ORGANISED FLYING

Evening Star, Issue 19765, 16 January 1928, Page 4

ORGANISED FLYING

CONQUEST OF'THE AIR REGENT ACHIEVEMENT POST-WAR ADVANCES. So commonplace has air travel become that people often forget that it was only in 1903 that the Wright brothers first flew in their box-kite machine, and that, while children have been growing into young men and women, flying has developed from a miraculous adventure to a system of transport, which is weaving a network of communications over at least two continent. Attention is drawn to tins development (says the ‘ Sydney Morning Herald ’) by two publications which have just reached Australia—the first number of an imposing British monthly periodical, 1 Air,’ and a monumental American text book on aircarft. “ The public have been misled by the optimistic oratory of the past nine years to believe that Brtiain is at ipast holding her own in the sphere of aviation,” writes Brigadier-general Groves, Secretary-General of the Air League of the British Empire, in _ ‘ Air.’ ‘ Nothing could bo further from the truth. Our commercial aviation, safe and reliable though it is, is by comparison with that of other great States quite insignificant.” The importance of organised civil flying services to the Empire, he points out, lies both in its utility in time of peace and in its defence value in war. Civil aviation supports the aircraft industry, provides a working organisation, landing grounds, trained pilots, a reserve of mechanics, and in fact, a national system of air transport. ‘‘ln 1920,” he proceeds, “the air route mileage of Europe was 2,028 milse; to-day it amounts, with its extensions, to 36,636 miles. Of these Germany has 14,862 miles, r ranee 8,304 miles, and Great Britain (even with the Cairo-Basra route included) only 2,226 miles.” Further, Britain possesses only twenty commercial machines, including the five used on the Cairo-Basra service. Germany, Prance, Russia, and Italy are all making great strides in laying out air services, national and international. On the mi itarv side Franco possesses 5,542 military machines, Britain l.Ood. rue great and growing German aircraft industry is supported now without subsidy and entirely by the demands of commercial aviation. In Prance the Government is asking l arhaiuent 10. credits of one and a-half millions sterling for civil aviation, to be sepnt over a ten-year _ period; annual current appropriations amount to about one and a-halt million sterling. In Britain the allotment tor civil aviation in the current year, under the Churchill, dictum that civil aviation must fly by itself, is £4M,~ 000, of which £247,000 is for subsidies. EMPIRE’S SEA ROUTES. These are some of the figures being used in Britain in agitation for greater attention to development of both civil find military air strength* ISaturaUy Continental countries, like European Powers and the United States, have found at hand better opportunities lor extending flying services than has Britain, with a, small area, highly developed rail and road transport systems, and an obvious handicap in competition upon. European Continental air lines. British interest is turning to the improvement by air communication of her own Empire routes, and these arc oi course, sea. routes. Hence the’recent development of flying boats and seaplanes and monster airships in the Mother Country. Development of land machines has in every country preceded that of ocean-flying craft, anti those countries with vast land surfaces within and beyond their borders have taken the recognised lead in organising a network of land-flying services. The journey of the British flying boats now on their way to Eastern Asia and Australia, and the new airship enter-, prise, concerning which an important British mission recently visited the Commonwealth, suggest a big doublebarrelled attempt at pioneering of the Empire’s ocean highways, which may in a few years great}' improve Britain s place in commercial flying. The home of mass factory production and of the world’s chief working oil supplies, the home, too. of the post-war world’s surplus capital, has naturally become one of the leading overland flyinrr nations. It is also the countiy which produced the Wright brothers, and the latest airman hero, Lindbergh. The United States army organised and carried out the first round-the- woild flight. Its civil aviation service has established a remarkably successful au mail system. Major Victor W. I’age, late chief aeronautical engineer of the third aviation instruction centre ot the United States armies in France, has written a practical treatise which he calls ‘Modern Aircraft,’ dealing with “ basic principles, operation, application, construction, repair, and maintenance.” The title page proclaims it a complete practical treatise outlining clearly the elements of aeronautical engineering, with special reference to simplified explanations of the tliooiy of the flight, aerodynamics, and basic principles underlying the action or balloons and airplanes of all types. The volume of nearly 900 pages is an elaboration on monumental scale ot the lectures which Major Page, in his war duties, gave to flying cadets m the American Air Force. Diagrams are supplied without stint, and the very amplitude of these and of the descriptions and running hints on all manner of aircraft indicate the extent to which, flying and the study of flying have developed in the United States. In short, it is a gigantic vade-mecum lor the private owner an dtho workshop mechanic on how to build, repair, and maintain airplanes. Most of the manufacturing companies seem to have contributed data.

SOME OMISSIONS

The very brief introductory chapters on oarly balloons and hoavier-than-air, machines do not mention the efforts ot others than Americans save Montgolfier, Santos Dumont, Lilienthal, and Count Zeppelin. Major Page apparently has never heard of Laurence Hargrave, tin? Englishman who made Australia his adopted country, and his book does not .mention (except to define it) the rotary engine, the idea of which was Hargrave’s girt to inventors who came after him. The reader of his pages could be forgiven an impression that the conquest of the air in this twentieth century was an American achievement, which began with the Wrights, and has got as far as Lindbergh’s crossing the Atlantic, an achievement to which there has been some slight auxiliary accompaniment in foreign countries. It does mention that the Hispano-Suiza engine was originally designed in Spain, but there is nothing about the Rolls Royce. Napier, Gnome, Le Rhone, or Clergot engines; and remembering the beginning of the American Hying corps in Prance, one would expect tq see soma reference to British and French airmen, engineers, and machines to whom and to which the American service owed nearly everything in those days. The pages on the organisation of United States civil services, and particularly that for the safety of night flying, are interesting and valuable. As a work of reference for the student of American machines and air problems, it is useful and copiously detailed, though the index is scanty and not always accurate. But if the student, for whom it is written, wants to know what other countries have done and are doing he will have to search elsewhere.