When a machine flies round a corner very quickly the pilot tilts it to one side. Such action as this is known as BANKING. This operation can be witnessed at any aerodrome when speed handicaps are taking place.
Since upside-down flying came into vogue we have heard a great deal about NOSE DIVING. This is a headlong dive towards earth with the nose of the machine pointing vertically downwards. As a rule the pilot makes a sharp nose dive before he loops the loop.
Sometimes an aeroplane enters a tract of air where there seems to be no supporting power for the planes; in short, there appears to be, as it were, a HOLE in the air. Scientifically there is no such thing as a hole in the air, but airmen are more concerned with practice than with theory, and they have, for their own purposes, designated this curious phenomenon an AIR POCKET. In the early days of aviation, when machines were far less stable and pilots more quickly lost control of their craft, the air pocket was greatly dreaded, but nowadays little notice is taken of it.
A violent disturbance in the air is known as a REMOUS. This is somewhat similar to an eddy in a stream, and it has the effect of making the machine fly very unsteadily. Remous are probably caused by electrical disturbances of the atmosphere, which cause the air streams to meet and mingle, breaking up into filaments or banding rills of air. The wind—that is, air in motion—far from being of approximate uniformity, is, under most ordinary conditions, irregular almost beyond conception, and it is with such great irregularities in the force of the air streams that airmen have constantly to contend.
CHAPTER XLIX. The Future in the Air
Three years before the outbreak of the Great War, the Master-General of Ordnance, who was in charge of Aeronautics at the War Office, declared: "We are not yet convinced that either aeroplanes or air-ships will be of any utility in war".
After four years of war, with its ceaseless struggle between the Allies and the Central Powers for supremacy in the air, such a statement makes us rub our eyes as though we had been dreaming.
Seven years—and in its passage the air encircling the globe has become one gigantic battle area, the British Isles have lost the age-long security which the seas gave them, and to regain the old proud unassailable position must build a gigantic aerial fleet—as greatly superior to that of their neighbours as was, and is, the British Navy.
Seven years—and the monoplane is on the scrap-heap; the Zeppelin has come as a giant destroyer—and gone, flying rather ridiculously before the onslaughts of its tiny foes. In a recent article the editor of The Aeroplane referred to the erstwhile terror of the air as follows: "The best of air-ships is at the mercy of a second-rate aeroplane". Enough to make Count Zeppelin turn in his grave!