V
Before I described the passenger-carrying flying-machine towards which contemporary research-work seems directed, I postulated the freedom of the air for that machine. I stipulated that the statesman and the financier should be gagged and bound. Now that I come to private-flying and air-racing, however, the imagination jibs at the notion of a similar freedom of the air. If the statesman were prevented from meddling with the technical development of the passenger-carrying flying-machine, he would most likely turn with redoubled vigour to the task of controlling, organizing, watching over, regulating, and generally bleeding the private, the record-breaking, and the racing aircraft.
I can, therefore, sketch the future of those machines only as the statesman will direct it.
The small fixed-wing private flying-machine, especially in the amphibian form, will gradually become more and more popular and, as it grows more popular, so the statesman will take more notice of it. His first opportunity for direct action will come when a few people get killed in an accident involving a private aircraft.
Taking advantage of the Press outcry, of the screams of the Safety First societies and of the opportunity for personal aggrandizement, Members of Parliament will pass a Flying-Machine Act.
Among the provisions of this Act will be a 40-miles per hour minimum speed-limit. No heavier-than-air craft will be permitted to fly at a speed of less than 40 miles per hour. It is easy to follow the workings of the official mind in setting this speed-limit. A fixed-wing aircraft crashes not because it goes too fast but because it goes too slowly. Therefore, the statesman will reason, if it is illegal to go too slowly, there will be no more accidents.
Another provision will make it illegal for anyone suffering from nicotine-poisoning to be in charge of a flying-machine. (Prohibition will be established in England by this time, so that no clause about “drunk in charge of a flying-machine” will be necessary.)
Further regulations will make it necessary for every private pilot to pass a medical examination once a month as a condition of his having a pilot’s licence. Having passed this examination, he will be required to wear, while in charge of an aeroplane, two 8-inch metal discs, with a number stamped upon them. One disc will be worn on the left shoulder and the other on the top of the flying-helmet.
The aeroplane, in addition to its letter markings on wings and fuselage, will be required to exhibit three plaques bearing identification-numbers. One will be on the centre section, one on the undercarriage, and one on the port side of the fuselage. The aeroplane will also carry metropolitan or county police markings on four tablets of given size, besides markings of the appropriate local council on plates of certain specified dimensions, and small circular pieces of paper contained in approved holders on the rear port interplane-strut (or wing-tip in the case of a monoplane), the rear starboard interplane-strut (or wing-tip) the undercarriage port forward-strut, the tail-fin, the fuselage, and the top plane gravity-tank (if any).
In addition to the pilot’s logbook, machine logbook, engine logbook, pilot’s licence, and airworthiness certificate, there will be a registration-book, travel-triptych, flight-permit, landing-permit, and housing-pass.
These items are, of course, extra to the navigation-lights, wing-tip flares, cockpit-illuminants, parachute-flares, fire-extinguishers, silencers, life-saving parachutes, and other obligatory equipment, such as lifebelts, fire-proof bulkheads, stall-indicators, warning-signals, and Very lights.
These regulations will provide the police with the opportunity of displaying their keen sense of duty. They will ignore the old-fashioned and mundane murders, and will say with Horace Walpole: “Do not wonder that we do not entirely attend to the things of earth; fashion has ascended to a higher element.”
Conceive the vigour and elegance with which they will uphold the 40 m.p.h. minimum speed-limit. What their stopwatches (for they will still use them) and observation lacks in accuracy, they will make up for by the free imagery and sweeping poetic fancy of their evidence in Court.
The pilot who flies while suffering from nicotine-poisoning will be the object of universal opprobrium. His social doom will be sealed when the witness says that his breath smelt of tobacco and that he must have been smoking the same morning. The pilot’s statement that he only had two cigarettes during the previous month will be completely discountenanced.
But the best chance for the police will come when the private moving-wing machine begins to make an appearance. Then will dawn the true constabulary millennium.
The moving-wing machine, as it has been shown, can almost hover and can fly comfortably at five or ten miles per hour. One day a moving-wing machine will pass through a police-trap while its pilot is admiring the countryside or inquiring from his companion where they will stop for lunch.
The pilot will appear in Court charged with flying at less than 40 miles per hour, and there will be a sensation when the detectives disclose that defendant’s speed, which he did not deny, was 8 miles per hour over a measured furlong.
The magistrate will say that, although he had been on that bench for thirty-five years, never in his whole experience, never from the moment that he had accepted those duties, never since the time when he devoted himself to the administration of justice, never had he heard of such a flagrant disregard for the safety of the public. Here was a flying-machine, over a populous area, travelling at 8 miles per hour when everyone knew that a flying-machine gained its lift by virtue of its speed through the air, and that if it travelled at less than forty miles per hour it was liable at any moment to fall upon the heads of the people below.
The pilot might endeavour to explain the technical points in the case. If he did so, his fine would be greater than if he merely pleaded guilty and said no more.
That case will be the signal for a wholesale persecution of moving-wing aircraft-owners. The Home Secretary will issue warnings, magistrates will wish that they could send pilots to prison—in fact there will be the usual process of departmental browbeating which we know so well. The theory that the private flyer will not be summoned for slow flying because there will be moving-wing passenger aircraft also capable of slow flying, does not bear investigation. There are now lorries, motor-buses, charabancs, steam-wagons, and trams which persistently exceed the 20-miles per hour speed limit. They are not prosecuted, nor will the passenger aircraft of the future be prosecuted.
Having given some idea of the delightful future which lies before the private flyer, I will add a few remarks upon air-racing.
After motor-road racing, air-racing is the finest sport yet invented. I give it ten more years life in England.
Before the War air-racing at Hendon was highly successful in that it attracted many entries and large crowds of spectators. Since the War air-racing has been unsuccessful. There are signs, however, that there will soon be a revival of it. Larger and larger crowds will collect to watch it. Special machines will be constructed, the number of entries will increase, continental firms will take part.
Then the statesman will step in and play his part, as he always must when anything becomes popular.
Air-racing is and will remain dangerous. Statesmen and newspapers will discover this and talk about it. Now I am informed upon the best authority that in England no one is allowed to face danger of any kind, whether he wants to or not. The State arranges that all dangers, physical and moral, are kept away from the individual. He may not do, see, hear smell, or taste anything calculated to arouse him from the suety state of mind so highly esteemed by the politician. The Englishman is nursed from birth to death by an army of officials. He is permitted to risk his life only in war.
Air-racing, since it is dangerous, will gradually be stamped out of existence. Air-racing improves the aircraft as a machine-entity; it would have a good effect upon the private flyer’s machine and upon the war-machine. When air-racing has been stopped, therefore, a decline in the quality of the private flying-machine and the service-machine will result.
Air-racing (with which I include record-breaking) is as important to pure aeronautical development as anything else. The history of the Schneider Cup seaplane-race is some indication of the technical advance racing achieves. In 1913 at Monaco the Schnieder Cup, was won by France at 45.4 m.p.h. In 1914 (England) at 86.4 m.p.h., in 1919 (Italy) at 124.9 m.p.h. (This race was declared void). In 1920 (Italy) at 107.2 m.p.h. In 1921 (Italy) at 111.4 m.p.h., in 1922 (England) at 146.1 m.p.h., in 1923 (America) 177.4 m.p.h., in 1925 (America) 234.4 m.p.h. and in 1926 (Italy) at 246.5 m.p.h. (Fig. 3).