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Show U ow Uncle Sam Is Goiiopt ihe Germans in the Airflg XUXT IT",1 te" lhf "'e V,"Ued ,StateS RUacks- Consequently, we have the present dend--Sip till w Imvo. 000 hntt e TiiinPK n ser- 1L- i r- v s S V. - on intimate terms with members of the government's govern-ment's aircraft production board, and all his results re-sults are at the disposal of the government for the prosecution of the war. Ho has great expectations of the development of aircraft in practical use after the war, when thousands of trained flyers shall return to civil life, and when we shall have enormous factory capacity for turning out the best machines In the world. But that, again,' is another story. The Joy and Chivalry of Air Fighting. Flying has become as much a matter of routine in war as marching on laud or steaming on the sea, and men are ordered to fly, at fixed hours and for stated periods, as though flying were a natural act, and not the organized miracle that it really is. A correspondent of the London Times writes interestingly in-terestingly about it, saying: Out in France the last chivalries, the last beauties beau-ties of battle have taken refuge in the air. From the labors, butcheries, miseries, horrors and ashpit ash-pit desolation of the earth, the lighting romance of war has taken wings and climbed sunwards. There alone combat is individual, visual, decisive. There alone has the combatant to rely solely on lumself. There alone is the battle decided not through sj ( V veils of distance, between V .) impersonal and unknown rV hosts, but wing to wing and ats0--5j5 face to face. There alone SSj3g3jJjjSf are the rare courtesies of . gjoSfe!5 warfare still possible; it sgJ was a British squadron that suggested, and a British air- ( . man who executed, the 'si3' dropping of a funeral r wreath over the German lines as a tribute to the air-warrior Immelniann. And there alone can individual in-dividual skill and courage have their swift reward. For one flash, between a clip and a climb of his swallow flight, the fighting airman may catch the glint of his opponent's eye, and, if the momentary burst of fire be truly directed, see him crumple up in his seat and the nose of his machine dip and begin its fatal spinning dive, while the victor soars up again to safety and solitude. And what a solitude is his ! From the moment iu the airplane when the mechanic lias given his last heave, and the last curt verbal exchange, " 'Contact, sir' 'Contact, " has been given, and the engine sets up its mighty droning song, the airman is alone, submerged in that roaring music, deaf and dumb. For perhaps a minute he sits there testing his engine, fingering his levers, assuring as-suring himself that all is well ; and then, as the '. drone sinks to a hum, he makes I his last communication the I S d characteristic quick outward pw Jsj wave of the hands and arms. The chocks are pulled away, O-n the hum rises to a drone, breaks into a roar, and he is off, bump- wrC Y ) ing over the uneven earth until VMl his speed gives his wings their life, the rough ground is shed away from beneath his feet, and he rises into the sudden peace of the air. The "peace of the air" may seem like a contradiction con-tradiction in terms in war time; but It is the supreme sensation of fair-weather flying, apart from flying and fighting. Once you have got your height, whether it be a thousand or ten thousnnd feet, you seem to be absolutely at rest at rest in sunshine and a strong gale. The dim carpet or map beneath you hardly moves; and although the trembling fingers of the little clocks and dials before you witness to the fluidity of your element and the tenderness of your hold on it, yet the Jl only things that do not .A seem to move are the Aif wings and stays of your machine which surround ' 50"' a rigic1 cagl5 from rS ftT I wnicn yu lo:; forth 0 ibi-C 1 Ion the slow-turning V-A m ' earth or the rush;,:-,' 'M clouds. It is not- uiuil W the engine has been shut off, and you begin to plane in mighty circle's toward the earth again, that you get, in that delicious de-licious rush down the hill of air, any sensation of speed; and not until, a moment before landing, you skim over the earth at SO miles an hour, that you realize with what pace you have been rushing through the airy vacancy. But these are the sensations of mere joy-riding Ten or twenty minutes may take the fighting pilot to his station in the air over the enemy's lines. How puny the absurdity of the greatest war of all time can appear is only known to the airman as lie sits in the breeze and the sun, high above it all ; the danger to him is not down there, although to ascend into his remote sphere lie has to pass through the zone of anti-aircraft fire; his own particular enemy is the German fighting machine, ma-chine, which may come down to harry or destroy the observer, and which he must himself attack the moment it makes its appearance. Between these two he watchfully patrols, and all this time, although a battle 'may he raging beneath him. he hears nothing but the strong, rasping hum of his engine. He flies and fights alone. 4 TTtT T ITIIIN tel1 months the United States will have 25,000 battle planes in ser-vice ser-vice in Europe. The planes will be tv ' 1 equipped with American motors of 250-IV 250-IV lif horsepower, capable of driving them at Nf't! a maximum speed of 1U0 miles an wr uour- Furthermore, these motors will L-y be constructed principally of aluminum Tjc?pE and will be of less weight per horse-.yyl horse-.yyl power than any airplane motor here-f here-f y ' tofore built. Thus the plans of the aircruft board of the council of national defense, adopted by the war department and financed by congress, are In a fair way to be speedily consummated. con-summated. Not long ago, the Washington correspondent of the Kansas City Star, who signs himself "H. J. II.," went to Dayton, O., to interview one of the inventors of the airplane about America's great aerial program, planned to "blind" the German army. Portions of the reporter's story are printed below. It gives some details of what Uncle Sam is doing in the production of an army of man-birds man-birds : A young man jumped and caught the propeller blade of the biplane and gave it a pull. It turned half way around and stopped. He repeated the performance two or three y -- times. Suddenly there was a "pWSyL roar and the propeller became ESiS a blur. ylSSS It was a hot morning in U Xjf Dayton and the breeze from -C C the revolving propeller fan XjA" looked refreshing. The plane wasn't going up. It was blocked on the ground and they were merely trying out the engine. I stepped forward into the breeze. "The power isn't turned on yet," said Orville Wright, at my side. "It won't be so pleasant here when it is." The roar turned into thunder. The ground seemed to be blowing away in a cloud of dust. We grabbed for our hats and retreated. . "Just one of the training planes," Mr. Wright explained. "Only a hundred horsepower." Of no importance on a battle line, perhaps. But one of the gathering squadrons that even now are beginning to cast a faint black shadow across the German horizon. For tllia field' witn lts four square miles, is to be one of the great centers of kzr,. tlle airc'r'lft work which is relied on to turn the scale yMJW f battle on the western yJT front. And there at one Sy Jjr( f end of the field, which has 6f Yf' been named the Wilbur Vjjl Ji Wright field, in honor of one of the two brothers who invented the airplane, is the little, weather-beaten weather-beaten shed which was used by the brothers as the hangar for their original plane, only thirteen years ago. .... ! ' H "is just a plain shed, and beyond it stretches the imposing line of hangars off into the distance pretty nearly two miles of buildings, calculated to house the 240 planes that are to be assembled in the field eight miles east of Dayton. And, yet, it is fittingly preserved as a memorial to the days when air flight was being slowly and painstakingly developed by the daring scientific genius of the Wright brothers. In Washington I had talked with the men whose Imagination had conceived the great 640-million dollar aircraft program, and who are now in charge of its execution. They are engineers and executives, not practical aircraft men. They know America's industrial and engineering resources. Their enthusiasm is contagious. I went to Dayton to talk with the world's foremost fore-most aeronautical engineer and to learn some of the difficulties that must be overcome before we can put out the eyes of the Germans in the air, organize our surprise attacks, destroy the enemy communications and blow up the Krupp works at Essen. Orville Wright is a man of 4G, of medium size. Modest and unassuming, he gives the impression of independence in thought and action. He is deliberative in manner, well-organized, perfectly controlled, clear thinking. "We can do the job," he said, as we drove to the aviation field. "And it's worth doing. It offers us the one big hope of winding up this war next year, instead of permitting it to drag along for years to come. All our information is that Germany Ger-many and the allies are keeping about an equal number of planes on the battle front. We can't be sure, but their resources In building seem about equal. Each side probably has about 3,500 planes in active service on the western front, aside from their reserves and training planes. "If we were in a position to put several thousand thou-sand planes, manned by trained aviators, on the western front today, we might bring the war to an early end." "By using the planes to extend the range of artillery, and bombing the enemy lines of communication com-munication and his munition plants and naval bases?" "Possibly, to some extent. I am not particularly sanguine over bombing, and I do not believe other flyers are. The men who have never llown are the most enthusiastic over the possibilities of dropping bombs. The antiaircraft guns keep the livers at a height of above two miles. Anyone who has ever flown, at that height knows the tremendous tre-mendous difficulty of hitting a target. There is nothing for him to gauge his speed by. The bomb drops through air currents moving in different di-rections di-rections which deflect it 5ffrS::::: from its course. S5$"--f'"-- , "The Krupp works at ffK- t Essen offer a large gZ' ; ' enough target so that "SJV 11 -- a squadron of airplanes CO-T might be able to put 'fcva' them out of business. Other plants might be successfully attacked. Under favorable conditions other bombing operations might be carried out successfully. But my idea of the effectiveness of supremacy in the air is along different lines." "Which ones." "In other wars the element of surprise has determined de-termined t lie outcome- when the forces were of approximately equal strength. The general who could mass his men so as to fall on a smaller force of the enemy won the battle. The airplane has stopped that. Now a commander on the western front knows exactly what his opponent Is doing. There Is no chance to mass men for surprise attacks. Consequently, we have the present deadlock dead-lock In France. "What we must do Is to drive every enemy airplane air-plane out of the air. By doing this we not only prevent the Germans from knowing what we are doing, but we also cripple their artillery, for artillery ar-tillery fire has been directed by the airplanes. Then we can plan surprise attacks and can drive the enemy back. In modern warfare the side without with-out airplanes Is nt a hopeless disadvantage. When we gain complete command of the air, when we have literally smothered the enemy airplanes, we break the deadlock and win the war. -Hs?N'st "The airplane has pro- - i(lE5vk duced the deadlock. The - '' ..srt airplane can end it." gSat-y 'ff "How soon can we -J'& Sfrasag hope to do this?" , "We have the best jpyj men In the country at work on the problem. But people must not be Impatient if at first our progress seems slow. Only men who have tried it know the difficulties of building a high-power airplane motor." In the matter of personnel, it may be noted, our aircraft promoters believe we have a great superiority supe-riority over the rest of the world, for this reason : It takes an exceptional sort of man to make a good flyer. He must be quick-witted and have the steadiest sort of nerves. Otherwise, he conies to grief and smashes an expensive machine. Men of this type volunteered extensively in Britain and Canada early in the war. They constituted the armies that went into the battle line without adequate artillery protection and so were largely destroyed. The same forces operated to destroy the strong and vigorous young men of France and Germany who would have made good aviators. So today America is the greatest reservoir in the world of the right sort of material for the personnel per-sonnel of the aircraft service. While the other countries are having difficulty In getting proper . men for flyers England has invited us to send men to her aviation schools because she cannot keep them filled our problem is merely to train them and provide them with equipment. I asked Mr. Wright what speed plane we might xpect to develop. , "It is a complicated problem, the limit of useful speed," he replied. "A good many reckless statements state-ments are made on the subject by persons with vivid imaginations. It is safe to say there are machines on the western front that can make 130 miles an hour. So far as speed is concerned there are no inherent impossibilities in developing a plane that might make as high as two hundred miles an hour. The difficulty is in the landing. "A machine's landing speed is about half its maximum speed. That is, if a plane is designed to make a speed of fifty miles an hour its wings will not sustain it in the air if it travels slower than twenty-five miles. It must be moving at a "peed of at least twenty-five miles an hour to make a successful landing. So a plane with a speed of 130 miles an hour cannot land at a speed of much less than sixty-five miles." From the field we drove to the laboratory. It is simply a development of the crude shop in which he and his brother together worked out the problem of air flight. The airplane was no lucky find. It was not developed by rule of thumb. Wilbur and Orville Wright, sons of a Dayton United Brethren bishop, after getting through high school, set up a bicycle repair shop. They had a natural taste for mechanics and for sports. Twenty-one years ago they became interested in the experiments ex-periments of Lllienthal, the German experimenter, in a glider. His death attracted their attention to his work. For two years they worked on data and "laws" that other investigators had produced, only to find that the work so far done was worthless. So in their own shop in Dayton they devised a "wind tunnel" a chute through which an air blast was driven by an electric fan, and set to work measuring the resistances of curved surfaces sur-faces by a wonderfully ingenious method of their own devising. By a long series of exact measurements measure-ments and elaborate mathematical calculations involving in-volving sines and cosines and such, they worked out the problem of the curvature of the planes and of the propellers. The problems of balance were enormously intricate. in-tricate. But these, too, they solved. They were pioneers. They had to discover ,the difficulties and then find the way out. So they had to devise de-vise the methods. It took unlimited patience, resourcefulness and hard thinking to win success. Both the brothers were primarily scientific men. They were impatient to devote themselves to the -ps scientific side of furthering SS the development of aeronau- C -j tics. But they necessarily k-Zz. had to finance companies, gf fight patent suits and con-jpg35' con-jpg35' . duct the business of estab- JjpSSBS' lishing a new industry. . j' Wilbur Wright died five C '"L years ago, and in 1915 Or-( Or-( ) ville Wright was able to dis-pose dis-pose of his business inter-' inter-' ests and devote himself to Ihe scientific work where his heart has always been. In his well-equipped laboratory in Dayton lie is now conducting two lines of work which will be of immediate value in the great aircraft program planned by the government, (hie is the measurement measure-ment of the air resistance of curved surfaces; the other the development "f a stabilizer to make the control of the airplane more nearly automatic. Other aeronautical laboratories the world over have made these measurements of air resistance, bur the figures have sometimes been as far as KM) or 2(K1 per cent apart. The results obtained by the Wright method fourteen years ago proved substantially sub-stantially accurate, and now Orville Wright is taking up the work where he left it off. "I hope to provide the proper measurements for a large variety of planes," he said, "so that in building different sorts we shall not have 10 depend de-pend on cut and try." The stabilizer is an intricate device by which tlie action of a revolving fan holds the airplane steady. "We can set the stabilizer," the inventor explained, ex-plained, "in such a way. for instance, as to keep the plane moving in a circle, leaving the pilot free to use his hands for making photographs." The stabilizer has been tried out successfully, but needs further refinements so as to do away with the need of daily adjustments before Mr. Wright is willing to put it into service. He Is |