Aircraft and Submarines / The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day Uses of War's Newest Weapons

by Willis J. Abbot

© U. & U.

British Aviators about to Ascend.
Note position of gunner on lower seat.

Meantime the great ship was drifting perilously near the housetops, and the uniformed officers in the cars began making signals to the soldiers below. Ropes were thrown out, seized by willing hands and made fast. The crew of Germans descended to find themselves prisoners. The international law was clear enough. The ship was a military engine of the German army. Its officers, all in uniform, had deliberately steered her into the very heart of a French fortress. Though the countries were at peace the act was technically one of war—an armed invasion by the enemy. Diplomacy of course settled the issue peacefully but not before the French had made careful drawings of all the essential features of the Zeppelin, and taken copies of its log. As Germany had theretofore kept a rigid secrecy about all the details of Zeppelin construction and operation this angered the military authorities beyond measure. The unlucky officers who had shared in the accident were savagely told that they should have blown the ship up in mid-air and perished with it rather than to have weakly submitted it to French inspection. They suffered court-martial but escaped with severe reprimands.

The story of the dirigibles of France and Germany is practically the whole story of the development to a reasonable degree of perfection of the lighter-than-air machine. Other nations experimented somewhat, but in the main lagged behind these pioneers. Out of Spain indeed came a most efficient craft—the Astra-Torres, of which the British Government had the best example prior to the war, while both France and Russia placed large orders with the builders. How many finally went into service and what may have been their record are facts veiled in the secrecy of wartime. Belgium and Italy both produced dirigibles of distinctive character. The United States is alone at the present moment in having contributed nothing to the improvement of the dirigible balloon.

CHAPTER V
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE AIRPLANE

The story of the development of the heavier-than-air machine—which were called aëroplanes at first, but have been given the simpler name of airplanes—is far shorter than that of the balloons. It is really a record of achievement made since 1903 when the plane built by Professor Langley of the Smithsonian Institution came to utter disaster on the Potomac. In 1917, at the time of writing this book, there are probably thirty distinct types of airplanes being manufactured for commercial and military use, and not less than fifty thousand are being used daily over the battlefields of Europe. No invention save possibly the telephone and the automobile ever attained so prodigious a development in so brief a time. Wise observers hold that the demand for these machines is yet in its infancy, and that when the end of the war shall lead manufacturers and designers to turn their attention to the commercial value of the airplane the flying craft will be as common in the air as the automobiles at least on our country roads.

The idea of flying like a bird with wings, the idea basicly underlying the airplane theory, is old enough—almost as old as the first conception of the balloon, before hydrogen gas was discovered. In an earlier chapter some account is given of early experiments with wings. No progress was made along this line until the hallucination that man could make any headway whatsoever against gravity by flapping artificial wings was definitely abandoned. There was more promise in the experiments made by Sir George Cayley, and he was followed in the first half of the nineteenth century by half a dozen British experimenters who were convinced that a series of planes, presenting a fixed angle to the breeze and driven against it by a sufficiently powerful motor, would develop a considerable lifting power. This was demonstrated by Henson, in 1842, Stringfellow, in 1847, Wenham, who arranged his planes like slats in a Venetian blind and first applied the modern term "aeroplane" to his invention, and Sir Hiram Maxim, who built in 1890 the most complicated and impressive looking 'plane the world has yet seen. But though each of these inventors proved the theorem that a heavier-than-air machine could be made to fly, all failed to get practical results because no motor had then been invented which combined the necessary lightness with the generation of the required power.

In America we like to think of the brothers Wright as being the true inventors of the airplane. And indeed they did first bring it to the point of usefulness, and alone among the many pioneers lived to see the adoption of their device by many nations for serious practical use. But it would be unjust to claim for them entire priority in the field of the glider and the heavier-than-air machine. Professor Langley preceded them with an airplane which, dismissed with ridicule as a failure in his day, was long after his death equipped with a lighter motor and flown by Glenn Curtis, who declared that the scientist had solved the problem, had only the explosive engine been perfected in his time.

Despite, however, the early period of the successful experiments of the Wrights and Professor Langley, it would be unjust for America to arrogate to herself entire priority in airplane invention. Any story of that achievement which leaves out Lilienthal, the German, and Pilcher, the Englishman, is a record in which the truth is subordinated to national pride.