THE PERILS OF AVIATION.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 166, 15 July 1910, Page 4

THE PERILS OF AVIATION.

The destruction of the German dirigible balloon, which collapsed near Cologne the other day with such -disastrous consequences, affords yet one more striking illustTatkni of the dangers that still encompass on every hand the daring navigators of the air. Apparently the wreck of the Erbsloch, through the sudden expansion of the gas Inside the envelope, indicates a new and unexpected source of peril to airships which scientific ingenuity may find some way of avoiding. But the risks of aviation in dirigibles of any type are manifestly far less than is the case with aeroplanes; and the tragic fate of England's best-known and most successful aviator may serve to emphasise the fact that the art of flying is still in its infancy, and that, as Wilbur Wright has warned the world, we must not expect to conquer the air without the sacrifice of many valuable lives. Tor the air as a medium of transit is in reality much more dangerous and disconcerting to the navigator than the sea. So far back as ten years ago the problem of driving an aeroplane up in -the air, and keeping it floating above the earth, had been successfully solved; bat the crucial question then, as now, was how to preserve its equilibrium "The chief trouble," writes one authority, "is the turmoil of the air. The com mon im-. pression is that the atmosphere xuns in comparatively regular currents which we call winds. No one who lias not been thrown about on a gliding aeroplane— rising or falling ten, twenty, or even thirty feet in a few seconds— can understand how utterly wrong this idea is. The air along the surf<u:e or the earth is, as a matter of .continually churning. It is thrown upward from every irregularity like sea.breakers on a coast line; every -hill and tree and building seirCs up a wave or slanting current. And it moves, not directly back and form upon its coast line like the sea, but in whirling rotary masses. Some of these rise up hundreds of yards. In a fairly strong wind the air near the earth is more disturbed than the whirlpools of Niagara." It is on this maelstrom of conflicting aircurrents that the An-Ti-ng aviator embarks. His machine always be made as light as is consistent with any chance of safety to have any hope of floating at all; and wnen we think of the strain -thrown upon it by the air

currents, by the vibtatioh of "the powers ful motor, and by the constant efforts of the aeronaut to adjust its movement to the ever-shifting waves of air, we can hardly wonder that every now and then the failure of a bolt, the snapping of a wire, or the cracking of a vane, may bring the whole frail fabric hurtling downward to destruction. The air does not submit tamely to mastery, and it 13 to be feared that it win exact a heavy toll from among the bravest and most skilful of our "flying men" before its conquest is complete.