J I 
 
 li 
 
 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 IN SIXTEEN HOURS 
 
 SIR ARTHUR WHITTEN BROWN 
 
FLYING THE ATLANTIC IN 
 SIXTEEN HOURS 
 
CAPT. SIR ARTHUR WRITTEN BROWN, K.B.E. 
 
FLYING 
 
 THE ATLANTIC IN 
 SIXTEEN HOURS 
 
 WITH A DISCUSSION OF AIRCRAFT IN 
 COMMERCE AND TRANSPORTATION 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR ARTHUR WHITTEN BROWN, KB.E. 
 
 ASSISTED BY 
 
 CAPTAIN ALAN BOTT, R.F.C. 
 
 WITH TWENTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright, 1920, by 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 All rights reserved, including that of translation 
 into foreign languages. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAOB 
 
 I SOME PRELIMINARY EVENTS .... 1 
 
 II ST. JOHN'S 15 
 
 III THE START 32 
 
 IV EVENING . . 47 
 
 V NIGHT . . 55 
 
 VI MORNING * 65 
 
 VII THE ARRIVAL 75 
 
 VIII AFTERMATH OF ARRIVAL 84 
 
 IX THE NAVIGATION OF AIRCRAFT. ... 93 
 
 X THE FUTURE OF TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHT. 108 
 
 XI THE AIR AGE 136 
 
 500236 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Capt. Sir Arthur Whitten Brown, K.B.E. Frontispiece 
 
 FACING 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Late Capt. Sir John Alcock, K.B.E., D.S.C. . 14 
 Feathering the Wings Setting Up the Flier at 
 
 St. John's, N. F 30 
 
 The Last Touches Adjusting the Bracing Wires . 30 
 It Was Hard to Find an Aerodrome with Suf- 
 ficient "Take Off" 44 
 
 Sightseers, If Left to Themselves, Would Have 
 
 Wrecked the Machine 44 
 
 The Transatlantic Machine A Vickers-Vimy 
 
 With Roll-Royce Engines 56 
 
 A Special Kind of Gasoline Had to Be Used . . 70 
 All Aboard for the First Trial Flight .... 70 
 
 The Vickers-Vimy Transatlantic Machine in the 
 
 Air 84 
 
 The Last Square Meal in America Was Eaten 
 
 Near the Wings of the Machine .... 84 
 
 The Late Capt. Sir John Alcock Just Before 
 
 Starting 98 
 
 Shipping the First Direct Transatlantic Air Mail . 98 
 Hot Coffee Was Taken Aboard 104 
 
 Slow Rising Nearly Caused Disaster at the Start 
 
 of the Great Flight 104 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Lucky Jim and Twinkletoe, the Mascots . . . 120 
 
 The Transatlantic Flight Ended With a Crash in 
 
 an Irish Bog 120 
 
 Chart of the North Atlantic Showing Course of 
 
 the Flight 136 
 
 The Men Who Worked Without Glory to Make 
 
 the Flight Possible 136 
 
 The Vickers Aeroplane Works at Weybridge, Eng- 
 land 154 
 
 Comfort Can Be Enjoyed in Air Travel Today . 154 
 
FLYING THE ATLANTIC IN 
 SIXTEEN HOURS 
 
FLYING THE ATLANTIC IN 
 SIXTEEN HOURS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SOME PKELIMINARY EVENTS 
 
 "After me cometh a builder. Tell him I, too, have 
 known. ' ' 
 
 KIPLING. 
 
 IT is an awful thing to be told that one has 
 made history, or done something historic. 
 Such an accusation implies the duty of living 
 up to other people's expectations; and merely 
 an ordinary person who has been lucky, like 
 myself, cannot fulfil such expectations. 
 
 Sir John Alcock and I have been informed 
 so often, by the printed and spoken word, that 
 our achievement in making the first non-stop 
 transatlantic flight is an important event in the 
 history of aviation that almost but not quite 
 I have come to believe it. And this half -belief 
 makes me very humble, when I consider the 
 splendid company of pioneers who, without due 
 
 1 
 
,THE : ATLANTIC 
 
 recognition, gave life, money or precious years, 
 often all three, to further the future of aero- 
 nautics Lilienthal, Pilcher, Langley, Eiffel, 
 Lanchester, Maxim, the Wrights, Bleriot, Cody, 
 Roe, Eolls and the many daring men who 
 piloted the weird, experimental craft which 
 were among the first to fly. 
 
 I believe that ever since Man, but recently 
 conscious of his own existence, saw the birds, 
 he has desired to emulate them. Among the 
 myths and fables of every race are tales of 
 human flight. The paradise of most religions 
 is reached through the air, and through the air 
 gods and prophets have passed from earth to 
 their respective heavens. And all authentic 
 angels are endowed with wings. 
 
 The present generation is lucky in that, de- 
 spite this instinctive longing since the begin- 
 ning of human history for the means of flight, 
 it is the first to see dreams and theories trans- 
 lated into fact by the startling development of 
 practical aviation, within the past fifteen years. 
 The aeronautical wonders of the next fifteen 
 years are likely to be yet more startling. 
 
 Five years ago, before the offensive and de- 
 fensive needs of war provided a supreme raison 
 d'etre, flying was but a costly and dangerous 
 
SOME PEELIMINAEY EVENTS 3 
 
 pastime. As such it attracted the first-class 
 adventurers of every race, many of whom lost 
 their lives on weird, Jabberwock-like aircraft, 
 built and tested before experimental data and 
 more accurate methods of calculation became 
 available. 
 
 But even these men could not realize the won- 
 derful possibilities of the coming air age, of 
 which they were the pioneers. Nearly all the 
 early aeroplanes were born of private enter- 
 prise, for capitalists had no faith in the com- 
 mercial future of flight. Very few firms ap- 
 plied themselves solely to the manufacture of 
 aircraft or aero engines, and only two or three 
 of the great engineering companies had the 
 vision to maintain aeronautical departments. 
 
 Among the few important companies that, in 
 those days, regarded aeronautics seriously was 
 Messrs. Vickers, Ltd. They established an ex- 
 perimental department, and as a result of its 
 work began to produce military types of air- 
 craft which were in advance of their period. 
 Later, when the whirlwind of war provided the 
 impetus which swept pioneer aviation into 
 headlong progress, the Vickers productions 
 moved with the times, and helped largely to 
 make the British aircraft industry the greatest 
 
4 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 in the world. Now that aviation has entered 
 into the third phase of its advance that of a 
 peace-time commercial proposition they are 
 again in the forefront of production. Inciden- 
 tally they provided me with the greatest chance 
 of my life that of taking part in the first non- 
 stop flight across the Atlantic. Since then a 
 Vickers aeroplane has won yet another great 
 distinction the prize for the first flight from 
 England to Australia. 
 
 At this point I desire to pay a very well-de- 
 served tribute to the man who from the begin- 
 ning has backed with money his faith in the fu- 
 ture of aviation. The development of aeronau- 
 tics has been helped enormously by the generous 
 prizes of Lord Northcliffe and the Daily Mail 
 for the first flights across the English Channel, 
 from London to Manchester, around the circuit 
 of Britain, and finally across the Atlantic. 
 
 In each case the competitions seemed impos- 
 sible of fulfilment at the time when they were 
 inaugurated; and in each case the unimagina- 
 tive began with scoffing doubts and ended with 
 wondering praise. Naturally, the prizes were 
 offered before they could be won, for they were 
 intended to stimulate effort and development. 
 This object was achieved. 
 
SOME PEELIMINARY EVENTS 5 
 
 But for the stimulus of these competitions, 
 Great Britain, at the beginning of the war, 
 might well have been in an even worse position 
 as regards aviation than she was. And all who 
 flew on active service during the first three years 
 of the war realize what they owe to Lord North- 
 cliff e's crusades for more and better machines, 
 and for a more extensive use of aircraft. 
 
 Having helped to win one of the Daily Mail 
 prizes, I am not going to quarrel with the prin- 
 ciple of flying competitions. Certainly, the 
 promise of reward brings to the surface ideas 
 and potential powers which might otherwise lie 
 fallow ; but I do not believe the system of money 
 prizes for spectacular flights to be altogether 
 an economically sound proposition. It is not 
 generally realized that as a rule the amount 
 spent by each of the firms that enter a machine 
 for such a, contest as the transatlantic flight 
 vastly exceeds the amount of the prize, although 
 the money reward more than covers' the ex- 
 penses of the aviators who gain it. 
 
 Would it not be more practical to pay directly 
 for research work! Anybody with vision can 
 see some of the infinite possibilities which the 
 future of aviation may hold, and which can only 
 be found by painstaking and properly applied 
 
6 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 research. There are plenty of men able and 
 anxious to devote themselves competently to 
 seeking for yet-hidden solutions whereby flying 
 will be made cheaper, safer and more reliable. 
 What is especially wanted for the moment is 
 the financial endowment of research into the 
 several problems that must be solved before the 
 air age makes the world a better place to live 
 in, and, by eliminating long and uncomfortable 
 journeys, brings the nations into closer bonds 
 of friendship, understanding and commerce. 
 
 Apart from the honor of taking part in the 
 first non-stop flight between America and Great 
 Britain, I am especially pleased to have helped 
 in a small way in the construction of a new link 
 between the two continents to which I belong. 
 My family is deeply rooted in the United 
 States ; but generations ago my ancestors were 
 English, and I myself happened to be born in 
 Glasgow. 
 
 This was in 1886, when my parents were vis- 
 iting that city. I was an only child, and I was 
 so well looked after that I caught neither a 
 Scotch nor an American nor even a Lancashire 
 accent; for later, between visits to the United 
 States, we lived in Manchester. There, after 
 leaving school, I served an apprenticeship in 
 
SOME PEELIMINAEY EVENTS 7 
 
 the works of the Westinghouse Electric and 
 Manufacturing Company. I inherited in some 
 degree a love of and an instinct for engineering 
 from my father, one of the best mechanical en- 
 gineers I have ever met. He helped to develop 
 this instinct by encouraging me in everything 
 I undertook, and by making me profit by the re- 
 sults of his experience. 
 
 In the works I was for a time a workman 
 among workmen a condition of life which is 
 the best possible beginning for an embryo en- 
 gineer. I found my associates of the workshop 
 good companions, useful instructors and incor- 
 rigible jokers. My father's warnings, however, 
 saved me from hours of waiting in the forge, at 
 their direction, while a "straight hook" or a 
 "putting-on tool" was made, and from hunting 
 the shops for the "spare short-circuit." 
 
 I was congratulating myself on making good 
 headway and, in articles accepted by various 
 technical journals, was even telling my elders 
 all about engineering, when the outbreak of war 
 changed all my plans and hopes, and interfered 
 with the career I had mapped out for myself. 
 In fact, I was in exactly the same position as 
 many thousands of other young men at the be- 
 ginning of their careers. 
 
8 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 Although, of American parentage and pos- 
 sessing American citizenship, I had not the pa- 
 tience to wait for the entry into the war of the 
 United States. With an English friend I en- 
 listed in the British University and Public 
 Schools battalion, when it was formed in Sep- 
 tember, 1914. And, although at the time I had 
 no more notion of it than of becoming Presi- 
 dent of the League of Nations, that was my first 
 step towards the transatlantic flight. 
 
 Those were wonderful days for all concerned 
 in the early training of our battalion at Epsom. 
 In knowledge of drill our officers started level 
 with us. Several times I saw a private step 
 from the ranks, produce from his pocket the 
 Infantry Training Manual, and show a lieuten- 
 ant where he had gone wrong. Doubtful disci- 
 pline, perhaps but excellent practice, for most 
 of the original privates of the U.P.S. soon be- 
 came officers of the New Army. 
 
 I was gazetted a second lieutenant of the 
 Manchester Eegiment in January, 1915, and 
 with it saw service in the trenches before Ypres 
 and on the Somme. Then came the second step 
 towards the transatlantic flight. I had always 
 longed to be in the air, and I obtained a trans- 
 fer to the Eoyal Flying Corps as an observer. 
 
SOME PRELIMINABY EVENTS 9 
 
 I had the good fortune to be posted to No. 2 
 Squadron, under Major (now General) Becke. 
 While in this unit I first experienced the mixed 
 sensations of being shot down. One day my 
 pilot and I were carrying out artillery observa- 
 tion over Vendin la Vielle when, at a height of 
 8,000 feet, two anti-aircraft shells set our ma- 
 chine on fire. Somehow, the pilot managed to 
 bring down his craft in the British lines ; but in 
 landing it tripped over some telephone wires 
 and turned a somersault, still blazing at various 
 points. We were thrown out, but escaped with 
 a few burns and bruises. 
 
 After a short rest in England I returned to 
 the squadron. I soon left it for good, however. 
 One dull, snowy day a bullet perforated the 
 petrol tank of the machine in which, with Lieut. 
 Medlicott, I was reconnoitering behind the en- 
 emy lines. As a result we were unable to reach 
 the British zone. We landed in occupied ter- 
 ritory; and I knew the deadly heart-sickness 
 which comes to all prisoners of war during the 
 first few days of their captivity. 
 
 I was repatriated after being a prisoner of 
 war in Germany for fourteen months, followed 
 by nine months in Switzerland. Medlicott, 
 meanwhile, made thirteen determined but un- 
 
10 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 successful bids for escape before being mur- 
 dered by the Germans in 1918, while indulging 
 in a fourteenth attempt. 
 
 My two years of captivity constituted, strange 
 to say, the third step towards the transatlantic 
 flight; for it was as a prisoner of war that I 
 first found time to begin a careful study of the 
 possibilities of aerial navigation. This I con- 
 tinued after returning to London, where, at the 
 Ministry of Munitions, I was employed in the 
 production of the larger aero-engines. 
 
 When, soon after the armistice, the ban on 
 attempts to fly the Atlantic was lifted, I hoped 
 that my studies of aerial navigation might be 
 useful to one of the firms who were preparing 
 for such a flight. Each one I approached, how- 
 ever, refused my proposals, and for the moment 
 I gave up the idea. 
 
 It was entirely by chance that I became in- 
 volved in the transatlantic competition. One 
 day I visited the works at Weybridge of Messrs. 
 Vickers. While I was talking with the super- 
 intendent, Captain Alcock walked into the of- 
 fice. We were introduced, and in the course of 
 conversation the competition was mentioned. I 
 then learned, for the first time, that Messrs. 
 Vickers were considering an entry, although not 
 
SOME PEELIMINAEY EVENTS 11 
 
 courting publicity until they should have at- 
 tempted it. 
 
 I sat up and began to take notice, and ven- 
 tured to put forward my views on the naviga- 
 tion of aircraft for long flights over the sea. 
 These were received favorably, and the outcome 
 of the fortunate meeting was that Messrs. Vick- 
 ers retained me to act as aerial navigator. 
 
 I soon learned to have every confidence in 
 the man who was to be my pilot. He flew for 
 years before the war, and he had a magnificent 
 record for long-distance flying when engaged in 
 bombing Constantinople and other parts of Tur- 
 key, with the detachments of the Eoyal Naval 
 Air Service in the Eastern Mediterranean. His 
 recent death in a flying accident took from avi- 
 ation one of its most able, experienced and 
 courageous pilots, and robbed his many friends 
 of a splendid man. 
 
 We set to work, and, with every assistance 
 from the Air Ministry, and the Admiralty, we 
 soon had our apparatus and instruments ready 
 for shipment to Newfoundland. Besides our 
 two selves the Vickers transatlantic party con- 
 sisted of ten other men from the works, and a 
 specialist on Eolls-Eoyce aero-engines. 
 
 Alcock and I sailed from Southampton on the 
 
12 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 Mauretania, on board of which its commander 
 Captain Eostron made me free of his 
 bridge, and, as a widely experienced navigator, 
 gave me much good advice. The Vickers-Vimy 
 machine, with all stores, left later by a freight 
 boat. 
 
 From Halifax, Nova Scotia, we proceeded to 
 Port aux Basques, and thence by way of the 
 Eeid Newfoundland Eailway to St. John's. 
 There, we joined the merry and hopeful com- 
 pany of British aviators who, long before we 
 arrived, had been preparing for an attempt to 
 win Lord Northcliffe's prize. 
 
 That four of them did not forestall us was 
 due in part to very bad luck, and in part to their 
 whole-hearted patriotism. They wanted for 
 their country the honor of the first transatlantic 
 flight, whether non-stop or otherwise; and, be- 
 ing unable to continue the wearisome wait for 
 good weather in face of the news that the Amer- 
 ican flying boat N.C.4 had reached the Azores, 
 they made their attempt under conditions that 
 were definitely unfavorable. Fate tripped up 
 Eaynham and Morgan at the start, when they 
 tried to take their heavily-laden machine into 
 the air while running over a too short space of 
 uneven ground, with the wind crossways to it. 
 
SOME PRELIMINARY EVENTS 13 
 
 Fate allowed Hawker and Grieve a rather 
 longer run, but brought about their fall when 
 they were half-way to success, owing to a mis- 
 hap which, though trifling, had the same effect 
 as a vital breakage. 
 
 It is superfluous, at this time of day, to offer 
 public sympathy to such gallant competitors; 
 but I seize the opportunity of expressing ad- 
 miration for their splendid effort, and for the 
 spirit that prompted it. To Hawker and 
 Grieve we owed particular thanks in that we 
 profited to a certain extent by what we learned 
 from the cabled reports of their experiences. 
 For Grieve, as an expert on aerial navigation, 
 I have the deepest respect, and I am in full ac- 
 cord with his views and theories on this, my own 
 subject. 
 
 The same sort of odds against accident that 
 sent them into the sea might well have befallen 
 Alcock and me. But it did not; and our free- 
 dom from it was an important factor in our 
 good fortune. Others were the excellence of 
 the Vickers-Vimy machine and the Rolls-Royce 
 engine. Whatever credit is ours should be 
 shared with them, and with Mr. R. E. Pierson, 
 E.Sc., M.I.C.E., the designer of the Vickers- 
 Vimy. 
 
14 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 We have realized that our flight was but a 
 solitary fingerpost to the air-traffic safe, com- 
 fortable and voluminous that in a few years 
 will pass above the Atlantic Ocean; and even 
 had the winning of the competition brought us 
 no other benefits, each of us would have re- 
 mained well content to be pioneers of this aerial 
 entente which is destined to play such an im- 
 portant part in ^ the political and commercial 
 friendship between Great Britain and America. 
 
THE LATE CAPT. SIR JOHN ALCOCK, K.B.E., D.S.C, 
 
CHAPTEE H 
 ST. JOHN'S 
 
 HAWKER left this afternoon. " 
 This message was shouted by a chance- 
 met motorist, who held up our own car as we 
 were driving back to St. John's from Ferry- 
 land on the evening of May the eighteenth, after 
 an unsuccessful search for an aerodrome site. 
 
 "And Raynham?" I asked. 
 
 "Machine smashed before he could get it off 
 the ground." 
 
 We thanked the stranger for his news, and 
 passed on to hear further details at the Coch- 
 rane Hotel, which was the headquarters of the 
 several transatlantic flight contingents at St. 
 John's. We had rather expected the Sopwith 
 and Martinsyde parties to make an attempt on 
 the eighteenth, although the conditions were 
 definitely unfavorable. The news of the 
 American N. C. 4's arrival at the Azores had 
 spurred them to the great adventure, despite 
 
 iff 
 
16 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 the weather. The United States flying boats 
 were not competing for the Daily Mail prize; 
 but Hawker and Grieve wanted to gain for 
 Great Britain the honor of being the first to 
 cross the Atlantic by air. The outcome of this 
 ambition was the gallant effort that ended in 
 the sea, half-way to Ireland. 
 
 While exceedingly sorry for Eaynham, we 
 were glad that Hawker had started, after his 
 weeks of weary waiting, and we wished him all 
 success; for with one exception there was the 
 best possible feeling among the small colony of 
 British aviators who had congregated at St. 
 John's for the transatlantic competition. In 
 any case, if Hawker succeeded and we no longer 
 had a chance of winning the prize, we meant 
 to demonstrate the high qualities of the Vick- 
 ers-Vimy machine by flying from Newfoundland 
 to Ireland. 
 
 "We had arrived at St. John's early on the 
 morning of May the thirteenth, being only 
 twelve hours late on a scheduled time of twen- 
 ty-seven hours for the journey from Port aux 
 Basques. Thirteen, by the way, we regarded 
 as our lucky number. The construction of our 
 transatlantic machine was begun on February 
 thirteenth, it was number thirteen of its class, 
 
ST. JOHN'S 17 
 
 and it reached Newfoundland on May twenty- 
 sixth (twice thirteen). Our party, with the me- 
 chanics, totaled thirteen, and we arrived at St. 
 John's on May thirteenth. Later we were dis- 
 appointed at having to postpone the getaway 
 until June fourteenth, instead of leaving on 
 June thirteenth. 
 
 We hired a car, and, driving to Mount Pearl, 
 began what was to be a long and difficult hunt 
 for any kind of a field that could be improvised 
 into an aerodrome. The uneven countryside 
 through which we passed held out no hopes ; and 
 the company we met that evening at the Coch- 
 rane Hotel (Hawker, Grieve, Eaynham, Mor- 
 gan, and various officials and newspaper cor- 
 respondents) were unanimous in declaring that 
 the only suitable patches of ground had been 
 appropriated, and that we should find no oth- 
 ers near St. John's. 
 
 The American flying boats were at Trepas- 
 sey, ready to start for the Azores, and most of 
 the American correspondents had left St. 
 John's to visit them. The United States air- 
 ship N. C. 5 had flown to St. John's some days 
 before our arrival. She came in a fog, after 
 wandering over the neighborhood of Newfound- 
 land for some hours, having lost herself, it was 
 
18 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 reported, owing to an error of 180 in the di- 
 rectional wireless bearings given her. She at- 
 tracted large crowds, ourselves among them, 
 to the bay. Later, we saw the airship steering 
 an erratic course through the Gap, and men- 
 tally wished her commander good luck in his 
 transatlantic ambitions. Soon afterwards we 
 heard of her unfortunate break-away and total 
 loss. 
 
 The departure of the N. C. flying boats sent 
 great excitement into the small company of 
 Britishers at the Cochrane Hotel. Hawker, 
 Grieve, Eaynham and Morgan discarded cau- 
 tion, and on hearing of the N. C. 4's arrival at 
 the Azores risked exceedingly their chances of 
 success by agreeing to start immediately, in a 
 whole-hearted and plucky effort to gain for 
 Great Britain the honor of the first flight across 
 the Atlantic. The result was immediate disas- 
 ter for Eaynham and Morgan, whose small aero- 
 drome was altogether unsuitable for a "take 
 off" into the then wind, and magnificent fail- 
 ure for Hawker and Grieve, owing to a minor 
 mishap to their engine. 
 
 Soon after the flight of the American craft, 
 I met Commander Byrd, U. S. N., designer of 
 the bubble sextant for aerial navigation that 
 
 
ST. JOHN'S 19 
 
 bears his name. We had an interesting talk 
 on the problems and difficulties of aerial navi- 
 gation, and I tried to secure from Washington 
 a Byrd sextant. The United States Naval au- 
 thorities promised to forward one from Wash- 
 ington; but unfortunately, owing to transport 
 difficulties, it reached St. John's after our de- 
 parture. Nevertheless I am deeply grateful to 
 the United States Navy Department for its 
 courtesy and its offer of help in an enterprise 
 that was foreign to them and non-official. 
 
 Newfoundland is a hospitable place, but its 
 best friends cannot claim that it is ideal for 
 aviation. The whole of the island has no 
 ground that might be made into a first-class 
 aerodrome. The district around St. John's is 
 especially difficult. Some of the country is 
 wooded, but for the most part it shows a roll- 
 ing, switchback surface, across which aero- 
 planes cannot taxi with any degree of smooth- 
 ness. The soil is soft and dotted with bowlders, 
 for only a light layer of it covers the rock 
 stratum. Another handicap is the prevalence 
 of thick fogs, which- roll westward from the sea. 
 
 For about a week we continued the quest for 
 a landing-ground, and we must have driven over 
 hundreds of miles of very bad road. Growing 
 
20 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 tired of hiring cars, we bought a second-hand 
 Buick which registered a total mileage of four 
 hundred miles at the time of purchase. Before 
 long we were convinced that the speedometer 
 must have been disconnected previous to the 
 final forty thousand miles. 
 
 The best possibilities for an aerodrome that 
 we could find were several level strips of mead- 
 owland, about a hundred yards wide by three 
 hundred long; whereas the Vickers-Vimy, fully 
 loaded, might need five hundred yards of clear 
 run into the wind. Meanwhile, although disap- 
 pointment accompanied us all over Newfound- 
 land, the pacing out of fields provided good ex- 
 ercise. 
 
 The evenings were mostly spent in playing 
 cards with the other competitors at the Coch- 
 rane Hotel, or in visits to the neighboring film 
 theaters. St. John's itself showed us every 
 kindness. We explored the town pretty thor- 
 oughly, and were soon able to recognize parts 
 of it with eyes closed and nostrils open; for 
 its chief occupation appeared to be the drying 
 of very dead cod. 
 
 Having heard rumors that suitable ground 
 might be found at Ferryland, we motored there 
 on May the eighteenth, and it was while re- 
 
ST. JOHN'S 21 
 
 turning from yet another disappointment that 
 we learned of Hawker's disappearance into the 
 Atlantic mists. Excitement and anxiety about 
 the possible fate of Hawker and Grieve spread 
 all the world over; but nowhere was it more 
 intense than among us at the Cochrane Hotel, 
 who had shared their hopes and discussed their 
 plans. We were a gloomy crowd indeed until 
 St. John's heard the sensational story of their 
 rescue. 
 
 Baynham, meanwhile, although very disap- 
 pointed after the setback that damaged his ma- 
 chine, kept alight the candle of hope and the 
 torch of determination. Before it was possi- 
 ble to know whether or not Hawker had suc- 
 ceeded, he made arrangements for repair and 
 decided to try again. He also invited Alcock 
 and me to use his ground for erecting the Vick- 
 ers-Vimy. A similar invitation was given by 
 Captain Fenn, now in charge of the Sopwith 
 party. 
 
 Neither aerodrome would be suitable for our 
 final "take off"; but we accepted Eaynham 's 
 very sporting offer, and arranged to build up 
 the Vickers-Vimy, which was expected to arrive 
 any day, on his aerodrome at Quidi Vidi, while 
 continuing the search for a more suitable field. 
 
22 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 Our mechanics arrived with machine and en- 
 gines on May the twenty-sixth, and we set to 
 work at once on its erection. This was carried 
 out in the open air, amid many obstacles and 
 with much improvization, sheerlegs for exam- 
 ple, being constructed out of scaffolding poles. 
 Eaynham let us use his hangar as a store. 
 
 All the Vickers party worked hard and cheer- 
 fully from early dawn until dark, each man 
 being on strenuous duty from twelve to four- 
 teen hours a day. Two mechanics remained on 
 guard each night, while the remainder drove 
 about three miles to their billets. 
 
 During the whole of this period of a thousand 
 and one difficulties, each mechanic gave of his 
 best, and I cannot pay too high a tribute to those 
 men who labored for us so competently and 
 painstakingly, and yet received none of the 
 glory. Even those who were but indirectly con- 
 cerned in the venture searched for opportuni- 
 ties of helping us. The reporters representing 
 the Dally Mail, the New York Times, and the 
 New York World were often of assistance when 
 extra man-power was required. But for one 
 of the American reporters Mr. Klauber we 
 should have been obliged to start without an 
 
ST. JOHN'S 23 
 
 electric torch when our own failed at the last 
 moment. 
 
 It was, indeed, a nerve-edging time until the 
 machine approached completion. Each day 
 produced some new difficulty. Alcock kept his 
 head and his temper admirably, however, and 
 his intelligent supervision of the mechanics' 
 work was an effective insurance against loss 
 of time. 
 
 As the parts of the Vickers-Vimy grew into 
 the semblance of a complete aeroplane it at- 
 tracted more and more visitors. Many rubber- 
 necks, who seemed to have no other occupation, 
 spent hours in leaning on the nearest fence and 
 watching us. Soon we found it necessary to 
 build a temporary enclosure round the machine. 
 Even that did not keep the curious at a distance. 
 We remained unworried so long as the crowd 
 contented itself with just watching ; but the vis- 
 itors forced us to take special precautions 
 against damage. The testing of the fabric's 
 firmness with the point of an umbrella was a 
 favorite pastime of theirs, and more than once 
 we dispersed small parties whom we found lean- 
 ing against the trailing-edges, much as Aus- 
 tralian soldiers on leave from France used to 
 lean against the lamp-posts of the Strand. One 
 
24 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 man held his lighted cigar against a wing, and 
 was quite annoyed when asked to keep at a dis- 
 tance. 
 
 We were still unsuccessful in our search for 
 an aerodrome. One day a telegram arrived 
 from a landowner in Harbor Grace, offering 
 what he called an ideal field. Alcock raced off 
 to inspect and secure it; but when he returned 
 in the evening his one-sided grin told me that 
 we were still out of luck. "The ideal aero- 
 drome" was a meadow about one hundred and 
 fifty by three hundred yards and the price de- 
 manded for its hire was twenty-five thousand 
 dollars plus the cost of getting it ready and an 
 indemnity for all damage. Land sells in New- 
 foundland at thirty-five cents an acre. 
 
 Soon afterwards a local inhabitant Mr. Les- 
 ter, who had done all our carting offered us 
 a field under more reasonable conditions, at a 
 place called Monday's Pool. We found it to be 
 a large meadow, half on a hill and with a swamp 
 at the bottom. It possessed, nevertheless, a 
 level surface of about three hundred yards, run- 
 ning east and west. 
 
 We examined and paced out four other fields 
 on the hilltop, and found that by taking them 
 in we could obtain a full run of five hundred 
 
ST. JOHN'S 25 
 
 yards. The owners of this additional ground 
 wanted extortionate prices for its use, but after 
 much haggling we closed a deal with them. 
 
 Thirty laborers, with pick and shovel, set to 
 work to prepare the aerodrome by removing 
 hillocks, blasting bowlders and leveling walls 
 and fences. Finally it was completed, well 
 within the time for the trial flight. 
 
 During the first few days spent on the erect- 
 ing of the machine there was little for me to do. 
 I unpacked and verified wireless and navigation 
 equipment, and having rigged up a receiving 
 station on the roof of the Cochrane Hotel, with 
 the consent and help of Lieut. Clare, of the 
 Mount Pearl Naval Wireless Station, I prac- 
 ticed the sending and receiving of wireless mes- 
 sages, and tuning in on various wave-lengths. 
 
 Eain and high wind caused a delay of three 
 days, during which the machine necessarily re- 
 mained in the open, with tarpaulins over the 
 engines and only a small windscreen to break 
 the force of the gales. When better conditions 
 arrived the body of the Vickers-Vimy grew 
 slowly into the semblance of a complete aero- 
 plane, spurred thereto by our impatience and 
 the willing work of the mechanics. The wings 
 being in place, the Rolls-Royce experts became 
 
26 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 busy, examining and checking every little de- 
 tail of their motors, so that there should be no 
 avoidable trouble on that account. Water for 
 the radiator was filtered, and then boiled in a 
 steel barrel. 
 
 Our day-to-day watchers from St. John's 
 showed much interest in this boiling process, 
 and asked many questions. They seemed con- 
 tent with our explanation that we were boiling 
 the gasoline so as to remove all water. Several 
 asked whether we filled the planes with gas to 
 make them lighter. Others were disappointed 
 because we did not intend to drop our under- 
 carriage over the sea, as Hawker had done, and 
 prophesied that such neglect would lead to fail- 
 ure. 
 
 The machine was ready to take the air on 
 the morning of Monday, June the ninth, and 
 we decided to make the first flight that same 
 afternoon. We had meant to keep the news of 
 the forthcoming trial as secret as possible, so 
 as to avoid a crowd. It leaked out, however, 
 and long before the engines were warmed up 
 and tested a large gathering had collected at 
 Quidi Vidi. 
 
 The weather was on its best behavior, and 
 our "take off" from the ground was perfect in 
 
ST. JOHN'S 27 
 
 every way. Under Alcock ? s skillful hands the 
 big Vimy became almost as nippy as a single- 
 seater scout. We headed directly westward, 
 passing over the sea for some fifteen minutes. 
 It was a clear day, and the sea reflected the 
 sky 's vivid blue. Near the coast it was streaked 
 and spotted by the glistening white of icebergs 
 and the evanescent appearances and disappear- 
 ances of whitecaps. 
 
 Trial observation with my navigation instru- 
 ments proved them to be 0. K. ; but not a spark 
 could be conjured from the wireless apparatus. 
 The machine and motors seemed in perfect 
 condition. 
 
 Alcock turned the Vickers-Vimy, and brought 
 us back over St. John 's at a height of four thou- 
 sand feet. Newfoundland from above looked 
 even more bleak and rugged than it did from 
 the ground; and we saw that landing grounds 
 would be impossible on the eastern side of it. 
 
 We were to descend on the new aerodrome, 
 which we picked out by means of a smudge-fire, 
 lighted as a signal. Alcock made a perfect 
 landing, in an uphill direction. The Vimy ran 
 on, topped the brow, and was heading straight 
 for a fence on the roadside ; but the pilot saved 
 a collision by opening up the starboard engine, 
 
28 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 which swung the craft round before she came 
 to a standstill. 
 
 We pushed the machine down the hill to the 
 most sheltered part of the field, pegged it down, 
 and roped off a space round it, to keep specta- 
 tors at a safe distance. The proposed hangar 
 was unfinished, so that the Vickers-Vimy still 
 remained in the open. 
 
 I dismounted the wireless generator for ex- 
 amination, and next day took it to Mount Pearl 
 Wireless Station, where Lieut. Clare helped me 
 to locate the fault and to remedy it. 
 
 A far more serious worry now confronted us. 
 The fuel we had intended to carry was a mix- 
 ture of gasoline and benzol, sent from England. 
 On examination we found in it a peculiar pre- 
 cipitate, like a very soft resin. It was sticky, 
 and had the consistency of India rubber wetted 
 with gasoline; but when dry it reduced to a 
 powder. Naturally we could not afford the 
 risk of letting such a deposit clog our filters 
 and perhaps, owing to stoppage of fuel supply, 
 cause motor failure that bugbear of every 
 aviator who flies over long distances. 
 
 It was not definitely proved that the precipi- 
 tate resulted from the mixture of gasoline and 
 benzol; but so much depended on satisfactory 
 
ST. JOHN'S 29 
 
 fuel that we dared use none that was doubtful, 
 and we decided to substitute pure gasoline for 
 the mixture. The problem was how to find 
 enough of the quality required Shell B. 
 Raynham, as much of a sportsman as ever, put 
 his spare stock at our disposal; but fortunately 
 a newly arrived ship brought enough for our 
 needs. 
 
 Mr. P. Maxwell Muller, who had organized 
 our transatlantic party, also came on this boat. 
 He is a rabid optimist, with the power of in- 
 fecting others with his hopefulness; and we 
 were glad indeed to see him, and especially to 
 turn over to him such things as unpaid bills. 
 
 The second trial flight took place on June 
 the twelfth. Once again everything except the 
 wireless apparatus was satisfactory. The 
 transmitter worked well for a short time, but 
 afterwards the insulation on a small trans- 
 former in the transmitter failed, giving me a 
 violent shock. After a short time in the air, 
 Alcock made another satisfactory landing. 
 
 By now we were besieging Lieutenant Clem- 
 ents, the meteorological officer, for weather re- 
 ports. Besides his own work he had now under- 
 taken the duties of Major Partridge, official 
 starter for the Eoyal Aero Club of London. As 
 
30 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 such he had to place the club's official seal on 
 the Vickers-Vimy. This he did without any 
 superfluous ceremony, his seal insuring that we 
 should not cheat by flying from Newfoundland 
 in one aeroplane and landing on Ireland in an- 
 other. 
 
 At that period the weather reports, such as 
 they were, indicated fairly favorable conditions 
 for the flight, and we prepared to make the at- 
 tempt immediately. At no time were the re- 
 ports complete, however, owing to the delays 
 in transmission; although Clements made the 
 very best of the meager data at his disposal. 
 
 We saw the Handley-Page carrying out its 
 initial flights ; but we hoped to leave on Friday, 
 June the thirteenth, and thus show it the way 
 across the Atlantic. We worked at high speed 
 on several last-minute jobs. The compasses 
 were swung, the wireless apparatus repaired, 
 more elastic shock-absorbers were wrapped 
 round the axles, the navigating instruments 
 were taken on board, with food and emergency 
 supplies. 
 
 But with all the hurry and bustle we found 
 that everything could not be ready by Friday 
 the thirteenth, and that a postponement until 
 4 A. M. on the Saturday was essential. 
 
FEATHERING THE WINGS SETTING UP THE FLIER AT ST. JOHNS, N. F. 
 
 THE LAST TOUCHES ADJUSTING THE BRACING WIRES 
 
ST. JOHN'S 31 
 
 By Friday evening the last coat of dope was 
 dry, and nothing had been overlooked. The 
 only articles missing were some life-saving 
 suits, which we were expecting from the United 
 States. Long afterwards we discovered that 
 these had been delivered to the Bank of Mon- 
 treal, where the officials, believing that the case 
 contained typewriters, stored it in their cellars. 
 
 Alcock and I went to bed at 7 P. M. on Friday 
 while the mechanics remained all night with 
 the machine, completing the filling of the tanks 
 and moving it to the position chosen for the 
 start. We were called before dawn, and joined 
 them on the aerodrome at 3 :30 A. M. on June 
 the fourteenth. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE STAET 
 
 ALAEGE black cat, its tail held high in a 
 comical curve, sauntered by the trans- 
 atlantic machine as we stood by it, early in the 
 morning; and such a cheerful omen made me 
 more than ever anxious to start. 
 
 Two other black cats more intimate if less 
 alive waited in the Vickers-Vimy. They were 
 Lucky Jim and Twinkletoe, our mascots, des- 
 tined to be the first air passengers across the 
 Atlantic. Lucky Jim wore an enormous head, 
 an untidy ribbon and a hopeful expression; 
 whereas Twinkletoe was daintily diminutive, 
 and, from the tip of her upright tail to the tip 
 of her stuffed nose, expressed surprise and 
 anxiety. Other gifts that we carried as evi- 
 dence of our friends' best wishes were bunches 
 of white heather. 
 
 " Strong westerly wind. Conditions other- 
 wise fairly favorable." 
 
 32 
 
THE START 33 
 
 Such was the brief summary of the weather 
 conditions given us at 4 A. M. by the meteoro- 
 logical officer. We had definitely decided to 
 leave on the fourteenth, if given half a chance ; 
 for at all costs we wanted to avoid a long period 
 of hope deferred while awaiting ideal condi- 
 tions. 
 
 At early dawn we were on the aerodrome, 
 searching the sky for a sign and asking infor- 
 mation of Lieutenant Clements, the Eoyal Air 
 Force weather expert. His reports were fairly 
 favorable ; but a hefty cross-wind was blowing 
 from the west in uneven gusts, and everybody 
 opined that we had better wait a few hours, in 
 the expectation that \t would die down. 
 
 Meanwhile, Alcock ran the engines and found 
 them to be in perfect condition. Neither could 
 any fault be found with the gray-winged ma- 
 chine, inert but fully loaded, and complete to 
 the last split-pin. 
 
 It was of the Standard t|rj*e of Vickers-Vimy 
 bomber; although, of course, bombs and bomb- 
 ing gear were not' carried, their weight being 
 usefully replaced by extra storage tanks for 
 gasoline. One of these, shaped like a boat, 
 could be used as a life-aving raft if some acci- 
 dent brought about a descent into the sea. This 
 
34 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 tank was so placed that it would be the first 
 to be emptied of gasoline. The fittings allowed 
 of its detachment, ready for floating, while the 
 machine lost height in a glide. We hoped for 
 and expected the best ; but it was as well to be 
 prepared for the worst. 
 
 To make communication and cooperation 
 more easy, the seats for both pilot and naviga- 
 tor were side by side in what is usually the 
 pilot's cockpit, the observer's cockpit at the 
 fore-end of the fuselage being hidden under a 
 stream-lined covering and occupied by a tank. 
 
 The tanks had been filled during the night, so 
 that the Vickers-Vimy contained its full com- 
 plement of eight hundred and seventy gallons of 
 gasoline and forty gallons of oil. We now 
 packed our personal luggage, which consisted 
 only of toilet kit and food sandwiches, Caley's 
 chocolate, Horlick's Malted Milk, and two 
 thermos flasks filled with coffee. A small cup- 
 board, fitted into the tail, contained emergency 
 rations. These were for use in case of disaster, 
 as the tail of the aeroplane would remain clear 
 of the waves for a long while after the nose 
 had submerged. Our mascots, also, were in 
 this cupboard. 
 
 The mail-bag had been taken on board a day 
 
THE STAET 35 
 
 earlier. It contained three hundred private let- 
 ters, for each of which the postal officials at St. 
 John's had provided a special stamp. For 
 one of these stamps, by the way, eight hundred 
 and seventy-five dollars was offered and re- 
 fused on the Manchester Exchange within two 
 days of the letter's delivery. They are now 
 sold at about one hundred and twenty-five dol- 
 lars apiece, I believe. 
 
 We breakfasted, and throughout the morning 
 waited for a weakening of the wind. As, how- 
 ever, it remained at about the same strength 
 and showed no signs of better behavior, we 
 made up our minds to leave at mid-day. 
 
 "We had planned to get away in an easterly 
 direction, for although we should thus be mov- 
 ing with the wind instead of into it, the machine 
 would face down-hill, and owing to the shape 
 of the aerodrome we should have a better run 
 than if we taxied towards the west. The 
 Vickers-Vimy was therefore placed in position 
 to suit these arrangements. 
 
 But soon we found that the gale was too 
 strong for such a plan, and that we should have 
 to "take off" into it. The mechanics dragged 
 the machine to the far end of the aerodrome, 
 so as to prepare for a westerly run. 
 
36 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 This change was responsible for a minor set- 
 back. A sudden gust carried a drag-rope 
 round the under-carriage, tightened one of the 
 wheels against a petrol supply pipe, and 
 crushed it. The consequent replacement wasted 
 about an hour. 
 
 Still with hopes that the gale would drop dur- 
 ing the early afternoon, we sat under the wing- 
 tips at two o 'clock and lunched, while conscious 
 of an earnest hope that the next square nleal 
 would be eaten in Ireland. 
 
 The wind remaining obstinately strong dur- 
 ing the early afternoon, we agreed to take 
 things as they were and to lose no more pre- 
 cious time. At about four o'clock we wriggled 
 into our flying-kit, and climbed into the machine. 
 We wore electrically heated clothing, Burberry 
 overalls, and the usual fur gloves and fur-lined 
 helmets. 
 
 While Alcock attended to his engines I made 
 certain that my navigation instruments were in 
 place. The sextant was clipped to the dash- 
 board facing the pilot, the course and distance 
 calculator was clasped to the side of the fuse- 
 lage, the drift-indicator fitted under my seat, 
 and the Baker navigation machine, with my 
 charts inside it, lay on the floor of the cockpit. 
 
THE STAET 37 
 
 I also carried an electric torch, and kept within 
 easy reach a Very pistol, with red and white 
 flares, so that if the worst should happen we 
 could attract the attention of passing ships. 
 The battery for heating our electric suits was 
 between the two seats. 
 
 The meteorological officer gave me a chart 
 showing the approximate strength and direc- 
 tion of the Atlantic air currents. It indicated 
 that the high westerly wind would drop before 
 we were a hundred miles out to sea, and that 
 the wind velocities for the rest of the journey 
 would not exceed twenty knots, with clear 
 weather over the greater part of the ocean. 
 This was responsible for satisfactory hopes at 
 the time of departure ; but later, when we were 
 over mid-Atlantic, the hopes dissolved in dis- 
 appointment when the promised " clear 
 weather " never happened. 
 
 The departure was quiet and undramatic. 
 Apart from the mechanics and a few reporters, 
 few people were present, for the strong wind 
 had persuaded our day-to-day sightseers from 
 St. John's that we must postpone a start. 
 When all was ready I shook hands with Lieu- 
 tenant Clements, Mr. Maxwell Muller and other 
 friends, accepted their best wishes for success, 
 
38 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 and composed myself in the rather crowded 
 cockpit. 
 
 The customary signal-word " Contact !" ex- 
 changed between pilot and mechanics, seemed, 
 perhaps, to have a special momentary signifi- 
 cance ; but my impatience to take the plunge and 
 be rid of anxiety about the start shut out all 
 other impressions that might have been differ- 
 ent from those experienced at the beginning of 
 each of the thousand and one flights I had made 
 before the transatlantic venture. 
 
 First one and then the other motors came to 
 life, swelled into a roar when Alcock ran them 
 up and softened into a subdued murmur when 
 he throttled back and warmed them up. Final- 
 ly, everything being satisfactory, he .discon- 
 nected the starting magneto and engine 
 switches, to avoid stoppage due to possible 
 short-circuits, and signaled for the chocks to 
 be pulled clear. With throttles open and en- 
 gines "all out," the Vickers-Vimy advanced 
 into the westerly wind. 
 
 The "take off," up a slight gradient, was 
 very difficult. Gusts up to forty-five knots 
 were registered, and there was insufficient room 
 to begin the run dead into the wind. What I 
 feared in particular was that a sudden eddy 
 
THE STAET 39 
 
 might lift the planes on one side and cause the 
 machine to heel over. Another danger was 
 the rough surface of the aerodrome. 
 
 Owing to its heavy load, the machine did not 
 leave the ground until it had lurched and lum- 
 bered, at an ever-increasing speed, over 300 
 yards. We were then almost at the end of the 
 ground-tether allowed us. 
 
 A line of hills straight ahead was responsible 
 for much "bumpiness" in the atmosphere, and 
 made climbing very difficult. At times the 
 strong wind dropped almost to zero, then rose 
 in eddying blasts. Once or twice our wheels 
 nearly touched the ground again. 
 
 Under these conditions we could climb but 
 slowly, allowing for the danger of sudden up- 
 ward gusts. Several times I held my breath, 
 from fear that our undercarriage would hit a 
 roof or a tree-top. 
 
 I am convinced that only Alcock's clever 
 piloting saved us from such an early disaster. 
 When, after a period that seemed far longer 
 than it actually was, we were well above the 
 buildings and trees, I noticed that the perspira- 
 tion of acute anxiety was running down his 
 face. 
 
 We wasted no time and fuel in circling round 
 
40 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 the aerodrome while attaining a preliminary 
 height, but headed straight into the wind until 
 we were at about eight hundred feet. Then 
 we turned towards the sea and continued to rise 
 leisurely, with engines throttled down. As we 
 passed our aerodrome I leaned over the side of 
 the machine and waved farewell to the small 
 groups of mechanics and sightseers. 
 
 The Vickers-Vimy, although loaded to the 
 extent of about eleven pounds per square foot, 
 climbed satisfactorily, if slowly. Eight minutes 
 passed before we had reached the thousand feet 
 level. 
 
 As we passed over St. John's and Cabot's 
 Hill towards Concepcion Bay the air was very 
 bumpy, and not until we reached the coast and 
 were away from the uneven contours of New- 
 foundland did it become calmer. The eddying 
 wind, which was blowing behind us from almost 
 due west, with a strength of thirty-five knots, 
 made it harder than ever to keep the machine 
 on a straight course. The twin-engine Vickers- 
 Vimy is not especially sensitive to atmospheric 
 instability ; but under the then atmospheric con- 
 ditions it lurched, swayed, and did its best to 
 deviate, much as if it had been a little single- 
 seater scout. 
 
THE STAET 41 
 
 We crossed the coast at 4:28 P. M. (Green- 
 wich time), our aneroid then registering about 
 twelve hundred feet. Just before we left the 
 land I let out the wireless aerial, and tapped out 
 on the transmitter key a message to Mount 
 Pearl Naval Station: "All well and started. " 
 
 My mind merely recorded the fact that we 
 were leaving Newfoundland behind us. Other- 
 wise it was too tense with concentration on the 
 task ahead to find room for any emotions or 
 thoughts on seeing the last of the square-pat- 
 terned roof -mosaic of St. John's, and of the 
 tangled intricacy of Newfoundland's fields, 
 woods and hills. Behind and below was Amer- 
 ica, far ahead and below was Europe, between 
 the two were nearly two thousand miles of 
 ocean. But at the time I made no such stirring, 
 if obvious, reflections; for my navigation in- 
 struments and charts, as applied to sun, hori- 
 zon, sea-surface and time of day, demanded 
 close and undivided attention. 
 
 Withal, I felt a queer but quite definite con- 
 fidence in our safe arrival over the Irish coast, 
 based, I suppose, on an assured knowledge that 
 the machine, the motors, the navigating instru- 
 ments and the pilot were all first-class. 
 
 The Vickers-Vimy shook itself free from the 
 
42 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 atmospheric disturbances over the land, and 
 settled into an even stride through the calmer 
 spaces above the ocean. The westerly wind 
 behind us, added to the power developed by the 
 motors, gave us a speed along our course (as 
 opposed to " air-speed' ') of nearly one hundred 
 and forty knots. 
 
 Visibility was fairly good during the first 
 hour of the flight. Above, at a height of some- 
 thing between two and three thousand feet, a 
 wide ceiling of clouds was made jagged at 
 fairly frequent intervals by holes through which 
 the blue sky could be glimpsed. Below, the sea 
 was blue-gray, dull for the most part but bright 
 in occasional patches, where the sunlight 
 streamed on it through some cloud-gap. Ice- 
 bergs stood out prominently from the surface, 
 in splashes of glaring white. 
 
 I was using all my faculties in setting and 
 keeping to the prescribed course. The Baker 
 navigating machine, with the chart, was on my 
 knees. Not knowing what kind of weather was 
 before us, I knelt on my seat and made haste to 
 take observations on the sea, the horizon, and 
 the sun, through intervals in the covering of 
 clouds. 
 
 The nagivation of aircraft, in its present 
 
THE STAET 43 
 
 stage, is distinctly more difficult than the navi- 
 gation of seacraft. The speed at which they 
 travel and the influence of the wind introduce 
 problems which are not easily solved. 
 
 A ship 's navigator knows to a small fraction 
 of a mile the set of any ocean current, and from 
 the known speed of his vessel he can keep "dead 
 reckoning " with an accuracy that is nearly 
 absolute. In fact, navigators have taken their 
 craft across the Atlantic without once having 
 seen the sun or stars, and yet, at the end of 
 the journey, been within five miles of the de- 
 sired destination. But in the air the currents 
 either cannot be, or have not yet been, charted, 
 and his allowance for the drift resulting from 
 them must be obtained by direct observation on 
 the surface of the ocean. 
 
 By the same means his actual speed over the 
 ocean may be calculated. He finds the position 
 of his craft by measuring the angle which either 
 the sun or a selected star makes with the hori- 
 zon, and noting the Greenwich mean time at 
 which the observation is made. If the bearings 
 of two distinct wireless stations can be taken, 
 it is also possible to find his definite position 
 by means of directional wireless telegraphy. 
 
 When making my plans for the transatlantic 
 
44 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 flight I considered very carefully all the possi- 
 bilities, and decided to rely solely upon observa- 
 tions of the sun and stars and upon "dead 
 reckoning," in preference to using directional 
 wireless, as I was uncertain at that time whether 
 or not. the directional wireless system was suffi- 
 ciently reliable. 
 
 My sextant was of the ordinary marine type, 
 but it had a more heavily engraved scale than 
 is usual, so as to make easier the reading of it 
 amid the vibration of the aeroplane. My main 
 chart was on the Mercator projection, and I had 
 a special transparent chart which could be 
 moved above it, and upon which were drawn the 
 Sumner circles for all times of the day. I car- 
 ried a similar special chart for use at night, 
 giving the Sumner circles for six chosen stars. 
 To measure the drift I had a six-inch Drift- 
 Bearing plate, which also permitted me to meas- 
 ure the ground speed, with the help of a stop- 
 watch. In addition, I had an Appleyard Course 
 and Distance Calculator, and Traverse tables 
 for the calculation of "dead reckoning. " 
 
 As the horizon is often obscured by clouds or 
 mist, making impossible the measurement of 
 its angle with the heavenly bodies, I had a 
 special type of spirit level, on which the horizon 
 
IT WAS HARD TO FIND AN AERODROME WITH SUFFICIENT "TAKE OFF" 
 
 SIGHTSEERS, IF LEFT TO THEMSELVES, WOULD HAVE WRECKED THE 
 
 MACHINE 
 
THE STAET 45 
 
 was replaced by a bubble. This, of course, was 
 less reliable than a true horizon since the bubble 
 was affected by variations of speed; but it was 
 at least a safeguard. Taking into account the 
 general obscurity of the atmosphere during 
 most of the flight, it was fortunate that I took 
 such a precaution, for I seldom caught sight 
 of a clearly defined horizon. 
 
 I could legitimately congratulate myself on 
 having collected as many early observations as 
 possible while the conditions were good; for 
 soon we ran into an immense bank of fog, which 
 shut off completely the surface of the ocean. 
 The blue of the sea merged into a hazy purple, 
 and then into the dullest kind of gray. 
 
 The cloud screen above us, also, grew much 
 thicker, and there were no more gaps in it. 
 The occasional sun-glints on wing-tips and 
 struts no longer appeared. 
 
 Thus I could obtain neither observations on 
 the sun, nor calculations of drift from the seas. 
 Assuming that my first observations were sat- 
 isfactory, I therefore carried on by "dead 
 reckoning, ' J and hoped for the best. From time 
 to time I varied the course slightly, so as to 
 allow for the different variations of the com- 
 pass. 
 
46 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 Meantime, while we flew through the wide 
 layer of air sandwiched between fog and cloud, 
 I began to jot down remarks for the log of the 
 journey. At 5 :20 I noted that we were at fif- 
 teen hundred feet and still climbing slowly, 
 while the haze was becoming ever thicker and 
 heavier. 
 
 I leaned towards the wireless transmitter, 
 and began to send a message; but the small 
 propeller on it snapped, and broke away from 
 the generator. Careful examination, both at 
 the time and after we landed, showed no defect ; 
 and I am still unable to account for the fracture. 
 Although I was too occupied with calculations 
 to pay much attention to moods or passing 
 thoughts, I remember feeling that this cutting 
 off of all means of communication with the life 
 below and behind us gave a certain sense of 
 finality to the adventure. 
 
 We continued eastward, with the rhythmic 
 drone of the motors unnoted in supreme con- 
 centration on the tense hours that were to come. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 EVENING 
 
 FOR a time Alcock and I attempted short 
 conversations through the telephone. Its 
 earpieces were under our fur caps, and round 
 our necks were sensitive receivers for trans- 
 mitting the throat vibrations that accompany 
 speech. At about six o'clock Alcock discarded 
 his earpieces because they were too painful; 
 and for the rest of the flight we communicated 
 in gestures and by scribbled notes. 
 
 I continued to keep the course by "dead reck- 
 oning, " taking into account height, compass 
 bearing, strength of wind, and my previous ob- 
 servations. The wind varied quite a lot, and 
 several times the nose of the Vickers-Vimy 
 swayed from the right direction, so that I had 
 to make rapid mental allowances for deviation. 
 
 The results I made known to Alcock by pass- 
 ing over slips of paper torn from my notebook. 
 The first of these was the direction: "Keep her 
 nearer 120 than 140. " 
 
 47 
 
48 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 The second supplied the news that the trans- 
 mitter was useless: "Wireless generator 
 smashed. The propeller has gone." 
 
 Throughout the evening we flew between a 
 covering of unbroken cloud and a screen of thick 
 fog, which shut off the sea completely. My 
 scribbled comment to the pilot at 5:45 was: 
 "I can't get an obs. in this fog. Will estimate 
 that same wind holds and work lay dead reckon- 
 
 Despite the lack of external guidance, the 
 early evening was by no means dull. Just after 
 six the starboard engine startled us with a 
 loud, rhythmic chattering, rather like the noise 
 of machine-gun fire at close quarters. With a 
 momentary thought of the engine trouble which 
 had caused Hawker and Grieve to descend in 
 mid- Atlantic, we both looked anxiously for the 
 defect. 
 
 This was not hard to find. A chunk of ex- 
 haust pipe had split away, and was quivering 
 before the rush of air like a reed in an organ 
 pipe. It became first red, then white-hot; and, 
 softened by the heat, it gradually crumpled up. 
 Finally it was blown away, with the result that 
 three cylinders were exhausting straight into 
 
EVENING 49 
 
 the air, without guidance through the usual out- 
 let. 
 
 The chattering swelled into a loud, jerky 
 thrum, much more prominent than the normal 
 noise of a Eolls-Eoyce aero-engine. This set- 
 tled down to a steady and continuous roar. 
 
 Until we landed nothing could be done to the 
 broken exhaust pipe, and we had to accept it 
 as a minor disaster, unpleasant but irremedi- 
 able. Very soon my ears had become so accus- 
 tomed to the added clamor that it passed un- 
 noticed. 
 
 I must admit, however, that although my 
 mind contained no room for impressions deal- 
 ing with incidents not of vital importance, I was; 
 far from comfortable when I first observed that 
 a little flame, licking outward from the open ex- 
 haust, was playing on one of the cross-bracing 
 wires and had made it red-hot. This trouble 
 could not be lessened by throttling down the 
 starboard engine, as in that case we should 
 have lost valuable height. 
 
 The insistent hum of the engines, in fact, 
 made the solitude seem more normal. The long 
 flight would have been dreadful had we made 
 it in silence ; for, shut off as we were from sea 
 and sky, it was a very lonely affair. At this 
 
50 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 stage the spreading fog enveloped the Vickers- 
 Vimy so closely that our sheltered cockpit sug- 
 gested an isolated but by no means cheerless 
 room. 
 
 Moisture condensed on goggles, dial glasses 
 and wires when, at about seven, we rose through 
 a layer of clouds on the two thousand foot level. 
 Alcock wore no goggles, by the way, and I 
 made use of mine only when leaning over the 
 side of the fuselage to take observations. 
 
 Emerging into the air above the clouds, I 
 looked upward, and found another stretch of 
 cloud-bank still higher, at five thousand feet. 
 We thus remained cut off from the sun. Still 
 guided only by "dead reckoning," the Vickers- 
 Vimy continued along the airway between a 
 white cloud-ceiling and a white cloud-carpet. 
 
 I was very anxious for an opportunity to take 
 further observations either of the sun or of the 
 stars, so as to check the direction by finding 
 our correct position. At 7 :40 I handed Alcock 
 the following note: "If you get above clouds 
 we will get a good fix * to-night, and hope for 
 clear weather to-morrow. Not at any risky 
 expense to engines though. We have four 
 hours yet to climb." 
 
 1 Position. 
 
EVENING 51 
 
 The altimeter was then registering three 
 thousand feet. 
 
 All this while I had listened occasionally for 
 wireless messages, as the receiver was still in 
 working order. No message came for us, how- 
 ever, and the only sign of life was when, at 7 :40, 
 I heard somebody calling "B. M. K." Even 
 that small sign of contact with life below 
 cheered me mightily. 
 
 Throughout the journey we had no regular 
 meals, but ate and drank in snatches, whenever 
 we felt so inclined. It was curious that neither 
 of us felt hungry at any time during the sixteen 
 hours of the flight, although now and then I 
 felt the need of something to drink. 
 
 The food was packed into a little cupboard 
 behind my head, on the left-hand side of the 
 fuselage. I reached for it at about 7:30, and, 
 deciding that Alcock must need nourishment, I 
 passed him two sandwiches and some chocolate, 
 and uncorked the thermos flask. He made use 
 of only one hand for eating and drinking, keep- 
 ing the other on the control lever. 
 
 We happened upon a large gap in the upper 
 layer of clouds at 8:30. Through it the sun 
 shone pleasantly, projecting the shadow of the 
 Vickers-Vimy on to the lower layer, over which 
 
52 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 it darted and twisted, contracting or expanding 
 according to the distortions on the cloud-sur- 
 face. 
 
 I was able to maintain observation on the 
 sun for some ten minutes. The calculations 
 thus obtained showed that if we were still on the 
 right course the machine must be farther east 
 than was indicated by "dead reckoning. " 
 From this I deduced that the strength of the 
 wind must have increased rather than fallen off, 
 as had been prophesied in the report of the 
 meteorological expert at St. John's. This sup- 
 position was borne out by the buffetings which, 
 from time to time, swayed the Vickers-Vimy. 
 Up till then our average speed had been one 
 hundred and forty-three knots. 
 
 I got my observations of the sun while kneel- 
 ing on the seat and looking between the port 
 wings. I made use of the spirit level, as the 
 horizon was invisible and the sextant could 
 therefore not be used. 
 
 Later, I caught sight of the sea for a few 
 brief moments, and at 9 :15 I wrote the follow- 
 ing note to Alcock: "Through a rather bad 
 patch I have just made our ground speed 140 
 knots, and from the sun's altitude we must be 
 much further east and south than I calculated." 
 
EVENING 53 
 
 I continued to keep a log of our movements 
 and observations, and at 9:20 P. M. made the 
 following entry: "Height 4,000 feet. Dense 
 clouds below and above. Got one sun observa- 
 tion, which shows that dead reckoning is badly 
 out. Shall wait for stars and climb. At 8:31 
 position about 49 deg. 31 minutes north, 38 deg. 
 35 minutes west." 
 
 The clouds above remained constant, at a 
 height of about five thousand feet. I was eager 
 to pass through them before the stars appeared; 
 and at nine-thirty, when the light was fading, I 
 scribbled the inquiry: "Can you get above these 
 clouds at, say, 60? We must get stars as soon 
 as poss." 
 
 Alcock nodded, and proceeded to climb as 
 steeply as he dared. Twilight was now setting 
 in, gradually but noticeably. Between the 
 layers of cloud the daylight, although never 
 very good, had until then been strong enough to 
 let me read the instruments and chart. At 
 ten o'clock this was impossible without artificial 
 light. 
 
 For my chart I now used an electric lamp. I 
 switched on a tiny bulb which was placed so as 
 to make the face of the compass clear in the 
 dark, all the other fixed instruments being 
 
54 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 luminous in themselves. For my intermittent 
 inspection of the engines I had to flash the 
 electric torch over either side of the cockpit. 
 
 The clouds, both above and below, grew 
 denser and darker. One could see them only 
 as indefinite masses of nebulousness, and it be- 
 came more and more difficult to judge how near 
 to or how far from them we were. An entry in 
 my log, made at 10:20, says, "No observations, 
 and dead reckoning apparently out. Could not 
 get above clouds for sunset. Will wait check 
 by stars/' 
 
 An hour later we had climbed to five thousand 
 two hundred feet. But still we found clouds 
 above us ; and we continued to rise, so as to be 
 above them in time for some early observations 
 on the stars. 
 
 It was now quite dark ; and as we droned our 
 isolated way eastward and upward, nothing 
 could be seen outside the cockpit, except the 
 inner struts, the engines, the red-glowing vapor 
 ejected through the exhaust pipes, and portions 
 of the wings, which glistened in the dim moon- 
 glimmer. 
 
 I waited impatiently for the first sight of the 
 moon, the Pole Star, and other night-time 
 friends of every navigator. 
 
CHAPTEE V 
 
 D 
 
 NIGHT 
 
 MIDNIGHT came and went amid sullen 
 darkness, modified only by dim moon- 
 light and the red radiance that spurted from 
 the motors' exhaust pipes. 
 
 By then we must have climbed to about six 
 thousand feet, although my log shows no record 
 of our height at this stage. Meanwhile, we 
 were still between upper and lower ranges of 
 cloud banks. 
 
 At a quarter past twelve Alcock took the 
 Vickers-Vimy through the upper range, only 
 to find a third layer of clouds, several thousand 
 feet higher. This, however, was patchy and 
 without continuity, so that I was able to glimpse 
 the stars from time to time. 
 
 At 12 :25 I identified through a gap to north- 
 eastward Vega, which shone very brightly high 
 in the heavens, and the Pole Star. With their 
 help, and that of a cloud horizon that was 
 
 55 
 
56 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 clearly defined in the moonlight, not far below 
 our level, I used the sextant to fix our position. 
 
 This I found was latitude 50 7' N. and longi- 
 tude 31 W., showing that we had flown 850 
 nautical miles, at an average speed of 106 knots. 
 We were slightly to the south of the correct 
 course, which fact I made known to Alcock in a 
 note, with penciled corrections for remedying 
 the deviation. 
 
 Most of my "dead reckoning' ' calculations 
 were short of our actual position because, in- 
 fluenced by meteorological predictions based on 
 the weather reports at St. John's, I had allowed 
 for a falling off in the strength of the wind, 
 and this had not occurred. Having found the 
 stars and checked our position and direction, 
 the urgent necessity to continue climbing no 
 longer existed. Alcock had been nursing his 
 engines very carefully, and to reduce the strain 
 on them he let the machine lose height slowly. 
 At 1 :20 A. M. we were down to four thousand 
 feet, and an hour later we had dropped yet four 
 hundred feet lower. 
 
 The clouds overhead were still patchy, clus- 
 ters of stars lightening the intervals between 
 them. But the Vickers-Vimy, at its then 
 height, was moving through a sea of fog, which 
 
NIGHT 57 
 
 prevented effective observation. This I made 
 known to the pilot in a message: "Can get no 
 good readings. Observation too indefinite." 
 
 The moon was in evidence for about an hour 
 and a half, radiating a misty glow over the semi- 
 darkness and tinging the cloud- tips with varia- 
 tions of silver, gold and soft red. Whenever 
 directly visible it threw the moving shadows of 
 the Vickers-Vimy on to the clouds below. 
 
 Mostly I could see the moon by looking over 
 the machine's starboard planes. I tried to 
 sight on it for latitude, but the horizon was still 
 too indefinite. 
 
 An aura of unreality seemed to surround 
 us as we flew onward towards the dawn and 
 Ireland. The fantastic surroundings impinged 
 on my alert consciousness as something extrav- 
 agantly abnormal the distorted ball of a moon, 
 the weird half-light, the monstrous cloud- 
 shapes, the fog below and around us, the misty 
 indefiniteness of space, the changeless drone, 
 drone, drone of the motors. 
 
 To take my mind from the strangeness of it 
 all, I turned to the small food-cupboard at the 
 back of the cockpit. Twice during the night 
 we drank and ate in snatches, Alcock keeping 
 a hand on the joystick while using his other to 
 
58 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 take the sandwiches, chocolate and thermos 
 flask, which I passed to him one at a time. 
 
 Outside the cockpit was bitter cold, but inside 
 was well-sheltered warmth, due to the protec- 
 tive windscreen, the nearness of the radiator, 
 and our thick clothing. Almost our only physi- 
 cal discomfort resulted from the impossibility 
 of any but cramped movements. It was a relief 
 even to turn from one motor to the other, when 
 examining them by the light of my electric 
 torch. 
 
 After several hours in the confined quarters, 
 I wanted to kick out, to walk, to stretch myself. 
 For Alcock, who never removed his feet from 
 the rudder-bars, the feeling of restiveness must 
 have been painfully uncomfortable. 
 
 It was extraordinary that during the sixteen 
 hours of the flight neither Alcock nor I felt the 
 least desire for sleep. During the war, pilots 
 and observers of night-bombing craft, their job 
 completed, often suffered intensely on the home- 
 ward journey, from the effort of will necessary 
 to fight the drowsiness induced by relaxed ten- 
 sion and the monotonous, never-varying hum 
 of the motor and this after only four to six 
 hours of continuous flying. 
 
 Probably, however, such tiredness was mostly 
 
NIGHT 59 
 
 reaction and mental slackening after the object 
 of their journeys the bombing of a target 
 had been achieved. Our own object would not 
 be achieved until we saw Ireland beneath us;, 
 and it could not be achieved unless we kept our 
 every faculty concentrated on it all the time. 
 There was therefore no mental reaction during 
 our long period of wakeful flying over the 
 ocean. 
 
 "We began to think about sunrise and the 
 new day. We had been flying for over ten 
 hours ; and the next ten would bring success or 
 failure. "We had more than enough petrol 
 to complete the long journey, for Alcock had 
 treated the engines very gently, never running 
 them all out, but varying the power from half to 
 three-quarter throttle. Our course seemed 
 satisfactory, and the idea of failure was con- 
 cerned only with the chance of engine mishap, 
 such as had befallen Hawker and Grieve, or of 
 something entirely unforeseen. 
 
 Something entirely unforeseen did happen. 
 At about sunrise 3 :10 A. M. to be exact when 
 we were between thirty-five hundred and four 
 thousand feet, we ran into a thick bank that pro- 
 jected above the lower layer of cloud. All 
 around was dense, drifting vapor, which cut off 
 
60 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 from our range of vision even the machine's 
 wing tips and the fore end of the fuselages. 
 
 This was entirely unexpected ; and, separated 
 suddenly from external guidance, we lost our in- 
 stinct of balance. The machine, left to its own 
 devices, swung, flew amok, and began to per- 
 form circus tricks. 
 
 Until we should see either the horizon or the 
 sky or the sea, and thus restore our sense of 
 the horizontal, we could tell only by the instru- 
 ments what was happening to the Vickers-Vimy. 
 Unless there be outside guidance, the effect on 
 the Augean canal in one 's ears of the centrifu- 
 gal force developed by a turn in a cloud causes 
 a complete loss of dimensional equilibrium, so 
 that one is inclined to think that an aeroplane 
 is level even when it is at a big angle with the 
 horizontal. The horizontal, in fact, seems to 
 be inside the machine. 
 
 A glance at the instruments on the dashboard 
 facing us made it obvious that we were not 
 flying level. The air speed crept up to ninety 
 knots, while Alcock was trying to restore equi- 
 librium. He pulled back the control lever; but 
 apparently the air speed meter was jammed, 
 for although the Vickers-Vimy must have nosed 
 upwards, the reading remained at ninety. 
 
 
 
NIGHT 61 
 
 And then we stalled that is to say our speed 
 dropped below the minimum necessary for 
 heavier-than-air flight. The machine hung mo- 
 tionless for a second, after which it heeled over 
 and fell into what was either a spinning nose- 
 dive, or a very steep spiral. 
 
 The compass needle continued to revolve 
 rapidly, showing that the machine was swinging 
 as it dropped ; but, still hemmed in as we were 
 by the thick vapor, we could not tell how, or 
 in which direction we were spinning. 
 
 Before the pilot could reduce the throttle, 
 the roar of the motors had almost doubled in 
 volume, and instead of the usual 1650 to 1700 
 revolutions per minute, they were running at 
 about 2200 revolutions per minute. Alcock 
 shut off the throttles, and the vibration ceased. 
 
 Apart from the changing levels marked by the 
 aneroid, only the fact that our bodies were 
 pressed tightly against the seats indicated that 
 the machine was falling. How and at what 
 angle it was falling, we knew not. Alcock tried 
 to centralize the controls, but failed because we 
 had lost all sense of what was central. I 
 searched in every direction for an external sign, 
 and saw nothing but opaque nebulousness. 
 
 The aneroid, meantime, continued to register 
 
62 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 a height that dropped ever lower and alarm- 
 ingly lower three thousand, two thousand, one 
 thousand, five hundred feet. I realized the pos- 
 sibility that we might hit the ocean at any 
 moment, if the aneroid's exactitude had been 
 affected by differences between the barometric 
 conditions of our present position and those of 
 St. John's, where the instrument was set. 
 
 A more likely danger was that our cloud 
 might stretch down to the surface of the ocean ; 
 in which case Alcock, having obtained no sight 
 of the horizon, would be unable to counteract 
 the spin in time. 
 
 I made ready for the worst, loosening my 
 safety belt and preparing to salve my notes of 
 the flight. All precautions would probably have 
 been unavailing, however, for had we fallen into 
 the sea, there would have been small hope of 
 survival. We were on a steep slant, and even 
 had we escaped drowning when first submerged, 
 the dice would be heavily loaded against the 
 chance of rescue by a passing ship. 
 
 And then while these thoughts were chasing 
 each other across my mind, we left the cloud as 
 suddenly as we had entered it. We were now 
 less than a hundred feet from the ocean. The 
 sea-surface did not appear below the machine, 
 
NIGHT 63 
 
 but, owing to the wide angle at wMch we were 
 tilted against the horizontal, seemed to stand up 
 level, sideways to us. 
 
 Alcock looked at the ocean and the horizon, 
 and almost instantaneously regained his mental 
 equilibrium in relation to external balance. 
 Fortunately the Vickers-Vimy maneuvers 
 quickly, and it responded rapidly to Alcock 's 
 action in centralizing the control lever and rud- 
 der bar. He opened up the throttles. The 
 motors came back to life, and the danger was 
 past. Once again disaster had been averted 
 by the pilot's level-headedness and skill. 
 
 When at last the machine swung back to 
 the level and flew parallel with the Atlantic, 
 our height was fifty feet. It appeared as if we 
 could stretch downward and almost touch the 
 great whitecaps that crested the surface. With 
 the motors shut off we could actually hear the 
 voice of the cheated ocean as its waves swelled, 
 broke, and swelled again. 
 
 The compass needle, which had continued to 
 swing, now stabilized itself and quivered toward 
 the west, showing that the end of the spin left 
 us facing America. As we did not want to 
 return to St. John's, and earnestly wanted to 
 
64 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 reach Ireland, Alcock turned the machine in a 
 wide semi-circle and headed eastward, while 
 climbing away from the ocean and towards the 
 lowest clouds. 
 
CHAPTEE VI 
 MORNING 
 
 OUNEISE made itself known to us merely as 
 O a gradual lightening that showed nothing 
 but clouds, above and below. The sun itself 
 was nowhere visible. 
 
 We seemed to be flying in and out of dense 
 patches of cloud; for every now and then we 
 would pass through a white mountain, emerge 
 into a small area of clear atmosphere, and then 
 be confronted with another enormous barrier 
 of nebulousness. 
 
 The indefiniteness of dawn disappointed my 
 hopes of taking observations. Already at three 
 o'clock I had scribbled a note to the pilot: 
 "Immediately you see sun rising, point machine 
 straight towards it, and we'll get compass 'bear- 
 ings. 99 I had already worked out a table of 
 hours, angles and azimuths of the sun at its 
 rising, to serve as a check upon our position; 
 but, as things happened, I was obliged to re- 
 
 65 
 
66 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 sume navigation by means of "dead reckon- 
 ing." 
 
 A remark written in my log at twenty minutes 
 past fonr was that the Vickers-Vimy had 
 climbed to six thousand five hundred feet, and 
 was above the lower range of clouds. For the 
 rest, the three hours that followed sunrise I 
 remember chiefly as a period of envelopment by 
 clouds, and ever more clouds. Soon, as we 
 continued to climb, the machine was traveling 
 through a mist of uniform thickness that com- 
 pletely shut off from our range of vision every- 
 thing outside a radius of a few yards from 
 the wing-tips. 
 
 And then came a spell of bad weather, begin- 
 ning with heavy rain, and continuing with snow. 
 The downpour seemed to meet us almost hori- 
 zontally, owing to the high speed of the ma- 
 chine, as compared with the rate of only a few 
 feet per second at which the rain and snow 
 fell. 
 
 The snow gave place to hail, mingled with 
 sleet. The sheltered position of the cockpit, 
 and the stream-lining of the machine, kept us 
 free from the downfall so long as we remained 
 seated ; but if we exposed a hand or a face above 
 
MOENING 67 
 
 the windscreen's protection, it would meet 
 scores of tingling stabs from the hailstones. 
 
 When we had reached a height of eight thou- 
 sand eight hundred feet, I discovered that the 
 glass face of the gasoline overflow gauge, 
 which showed whether or not the supply of fuel 
 for the motors was correct, had become ob- 
 scured by clotted snow. To guard against car- 
 buretor trouble, it was essential that the pilot 
 should be able to read the gauge at any mo- 
 ment. It was up to me, therefore, to clear away 
 the snow from the glass. 
 
 The gauge was fixed on one of the center sec- 
 tion struts. The only way to reach it was by 
 climbing out of the cockpit and kneeling on 
 top of the fuselage, while holding on to a strut 
 for balance. This I did; and the unpleasant 
 change from the comparative warmth of the 
 cockpit to the biting, icy cold outside was very 
 unpleasant. The violent rush of displaced air, 
 which tended to sweep me backward, was an- 
 other discomfort. 
 
 I had no difficulty, however, in reaching up- 
 ward and rubbing the snow from the face of the 
 gauge. Until the storm ended> a repetition of 
 this performance at fairly frequent intervals 
 continued to be necessary. There was, how- 
 
68 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 ever, scarcely any danger in kneeling on the 
 fuselage as long as Alcock kept the machine 
 level. 
 
 Every now and then we examined the motors ; 
 for on them depended whether the next four 
 hours would bring success or failure. Mean- 
 time, we were still living for the moment; and 
 although I was intensely glad that four-fifths 
 of the ocean had been crossed, I could afford 
 to spare no time for speculation on what a safe 
 arrival would mean to us. As yet, neither of 
 us was aware of the least sign of weariness, 
 mental or physical. 
 
 When I had nothing more urgent on hand, 
 I listened at the wireless receiver but I heard no 
 message for us from beginning to end of the 
 flight. Any kind of communication with ship 
 or shore would have been welcome, as a re- 
 minder that we were not altogether out of touch 
 with the world below. The complete absence 
 of such contact made it seem that nobody cared 
 a darn about us. 
 
 The entry that I scribbled in my log at 6 :20 
 A. M. was that we had reached a height of nine 
 thousand four hundred feet, and were still in 
 drifting cloud, which was sometimes so thick 
 that it cut off from view parts of the Vickers- 
 
MORNING 69 
 
 Vimy. Snow was still falling, and the top sides 
 of the plane were covered completely by a 
 crusting of frozen sleet. 
 
 The sleet imbedded itself in the hinges of the 
 ailerons and jammed them, so that for about 
 an hour the machine had scarcely any lateral 
 control. Fortunately the Vickers-Vimy has 
 plenty of inherent lateral stability; and, as the 
 rudder controls were never clogged by sleet, 
 we were able to carry on with caution. 
 
 Alcock continued to climb steadily, so as to 
 get above the seemingly interminable clouds and 
 let me have a clear sky for purposes of naviga- 
 tion. At five o'clock, when we were in the 
 levels round about eleven thousand feet, I 
 caught the sun for a moment just a pin-point 
 glimmer through a cloud-gap. There was no 
 horizon ; but I was able to obtain a reading with 
 the help of my Abney spirit level. 
 
 This observation gave us a position close to 
 the Irish coast. Yet I could not be sure of just 
 where we were on the line indicated by it. We 
 therefore remained at eleven thousand feet 
 until, at 7 :20 A. M., I had definitely fixed the 
 position line. This accomplished, I scribbled 
 the following message and handed it across to 
 the pilot : 
 
70 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 "We had better go lower down, where the 
 air is warmer, and where we might pick up a 
 steamer." 
 
 Just as we had started to nose downward, 
 the starboard motor began to pop ominously, as 
 if it were backfiring through one of its carbu- 
 retors. Alcock throttled back while keeping the 
 machine on a slow glide. The popping there- 
 upon ceased. 
 
 By eight o'clock we had descended from 
 eleven thousand to one thousand feet, where the 
 machine was still surrounded by cloudy vapor. 
 Here, however, the atmosphere was much warm- 
 er, and the ailerons were again operating. 
 
 Alcock was feeling his way down gently and 
 alertly, not knowing whether the cloud extended 
 to the ocean, nor at what moment the machine 's 
 undercarriage might touch the waves. He had 
 loosened his safety belt, and was ready to 
 abandon ship if we hit the water. I myself felt 
 uncomfortable about the danger of sudden im- 
 mersion, for it was very possible that a change 
 in barometric conditions could have made the 
 aneroid show a false reading. 
 
 But once again we were lucky. At a height 
 of five hundred feet the Vickers-Vimy emerged 
 from the pall of cloud, and we saw the ocean 
 
A SPECIAL KIND OF GASOLINE HAD TO BE USED 
 
 ALL ABOARD FOR THF. FIRST TRIAL FLIGHT 
 

 
 
 
 7 
 
MOENING 71 
 
 a restless surface of dull gray. Alcock at once 
 opened up the throttles, and both motors re- 
 sponded. Evidently a short rest had been all 
 that the starboard motor needed when it began 
 to pop, for it now gave no further signs of 
 trouble. 
 
 I reached for the Drift Bearing Plate, and 
 after observation on the ocean, found that we 
 were moving on a course seventy-five degrees 
 true, at one hundred and ten knots ground speed 
 with a wind of thirty knots from the direction 
 of two hundred and fifteen degrees true. I had 
 been reckoning on a course of seventy-seven 
 degrees true, with calculations based on our 
 midnight position; so that evidently we were 
 north of the prescribed track. Still, we were 
 not so far north as to miss Ireland, which fact 
 was all that mattered to any extent. 
 
 In my correction of the compass bearing, I 
 could only guess at the time when the wind 
 had veered from its earlier direction. I made 
 the assumption that the northerly drift had 
 existed ever since my sighting on the Pole Star 
 and Vega during the night, and I reckoned that 
 our position at eight o 'clock would consequently 
 be about fifty-four degrees N. latitude, ten de- 
 grees thirty min. W. longitude. Taking these 
 
72 
 
 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 figures, and with the help of the navigation ma- 
 chine, which rested on my knees, I calculated 
 that our course to Galway was about one hun- 
 dred and twenty-five degrees true. Allowing 
 for variation and wind I therefore set a com- 
 pass course of one hundred and seventy de- 
 grees, and indicated to the pilot the necessary 
 change in direction by means of the following 
 note and diagram : 
 
 "Make course 
 
 /TO* 
 
 "Don't be afraid of going S. We have had 
 too much N. already." 
 
 Alcock nodded and ruddered the Vickers- 
 Vimy around gently, until its compass showed 
 a reading of 170 degrees. 
 
 My calculations, if correct, proved that we 
 were quite close to Ireland and journey's end. 
 
MORNING 73 
 
 As we flew eastward, just below the lowest 
 clouds and from two hundred to three hundred 
 feet above the sea, we strained our eyes for a 
 break in the monotonous vista of gray waves ; 
 but we could find not even a ship. 
 
 Although neither of us felt hungry, we de- 
 cided to breakfast at eight o'clock, partly to kill 
 time and partly to take our minds from the 
 rising excitement induced by the hope that we 
 might sight land at any instant. I placed a 
 sandwich, followed by some chocolate, in 
 Alcock's left hand. His right hand remained 
 always on the control lever and his feet on the 
 rudder bar. 
 
 At no time during the past sixteen hours had 
 the pilot's hands and feet left the controls. 
 This was a difficult achievement for such a long 
 period, especially as a rubber device, fitted to 
 ease the strain, proved to be valueless. Elastic, 
 linked to a turnbuckle, had been attached to the 
 control lever and rudder bar; but in the hurry 
 that preceded our departure from St. John's, 
 the elastic was cut too short. All the weight 
 of the controls, therefore, bore directly on the 
 pilot. 
 
 The machine now tended to sag downward, 
 being nose-heavy because its incidence had 
 
74 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 changed, owing to the gradual alteration in the 
 center of gravity as the rear gasolene tanks 
 emptied. Alcock was thus obliged to exert con- 
 tinuous backward pressure on the control lever. 
 
 I had screwed on the lids of the thermos flask, 
 and was placing the remains of the food in the 
 tiny cupboard behind my seat, when Alcock 
 grabbed my shoulder, twisted me round, beamed 
 excitedly, and pointed ahead and below. His 
 lips were moving, but whatever he said was in- 
 audible above the roar of the motors. 
 
 I followed the direction indicated by his out- 
 stretched fore-finger;, and, barely visible 
 through the mist, it showed me two tiny specks 
 of land. This happened at 8:15 A. M. on 
 June 15th. 
 
 With a light heart, I put away charts and 
 tables of calculation, and disregarded the com- 
 pass needle. My work as navigator of the 
 flight was at an end. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE ARRIVAL 
 
 ALCOCK flew straight for the specks of 
 land, which revealed themselves as two 
 tiny islands Ecshal and Turbot, as we after- 
 wards discovered. In his log of the return 
 flight, from New York to Norfolk, of the British 
 airship R-34, Brigadier-General Maitland, C. 
 M. G., D. S. 0., notes the curious coincidence 
 that his first sight of land was when these same 
 two islands appeared on the starboard bow of 
 the dirigible. 
 
 From above the islands the mainland was 
 visible, and we steered for the nearest point 
 on it. The machine was still just underneath 
 the clouds, and flying at two hundred and fifty 
 feet; from which low height I saw plainly the 
 white breakers foaming on to the shore. We 
 crossed the coast of Ireland at 8 :25 A. M. 
 
 I was then uncertain of our exact location, 
 and suggested to Alcock that the best plan 
 
 75 
 
76 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 would be to find a railway line and follow it 
 south. A few minutes later, however, the wire- 
 less masts at Clifden gave the key to our posi- 
 tion. To attract attention, I fired two red 
 flares from the ^ery pistol ; but as they seemed 
 to be unnoticed from the ground, we circled 
 over the village of Clifden, about two miles 
 from the wireless station. 
 
 Although slightly off our course when we 
 reached the coast, we were in the direct line of 
 flight for Galway, at which place I had calcu- 
 lated to hit Ireland. Not far ahead we could 
 see a cluster of hills, with their tops lost in low- 
 lying clouds. 
 
 Here and elsewhere the danger of running 
 into high ground hidden from sight by the mist 
 would have been great, had we continued to fly 
 across Ireland. Alcock, therefore, decided to 
 land. 
 
 If the atmosphere had been clearer, we could 
 easily have reached London before touching 
 earth, for the tanks of the Vickers-Vimy still 
 contained enough gasoline to keep the machine 
 in the air for ten hours longer. Thus, had we 
 lost our way over the ocean, there would have 
 been a useful margin of time for cruising about 
 in search of ships. 
 
THE ARRIVAL 77 
 
 Having made up our minds to land at once, 
 we searched below for a smooth stretch of 
 ground. The most likely looking place in the 
 neighborhood of Clifden was a field near the 
 wireless station. With engines shut off, we 
 glided towards it, heading into the wind. 
 
 Alcock flattened out at exactly the right mo- 
 ment. The machine sank gently, the wheels 
 touched earth and began to run smoothly over 
 the surface. Already I was indulging in the 
 comforting reflection that the anxious flight had 
 ended with a perfect landing. Then, so softly 
 as not to be noticed at first, the front of the 
 Vickers-Vimy tilted inexplicably, while the tail 
 rose. Suddenly the craft stopped with an un- 
 pleasant squelch, tipped forward, shook itself, 
 and remained poised on a slant, with its fore- 
 end buried in the ground, as if trying to stand 
 on its head. 
 
 I reached out a hand and arm just in time to 
 save a nasty bump when the shock threw me 
 forward. As it was, I only stopped a jarring 
 collision with the help of my nose. Alcock had 
 braced himself against the rudder control bar. 
 The pressure he exerted against it to save him- 
 self from falling actually bent the straight bar, 
 
78 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 which was of hollow steel, almost into the shape 
 of a horse-shoe. 
 
 Deceived by its smooth appearance, we had 
 landed on top of a bog ; which misfortune made 
 the first non-stop transatlantic flight finish in 
 a crash. It was pitiful to see the distorted 
 shape of the aeroplane that had brought us from 
 America, as it sprawled in ungainly manner 
 over the sucking surface. The machine's nose 
 and its lower wings were deep in the bog. The 
 empty cockpit in front, used in a Vickers-Vimy 
 bomber by the observer, was badly bent; but, 
 being of steel, it did not collapse. Quite pos- 
 sibly we owe our lives to this fact. In passing, 
 and while gripping firmly my wooden pen- 
 holder (for the year is not yet over), I consider 
 it extraordinary that no lives have been lost in 
 (the transatlantic flights of 1919. 
 
 The leading edge of the lower plane was bent 
 in some places and smashed in others, the gaso- 
 line connections had snapped, and four of the 
 propeller blades were buried in the ground, al- 
 though none were broken. That about com- 
 pleted the record of preliminary damage. 
 
 We had landed at 8 :40 A. M., after being in 
 the air for sixteen hours and twenty-eight min- 
 utes. The flight from coast to coast, on a 
 
THE ARRIVAL 79 
 
 straight course of one thousand six hundred 
 and eighty nautical miles, lasted only fifteen 
 hours and fifty-seven minutes, our average 
 speed being one hundred and five to one hun- 
 dred and six knots. For this relatively rapid 
 performance, a strong following wind was 
 largely responsible. 
 
 As a result of the burst connections from 
 tank to carburetor, gasoline began to swill into 
 the rear cockpit while we were still inside it. 
 Very fortunately the liquid did not ignite. 
 Alcock had taken care to switch off the current 
 on the magnetos, as soon as he realized that a 
 crash was imminent, so that the sparks should 
 have no chance of starting a fire. 
 
 We scrambled out as best we could, and lost 
 no time in salving the mailbag and our instru- 
 ments. The gasoline rose rapidly, and it was 
 impossible to withdraw my chart and the Baker 
 navigating machine before they had been dam- 
 aged. 
 
 I then fired two white Very flares, as a signal 
 for help. Almost immediately a small party, 
 composed of officers and men belonging to the 
 military detachment at Clifden, approached 
 from the wireless station. 
 
 "Anybody hurt?" the usual inquiry when 
 
80 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 an aeroplane is crashed was the first remark 
 when they arrived within shouting distance. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Where you from?" this when they had 
 helped us to clear the cockpit. 
 
 "America." 
 
 Somebody laughed politely, as if in answer 
 to an attempt at facetiousness that did not 
 amount to much, but that ought to be taken 
 notice of, anyhow, for the sake of courtesy. 
 Quite evidently nobody received the statement 
 seriously at first. Even a mention of our names 
 meant nothing to them, and they remained un- 
 convinced until Alcock showed them the mail- 
 bag from St. John's. Then they relieved their 
 surprised feelings by spontaneous cheers and 
 painful hand-shakes, and led us to the officers' 
 mess for congratulations and hospitality. 
 
 Burdened as we were with flying kit and 
 heavy boots, the walk over the bog was a drag- 
 ging discomfort. In addition, I suddenly dis- 
 covered an intense sleepiness, and could easily 
 have let myself lose consciousness while stand- 
 ing upright. 
 
 Arrived at the station, our first act was to 
 send telegrams to the firm of Messrs. Vickers, 
 Ltd., which built the Vickers-Vimy, to the Lon- 
 
THE ARRIVAL 81 
 
 don Daily Mail, which promoted the transat- 
 lantic competition, and to the Royal Aero Club, 
 which controlled it. 
 
 My memories' of that day are dim and incom- 
 plete. I felt a keen sense of relief at being 
 on land again ; but this was coupled with a cer- 
 tain amount of dragging reaction from the tense 
 mental concentration during the flight, so that 
 my mind sagged. I was very sleepy, but not 
 physically tired. 
 
 We lurched as we walked, owing to the stiff- 
 ness that resulted from our having sat in the 
 tiny cockpit for seventeen hours. Alcock, who 
 during the whole period had kept his feet on 
 the rudder bar and one hand on the control 
 lever, would not confess to anything worse than 
 a desire to stand up for the rest of his life or 
 at least until he could sit down painlessly. My 
 hands were very unsteady. My mind was quite 
 clear on matters pertaining to the flight, but 
 hazy on extraneous subjects. After having 
 listened so long to the loud-voiced hum of the 
 Rolls-Royce motors, made louder than ever 
 by the broken exhaust pipe on the starboard 
 side, we were both very deaf, and our ears 
 would not stop ringing. 
 
 Later in the day we motored to Galway with 
 
82 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 a representative of the London Daily Mail. It 
 was a strange but very welcome change to see 
 solid objects flashing past us, instead of miles 
 upon monotonous miles of drifting, cloudy 
 vapor. 
 
 Several times during that drive I lost the 
 thread of connection with tangible surround- 
 ings, and lived again in near retrospect the 
 fantastic happenings of the day, night and 
 morning that had just passed. Subconsciously 
 I still missed the rhythmic, relentless drone of 
 the Rolls-Royce aero-engines. My eyes had not 
 yet become accustomed to the absence of clouds 
 around and below, and my mind felt somehow 
 lost, now that it was no longer preoccupied with 
 heavenly bodies, horizon, time, direction, charts, 
 drift, tables of calculations, sextant, spirit level, 
 compass, aneroid, altimeter, wireless receiver 
 and the unexpected. 
 
 For a while, in fact, the immediate past 
 seemed more prominent than the immediate 
 present. Lassitude of mind, coupled with re- 
 action from the long strain of tense and un- 
 broken concentration on one supreme objective, 
 made me lose my grip of normal continuity, so 
 that I answered questions mechanically and 
 wanted to avoid the effort of talk. The out- 
 
THE AERIVAL 83 
 
 standing events and impressions of the flight 
 for example the long spin from four thousand 
 to fifty feet, and the sudden sight of the white- 
 capped ocean at the end of it passed and re- 
 passed across my consciousness. I do not 
 know whether Alcock underwent the same men- 
 tal processes, but he remained very silent. 
 Above all I felt the need of reestablishing nor- 
 mal balance by means of sleep. 
 
 The wayside gatherings seemed especially un- 
 real almost as if they had been scenes on the 
 film. By some extraordinary method of news 
 transmission the report of our arrival had 
 spread all over the district, and in many dis- 
 tricts between Clifden and Galway curious 
 crowds had gathered. Near Galway we were 
 stopped by another automobile, in which was 
 Major Mays of the Eoyal Aero Club, whose 
 duty it was to examine the seals on the Vickers- 
 Vimy, thus making sure that we had not landed 
 in Ireland in a machine other than that in 
 which we left Newfoundland. A reception had 
 been prepared at Galway ; but our hosts, realiz- 
 ing how tired we must be, considerately made it 
 a short and informal affair. Afterwards we 
 slept for the first time in over forty hours. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 AFTEKMATH OF ARRIVAL 
 
 ALCOCK and I awoke to find ourselves in 
 a wonderland of seeming unreality the 
 product of violent change from utter isolation 
 during the long flight to unexpected contact with 
 crowds of people interested in us. 
 
 To begin with, getting up in the morning, 
 after a satisfactory sleep of nine hours, was 
 strange. In our eastward flight of two thou- 
 sand miles we had overtaken time, in less than 
 the period between one sunset and another, to 
 the extent of three and a half hours. Our phys- 
 ical systems having accustomed themselves to 
 habits regulated by the clocks of Newfoundland, 
 we were reluctant to rise at 7 A. M. ; for sub- 
 consciousness suggested that it was but 3:30 
 A. M. 
 
 This difficulty of adjustment to the sudden 
 change in time lasted for several days. Prob- 
 ably it will be experienced by all passengers 
 traveling on the rapid trans-ocean air services 
 
 84 
 
Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. 
 
 THE VICKERS-VIMY TRANSATLANTIC MACHINE IN THE AIR 
 
 THE LAST SQUARE MEAL IN AMERICA WAS EATEN NEAR THE WINGi 
 OF THE MACHINE 
 
AFTERMATH OF ARRIVAL 85 
 
 of the future those who complete a westward 
 journey becoming early risers without effort, 
 those who land after an eastward flight becom- 
 ing unconsciously lazy in the mornings, until 
 the jolting effect of the dislocation wears off, 
 and habit has accustomed itself to the new con- 
 ditions. 
 
 Then, after breakfast eaten in an atmos- 
 phere of the deepest content there began a 
 succession of congratulatory ovations. For 
 these we were totally unprepared; and with our 
 relaxed minds, we could not easily adapt our- 
 selves to the conditions attendant upon being 
 magnets of the world's attentive curiosity. 
 
 First came a reception from the town of 
 Galway, involving many addresses and the pres- 
 entation of a memento in the form of a Clad- 
 dagh ring, which had historical connections with 
 a landing on the coast of Ireland thereabouts 
 by vessels of the Spanish Armada. 
 
 The warm-hearted crowd that we found wait- 
 ing at Galway Station both amazed and daunted 
 us. We were grateful for their loud apprecia- 
 tion, but scarcely able to respond to it ade- 
 quately. Flowers were offered, and we met the 
 vanguard of the autograph hunters. We must 
 have signed our names hundreds of times dur- 
 
86 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 ing the journey to Dublin on books, cards, old 
 envelopes and scraps of paper of every shape 
 and every state of cleanliness. This we did 
 wonderingly, not yet understanding why so 
 many people should ask for our signatures, 
 when three days earlier few people had heard 
 of our names. 
 
 The men, women and children that thronged 
 every station on the way to Dublin seemed to 
 place a far higher value on our success than we 
 did ourselves. Until now, perhaps, we had 
 been too self -centered to realize that other peo- 
 ple might be particularly interested in a flight 
 from America to England. We had finished the 
 job we wanted to do, and could not comprehend 
 why it should lead to fuss. 
 
 Now, however, I know that the crowds saw 
 more clearly than I did, and that their cheers 
 were not for us personally, but for what they 
 regarded as a manifestation of the spirit of ad- 
 venture, the True Eomance call it what you 
 will. For the moment this elusive ideal was 
 suggested to them by the first non-stop journey 
 by air across the Atlantic, which we had been 
 fortunate enough to make. 
 
 At one station, where a military band played 
 our train in and out again, a wooden model of 
 
AFTERMATH OF ARRIVAL 87 
 
 an aeroplane was presented to Alcock by a 
 schoolboy. At Dublin, reached on the morning 
 of Trinity Sunday, Alcock and I passed with 
 difficulty through the welcoming crowds, and 
 drove towards the Automobile Club in separate 
 cars. In due course, I reached sanctuary; but 
 where was Alcock? We waited and waited, and 
 finally sent out scouts to search for him. They 
 came back with the news that he had been kid- 
 napped, and taken to Commons in Trinity Col- 
 lege. 
 
 Landing at Holyhead next morning, we were 
 welcomed back to the shores of England by Mr. 
 R. K. Pierson, designer of our Vickers-Vimy 
 machine, by Captain Vickers, of the famous firm 
 that built it, and by Mr. C. Johnson, of the 
 Rolls-Royce Company that supplied our mo- 
 tors. Scenes all along the line to London were 
 a magnified repetition of those from Galway to 
 Dublin. Chester, Crewe, Rugby and other towns 
 each sent its Mayor or another representative 
 to the station. Aeroplanes escorted the train 
 all the way to London. Again we could only 
 play our part in a more or less dazed state of 
 grateful wonder. 
 
 Of the warm-hearted welcome of the peo- 
 ple of London, I have confused recollections 
 
88 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 that include more receptions, more and larger 
 crowds, more stormy greetings, and an excit- 
 ing, pleasant drive to the Royal Aero Club. Al- 
 cock delivered to the postal authorities the 
 mail-bag from St. John's, with regrets that it 
 had not been possible to fly direct to London 
 with the letters. In the evening we separated, 
 Alcock to see a big prize fight, I to visit my 
 fiancee. 
 
 Perhaps the welcome that we appreciated 
 most was that given us next day when, at the 
 Weybridge works of the Vickers Company, we 
 were cheered and cheered by the men and girls 
 who had built our transatlantic craft. We were 
 glad indeed to be able to tell them and the de- 
 signer of the machine that their handiwork had 
 stood a difficult test magnificently, as had the 
 Rolls-Royce engines. One of my most sincere 
 reasons for satisfaction was that the late Mr. 
 Albert Vickers, one of the founders of the great 
 firm, regarded the flights as having maintained 
 the Vickers tradition of efficiency, originality 
 and good workmanship. 
 
 That Lieutenant-Commander Read, U.S.N., 
 who commanded the American flying boat 
 N. C. 4 in its flight from America to England, 
 had left London before our arrival was a cause 
 
AFTERMATH OF ARRIVAL 89 
 
 of real regret. Both Alcock and I were anx- 
 ious to meet him and his crew, so that we might 
 compare our respective experiences of aerial 
 navigation and of weather conditions over the 
 Atlantic. The United States aviators who flew 
 to Europe, and those that were so unlucky in 
 coming to grief at the Azores, showed them- 
 selves to be real sportsmen; and without any 
 exception, there was the best possible feeling be- 
 tween them and all the British aviators who 
 made, or attempted to make, a non-stop jour- 
 ney from Newfoundland to Ireland. 
 
 Although I am supremely glad to have had 
 the opportunity of flying the Atlantic by aero- 
 plane, afterthoughts on the risks and chances 
 taken have convinced me that, while our own 
 effort may have been useful as a pioneer dem- 
 onstration, single or twin engine aircraft are 
 altogether unsuitable for trans-ocean voyages. 
 We were successful yes. But a temporary 
 failure of either of our motors (although this 
 is unlikely when dealing with Rolls-Royce or 
 other first-class aero motors) would have meant 
 certain disaster and likely death. 
 
 Another vital drawback of the smaller ma- 
 chines is that so much space, and so much dis- 
 posable lift, is needed for fuel that the num- 
 
90 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 ber of persons on board must be limited to two, 
 or in some cases three, and no freight can be 
 taken. Yet another is that should the naviga- 
 tor of an aeroplane make an important error in 
 calculation while flying over the ocean in fog or 
 mist, an enforced descent into the water, after 
 the limited quantity of fuel has been expended 
 over a wrong course, is more than possible. 
 
 In the present condition of practical aero- 
 nautics, the only heavier-than-air craft likely to 
 be suitable for flying the Atlantic are the large 
 flying boats now being built by various aircraft 
 companies ; and even they are limited as to size 
 by certain definite formulae. The development 
 in the near future of long flights over the ocean 
 would seem, therefore, to be confined to lighter- 
 than-air craft. 
 
 In this connection the two voyages across the 
 Atlantic of the British government airship R-34, 
 not long after Alcock and I had returned to 
 London, was a big step towards the age of reg- 
 ular air service between Britain and America. 
 With five motors the R-34 could carry on if one, 
 or even two of them were out of action. In 
 fact, on its return flight, one motor broke down 
 beyond the possibility of immediate repair; al- 
 though there were ample facilities and an ample 
 
AFTEEMATH OF ARRIVAL 91 
 
 crew for effecting immediate repairs in the air. 
 Yet she completed her journey without diffi- 
 culty. With a disposable lift of twenty-nine 
 tons, the airship carried plenty of fuel for all 
 contingencies, an adequate crew, and heavy 
 wireless apparatus that could not have been 
 fitted on the larger aeroplanes. 
 
 Despite all this preliminary weight, a large 
 collection of parcels, letters and newspapers 
 were taken from America to England in rec- 
 ord time. Had the weather conditions been at 
 all suitable she could easily have brought the 
 mail direct from New York to London by air. 
 All honor to General Maitland, Major Scott and 
 the other men who carried out this astonishing 
 demonstration so early as July, 1919. 
 
 Even vessels of the R-34 type, however, are 
 quite unsuitable for regular traffic across the 
 Atlantic. Much bigger craft will be needed if 
 the available space and the disposable lift are 
 to be sufficient for the carrying of freight or 
 passengers; on a commercial basis. Already 
 the construction of airships two and a half and 
 five times the size of the R-34, with approxi- 
 mate disposable lifts of one hundred and two 
 hundred tons respectively, is projected. When 
 
92 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 such craft are accomplished facts, and when 
 further progress has been made in solving 
 weather and navigation problems, we may look 
 for transatlantic flights on a commercial basis. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE NAVIGATION OP AIBCBAPT 
 
 1DO not claim to be an especial authority on 
 the theory of navigation indeed, it was as 
 a prisoner of war that I first took up seriously 
 the study of that science. But I believe that 
 sustained and sufficient concentration can give 
 a man what he wants ; and on this assumption 
 I decided to learn whatever might be learned 
 about navigation as applied to aircraft. As yet, 
 like most aspects of aeronautics, this is rather 
 indefinite, although research and specially 
 adapted instruments will probably make it as 
 exact as marine navigation. 
 
 Navigation is the means whereby the mari- 
 ner or aviator ascertains his position on the 
 surface of the earth, and determines the exact 
 direction in which he must head his craft in 
 order to reach its destination. 
 
 The methods of navigation employed by mari- 
 ners are the result of centuries of research and 
 invention, but have not yet reached finality 
 
94 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 witness the introduction within the last few 
 years of the Gyroscopic Compass and the Di- 
 rectional Wireless Telegraph Apparatus, as 
 well as of improved methods of calculation. 
 
 In short journeys over land by aeroplane or 
 airship the duties of a navigator are light, so 
 long as he can see the ground and check his 
 progress towards the objective by observation 
 and a suitable map. 
 
 But for long distance flights, especially over 
 the ocean and under circumstances whereby the 
 ground cannot be seen, the navigator of the air 
 borrows much from the navigator of the sea. 
 He makes modifications and additions, necessi- 
 tated by the different conditions of keeping to 
 a set course through the atmosphere and of 
 keeping to a set course through the ocean but 
 the principles underlying the two forms of 
 navigation are identical. 
 
 It is impossible to explain aerial navigation 
 without seeming to paraphrase other writers on 
 the subject. One of the simplest explanations 
 of the science is that of Lieutenant Commander 
 K. Mackenzie Grieve in "Our Atlantic At- 
 tempt," which he wrote in collaboration with 
 Mr. Harry Hawker, his pilot, after their glori- 
 
NAVIGATION OF AIRCRAFT 95 
 
 ous attempt to win the London Daily Mail's 
 transatlantic competition. 
 
 The chief differences between the navigation 
 of aircraft and the navigation of *seacraft are 
 occasioned by: 
 
 (a) The vastly greater speed of aircraft, ne- 
 cessitating more frequent observations and 
 quicker methods of calculation. 
 
 (b) The serious drift caused by the wind. 
 This may take aircraft anything up to forty or 
 more miles off the course in each hour's flying, 
 according to the direction and strength of the 
 wind. In cloudy weather, or at night, a change 
 in the wind can alter the drift without the 
 knowledge of the navigator. Hence, special 
 precautions must be taken to observe the drift 
 at all possible times. 
 
 (c) The absence of need for extreme accu- 
 racy of navigation in the air, since a ten or 
 even twenty mile error from the destination in 
 a long journey is permissible. Another favor- 
 able point is that rocks, reefs and shoals need 
 not be avoided. This permits the aerial navi- 
 gator to use short cuts and approximations in 
 calculation, which would be criminal in marine 
 navigation. 
 
 There are three methods of aerial navigation 
 
 
96 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 "Dead Beckoning,'' Astronomical Observa- 
 tion, and Directional Wireless Telegraphy. 
 None should be nsed alone ; for although accu- 
 racy may be obtained with any single method, 
 it is highly advisable to check each by means 
 of the others. 
 
 As in the case of marine navigation, a reli- 
 able compass, either of the magnetic or gyro- 
 scopic type, is essential for aerial navigation, 
 as well as an accurate and reliable chronometer. 
 Suitable charts must be provided, showing all 
 parts of the route to be covered. When the 
 magnetic compass is used, such charts should 
 show the variation between True and Magnetic 
 North at different points on the route. 
 
 NAVIGATION BY "DEAD BECKONING" 
 
 "Dead Beckoning " is the simplest method of 
 navigation; and, under favorable conditions, it 
 gives a high degree of accuracy. A minimum 
 of observation is required, but careful calcula- 
 tion is essential. 
 
 The "Dead Keckoning" position of an aero- 
 plane or airship at any time is calculated from 
 its known speed and direction over the surface 
 of the earth or ocean, and its known course as 
 
NAVIGATION OF AIRCRAFT 97 
 
 indicated by the magnetic or gyroscopic com- 
 pass. 
 
 To determine the direction of movement of 
 an aeroplane or airship, as apart from the di- 
 rection in which it is headed, an instrument 
 known as a Drift Indicator, or Drift Bearing 
 Plate, is used. 
 
 One form of Drift Indicator consists of a 
 simple dial, with the center cut away and a wire 
 stretched diametrically across it. The outer 
 edge of the dial is divided into degrees, in a 
 similar manner to that of the compass. It is 
 mounted in such a way that an observer can, 
 by looking through the center of the disc, see 
 the ground or ocean below him. The disc is 
 then turned until objects on the ground or 
 white-caps, icebergs, ships, or other objects vis- 
 ible on the surface of the ocean are seen to 
 move parallel with the wire, without in any way 
 deviating from it. The angle which the wire 
 then makes with the direction in which the nose 
 of the aeroplane or airship is pointing gives 
 the angle of drift. 
 
 The ground speed (or speed over the surface 
 of the earth) of aircraft can be measured by ob- 
 serving the time taken in passing over any fixed 
 or very slowly moving object, while a certain 
 
98 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 angular distance is described this being found 
 by suitable sights, attached to the Drift Bear- 
 ing Plate. From the result, considered in con- 
 junction with the height of the aeroplane or 
 airship, the actual speed over the surface is 
 calculated. This speed will be in the direction 
 shown by the wire of the Drift Bearing Plate. 
 
 The ground speed so found will differ nearly 
 always from the air speed, as shown by the air 
 speed meter, because of the effect of the wind. 
 The difference is greater or less according to 
 the wind's relation to the direction in which the 
 aeroplane or airship is headed. 
 
 Having found by observation the drift, the 
 ground speed and the air speed, a simple in- 
 strument such as the Appleyard Course and 
 Distance Calculator then permits the aerial 
 navigator to discover without difficulty, as on 
 a slide rule, the strength and direction of the 
 wind. Should the actual track of aircraft over 
 the earth's surface not coincide with the de- 
 sired course, the Course and Distance Calcula- 
 tor, or a similar instrument, can thus be used 
 to calculate, in connection with the wind veloc- 
 ity and direction already found, the direction 
 in which the nose of the craft must be pointed 
 in order to correct the deviation due to drift. 
 
NAVIGATION OF AIRCRAFT 99 
 
 Knowing the latitude and longitude of the 
 point of departure, and noting carefully the time 
 that elapses between each separate observation 
 of the ground speed and of the course, the air 
 navigator, with the aid of a specially prepared 
 set of " traverse tables " (as used by mariners), 
 can easily plot on his chart the distance cov- 
 ered and the direction in which it has been 
 covered. Hence the position of the aircraft at 
 any time is either known definitely, or can be 
 forecast with a fair degree of accuracy. 
 
 For aerial navigation by means of "Dead 
 Reckoning," frequent observations of ground 
 speed and drift are necessary. If aircraft are 
 cut off by clouds or fog from all possibility of 
 sighting the surface of the earth, grave errors 
 may occur, since in long distance flights the 
 wind 's velocity and direction often change with- 
 out the pilot's knowledge. 
 
 NAVIGATION BY ASTRONOMICAL, OBSERVATION 
 
 In navigation by astronomical observation, 
 the position of the aeroplane or airship is found 
 by observing the height above the horizon of 
 either the sun or another heavenly body, such 
 as a star that is easy of recognition. The 
 
100 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 method depends upon the known fact that at 
 any given instant the sun is vertically above 
 some definite point on the earth's surface. This 
 point can be calculated from the time of the ob- 
 servation and the declination and equation of 
 time, as tabulated in the nautical almanac. 
 
 In the case of stars, the right ascension of 
 the sun and of the star also enter into the cal- 
 culation. The method of carrying out such cal- 
 culations is too involved for the scope of this 
 volume, and the reader is referred to many of 
 the excellent text books published on the sub- 
 ject of navigation. 
 
 Since the navigator knows, from the time of 
 his observation, the point on the earth's surface 
 over which is the heavenly body in question, it 
 is clear that around this point circles on the 
 surface of the earth may be described. From 
 any point in any one circle the heavenly body 
 will appear to have the same altitude or eleva- 
 tion above the horizon. A single observation 
 of the altitude of any one heavenly body shows, 
 therefore, only that the observer may be at any 
 point on such a circle of equal altitude other- 
 wise known 'as a Sumner circle. But it does not 
 fix that point. 
 
 A second simultaneous observation, of a dif- 
 
NAVIGATION OF 
 
 ferent heavenly body, will give a different cir- 
 cle, corresponding to the position of the second 
 body. The intersection of these two circles de- 
 termines the point of observation. 
 
 This fact constitutes a reliable basis for fix- 
 ing one's position during a clear night, when 
 many stars are visible and choice of suitable 
 heavenly bodies may be made. During the day, 
 however, the light of the sun prevents other 
 heavenly bodies from being seen, so that only 
 a single observation is possible. 
 
 If the aeroplane or airship were not moving, 
 then two successive observations of the sun, 
 with an interval of an hour or more between 
 them, would give the intersecting circles and 
 fix the position. But the aircraft being in mo- 
 tion, it is necessary to combine the method of 
 "Dead Beckoning" with the use of the Sum- 
 ner circles, as found by observation of the sun's 
 altitude. 
 
 In order to avoid drawing the entire circle, 
 a small portion only of it is shown on the chart 
 so small that it may be regarded as a straight 
 line. Such a small section of the Sumner cir- 
 cle is known as a " position line." 
 
 The desired track is laid out on the chart, 
 and the "Dead Beckoning" position for the 
 
 
.102 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 time of the solar observation is indicated on 
 it. The track should be intersected at this point 
 by the position line, the observation thus form- 
 ing a check upon the ' i Dead Beckoning. ' ' 
 
 The altitude of the sun or of a star is meas- 
 ured by the sextant. For such an observation 
 to be exact, it is necessary that not only should 
 the sun or stars be viewed clearly, but that a 
 clear horizon, formed either by the ocean or by 
 suitable clouds, should be visible. 
 
 Corrections must be applied to the observed 
 altitude for the aircraft 's height above the hori- 
 zon, for refraction, and for the diameter of the 
 body under observation the latter two correc- 
 tions being given in the nautical almanac. 
 There may be, also, an error inherent in the 
 sextant itself. For extremely refined naviga- 
 tion, corrections are applied in accordance with 
 the direction and velocity of the aeroplane or 
 airship ; but these are not really necessary, since 
 navigation of aircraft does not require such 
 close calculation. 
 
 When the sun or star observed is directly 
 south of the aerial navigator in the northern 
 hemisphere, or north of him in the southern 
 hemisphere, the altitude, corrected for declina- 
 tion of the body under observation, gives the 
 
NAVIGATION OF AIECRAFT 103 
 
 aircraft's latitude. When the navigator is di- 
 rectly east or west, the altitude, corrected for 
 the time of observation, gives its longitude. 
 
 If the horizon is invisible, owing to fogs or 
 unsuitable clouds, it may be replaced by means 
 of a spirit level ; but great care should be taken 
 in making such observations, since a spirit level 
 on an aeroplane or airship is not wholly relia- 
 ble, unless the craft is proceeding in an abso- 
 lutely straight direction, and without sway of 
 any kind. 
 
 All methods of navigation by Astronomical 
 Observation fail when the sky is obscured by 
 clouds and the heavenly bodies cannot be seen. 
 As a general rule this drawback does not ham- 
 per air navigation to any great extent, since 
 aircraft should be able to climb above most of 
 the obscuring clouds. Yet it may happen, as it 
 did in the case of our transatlantic flight, that 
 the clouds are too high for such a maneuver. 
 
 If it were possible to measure accurately the 
 true bearing of the sun or star at the moment 
 of observation, then a single observation of a 
 single heavenly body would fix the position of 
 the craft at the intersection of the line of bear- 
 ing with the position line. At the time of writ- 
 ing, however, there are no satisfactory means 
 
 
104 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 of making such a measurement with the re- 
 quired degree of accuracy. Apparatus which 
 will enable this to be done is now in course of 
 development. Navigation by means of astro- 
 nomical observation will thereby be simplified 
 greatly. 
 
 NAVIGATION BY WIKELESS DIRECTION FINDER 
 
 With the great improvements that have been 
 made in the year 1919, the guiding of aircraft 
 by directional wireless telegraphy is rapidly 
 becoming a reliable and accurate means of 
 aerial navigation. Although complicated in de- 
 sign and construction, the complete receiving 
 equipment for aircraft is now light, compact, 
 and simple of operation. 
 
 The receiving equipment on aeroplanes and 
 airships is arranged so as to indicate, with a 
 comparatively high degree of accuracy, the di- 
 rection from which wireless signals are re- 
 ceived. The position of the sending, or beacon, 
 station being known, the bearing of the aircraft 
 from that station may be plotted on a suitable 
 chart, in which small segments of great circles 
 are represented by straight lines. Simultane- 
 ous bearings on two known beacon stations are 
 
HOT COFFEE WAS TAKEN ABOARD 
 
 SLOW RISING NEARLY CAUSED DISASTER AT THE START OF THE GREAT 
 
 FLIGHT 
 
NAVIGATION OF AIRCRAFT 105 
 
 sufficient to fix the observer's position with tol- 
 erable accuracy at the intersection of the lines 
 of bearing, provided that they intersect at a 
 reasonable angle 45 degrees or more, where 
 possible. 
 
 With the very close tuning rendered possible 
 by the use of continuous waves, beacon stations 
 of the future will probably be provided with 
 automatic means whereby directional signals 
 can be sent out at intervals of one hour or less. 
 Such signals will be coded, so fhat the crews of 
 aircraft can identify the wireless station. The 
 wave lengths must be chosen so as not to inter- 
 fere with messages sent from commercial sta- 
 tions. 
 
 If there be a beacon station at the* air navi- 
 gator's destination, it is possible for him to 
 direct his course so that the craft is always 
 headed for the beacon ; and in due time he will 
 reach his objective. 
 
 This simple but lazy method, however, is not 
 to be recommended; for, owing to the action 
 of the wind, the route covered is longer than 
 the straight course. To counteract drift and 
 proceed in a direct line towards his destination, 
 the air navigator frequently has to direct his 
 course so that the craft is not headed straight 
 
106 
 
 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 for the objective. Hence, with a single beacon 
 station, frequent observations of drift are nec- 
 essary, if the shortest route is to be followed. 
 Thus: 
 
 Approximate path taken by aircraft headed always towards 
 beacon station. 
 
 Path taken by aircraft headed so as to counteract drift. 
 
 When two or more beacon stations are avail- 
 able, and positions can be ascertained at least 
 once an hour, observation on the surface of the 
 ocean for drift, although desirable, is not ab- 
 solutely necessary. The drift may be calcu- 
 lated with accuracy enough from the craft's po- 
 sition as found by the lines of bearing indicated 
 in messages from the various beacon stations. 
 
 Another method of employing the Wireless 
 
NAVIGATION OF AIRCRAFT 107 
 
 Direction Finder is for aircraft to send out sig- 
 nals to two or more beacon stations, which reply 
 by advising the air navigator of his bearing in 
 relation to themselves. This is, perhaps, the 
 most accurate method. Its disadvantage lies in 
 the fact that whereas the heavier and more ro- 
 bust apparatus needed for it can easily be em- 
 ployed in the stationary beacon stations, few 
 aircraft will be able to support wireless send- 
 ing apparatus of sufficient weight to carry over 
 the long distances they must cover in trans- 
 oceanic aerial travel. 
 
 The greatest advantage of air navigation by 
 means of wireless telegraphy is that it can be 
 employed in any weather. Fogs and clouds do 
 not make it inoperative, nor even less accurate. 
 Another recommendation is that its use does not 
 entail a knowledge of advanced mathematics, as 
 required for navigation by astronomical ob- 
 servation. 
 
 I believe firmly that the air navigator of the 
 future will rely upon the Wireless Direction 
 Finder as his mainstay, while using astronom- 
 ical observation and the system of "Dead 
 Reckoning" as checks upon the wireless bear- 
 ings given him, and as second and third strings 
 to his bow, in case the wireless receiving ap- 
 paratus breaks down. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE FUTURE OF TRANSATLANTIC AIR TRAVEL 
 
 \ LTHOUGH three pioneer flights were 
 2\. made across the Atlantic during the sum- 
 mer of 1919, the year passed without bringing 
 to light any immediate prospect of an air serv- 
 ice between Europe and America. Nor does 
 1920 seem likely to produce such a development 
 on a regular basis. 
 
 Before a transatlantic airway is possible, 
 much remains to be done organization, capi- 
 talization, government support, the charting of 
 air currents, the establishment of directional 
 wireless stations, research after improvements 
 in the available material. All this requires the 
 spending of money ; and for the moment neither 
 governments nor private interests are enam- 
 ored of investments with a large element of 
 speculation. 
 
 But, sooner or later, a London-New York 
 service of aircraft must be established. Its ad- 
 
 108 
 
TRANSATLANTIC AIR TRAVEL 109 
 
 vantages are too tremendous to be ignored for 
 long. Prediction is ever dangerous; and, 
 meantime, I am confining myself to a discus- 
 sion of what can be done with the means and 
 the knowledge already at the disposal of ex- 
 perts, provided their brains are allied to suffi- 
 cient capital. 
 
 Notwithstanding that the first two flights 
 across the Atlantic were made respectively by 
 a flying-boat and an aeroplane, it is very evi- 
 dent that the future of transatlantic flight be- 
 longs to the airship. That the apparatus in 
 which Sir John Alcock and I made the first non- 
 stop air journey over the Atlantic was an aero- 
 plane only emphasizes my belief that for long 
 flights above the ocean the dirigible is the only 
 useful vehicle. If science discovers some start- 
 lingly new motive power for example, inter- 
 molecular energy that will revolutionize me- 
 chanical propulsion, heavier-than-air craft may 
 be as valuable for long flights as for air traffic 
 over shorter distances. Until then trans-ocean 
 flying on a commercial basis must be monopo- 
 lized by lighter-than-air craft. 
 
 The aeroplane and in this general term I in- 
 clude the flying boat and the seaplane is im- 
 practicable as a means of transport for dis- 
 
110 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 tances over one thousand miles, because it has 
 definite and scientific limitations of size, and 
 consequently of lift. The ratio of weight to 
 power would prevent a forty-ton aeroplane 
 which is approximately the largest heavier- 
 than-air craft that at present might be con- 
 structed and effectively handled from remain- 
 ing aloft in still air for longer than twenty-five 
 hours, carrying a load of passengers and mails 
 of about five tons at an air speed of, say, eighty- 
 five miles an hour. Its maximum air distance, 
 without landing to replenish the fuel supply, 
 would thus be two thousand, one hundred and 
 twenty-five miles. For a flight of twenty-five 
 hundred miles all the disposable lift (gross lift 
 minus weight of structure) would be needed for 
 crew and fuel, and neither passengers nor 
 freight could be taken aboard. 
 
 There is not in existence an aeroplane capable 
 of flying, without alighting on the way, the 
 three thousand miles between London and New 
 York, even when loaded only with the neces- 
 sary crew. With the very smallest margin of 
 safety no transatlantic route of over two thou- 
 sand miles is admissible for aeroplanes. This 
 limitation would necessitate time-losing and 
 wearisome journeys between London and Ire- 
 
TEANSATLANTIC AIE TRAVEL 111 
 
 land, Newfoundland and New York, to and 
 from the nearest points on either side of the 
 ocean. Even under these conditions only im- 
 portant mail or valuable articles of little weight 
 might be carried profitably. 
 
 As against these drawbacks, the larger types 
 of airships have a radius far wider than the 
 Atlantic. Their only limit of size is concerned 
 with landing grounds and sheds; for the per- 
 centage of useful lift increases with the bulk 
 of the vessel, while the weight to power ratio 
 decreases. A voyage by dirigible can there- 
 fore be made directly from London to New 
 York, and far beyond it, without a halt. 
 
 Another advantage of lighter-than-air craft 
 is that whereas the restricted space on board an 
 aeroplane leaves little for comfort and conven- 
 ience, a large rigid airship can easily provide 
 fipst-rate living, sleeping and dining quarters, 
 besides room for the passengers to take exercise 
 by walking along the length of the inside keel, 
 or on the shelter deck. In a saloon at the top 
 of the vessel no noise from the engines would 
 be heard, as must be the case in whatever quar- 
 ters could be provided on a passenger aero- 
 plane. 
 
112 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 Yet another point in favor of the airship as 
 a medium for trans-ocean flight is its greater 
 safety. An aeroplane is entirely dependent 
 for sustentation in the air on the proper work- 
 ing of all its motors. Should two motors in 
 some cases even one break down, the result 
 would be a forced descent into the water, with 
 the possibility of total loss on a rough sea, even 
 though the craft be a solid flying boat. In the 
 case of an airship the only result of the failure 
 of any of the motors is reduction of speed. 
 Moreover, a speed of four-fifths of the maxi- 
 mum can still be maintained with half the mo- 
 tors of an airship out of action, so that there is 
 no possibility of a forced descent owing to en- 
 gine breakdown. The sole result of such a mis- 
 hap would be to delay the vessel's arrival. 
 Further, it may be noted that an airship 's ma- 
 chinery can be so arranged as to be readily ac- 
 cessible for repairs and replacement while on 
 a voyage. 
 
 As regards comparative speed the heavy type 
 of aeroplane necessary to carry an economical 
 load for long distances would not be capable of 
 much more than eighty-five to ninety miles an 
 hour. The difference between this and the 
 
TEANSATLANTIC AIR TEAVEL 113 
 
 present airship speed of sixty miles an hour 
 would be reduced by the fact that an aeroplane 
 must land at intermediate stations for fuel re- 
 plenishment. Any slight advantage in speed 
 that such heavier-than-air craft possess will dis- 
 appear with the future production of larger 
 types of dirigible, capable of cruising speeds 
 varying from seventy-five to ninety miles an 
 hour. For the airship service London-New 
 York direct, the approximate time under nor- 
 mal conditions should be fifty hours. For the 
 aeroplane service London-Ireland-Newfound- 
 land-New York the time would be at least forty- 
 six hours. 
 
 Perhaps the most convincing argument in 
 favor of airships as against aeroplanes for 
 trans-ocean aviation is that of comparative cost. 
 All air estimates under present conditions must 
 be very approximate; but I put faith in the 
 carefully prepared calculations of experts of 
 my acquaintance. These go to show that, with 
 the equipment likely to be available during the 
 next few years, a regular and effective air ser- 
 vice between London and New York will need 
 (again emphasizing the factor of approxima- 
 tion) the following capital and rates: 
 
114 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 Aeroplane 
 Airship Service * Service * 
 
 Capital required ......... $13,000,000 $19,300,000 
 
 Passenger rate: 
 
 London-New York _____ $240 $575 
 
 Rate per passenger: 
 
 Mile ................ 8 cents 18 cents 
 
 Mails per ounce : 
 
 London-New York ..... 6^4 cents 15% cents 
 
 These figures for an airship service are based 
 on detailed calculations, of which the more im- 
 portant are : 
 
 Capital Charges: 
 Four airships of 3,500,000 cu. ft. ca- 
 
 pacity, at $2,000,000 each .......... $8,000,000 
 
 Two double airship sheds at $1,500,000 
 
 each ............... ............. 3,000,000 
 
 Land for two sheds and aerodromes at 
 
 $150,000 each ................... 300,000 
 
 Workshops, gas plants, and equipment. 750,000 
 Working capital, including spare parts, 
 
 stores, etc ....................... 850,000 
 
 Wireless equipment ................. 50,000 
 
 Miscellaneous accessories ............ 50,000 
 
 Total capital required $13,000,000 
 
 Annual charge, interest at 10% $1,300,000 
 
 *For airships with gross gas capacity of 3,500,000 cubic 
 feet and total load of 105 tons. 
 Tor machines with total load of 40 tons. 
 
TEANSATLANTIC AIE TEAVEL 115 
 
 Depreciation and Insurance: 
 Airships. 
 
 Useful life, about 3 years. 
 Obsolete value, about $100,000 per ship. 
 Total depreciation per ship, $1,900,000 in three 
 
 years. 
 Average total depreciation per annum for four 
 
 ships for 3 years, $2,535,000. 
 Airship sheds. 
 
 Total annual charge $90,000 
 
 Workshops and plant. 
 
 Depreciation at 5% per annum 17,500 
 
 Total annual charge for depreciation 2,650,000 
 
 Total annual insurance charges on air- 
 ships and plant 617,500 
 
 Annual Establishment Expenses: 
 Salaries of Officers and Crews 
 
 4 airship commanders $20,000 
 
 8 airship officers 30,000 
 
 Total number crew hands (64) 80,000 $130,000 
 
 $130,000 
 Salaries of Establishment 
 
 Management and Staff $25,000 
 
 Workshop hands, storekeepers, 
 etc. (50 at each shed total 
 100) 100,000 $125,000 
 
 Total annual establishment expenses. . . . $255,000 
 Repairs and Maintenance: 
 Sheds and plant, annual charge, say , $25,000 
 
116 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 Repairs and overhaul of airships 100,000 
 
 Total charge $125,000 
 
 Total annual charges on above basis $4,947,500 
 
 Say $5,000,000 
 
 Cost Chargeable per Crossing: 
 
 Taking the total number of crossings per 
 
 year as 200 (London-New York) 
 Proportion of annual charges per cross- 
 ing $25,000 
 
 Petrol per trip, 30 tons at $125 per ton. 3,750 
 
 Oil per trip, 2 tons at $200 per ton 400 
 
 Hydrogen used, 750,000 cu. ft. at $2.50 
 
 per 1,000 cu. ft 1,875 
 
 Cost of food per trip for crew of 19 and 
 
 100 passengers 2,000 
 
 Total charge per crossing (London-New 
 
 York) $33,025 
 
 The weight available for passengers and 
 mails on each airship of the type projected 
 would be fifteen tons. This permits the carry- 
 ing of one hundred and forty passengers and 
 effects, or ten tons of mails and fifty passen- 
 gers. To cover the working costs and interest, 
 passengers would have to be charged $240 per 
 head and mails $2,025 per ton for the voyage 
 London-New York. 
 
 This charge for passengers is already less 
 
TRANSATLANTIC AIE TRAVEL 117 
 
 than that for the more expensive berths on 
 transatlantic liners. Without a doubt, with the 
 coming of cheaper fuel, lower insurance rates 
 and larger airships, it will be reduced eventu- 
 ally to the cheapest rate for first-class passages 
 on sea liners. 
 
 With a fleet of four airships, a service of 
 two trips each way per week is easily possible. 
 For aeroplanes with a total load of forty tons 
 the weight available for passengers and mails 
 is 2.1 tons. If such a craft were to carry the 
 same weekly load as the service of airships 
 thirty tons each way it would be necessary to 
 have fourteen machines continually in commis- 
 sion. Allowing for one hundred per cent, 
 spare craft as standby for repairs and overhaul, 
 twenty-eight aeroplanes would be required. 
 The approximate cost of such a service is : 
 
 Capital Charges: 
 
 28 aeroplanes at $600,000 each $16,750,000 
 
 28 aeroplane sheds at $50,000 each... 1,400,000 
 
 Land for 4 aerodromes 500,000 
 
 Workshops and equipments 100,000 
 
 Spare parts, etc 500,000 
 
 Wireless equipment 50,000 
 
 Total capital required $19,300,000 
 
 Annual charge at 10% interest $1,930,000 
 
118 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 Depreciation and Insurance: 
 Aeroplanes. 
 
 Useful life, say 3 years, as for airships. 
 Obsolete value, say, $30,000 per ma- 
 chine. Average total depreciation 
 
 per annum for 28 machines $5,250,000 
 
 Aeroplane Sheds. 
 
 Total annual charge 60,000 
 
 Workshops and Plant. 
 
 Depreciation at 3% per annum 3,000 
 
 Total annual charge for depreciation 5,314,000 
 
 Total annual insurance charges on ma- 
 chinery and plant 1,152,000 
 
 Annual Establishment Expenses: 
 
 Salaries of 36 pilots at $3,000 per annum $108,000 
 Salaries of 36 engineers at $2,000 per an- 
 num 72,000 
 
 Salaries of 12 stewards at $1,500 per an- 
 num 18,000 
 
 Salaries of establishment 
 
 Management and staff 25,000 
 
 "Workshop hands and storekeepers, etc., 
 
 100 off 100,000 
 
 Total annual establishment expenses . . . $323,000 
 Repairs and Maintenance: 
 
 Sheds and plant, annual charge, say $25,000 
 
 Repairs and overhaul to machines 50,000 
 
 Total . , $75,000 
 
 Total annual charges on above basis. . .$8,792,500 
 
TEANSATLANTIC AIR TEAVEL 119 
 
 Cost chargeable per crossing: 
 Proportion of annual charges per crossing. . $7,250 
 Petrol used per trip, 28 tons at $125 per ton 3,500 
 
 Oil per trip, 2 tons at $200 per ton 400 
 
 Cost of food per trip for 29 passengers and 
 
 crew of seven 500 
 
 $11,650 
 
 It will be seen from the above that the direct run- 
 ning cost is 38%, and the overhead charges 62% of 
 the total cost. 
 
 With a weight of 2.1 tons available on each 
 machine for passengers and mailg twenty pas- 
 sengers might be carried. To cover the work- 
 ing costs and interest they must be charged 
 $575 per head. The rate for mails would be 
 $5,500 per ton. 
 
 Having made clear that the airship is the only 
 means of transatlantic flight on a paying basis, 
 the next point to be considered is the type of 
 dirigible necessary. A discussion at present of 
 the size of the airships that will link Europe and 
 America can be little more substantial than 
 guesswork. The British dirigible R-34, which 
 last year made the famous pioneer voyage be- 
 tween England and the United States, is too 
 small for commercial purposes, with its dispos- 
 
120 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 able lift of twenty-nine tons and its gas capacity 
 of less than two million cubic feet. Experts 
 have predicted the use of airships of five mil- 
 lion and ten million cubic feet capacity, with 
 respective weights of thirty tons and one hun- 
 dred tons available for passengers and freight. 
 
 It is probable, however, that such colossi 
 must await birth for many years, and that a be- 
 ginning will be made with moderate-sized craft 
 of about three million, five hundred thousand 
 cubic feet capacity, similar to those that serve 
 as the basis of the estimates for a service be- 
 tween London and New York. A combination 
 of British interests is planning to send ships of 
 this type all over the world. These can be built 
 immediately, and there are already in existence 
 suitable sheds to house them. Details of their 
 structure and capabilities may be of interest. 
 
 The projected airship of three million, five 
 hundred thousand cubic feet capacity is capable 
 of carrying a useful load of fifteen tons (pas- 
 sengers and mails) for a distance of forty-eight 
 hundred miles in eighty hours, at the normal 
 cruising speed. The total lifting power is one 
 hundred and five tons, and the disposable lift 
 (available for fuel, oil, stores, crew, passengers 
 and freight) is sixty-eight tons. The maximum 
 
LUCKY JIM AND TWINKLETOE, THE MASCOTS 
 
 THE TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHT ENDED WITH A CRASH IN AN IRISH BOO 
 
TEANSATLANTIC AIR TRAVEL 121 
 
 engine power is thirty-five hundred h. p., the 
 maximum speed seventy-five miles an hour. 
 The normal flying speed, using a cruising power 
 of two thousand h. p., is sixty miles an hour. 
 The overall length is eight hundred feet, the 
 maximum diameter and width one hundred feet, 
 and the overall height one hundred and five feet. 
 These particulars and performances are based 
 on present design, and on the results attained 
 with ships of two million cubic feet capacity, 
 now in service. The figures are conservative, 
 and it is probable that a disposable lift greater 
 than that of the specifications will be obtained 
 as a result of improved structural efficiency. 
 
 The passenger accommodation will be such 
 that the air journey can be made in comfort 
 equal to that on a first-class liner of the sea. 
 Apart from their comparatively small dispos- 
 able lift, a main objection to vessels of the R-34 
 type for commercial purposes is that the living 
 quarters are in cars slung from under the mid- 
 dle envelope. In this position they are neces- 
 sarily rather cramped. In the proposed craft 
 of three million, five hundred thousand cubic 
 feet capacity the passengers' quarters are at 
 the top of the vessel. There, they will be roomy 
 and entirely free from the vibration of the en- 
 
122 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 gines. They are reached through an internal 
 corridor across the length of the ship, or by 
 elevator, from the bottom of it. 
 
 The main room is a large saloon lounge fitted 
 with tables and chairs in the style of a Pullman 
 car. Around it are windows, allowing for day- 
 light and for an outlook in every direction. 
 Part of it is fire-proofed, and serves as a smok- 
 ing room. 
 
 Next to, and communicating with, the lounge 
 is the dining saloon. This leads to a serving 
 hatch and electrical cooking apparatus. Elec- 
 trical power is provided by dynamos driven off 
 the main engines. Current for electric lighting 
 and heating of the saloons, cars and sleeping 
 quarters is provided by the same method. 
 
 Sleeping accommodation is in four-berth and 
 two-berth cabins on top of the airship and for- 
 ward of the living saloons. The cabins are of 
 the type and size fitted on ocean-going steam- 
 ers. With them are the usual bathrooms and 
 offices. Other conveniences are an open shelter 
 deck at the vessel's aft end, to enable passen- 
 gers to take the air, and an observation car, fit- 
 ted below the hull and also at the aft end, so 
 that they can observe the land or sea directly 
 below them. 
 
TRANSATLANTIC AIR TRAVEL 123 
 
 No danger from fire need be feared. The ma- 
 chinery installation is carefully insulated from 
 the gas bags, and the quarters are to be ren- 
 dered fire-proof and gas-proof. Moreover, the, 
 amount of weight involved by the passengers' 
 section is so small, compared with the weight 
 of the machinery, fuel, cargo and stores, carried 
 in the lower part of the craft, that the stability 
 of the ship for rolling is unaffected by the novel 
 position of the living quarters. 
 
 The ship's officers will have on the hull, to- 
 wards the forward end, a control and naviga- 
 tion compartment, containing the main controls, 
 navigation instruments, charts, and a cabin for 
 the wireless telegraphy installation. The win- 
 dows of this car give a clear view in every 
 direction. 
 
 Other general specifications are: 
 
 Hull Structure. The shape of the hull is of 
 the most perfect stream-line form within the 
 limitations of constructional requirements. An 
 internal keel corridor, running along the bottom 
 of the hull, contains all petrol and oil tanks and 
 the water ballast. 
 
 Outer Covering. The outer cover is made of 
 special weather-proof fabric, which gives the 
 longest possible life. This fabric is as efficient 
 
124 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 as possible in insulating the gas from change of 
 temperature, and thus avoids great variations 
 in the lift. 
 
 Gasbags. The gas capacity is divided up into 
 gasbags made of suitable rubber-proofed cotton 
 fabric, lined with gold-beaters' skins. Gasbags 
 will be fitted to automatic relief valves and hand 
 control maneuvering valves. 
 
 Machinery Cars. Six machinery cars are 
 provided, each containing one engine installa- 
 tion, with a direct-driven propeller fitted at the 
 aft end. These compartments give the mechan- 
 ics easy access to each of the six engines, and 
 allow them to handle all parts of the machinery. 
 Engine room telegraphs of the electrical type 
 communicate between the forward compartment 
 and each of the machinery cars. 
 
 Whereas the living quarters and the control 
 compartment must be heated by electric radia- 
 tors, arrangements can be made to warm the 
 machinery cars by utilizing the exhaust heat. 
 The transmission gear in two of the wing cars 
 is to be fitted with reversing gear, so that the 
 craft may be driven astern. So that passengers 
 shall not be worried by the usual roar of the 
 exhaust, special silencers will be fitted. The 
 transmission gear is also so arranged that all 
 
TRANSATLANTIC AIE TRAVEL 125 
 
 unnecessary clamor from it may be avoided. 
 
 The engines run on gasoline fuel, but they 
 have devices whereby they can be run alterna- 
 tively on hydrogen gas. They are designed to 
 develop their maximum power at a height of 
 five thousand feet. 
 
 Telephones. Telephone communication links 
 all stations on the airship. 
 
 Landing Gear. Inflated buffer landing bags 
 of a special type are to be fitted underneath the 
 Forward Control Compartment and under- 
 neath the two Aft Machinery Cars. These en- 
 able the airship to alight either on land or on 
 the sea's surface. 
 
 Wireless Telegraphy. A powerful wireless 
 telegraphy installation is to be fitted in the wire- 
 less cabin in the forward control compartment. 
 It will have a range for sending and receiving 
 of at least five thousand miles. 
 
 Crew. Two watches would be required, tak- 
 ing duty in eight-hour shifts. Both must be on 
 duty when the craft leaves or lands. Each 
 watch consists of navigating officer, steersman, 
 elevator man, four engineers and a wireless 
 operator. With the commanding officer and two 
 stewards, whose duties are not regulated by 
 watches, the crew thus numbers nineteen men. 
 
126 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 Although the speed of the airship at maxi- 
 mum power is seventy miles per hour, the cross- 
 ing normally would be made at sixty miles per 
 hour, which only requires two thousand horse 
 power, and is much more economical in fuel. 
 The full speed, however, can be used whenever 
 the ship is obliged to voyage through storm 
 areas or against strong head winds. By the 
 Azores route, the time needed for the journey 
 of thirty-six hundred miles, at a speed of sixty 
 miles per hour, is sixty hours ; but to allow for 
 delays owing to adverse weather, the airship 
 would always carry eighty hours' fuel, allow- 
 ing for a speed of sixty miles per hour. The 
 normal time for the journey from London to 
 New York, via Portugal and the Azores (thirty- 
 six hundred miles) would be, therefore, two and 
 one half days. The normal time for the journey 
 New York to London by the direct route (three 
 thousand miles) would be just over two days. 
 
 The prevailing wind on the direct route is al- 
 most always from West to East, which favors 
 the Eastbound journey, but is unfavorable to 
 the Westbound journey. It is proposed that 
 the crossing Eastward from New York to Lon- 
 don be made by the most direct route, advan- 
 tage thus being taken of the Westerly winds. 
 
TRANSATLANTIC AIR TRAVEL 127 
 
 By making the Westbound journey on the 
 Southerly route, via the Coast of Portugal and 
 the Azores, and on 35' N. parallel of latitude 
 across the Atlantic, and then to New York, the 
 voyage is made in a region where the prevailing 
 Westerly winds of the higher latitudes are ab- 
 sent, and only light winds are encountered, gen- 
 erally of a favorable direction. This route, 
 however, adds about six hundred miles to the 
 distance. With a ship speed of sixty miles per 
 hour, it would be quicker to make the West- 
 bound journey by the direct route if the West- 
 erly wind did not exceed ten miles per hour. If 
 the wind were greater, time would be saved by 
 covering the extra six hundred miles of the 
 Southerly route and dodging the unfavorable 
 air currents. 
 
 With four airships on the Cross-Atlantic air- 
 way, two only would be in service at a time, 
 so that each could lay up during alternate weeks 
 for overhaul and re-fit. As the time of journey 
 between London and New York will vary be- 
 tween fifty to sixty hours, each airship can 
 easily make two crossings or one double journey 
 per week, thus giving a service, with two diri- 
 gibles, of two "sailings" each way per week. 
 
128 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 The average time table might therefore be as 
 follows : 
 
 LEAVE LONDON ARRIVE NEW YORK 
 
 Monday morning Wednesday afternoon or 
 
 evening 
 Thursday morning Saturday afternoon or 
 
 evening 
 
 LEAVE NEW YORK ARRIVE LONDON 
 
 Monday afternoon Thursday morning 
 
 Thursday afternoon Sunday morning. 
 
 From available weather reports, it is consid- 
 ered that crossings are practicable on at least 
 three hundred days in the year. Probably a 
 total of two hundred crossings in the year could 
 be maintained. Until further study of weather 
 conditions supplies a certain knowledge of the 
 best possible altitudes and latitudes, it is likely 
 that a regular service of two crossings each way 
 per week will be maintained only in the months 
 of May to September, and that the crossings 
 from October to April will be irregular, the day 
 of departure being dependent on the weather. 
 
 "Weather difficulties are likely to be much less 
 severe than might be imagined. Bain, hail and 
 snow should have little influence on the naviga- 
 tion of airships. An outer covering that 
 
TRANSATLANTIC AIR TEAVEL 129 
 
 is rainproof and non-absorbent avoids the ab- 
 sorption of water and the consequent increase 
 of weight. Hail and snow cannot adhere to the 
 surface of the craft when in flight, owing to its 
 high speed through the air; and, in any case, 
 the precipitation height being not more than 
 eight thousand feet, they can be avoided by fly- 
 ing above this altitude. 
 
 Fog may give trouble in landing, but during 
 the journey an airship can keep above it. If the 
 terminal were enveloped by fog an arriving 
 ship could pass on to an emergency landing 
 ground away from the fog-belt ; if the mistiness 
 were slight, it could remain in the air until the 
 ground were visible, making use of its margin 
 of fuel beyond the amount necessary for the 
 London-New York flight. Airships in fog may 
 be enabled to find their landing ground by 
 means of captive balloons or kites, and of strong 
 searchlights from the ground. At night, the 
 balloons or kites could carry electric lights, with 
 connections from the aerodrome. 
 
 In any case, fog, rain, hail and snow are 
 nearly always local in their occurrence, and can 
 be avoided by a short deviation from the usual 
 route. Atlantic records indicate that on the 
 main steamship routes fog sufficient to impede 
 
130 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 navigation does not occur on more than about 
 twelve days in the year. 
 
 Wind is a factor that needs more careful 
 study in its relation to transatlantic air naviga- 
 tion. In most cases, unduly strong winds can be 
 dodged by flying on a higher level, or by cruis- 
 ing on a different course, so as to avoid the 
 storm belt. Heavy storms, which are usually 
 of a cyclonic nature, rarely cover an area of 
 more than two hundred miles diameter. More- 
 over, the rate of progression of a cyclonic area 
 is much less than the speed of the air movement. 
 An airship is able to shake off a cyclonic area 
 by a deviation from its course of not more than 
 two hundred miles. Once away from the storm 
 belt, it has no difficulty in keeping clear of it. 
 
 When higher levels of the air have been 
 charted, there is every reason to believe that 
 the known movements of the Atlantic winds 
 will be used to shorten air journeys. There are 
 at sea level, between certain clearly defined 
 latitudes, prevailing winds of -constant direc- 
 tion. At greater heights, also, there is in most 
 latitudes a constant drift which, if charted, 
 might be useful even if winds at sea level were 
 unfavorable. 
 
 Although precise information is available of 
 
TRANSATLANTIC AIE TEAVEL 131 
 
 the prevailing and periodic winds at sea level 
 in various latitudes, very little coordinated 
 work appears to have been done in charting the 
 prevailing and seasonal winds in higher levels 
 of the atmosphere. Observations of the air cur- 
 rents over various localities in the United 
 States, England and Germany have been taken, 
 but very little is known of the winds above the 
 great ocean tracts. There is a great necessity 
 for international research to provide data for 
 predictions of weather conditions in the upper 
 atmosphere and thus enable advantage to be 
 taken of these higher currents. 
 
 At high altitudes, constant winds of from 
 thirty to forty miles per hour are common. If 
 the prevailing directions of those were known to 
 airship navigators, the duration of the journey 
 could be considerably shortened, even if this 
 meant taking an indirect route. It is undesir- 
 able to fly at great heights owing to the low tem- 
 perature ; but with suitable provision for heat- 
 ing there is no reason why flying at ten thou- 
 sand feet should not be common. 
 
 Air currents cannot be charted as exactly as 
 sea currents ; but much valuable work can and 
 will be done by tabulating in detail, for the 
 guidance of air navigators, the tendencies of 
 
132 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 the Atlantic atmospheric drifts. Beliable 
 charts, used in conjunction with directional 
 messages from wireless stations and ships, may 
 make it possible for vessels on the London-New 
 York air service always to avoid troublesome 
 winds, as well as storms and fogs, and to reduce 
 the percentage of risk to a figure not exceeding 
 that relative to sea liners. 
 
 For the rest, the excellence of the most mod- 
 ern engines and the fact that one or two, or even 
 three of them can be temporarily out of action 
 without affecting the airship's stability during 
 a flight, minimize the danger of a breakdown 
 from loss of power. The only remaining ob- 
 stacle to reasonable safety would seem to be in 
 landing on and departing from the terminal 
 during rough weather. This can be overcome 
 by the recently patented Vickers Mooring Gear 
 for Eigid Airships. 
 
 The gear, designed so as to permit an airship 
 to land and remain moored in the open for ex- 
 tended periods in any weather without the use 
 of sheds, consists principally of a tall steel mast 
 or tower, about one hundred and fifty feet in 
 height, with a revolving head to which the craft 
 is rigidly attached by the nose, permitting it to 
 ride clear of the ground and to turn round in 
 
TEANSATLANTIC AIR TEAVEL 133 
 
 accordance with the direction of the wind. It is 
 provided with a hauling-in winch and rope to 
 bring the ship up to the mooring point. 
 
 An elevator, for passengers and goods, runs 
 up the tower from the ground to the plat- 
 form adjoining the nose of the airship. The 
 passengers reach their quarters along a passage 
 through the vessel, and the goods are taken 
 down a runway. An airship moored to this 
 mast can remain unharmed in even the worst 
 weather, and need be taken into a shed only 
 when overhaul and repairs are necessary. 
 
 In discussing the future of transatlantic flight 
 I have confined myself to the projected service 
 between London and New York. There is likely 
 to be another route over the Atlantic London 
 to Eio de Janeiro, via Lisbon and Sierra Leone. 
 Already in London tickets are on sale at $5,000 
 apiece for the first flight from London to Eio. 
 This, of course, is a freak price, which covers 
 the distinction of being in the first airship to 
 travel from England to Brazil. If and when a 
 regular London-Eio service is established, the 
 ordinary passenger rate should be little more 
 than the $240 estimated as the air fare on the 
 London-New York route. 
 
 It may be that the London-New York air ser- 
 
134 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 vice will not arrive for many years. Sooner or 
 later, however, it must arrive ; for science, allied 
 to human enterprise, never neglects a big idea. 
 It may be that, when it does arrive, the struc- 
 ture of the craft and the methods of navigation 
 applied to them will differ in important details 
 from what I have indicated. I make no pre- 
 tense at prophecy, but have merely tried to 
 show how, with the means already at hand, 
 moderately priced air journeys from Europe to 
 America can be made in two to two and a half 
 days, with comfort, safety and a high degree of 
 reliability. Meanwhile, much depends on the 
 funds available for the erection of stations for 
 directional wireless messages, on research into 
 the air currents at various levels above the At- 
 lantic Ocean, on the courage of capitalists in 
 promoting what seems to be a very speculative 
 enterprise, and on new adaptations of old me- 
 chanical inventions. 
 
 Already hundreds of aeroplanes, as time-sav- 
 ing vehicles, are used regularly in many coun- 
 tries for commercial traffic over comparatively 
 short distances the carriage of mails, passen- 
 gers, valuable freight and urgent special jour- 
 neys. When, but not until, the hundreds be- 
 
TRANSATLANTIC AIE TRAVEL 135 
 
 come thousands, and the longer distances are as 
 well served by airships as are the shorter dis- 
 tances by aeroplanes, the world's air age will 
 be in sight. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE AIR AGE 
 
 \ LTHOUGH facts disappointed many over- 
 2\. sanguine expectations that the billions of 
 dollars invested in aeronautics during the war 
 would pay direct dividends already in 1919, the 
 year brought us a long step nearer the age of 
 universal flight. Meantime, commercial avia- 
 tion is still a long way from the stage at which 
 bankers regard its undertakings as good secur- 
 ity for loans. 
 
 Air routes have been opened up in most parts 
 of the world. Captain Boss-Smith has shown, 
 by his magnificent journey from England to 
 Australia in a Vickers-Vimy aeroplane, that 
 long-distance flights over the most out-of-the- 
 way lands and ocean tracts can be made even 
 under the present unsatisfactory conditions, be- 
 fore terminals, landing grounds and wireless 
 stations are provided for air pilots and naviga- 
 tors. The Atlantic has been crossed four times, 
 twice by a dirigible, once by an aeroplane and 
 
 [136 
 
MOUTH ATLAHTIC , X 
 
 HOVTB CHART * / 
 
 CHART OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC SHOWING COURSE OF THE FLIGHT 
 
 THE MEN WHO WORKED WITHOUT GLORY TO MAKE THE FLIGHT 
 POSSIBLE 
 
THE AIE AGE 137 
 
 once by a flying boat. Aeroplanes have flown 
 from England to India. Aircraft have been 
 used for commercial purposes in every part of 
 Western Europe, in most countries of North 
 and South America, in Australia, India, Egypt 
 and South Africa, Important exhibitions of 
 modern aircraft, similar to automobile shows, 
 have been held in London, New York, Paris, 
 Amsterdam and elsewhere. 
 
 To-day all the Great Powers can show com- 
 mercial air services in full operation. Of these 
 the most important are perhaps the triangular 
 airways around London, Paris and Brussels. 
 One French and two British companies operate 
 daily between London and Paris ; British craft 
 travel backwards and forwards between Lon- 
 don and Brussels three times a week; and 
 French machines fly between Paris and Brus- 
 sels every day. 
 
 The London-Paris services have established a 
 magnificent record for efficiency and regularity. 
 Valuable and urgent freight of every kind, in- 
 cluding furs, dresses, jewelry, documents, a 
 bunch of keys, perfume, a grand piano and even 
 a consignment of lobsters, have been delivered 
 in safety. Forty pounds of assorted London 
 newspapers are taken each morning to Paris, 
 
138 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 where they are sold in the streets on the "day of 
 publication instead of next morning, as was the 
 case when they were forwarded by train and 
 packet-boat. Leading London papers, such as 
 the Times, the Telegraph, the Morning Post, the 
 Daily Mail, and the Daily Express, have regu- 
 lar contracts with one of the companies. 
 
 As for passengers, men of every occupation 
 take advantage of the opportunity to travel 
 comfortably from London to Paris in two and 
 one-quarter hours. There is seldom a vacant 
 seat on the larger machines ; although the fare 
 is at present rather high, ranging from $75 to 
 $105 for the single journey. 
 
 Moreover, the accommodation on two of the 
 types of aeroplane now used the Handley- 
 Page W-8 and the Airco DH-18 is more 
 attractive than that of a Pullman car. The 
 Handley-Page W-8 carries fifteen to twenty 
 passengers with personal luggage, or two tons 
 of freight. The Airco DH-18 takes eight pas- 
 sengers, with their personal luggage. 
 
 The past year saw no specially important de- 
 velopments of commercial aviation inside Great 
 Britain itself. A week-end service between 
 Southampton and Havre was inaugurated, and 
 passengers and mails were flown from London 
 
THE AIE AGE 139 
 
 to Leeds. The most important undertaking was 
 perhaps the delivery by air of newspapers. For 
 a time the Manchester edition of the Daily 
 Mail was taken by air for distribution in Car- 
 lisle, Dundee and Aberdeen, the last-named 
 place being reached in three and one-quarter 
 hours instead of the thirteen hours of train 
 journey. Evening newspapers were carried 
 daily during the summer from London to vari- 
 ous resorts on the South coast. 
 
 The London-Leeds undertaking is the only 
 regular service between English towns that has 
 lasted for long. Elsewhere the air rates proved 
 to* be too high, and although there were plenty 
 of aerodromes, the promoters of aerial trans- 
 port companies could not compete with the all- 
 embracing network of railways. During the 
 great railway strike of October, however, valu- 
 able transport work was done by aircraft. For 
 the rest, aeroplanes in England are chartered 
 as aerial taxicabs for special trips, and last 
 summer one or two companies reaped a mod- 
 erate harvest by organizing pleasure trips at 
 the seaside resorts. An airship or two have 
 taken tours around the battlefields of France 
 and Flanders. A few wealthy amateurs have 
 bought aeroplanes for their private use. 
 
140 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 Other European countries France, Italy, 
 Holland, Belgium, Scandinavia, Spain and Por- 
 tugal have made rather less progress in the 
 manufacture and development of aeroplanes or 
 dirigibles; but their use of aircraft for com- 
 mercial purposes was about the same as that of 
 Britain newspaper distribution, some special 
 journeys, and many joyrides. French aviators 
 have opened tentative airways to Morocco, 
 Senegal and Tunis. For regular passenger or 
 goods services in continental Europe the high 
 cost of fuel and accessories makes the rates too 
 high. Also aerodromes and landing grounds 
 are too few; and seldom can aeroplanes com- 
 pete on a large scale with railways over com- 
 paratively short distances. Exceptions are the 
 Paris-Lyons and Madrid-Lisbon airways. 
 
 Germany, throughout what was for her a ter- 
 rible year, made further progress with her 
 Zeppelin dirigibles. A number of return voy- 
 ages were made over the route Berlin-Munich- 
 Vienna-Constantinople. The latest type of Zep- 
 pelin is so efficient that no weather conditions, 
 except a strong cross-hangar wind, prevents the 
 airship Bodensee from making its daily flight of 
 three hundred and ninety miles between Fried- 
 richshafen and Staalsen, thirteen miles from 
 
THE AIE AGE 141 
 
 j 
 
 Berlin. The passenger carrying Zeppelins, 
 which prior to the war provided the only im- 
 portant example of commercial aircraft, claim 
 a remarkable record. They have carried more 
 than one hundred and forty thousand people, 
 and yet not one of the passengers has been 
 killed or injured in an accident ; although some 
 members of the crews lost their lives in the 
 early days of the pioneer Zeppelins. 
 
 The vast distances of the United States offer 
 better opportunities for aeroplane traffic than 
 the comparatively small and closely-railwayed 
 countries of Western Europe. There is no 
 doubt that, had the United States government 
 supported its aircraft companies to the same 
 extent as did the British government, commer- 
 cial aviation in America would have traveled 
 along a smooth road. Even without this sup- 
 port it has made excellent progress. Success- 
 ful regular services are established between Los 
 Angeles and San Diego, and elsewhere in the 
 West, and in the East many passengers have 
 been carried between New York and Atlantic 
 City, and around the coast of Florida. Plans 
 are being laid for various other airways, includ- 
 ing one between Key West and Havana. 
 
 While no continuous service for aerial goods 
 
142 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 traffic exist in the United States, aeroplanes are 
 often chartered for special deliveries. This is 
 particularly the case in the oil countries of 
 Texas and Oklahoma, where newly-grown and 
 important centers are off the beaten railroad 
 track. One company in Oklahoma regularly 
 sends its employees' pay by aeroplane from 
 town to oilfield camp, thus assuring a quick and 
 safe delivery, free from the necessity of armed 
 guards and the danger of hold-ups. Other items 
 worth noting in the United States' aerial his- 
 tory of the past twelve months are that aero- 
 planes have performed survey work and located 
 forest fires, that thirty-two cities have applied 
 for commercial aerodromes for postal, passen- 
 ger and express purposes, and that an advertis- 
 ing agency is soliciting aerial business that will 
 include display work on dirigibles, balloons and 
 aeroplanes, the dropping of pamphlets from the 
 air, and aerial photography. 
 
 Where the United States undoubtedly leads 
 the way is in the ownership and use of privately 
 owned aeroplanes a circumstance partly ex- 
 plained by the great quantities of new money 
 being spent. For a time some of the American 
 manufacturers were months behind their post- 
 war orders, and were selling everything that 
 
THE AIE AGE 143 
 
 could fly. One famous company disposed of 
 hundreds of pleasure craft at $7,500 apiece. 
 Many buyers, impatient of delay, accepted im- 
 mediate delivery of training machines, rather 
 than wait for the pleasure craft. Eeputable 
 agencies dealing in second-hand aeroplanes 
 bought from the United States and Canadian 
 governments, disposed of thousands of ma- 
 chines and could not obtain enough to satisfy 
 all their clients. An interesting development 
 was the idea of community aeroplanes, pur- 
 chased and maintained jointly by small groups 
 of people living in the same residential district. 
 The United States postal authorities have 
 satisfactorily maintained aerial mail services 
 over the route New York- Washington-Cleve- 
 land-Chicago. After some preliminary fiascos 
 these became reliable, besides being very 
 speedy, as compared with train schedules. For 
 June the Washington-New York air mail 
 achieved ninety-nine per cent, efficiency, and the 
 Cleveland-Chicago route one hundred per cent. 
 The latter never missed a day in May and June, 
 and not a single forced landing occurred dur- 
 ing the first seventy days. At the close of 1919 
 the air mails showed a surplus of $19,000 of 
 revenue over working costs, on a basis of two 
 
144 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 cents charge for each ounce of mail matter car- 
 ried. Better results are expected now that 
 specially constructed machines, with freight 
 capacities of one thousand pounds and upward, 
 are ready for use. 
 
 The British dominions and dependencies take 
 a great interest in aeronautics, and last year 
 saw satisfactory beginnings in some of them. 
 In Australia, for example, a passenger and 
 freight service links Sydney and Port Darwin, 
 over a distance of twenty-five hundred miles, 
 with intervening stations. Plans are ready for 
 regular flights from North to South of the con- 
 tinent, and also from East to West, across the 
 difficult country between New South Wales and 
 Victoria on the one hand, and Western Austra- 
 lia on the other. 
 
 Canada has found a highly successful use for 
 aeroplanes in prospecting the Labrador timber 
 country. A group of machines returned from 
 an exploration with valuable photographs and 
 maps of hundreds of thousands of dollars' 
 worth of forest land. Aerial fire patrols, also, 
 have been sent out over the forests. While no 
 important air route for passenger carrying is 
 yet utilized in Canada, there is a certain amount 
 of private flying, and air journeys for business 
 
THE AIE AGE 145 
 
 - 
 
 purposes are common. Plans have been pre- 
 pared for a regular service between Newfound- 
 land and cities on the mainland, thus saving 
 many hours over the time schedules perpetrated 
 by the little Newfoundland railway. 
 
 In the South African Union, where the rail- 
 way system by no means corresponds with the 
 vast distances, many passengers and mails are 
 carried by air from Johannesburg to Pretoria, 
 Maritzburg, Durban and Cape Town. Later, 
 when the services over these routes are better 
 organized, they will doubtless be extended to 
 important centers in Khodesia, the East Africas 
 and what was German South- West Africa. 
 
 Aeroplanes in India take passengers over the 
 route Calcutta-Simla in twelve to fourteen 
 hours of cool roominess, as compared with 
 forty-two hours of stuffy oppressiveness on a 
 train. Other Indian air routes in preparation 
 are Calcutta-Bombay, Calcutta-Darjeeling and 
 Calcutta-Puri. The air fare in India averages 
 about 11 cents a mile. 
 
 Aerodromes and landing grounds are already 
 prepared between Egypt and India, and several 
 machines have made the journey from Cairo to 
 Delhi, via Damascus, the Syrian Desert, Bag- 
 dad, Bandar Abbas and Karachi. Elsewhere 
 
146 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 in the East the Malay Peninsula, Singapore, 
 Borneo, Java and China similar routes are 
 planned. The whole of Eastern Africa, from 
 Cairo to Cape Town, has been mapped out for 
 the use of aircraft, with landing grounds at 
 short intervals. 
 
 So much for accomplishment during the past 
 year. What the future and the near-future 
 have in store for aeronautics is problematical, 
 and any detailed analysis must be conjecture. 
 The general trend of development during the 
 next two years may be forecast, however, with a 
 fair degree of accuracy. 
 
 Anybody who blends sane imagination with 
 some knowledge of the history of aeronautics 
 must realize that what has been achieved is very 
 little in comparison with what can be achieved. 
 It is unnecessary to make trite comparisons 
 with the first stages of steam locomotives or 
 motor cars. 
 
 Yet, it is folly to expect an air age now. Its 
 coming will be delayed by the necessity of slow, 
 painstaking research, and by the fact that in the 
 countries which are encouraging aviation to the 
 greatest degree, capital is no longer fluid and 
 plentiful, and money in substantial sums can- 
 not be risked on magnificent experiments. The 
 
THE AIR AGE 147 
 
 cost of building fleets of dirigibles and hosts of 
 air terminals, for example, must be enormous ; 
 and until it has been demonstrated beyond ques- 
 tion that they will be paying propositions, finan- 
 ciers and investors are unlikely to be interested 
 in their concrete possibilities on a large scale. 
 
 Unless some startling innovation a much 
 cheaper fuel for example, or a successful heli- 
 copter revolutionizes commercial aviation, its 
 near-future is unlikely to stray beyond the ex- 
 tension of airways over distances of about five 
 hundred to two thousand miles. These are 
 likely to be covered mostly by heavier-than-air 
 craft, although, as in Germany, dirigibles will 
 have their place. 
 
 Extension of air traffic is especially probable 
 in industrial and agricultural countries of large 
 area, such as the United States, Canada, Aus- 
 tralia, India and the South American republics. 
 Another projected development with immediate 
 possibilities is the linking of regions that are 
 separated by a comparatively narrow expanse 
 of water. Obvious examples, in addition to 
 Britain and France, are England and Ireland, 
 the Mediterranean coast of France and the 
 Mediterranean coast of Africa, and Florida and 
 Cuba. 
 
148 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 Traffic across the ocean or a great lake offers 
 to air travel the best time-saving inducement. 
 To connect two places separated by one hun- 
 dred and fifty miles of water, an average steam- 
 ship needs ten hours. A passenger on it must 
 spend at least one night away from home, while 
 transacting his business. An air passenger 
 covers the same distance in one and one-half to 
 two hours, and can return on the same day. 
 For such transport the seaplane and the flying 
 boat will have their chance. 
 
 Besides the carriage of passengers, mails and 
 valuable freight, aviation will have many addi- 
 tional functions. Maps may be made and 
 checked with absolute accuracy by means of 
 aerial photography. Another important func- 
 tion of the aeroplane and the aerial camera is 
 to explore and prospect undeveloped, districts. 
 In places remote from the ordinary facilities of 
 civilization aircraft may be used for the dis- 
 covery of fire, flood and lawlessness. Already 
 the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police have 
 captured wrongdoers by means of aeroplane pa- 
 trols. 
 
 Aircraft offer particular advantages as car- 
 riers in regions where the natural obstacles on 
 the ground prohibit railway or road transport. 
 
THE AIR AGE 149 
 
 In Alaska valuable metals and furs are brought 
 to civilization on sleds drawn by dogs, over 
 paths that are circuitous and dangerous. They 
 could be taken in safety, and with an immense 
 saving of time, by aeroplanes fitted with skids 
 suitable for landing on ice and snow. Again, 
 copper is transported from mines in the Andes 
 by llamas, which are slow and must jog over 
 devious tracks. Aeroplanes could make the 
 journey directly and speedily, from mine to 
 coast, without regard to precipice, marsh or 
 forest. 
 
 South America is likely to be a happy hunt- 
 ing-ground for aeronautical pioneers. The 
 mountain-range of the Andes, which for hun- 
 dreds of miles sharply divides America into two 
 parts, gives aviation an incontestable oppor- 
 tunity. The eastern section of South America 
 could be brought days nearer the western sec- 
 tion by high-climbing aircraft, which would pro- 
 vide a pleasant alternative to the roundabout, 
 uncomfortable journeying now necessary. The 
 air mails between the two great commercial 
 centers of South America Eio de Janeiro and 
 Buenos Ayres should also save many days of 
 valuable time. Many owners of ranches and 
 plantations in the Argentine, Uruguay, Para- 
 
150 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 guay and Brazil are buying aeroplanes to bring 
 their isolated, up-country properties in closer 
 contact with the towns. 
 
 Asia and Africa have similar geographical 
 problems, to which air traffic might find a ready 
 solution. Each of these continents has enor- 
 mous areas that, because of the absence of good 
 railways, are either unproductive or much less 
 productive than their resources warrant. A 
 few of many such cases are Turkestan, Central 
 Arabia, parts of China, Siberia, Thibet, and 
 the whole of Central Africa. Most of these are 
 rich in minerals. Meanwhile, aeroplanes have 
 flown between the desert marts of Damascus 
 and Bagdad in eight to ten hours. These cities 
 are not yet linked by railroad and a camel cara- 
 van over the Syrian desert covers the same 
 route in two weeks to a month. The same con- 
 ditions apply to the Gobi desert. i 
 
 So far I have dealt with the future of com- 
 mercial aeronautics almost entirely in terms of 
 heavier-than-air machines. These land planes, 
 seaplanes and flying boats have at present a 
 useful radius of non-stop flight confined to dis- 
 tances of under one thousand miles. The limi- 
 tation must remain until changes in the basic 
 principles of aeroplane construction are so al- 
 
THE AIE AGE 151 
 
 tered as to give a much greater speed in pro- 
 portion to fuel consumption. One such change 
 may be the introduction of wings with variable 
 camber. This, by permitting variations in the 
 angle of incidence, would make possible a quick 
 ascent at a steep inclination, and a very fast for- 
 ward speed once the required height had been 
 attained. The benefits from variable camber 
 could be increased by the introduction of a pro- 
 peller with a variable pitch. Going still further 
 in the same direction, we may find any day that 
 one of the attempts in various countries to de- 
 sign and construct a successful helicopter has 
 matured, producing a machine which, by reason 
 of a very powerful propeller on a moveable 
 shaft that can be inclined in any direction, 
 will not only rise and descend vertically, but 
 also may be made to travel forward at a great 
 speed and to perform such acrobatic tricks as 
 sudden halts, retreats and jumps. 
 
 All this, however, is surmise; and we are 
 faced with the fact that until the design of aero- 
 planes differs radically from its present form, 
 heavier-than-air flying apparatuses are limited 
 as to maximum size by certain structural prin- 
 ciples too complicated for explanation in this 
 non-technical analysis. A further limitation is 
 
152 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 imposed by the space needed by the largest 
 machines for leaving the ground or landing. 
 
 Within these bounds it has been found that 
 the maximum capacity for passengers and 
 freight does not greatly exceed one and one- 
 half to two tons for a non-stop journey of five 
 hundred miles in still air. Lesser distances do 
 not increase the useful load appreciably, but 
 greater distances decrease it ; until for a radius 
 of about twenty-five hundred miles the whole 
 of the disposable lift is needed for fuel, and 
 nothing else may be carried. 
 
 For long journeys over land, therefore, the 
 aeroplane must come to earth for replenishment 
 of fuel every five hundred miles. Even for this 
 distance it cannot take more than one and one- 
 half to two tons beyond the weight of fuel and 
 crew. If heavier loads are to be transported, 
 more machines must be used. Finally there 
 comes a point at which a single airship, carry- 
 ing a heavy freight over five hundred miles, is 
 more economical than several aeroplanes. For 
 non-stop flights of over one thousand miles the 
 same considerations make the airship always 
 more economical than the aeroplane. 
 
 Over the ocean the flying boat can beat the 
 dirigible in time and cost up to five hundred 
 
THE AIE AGE 153 
 
 miles. Even at one thousand miles it is a com- 
 mercial proposition, but it must then have all 
 in its favor. For longer distances the airship 
 has no competitor. It may be deduced that in 
 years to, come, when the world's airways are in 
 general operation, heavier-than-air machines 
 will bring freight to the great airports, there 
 to be transferred to dirigibles and by them car- 
 ried to the earth's uttermost ends. 
 
 The time for this seeming Utopia is not yet, 
 however, although a group of airship interests 
 in England are now planning airship services 
 that may eventually set London within two and 
 a half days of New York, one and a half days 
 of Cairo, four of Bio de Janeiro, five and a half 
 of Cape Town and seven of Australia. But first 
 must come bold expenditure, very careful or- 
 ganization, many-sided research and improved 
 invention. 
 
 Although no claim is made that present-day 
 airships can compete for reliability with rail- 
 road trains and ocean liners, there is no doubt 
 that a sufficient number of passengers are pre- 
 pared to pay relatively higher rates for the 
 great saving in time taken for long distance 
 journeys, particularly over the ocean. 
 
 The demand would be mainly for the car- 
 
154 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 riage of express freight and mail matter and for 
 passenger traffic to serve people who wish to 
 get from center to center in the shortest pos- 
 sible time. Another use for large airships 
 would be the carrying of freight of high intrin- 
 sic value, such as valuable ores, from places 
 otherwise inaccessible, or not provided with 
 other means of direct transport. 
 
 To meet the requirements of various pur- 
 poses for which airships may be utilized, diri- 
 gibles of four kinds are projected : 
 
 First, the airship of moderate size and high 
 speed for carrying express, mails and passen- 
 gers. 
 
 Secondly, the air liner solely for passenger 
 traffic, of a large size and speed. 
 
 Thirdly, the large airship of comparatively 
 slow speed, and great carrying capacity, for 
 general transport. 
 
 Fourthly, the small non-rigid airship for 
 private purchase and upkeep as an aerial yacht. 
 
 The rigid airship is as yet only at the begin- 
 ning of its development, particularly as regards 
 size and carrying capacity. The airship of 
 three million, five hundred thousand cubic feet 
 capacity, for immediate use on the fast passen- 
 ger services, carrying a load of passengers of 
 
Vickers L^-Wey bridge Aeroplane Works.] 
 THE VICKERS AEROPLANE WORKS AT WEYBRIDGE, ENGLAND 
 
 COMFORT CAN BE ENJOYED IN AIR TRAVEL TODAY 
 
THE AIE AGE 155 
 
 fifteen tons for a distance of forty-eight hun- 
 dred miles, might be built immediately, and 
 could be housed in sheds at present available. 
 As the lift and speed efficiency of a rigid air- 
 ship increases rapidly in proportion to the ves- 
 sel's size, it will be advantageous to use the 
 largest airships that can be economically oper- 
 ated. A rigid dirigible able to carry fifty tons 
 of passengers and freight for ten thousand 
 miles at a speed of eighty miles an hour is quite 
 feasible; and the design and construction of 
 such an airship could be undertaken immedi- 
 ately if it were justified by the demand for air 
 transport. 
 
 The ships of three million, five hundred thou- 
 sand cubic feet capacity, which can be housed 
 and flown for commercial purposes as soon as 
 the required terminals and navigational facili- 
 ties are ready, will approximate to those de- 
 scribed as being suitable for a transatlantic 
 service. If standardized for adaptation to all 
 conditions and world routes, they should be 
 capable of a non-stop flight of about eighty 
 hours, at an average speed of sixty miles an 
 hour. 
 
 To prevent wastage and reduce the running 
 costs, several economical devices for dealing 
 
156 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 with height equilibrium are needed. On long 
 flights the greatest problems are maintenance 
 of the airship at a constant height, and avoid- 
 ance of the loss of gas consequent on expansion 
 when the ship rises as it loses weight by the 
 consumption of fuel. Owing to the great varia- 
 tion in temperature between day and night, the 
 ship becomes heavy at night owing to the lower 
 temperature, and light during the day, as a re- 
 sult of the higher temperature. A discharge of 
 ballast at nightfall, and of gas in the morning, 
 is needed to keep it in equilibrium. To obvi- 
 ate discharge of gas, and the necessity of start- 
 ing with a large weight of ballast, it is proposed 
 to run a proportion of the engines on hydrogen 
 fuel, so that the hydrogen can be consumed at 
 such a rate that the loss of lift equals the loss 
 of weight of fuel consumed by the other engines, 
 thus economically using hydrogen which other- 
 wise would be lost through the discharge of the 
 gas valves. 
 
 I make the supposition that hydrogen, and 
 not helium, will be the sustaining gas. For com- 
 mercial aviation it has many advantages, for 
 helium is dearer and rarer, and has about 
 twenty per cent, less lift. Contrary to general 
 belief, a flight in an airship filled with hydrogen, 
 
THE AIE AGE 157 
 
 subject to proper precautions, has no greater 
 fire risk than living near a gas factory. Helium 
 is a necessity only for airships used in war, as, 
 unlike hydrogen, it is not ignited by incendiary 
 bullets from hostile aircraft. The United States 
 has almost a monopoly of the world's quanti- 
 tative supply of helium, which fact should be a 
 tremendous asset in wartime. 
 
 The ballast difficulty can be met by apparatus 
 to condense the water of combustion from the 
 exhaust gases of the engines. Experiments 
 have shown that it is practicable to recover 
 water of slightly greater weight than the gaso- 
 line fuel consumed, thus avoiding any variation 
 in lift due to gasoline consumption. Further, 
 water ballast could be picked up periodically 
 from the sea by descending and taking in water 
 through a pump suspended from a flexible hose, 
 or direct into tanks in the gondolas through sea- 
 valves. 
 
 Still further reduction of running costs may 
 be effected by fuel economy. This would be 
 difficult with internal combustion engines of the 
 type in use at present, for greater thermal ef- 
 ficiency (the ratio between the amount of heat 
 contained in the fuel consumed and the amount 
 of useful work delivered by the engine) neces- 
 
158 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 sitates heavier machinery. The reduction in 
 gasoline consumption is thus offset by a de- 
 crease in the disposable lift. It is probable that 
 a saving on large dirigibles might result from 
 substituting for the internal combustion method 
 of generating power engines that burn cheap 
 oils. Although such engines are much heavier, 
 and although the crude oils weigh a good deal 
 more than gasoline, the difference would be 
 more than covered on long flights, for gasoline 
 is nearly four times dearer than crude oil. 
 Moreover, the weight of oil actually consumed 
 would be about twenty per cent, less than that 
 of the gasoline burned by internal combustion 
 engines over the same distance. 
 
 The solution may be in the employment of 
 steam. For the rather low standards of horse- 
 power on which dirigibles are driven, heavy 
 steam engines of the ordinary type, although 
 much more reliable, would be less economical 
 than internal combustion engines, owing to the 
 latter 's better thermal efficiency. Engineers are 
 attempting to evolve a light type of steam tur- 
 bine that will overcome this drawback. 
 
 Of equal importance to fuel economy is a bet- 
 ter system of airship navigation. This is simi- 
 lar in principle to steamship navigation, but it 
 
THE AIE AGE 159 
 
 is made more complicated by the much greater 
 drift of atmospheric currents. Moreover, air 
 currents can never be charted as exactly as sea 
 currents. An excellent meteorological organ- 
 ization, for reporting motions of the air at given 
 times, is therefore essential. 
 
 When flying over land a navigator can deter- 
 mine the drift of his vessel by taking observa- 
 tion on a suitable fixed point on the earth's sur- 
 face, and adjusting his compass course accord- 
 ingly. It is probable that a gyroscopic compass 
 will be the standard type for dirigibles. Many 
 aviators have experienced difficulties with the 
 magnetic compass on long flights; although it 
 has served me well always, especially on my 
 transatlantic flight as Captain Alcock's naviga- 
 tor. 
 
 Over the sea no fixed point is available, so 
 that the motion of the wind must be checked 
 periodically. One method is for the navigator 
 to make astronomical observations, and from 
 them deduce his position on the chart. Another 
 may be the use of bombs which ignite on the 
 water and give out a dense smoke or a bright 
 light, lasting for several minutes. During the 
 day the navigator sights on the smoke, and dur- 
 ing the night on the light, and thus discovers 
 
160 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 the wind's velocity and direction. An invention 
 that could simplify navigation would be some 
 form of ground-speed meter, showing at a 
 glance the rate of progress over the earth (as 
 distinct from air speed), with either a follow- 
 ing or a contrary wind. 
 
 The most valuable means of airship naviga- 
 tion will be that of directional wireless. Com- 
 munication from two separate stations, which 
 could be either land terminals or stationary 
 ships in the ocean, gives the direction of the 
 transmitted wireless waves and signals to the 
 dirigible its bearings. The position is then laid 
 off on the chart, and the course regulated ac- 
 cordingly. This method was used by the Ger- 
 man Zeppelins during the war. 
 
 Of equal importance to the structural and 
 navigational equipment of airships is the pro- 
 vision of suitable terminals for each route. 
 These would require, among other necessities, 
 an aerodrome of about one mile square ; a double 
 airship shed capable of housing two vessels ; a 
 mooring-out tower; mechanical gear for trans- 
 ferring an airship from the mooring tower to 
 the shed; hydrogen generating and storage 
 plant; repair workshops and stores; meteoro- 
 logical offices ; wireless telegraphy installation ; 
 
THE AIR AGE 161 
 
 electrical night signaling and landing arrange- 
 ments; a station on the local railway from the 
 main part of the city ; a hotel ; a garage ;, and 
 customs and booking offices. 
 
 The aerodrome must be a short distance from 
 the city served by the airship service. If pos- 
 sible it should be near a chemical works where 
 hydrogen could be produced as a by-product. 
 The ground would be preferably on a site re- 
 mote from hills and other topographical fea- 
 tures likely to cause air disturbances. 
 
 The double sheds for housing vessels of the 
 size specified, three million, five hundred thou- 
 sand cubic feet capacity, would have two berths, 
 the minimum dimensions of each of which must 
 be eight hundred and fifty feet long, one hun- 
 dred and fifty feet wide, and one hundred and 
 fifteen feet high. Their contents should in- 
 clude hydrogen filling mains and gear for sling- 
 ing the airships from the roof when deflated for 
 overhaul. Special arrangements would be made 
 for rapid replenishment of the ships with gas, 
 fuel, and water ballast. 
 
 If no industrial supply of hydrogen were pro- 
 vided by a nearby factory, the aerodrome 
 should have a generating plant capable of pro- 
 ducing fifty thousand cubic feet of hydrogen per 
 
162 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 hour. Gasometer storage, with a capacity of 
 about five hundred thousand cubic feet, is also 
 a necessity. 
 
 The meteorological office would issue weather 
 reports for the guidance of airship navigators, 
 and issue navigating instructions to them by 
 means of the wireless installation. The latter 
 should have a range of at least five thousand 
 miles. 
 
 Each aerodrome would be provided with 
 suitable electric light signals to indicate the 
 position of the landing ground to incoming ships 
 at night, as well as landing lights to point the 
 way to the mooring tower. Trolleys running 
 on guide rails, with electrically driven gear, 
 could move a dirigible from the tower to the 
 shed with a minimum of man power. 
 
 A suitable mooring tower constitutes an 
 enormous saving of time and labor. The Vick- 
 ers Patent Mooring Gear, which has been tested 
 satisfactorily, can be worked by half a dozen 
 men; whereas the old method of rope pulling 
 and dragging needs two to four hundred men 
 for landing an airship of three million, five hun- 
 dred thousand cubic feet capacity. 
 
 With existing methods, a rigid airship must 
 be housed in a suitable shed when not in flight. 
 
THE AIR AGE 163 
 
 The danger and difficulty of removing the ship 
 from its shed, and returning it safely thereto 
 after a journey, restricts the number of actual 
 flying days in the year to those on which such 
 operations can be performed without risk of 
 damage, although a modern rigid airship may 
 be in the air with efficiency and perfect safety in 
 practically any state of the weather. The Pat- 
 ent Mooring Gear renders the landing inde- 
 pendent of the weather, while calling for the 
 attendance of only six men to actuate the vari- 
 ous mechanical devices employed. 
 
 In principle, the gear consists of a tall steel 
 mast, of such a height that when the ship is at- 
 tached by the nose it rides on an even keel at a 
 height of upwards of one hundred feet. The 
 mast has at the top a platform or deck. The 
 head of the tower is entirely enclosed and con- 
 tains the necessary apparatus for bringing a 
 vessel to rest. This top portion is designed to 
 rotate, so that a ship, when moored, may always 
 lie directly head to wind. 
 
 Access to the upper deck of the masthead is 
 obtained by means of an elevator, which allows 
 passengers to enter the ship in comfort. Be- 
 hind the deck is a compartment containing Ihe 
 landing gear. This consists of an electrically 
 
164 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 driven winding- engine, fitted with about one 
 thousand feet of the highest quality flexible 
 steel wire rope, together with any automatic 
 coupling. In the compartment are also pipes 
 for the supply to the ship of hydrogen, gasoline, 
 oil and water from the main reservoirs, situated 
 on the ground at the foot of the mast. The 
 vessel itself is fitted with apparatus comple- 
 mentary to that housed in the masthead. From 
 the nose projects the attachment which is 
 gripped by the automatic coupling, while in the 
 bow is situated a storage drum and winch for 
 six hundred feet of wire rope. 
 
 On approaching the aerodrome, the ship wire- 
 lesses its intention to land. The masthead 
 mooring rope is then threaded through the 
 automatic coupling, and paid out until the free 
 end reaches the ground below. This end of the 
 rope is attached by a shackle to the rear of a 
 light car, which is driven away from the mast 
 in the direction from which the ship is ap- 
 proaching, while the rope uncoils from the drum 
 above. When at a distance of seven hundred or 
 eight hundred feet from the foot of the mast 
 the men in charge of the gear unshackle the 
 rope, and spread landing signs that indicate to 
 the airship pilot their position on the ground. 
 
THE AIR AGE 165 
 
 On arrival over the landing party, the ship's 
 bow mooring rope is released, and runs out 
 from the bow attachment under the influence of 
 a weight of several hundred pounds in the form 
 of sandbags. Two men of the party on the 
 ground below take charge of the rope, un- 
 shackle the sandbags, and effect a junction with 
 the mooring mast rope, which is in the hands 
 of the remaining men of the landing party. The 
 rope ends are coupled together by means of a 
 self-locking coupling, which enables the junc- 
 tion to be made within five seconds. 
 
 The dirigible is now connected with the head 
 of the mooring mast by a long length of steel 
 wire rope. On receiving a signal from the 
 ground party, the men in charge of the winding 
 gear in the masthead haul in. As the rope 
 tautens, ballast is discharged from the ship, 
 which is slowly hauled into connection with the 
 automatic coupling already set in the open po- 
 sition to receive the attachment on the nose. 
 When once this coupling is closed, the mooring 
 ropes can be dispensed with, the ship 's rope be- ' 
 ing re-wound on to the storage drum in the 
 bows. 
 
 After landing at the masthead, connection is 
 made with the hydrogen, gasoline, oil, and water 
 
166 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 mains, and fresh gas, fuel and water ballast are 
 placed on board, so that the ship may be kept in 
 trim during the discharge of cargo, and so the 
 embarkation of passengers and stores be ef- 
 fected. 
 
 When all is ready to leave the masthead for 
 flight, the pulling of a lever in the automatic 
 coupling releases the ship. The latter then 
 draws astern and upward, under the influence of 
 the prevailing wind, until it is well clear of the 
 landing station and can proceed on its course. 
 
 The design of this apparatus is such that the 
 landing of an airship is as easy in a wind as 
 in complete calm. "With its help an airship can 
 land in any speed of wind in which it is safe to 
 fly. Should the wind be so high (over 60 or 70 
 miles per hour) that the vessel cannot reach a 
 given mast, it will always be possible to learn 
 by wireless the nearest station at which favor- 
 able conditions allow it to come down. 
 
 The release of the ship from the mast can 
 take place in any wind-speed. Owing to the 
 comparatively local nature of a big storm 
 (storms are known not to cover districts greater 
 than two hundred miles in diameter) the ves- 
 sel, after slipping its moorings, is able to cir- 
 cumnavigate the disturbed area by making a 
 
THE AIE AGE 167 
 
 small initial deviation from the true course. 
 
 A part of the aerodrome should be given over 
 to aeroplanes, used for the bringing of mails 
 and urgent freight from places distant from the 
 terminal. Heavier-than-air machines, in fact, 
 will be the veins leading to the great arteries 
 of the world's air routes, operated by dirigibles. 
 A strong searchlight, for the guidance of aero- 
 plane pilots flying in fog, might be necessary. 
 Given improved landing facilities, means might 
 be found for them to coast down the search- 
 light, if the ground away from it were invis- 
 ible. Another method of delivering mails, be- 
 fore leaving for a landing ground away from 
 the fog belt, is to drop them, attached to a para- 
 chute. When the package reaches earth it can 
 be located by an electric bell, which rings on im- 
 pact and continues ringing. 
 
 The mail services of to-day, by railway and 
 boat, can in many cases be greatly speeded up 
 if part of a long journey be covered by aero- 
 plane. A good instance is the route between 
 Great Britain and South America. If a mer- 
 chant in London posts three letters to cor- 
 respondents in New York, Bio de Janeiro and 
 Buenos Ayres respectively, he may have a reply, 
 from New York before the Brazil man has had 
 
168 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 time to read his communication, and four or 
 five days before the man in the Argentine has 
 received his. An aerial short cut to Dakar 
 already several machines have flown there from 
 Paris would lessen by six or seven days the 
 transit time for mailbags sent from England to 
 Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Ayres. 
 
 As long as the internal combustion engine is 
 used in aeronautics, and mechanical failure is 
 always a possibility to be reckoned with, the 
 cost of maintaining aeroplane routes, even if 
 they be only auxiliary to dirigible or steamship 
 services, will be greatly swollen by the need of 
 maintaining frequent landing grounds. Every 
 ten miles would be an ideal interval for them; 
 every twenty miles is a minimum for first-rate 
 insurance against risk. From a height of five 
 thousand feet, the probable average minimum 
 elevation for commercial air navigation, a pilot 
 can without difficulty cover a distance of five 
 miles while planing down without the aid of 
 motors. From ten thousand feet he can cover 
 ten miles under the same conditions; so that 
 at this height he would never be outside glid- 
 ing distance of landing grounds prepared every 
 twenty miles. 
 
 Given these safeguards, the element of risk 
 
THE AIE AGE 169 
 
 in present day aviation is no greater than it 
 was in the early days of railways and steam- 
 boats; and little, if any, greater than in mod- 
 ern motoring. Many people, possessing only a 
 newspaper acquaintance with aerial affairs, 
 still believe mechanical flight to be perilous. 
 In exactly the same manner men shunned the 
 infant steamboat, railway train, bicycle and 
 motor-car. Yet, proportionately, the aeroplane 
 and the dirigible are responsible for no more 
 deaths than the train or the automobile. The 
 seeming discrepancy is because so much atten- 
 tion is paid to air fatalities. Every week-end 
 motor-car accidents cause scores of fatalities. 
 Yet the death in harness of a single aviator 
 produces more comment than all of these. 
 Partly, no doubt, the intense horror with which 
 humanity regards death by falling from a great 
 height is due to its novelty among human ex- 
 periences. 
 
 The airways of the world offer some pretty 
 problems of international politics, involving 
 commerce, rights of landing, customs duties, air 
 smuggling, air traffic regulations and air laws. 
 All these were dealt with in the International 
 Aerial Commission at the Peace Conference, 
 which agreed upon the following principles : 
 
170 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 1. Recognition of the greatest possible free- 
 dom of aerial navigation, as far as that freedom 
 of navigation is reconcilable with the principle 
 of the sovereignty of each state in the air above 
 its territory, with the security of the state af- 
 fected, and in conformity with a strict enforce- 
 ment of safety regulations. 
 
 2. Regulation under obligatory permits for 
 pilots and other aeronautical personnel to be 
 recognized mutually by the signatory states. 
 
 3. The establishment of international air 
 rules, including signals, lights, methods of 
 avoiding collisions and regulations for landing. 
 
 4. The recognition of the special treatment of 
 army, navy and state machines when on duty 
 for the state. 
 
 5. Recognition of the right to utilize all pub- 
 lic aerodromes in other states, under a charge 
 to be uniform for the aircraft of all nations, in- 
 cluding the home nation. 
 
 6. Recognition of the right of crossing one 
 country to another, with the privilege of land- 
 ing, but under the reservation of the right of 
 the state crossed to apply its local rules, and 
 if necessary to force the landing of the visiting 
 machines on signal. 
 
 7. Recognition of the principle of mutual in- 
 
THE AIR AGE 171 
 
 demnity to cover damages to persons or prop- 
 erty due to aircraft the state of the offending 
 machine to make reparation and then to recoup 
 itself in any way it sees fit. 
 
 8. Recognition of the necessity of a perma- 
 nent international aeronautical commission, in 
 order to keep the development of the legal side 
 of aviation abreast of the development of the 
 science itself. 
 
 9. Recognition of the obligation of each state 
 to regulate its internal legislation along the 
 lines of the clauses of the international agree- 
 ment. 
 
 The main airways of the world are still hypo- 
 thetical, but some of their main terminals, in 
 relation to the centers of industry and popula- 
 tion and the trade routes, will certainly be Lon- 
 don, New York, San Francisco, Tokio, Delhi, 
 Colombo, Cairo, Cape Town, and Rio de Ja- 
 neiro. In particular London, New York, Cairo 
 and Rio de Janeiro are fitted to be great junc- 
 tions for air traffic. London is the logical dis- 
 tribution center for passengers and freight 
 from North and South America bound for Con- 
 tinental Europe or the East. The New York 
 terminal should link the transatlantic airways 
 from Europe with the airways of North Amer- 
 
172 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 ica. Eio de Janeiro should perform the same 
 function for South America, and also be the 
 center of seaplane traffic up the Amazon. Cairo 
 is destined to be the junction for the air routes 
 between Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. 
 From it dirigibles or aeroplanes may pass to 
 India (via Damascus and Bagdad), to Cape 
 Town (via Nairobi), to Australia (via Aden and 
 Colombo, or Delhi and Singapore), and to Lon- 
 don (via Algiers or some point in Southern 
 Italy). Cairo is also likely to be an important 
 base for seaplanes and flying boats plying up 
 and down the tremendous waterways of the Nile 
 and the Great Lakes. 
 
 The British Empire is especially bound up 
 with the airways of the future. The geograph- 
 ical position of the Briton forces him to think 
 in Imperial terms. In 1776 Great Britain lost 
 her most valuable colonies largely because the 
 Atlantic Ocean made adequate representation 
 of the colonial interest physically impossible. 
 Since that day cables, steamships and the wire- 
 less have helped to overcome the distances that 
 separate the overseas dominions from the Brit- 
 ish Isles. Aircraft and well-organized British 
 air routes should be the greatest step in the con- 
 solidation of the far-flung Empire. 
 
THE AIR AGE 173 
 
 To this end British official experts mapped 
 out the stages of the aerial route to Australia 
 from Egypt, via Damascus, Bagdad, Karachi, 
 Delhi, Calcutta, Singapore and Sumatra. Al- 
 though the successive landing grounds were not 
 ready in time for Captain Ross-Smith's mag- 
 nificent flight from England to Australia, the 
 information and advice collected by the official 
 surveyors were of inestimable value to him. It 
 is noteworthy that nearly the whole of the pro- 
 posed airway from Egypt to Australia is over 
 British territory or the sea. 
 
 The same is true of the proposed route from 
 Cairo to Cape Town. This was planned out 
 very carefully by three parties of military avia- 
 tors, who covered the whole length of civilized 
 and uncivilized Africa in their search for land- 
 ing grounds. The absorption of German East 
 Africa by the South African Union makes an 
 all British corridor for aircraft from Cairo to 
 Cape Town, by way of Egypt, the Sudan, Brit- 
 ish East Africa, British Central Africa, German 
 East Africa, Rhodesia, the Transvaal and Cape 
 Colony. There is an alternative water route 
 over the Nile, the Great Lakes, the Zambezi 
 River and along the coast to Cape Town. Be- 
 ing the junction of the airways to India, Aus- 
 
174 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 tralia and South Africa, Egypt is destined to 
 be the nerve center of an air-linked British Em- 
 pire, just as the Suez Canal has been its jugular 
 vein. 
 
 But the laying out of great air routes to the 
 East and South does not complete Britain's 
 plans. She must connect them up with London 
 a task which is much more complicated from 
 the standpoint of high politics, because it in- 
 volves routes over the territory of other nations. 
 An aeroplane can fly from London to Cairo via 
 Gibraltar without passing over foreign terri- 
 tory or foreign territorial waters. But the air 
 route would be long and the aerodrome bases 
 great distances apart, in comparison with the 
 proposed land route of two thousand miles 
 across France, down the length of Italy and 
 Greece and across the Mediterranean to Cairo. 
 Such a route necessitates an entente cordiale 
 with the nations of Western Europe, and is one 
 of the reasons why Great Britain can never con- 
 template easily a loosening of the bonds that 
 now hold together the Allies of Western Eu- 
 rope. 
 
 The French, for their part, are also thinking 
 of air routes in terms of their colonial posses- 
 sions. For them the international situation is 
 
THE AIR AGE 175 
 
 much the same as for the London-Cairo airway. 
 French pilots need not fly over foreign territory 
 to Algiers or Morocco. A long flight across the 
 Mediterranean, or skirting the west coast of 
 Spain, is a possibility. But Spanish territory 
 is the logical corridor from France to Africa. 
 It was over Spain that a trip was made from 
 Toulouse to Casablanca, the eighteen hundred 
 miles being covered in eleven hours of actual 
 flying. The ordinary postal service takes six 
 days. For direct aerial communication with 
 Syria, also, France must have an entente with 
 several intervening countries. 
 
 Not only will the aeroplane connect France 
 more closely with Africa; it will likewise bind 
 together the various sections of France 's colo- 
 nial territory in Africa, The Sahara Desert 
 will become a less formidable obstacle to in- 
 tercommunication. French pilots have made 
 experimental flights over parts of the Sahara in 
 a search for the best routes and landing places, 
 as links in communication between Morocco and 
 the Ivory Coast. 
 
 When technical progress and perfected or- 
 ganization place the world's main airways in 
 operation, there will be enormous saving of 
 time on the longer routes. The estimated time 
 
176 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 for transatlantic flights from London to New 
 York by the three million, five hundred thou- 
 sand cubic feet dirigibles is two to two and one- 
 half days, Other likely figures for various 
 services are as follows: 
 
 London to India and Australia: 
 
 London to Cairo 2,050 miles 
 
 Cairo to Colombo (via Aden) 3,400 miles 
 
 Colombo to Perth (Australia) 3,150 miles 
 
 At an average speed of sixty miles per hour, 
 and with a stop of twelve hours at each station 
 for re-fueling, the times taken would be 
 
 London to Cairo 34 hours, or l 1 /^ days 
 
 London to Colombo 34 + 12 + 58 hours = 104 
 
 hours, or 4^/ 2 days 
 
 By train and mail steamer, the journey to 
 Ceylon at present takes fifteen days, and to Aus- 
 tralia over thirty days. 
 
 Cairo to Cape Town: 
 
 Cairo to British East Africa (Nairobi) 
 
 2,100 miles 35 hours 
 
 Nairobi to Cape Town 2,200 miles 37 hours 
 
 Total time from Cairo to Cape Town, allowing 
 
 for a break of twelve hours at Nairobi. . .54 hours 
 
 Owing to variation in the weather conditions, 
 latitude in estimating the time of arrival must 
 
THE AIR AGE 177 
 
 be permitted in each case. Where, however, 
 there is a saving of several days in comparison 
 with steamship travel, the difference of a few 
 hours matters little. 
 
 In years to come, with the development 
 of airship transport to the most distant cen- 
 ters of the world, it is conceivable that no im- 
 portant city will be further from London than 
 ten days' journey. The following table, as ap- 
 plied to a London terminal, is by no means fan- 
 tastic : 
 
 To New York 2-2% days 
 
 1 ' San Francisco 4% days 
 
 " Cairo 1% days 
 
 " Colombo 4% days 
 
 " Perth 7 days 
 
 " Nairobi 3% days 
 
 " Cape Town 5% days 
 
 * * Rio de Janeiro 4 days 
 
 As the maximum distance of direct flight be- 
 tween intermediate stations is not more than 
 three thousand, five hundred miles, it would be 
 practicable to run these services with the size 
 of airship described three million, five hundred 
 thousand cubic feet capacity. The cost of op- 
 eration for regular services would be approxi- 
 mately as for the Atlantic service passengers 
 
178 FLYING THE ATLANTIC 
 
 at the rate of eight cents per mile, and mails at 
 the rate of six cents per ounce. With the de- 
 velopment of larger airships, carrying greater 
 loads, the cost should be more economical. 
 
 I admit that such a near-Utopia of an air age 
 may not be seen by the present decade, and that 
 its attainment demands great results from sci- 
 ence, statesmanship and business organization. 
 Yet even to come within sight of world inter- 
 communication as rapid as is indicated by the 
 signposts of present-day aeronautics would 
 make possible an era of greater prosperity, 
 peace and friendliness. If people, their writ- 
 ten communications and their goods can be 
 taken from continent to continent as quickly, or 
 nearly as quickly, as a cablegram, the twin evils 
 of state parochialism and international misun- 
 derstanding will less often be dragged from the 
 cupboard in which the world's racial skeletons 
 are kept. The airship and the aeroplane may 
 well become a greater influence towards inter- 
 nationalization than the signed covenant of the 
 league of nations. 
 
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