The Romance of Aircraft

by Laurence Yard Smith

When the War broke out airplanes were not planned so carefully nor equipped so fully for their special duties as they are to-day. Nobody foresaw exactly what those duties would be, and nobody once dreamed that the battalions of the air would play the tremendous rôle they have played in deciding the great struggle. Even Germany, who had been secretly planning and working and preparing for so long, had very little conception of the actual importance of her heavier-than-air machines. She neglected to use them entirely when she began her swift stride across Belgium. That piece of neglect lost her the prize, for the plucky Belgians, seizing the opportunity, marshalled their air forces, a small handful of airplanes, and used them to good advantage in discovering the intentions of the enemy. By means of her air force, Belgium was enabled to hold back for awhile the onrushing tide of the Hun armies, until France could bring her men into the field and the “contemptible little army” of Britain could be hurried across the Channel.

As the air forces were the deciding factor in that first great onslaught, so they have remained during the whole struggle. They began as mere scouting machines, but they have taken upon themselves more and more duties, until at the present time they are used for a multitude of purposes, and are fitted with the most perfect equipment to carry out their various ends.

Airplanes have often been called the “eyes of the army,” but in war it is not sufficient to be able to see what the enemy is doing or is about to do. You must also be able to keep him from knowing what your plans are. So, there are the machines whose duty is to “see” and those whose duty is to “put out the eyes of the enemy.” These latter must keep an eternal vigilance over the lines, on the lookout for enemy craft. When one is spotted they dash out after it, pursue it back to its lines and prevent it from performing its mission of reconnaissance. Nor are they satisfied merely to drive it off, they follow and give fight. Over there against the sky you see a little puff of smoke and flame that goes shooting down to the horizon. It is an enemy plane that will never again come spying upon Allied troops. Perhaps a group of fast German fighting machines dart out unexpectedly to avenge it, and then there is a terrible battle in the clouds, with every machine that is in the air hurrying to the skirmish. You try to follow their swift movements as they loop and dart and dive, but all you can see is a rapid confusion of wings, and now and then a machine that separates itself from the general mêlée and goes crashing to earth.

Not the least dangerous of the many services the airplane is performing is that of the artillery “spotter.” It belongs to some particular battery whose guns are thundering away at the enemy. Hovering above No Man's Land, where its position is a trifle too exposed to be comfortable, it radiographs back to the gunners the exact locations of important objectives, then watches the firing and reports the results. Thanks to it the big guns do not speak in vain, and almost every shot is a direct “hit.”

And then there are the dreadnaughts of the sky who actually take part in an attack, flying low over the lines and attacking the enemy infantry with guns and with death-dealing bombs. They must run the gauntlet of the enemy's fire, but on the other hand they spread terror and confusion in the ranks of the soldiers massed below, distracting their attention and leaving them open to the surprise of a sudden onslaught of Allied troops.

There are other machines which help in an attack by keeping the various parts of the long line in close communication with each other, so that all efforts are in unison. Their duties correspond in a way to those of the swift horseback rider we read of in the stories of old wars, who sped with news of great import from one commander to another. Only that the airplanes of to-day are so much more efficient than the gallant horseback rider of old, that although the line stretches across a nation, it can act as a man when the moment comes for a big “push.”

Long before the war Germany had been busy turning out airplanes in large numbers in her factories, and in August, 1914, her air force was far superior in numbers to that of her great opponent France. She fondly imagined that she would be able with the greatest ease to put out her enemy's eyes, but in this she failed utterly. In spite of her military program of construction, according to which airplanes were turned out as if by clock-work, there was something wrong with her calculations. It is amusing to look back and see how German “method” had been carried to the absurd point of defeating itself. In manner truly characteristic, the Hun had standardized his airplane down to the last bolt. Every machine turned out was of exactly the same pattern, and built up of exactly the same parts—parts which could be manufactured in large quantities and put together with unusual speed. It was certainly system raised to the nth degree. And the machines themselves were good enough—sturdy biplanes intended to be maids-of-all-work over the front lines. Yet in a little while after the fighting had begun, Germany withdrew them in more or less chagrin, and set herself to constructing others of varied patterns. They were well made and splendidly equipped, but they were not sufficiently specialized for the many different kinds of work they were called on to perform.

France had a motley array of airplanes of every size, shape and make when the war broke out. They had varying systems of control, so that a pilot who flew one with ease was nothing more than a novice when he stepped into another. He did not know how its new set of levers operated, nor how the plane would behave in the air. Moreover, the parts for these French airplanes and for their engines had been specially designed by each maker, and were quite unsuitable for any other type of machine. The result was that when a machine had to be repaired at the front, it was “laid up” for a long time, while the special part it required was being ordered and made for it. When finally it arrived, very often there had been some mistake, and so there was another long period of uselessness. France had prided herself on her versatility in airship design. She now had cause to regret it as she viewed the almost helpless confusion it had caused in her air service. Her machines, moreover, were much inferior to the German in armament, speed and climbing gauges, cameras, and all the hundreds of accessories which gave the German machines their initial advantage. But experience is the best teacher, and no sooner had she seen wherein she fell short than dauntless France mustered all her resources to correcting past mistakes. Order was brought out of confusion, and it was only a very little while before the German war lords had need to look to their laurels, for the Frenchmen were far outstripping them in the air.

There was one “accessory” which the airplane of the Hun lacked, and which all his mechanical skill and ingenuity were not able to provide: a pilot with the dash and daring of the French! Even in those first dark days when the French planes were the equals of their adversaries neither in numbers nor in capabilities,—a continuous stream of gallant French pilots took to the air and proved that they could surprise and outmaneuver their slower-thinking opponents. While they held the line in their inferior craft, French manufacturers were rushing newer and better equipped machines to reenforce them.

Great Britain was far behindhand in aircraft production when the trumpet of war sounded,—in fact, her air force was considered a negligible quantity by friend and foe alike. By dint of persevering search she managed to scrape up a small group of planes of many makes and for the most part antiquated. She sent them—along with her “contemptible little army ”—to France, and there they succeeded in holding their own during the first great German push. When the Stories of heroic fighting against hopeless odds, of British airmen flinging their lives in challenge against the foe in the great air struggle, began to reach home, the British lion repented his tardiness and a program of aircraft construction on a large scale was instituted without delay.