Part 4

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.

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.

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.

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.