FROM BIRD CAGE TO BATTLE PLANE—Ralph Michaelis—CrowelI ($2.75).
One fall day in 1911 "the entire military air force of the British Empire" was assembled in southern England, took off in a body for a destination no miles away. In that one brief flight, when two planes crashed, the Empire lost half its air power.
Of the British air force's four planes, one (a Farman biplane) belonged to the officer who flew it. The other three were Government-owned Bristol Box Kites, contraptions of ash, spruce, cotton fabric, weighing half a ton and held together with "a tangle of piano wire." Pilots who wanted to test the rigging were said to place a bird in the pilot's seat. "If the bird managed to get out, they knew that there must be a wire missing."
Such "bird cages" were the cradle of Ralph Michaelis' career as a fighter pilot in World War I. His "continuous story of [the R.A.F.] from its beginnings to the present day" is a fine blend of solid history and excellent narrative.
"At such times as they could be persuaded to leave the ground," says Author Michaelis, Britain's early planes could range for 50 miles at a flat-out speed of 37 m.p.h. The cylinders of "this phenomenon of motor engineering" were attached to the propeller, whirled around with it, spewing a castor-oil lubricant through their aching joints. Rotary engines of this type were used on the lighter machines right up to the end of World War I and the castor-oil fumes were said to have produced "the most stimulating results to the health of ... pilots."
Spare the Horses. Building the air force was a slow business. Seven years after the Wright brothers' first flight, a daring young British captain shocked the military by turning up for army maneuvers in a biplane. "The cavalry in particular were unfriendly. They said the airplane would frighten their horses." Britain entered World War I with 113 air and sea planes. Over the Turks in North Africa she had "complete air supremacy" —three planes to none. In the rarefied desert air the "bird tages . . . would often have to run for a couple of miles before becoming airborne."
Purpose of World War I's early planes was observation, not attack. In a daring experiment, two planes on the French front were armed with machine guns, given the name "gun machines." One took off after a German plane, assisted by other British bird cages carrying "a stock of hand grenades, the idea being to bring down the enemy by dropping the grenades on him from above." The German set off for home, "vibrating violently in every wire at a sizzling 45 miles an hour." "Weighed down by its armament," the gun machine failed to match the German's altitude of 5,000 feet. The authorities removed the gun.