War Progress in Flying 



By Carl Dienstbach 



The old way made 

 for aiUi-aircraft guns 



THE way aoroplanes were ildwii 

 before tlie war seems almost 

 ridiculous now, after men have 



really learned how to fly as the result of 



war's exigencies. 



them an eas^- pre} 



and for attack- 

 ing machines. 



When it be- 

 came necessary 



to dart out of 



the range of a 



high-angle bat- 

 tery, which 



had suddenK- 



revealed its 



presence with 



bursting shrap- 

 nel, or when 



only a C|uick 



mane u \- e r 



could prevent 



a hostile 



machine from 



blocking the 



wa>' home, the 



old- fashioned, 



steady, level 

 flyer and slow 



climber 



.proved a very 

 death- trap. 

 Looping-the- 

 loop, caper-cutting, all the acrobatic 

 performances that attend exhibition 

 flying l)ecame normal exolutions. Only 

 excess power for a sudden burst of speed 

 and climbing would avail in a perilous 

 moment. 



A fast-climbing machine, which also 

 has the virtue of exhibiting great lifting 

 power in the thin air of high akiludes, 

 naturally vaults into the air easily in a 

 difliculi start on rough ground. In a 

 critical landing —when, for instance, the 

 groimd, wliicli, from above seems in\it- 

 ingly sniootli, turns out to be alarmingly 

 rough — the fast-climbing machine can 

 easily stop its swift descent and leap 

 lightly over an obstacle. By reducing 

 his power while the machine is flying at 



A German "Taube" in flight. We hear less of 



Taubes now than we did at the beginning of the 



war. They were standardized machines, and the war 



upset all preconceived aeroplane standards 



a Steep angle, the i^ilot nia>' e\en touch 

 the ground at a vcr\- low speed. 



Salvation Lies in High Power 



A machine thus able to deal with rough 

 ground is most stable in rough air. An 



aviator fears 

 what he calls a 

 "hole in the 

 air" — a pocket 

 formed by a 

 downwardly- 

 twisting cur- 

 rent. Into such 

 a hole he drops 

 in a sickening 

 way because 

 his wings no 

 longer have an 

 upward blast 

 to support 

 them. He saves 

 himself, not by 

 trying to climb 

 out — a useless 

 proceeding — ■ 

 but by steering 

 d oiv n -w a r d , 

 thus increasing 

 his speed and 

 likewise the 

 pressure be- 

 ji e a t h his 

 wings. "To go up, one must sometimes 

 steer up, at other times steer down," 

 Wilbur Wright told me in his little 

 insignificant bicycle shop in Dayton, 

 Ohio, in 1905, in discussing the low- 

 powered Wright machine. 



Evidently the aviator needed power 

 to combat these dilficulties. This he 

 obtained by resorting to surplus-powered 

 and reserve-powered machines. There 

 would seem to be no distinction between 

 the two terms, but the ditTerence is this: 

 the surplus-powered machine has a 

 motor which is more than able to make 

 it fly and the excess power of which is 

 constantly used for normal flight; the 

 reser\-e-powered machine uses its excess 

 <)ni\' in an emergency. 



5'i. 



