[ARMOUR HEIGHTS SYSTEM.]
Training development in England had now reached a point at which elements already recognized but not hitherto fully appreciated were proved to be invaluable. Their use was aimed primarily at the attaining of instinctive flying by the pupil. The means by which this was achieved, the consequent effect on the instructor, and the reduced fatalities during instruction are sufficiently notable to call for mention.
The product has been the active-service pilot as distinguished from the peace pilot—two vastly different individuals.
The actions and reactions of this system are in general psychological. They begin with the assumption that since fear is almost invariably of the unknown, once the latter is eliminated fear should be non-existent. The approach is, therefore, by way of wiping out ignorance concerning the air and the machine in which the pupil and instructor ascend, and illustrating, while in flight, the simplicity of those laws which are fundamental to all good pilots and machines.
This, while seemingly simple enough, involves an ultimate strain on the instructor. His pupils are, it is true, limited to six, but into each of these he is expected to pour the sum of his knowledge and skill. He is personally responsible for their crashes. At first blush apparently unjust, this resolves itself into an absolutely fair deduction from the principles of the system. A crash by a pupil—engine failure and aeroplane failure being too infrequent to alter the premise—is considered as due to an imperfection of training. At some stage in the course some indispensable point must have been slighted or overlooked. Hence the pupil’s inability to meet the emergency.
Character—that subtle union of temperament and disposition, the increasing air sense, the delicacy of control, the spontaneous response, the nameless faculty by which the pupil becomes, as it were, welded to the machine which in turn replies to the subconscious movement of hand and foot—the study of all these are found in the Armour Heights system, which itself is based on an admirable method originated at Gosport, in England. The pupil is expected to do the flying, and even in an emergency the instructor does not assume control until it is demonstrated that the pupil is literally out of his depth.
And always by telephone or tube sounds back from the front seat the guiding voice, encouraging, reproving, suggesting and probing the mental process of the pupil at the moment. Take, for instance, the spin, that plunge easy to commence and equally easy to terminate. The machine slows, stalls, dips and dives earthward. At the second spin comes steadily in the word of experience—“stick a little forward—not too much—right rudder—hold her there—that’s right—easy isn’t it?—feel all right?—let’s do it again—put her in yourself this time.” With such an “entente cordiale” as this, it is clear why the words “danger” and “nerves” are barred from the instructor’s vocabulary, and the terms “safe” and “dangerous” give place to “right” and “wrong.” The pupil has obtained the sense of relationship between himself and his machine.