At work on one of the F-5-L type of seaplane at the Naval Aircraft Factory, League Island, near Philadelphia. The F-5-L is one of the largest type of naval seaplane, and flew from Hampton Roads, Va., to Rockaway Naval Air Station, L.I.

OPPORTUNITIES IN AVIATION BY CAPTAIN ARTHUR SWEETSER AND GORDON LAMONT

 

Published by Seltzer Books

established in 1974, now offering over 14,000 books

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Vintage books about early aircraft and aviation available from Seltzer Books:

Robur the Conqueror by Jules Verne

The Master of the World by Jules Verne

Learning to Fly by Grahame-White and Harper

Aeroplanes and Dirigibles in War by Talbot

A History of Aeronautics by Vivian

The Mastery of the Air by Claxton

Aeroplanes by Zerbe

Over the Front in an Aeroplane by Pulitzer

Flying Machines by Jackman and Russell

Early History of the Airplane by Wilbur and Orville Wright

The Aeroplane Speaks by Barber

The Aeroplane by Grahame-White and Harper

The First Man-Carrying Aeroplane by Zahm

The Story of the Aeroplane by Galbreath

Aviation in Peace and War by Sykes

Opportunities in Aviation by Sweetser and Lamont

 

Sweetser, U.S. Air Service, Author of "The American Air Service"

 

Lamont, Late Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force, Canada

 

 

HARPER & BROTHERS
Publishers New York and London

Acknowledgement is made to the New York
Evening Post for some of the material which first appeared in its columns.

 

Opportunities in Aviation
Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published, January, 1920

 

To that great new gift which is so soon to come to us, this little book is enthusiastically dedicated by the authors.

 

INTRODUCTION

I - WAR'S CONQUEST OF THE AIR

II - THE TRANSITION TO PEACE

III - TRAINING AN AIRPLANE PILOT

IV - SAFETY IN FLYING

V - QUALIFICATIONS OF AN AIRPLANE MECHANIC

VI - THE FIRST CROSSING OF THE ATLANTIC

—VII - LANDING-FIELDS—THE IMMEDIATE NEED

VIII - THE AIRPLANE'S BROTHER

IX - THE CALL OF THE SKIES

ADDENDUM - A PAGE IN THE DICTIONARY FOR AVIATORS

 
INTRODUCTION

 

Any ordinary, active man, provided he has reasonably good eyesight and nerve, can fly, and fly well. If he has nerve enough to drive an automobile through the streets of a large city, and perhaps argue with a policeman on the question of speed limits, he can take himself off the ground in an airplane, and also land—a thing vastly more difficult and dangerous. We hear a great deal about special tests for the flier—vacuum-chambers, spinning-chairs, co-ordination tests—there need be none of these. The average man in the street, the clerk, the laborer, the mechanic, the salesman, with proper training and interest can be made good, if not highly proficient pilots. If there may be one deduction drawn from the experience of instructors in the Royal Air Force, it is that it is the training, not the individual, that makes the pilot.

 

Education is not the prime requisite. Good common sense and judgment are much more valuable. Above all, a sense of touch, such as a man can acquire playing the piano, swinging a pick, riding a bicycle, driving an automobile, or playing tennis, is important. A man should not be too sensitive to loss of balance, nor should he be lacking in a sense of balance. There are people who cannot sail a sail-boat or ride a bicycle—these people have no place in the air. But ninety-nine out of one hundred men, the ordinary normal men, can learn to fly. This has been the experience of the Royal Air Force in Canada.

 

There will be as much difference between the civilian pilot, the man who owns an airplane of the future and drives it himself, and the army flier, as there is now between the man who drives his car on Sunday afternoons over country roads and the racing driver who is striving for new records on specially built tracks. If aeronautics is to be made popular, every one must be able to take part in it. It must cease to be a highly specialized business. It must be put on a basis where the ordinary person can snap the flying wires of a machine, listen to their twang, and know them to be true, just as any one now thumps his rear tire to see whether it is properly inflated.

 

The book, in a large sense a labor of love, is the collaboration of an American officer of the United States Air Service and another American, a flying-officer in the Royal Air Force. If the Royal Air Force way of doing things seems to crowd itself to the fore in the discussion of the training of pilots, the authors crave indulgence.

 

In a subject which lends itself dangerously to imagination, the authors have endeavored to base what they have written, not on prophecy, but on actual accomplishments to date. The latter are indeed so solid that there is no necessity for guesswork. Aviation has proved itself beyond peradventure to those who have followed it, but up to the present the general public has not sufficiently analyzed its demonstrated possibilities.

 

The era of the air is undoubtedly at hand; it now remains to take the steps necessary to reap full advantages from it.

 

Arthur Sweetser,
 Gordon Lamont.

 

I - WAR'S CONQUEST OF THE AIR

 

The World War opened to man the freedom of the skies. Amid all its anguish and suffering has come forth the conquest of the air. Scientists, manufacturers, dreamers, and the most hard-headed of men have united under the goad of its necessity to sweep away in a series of supreme efforts all the fears and doubts which had chained men to earth.

 

True, years before, in fact, nearly a decade before, the Wright brothers had risen from the ground and flown about through the air in a machine which defied conventional rules and beliefs. The world had looked on in wonder, and then dropped back into an apathetic acceptance of the fact. Despite the actual demonstration and the field of imagination which was opened up, these early flights proved to be a world's wonder only for a moment.

 

For years aviation dragged on. Daredevils and adventurers took it up to make money by hair-raising exploits at various meets and exhibits. Many died, and the general public, after satiating its lust for the sensational, turned its thought elsewhere. Flight was regarded as somewhat the plaything of those who cared not for life, and as a result the serious, sober thought of the community did not enter into its solution.

 

Business men held aloof. Apart from circus performances there seemed no money to be made in aviation and consequently practically none was invested in it. What little manufacturing was done was by zealots and inventors. Workmanship was entirely by hand, slow, amateurish, and unreliable.

 

Strangely enough, scientists were equally apathetic. It might have been expected that their imaginations would be fired by the unexplored realms of the air and by the incomparably new field of experiment opened to them; but they were not. The great question, that of flight itself, had been answered, and but few were interested in working out the less spectacular applications of its principles. Aviation remained very much of a poor sister in the scientific world, held back by all the discredit attaching to the early stunt-flying and by failure to break through the ancient belief in its impracticability for any purposes other than the sensational.

 

So the science limped along, unsupported by either public interest or capital. Now and again some startling feat attracted the world's attention, as when the English Channel was first crossed by air and England was made to realize that her insularity was gone. For a moment this feat held public interest, but again without a true realization of its significance. There seemed nothing which would drive man to develop the gift which had been put within his reach.

 

Up to that fatal moment in August, 1914, when the World War broke out, aviation had made but little progress. All nations had what passed as air services, but they were very small and ill-equipped and were regarded with doubt and suspicion by the military leaders of the various countries. Compared with what has since taken place, the experiments previous to the war were only the most rudimentary beginnings.

 

Then came the war. Man's imagination was aroused to a feverish desire for the development of any device for causing destruction. Conventions, usages, and prejudices were laid aside and every possibility of inflicting damage on the enemy was examined on its merits. Sentiment or any regard for personal danger involved was thrown to the winds. Science was mobilized in all lines in the...