The discovery of a method for obtaining helium in large quantities at a low cost from natural gas will have results of the highest consequence for air navigation. Being non-inflammable it makes the dirigible a safe means of transport by air and so greatly increases the possibilities of long distance flights above both oceans and continents. The propaganda balloons devised by the meteorological and other services of the United States were most useful in the dissemination of information in enemy countries, where the results were important in the undermining of morale. They also make possible the mapping of the air highways across the Atlantic and the observation of air temperatures and air currents—a service which will be of so much importance to the future of aviation that it can not yet be estimated.
The ingenuity and resourcefulness which found a means of treating cotton fabric to make it as good as linen for the covering of airplane wings made a contribution of signal value to American effort in the war, for without it our air program would have been completely balked. Other nations had attempted to solve the same problem and had devised cotton substitutes for linen, but none of them had proved equal to the strain which airplane wings must bear. The American process gave a substitute as good as linen, and better in some respects, and it has already proved a contribution of very great value to the building of airplanes for commercial purposes, for it simplifies the obtaining of raw material and lessens the cost of production.
Many problems connected with work in the air were under study by scientific experts in the army service when the armistice was signed and many smaller problems had been solved and contributions of less value had been made. Among them was the devising of a new and improved compass for air use; the developing of new and more serviceable cameras for airplanes; the construction of a leak-proof tank for airplanes which lessens the dangers of flying; the devising of several kinds of ingenious signaling lamps for both day and night use. Several new types of planes were developed under the urgency of the country’s needs that make important aeronautical advances.
One of the most important of all the airplane improvements of the entire war was the developing and the successful application by members of the Bureau of Aircraft Production to American airplanes of the radio telephone. It made possible voice communication between planes in the air and between the ground and the planes. For some time before the armistice was signed squadrons of American planes at the front were being maneuvered and fought by radio telephone and German orders had been insistent that an American plane thus equipped should be shot down and brought to the rear for examination. Important for war purposes as was this development, the result of months of investigation and experiment, its possibilities and its value for peace time uses are even greater.
Although not completed in time for war use, an invention for the control and direction by wireless from the air of boats and torpedoes in the water and of airplanes from the ground was mainly developed under the spur of war needs and its promise was high for decisive war usefulness, as it is also for peace-time purposes.
To create a new industry and bring it into quantity production; to work out a method of instruction and training; to train thousands of fliers in all the specialized branches of flying to a high degree of skill; to train the tens of thousands of mechanics necessary for the upkeep and supply of a large aviation service; to bring that service up from a point of utter negligibility to a state of such efficiency and importance that it gave aid of high value on the Western front; and during the same time to make contributions of the highest consequence to air navigation—that is the summing up of America’s achievement in the air, in a year and a half, for the prosecution of the war.
PART TWO
THE NATION BEHIND THE FIGHTERS
CHAPTER XXI
FINANCING THE WAR
Statistics of financial operations usually make dull and dreary reading for all who are not professional financiers. But every figure in the financing of our share in the great war glows with interest. For it is illumined by the high flame of patriotism and the eager wish to serve the needs and the ideals of the nation that animated the whole people. The story of the financing of the war is the story of the enthusiastic giving by young and old, rich and poor, high and lowly, all over the country, of all that their government asked in such overflowing measure as far exceeded its requests. Willingly they took up the heavy burden of increased taxes and gladly they carried to triumphant success four huge loans of government bonds, thus providing an enormous reservoir of credit that enabled the government to pay its mountainous bills, to give a helping hand to other nations, to bend all its energies to the prosecution of the war, and to carry the country over from a peace to a war basis without shock or financial disturbance.