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.
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.
[Illustration: " America"--Built to Cross the Atlantic Ocean. © U. & U.]
When war was declared none of the belligerent nations had its aërial fleet properly organized, nor was the aviation department in any of them equal in preparedness to the rest of the army. The two great antagonists did not differ greatly in the strength of their flying forces. Germany possessed about 1000 airplanes, exclusive of about 450 in private hands, of all which it is estimated about 700 were ready for immediate service. Fourteen Zeppelins were in commission, and other large dirigibles of different types brought the number of the craft of this sort available up to forty.
[Illustration: Wright Airplane in Flight.]
France was stronger in airplanes but weaker in dirigibles. Of the former she had about 1500; of the latter not more than twenty-five. The land was swept for planes in the hands of private owners and, as the French people had from the first taken a lively interest in aviation, more than 500 were thus obtained. The French furthermore at the very outset imperilled their immediate strength in the air for the sake of the future by adopting four or five machines as army types and throwing out all of other makes. More than 550 machines were thus discarded, and their services lost during the first weeks of the war. The reason for this action was the determination of the French to equip their aviation corps with standardized machines of a few types only. Thus interchangeable parts could always be kept in readiness in case of an emergency, and the aviation corps was obliged to familiarize itself with the workings of only a few machines. The objection to the system is the fact that it practically stopped all development of any machines in France except the favoured few. Moreover it threw out of the service at a stroke, or remanded for further instruction, not less than four hundred pilots who had been trained on the rejected machines. The order was received with great public dissatisfaction, and for a time threatened serious trouble in the Chamber of Deputies where criticisms of the direction of the flying service even menaced the continuance of the ministry in power.
