Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 221, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 September 1916 — HAVE TOO MUCH LEISURE IN AIR [ARTICLE]

HAVE TOO MUCH LEISURE IN AIR

Aviator Says There Isn’t Enough to Do While Flying Aloft.

THRILLING TALES OF AIR

“Sail for Hours Without Putting a Hand on Lever," Says OneClouds Most Deadly Things They Have to Fear.

London. —The hardest part about flying in war Is the thinking that a flying man has to do. Here's the idea in an English flying man's own words: “There isn't enough to keep a man’s mind busy in the air since the war has developed the aeroplane. In the old days of the aeroplane there were so many things a flying man had to watch that he didn’t have time to worry about what might happen to him. But In these days sitting ta-your-ma-cliiue is about like sitting on a dog and waiting for something to happen. “We don't have to use our hands as we used to. There Is only one lever, and you don’t have to watch that very closely. You can fly for hour, without having your hand on it. You can write or read or smoke, and unless you touch the lever to change its position you will fly along at the same level indefinitely owing to the selfstabilization of the machine.

Look Down; Watch Shells. “So, with your attention only mildly occupied, you keep looking down over the edge to see what’s happening. You get to watching the wires and wondering what would happen if a bullet cut cue of them. You look at the frail irons and consider how frail they really are. Shrapnel is breaking below you and around you, perhaps. That’s a daily occurrence. There’s no use of trying to dodge it, for by doing so you may only run into it. “So there you sit imagining all sorts of horrible possibilities. You’ve been told to go to a certain place and then return. Your route is all laid out for you and your duties are so simple and easy that while you’re performing them you have a thousand times too much spare time for thought and worry. As for myself, I’d much rather have the aeroplane a less simple affair, just to have my attention occupied. An imagination is a curse to a flier.”

And then there’s the problem of the whirling compass. An airman flies into a cloud; suddenly the finger of his compass begins to whirl around like *' a clock gone mad. Scientists say it doesn’t whirl, but so many English airmen have had the experience that even the scientific men are wondering whether the phenomenon isn’t worth studying.

The Whirling Compass. Here’s a flying man’s wide of it: “My compass finger hau whirled like a top when I have gone into a cloud. It’s enough to turn you' demented. It’s, bad enough, goodness knows, to be- lost in a cloud, but to have your compass go back on you ut the same time is too much. Our scientific instructors tell us that the compass doesn’t change but that we lose our heads when we get into the mist and change our courses without realizing it, so that the compass indicator changes naturally. “But in some clouds your compass doesn’t change. It remains as steady as it was in the sunshine. Why should a flier jiggle his course unknowingly In one cloud and not In another? My opinion is that there are certain kinds of clouds that are charged with electricity.' In such clouds your compass goes crazy. In other words, where electricity is not present your eon?fc>ass behaves itself.” How far are the clouds above the earth? As high above as we wish to climb. But the chief question with a flying man is how low the clouds are. A crack English flier told the correspondent something about low clouds. “You may be walking along the street on a heavy day and, lboking up, may think that the clouds are miles high. As a matter of fact they may be only 200 or 300 feet above you. That’s the kind of a day that the airman dreads. I’ye been lost in a cloud in France and come down out of it only to find myself flying around among the church steeples French town, with good chances of killing myself. “In a cloud you can never tell whether you’re over the enemy’s lines. You may come right down into his trenches before you know it. Clouds, the low kinds, are the most deadly things w« have to fear.”