CHAPTER II
FUTURE SURPRISES OF THE AEROPLANE–HUNTING, TRAVEL, MAIL,
WIRELESS, LIFE-SAVING, AND OTHER SPECIAL USES
Many will be the future uses of the aeroplane; special uses not necessarily dependent on speed.
Sportsmen are likely to find in the aeroplane, especially in the hydro, an admirable vehicle for hunting, aside from their interest in its racing capacity. Already there is pending in the California legislature a bill designed to regulate shooting from an aeroplane, intended as an addition to the California aeroplane traffic regulations, described later. While this bill is probably intended as more or less of a joke, it has been thoroughly demonstrated that it is possible to shoot wild ducks from an aeroplane. Hubert Latham proved this fact in his Antoinette monoplane at Los Angeles.
Latham flew from Dominguez Field to the Bolsa Chica Gun Club on the shore of the Pacific, ten miles away, and chased wild ducks for thirty minutes, finally bagging one. The sportsmen of California thought they saw in this feat of Latham's the near approach of a time when the aeroplane would be utilised for exterminating game, and seemed much exercised over the incident. The newspapers saw only the humour of the incident, however, and the sportsmen were quickly reassured.
Latham, not content with this achievement and thirsting for new thrills, said that he was going to fly up into the Rocky Mountains and shoot grizzly bears. His last undertaking was to take his aeroplane with him to the Congo where he went to hunt big game and to use the aeroplane in this novel and sensational sport. Strange to relate, after having braved all the dangers of the air, he met his fate by being gored to death by a wounded and infuriated wild buffalo, in July, 1912.
Some ranchers out west have clubbed together to purchase an aeroplane for hunting wolves which have been killing their cattle, and four aviators flew over San Fernando Valley in California recently, eagerly watching the underbrush for a sight of two fugitive bandits who for two days had eluded a large sheriff's posse after attempting to hold up a railway agent and mortally wounding a deputy at San Fernando. Each aviator was sworn in as a deputy and carried with him an observer provided with a powerful field glass. They reported that they could see objects very clearly below.
In scouring the hills one of the observers thought that he had surely spotted his man and the plane was dipped abruptly toward the ground. On returning he said, "It was a dog I saw and I'll bet that dog is running yet."
I have heard on the best of authority that an aviator in this country chased a buzzard until it fell exhausted and that in Europe this same game was played by a German aviator upon a large stork.
AERIAL BIRD-NETTING
On my practice flights in a hydroaeroplane over San Diego Bay, I noticed on several occasions that pelicans and sea gulls and even wild ducks got in my path, and I was sometimes obliged to change my course in order to avoid the slow-flying fowl. It occurred to me that with a net affixed to the forward part of the planes it would have been an easy matter to run down and bag a pelican, and possibly a sea gull. The ducks are too quick to be caught by an aeroplane, as yet. Chasing ducks in an aeroplane and catching them in a net would be about as thrilling a sport as one can imagine. Perhaps when the killing of wild fowl with guns shall have palled on sportsmen, we shall see the method of "netting" them with an aeroplane come into use. Something after the manner of scientists who hunt the lepidoptera.
Mrs. Lillian Janeway Platt Atwater, of New York, while taking instructions in the operation of the hydroaeroplane at North Island, early in 1912, tried my new method of catching seabirds. She asked Lieut. J. W. McClaskey, instructor at the Curtiss school, to take out the hydroaeroplane, with her as a passenger, and attempt to catch a pelican or gull with a net. The instructor promptly agreed and for almost half an hour the big hydroaeroplane with Lieut. McClaskey and Mrs. Atwater chased pelicans and sea gulls up and down the bay. They discontinued the hunt only when a large pelican barely escaped becoming entangled in the propeller, which would have smashed it and possibly caused an accident. On another occasion Mrs. Atwater did actually succeed in catching a gull while flying with her husband.
Shooting rabbits from an aeroplane would be comparatively easy. I came to this conclusion while flying over North Island, which is covered with weeds and sagebrush for the most part, with hundreds of jack-rabbits and cottontails living there. At first these rabbits were terribly frightened by the aeroplane and ran in all directions to escape. They soon became used to the sight, however, and would watch the aeroplane with a great deal of curiosity. One of the big jack-rabbits, either from fright or curiosity, waited too long to get out of the way of Harry Harkness in his Antoinette, when he made a rather abrupt descent, and it was cut in two by the propeller.
MAIL-CARRYING
One of the most important special uses to which the aeroplane is
## particularly adapted is for carrying the mail. Royal mail was first
actually handled at Allahabad in India last summer, during which over 6,000 letters were transferred. This service was planned to prove the great value of an aeroplane post during war time to a besieged town. A mail route via aeroplane was established on trial between London and Windsor in England, which carried several tons of mail matter. And in this country last fall Postmaster-General Frank H. Hitchcock and Captain Paul Beck, U. S. A., inaugurated the first aerial postal service regularly established in the United States, over a route between the Aero Club of America's flying grounds at Nassau Boulevard on Long Island, and Mineola, L. I. A picturesque account of this little episode is given by Frank O'Malley, who wrote:
"The flying events of the day at the Nassau Boulevard aviation meet came to an end in a hubbub of joyousness among 1,500 spectators on the grounds.
"Lieutenant Milling had busted the American record and was still flying for the world's record when a tall, youngish man decked out in a blue serge suit, and a gray cap, climbed into the Curtiss machine driven by Captain Paul Beck of the army.
"'The Hon. Frank H. Hitchcock, Postmaster-Gen'rul of the whole United States,' the megaphone man began to holler,'will now fly to Mineola with Captain Beck to deliver the mail. Postmaster-Gen'rul Hitchcock of the United States will carry the mail-bag on his knees and drop the bag at Mineola into a circle in which will be the Postmaster-Gen'rul of I mean the Postmaster of Mineola. Ladies and gentlemen, Postmaster-Gen'rul Hitchcock.' (Much applause.)
"Mr. Hitchcock wasn't around to hear all this and so didn't lift his gray cap in acknowledgment. He was far out on the field with Attorney-General Wickersham and Captain Beck. Post Office Inspector Doyle handed the Postmaster-General a mail bag containing one thousand, four hundred and forty postcards and one hundred and sixty-two letters, and Captain Beck and the Postmaster-General hiked off in a northerly direction for the high spots,
"The Curtiss circled three-quarters of the field and then climbed rapidly until it was three hundred or four hundred feet above the south end of the track. Ovington, who had also got under way with a second bag of mail in his monoplane, shot up into the same acre of sky occupied by Captain Beck and Mr. Hitchcock and shot eastward as a track finder for Captain Beck's machine.
"The field could see the two machines almost all the time during the cross-country flight. The way the biplane with a passenger pegged along just behind the monoplane with only a pilot aboard was a caution. Over a big white circle painted on the Mineola real estate, Ovington from his monoplane and the Postmaster-General from Captain Beck's machine, plumped down to Mineola the two pouches and hit within the circle in each case.
"The biplane teetered slightly as the mail bag was released and then the two machines made a circle and spun back to where the crowd stood on tiptoe peering over fences at Nassau Boulevard.
"'I was up once before,' the Postmaster-General said after he had shaken hands all around upon his return to earth.' That was at Baltimore with Count de Lesseps in his Bleriot. The biplane to-day I found was much steadier.
"'Fly again? I hope so, because I like the experience very much. My trip to-day was especially enjoyable because at Baltimore I could see very little of the ground below, owing to the closed-in construction of a monoplane. To-day from the biplane all this end of Long Island was stretched out to be looked at.
[Illustration: CARRYING THE MAIL–NASSAU BOULEVARD, 1911]
Right to left: Attorney-general Wickersham, Captain Paul Beck, Postmaster-General Hitchcock, with mail-bag.
[Illustration: STUDENTS OF AERIAL WARFARE]
Beck, St,. Henry, and Curtiss studying a flight by Kelley
Military pupils. Left to right: McClaskey, Curtiss, Beck, Towers, Ellyson
"'Yes, air-routes are all right for practical mail-carrying,' Mr. Hitchcock continued, in answer to a question.'I mean,' he smiled,'the air is all right, but the vehicles must continue toward perfection. But even with the aeroplane as it is now it would be very useful to us,
## particularly in some parts of the country.
PRACTICAL VALUE TO-DAY FOR MAIL-CARRYING
"'Take along the Colorado River in the canon district of Yuma, for instance, or in parts of Alaska. Along the Colorado there are places where detours of fifty miles out of the way are made in mail routes to get to a bridge. An aeroplane could hop right across the river.
"'The expensiveness of maintaining an aeroplane service is an obstacle, but that will diminish. I would like to see the Post Office Department do something definite in this direction for the good effect it would have in stimulating the development of the machine. Fliers at present have many lean months between the meets.'"
Ever since Postmaster-General Hitchcock made this trip he has been an enthusiastic advocate of the aeroplane as a means of transporting mail over difficult routes. During the next few months he granted permission to a number of aviators, including Ovington, Milling, Arnold, Robinson, Lincoln Beachey, Charles F. Walsh, Beckwith Havens, Charles C. Witmer, and Eugene Godet, all of whom fly Curtiss machines, to act as special mail carriers, and these men have carried mail bags in similar exhibiting tests from aviation fields to points near the Post Office. Among the cities where such tests have been officially made are Rochester, N. Y.; Dubuque, Iowa; Fort Smith, Ark.; Temple and Houston, Texas; Atlanta, Savannah, Columbia, and Rome, Ga.; and Spartanburg and Salisbury, N. C.
The record for long-distance mail carrying is held by Hugh Robinson, who took a bag of mail at Minneapolis, Minn., and carried it on his long flight down the Mississippi River in a hydroaeroplane as far as Rock Island, Ill. The distance covered by Robinson was 375 miles on this trip, and letters and first class mail matter were put off and taken on at Winona, Minn.; Prairie du Chien, Wis.; Dubuque and Clinton, Iowa; and Rock Island, Ill.
Of course the aeroplane is, at present, best suited for carrying mail in localities where the weather is equable; in such places it offers a speedy, direct, and dependable service. These numerous experiments in mail-carrying by aeroplane have brought about the urging of an appropriation by Congress for this purpose. The second Assistant Postmaster-General, who is in charge of mail transportation, in a report that has just been made public at the time I am writing this, asks for $50,000 for the transportation of mails by aeroplane. Part of this fund may be devoted to mail routes in the Alaskan interior. One government has actively entered on practical mail-carrying by aeroplane. Belgium has voted a fund to establish routes across seven hundred miles of impenetrable Congo jungle.
WIRELESS
The aeroplane is ideal for use with wireless telegraphy and the combination of the aeroplane's ability to obtain information and the ability to transmit it by wireless will be one of its most important future developments in practical usefulness.
Wireless experiments do not involve any great problem, as messages have been successfully transmitted from an aeroplane to land stations many times. The receiving of a wireless message by an operator in an aeroplane from a land station or from a warship involves considerable difficulty because of the noise and vibration of the motor, but it is expected, however, that this will be soon entirely overcome and that it will be possible to transmit or receive telegrams in an aeroplane to or from distant points with the same ease and accuracy that it is now seen on the ground or on the water.
The telegraph seems to be the companion of the locomotive, the telephone of the automobile, and now wireless has its side-partner in the aeroplane!
Important experiments are being carried on by the signal corps of every army with various methods of communication with an aeroplane in flight and by the aviator with those on the ground. They have tried an instrument for making smoke signals, with large and small puffs, reviving a method used by the American Indians in the pioneer days and quite familiar to all boys who have played Indian in the country.
FORESTRY SURVEY
The supervisor of the Selway forest, consisting of 1,600,000 acres, which was formerly part of the Nez Perces reserve in Idaho, predicts that aeroplanes and wireless telegraphy will be important factors in forest fire prevention before a far distant date. He believes that a man in an aeroplane could do more accurate and extensive survey work in the forests of the Pacific slope country in a few hours when forest fires are raging than is usually accomplished by twenty rangers in a week. With wireless stations installed on peaks in the chief danger zones, he believed it would be a comparatively easy task to assemble men and apparatus to check and extinguish the flames and prevent fires from spreading.
MOVING PICTURES
Aeroplanes have already been used for purposes of photography and moving picture machines have also been attached to them and some remarkable pictures taken. One of the large moving picture magnates said, "Now, Mr. Curtiss, if you can take a series of moving pictures showing a trip across the United States, I do not care if it takes you a year to get it and even though it is taken piecemeal, or one section at a time over the main cities on the way, I will pay you well for it. We will take the film, trim it down, and run it through at lightning speed taking our audience from New York to San Francisco 'as the bird flies' in twenty minutes."
The value of moving pictures taken from above and from a swift low-flying machine is apparent at a glance. The contour of the country is shown as in no other way, and now that warfare is going to have a quite different point of view, even a different range of action, it is important that schools, and especially military schools, should be made familiar with this aspect of the land. The flat map is superseded by such a panoramic view. In time of actual war, moving pictures taken in this way will have a unique value.
In photographing reviews of troops, public celebrations, lines of battleships, or any scenes that require a panoramic representation, the aeroplane has been used with success. It can also be of great service in photographing animals and rare birds which may inhabit regions otherwise inaccessible. With the advance of nature study and the steady development of "camera hunting," the aeroplane will be used more and more for such purposes as well as for photographing mountain tops and other insurmountable or dangerous places to reach.
Robert G. Fowler has had some surprisingly good motion pictures taken from his machine during his cross-continent flight, by an operator sitting beside him, his camera placed on a temporary stand.
Mr. Frank W. Coffyn took a most interesting series of moving pictures of New York City from the water front, portraying the Battery, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the famous Statue of Liberty in the harbour. Mr. Coffyn used a hydroaeroplane for this purpose, which made his flights comparatively safe. In fact, such a feat would have been well nigh impossible for a machine that could not land on the water, for there are no places where an aeroplane can land in the business section of New York unless the aviator should land on one of the large buildings, and then he would have great difficulty in getting away again.[6]
Great care has to be exercised to keep the machine on an even keel, so that the operator can manage the roll of film.
LIFE-SAVING
Another branch of the government service that will no doubt be greatly aided by aeroplanes are the Life Saving Stations along the coast, whose regular equipment might well include an aeroplane to fly to wrecks and carry a line from shore to ship when the high seas make it impossible to launch a lifeboat. It might be impracticable to go out during the period of severe storm, but there is always a calm in the air after a storm, as well as the proverbial calm before one, while the high seas in which a lifeboat cannot live are still running. The aeroplane or the hydroaeroplane, dashing through the air, even through high wind, would bring the line that means life to helpless men clinging to a wreck.
I am awaiting with earnest expectation the first time that an aeroplane actually saves a life; when that takes place, it will have conquered the heart of the people as well as fascinated its intellect, aroused its awe, or compelled its admiration. The first period of enthusiastic acceptance of the new machine has been succeeded in the mind of the general non-flying public by an admiration not at all like affection.
Realising how many lives have been given to its development, feeling that the aviator takes, as they call it, "his life in his hands," the crowd at a flying-meet feels with all its great and growing interest, an attraction in which figures not a little fear and distrust. The first time that an aeroplane saves a life as it can and will do many times it will have begun to conquer this public distrust. That is why the exploit of the hydroaeroplane already described, in coming first to the aid of the aviator in the water, had a value far greater than its apparent importance.[7]
EXPLORING AND ESCAPE FROM DANGER
The aeroplane will find one of its important uses not only in taking pictures of inaccessible spots, but also in crossing otherwise impassable places, especially in times of pressing need when fire, earthquake, volcanic eruptions that leave beds of molten lava, explosions, pestilences, floods, or other devastations occur, and quick assistance is necessary.
In engineering and mining matters, the aeroplane may be of assistance in exploring the best places to locate the route for railroads through mountain passes and into such places as "Death Valley" where the salt deposits are located.
TRAVEL
An important field in the sporting world of aviation of course will be carrying passengers and initiating novices into the mysteries of the air lanes and into the pleasures of aerial touring.
In this delightful method of travel the panorama below is equal to any of the magnificent landscapes which may be seen from high mountains and besides, the view is attended by most delicious thrills and sensations, and when a good pilot is in control of the machine the passenger is sure of a pastime absolutely unequalled for mere joy, aside from further use or benefit it may have.
While travelling over torrid places like deserts and arid wastes, as well as burning prairies, the aviator can fly high where the air is cool and clear and escape the great humidity and the deadly alkali dust.
As for mountain climbing, it will have lost its peculiar fascination when the aeroplane will be to mountains what the elevator is to high buildings. The landscape has a greater, far greater beauty; for an aviator can see a great distance over a level plane. At the height of one mile you can, theoretically, see ninety-six miles in every direction and as you ascend the distance to the horizon becomes greater. In hilly country, one hill hides another when you look from the ground, but when you are high up in the sky, like the eagle, the mountains all seem to lose their height and appear flat and naturally your view is unobstructed.
At great altitudes the sky becomes very deep blue and if you kept going up you would reach a point finally where the sky became black and the sun appeared like a ball of fire all by itself as a candle flame does in the dark.
FOR HEALTH
In these regions there is no dust in the air to diffuse the light and the air is dry and consequently excellent for persons with lung trouble. There is even a possibility that physicians will advise patients suffering from tuberculosis to ascend to these high altitudes, and it is a fact that Hubert Latham was threatened with this disease, yet enjoyed good health after taking up aviation, only to be killed by a wild buffalo, as related. Perhaps this is one of those cases I was looking for where the aeroplane has saved a life.
METEOROLOGY
An aeroplane will bring quick reports of changes in the weather. Rapid investigations of conditions which exist in the strata of air at varying altitudes above the surface of the earth, made by the use of flying machines, may lend us material aid in understanding those conditions which are closer to earth.
The study of the weather and meteorological conditions becomes of greater and greater importance as the progress in the science of aviation advances. The currents of air that are regular in their direction of movement, like the trade winds, must be mapped and charted, for with the aid of a strong wind an aviator can make marvellous speed, as the speed of the wind is added to the speed of his machine and with an aeroplane capable of making one hundred miles an hour a favourable wind of fifty miles an hour would increase the total speed by one half. For the wind is now no longer an obstacle to flight, and as I have already noted at the beginning of this chapter, this is one of the most noticeable advancements in aviation, one that can readily be seen, understood, and appreciated even by the uninitiated.
THE TENDENCY TOWARD HYDROS
There is always more or less danger in flying over land, and the rougher its surface the more difficult and dangerous the matter of landing. The safest place and the most uniform surface is to be found over the water, and there is much less danger to the aviator flying there than over the land. The strength of the wind can be easily judged by the height of the waves, and squalls and puffs can be seen coming so that if they seem to be very bad you can come down on the surface of the water or skim along very near it with the greatest safety, if you are in a hydroaeroplane. Rivers will no doubt become the favourite highways of travel for the airman, as they were once the only great avenues for the march of civilisation when the canoe or the rude boat was the only vehicle of transportation. This brings us naturally to another consideration of the air-land-water machine.
##