Flying for France: The Story of the American Volunteers With the French Airforce

HOW FRANCE TRAINS PILOT AVIATORS
 

France now has thousands of men training to become military aviators, and the flying schools, of which there is a very great number, are turning out pilots at an astounding rate.

The process of training a man to be a pilot aviator naturally varies in accordance with the type of machine on which he takes his first instruction, and so the methods of the various schools depend on the apparatus upon which they teach an élève pilote--as an embryonic aviator is called--to fly.

In the case of the larger biplanes, a student goes up in a dual-control airplane, accompanied by an old pilot, who, after first taking him on many short trips, then allows him part, and later full, control, and who immediately corrects any false moves made by him. After that, short, straight line flights are made alone in a smaller-powered machine by the student, and, following that, the training goes on by degrees to the point where a certain mastery of the apparatus is attained. Then follows the prescribed "stunts" and voyages necessary to obtain the military brevet.

The method of training a pilot for a small, fast avion de chasse, as a fighting airplane is termed, is quite different, and as it is the most thorough and interesting I will take that course up in greater detail.

The man who trains for one of these machines never has the advantage of going first into the air in a double-control airplane. He is alone when he first leaves the earth, and so the training preparatory to that stage is very carefully planned to teach a man the habit of control in such a way that all the essential movements will come naturally when he first finds himself face to face with the new problems the air has set for him. In this preparatory training a great deal of weeding out is effected, for a man's aptitude for the work shows up, and unless he is by nature especially well fitted he is transferred to the division which teaches one to fly the larger and safer machines.

First of all, the student is put on what is called a roller. It is a low-powered machine with very small wings. It is strongly built to stand the rough wear it gets, and no matter how much one might try it could not leave the ground. The apparatus is jokingly and universally known as a Penguin, both because of its humorous resemblance to the quaint arctic birds and its inability in common with them to do any flying. A student makes a few trips up and down the field in a double-control Penguin, and learns how to steer with his feet. Then he gets into a single-seated one and, while the rapidly whirling propeller is pulling him along, tries to keep the Penguin in a straight line. The slightest mistake or delayed movement will send the machine skidding off to the right or left, and sometimes, if the motor is not stopped in time, over on its side or back. Something is always being broken on a Penguin, and so a reserve flock is kept at the side of the field in order that no time may be lost.

After one is able to keep a fairly straight line, he is put on a Penguin that moves at a faster rate, and after being able to handle it successfully passes to a very speedy one, known as the "rapid." Here one learns to keep the tail of the machine at a proper angle by means of the elevating lever, and to make a perfectly straight line. When this has been accomplished and the monitor is thoroughly convinced that the student is absolutely certain of making no mistakes in guiding with his feet, the young aviator is passed on to the class which teaches him how to leave the ground. As one passes from one machine to another one finds that the foot movements must be made smaller and smaller. The increased speed makes the machine more and more responsive to the rudder, and as a result the foot movements become so gentle when one gets into the air that they must come instinctively.

The class where one will leave the ground has now been reached, and an outfit of leather clothes and casque is given to the would-be pilot. The machines used at this stage are low-powered monoplanes of the Blériot type, which, though being capable of leaving the ground, cannot rise more than a few feet. They do not run when the wind is blowing or when there are any movements of air from the ground, for though a great deal of balancing is done by correcting with the rudder, the student knows nothing of maintaining the lateral stability, and if caught in the air by a bad movement would be apt to sustain a severe accident. He has now only to learn how to take the machine off the ground and hold it at a low line of flight for a few moments.

For the first time one is strapped into the seat of the machine, and this continues to be the case from this point on. The motor is started, and one begins to roll swiftly along the ground. The tail is brought to an angle slightly above a straight line. Then one sits tight and waits. Suddenly the motion seems softer, the motor does not roar so loudly, and the ground is slipping away. The class standing at the end of the line looks far below; the individuals are very small, but though you imagine you are going too high, you must not push to go down more than the smallest fraction, or the machine will dive and smash. The small push has brought you down with a bump from a seemingly great height. In reality you have been but three feet off the ground. Little by little the student becomes accustomed to leaving the ground, for these short hop-skip-and-jump flights, and has learned how to steer in the air.

If he has no bad smash-ups he is passed on to a class where he rises higher, and is taught the rudiments of landing. If, after a few days, that act is reasonably performed and the young pilot does not land too hard, he is passed to the class where he goes about sixty feet high, maintains his line of flight for five or six minutes and learns to make a good landing from that height. He must by this time be able to keep his machine on the line of flight without dipping and rising, and the landings must be uniformly good. The instructor takes a great deal of time showing the student the proper line of descent, for the landings must be perfect before he can pass on.

Now comes the class where the pilot rises three or four hundred feet high and travels for more than two miles in a straight line. Here he is taught how to combat air movements and maintain lateral stability. All the flying up to this point has been done in a straight line, but now comes the class where one is taught to turn. Machines in this division are almost as high powered as a regular flying machine, and can easily climb to two thousand feet. The turn is at first very wide, and then, as the student becomes more confident, it is done more quickly, and while the machine leans at an angle that would frighten one if the training in turning had not been gradual. When the pilot can make reasonably close right and left turns, he is told to make figure eights. After doing this well he is sent to the real flying machines.

There is nothing in the way of a radical step from the turns and figure eights to the real flying machines. It is a question of becoming at ease in the better and faster airplanes taking greater altitudes, making little trips, perfecting landings, and mastering all the movements of correction that one is forced to make. Finally one is taught how to shut off and start one's motor again in the air, and then to go to a certain height, shut off the motor, make a half-turn while dropping and start the motor again. After this, one climbs to about two thousand feet and, shutting off the motor, spirals down to within five hundred feet of the ground. When that has been practised sufficiently, a registering altitude meter is strapped to the pilot's back and he essays the official spiral, in which one must spiral all the way to earth with the motor off, and come to a stop within a few yards of a fixed point on the aviation grounds. After this, the student passes to the voyage machines, which are of almost twice the power of the machine used for the short trips and spirals.

There are three voyages to make. Two consist in going to designated towns an hour or so distant and returning. The third voyage is a triangle. A landing is made at one point and the other two points are only necessary to cross. In addition, there are two altitudes of about seven thousand feet each that one has to attain either while on the voyages or afterward.

The young pilot has not, up to this point, had any experience on trips, and there is always a sense of adventure in starting out over unknown country with only a roller map to guide one and the gauges and controls, which need constant attention, to distract one from the reading of the chart. Then, too, it is the first time that the student has flown free and at a great height over the earth, and his sense of exultation at navigating at will the boundless sky causes him to imagine he is a real pilot. True it is that when the voyages and altitudes are over, and his examinations in aeronautical sciences passed, the student becomes officially a pilote-aviateur, and he can wear two little gold-woven wings on his collar to designate his capacity, and carry a winged propeller emblem on his arm, but he is not ready for the difficult work of the front, and before he has time to enjoy more than a few days' rest he is sent to a school of perfectionnement. There the real, serious and thorough training begins.

Schools where the pilots are trained on the modern machines--écoles de perfectionnement as they are called--are usually an annex to the centres where the soldiers are taught to fly, though there are one or two camps that are devoted exclusively to giving advanced instruction to aviators who are to fly the avions de chasse, or fighting machines. When the aviator enters one of these schools he is a breveted pilot, and he is allowed a little more freedom than he enjoyed during the time he was learning to fly.

He now takes up the Morane monoplane. It is interesting to note that the German Fokker is practically a copy of this machine. After flying for a while on a low-powered Morane and having mastered the landing, the pilot is put on a new, higher-powered model of the same make. He has a good many hours of flying, but his trips are very short, for the whole idea is to familiarize one with the method of landing. The Blériot has a landing gear that is elastic in action, and it is easy to bring to earth. The Nieuport and other makes of small, fast machines for which the pilot is training have a solid wheel base, and good landings are much more difficult to make. The Morane pilot has the same practices climbing to small altitudes around eight thousand feet and picking his landing from that height with motor off. When he becomes proficient in flying the single- and double-plane types he leaves the school for another, where shooting with machine guns is taught.

This course in shooting familiarizes one with various makes of machine guns used on airplanes, and one learns to shoot at targets from the air. After two or three weeks the pilot is sent to another school of combat.

These schools of combat are connected with the écoles de perfectionnement with which the pilot has finished. In the combat school he learns battle tactics, how to fight singly and in fleet formation, and how to extract himself from a too dangerous position. Trips are made in squadron formation and sham battles are effected with other escadrilles, as the smallest unit of an aërial fleet is called. For the first time the pilot is allowed to do fancy flying. He is taught how to loop the loop, slide on his wings or tail, go into corkscrews and, more important, to get out of them, and is encouraged to try new stunts.

Finally the pilot is considered well enough trained to be sent to the reserve, where he waits his call to the front. At the reserve he flies to keep his hand in, practises on any new make of machine that happens to come out or that he may be put on in place of the Nieuport, and receives information regarding old and new makes of enemy airplanes.

At last the pilot receives his call to the front, where he takes his place in some established or newly formed escadrille. He is given a new machine from the nearest airplane reserve centre, and he then begins his active service in the war, which, if he survives the course, is the best school of them all.