"The airplane has never really come into its own as a sporting proposition. Of late years the tendency has been to develop a high rate of speed rather than to build machines that may be operated safely at a comparatively low speed. You see, a machine adapted to make from seventy to one hundred miles an hour cannot run at all except at a pretty rapid clip, and this means difficulty in getting down. One must have a good, smooth piece of ground to land on and plenty of it. When we get an airplane that will fly along at twenty miles an hour, one can land almost any place,—on a roof, if necessary,—and then people will begin to take an interest in owning an airplane for the enjoyment of flying."
"Is it true that you and your brother had a compact not to fly together?"
"Yes, we felt that until the records of our work could be made complete it was a wise precaution not to take a chance on both of us getting killed at the same time. We never flew together but once. From 1900 to 1908 the total time in the air for both Wilbur and myself, all put together, was only about four hours."
Mr. Wright's statement of the brevity of the time spent in actual flying in order to learn the art will astonish many people. Few novices would be so rash as to undertake to steer an automobile alone after only four hours' practice, and despite the fact that the aviator always has plenty of space to himself the airplane can hardly yet be regarded as simple a machine to handle as the automobile. Nevertheless the ease with which the method of its actual manipulation is acquired is surprising. More work is done in the classroom and on the ground to make the fighting pilot than in the air. As we have traced the development of both dirigible and airplane from the first nascent germ of their creation to the point at which they were sufficiently developed to play a large part in the greatest of all wars, let us now consider how hosts of young men, boys in truth, were trained to fly like eagles and to give battle in mid-air to foes no less well trained and desperate than they.
CHAPTER VI
THE TRAINING OF THE AVIATOR
The Great War, opening in Europe in 1914 and before its end involving practically the whole world, including our own nation, has had more to do with the rapid development of aircraft, both dirigible balloons and airplanes, than any other agency up to the present time. It tested widely and discarded all but the most efficient. It established the relative value of the dirigible and the airplane, so relegating the former to the rear that it is said that the death of Count Zeppelin, March 8, 1917, was in a measure due to his chagrin and disappointment. It stimulated at once the inventiveness of the constructors and the skill and daring of the pilots. When it opened there were a few thousand machines and trained pilots in all the armies of Europe. Before the war had been in progress three years there were more flying men over the battlefields of the three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa, than there were at that time soldiers of all classes enlisted in the regular army of the United States. Before that war the three arms of the armed service had been infantry, artillery, and cavalry. The experience of war added a new arm—the aviation corps—and there is to-day some doubt whether in importance it should not be ranked above the cavalry.
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