The 1911 death roll of American aviators included: Lieutenant Kelly, U. S. A.; A. Hartle, Los Angeles; Kreamer, Badger and Johnstone, Chicago; Frisbie, Norton, Kan.; Castellana, Mansfield, Pa.; Miller, Troy, Ohio; Clarke, Garden City, N. Y.; Dixon, Spokane, Wash.; Ely, Macon, Ga.; and Professor Montgomery, Santa Clara, Cal., whose early experiments are held in such high esteem by scientists.
Just as 1910 was the year for record-breaking aeroplane contests, 1911 was the year that proved the aeroplane a machine with a greater and more important use than that of a very exciting and a very expensive sport. Probably the most astounding developments in the world of aviation in 1911 were the experiments of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, which showed that man has come very near to solving the problem of true soaring flight. We will look more closely at the experiments in a later chapter.
Of much greater practical use was the development of the hydro-aeroplane by Glenn Curtiss. His lead in this was quickly followed by the Wrights and most of the European makers.
The year 1911 saw the aeroplane employed for the first time in the world's history in actual warfare. When the revolution was raging in Mexico in February, 1911, the Diaz Army sent Rene Simon in a Blériot monoplane to make a scouting trip over the camp of the insurrectos. A little later on Lieutenant Foulois of the American Signal Service, whose name will be remembered in connection with the Fort Myer experiments, sailed over and about the camp of the mobilized American Army at San Antonio, Texas, while the Mexican revolution was in progress just across the American boundary line.
Next came the use of the aeroplane for scouting by the Italian Army in its invasion of Tripoli. All of these expeditions showed that the aeroplane can be used more successfully in war for scouting than as a means for dropping explosives. Of course there have been many experiments conducted by aviators in dropping paper bombs, but army officers both in the United States and abroad are not agreed as to the success of such projects.
Another of the important military experiments has been the equipping of aeroplanes with wireless apparatus so that a wireless operator in the machine with the aviator could send and receive brief messages such as would describe the position and strength of an enemy in war time. Also many aviators have taken up with them photographers who have taken accurate photographs of both the still and motion variety of the country over which they were passing. Of course the armies of the world are building guns which will carry to a great altitude as a defence from aerial attack.
Although the first country to adopt aeroplanes for use by its army, the United States is now far behind other nations in its aviation squads. The United States Signal Corps owns only a few Wright and Curtiss biplanes, with only a small number of officers who know how to fly them. France has an extensive fleet of several hundred aeroplanes and a small army of aviators, while Germany has established a school for aviation where sixty or seventy officers are always being instructed in flying the various types of machines. The German Army has now more than one hundred aeroplanes, besides many dirigible balloons. The British Government has not gone so far, but has conducted some interesting experiments in which Claude Grahame-White was one of the leaders.
The latest things in the aeroplane, however, are always expected to be brought out at the French Army tests, and several machines that were first exhibited in this way will be described a little later on.
But not only in war is the aeroplane being developed, but also in the greater work of peace, because the aeroplane enthusiasts expect that in the near future the art will be developed to such a degree of safety that regular systems of passenger traffic can be installed. Besides this, the aeroplane is the fastest mode of travelling now known, and it may be used for the carrying of mail. It was only in the summer of 1911 that the first aeroplane mail route of the United States was established between the aviation field in Garden City, L. I., and the United States post-office at Mineola, several miles away. Daily throughout the meet at Garden City Captain Beck and Earle L. Ovington carried a sack of officially stamped and sealed mail from the post-office on the field to the postal station at Mineola. The first sack was handed to Beck by Postmaster-General Hitchcock. Before this, mail had been carried by aeroplane in England, but not on a regularly established route.
Also the aeroplane has been pressed into service by deputy sheriffs seeking criminals and by searching parties hunting for lost persons. The former was done in Los Angeles when a gang of desperadoes escaped into the California desert and an aeroplane soared over the sagebrush in an effort to locate them, while the latter was done near New York after duck hunters had got lost in a storm on great South Bay, and near New Orleans when an aviation student skimmed over Lake Pontchartrain and located the body of a man drowned there.