AVIATION in the United States has sailed for some years past in troubled waters in which commercial aviation and military flying alike were but struggling for a foothold, seeking to establish themselves on a basis of solid usefulness while wild torrents of controversy and charge and counter-charge raged around them. It is possibly the proper occasion of a little surprise, and certainly an occasion for more than a little gratification, that despite those difficult conditions steady progress has been made. It has come to be a matter of general knowledge now that the American Air Mail Services arouse the envy of the world. It has come to be universally recognized that the products of the American aircraft industry challenge comparison with any others. It requires but a superficial examination into the subject for the layman to realize that he may take an equal pride in the record of aviation in his Navy.
Through the post-war period of readjustment, when the armed services were returning to a peace basis and when the Navy was being scaled down in size, there was but little opportunity for increasing the number of airplanes or naval aviators, yet the operations undertaken were constantly changing their nature and developing into an increased usefulness, and the spirit of the service was manifesting itself through a steady improvement in efficiency. On June 30, 1921, there were 370 naval aviators in the service, and during the year ending on that day the hours of flight had totaled 37,248, an average of 101 hours for each officer qualified as an airplane pilot. The average number of naval aviators on duty during the fiscal year 1923 had decreased to 320, but the hours of flight for that year rose to 43,300, an average of 135 hours as against the 101 of two years previously. Two years more saw a further increase to a total of 64,000 hours of flying (including the Marine Corps), a mean of 155 hours for each naval aviator, while during the fiscal year just ended the total ran to the astonishing figure of over 100,000 hours, an average of well over 180 hours per officer pilot. The total number of airplanes available for the naval service was remaining almost stationary, due to the rapid retirement of war-time stock, while the hours of flight and number of flights were being substantially trebled in the course of five years. It happens that the number of airplanes on hand in the naval service on September 30, 1925, was almost identical with the number on June 1, 1927, yet of those available for service on the earlier date, approximately sixty per cent had been designed in 1918 or earlier, while in June of this year, only twenty months later, that proportion had decreased by more than a half. By the time this article appears in print the proportion of war-time airplanes will have dropped to scarcely twenty per cent, and within another year, in all sizes and for all purposes, they will have ceased to be an appreciable factor.
Within another year or two it will be impossible longer to speak of the total of equipment on hand as remaining constant. The most modern equipment will be delivered from now on, even more rapidly, as airplanes of the war period and of other obsolete designs are cancelled from the records. The airplane is firmly established not only as an indispensable part of the Navy’s activities afloat and ashore, an integral unit of the fleet without which a commander-in-chief would be grievously, and perhaps fatally, handicapped in emergency, but also as an independent instrument of scouting and defense against enemy activity upon the sea in the event of war. It is in recognition of that new and growing importance that the Department has drawn up and recommended, Congress has authorized, and the responsible officers are now putting into execution, a program which will carry the total number of naval airplanes of modern type and useful in the event of war from its present figure of about 500 up to an authorized level of 1,000 as the result of purchases made up through the fiscal year of 1931.
The appreciation of the vital significance of naval aviation which has led to these giants of power and these expanding plans for the future has itself been the result of repeated demonstration of the capacities of aircraft. Those demonstrations have been possible, and the doubling and tripling of the amount of operation per man and per machine has been accomplished, in part because of developments in aeronautical engineering science and improvements in the equipment available, but mainly because of the continuous and concentrated efforts for making of a better record on the part of every man attached to any aviation unit. That same improvement in equipment and that same keenness for raising the standards still further has shown itself also in an increase of over too per cent in the safety of naval aircraft operations within the last four years, so that in the past year the hazard among naval officers and men piloting airplanes corresponded to but one fatality for every 8,400 hours of flight by the individual. Put in other terms, despite the considerable increase in the average amount of flying done by each man engaged in naval aviation in the past few years, there has been no corresponding increase in the proportion of those aviation specialists suffering death or injury by airplane accidents.
The growth of commercial aviation in the United States in the past year has been vastly encouraging, and it is to be expected that it will continue until non-military flying totally over-shadows in amount the total of military and naval operations. As yet, however, the number of miles flown in a year in the naval service is nearly double the total for all the air mail and passenger lines in the United States. The very vastness of the experience amassed in fifteen years of operations working up gradually to so considerable a scale made it possible for naval flying and naval flyers to be of the greatest service to the commercial operator and to those engaged in developing equipment for commercial service.
It is worth recalling that seaplanes were used, and the operation was an over-water one, in the first commercial airplane passenger service started in the United States, if not the first in the world, a line which ran across a bay in Florida about 1912. Those who have followed the history of aviation will readily remember, too, that the first serious attempt at commercial passenger carrying after the war was made with seaplanes on a Key West-Havana run, and that routes between Cleveland and Detroit and between New York and Atlantic City succeeded to that one.
The commercial operation of seaplanes has suffered a temporary eclipse during the past few years, but both fundamental logic and observation of European experience indicate clearly that the seaplane possesses important advantages for a wide range of commercial operation over ocean, along rivers, over large inland lakes, and even possibly over the land where lakes and streams are frequent. Public attention has been forcibly turned to overwater flying in general, and to its particular problems, by the remarkable flights of Lindbergh, Chamberlin, and Commander Byrd, as well as by Commander De Pinedo’s trips in which he has used a seaplane over land and water indiscriminately. This growing interest in maritime aviation in commerce and in airplanes designed especially to meet its needs naturally increases the bond between commercial and naval flying, for practically all the large flying boats that have so far been built in the United States have been built for naval use, and the design of a commercial seaplane now would depend upon the experience that has been gained in that work and upon the extended researches conducted upon the forms of hulls and floats at the Washington Navy Yard during the past decade and a half.
The profit to commercial aviation from naval operations is, however, by no means limited to those services which employ seaplanes. Aside from the fact that a very considerable proportion of the Navy’s own work is done with landplanes operating either from the shore or from the decks of aircraft carriers, there is a community of principle and of practice in many of the elements in the design of all heavier-than- air craft, whether intended for over-land or over-sea work. All modern airplanes in fact show the result of service experience at many points in their design.
Out of the sums appropriated for naval aviation in the past few years, there has been an annual average of about $1,750,000 allocated to experimental and research work. Since studies on the development of armament and other purely military equipment are carried under other sub-headings of the appropriation, the bulk of that sum is available for experiments conducing directly to the production of improved airplanes, engines, propellers and aeronautical accessories, and of the amount so spent there is hardly a dollar which will not ultimately pay a good return in benefit to commercial aviation as well as to the naval service. The primary function of aeronautical research in the Navy, as of every other naval activity, is to keep the whole plant and its operating personnel set for action in any emergency. It frequently happens, as in this case, that in fulfilling that obligation as scrupulously as possible there is incidental return in the form of important benefit to some industrial or commercial activity. The quest for such incidental return cannot be a guiding motive of policy, but when it appears it offers cause for gratification. The proverbial two birds are brought down with the proverbial single stone, and the taxpayer’s dollar brings in a double dividend, a regular return in the national defense and an extra one in other directions.
It is not alone in the conduct of researches that the Navy’s aerial activities serve air commerce. In addition to spending $1,750,000 each year upon experiment, the Navy has had during the past three years an average of about $12,500,000 annually to put into new airplanes and engines, and that has served directly and indirectly to sustain the industry whence emanates the equipment of the air transport route. Such support is of special importance to the engine builders, for unlike the construction of an airplane, which can be carried out in a small shop and with but few special tools, the building of a satisfactory aircraft engine requires a highly organized factory with much expensive equipment and correspondingly high over-head costs.
The best example of this service rendered to commercial aviation by the upkeep of an industry on service orders is afforded by the history of the power plant which carried Lindbergh, Chamberlin, Byrd, and Maitland to success, and which drove more than three quarters of the commercial airplanes entered in the recent national air tour. That engine was first built to suit naval requirements, and was first purchased by the Navy, and for several years it was upon naval business that the development work was fostered and the overhead expense carried, while commercial orders were few and far between. Without the support of the service the process of incubation and of gradual growth into the wonderfully successful product of the present day could hardly have taken place at all, or, if it had been carried on by some means, the cost of the engine to the commercial buyer would have been almost prohibitive. Because there was assurance of a substantially steady service demand the price could be kept down, and the engine could make its way in a field where economic competition as well as inherent performance had to be considered. So successful has it been in finding a place there that it seems likely, extending forward the tendencies of the last two or three years, that the commercial orders for such power plants will soon bulk larger than those for the government services. When that point is reached it will be the Navy and Army which will in turn reap the benefits of economy from factory production on a scale larger than would be possible if it were only government orders that had to be filled.
The improvement of equipment does not depend upon research alone. After a product has been brought to the stage of readiness for the market its further improvement depends largely upon experience with it in service and upon the correction of the minor ailments appearing from time to time during ordinary operation. Manufacturers of equipment widely disseminated in the hands of private owners have always to contend with the difficulty of getting specific information on the troubles encountered and the conditions under which they manifest themselves. In naval operation, however, airplane and engine and all their equipment are subjected to heat and cold, salt air and every other arduous condition, yet at the same time they are assured of competent attention, and there is exact and specific record of anything that goes wrong. The operations of naval aviation, aggregating a distance flown each day nearly equal to that around the earth at the equator, serve as a laboratory on a grand scale for focusing the spotlight upon the weak points of material and providing the manufacturer with specific information upon which he can rely in seeking cures for the defects.
The operation of air routes, as well as the safe use of airplanes across country or over sea in commerce or in the hands of private owners, depends upon ground organization. There must be terminal facilities and provision for refueling and charts and aids to navigation of varying sorts. The Department of Commerce has now embarked upon the task of laying out and maintaining air routes and their accessories, but as the work of that department gradually progresses the traveler by seaplane still finds himself dependent to a considerable degree, as he has been very largely dependent in the past, upon aid from naval sources. The Hydrographic Office, active for many years in the service of those who go down to the sea in ships, has promptly taken an interest in travelers by air, and prepared the first of American charts intended for the special needs of the coastal seaplane voyager, together with an air pilot which is the air yachtsman’s guide and his Bluebook of the aerial highways along the coast, carrying as it does both maps and complete compendia of information likely to be useful to the pilot choosing a port for refueling or other purposes. Furthermore, the naval air stations themselves are harbors of refuge for civilian travelers by air, and in case of need when no commercial facilities are available, the air stations can supply fuel and mechanical assistance to speed the traveler on his way. Again, an activity planned solely with reference to the needs of the Navy as a part of the national defense is proving an important utility for those who employ the airplane in commerce, for personal travel, or purely for pleasure.
Through fifteen years since naval officers began to fly, aviation in the Navy has grown stronger and stronger, and its relative importance in naval affairs has steadily increased. During all that time the work done has been laying the foundation for a commercial aviation, of which the coming was very gradual at first, but which in the last two years has sprung up like Jack’s legendary beanstalk. Naval flying is being further developed under the five-year program act, and it is our confident expectation that it will continue to develop, but we confidently expect also to see the commercial use of aircraft expand until it goes far beyond the limits of their naval and military employments. As that happens the naval service can claim, and should in justice receive from the public, a good measure of credit for the commercial reaction of the work that has been done in the past and that will be done with the funds provided in the years immediately to come. As it comes to pass, too, the national defense will be favorably affected in turn by the creation in commercial aeronautics of a potential reserve of personnel and by the building up and maintaining in strong and active condition of that aircraft industry, the strength and activity of which is among the most vital of single factors in aerial preparedness.