Part 2 (1/2)
After the explanation of the use of these controls, and their demonstration on the machine as it awaits its turn in the air, the pupil is taken up for his first ride--strictly a joy ride, and not always joyous for those who take every chance to be seasick. After he has a glimpse of what the ground looks like from the air, and has recovered from his first breathless sweep off the ground, the pupil is given a lesson in the demonstration of controls. The instructor explains through a speaking-tube attached to his helmet the very simple principles. Forward with the stick to nose down, back to lift it up, left stick tilts the machine over on its left wing, and right stick banks it to the right. Right stick and right rudder, in proper proportions, turn the machine to the right, left stick and left rudder to take the machine out of the turn and fly it straight again.
Then the wonderful moment when the instructor calls through the tube, ”All right, now you take the stick.” You clutch it as though it were the one straw in a great ocean. ”Not so hard,” comes the voice. ”Now put your feet gently on the rudder-bar. Not so rough; easier, man, easier on that stick!” For a glorious moment she is yours, you hold her nose up, and you are flying an airplane tearing over the checkerboard country far below.
Then, like the voice of doom: ”Now, do a gentle turn to the left.
Don't forget to give her rudder and stick at the same time. That's right. Begin the motion with your feet and hands at the same time.”
The world swings furiously, and down below that left wing-tip a little farm sways gently.
”Now you are in a gentle turn--feel that breeze on your cheek? We are side-slipping; give her a touch more of left rudder. Not so much. Now your nose is dropping; pull back on the stick. Back! Not _forward_!
_Back!_ Now your nose is too _high_; take us out, and don't forget that _opposite_ stick and rudder.
”Now fly straight for a few minutes. Your right wing is low--bring it up. Your nose is too high. Now it is too low. Keep it so that the radiator cap is above the horizon. That's right.”
So goes the business of instruction through the lessons on straight flying, gentle turns, misuse of controls, side-slipping, and approach, take-off, and landing. The trips should average thirty-five or forty minutes, long enough to teach the lesson, but not long enough to weary the pupil. Here at take-off and landing the pupil finds himself up against the most difficult part of his training. He has the problem of stopping a large machine weighing a ton or more, traveling at a landing speed of forty to fifty miles an hour, with the center of gravity just balanced over the under-carriage. An error in judgment will pile the machine up on its nose with a crashed propeller, and perhaps two broken wings and damaged under-carriage. Not a dangerous accident for the pilot, but very humiliating.
Army practice has shown that a pupil should have about sixty practice landings dual, that is to say, coached and helped by his instructor.
By this time he has a total flying time of six to twelve hours. At this point, before he goes solo, the Gosport system provides that he shall be taken to a reasonably safe height for the practice of high maneuvers. At a height of say two thousand five hundred feet the instructor shows him how a stalled machine falls into a spin. The question of teaching higher maneuvers to civilian pilots is open to argument.
As soon as the instructor shuts off the engine the machine rapidly loses flying speed. It reaches a point where there is not enough air pa.s.sing over the wing surfaces to support the plane in the air. Her nose begins to drop, and he pulls the stick back. The stick is full back, she stalls, topples over on her side, and plunges nose first.
The instructor kicks on full rudder, and the world whirls below like a top, and the air whistles, swish, swish, swish, in the wires at every turn. Stick forward, opposite rudder, and she comes out so fast that your head swims. That is the spin.
”Now you try it,” says the instructor. For there is nothing to a spin unless a machine does not come out of it--a rare thing if the plane is properly handled. The pupil is now ready to go solo, and for the first couple of hours' solo flying he does nothing but make circuits around the field, landing and taking off. Then his instructor takes him dual for forced-landing practice, business of getting down into a field within gliding range by gliding turns. Then the pupil tries it solo, throttling down for the practice, a most valuable experience which increases the confidence of the pilot. He learns to use his own judgment and to gauge height and ground distance as it appears from the air.
After three or four hours of solo time the pupil is scheduled for another demonstration of higher maneuvers, spinning and the stall turn. For the stall turn the pilot noses the machine down to get an air speed of seventy-five miles an hour. A little bank, stick back, she rears into the air with her nose to the sky and propeller roaring.
Full rudder and throttle off. In silence she drops over on her side into the empty air; blue sky and green fields flash by in a whirl. She hangs on her back while the pa.s.sengers strain against the safety belts, and then her nose plunges. The air shrieks in the wires as the ground comes up at terrific speed.
It is time for the pupil to go up for his solo spin under the plan adopted for army purposes. Up, up, up the pupil flies, three thousand feet, and the ground below looks soft and green. Would it be soft to hit in a spin from that height? It would not. Have people ever spun that far? he wonders. They have. Have machines ever failed to come out of a spin and killed the pilot? The answer is too obvious. With faith in nothing in particular, and with his mind made up that one can die but once in a spin, he stalls and spins her--and comes out. He is so surprised and exhilarated that he tries it again before he loses his nerve. Yet again. The pupil is a pilot, the air has no terrors, and he has learned the oldest truth of flying, that there is nothing to a spin unless you don't come out.
The natural result of training a pupil along those lines is that he graduates rapidly into a good stunting pilot. He realizes that he cannot tempt the devil at three hundred feet and hope to live, but he takes a good alt.i.tude, throws his machine upside down, and knows that, given enough air, he must come out. He does come out unless he loses complete control of his mind and body. With fifteen hours of solo flying the pupil has really become a pilot. He is beginning to show that he can control his machine. From then on it is a question of the polis.h.i.+ng of the nice points, making his forced landings perfect, not side-slipping a foot on his vertical banks, and coming out of spin so that he always faces the airdrome--all of which distinguish the good pilot from the poor pilot.
IV
SAFETY IN FLYING
The fatalities on the training-fields of every country during the period of training in war, and before and after the war, testify only too surely that flying cannot be absolutely safe. It is no reflection on the future of flying to realize that it has not been safe, and that it can never, perhaps, be made fool-proof. One or two things must be remembered before we become despondent over the future safety of flying.
When the United States entered the war the entire personnel of the Signal Corps numbered one hundred and sixty officers and men. At the time the armistice was signed more than thirty thousand pilots had been trained. They were trained in great numbers under high pressure.
We did not have the machines to train them in or the instructors to fly with them. We had not the experience in wholesale training of flying-men, and yet we turned out vast numbers. It was a question of getting the men through their flying and getting them overseas as quickly as possible. We had no adequate methods of inspection of machines, and no laid-out course in flying-training. We had to learn by our own experience, in spite of the fact that England at all times gave unstinted aid.
The wonder is really that we did not have more flying accidents. There were few men in the country who really understood what conditions tended toward a flying accident. There were few who had ever gone into a spin and lived to tell about it. At that time a spinning-nose dive was a manifestation of hard luck--like a German sh.e.l.l. If you once got into it, it was only the matter of waiting for the crash and hoping that the hospital might be able to pull you through.
Toward the end, of course, this situation had been largely overcome, the Gosport system of flying had been tried out, and there was a vast increase in the knowledge of flying among the instructors and pupils.
The spin had been conquered, training was on a sound basis, and accidents were being rapidly cut down.
One of the most obvious ways to cut down crashes was by making sure that the pilot was in good condition physically. Flight surgeons a.s.signed to every camp were detailed to make a study of the very delicate relations.h.i.+p between a sick and stale pilot and the crash. It was discovered, for instance, that a man who went up not in the best condition multiplied by many times the ordinary hazards in the air. It became the duty of these surgeons to conduct recreation and exercises so that pilots would always be in good trim.
Flying for an early solo pupil is the greatest mental strain that a man can experience. Every moment the fact that he is up in the air, supported only by wood, wires, and fabric, may be on his mind. He is making desperate efforts to remember everything his instructor has told him since he started his dual. He tries to keep that nose on the horizon, the wings balanced, and the machine flying true. He is in fear of stalling and consequent loss of control. He goes into his turns, hardly knowing whether he is going to come out of them, and noses down for a landing, mentally giving prayer, perhaps, that he will come out all right. He can't possibly remember everything he has been told, but he tries to salvage as much knowledge as possible to make a decent landing.
These experiences tend to bring about two conditions, aerophobia (fear of the air) and brain fatigue, both resulting in complete loss of head on the part of the pilot and inability to react to impulses.