On the aviation training-fields, owing to the novices who were learning to fly, the natural recklessness of youth, and sometimes the faulty construction of planes—hastily built and often superficially inspected—the casualties were higher. Stunting too near the ground and in machines constructed primarily for straight flying so that the stresses should come from only one flying angle, enemy treachery, and the absolute necessity of discovering the best manœuvres and newest types of aeroplanes also augmented the honor roll. But stunting eliminated, with machines equipped with two or more reliable aeronautic motors built according to standardized specifications as to materials, methods, stability, and the required number of safety factors, steered by tried and true pilots, flying between regular landing-fields and aerodromes and directed in the dark and in foggy weather from the ground by radiotelephones, such as flight commanders used in giving instruction to the members of the flying squadron, the dangers of flying can be reduced to proportions commensurate with the desire of the public to get from place to place in the quickest and safest vehicle.
Of course, the present high landing speed of an aeroplane is the cause of many accidents. Thirty-five miles an hour, except where the head resistance is great, is the slowest speed now made in landing a heavier-than-air machine. The invention of a device or the discovery of a means of reducing the speed to ten miles an hour when touching the ground, though still only in the realms of the probable, is by no means diametrically opposed to the inherent laws of the aeroplane. This accomplished, the danger of flying in an aeroplane will be reduced to infinitesimal proportions—at least to a degree no more precarious than riding in an automobile.
Already the War Department has ordered flyers to map the country, and large stretches of the United States have already been mapped. The Wilson Aerial Highway, from New York to Chicago and San Francisco, has been laid out. Aerial transportation companies have been formed to provide planes. Thousands of skilled pilots have secured jobs; many chambers of commerce have built landing-places near their towns and cities. Needless to say, aerial laws will be passed to prevent stunting with passengers and requiring machines to fly at the altitude necessary to glide to the nearest aerodrome in case a motor stalls. Already a dozen different aeronautical motors have been developed which will run twenty-four to one hundred hours without stopping. Recently the Caproni biplane at Mineola, Long Island, climbed to 14,000 feet with one of the three motors completely shut off all the way.
On August 9 the Italian poet Gabriele d’Annunzio flew from Venice to Vienna via the Alps with his motor wide open all the way. Indeed, thousands of equally sensational flights have been made, in all kinds of weather and under the most adverse circumstances of a great war. Of the hundred-odd air raids on London by the Gothas some were conducted in broad daylight, when the Germans had to fly through squadrons of British scouts and fighters, through or over three barrages in order to get to the metropolis; and yet seldom more than one or two Hun machines out of the thirty usually constituting the squadron were forced to land or were shot down. The same thing was true of the British Independent Air Force in the raids they made over the German cities, citadels, factories, ammunition-dumps, and other military objectives, though they often flew in fleets of fifty to a hundred.
Of the 350 machines constituting the American air raid on Wavrille in October, 1918, only one aeroplane failed to return, though twelve Hun machines were shot down. The German flying-tank which shot down Major Lufbery, the most famous American ace, was driven by five engines, which were protected, as well as the fuselage, with bullet-proof steel three-eighths of an inch thick. Major Lufbery emptied his machine-gun against this aerial monster from close range and from many angles before his gas-tank was pierced and his machine went down in flames. Therefore a bimotored machine, flying under peace conditions, should be able to make its aerodrome safely nearly every time.
There were three discomforts of air travel—the cold, the noise of the motor, and the lack of room in moving about. Electrically heated clothes eliminate the cold; ariophones, which shut out the noise of the motor but permit the passengers or aviators to converse together, are in universal use on aeroplanes. With the increase in the size of the aeroplanes and the number of motors, the nacelles and the enclosed roomy cabins can be constructed as they were on the famous Sykorsky aerobus, which was built in Russia before the war. This aeroplane carried twenty-one people to an altitude of 7,000 feet. On this trip they had ample room to move about and to observe the sky and the landscape. On Thanksgiving Day, 1917, a half-dozen guests of an American aircraft factory had their turkey dinner served in a huge aeroplane above the clouds.
The Handley Page and Farman aerial transport busses now flying between London and Paris carry the passengers entirely housed in.
It is true that owing to the cost of the aeroplanes and the aeromotors, their upkeep and the number of skilled men required to fly and maintain them, all aerial travel is expensive. The two-seater training-machines, equipped with one motor, cost five to seven thousand dollars, and the huge bimotored bombing-machines averaged forty to sixty thousand dollars. This price was due to the necessity for hurried construction. For everything that went into the building of the aeromotor and the machine itself and also for the labor the very highest price had to be paid. Tools, machinery, factories, fields, hangars, and a thousand other things had to be purchased, and a great body of skilled workmen had to be trained before aircraft could be turned out in quantity.
Now all this skill and billions of money have been invested in the industry so that the plants in this country have the capacity to manufacture nearly two hundred a day. With this nucleus to start a peace-construction programme the price of even the biggest machines must soon shrink to that of a high-priced automobile or private yacht. Plenty of sporting machines with a small wing spread and a two-cylinder motor that will sell for five hundred dollars are now being made; and since these machines can average twenty-two miles on a gallon of gasoline the expense of maintaining one of these will not be out of the means of hundreds of the young flyers who have returned from flying on the West Front. Moreover, since there will be no maintenance of roads, rails, live wires, and so on, such as there is in the railroad and electric road industries, the cost of aero maintenance is infinitely smaller, so that aerial travel may become cheaper than any other known to man.
Fundamentally, the hydroaeroplane is the same as the aeroplane except that pontoons instead of wheels are used to land upon. The cost of these airships over the land machines is noticeable only where boats are used instead of pontoons. Consequently, their price above the aeroplane will depend on the size and the kind of furnishings used in the boat. Owing to the fact that no landing-field has to be bought and maintained and that the flying-boat can come down on a river or a lake with comparative ease, and also the fact that altitude does not have to be maintained in order to glide to an aerodrome or a safe landing-field, this type of aerial navigation bids fair to be fast, cheap, and absolutely safe. Moreover, the size and passenger-carrying capacity of these flying-boats will be limited only by the construction of wings strong enough to maintain them in the air, for the size of the hulls and the number of motors can be increased indefinitely.