The Aero Exhibition
IN the days when I was a poor benighted observer in the Air Force, the contraption of stick and string from which I used to look at the Tnrks was no windier than a fast car, for its pace was only fifty miles an hour. When we met a bump, the trayload of little bombs be- tween my feet used to come adrift : and I had to snatch them up hurriedly and drop them out two or three at a time, hoping they wouldn't catch in our bracing wires. We sat in the open, with the propellor behind us, and in moments of excitement various objects flew out of my hand Into it—a map, a leaf of a note-book, and once, when a bullet grazed the nape of my pilot's neck, a first field- dressing, which I was trying to wrap round the wound.
And now fourteen years later, wandering round the Aeronautical Exhibition at Olympia, I feel that those times are almost unbelievably remote. What should I do in that secret silver thing called an Interceptor, which , reaches the height of Mount Everest in twenty minutes and flies five times as fast as I used to travel ? No casual bombs could get loose in it. If it drops such things at all, it does so with levers and telescopic bomb sights. Nothing could blow away, for everything, including the pilot, must be tautly belayed when one is travelling at five miles a minute. I should sit in that deep cockpit, belted and electrically-mittened and oxygen- masked—if I were worthy. But time has passed by me with a scream from his supercharged engines. These new machines are brought to earth nearly twice as fast as my old " Longhorn " could fly through the air on full throttle. I belong to the first Maurice Farmans seen in Mesopotamia-Lpterodactyls of the Air Age.
These breath-taking Battle Scouts are not for me. But I should be comfortable in that Vickers-Vimy troop- carrier, on the same stand. I like to think of its three sisters who rescued six hundred people from Kabul last December. They hopped over from Baghdad—a jaunt of 2,500 miles—in order to engage in their life- saving operations. Sc•heherezade never told a stranger story than this adventure of eight-ton carpets carrying twenty people at a hundred miles an hour, through storm and ice, to the safety of Peshawar.
Near-by, is the graceful Supermarine Napier S 5, in which Flight-Lieutenant Greig made the British speed record. When will it be surpassed ? Very soon, for certain. I remember last year Sir Alliott Roe showed me a model of the triplane in which he was the first man to fly in England in 1908—followed by a boy on a bicycle carrying a fire-extinguisher. From that box kite to the thick-wing monoplanes he is now manufacturing under the Fokker patents is a giant stride in evolution. " What will happen in the next twenty years ? " I asked him. Sir Alliott would be surprised at nothing. He will not prophesy, but when I suggested that rocket planes might shoot up to altitudes of 40,000 feet and travel there at 1,0.00 miles an hour, he said that such portents might well be seen in our skies. If we do not see them, our descen- dants will.
What of the tiny Parnell Peto, which a submarine car- ries in its stomach, and spews out when required ? Who thought that would happen ten years ago ? Who imagined the Desoutter sports coupe, complete with ash- trays, vanity case, and mirrors ? Who would have predicted that Mr. Ford would be making three-engined twelve-seated aeroplanes at the rate of five a week ? One hundred and fifty of these great machines are already in operation, and this one is going on a tour of Europe to capture new markets. Near the Ford, is the beautiful Blackburn Bluebird. It only costs £700, and seats two people side by side in the cosiest cockpit imaginable, with a special heating arrangement from the exhaust. One could never be cold or lonely in a Bluebird. I should go on long and delight- ful journeys in a 'bus like this. Yes, and if I were rich, I would charter one of the new Handley Page forty-seaters for a tour through the Isles of Greece ; and I would cross the Atlantic in the twelve-engined Dornier Wal, whose model in aluminium is here ; and I would buy an Autogyro also.
The Autogyro is really the most interesting of all the exhibits, for it embodies a new idea in aerodynamics, namely, the utilization of centrifugal force. The body, engine and propellor of this machine are of the usual type, but its wings revolve and are also free to hinge upwards. If this happened in flight, the machine would, of course, fall like a stone. But it never does happen, and could not conceivably do so, owing to the existence of a law of nature as inexorable and as mysterious as gravity. Senor de la Cierva, the inventor, has used centrifugal force to counteract the cosmic power of attrac- tion. The wheel, which Nature rarely uses in her designs, but in which man delights, is here employed in a new way. For landing, the Autogyro pilot merely shuts off his engine and settles down as if in a parachute : there is no landing speed at all, and the " take-off " is only thirty yards, so that the machine can be flown into and out of any small field. I hope one day to have an opportunity of describing this invention fully, for it is likely to revolutionize our attitude towards the air. Everyone who is not blind or paralytic will be able to fly (if he can afford it) as soon as the Autogyro has proved itself. No one's lawn will be immune from the mass-produced fool-proof " flivver " of the future. We may live to curse Senor de la Cierva, but at present I am inclined to bless him, for he has made the kind of thing I want, in my middle-age and in this weather. Let others frolic like tumbler pigeons and tempt high heaven with their loops and rolls : I should like to leave the roof of my house in London as soon and safely as possible—and reach a bathing beach.
F. YEATS-BROWN.
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