Chapter II: Part 2

Curtiss had collected a group of skilled pilots to fly under his direction. In this group were McCurdy, Willard, Witmer, Ely, and the famous Lincoln Beachey. With this assemblage Curtiss was able to make great strides in the progress of flying and aircraft development. Curtiss and Captain Chambers, working closely together, laid their plans for proving to the Navy Department the capabilities of the airplane. Both men were convinced thoroughly that it was possible to take off in an airplane from the deck of a ship, fly to a designated spot, fly back, and land on the deck. There was a great amount of ridicule at this idea, but Curtiss and Chambers went ahead with their plans and erected a 120-foot platform on the deck of the cruiser U. S. S. _Pennsylvania_. On January 18, 1911, a Curtiss landplane, with Eugene Ely at the controls, soared from the deck, circled out over the water, and approached the cruiser. Twenty-two pairs of fifty-pound sandbags were attached to lines drawn taut across the deck platform. The plane was equipped with steel hooks for use in catching the deck lines. Ely flew in at the speed of thirty-nine miles an hour. Sailors aboard the _Pennsylvania_ ducked for cover, expecting the plane to overshoot the platform. Just as he reached the end of the platform, Ely pulled up the nose of his ship, and cut off the engine. The plane settled to the deck. Then and there were the beginnings of what eventually was to become the most effective weapon of the United States Navy--the _aircraft carrier_.

During the winter of 1911, Curtiss designed the first American seaplane, or hydroplane as it was then called. On January 26th, he made a flight of thirty-one seconds and landed smoothly on the water. That afternoon he made a number of flights, to the delight of the crowds that lined the Coronado shores of the Spanish Bight off San Diego. Little did the onlookers dream that years later flying boats of the United States Navy would fly over the Seven Seas, even remaining aloft for a day at a time.

In addition to Lieutenant Ellyson, Captain Chambers succeeded in having Lieutenants John H. Towers and John Rogers ordered to report for flight instruction. These three men became Navy Pilots One, Two and Three. Pilot Number 3 was Lieutenant (now Vice Admiral) John H. Towers, who ever since has made his name synonymous with the progress of naval aviation. In July, 1911, the United States Navy took delivery of its first airplanes, one Wright and two Curtiss landplanes. Later that year the Navy established its first aviation camp on the banks of Severn River just across from the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland.

During this time the United States Army was making some progress with military aviation. In March, 1911, Congress was prevailed upon to appropriate $125,000 for aëronautics. The Army bought three more airplanes, the first since the purchase of one Wright airplane in 1909. In July, 1911, the first military aviation school was established at College Park, Maryland. The Army’s first instructor was Army Pilot Number 1, Lieutenant Frank Lahm. The first students were Lieutenants Benjamin Foulois, Thomas DeW. Milling, and the man who was destined, thirty-two years later, to lead the world’s greatest air force, Henry H. (“Hap”) Arnold, Commanding General, United States Army Air Forces during World War II.

Flying in two Wright and one Curtiss biplanes, the fledgling Army fliers conducted experimental work in aërial photography and radio. But these forward-looking young men, even then, saw the airplane as a weapon and began seeking ways of dealing out destruction to an enemy. They fired machine guns at ground targets, tested a bomb sight, and dropped small bombs from their planes.

In 1905 a newspaper in Salina, Kansas, had carried a story of two brothers named Wright. This story robbed the budding “auto” industry of a promising young mechanic, Glenn L. Martin by name.

As a boy, Glenn Martin built and flew the very best kites in Salina. As he grew older he was thrilled by the appearance of the horseless carriage. As soon as he was old enough he took a job in Dave Methven’s garage, convinced that there was a future in the noisy “gas-buggies.”

In the surge of interest in automobiles, Glenn Martin had all but forgotten the stories of Chanute and Lilienthal and the old urge of the winds in his kites. In 1905, after reading the newspaper story concerning the Wrights, he excitedly told his mother, “I am going to fly, too!” And he did.

A short time after he made that remark, Glenn’s family moved to California and he soon became a successful automobile salesman. But he did not forget his decision to fly. With his mother’s support, he began to build his plane by night, after selling cars all day. With his mother holding a lantern for him, he often worked most of the night in the abandoned church that served as his workshop. In spite of neighborly criticism, Glenn finished his plane and flew it from a Santa Ana cow pasture, on August 1, 1909.

WINGSPAN 30 FEET LENGTH 20 FEET

GLENN L. MARTIN DESIGNED HIS OWN AIRPLANE AND BUILT IT HIMSELF WITH MONEY EARNED BY SELLING AUTOMOBILES.

POWER ONE 4-CYLINDER 20-HP. FORD ENGINE

MARTIN USED A SECONDHAND FORD AUTOMOBILE ENGINE TO CREATE THE POWER FOR HIS FIRST PLANE.

SPEED ONE HOUR 30 MILES

RANGE 75 MILES

CEILING 3,000+ FEET

PAYLOAD ONE PERSON

GLENN MARTIN’S FIRST AIRPLANE, BUILT WITH THE HELP OF HIS MOTHER IN AN OLD ABANDONED CHURCH, WAS A LANDPLANE OF THE PUSHER TYPE SIMILAR IN APPEARANCE TO THE CURTISS AIRPLANE. MARTIN BUILT BOTH LANDPLANES AND SEAPLANES OF VARIOUS SIZES AND POWER. HE SOLD HIS PLANES MOSTLY TO EXHIBITION FLYERS AND WEALTHY SPORTSMEN. IN THOSE EARLY DAYS NO ONE WOULD HAVE EVER DREAMED THAT HE WAS LATER TO BUILD AN 80-TON PLANE.

GLENN L. MARTIN WAS ONE OF AVIATION’S MOST ENERGETIC PIONEERS. HE BUILT MANY AIRPLANES OF VARIOUS TYPES. THEY WERE ALL SUCCESSFUL. HIS GREATEST CONTRIBUTION TO EARLY AVIATION, HOWEVER, WAS THAT HIS FLYING EXHIBITIONS INTRODUCED THE AIRPLANE TO THE PUBLIC ON THE PACIFIC COAST.]

As soon as he had successfully flown his first airplane, Martin began to plan better machines. He gave flying exhibitions all over southern California to earn the money to build more Martin planes. In January, 1912, he flew the first mail from Dominguez, California, to Compton, California. In April of that year he flew twenty-four miles in twenty-five minutes, to deliver newspapers from Fresno, California, to a neighboring town. On May 10, 1910, Martin flew thirty-three miles over the ocean from Newport Harbor, California, to Catalina Island. This first trans-Pacific flight was made in a hydroplane of Martin’s own design.

UNITED STATES MILITARY AND NAVAL AVIATION WORLD WAR I

Although America was actually the birthplace of the airplane, many years passed after the first flight of the Wright Brothers before there was any real consideration of the military or civil values of aviation. That aviation did progress at all in its early years was due to the efforts of a few fledgling military fliers, a group of barnstormers, and a handful of aircraft builders.

Working closely together, these men flew and experimented with our first flying machines. They risked their lives time and again in order to learn everything possible about flying and the flying machine. As a result of crashes and hairbreadth escapes, these men discovered many faults and set about correcting them.

Each make of plane had a different control system, and an all-around flier had to master several varieties of levers and wheels in order to be able to fly all types of machines. A pilot originally was forced to fly his plane while sitting on an exposed and uncomfortable perch at the edge of the wing. Just back of his seat was mounted the heavy engine ready to topple over on him in case of a crash.

The first step in correcting some of the faults of the early airplane came with the development of a body, or fuselage. The first fuselages were built of spruce frames covered with fabric and strengthened with wire. They were mounted between the wings and braced to them. The engine and propeller were housed in the front of the fuselage. Farther back an enclosed compartment, or cockpit, was provided for the pilot. Thus he was moved from his perch on the wing with the engine at his back into a safer and more comfortable location.

The development of the fuselage caused the elevators to be taken away from the front of the machine. These were combined with the stabilizer and rudder attached to the rear of the fuselage. The Wright method of wing warping to produce lateral control was dispensed with and the Curtiss type of aileron was moved up from the wing struts and hinged to the trailing edge of the wings. This established the ailerons as part of the _lift_ surfaces of the wings, giving them a more direct influence on the lateral movements of the airplane.

With the new positions of the control surfaces came the second important step, the standard control system. This system made use of a single control column, or stick, and a rudder bar. The stick was attached by means of cables and pulleys to both the ailerons and the elevators. A hinged arrangement allowed the stick to be moved forward and backward, and to the right or to the left. The forward and backward movement of the stick controlled the up and down position of the elevators. The right and left movement of the stick raised or lowered the ailerons. Steering to right or left was accomplished by pressure of the pilot’s feet on a bar that was attached to the rudder by cables. All positions of the airplane were caused by gently pressing the control stick and rudder bar in the direction of the flight movement desired by the pilot.

By 1915, American airplane builders had adopted a standard biplane design with an enclosed fuselage and a two-wheel and tail-skid landing gear, typified by the Curtiss _Jenny_ at the left.

The beginning of World War I, in Europe, saw the first use of the airplane by the military. At first, warring pilots flying over the battle lines actually exchanged friendly waves in passing. This was the expression of brotherly feeling among men who already had risked their lives to conquer the flying machine.

But this knightly feeling did not last long. One belligerent flier carried a rifle aloft. This rifle inspired the thought of the machine gun, and war in the air, as in the trenches, became a survival of the fittest.

In the United States, the Aviation Section, Signal Corps, U. S. Army, was just two weeks old. When it was created on July 18, 1914, the Aviation Section had an authorized personnel of 60 officers and 260 enlisted men, and a few airplanes. In Europe, every major power boasted of hundreds of planes.

The year 1916, two years after the start of World War I, saw Army aviation in its first offensive action. Eight low-powered planes engaged in a punitive expedition against Mexican bandits. The chief result of this expedition was the severe newspaper criticism of the poor showing made by our fliers and America’s lack of improved types of combat planes.

As the result of the criticism created by the Mexican expedition, Congress, in June, 1916, voted funds for the expansion of Army aviation. But aviation development required time and, actually, when the United States went into World War I on April 6, 1917, Army aviation consisted of but 65 officers (including only 35 fliers), 1,087 enlisted men, and 55 airplanes. All of the planes were obsolete and none carried machine guns.

Thus, with no military planes suitable for use against a well-equipped enemy, no fliers trained in the use of high-powered fighting planes and aërial machine guns, and with few factories that had had any previous experience in the production of airplanes, America plunged into the midst of World War I.

Although a little late, America went to work. Having no good combat designs of our own, our fliers fought in British and French airplanes. We developed the best training plane in the world, the Curtiss JN-_Jenny_ (page 32), and trained 15,000 flying cadets. By March, 1918, our Army Aviation strength was 11,000 officers and 120,000 enlisted men. At the time of the Armistice we had 757 pilots, 481 observers, with 740 planes at the front and 1,402 pilots and 769 airplanes in the Zone of Advance, ready for combat. Our pilots were credited with the destruction of 491 enemy airplanes, of which 462 were accounted for by 63 airmen. We had produced 26 aces, each of whom had destroyed five or more enemy aircraft.

BRITISH DH-4 BRITISH _CAMEL_ GERMAN _ALBATROS_ GERMAN FOKKER FRENCH _SPAD_]

THE FIRST TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHT

United States naval aviation had made slow but steady progress in the years just preceding World War I. Bombing and scouting practice was engaged in by naval planes and considerable headway was made in the development of larger flying boats and amphibians.

When war was declared in 1917, naval aviation consisted of 54 airplanes, 38 pilots, and 163 enlisted men. By rapid expansion it had reached the strength of more than 50,000 men and over 2,000 airplanes by the end of the war. Some 17,000 men and 540 airplanes were sent abroad during the conflict. Extremely successful anti-submarine and patrol operations were carried on throughout the war, and our naval aviators served with great distinction.

Our early models of big flying boats, like the F5-L above, were so successful that the Navy ordered even larger ones. The “big boats” as they were termed, were giant four-engine planes with a wingspan of 126 feet, the largest built to that time. Their size created a difficult shipping problem and it was decided that they were to be flown overseas. Commander John H. Towers, pioneer naval operator, was assigned to the task of supervising their construction and flight tests. The planes were ordered in December, 1917, and ten months later the first of the “big boats” proved its ability in a series of test flights. The planes were designated the NC’s, Navy Curtiss. With everyone rushing madly to finish the NC’s for their overseas flight, the war ended abruptly.

WINGSPAN 126 FEET LENGTH 68 FEET

POWER FOUR 12-CYLINDER 400-HP. _LIBERTY_ ENGINES

THE GIANT CURTISS NC FLYING BOATS WERE THE LARGEST PLANES THAT HAD BEEN BUILT AT THAT TIME. THEIR BIG WINGS SPANNED A DISTANCE GREATER THAN THAT COVERED IN THE FIRST AIRPLANE FLIGHTS.

SPEED ONE HOUR 100 MILES

RANGE 2,000+ MILES

CEILING 5,000+ FEET

PAYLOAD SIX-MAN CREW

THE BIG BOATS HAD A GOOD TOP SPEED CONSIDERING THEIR SIZE. THEY COULD CARRY 1,800 GALLONS OF GASOLINE, AND ON A TEST FLIGHT ONE NC FLYING BOAT SOARED ALOFT WITH 51 PASSENGERS.

THREE PROPELLERS WHIRLED IN FRONT OF THE NC’S WINGS AND ONE OTHER, A PUSHER, TURNED BEHIND THE CENTER OF THE WINGS.

THE HUGE NC FLYING BOATS WERE THE FIRST FOUR-ENGINED AIRPLANES BUILT IN THE UNITED STATES. THEY NOT ONLY PROVED THAT WE COULD BUILD BIG AIRPLANES, BUT THAT SHIPS OF THIS TYPE WERE PRACTICAL FOR OVER-OCEAN FLIGHTS. THEY ALSO SHOWED THE POSSIBILITIES OF GIANT, LONG-RANGE NEW PATROL PLANES.]

After the Armistice the NC’s were not needed in Europe, but they were ready and the Navy felt sure that they could fly the Atlantic. On May 6, 1919, three NC’s took off from Far Rockaway, New York, on one of the most significant flights in history. After making a stop at Trepassey Bay, Newfoundland, the NC’s with “Jack” Towers in command, flew through the stormy Atlantic night to land the following morning on the water near Horta in the Azores. The planes were badly battered, and the crews were weary. Only the NC-4 Lieutenant Commander A. C. Read in charge, flew on to Lisbon, Portugal, and finally to Plymouth, England, in the first transatlantic flight.

A month after the first transatlantic flight of the U. S. Navy NC boats, two Royal Flying Corps pilots, Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Brown, flying a two-engined Vickers Vimy biplane, flew nonstop from Newfoundland to Ireland. To those two hardy adventurers goes the credit for the first nonstop crossing of the Atlantic by airplane.

MEN AND MACHINES WORLD WAR I

Slow as she had been in starting, America picked up speed and finished World War I with a record definitely creditable. American aviation discarded its swaddling clothes forever. At the time of the Armistice, American fliers had flown more than 3,500,000 miles in battle and dropped 275,000 pounds of explosives on the Germans. In plane-to-plane combat our military pilots showed a courage and initiative unequaled by ally or foe.

With our entry into the war, our infant aviation industry also picked up speed. With typical American energy it built up an enviable production record before the end of the war. As America had no combat airplane designs at the start of the war, our industry turned out planes and engines of foreign design. Aircraft factories built English DH-4 observation planes, Handley-Page bombers, and SE-5 fighter planes. We did build one plane of American design, the Curtiss JN-4 _Jenny_ training plane. The _Jenny_ was the best training plane in the world at that time. Our factories built hundreds of them in 1917 and 1918. Practically all American and many Allied fliers received their flight training in the famous old _Jennies_.

The science of flight was only slightly more than ten years old when men decided to use the airplane as a military weapon in actual warfare. Therefore it can be understood that the fighting planes of World War I were fairly elementary in every way. They were fairly standard in design and construction--all biplanes with enclosed fuselage and two-wheel and tail-skid landing gear. The French Nieuport-27 fighter plane, brought out in 1915, was considered the outstanding aërial achievement of its day. The first of the British fighters was the Sopwith _Camel_. The Nieuport-27 was followed in 1916 by the famous French Spad and in 1917 by the Nieuport-28. The Germans used the Fokker fighter designed by Anthony Fokker, a Hollander.

Fighter planes of World War I had an average wingspan of 28 feet, and a ceiling of about 20,000 feet. They were powered with engines of 150 horsepower, their speeds ranged from 100 to 125 miles per hour. Their average weight was 1,500 pounds and they carried enough gasoline for a two hours’ flight and were armed with two .30-caliber machine guns. All of these planes had the habit of shedding parts under stress of battle and more pilots were killed during the war because of defective equipment, lack of parachutes, and inexperience than as a result of enemy action.

The long-range heavy bomber also came into being during World War I. Before the conflict was over many farsighted military men visualized it as the most important military weapon produced by the science of flight. Our own General “Billy” Mitchell was one of the first to visualize its possibilities.

The British two-engined Handley-Page bomber carried the brunt of heavy bombardment action during the war. It carried a one-thousand-pound bomb load, with its bombs ranging from 15 to 600 pounds each. It had a range of 250 miles and was credited with a great deal of destructive work behind the German lines. At the end of the war a new and larger Handley-Page bomber with a range of 650 miles and a 2-ton bomb load capacity was ready to carry the war far beyond the enemy’s lines. While the Germans relied mainly on their big Zeppelins for long-range bombardment, they also used the big two-engined _Gotha_ bomber for raids on French cities.

Whether the airplane had any real effect on the outcome of World War I is questionable. It did, however, set keen-minded military men to thinking in a manner that made the airplane the key weapon of World War II.

During World War I, American aviation production was centered around the three great names that had typified the airplane since its earliest days--Wright, Curtiss, and Martin. Wilbur Wright died on May 30, 1912, from typhoid fever, and in 1915 Orville disposed of his interests in the Wright Company. He continued, however, to act as a consultant for the company. In California, young Glenn L. Martin’s company had prospered with war orders from the United States and foreign governments. His chief engineer was the young midshipman who, not so many years before, had robbed his penny bank to watch the trials of the first Wright Army plane--Donald Douglas. Larry Bell, of whom we will hear more in connection with another great war, was Martin’s general manager. In 1916, the Martin Company and the Wright Company were joined in partnership, as the Wright-Martin Company. This organization was a heavy contributor to the war effort, turning out hundreds of airplane engines for the Allies. The Curtiss company produced the famous Jenny training plane and many flying boats for the Navy, including the big NC flying boats. America also produced the celebrated 12-cylinder, 450-horsepower _Liberty_ engine. It was the lightest per horsepower aviation engine in the World and was used to power the American-built DH-4 observation plane used by the Army in the latter part of the war. Considering the fact that it was only a dozen years since man had first flown in a powered airplane and that our knowledge of aërial warfare was extremely limited, both manufacturers and aviators did a splendid job in the First World War.

It was in terms of men rather than in aërial victories that America profited. As the result of the foundation laid by men like Wilbur and Orville Wright, Glenn H. Curtiss, Glenn L. Martin, E. J. Hall and J. G. Vincent (inventors of the Liberty engine), Guy Vaughn of Curtiss, Donald Douglas, and others, America gained world leadership in the production of aircraft engines and airplanes.

Many of the young men who flew the “crates” of World War I for the American Army and Navy are the men whose names make headlines in commercial air transport and on the world-wide battlefronts today. Many a pilot who got his first flying training in a _Jenny_ or a Curtiss flying boat is now an airline executive or a world-famous flying general or admiral. It was the steadfast efforts of such veteran airmen as Mitchell, Arnold, Spaatz, Eaker, Rickenbacker, Harold L. George, Artemus Gates, Bob Lovett, Louis Brereton, Jimmy Doolittle, Frank Lahm, Gill Robb Wilson, Jack Jouett, John H. Towers, and others, who have built American air supremacy.

The famous Curtiss _Jenny_ that served the Army so well as a training plane also helped keep aviation alive in the days following World War I. Ex-Army fliers used them for pleasure and business, and a few of them used them to start some of the country’s first airlines.

THE FIRST AIR MAIL

On May 15, 1918, America’s first official airplane mail service was inaugurated. The man in charge was Major Reuben H. Fleet, U. S. Army Air Service. We will hear more of Major Fleet later on in our story.

Piloted by Army aviators, airplanes took off from Washington, D. C., bound for New York, via Philadelphia--and from New York bound for Washington, by the same route. Twenty minutes after Lieutenant George Boyle took off from Potomac Park, Washington, with 350 pounds of mail, he lost his course, and in landing near Waldorf, Maryland, the plane nosed over, breaking the propeller. Lieutenant Leroy Webb, who took off from the old Belmont Race Track near New York City at 11:40 A.M., had better luck, however, and reached Philadelphia an hour and twenty minutes later. Lieutenant J. C. Edgerton took over the controls and flew on from there, landing in Washington at 4:00 P.M. Within another half hour Boy Scouts had completed delivery of the 500 letters and parcels consigned to Washington, and air mail service in the United States had begun.

Wartime Curtiss _Jenny_ training planes were used for the first air mail service. They could carry about 300 pounds of mail and had a top speed of 90 miles per hour. In August, 1918, the air mail service was taken over by the Post Office Department.

WINGSPAN LENGTH

THE DH-4 BIPLANE, ORIGINALLY AN OBSERVATION SHIP IN WORLD WAR I,
WAS CONVERTED FOR PEACETIME USE AS A MAIL PLANE BY THE POST OFFICE
DEPARTMENT.

POWER

ONE 12-CYLINDER, 400-HP., LIQUID-COOLED ENGINE.

THE DH-4 MAIL PLANE WAS POWERED WITH A _LIBERTY_ ENGINE FROM THE
ARMY’S SURPLUS WAR STOCK.

SPEED

ONE HOUR

100 MILES

RANGE

350 MILES

CEILING

4,000

FEET

THE DH-4 HAD A CRUISING SPEED OF APPROXIMATELY 100 MILES PER HOUR
AND A RANGE OF AROUND 350 MILES UNDER GOOD WEATHER CONDITIONS.
=ALTHOUGH IT WAS ABLE= TO REACH A HIGHER CEILING, ITS BEST
PERFORMANCE WAS AT ALTITUDES FROM 2,000 TO 4,000 FEET.

PAYLOAD

2 PERSONS OR 1 PERSON AND 350 POUNDS OF CARGO.

IN ADDITION TO THE PILOT, THE DH-4 COULD CARRY ONE PASSENGER OR A
350-POUND LOAD OF MAIL OR EXPRESS.

THE DH-4 WAS ORIGINALLY BUILT FOR WAR SERVICE WHERE THE COST OF OPERATION WAS A SECONDARY MATTER. IT WAS A COMPARATIVELY SLOW SHIP AND DID NOT FLY WELL IN BAD WEATHER. IT HAD A VERY SMALL PAYLOAD CAPACITY AND WAS COSTLY TO OPERATE. POSTAGE RATE FOR AIR MAIL THEN WAS 24 CENTS PER OUNCE.]

The original air mail route of 1918 was only 218 miles in length, but it was not long before the Post Office Department extended the service. By September, 1920, transcontinental air mail service was in operation between New York and San Francisco, California.

Flying in single-engined, open-cockpit Army _Jennies_ and DH-4’s, the unsung pioneers of our early air mail service were Army aviators. They had no reliable flight instruments. Roads, rivers, and railroad tracks were their only airway markers, and the family wash on a clothes line was the means by which the fliers ascertained their wind direction.

PRECISION BOMBING IS BORN

The end of World War I found Army aviation with a personnel of 18,000 officers and 135,000 enlisted men. Aircraft manufacturers with expanded production facilities were proceeding at full speed. Within a very short time the aviation strength of the Army was reduced to 1,000 officers and 10,000 enlisted men. Aircraft contracts were canceled and soon after the close of the war many aircraft firms were forced out of business. As a result, the Army was left to carry on with reconditioned wartime airplanes and engines.

Men like General “Billy” Mitchell fought to keep the Army from forgetting aviation. This was a peace-loving country and most people felt that the United States had fought its last war. Mitchell organized a transcontinental air race. He tried to persuade the Government to build lighted airways across the country for commercial aviation, but met with little support. Ex-Army aviators bought discarded Army planes, barnstormed the country, carried passengers at five dollars a hop, and tried in every way possible to keep aviation alive. But the early twenties saw aviation in an almost hopeless struggle for existence.

The three big names of aviation continued to lead in the struggling airplane manufacturing field. The Wright-Martin Company separated. The Wright interests became the Wright Aëronautical Corporation and those of Martin became the Glenn L. Martin Company. The Wright organization made airplane engines, and the Martin Company, with Glenn L. Martin still its director, began to build a big two-engine bomber. The Curtiss Company continued to build airplanes.

The devastating raids made by our big bombers on enemy lands, led many people to believe that the heavy bomber of the Army Air Forces was a “miracle” weapon born of World War II. Airmen know better. In World War I, General Mitchell believed that heavy long-range bombers could have bombed Germany to a more decisive defeat. However, we had no heavy bombers in 1918. It was not until 1921 that General Mitchell had an opportunity to prove the destructive power of aërial bombs.

In July of that year, using six Martin BM-1 bombers, the Army sank the giant 22,000-ton, ex-German battleship _Ostfriesland_ with aërial bombs in 25 minutes. “Billy” Mitchell’s theory was proved and America’s policy of long-range, precision bombing was born.

AMERICA’S FIRST TWO-ENGINED BOMBER. POWERED WITH TWO 400-HP. _LIBERTY_ ENGINES, ITS SPEED WAS 118 MILES PER HOUR. ITS WINGSPAN WAS 71 FEET.]

THE U. S. NAVY’S FIRST AIRCRAFT CARRIER

Ever since that morning in January, 1911, when Eugene Ely took off from a platform on the deck of the cruiser _Pennsylvania_, flew around, and landed back on the deck, farsighted naval leaders had dreamed of taking the airplane to sea with the fleet.

World War I and the use of naval aviation in anti-submarine and patrol duties had stopped progress in experiments along this line. It was not until the end of the war that Navy men began to consider the idea of building a surface vessel capable of carrying airplanes to sea. It was soon recognized that such a ship must be devoted exclusively to the carrying and handling of airplanes. It must be literally an aircraft carrier.

The idea of the carrier created several problems. Assuming that the pilots could land on the bobbing deck of a vessel, how were the planes to be stopped? Then there was the question of training flying boat pilots to handle landplanes. While some Navy pilots had obtained landplane experience overseas during the war, the majority had never been aloft in any type of machine other than a seaplane.

Nevertheless, the entire idea appealed to our Navy men and the project was undertaken. The Army agreed to provide landplane training facilities for Navy pilots. Under the command of Lieutenant Commander G. DeC. Chavalier, U.S.N., the Navy pilots first mastered the technique of flying landplanes. They learned to land their planes in small areas marked out on the ground to represent the deck of a ship. Then a platform one hundred feet long and forty feet wide was constructed on a coal barge at the Washington Navy Yard for use in deck landings. The barge platform proved dangerous, since no arresting gear had yet been developed, and the training was continued at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia. Here a platform was erected on the ground and a number of arresting gear ideas were tested. Finally there was developed a simple and reliable arresting gear, an outgrowth of the original taut line and sandbag idea, used by Ely.

In the meantime, the secretary of the Navy had authorized the conversion of the old collier, _Jupiter_, into an aircraft carrier. A platform, or flight deck, was built covering the entire top of the ship and the arresting gear was mounted on it at the stern. The ship’s smokestacks were set to one side of the deck so as not to interfere with the landings. The carrier, commissioned the _Langley_, in memory of the inventive professor, first steamed to sea in October, 1922. At a spot near Old Point Comfort, where eleven years before Ely had made his flight from the _Birmingham_, Commander V. C. Griffin soared up from the deck of the _Langley_.

Out from Norfolk roared Commander Chavalier, to set his plane down in a perfect landing on the _Langley’s_ deck. The United States Navy had its first aircraft carrier.

THE FIRST FLIGHT AROUND THE WORLD

Do you remember the young midshipman who spent his savings to go to see the Wrights fly their plane for the Army at Fort Meyer? After that it was not long before he decided to leave the Naval Academy to take up a career in the new field of aviation. By 1920 Donald Douglas was one of America’s most promising aircraft engineers. At the age of twenty-eight he was vice president of the Glenn L. Martin Company. At that age most young men would have been happy to be even close to a position like that. But not Don Douglas. He still had his dream of great commercial airliners and he thought that California was the place to build them. He left his job with Martin and started in business for himself, at a time when half the aviation industry was struggling for its very existence.

Douglas went to Los Angeles, but friends and bankers alike could see no future in aviation, and advised him to get out of it. Discouraged but not beaten, he kept on trying. A chance meeting with a wealthy man in a barber shop gave him his starting capital and before long the former midshipman was building planes for the U. S. Navy. In 1924, his Army Douglas World Cruiser circled the globe, but his great airliners still were a dream.

WINGSPAN 50 FEET LENGTH 38 FEET

THE U. S. ARMY’S DOUGLAS DWC _CRUISERS_ WERE THE FIRST AIRPLANES TO
CIRCLE THE GLOBE.

POWER

ONE 12-CYLINDER 450-HP. _LIBERTY_ ENGINE

THE DWC’S WERE POWERED WITH WORLD WAR I TYPE OF _LIBERTY_
WATER-COOLED IN-LINE ENGINES.

SPEED

ONE HOUR

100 MILES

RANGE

800+ MILES

CEILING

8,000+ FEET

THE DOUGLAS DWC WAS NOT A VERY FAST AIRPLANE, BUT IT WAS A STURDY
SHIP FOR ITS TIME. IT WAS DESIGNED FOR THE WORLD FLIGHT AND STOOD
UP WELL. THE DWC WEIGHED 6,000 POUNDS EMPTY. FULLY LOADED WITH
GASOLINE AND OIL, IT WEIGHED 8,200 POUNDS. THE TWO CREW MEMBERS
RODE IN SEPARATE, OPEN COCKPITS THE ENGINES WERE THE WEAK SPOT IN
THE SHIP. THE FLIGHT PROVED THE NEED FOR BETTER ENGINES.

PAYLOAD

TWO-MAN CREW

TWENTY-ONE YEARS AGO THE FIRST AROUND-THE-WORLD FLIGHT WAS A DARING OPERATION. CREW MEMBERS TOOK SPECIAL TRAINING. A WORLD-WIDE GROUND ORGANIZATION WAS SET UP TO SERVICE THE PLANES. THE DWC’S WERE EQUIPPED TO USE EITHER WHEEL OR PONTOON LANDING GEAR.]

It was between April 6 and September 28, 1924, that the first flight around the world was made. Four Douglas Cruisers, each carrying two men, started the flight from Seattle, Washington. A world-wide organization was set up to service the planes as they circled the globe. Two of the planes completed the trip 175 days later. The total distance flown was 26,345 miles and the total flying time was 363 hours, 7 minutes. A third plane was destroyed in a crash in Alaska early in the flight, and the fourth sank after a crash in the Atlantic on the last lap of the trip. The DWC’s used in the flight were powered with 450-horsepower _Liberty_ engines, and the average speed was about 72 miles per hour. This round-the-world flight was truly a daring operation.

AIR PROGRESS

In the early twenties the design of the airplane underwent very little change. The biplane with an enclosed fuselage remained standard in both military and civil aircraft. With the exception of a few Navy flying boats, the biplane was a two-place plane capable of carrying the pilot and one passenger, or 300 pounds of cargo or mail. There were some attempts at streamlining to eliminate drag, but they consisted mainly of using fewer wing struts and wire bracings.

Landing gears were made stronger and the oleo landing strut was introduced. The oleo landing strut was made by two sleevelike cylinders which operated as does a piston. The upper cylinder was filled with heavy oil. The landing wheels were attached to the lower cylinder. On landing, the weight of the airplane caused the cylinder to push up, as a piston, into the oil-filled upper cylinder. This produced a pressure on the oil. A small opening in the cylinder allowed the oil slowly to slip out of the cylinder. This reduced the pressure gradually as the gear absorbed the landing shock. If you take a bicycle pump and hold your finger over the valve, then build up pressure in the pump and at the same time allow just a little air to escape from under your finger, you will readily see how the oleo landing works. The oleo shock-absorbing type of landing gear is standard with all modern planes.

Fuselage construction of wooden stringers and posts, with the wire bracing so familiar in all early airplanes, gave way to the use of veneered wood covering. The first Douglas planes, the DH-4’s, the Curtiss Orioles, and the L. W. F. of the early twenties used veneer covering instead of fabric for their fuselages. This was followed by the introduction of welded steel tubing for fuselage framework. Several attempts were made to develop a monoplane in those days but none was very successful. In Germany, in 1922, the Junkers JL6 was the first plane successfully to use an internally braced monoplane wing. In this country it was several years before an aircraft designer dared to attempt to overcome the prejudiced aviators against the monoplane design.

During the middle twenties the names of Wright, Curtiss, and Martin were still to the fore. The Wright Aëronautical Corporation was the leader in its field. Its liquid-cooled engines had grown from 120-horsepower to 300-, 400-, 675-horsepower. It also had begun to experiment with and develop an air-cooled radial airplane engine. This engine, invented by Charles L. Lawrance, was a result of his study of the Manley radial engine built for Professor Langley’s _Aerodrome_. The Manley engine was far ahead of its time. What might have happened had the first Wright plane and the Manley engine come together in the early days is pure guesswork. The original Manley radial engine weighed only 3.6 pounds per horsepower. In the early twenties, when Lawrance started to work with the Manley engine as a guide, airplane engines weighed about 10 pounds per horsepower. The Manley engine used in the _Aerodrome_ was water-cooled and Lawrance went to work to eliminate the extra weight caused by radiator and water-cooling equipment. So successful were his first experiments that he joined the Wright Aëronautical Corporation to collaborate in developing an aircraft engine that was to have a profound influence on world aviation.

During this time the Curtiss Company continued to build successful airplanes for both the Army and the Navy, including the first of the famous Hawk fighters, completed in 1923. Martin worked on improved types of Army bombers and Douglas built planes for both branches of the service. In Seattle, Washington, the Boeing Company had started its first aircraft for the Army. New names such as Beech, Cessna, Sikorsky, Vought, Fairchild, Northrop, and others began to appear on the nameplates of new planes.

In the early twenties, with transcontinental mail service well under way, there were many attempts made to establish air transport and cargo services. Most of these ventures were undertaken by former military aviators, using cast-off Army airplanes. Their airports usually were cow pastures. They planned their own air routes and got their weather reports from the newspapers. Bad weather would often ground a flight and passengers were almost as uncertain as the weather. Many of those pioneer operators had to depend on the dollar-a-ride hops of Sunday sightseers to “keep the wolf from the door.” One service operated 14-passenger converted Navy seaplanes on a route between New York and Havana, and another route between Cleveland and Detroit. Most of these pioneer air transport Operations lasted for only a short time, due to the heavy cost of maintaining the planes and the lack of properly marked air routes.

Difficulties had arisen in the air mail service by 1921. It had become apparent that air mail would not be valuable to the Government unless it could be flown by night as well as by day. It had been standard practice for the mail to be flown only during daylight hours and to be carried by train at night. The Government was about to abandon the air mail service when the pilots pointed out that all that was needed was a chain of airway beacons and lights for the landing fields and planes.

REVOLVING BEACON

51-FOOT TOWER

POWER HOUSE

COURSE LIGHTS

CONCRETE ARROW POINTING TO NEXT BEACON

ROUTE DESIGNATION BASED ON TERMINAL CITIES

ROUTE NUMBER BASED ON MILEAGE

AIRWAY BEACON LIGHT]

To prove their point a group of pilots volunteered to make a continuous night-and-day flight from San Francisco to New York. Flying in relays and guided at night by bonfires tended by friendly farmers along the route, the pilots flew the mail across the country in 33 hours and 21 minutes. The Post Office Department immediately arranged for the installation of lighted airways and the planes were equipped with navigation and landing lights.

By July, 1924, a continuous chain of lighted airway beacons marked the air mail route from coast to coast. Lighted landing fields were established at 250-mile intervals and through transcontinental air mail service, with night-and-day flying, was an accomplished fact.

AMERICA’S FIRST ALL-METAL TRANSPORT

We have spoken of the fact that in the early twenties aircraft designers were hesitant about attempting to overcome the prejudice of aviators against the internally braced monoplane design. However, there was one young man who had never been timid about the idea. He was a tall, scholarly fellow who, as a youngster, was designing and flying model planes before the Wright Brothers made their first flight. Like the Wrights he was the son of a minister. This young man, William Bushnell Stout by name, worked his way through the University of Minnesota by firing a furnace. After graduation he worked for a newspaper and edited a boys’ page, one of the first in America that gave complete directions for building model airplanes.

With the outbreak of World War I, Bill Stout became technical adviser to the Aircraft Board in Washington. His first advice to the aviation experts there was to scrap all existing designs and build a streamlined monoplane with an internally braced wing without struts or wires. They said it could not be done. Bill promptly sat down and drew workable plans for such a ship.

Eventually the Government bought Bill Stout’s design and with the money he set up his own engineering laboratory in Detroit, Michigan. He decided that wood and fabric were not suitable to stand the strain required in a modern plane. His first all-metal plane, a Navy torpedo bomber, flew successfully in test flights, but a Navy pilot wrecked it on its official trial. The Navy would not order another one, so Bill had to raise more money. He got it and built America’s first all-metal transport plane. It carried eight passengers in addition to the two-man crew. Bill knew it was a good plane and he was satisfied with it, but he did not want to be a manufacturer. He wanted instead to stay at his engineering work, so he sold his airplane company to Henry Ford, and the famous Stout-designed, Ford tri-motor, “Tin Goose” was born.

WINGSPAN 70 FEET LENGTH 40 FEET

THE FORD TRI-MOTOR WAS AMERICA’S FIRST ALL-METAL TRANSPORT PLANE. IT PROVED THE VALUE OF METAL IN AIRCRAFT CONSTRUCTION.

POWER

THREE 9-CYLINDER 200-H.P. RADIAL ENGINES

POWER FOR THE FORD PLANE WAS FURNISHED BY WRIGHT _WHIRLWIND_
AIR-COOLED, RADIAL ENGINES.

SPEED

ONE HOUR

100 MILES

RANGE

500 MILES

CEILING

8,000 FEET

PAYLOAD

8 PASSENGERS OR A CARGO LOAD OF EQUAL WEIGHT.

ALTHOUGH THE FORD DID NOT INCREASE THE RATE OF SPEED OF AIR
TRANSPORT, ITS ROOMY, ENCLOSED CABIN DID OFFER GREATER COMFORT FOR
AIR TRAVELERS. ITS THREE ENGINES GAVE IT A GREATER FACTOR OF
SAFETY. AS THE CABIN WAS HEATED ONLY BY ENGINE EXHAUST GASES, ITS
PRACTICAL SERVICE CEILING WAS UNDER 4,000 FEET. IN ADDITION TO ITS
PASSENGERS THE FORD CARRIED SEVERAL HUNDRED POUNDS OF AIR MAIL IN
ITS WING COMPARTMENTS.

THE _WHIRLWIND_-POWERED FORD TRANSPORT WAS ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL EARLY PASSENGER AND CARGO CARRIERS. ONLY A FEW OF THEM WERE BUILT, AS HENRY FORD DID NOT WISH TO CONTINUE IN THE AIRPLANE BUSINESS. MANY 1926 FORD TRANSPORTS ARE STILL IN USE IN VARIOUS PARTS OF THE WORLD.]

Just about the time the Ford tri-motors were proving themselves in tests an important law was passed by Congress. It was the Kelly Air Commerce Act of 1925. It authorized the Post Office Department to contract with private firms to fly the air mail routes maintained by the Department of Commerce. This law was designed to encourage private capital to enter the aviation field, with the objective of carrying not only mail but passengers. In February, 1926, officials of one of the newly formed air transport firms proudly watched their first big air transport plane take off from the Detroit airport. The big plane was a Stout-designed, all-metal Ford, the first of a series of airliners that were destined to make aviation history.

By the end of 1926, there were sixteen air transport operators holding air mail contracts. Most of the flying was still done in single-engined planes. Up to that time the weight of the big water-cooled engines in multi-engined transports left little to spare for pay loads. It was not until the development of the radial engine that commercial aviation really started.

The in-line engine required a long, heavy crankshaft with sections for each cylinder. This required that separate crankshaft bearings be used for each cylinder. The whole crankshaft assembly was heavy and cumbersome. When extra cylinders were added, the engine’s weight increased and it became longer. In the radial engine a single crankshaft hearing was used.

The radial air-cooled engine immediately showed many advantages over the in-line, water-cooled engines of that time. The use of aluminum in its construction made it lighter. It was cooled by allowing air to rush through finely spaced fins on cylinder heads and barrels. The weight of the cooling liquid (water) and the pump and mechanism to circulate it was avoided.

THE ACTION OF THE CRANKSHAFT IS THE SAME AS WINDING UP THE WELL
ROPE THAT HOISTED THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET. THE CRANKSHAFT’S JOB IS TO
TRANSLATE STRAIGHT-LINE MOTION INTO ROTARY MOTION.

IN THE RADIAL ENGINE, ALL HANDS TRANSMIT THEIR POWER TO ONE MASTER
ROD

IN THE IN-LINE ENGINE THE POWER OF EACH CYLINDER IS TRANSMITTED BY
A SEPARATE CRANK. THIS MAKES THE CRANKSHAFT GROW LONGER WITH EACH
ADDITIONAL CYLINDER.

SHORT, LIGHT, 9-CYLINDER, RADIAL CRANKSHAFT

LONG, HEAVY CRANKSHAFT OF A FOUR-CYLINDER IN-LINE ENGINE

EACH ADDITIONAL CYLINDER NOT ONLY INCREASES THE LENGTH OF THE
CRANKSHAFT, BUT IT ALSO MAKES IT NECESSARY TO CONSTRUCT A HEAVIER
BASE TO SUPPORT THE CYLINDERS, CRANKSHAFT, AND CRANKSHAFT BEARINGS.

THE RADIAL ENGINE, THE POWER OF ALL CYLINDERS IS TRANSLATED INTO
ROTARY MOTION BY RODS CONNECTED TO THE MASTER ROD, WHICH TURNS THE
SHORT CRANKSHAFT.]

BETTER POWER FOR AMERICA’S AIRPLANES

The Wright Brothers’ first airplane engine had weighed 170 pounds and had produced 12 horsepower. It had used twenty-five per cent of its energy propelling itself. With the introduction of the air-cooled, radial engine twenty years later, a pound and a half of engine had been made to produce one horsepower. Thus the new 350-pound radial engine of 200 horsepower put all but a fraction of weight into load-carrying power.

While we are discussing horsepower, it might be well to find out just what we mean by the term. In connection with steam and gasoline engines it is used for the reason that the horse had for years been man’s most common power plant. One horsepower represents the power ascribed to a heavy dray horse in the days of horse-drawn vehicles. This “standard” one-horse’s-power includes the three factors, time, weight, and distance, or the length of time it takes to move a certain weight a certain distance. One horsepower in these factors amounts to the ability to lift 33,000 pounds one foot in one minute. Actual brake tests, where an experimental engine shows its ability to lift a certain number of pounds so high in one minute, gives the engineer a series of tables to be used in designing other engines. Each cylinder produces an equal share of the engine’s total horsepower. Thus each cylinder of the nine-cylinder, 200-horsepower, Wright radial engine produced slightly over 22 horsepower, or eight more than the entire four cylinders of the Wright Brothers’ 1903 engine.

With the introduction of the first practical, light-weight, air-cooled, radial engine, American aviation underwent a great change for the better.

The Lawrance-designed Wright J engines promptly began to put a long succession of famous fliers and famous airplanes in the books for one record after another. The Stout-designed Ford tri-motor transport plane was powered with Wright J3 radials. The J3 was adapted for use by the United States Navy and led the Navy to discontinue entirely its use of liquid-cooled power plants in favor of air-cooled radial engines for all its service airplanes. Wright J4 engines powered the flight of Admiral Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett over the North Pole in 1926. Tony Fokker, who had designed Germany’s fighters in World War I, began to make records with his American-built planes powered with Wright radials.

With the arrival of a suitable engine, fliers all over the country began to think of the Raymond Orteig prize of $25,000 for the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris. This offer had been standing since 1919. Admiral Byrd was ready to try for it when a slim, quiet, young air mail pilot hopped off from Long Island, N. Y. Flying a Ryan monoplane powered with a Wright J5 radial, this young fellow flew the Atlantic nonstop to land, some thirty-three hours and thirty-nine minutes later, in Paris with the quiet announcement, “I am Charles Lindbergh.”

RECORD-MAKING FOKKER TRI-MOTOR TRANSPORT PLANE

The best fighter planes used by the Germans in World War I were not of German design. They were designed and built under the supervision of a young man from Holland. Tony Fokker had offered his airplane designs to his native Holland. They were refused. In turn, Fokker tried to interest the British, French, and Belgians in his airplanes, but none of them took him seriously. Just before World War I, the Germans “tied up” Fokker with a contract that kept him practically their prisoner until the war was over.

After the Armistice, Fokker fled from Germany with much of his equipment and established himself in an airplane factory in his homeland. The United States bought some of his airplanes, and in 1923 he established an aircraft factory in this country.

In April of the same year, two Army lieutenants, Oakley Kelly and John Macready, flying a Fokker T-2 powered by a _Liberty_ engine, set a world’s endurance record by remaining in the air for thirty-six hours. Later, in the same Fokker, they flew nonstop from Long Island to California at a speed of nearly one hundred miles an hour. In 1925, Fokker began building his famous Fokker tri-motor transport plane.

Among the first private firms that were successful in winning an air mail contract was the Colonial Air Transport, operating between New York and Boston. This airline was started in 1925 by a young ex-Navy flyer named Juan Trippe, descendant of an old New England whaling family. Young Trippe’s airline used a small fleet of Tony Fokker’s tri-motor transport planes. In December, 1925, Juan Trippe, Tony Fokker, Harry Bruno, and George Pond, the pilot, climbed into one of the Fokker tri-motors on what Trippe called a survey flight. The “survey” included some flying around the Florida coast and climaxed with a record nonstop flight from Miami, to Havana, Cuba.

WINGSPAN 70 FEET LENGTH 40 FEET

THE FOKKER WAS ONE OF THE FIRST MULTI-ENGINED TRANSPORTS AND THE FIRST TO USE WOOD VENEER FOR WING AND FUSELAGE COVERING.

POWER THREE 9-CYLINDER 200-HP., RADIAL ENGINES.

ANY TWO OF THE FOKKER’S THREE ENGINES WOULD ENABLE IT TO STAY IN THE AIR, A STEP FORWARD IN SAFETY.

SPEED ONE HOUR 100 MILES

EVEN WITH THREE 200-HP. ENGINES, THE BIG FUSELAGE CAUSED A _DRAG_ THAT HELD ITS CRUISING SPEED DOWN TO 100 MILES PER HOUR.

RANGE 500 MILES

ITS NORMAL RANGE WAS 500 MILES, BUT WITH EXTRA GAS TANKS INSTEAD OF PAYLOAD IT COVERED RECORD DISTANCES.

CEILING 8,000 FEET

THOUGH CAPABLE OF HIGHER ALTITUDES, ITS MOST PRACTICAL CRUISING ALTITUDE WAS FROM 2,000 TO 4,000 FEET, DUE TO THE LACK OF A GOOD HEATING SYSTEM.

PAYLOAD 8 PASSENGERS OR A CARGO LOAD OF EQUAL WEIGHT.

THE FOKKER TRI-MOTOR WAS DEFINITELY AN ADVANCEMENT IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF LARGE MULTI-ENGINED TRANSPORT PLANES. THOUGH FAR FROM PERFECT, IT WAS A GREAT IMPROVEMENT OVER THE SINGLE-ENGINED, OPEN-COCKPIT SHIPS THAT WERE FIRST USED IN AIR TRANSPORT.]

The idea behind Juan Trippe’s “survey” flight to Florida and Havana was to extend Colonial Air Transport’s route from Boston to Florida, then on southward. His board of directors could not see his point, so Trippe left Colonial. In a matter of weeks he had rounded up a few ex-war flier friends with money, and had organized his own airline under the title, Pan American Airways. Before it was completely set up Trippe had a contract to fly the mail from Key West, Florida, to Havana, Cuba. That was in 1928. From that time on, Juan Trippe’s Pan American Airways continued to move just as fast as it had in its first few weeks of organization. Less than two years after the first Key West-Havana flight, Pan American was flying the mail to the Argentine.

AIR TRANSPORT GROWS

While Tony Fokker was producing his famous tri-motor transports for budding airlines like Juan Trippe’s Pan American Airways, Admiral Byrd and three companions had flown a tri-motored Fokker to France. Clarence Chamberlain and Charles Levine flew a Bellanca radial-powered monoplane to Germany; Army Lieutenants Maitland and Hegenberger flew 2,400 miles nonstop from Oakland, California, to Honolulu, Hawaii, in a radial-powered Fokker; Amelia Earhart and Wilmer Stultz flew a Fokker from Newfoundland to England. Amelia thus became the first woman to cross the Atlantic in an airplane. Later she was to fly the Atlantic alone.