England at this date possessed one military airplane, and it was late before she awakened to the importance of aviation as a branch of warfare.
Germany, Italy, Russia, and America were looking on with keen interest, but for a while France maintained supremacy over all in her aerial projects. By the end of the following year she had over 200 military machines, with a competent staff of pilots and observers.
To follow the course of aviation achievement we must now go back to England, where in July, 1911, another big Daily Mail contest took place. This time the newspaper had put up a prize of £10,000 to be won by flying what was known as the “Circuit of Britain.” This had been marked out to pass through many of the large cities of England, Scotland and Ireland. There were seventeen entrants for the contest, which was won by a lieutenant of the French navy, named Conneau. Cross-country flights were growing longer and longer, keeping pace with the rapid strides in the development of the airplane. Still another contest during 1911 was the “Circuit of Europe,” which lay through France, Belgium and England; while a flight from Paris to Rome and one from Paris to Madrid served to demonstrate the growing reliability of the aircraft.
Money had always flowed freely from French coffers for this favorite of all hobbies. At the Rheims Meeting in October of 1911 the Government offered approximately a quarter of a million dollars in prizes for aerial feats and in orders for machines. Representatives from many countries visited the meeting to witness the tests of war airplanes.
In the two years since the first Rheims Meeting many vast changes had taken place. Pilots no longer feared to fly in high winds; machines were reliable, strong and swift. A number made non-stop flights of close on to 200 miles, and showed as well remarkable climbing abilities.
It was the Nieuport monoplane which led all others at this Rheims Meeting. To-day the name of Nieuport is familiar to every one, for the little scout machines carried some of the bravest pilots of France and America to victory in the air battles of the Great War. Even in 1911 the Nieuport monoplane was breaking all records for speed. Carrying both a pilot and a passenger it flew as fast as 70 miles an hour at Rheims.
Another new machine that attracted attention was the Breguet biplane, a heavy general service machine weighing 2420 pounds and carrying a 140 h. p. Gnome motor. The Gnome had so far outdistanced all competitors that it had virtually become the universal motor for airplanes, and, many of those seen in 1911 were equipped with it. Since then vast improvements have been made in stationary engines but at that time they almost entirely failed to meet the requirements of light weight, high power and reliability.
One development in the biplanes of 1911 cannot be passed over, for it bears a very interesting relation to their efficiency as war machines. Any one who has seen a photograph of one of the early biplanes must have been struck by the curious kite-like appearance it presented, due to the fact that it had no body or fuselage, but only two large planes, connected by strong wooden supports, and usually with a seat for the pilot in the center of the lower plane.
It was in the monoplane that a car or airplane body first made its appearance, and to it the wing surfaces of the monoplane were strongly braced with wires. Many of the biplanes of 1911 had adopted the idea and in consequence began to take on a more modern appearance. It was a thoroughly good idea, for by means of its greater stability and strength, protection for the pilot and general efficiency were obtained. Biplanes of this type now carried their engines in the fuselage bow with the pilot's seat just behind it, while instead of the front elevating plane of the earlier models, the elevating surfaces were at the rear of the fixed tail plane. The Breguet was one of these progressive type biplanes of 1911. Constructed very largely of steel, it had a long, tapering body with its controlling planes—rudder and elevators—at the rear. Instead of a number of wooden supports between the planes the Breguet had exactly four reliable struts.
Henry Farman developed a military biplane in 1911 which had one particularly new feature. Instead of the upper main plane being placed exactly above the lower it had been moved slightly forward or “staggered”—giving it an overhang in front. The idea was that this gave a greater climbing power and was helpful in making descents, though the point has never been satisfactorily proved.