The Way of the Air: A Description of Modern Aviation

Had either Orville or Wilbur Wright, when they first glided down the low sand-dunes of the Pacific shore on a frail, uncontrollable air machine, in the earlier part of this cent...

The other day, yesterday afternoon to be exact, a most exciting adventure befell me. I was detailed to take part in a bombing raid at ----. We had not proceeded far beyond our o...

The airship is the aristocrat of the air. In jealousy and scorn the aeroplane may refer to her as “gasbag,” “sausage”; may poke fun at her by reason of her unwieldy size, and la...

As I walked across the aerodrome, the feeble rays of the young moon were dying in the west. It was 4.30 in the morning, with an icy-cold nor’wester shrieking through the tree-to...

The seaplane, as its name implies, is used solely for flying over tracts of water. It is identical in shape with the aeroplane, but with minor variations. It is considerably hea...

And here in the privacy of my thoughts and of my pen let it be said that at first I was troubled with qualms of fear--qualms that I had experienced in the previous life after a...

Sunday again, but hardly to be imagined in these troublous times and places, with adventure for one’s bedfellow, war for one’s profession, and bloodshed and horrors for one’s co...

The Air Service is young, very young; it is like an overgrown schoolboy, strong, healthy and full of life, but lacking just that sense of proportion that distinguishes the schoo...

“The life of an airman is one of intense idleness interrupted by moments of violent fear.” This remark, originating as it does from a youthful member of the Senior Service descr...

In writing of modern aviation it is to be regretted that the sport or science, call it what you will, was developed more in two years by the war than would have been possible in...

Imagine a great bare meadow-land, lonely, wind-swept, and dark with inky blackness, out of which there plunges an occasional hurrying figure, that misses one by inches and passe...

The heroism and courage of the airmen were without precedent, but none the less admirable. Those stripling pilots of the air that flew undaunted over shell-fire in all weathers...

The appointment to a commission in one of the flying services can be either temporary or permanent. The former holds good until the end of the war, the latter for as long as the...

For the first few trips up aloft the beginner is always accompanied by an instructor. First he is taken up as a passenger, and his only duty is to sit in the observer’s seat and...

They came over about noon and roused the fearful and subdued the proud while we were all at lunch. They circled overhead for about five minutes, dropped a dozen or so bombs, the...

Once in the Service, the R.N.A.S. man may be selected for one of three branches of flying, namely, seaplane, aeroplane--which, incidentally, is far preferable to any other branc...

It was a sleepy old-world town hidden away in the sunny hills of Northern France, with a broad highway leading from the town in either direction and easily distinguishable from...

At a recent coroner’s inquest on the death of a young Service pilot in England, an instructor of the flying school at which he was being trained, stated in the course of his evi...

Tucked away in a corner of an unused Flanders roadway, a long straggled line of irregular shaped huts and sheds surrounding a wide open meadow land, several acres in extent, is...

“X or Y airships participated in the attack on Great Britain last night; Z raiders were brought down.” Hard official words these, that, read in the cold black and white of print...

Somewhere in the north of France there is a little wood. It is about half a mile square in area, and stands immediately south of a fine, broad highroad, along which there daily...

The British Air Service is now a great army, 80 per cent. of whom, before the war, had never even seen an aeroplane, much less been up in one,--bank clerks, young merchants, und...

The other day I had a dream; at six o’clock in the morning, at 10,000 feet up in the air, with the biting cold wind whistling by my ears. On all sides stretched the air, a bound...

Our day was of this variety. A day when a man’s heart yearns for a moor, a dog, and a gun. For moor we had the long, flat, dreary sandhill and marshes of the Belgian coast; a do...

Dawn--not as we imagine it; but a dawn with God’s clear Heaven filled with every winged messenger of death. The very earth is shaken with agony, and the face of the sun is blott...

With every combat in mid-air some new theory is set up, some new conclusion arrived at, and as yet nothing can be definite. We may say for practical purposes that the strategica...

Somebody censored was engaged in a long reconnaissance trip into the enemy’s country, and had already turned home when a shrapnel shell burst immediately beneath his aeroplane,...

IX. BEHIND THE FIRING LINE 61 X. THE FIRST TRIP ACROSS THE LINE 66 XI. SOME ANECDOTES 74 XII. SPORT EXTRAORDINARY 81 XIII. A BALLOON-TRIP BY NIGHT 85 XIV. THE BATTLE OF THE WOOD...

AUTHOR’S NOTE vii INTRODUCTION 3 I. JOINING THE SERVICE 10 II. THE AIRMAN’S FIRST DAYS 17 III. THE INITIAL FLIGHT 23 IV. THE PERILS OF THE AIR 28 V. THE SPIRIT OF THE AIR 34 VI....

(Part II contains a series of incidents and adventures taken from the note-book of a British air pilot, stationed somewhere in the north of France, and are given in their origin...