AEROPLANING.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 2 August 1913, Page 9

AEROPLANING.

WHY SO MANY ACCIDENTS HAPPEN.

A properly designed aeroplane, soundly constructed, is as safe a conveyance in the hands of a capable pilot as a yacht in the hands of a good seaman. Then why, one asks, are there so many fatal aeroplane accidents in proportion to the number of people who fly? To this the true answer is that on properly designed and strongly built machines there have been hardly any accidents in England during the past year. There are some machines which are supposed to have passed the experimental stage which are well known to be. unstable in a wind, and others which are known to have some mysterious weakness which causes them to break in the air. The man who flies one of these is akin to the sailor who takes out an unseaworthy craft in a storm, and is only asking for trouble. Up till lately there have been so few aeroplanes in England that many fliers had to choose between flying one of these machines or not getting any flying at all. It is extremely sad to think that four or five of the fatal ac- I cidents during the past year have happened on machines of which the pilots are known to have privately expressed a distrust. THE PILOT BLAMED. When an aeroplane breaks in the air, constructors, in defence of their machine, are very apt to blame the pilot. They usually say either that he drove the machine down with the engine running all out, which, of course, puts a great strain on the machine—or else they say that the pilot brought the maI chine down very steep and tried to level up with a jerk. In reality when a machine breaks in the air it is generally due to the faulty construction of the machine, and it is the constructor, and not the pilot, who should be blamed. There is little doubt, that aeroplanes can be built to withstand these sudden strains, for such proven machines Bleriots, Maurice Farmans, and others stand these strains every day without breaking up. There is, and can be, no excuse for a machine which breaks in the air. It must be remembered that there used to be accidents in France, even or Bleriots, until the weakness which ciused them was discovered and remedied: until then they were still in tho . egior of experiment, although they had done a good lot of flying. UNNECESSARY ACCIDENTS. ' In addition to the serious ac< Wenti which happened at Montrose xecei'fjy

whereby a gallant officer, Lieutenant Arthur, lost his life, there Lave been other accidents during the »<'ar, totably those to Captain Lorraine on a Nieuport, Campbell on a Bristol, Astley on a Bleriot, and Lieutenant Harrison on a Cody biplane. It was recited at the time that Captain Lorraine's defth was caused by his being m f.hle to pull up after a sideslip on a-xount of hie passenger, who was a heavy man, falling on top of him and forcing the elevating lever forward. Campbell's accident was quite unavoidable, as it >vas due to his breaking one of the first rules of flying by letting his machine lose flying speed when coming down with his engine off. Astley could have' saved his own life at Belfast by landing in the enclosure, but preferred to risk his neck by making a sharp turn to avoid hurting the crowd. The accident to Lieutenant Harrison was apparently caused by the wings breaking, but as the result of the Aero Club investigation of this accident has not yet fieeipublished it is best to leave it out of the discussion. Now although these accidents did not occur on machines either in the experimental stage or weakly constructed, they were all what one might call unnecessary accidents, and should not be taken as illustrative of the dangers of aviation. Lorraine's was pure bad luck, Campbell's would not have happened to an experienced pilot, and Astley's was much the same sort of accident as might occur any day motoring, in trying to avoid running over someone. There is,, of course, and always will be, a certain danger in flying new types of machines, because they are quite likely to be wrong at first, as the narrow escape of the pilot who fell 200 ft in Colonel Scely's "best aeroplane in tho world" plainly shows. All this goes to prove that most of the fatal accident* during the past year have been caused, not by the dangers that the grumblers say will always be associated with flying, but by the dangers that come from flying practically unproved machines, which is a danger that one can hope will soon be eliminated almost entirely.