Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 69, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 March 1919 — Peaceful Air Navigation Presents Problem [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Peaceful Air Navigation Presents Problem

Besides Canning Passengers. Freight and Mail. Planes Can be Put to Mann Uses,But There Are Difficulties to be Overcome^-"''' - ''

HAT! are wo going/to do- with all our expensively trained aviators when they come back from Jhe war?- From f<«ur -to 7*fx thousand flew- in United Stan s machines and U&sS&LKJ other -mttrlji ai >< »ve 11 re- string ••■■■■■—J p H e, w j tll Bjxx) others ready to take

their places when :uachines were available, and from 11 to 15 thousand trained or in training in this country, not counting supernumeraries to the total of 100.000 young Americans trained for aviation. Now that the war Is over Is all that training and Its outlay to go for nothing? To be sure we are going to turn from 4,000 to 6,000 fighting planes into mail work; but here the practical man grows a bit skeptical and un-

certain, writes Agnes C. Laut in New York Sun. _Can it be done? To what uses can we turn 6,000 machines and 30,000 men that will give returns at all commensurate with the enormous outlay? Hadn't we better figure all the outlay up and charge It to war and let it go at that, and not break more necks? That is the practical man’s attitude; and the airplane manufacturers-’ attitude is just what the motor manufacturers’ was ten years ago. As well ask to what use can we put our five million output of motorcars? How can we use airplanes in practical everyday life? Here is the all* plane man s answer, and when you have pondered it you will not count very many airplanes going to waste or to spare: Some of the Possibilities. Fast mail, fast express, light rush freight, such as perishable foods.; fast transcontinental and ocean passenger service, joy riding, sightseeing to places inaccessible by rail, such as the upper reaches of Grand Canyon or the Holy Land or the sacred city of. Tibet; coast guard and revenue patrol, ocean survey work, weather burejtu work, exploration, such as across the pole or the hot tropical forests of Africa and South America, which would not be hot by the air route; boundarypatrol, patrol or power lines and oil liuesjjud gas lines, bird's-eye sightseeing of cities, country to city commuting, patrol of forests for fires, first aid in medical work, quick relief in such catastrophes as flood, fires, earthquakes; life saving at sea in ease of wreck, carrying supplies to inaccessible mines such as those in thO Klondike or on the Coppermine river or in deserts where lack of water bars out man and beast; mountain climbing on wings, military and naval reconnaisanee. For all these purposes no right of way is required,oo rails, nd grading. Both extreme heat and extreme cold can be avoided. Any one of these manifold uses would absorb every airplane nowengaged for war. All the uses combined would demand and absorb as inany airplanes as’There are motorcars —say 5,000,000 for this country alone. At this stage, the practical man has a touch of aerial vertigo. He is too polite to tear his hair out in handfuls; but —well, he interrupts with, “Show me!’’ Very well. Take mails. Mails are already being carried between New York and Washington, and New York and Chicago; and if all the war planes are absorbed for mail use, as 1,000 of them already have been assigned, mails will be carried before the end of 1919 between all the leading cities of the United States. Is this mail business going to be practical? Will it pay? Will it sUVQ.say.some money, as well as time? The rate talked of just now is 16 cents an ounce, or 43 cents a mile for 20 pounds, which is so vague That it leaves you all up in the air as. to ultimate charges. This scale is absurdly high. During the experimental period it is all right, but when aerial mail routes are as common as rail mail routes, how about charges? Profits in the Aerial Mail. Here you are in the realm of pure speculation, but, basing your speculation on facts, the government could do more than save time. It could saVt money and make oodles of money by the air mail route. eSuppose the charge is 25 cents a pound, which is cheaper than our letter rate today. Land machines as at present instructed can carry at least half their own weight, but now that war requirements are past, their construction can be changed to improve vastly on that. They will not need machine guns. They will not need bombs. Thpy will not need devices for "quick < ascent or terrific velocity or head-on Impetus and impact in case of a charge head to head. They will dispense with all war equipment, That wilj give carrying ripartfy for other work. . But take even the present proportion. One ma- * ' • . £> • ■ ■ •

chine for bomb work can carry from five to six tons. There is another machine for ocean work that can carry eleven tons. Average the mail carriers or fast express planes at eight tons capacity-. Eight tons are 16,000 pounds, and a rate of 25 cents a pound would give a daily revenue between Chicago and New York of 84.000. Now the government is not talking 25 cents a pound. It is talking of from 10 to 16 cents an ounce. You can figure the revenue on that basis yourself. Or take the passenger rate from Paris to London, §75. Suppose we have a passenger service from New York to Florida at SIOO. There is a niaehine capable of carrying fifty passengers from “New York to Florida. That would be a revenue of 85, (XXI. But the cost of the machine and pilots? The little machines require only one pilot, the big ones two. Pilots can be hired for from 8100 to S2OO a month, especially if they are permitted to retain their present military or naval status. The gasoline will not run at more than 32 gallons an hour, at not less than 12 gallons per engine- per hour. Of the machine cost, we have only war figures now, with wages and material at \Var levels; but after the war, men like Curtiss and Wright believe the machines with military equipment now- running from 87.500 to $50,000 can be produced for industrial purposes at from $1,500 to $15,000. Now, I don’t know of many locomotives and steamships that can cover all the way from onethird their Cost to all their cost in the revenue of one trip. That is, I don’t know/ of methods of transportation that can do so when freights are not at war levels. After those figures. I don’t know how the practical man feels, hut I do know tWairplane manufacturers are thankful to heaven the war is ovey so that they can put the* airplane on as sound a commercial basis as any other industry. But before the airplane can be as generally adopted for industrial uses as the motorcar, just as much will have to be done. Everybody knows, Tjr shoultrkiiow.nhat the motor was the inspiration of the good roads propaganda, which has run over the country like wildfire for ten years. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on the good roads propaganda till it became a national slogan. Then millions were spent on the good roads themselves: and they have paid back compound interest on every dollar. And do you mean to say we have to build good roads for the airplane through the air? Yes; that Is exactly what 1 mean, only they won’t be roads, and you won’t have to spend any millions on either the propaganda .or the, roads themselves. It will be a strictly and entirely government job. Only instead of roads, it will be charts you will have to lay out; and they don’t need rails, roadbed, grading, political graft. « More Anxious Over the Land. The airplane man is far more anxious about air over the land than Sir over the sea. Over the sea, if he does come down, all he will hit is water. On the land, if he comes dowiF'without a proper landing place, something as small as a stray cat, a fence post, a telephone wire, a two-foot ditch, a rain-sodden cow path. or'a dry desert arroyo might wreck his machine. K ,

, It isn’t the air proper that concerns the flyer. It is the hopping up place and coming down place at each end of his air route. That is what is meant by “charting the air;” so you need not have cold shivers about road building graft. The airman can no more

follow the' shortest distance between two points through the air with mail and fast express matter than a train can run without stations and switches at each end of the route. ======= At these air route stations must be landing fields, hangars for the machines, gasoline supplies, spare parts, charts, maps, weather forecast signals, engine mechanics, receivers for the quick transfer and delivery of mail, express matter or whatever it is.. What types of landing fields? And where shall they be located—outside city limits or in city parks cleared of buildings and trees for the purpose? Another point: Special charts will have to be prepared for the pilot to follow. For instance, crossing the Atlantic, going east, the airplane would, I am told by engineer’s, have to follow east a little by south. Similar charts would have to be drawn to guide the pilot during prevailing trade ar seasonal winds. -The Chinook winds of”the Rockies, for instance, would add from 20 to 50 miles an hour to a pilot’s speed coming east and impede his flight to the same extent going west. The deserts, the Mojave, Arizona, Mexico, Utah, have their dust storms from March to June. Which way do they blow? Montague, I think it is, says the brown fogs of the Atlantic can be surmounted at from 10,000 to 15,000 feet, bht while the airplane will take the flyer above the dust, will it take him above the hurricane that creates the dust? The meteorological bureau of Washington and the chamber* of commerce of San Diego have done most up .to the present time in charting air currents for aerial flights. It is ap entirely new world, and it is a puzzling one; for remember, the airplane may drift from its course, just as ships drift in ocean currents without the compass giving an inkling of it, and here again the army and navy could, an they would, a tale unfold. But it is in the region of the mountains that the lighthouses with powerful lenses are most need&d for aerial routes. This air region is an entirely unknown world, and It is dangerous as reefs off Labrador for a landing place. Cases are on record in which fighters in the war interlocked wings and came down and stuck in a treetop without so much as a scratch on the skin of either pilot. But’ qtiite as dangerous as treetops and rocks coming up to meet you through the floor of your car are the gusty air pockets above all mountains. It is not known yet whether the air above mountains is as gusty at night when the sun is not creating-upeurrents; but if by day-the stjn creates Niagaras of air, and if by night you may run into a blizzard of snow, say, above Pike’s Peak, there is a lot to do in charting air roads above the Rockies before we get that section «f our transcontinental air route as safe as flight above the ocean. Still, as late as 1830, the fur traders of the mountains scouted the possibility of even wagons ever crossing the Great Divide. Today, trains, and wagons cross all sections of the Divide with less thought and danger than pedestrians cross Fifth avenue. New York; and by 1930, it is a safe wager with your ‘son that airplanes will do the same. But this- is not all there is to charting the alt, not by a long, long shot. How about direction signale? - Rules of y>e Road Needed. Each machine must always be given its own space, or twice its own space, to pass or meet another machine, but how about direction signals? Do you Sass to the right or left? What are the penalties and who pays them, if you don’t take the correct side and a collision results? Who has the right of way, the coming-in machine or the going byt? What rate of .speed is to be allowed for certain levels, and who is to police the air and regulate the traffic? Dlcfyou ever think whaf a gorgeous streak: of adventure an air robber, a Captain Kidd of the sky route, could have if he made off with a plane good for eleven tons cargo.and 167 miles You might catch him on a peak of the Rockies, or he might have cached his loot in the moon. You may smile, but are any of these possibilities more unlikely than were the actual achievements of the airplane In the war? The apprehension of the airplane In industry being chancy’because its engine may go dead or its controls go out of whack does not alarm the airman. Dual engines, dual controls find two pilots will minimize that risk; but there is a very definite apprehension in the airman’s mind. He knows the airplane Is going to leap into industry as spectacularly as the motorcar, all right. He wants the air charted and the rules of the game established before the argosies of countless winged fleets are iu the air. , He wants all elements of danger and confusion and antagonism removed before Ihe argosies of mail and express and flying freight go up in the air.