A Century Of Flight

It's the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first powered flight next month, so I'm going to indulge myself and write mostly about aircraft this month.

My dad was a pilot and I owe my love of airplanes to him. I remember flying in Cessnas and Bonanzas as a kid, long before I ever got into an airliner. Growing up I devoured Flying Magazine each month and I adored watching shows that had aircraft in them, like Sky King, Whirlybirds and Air Power. I knew the Mustangs, Spitfires and Zeros of World War II like other kids knew their Buicks, Plymouths and Fords.

Even if your dad wasn't a pilot though, you have to admit that airplanes had a huge effect on the 20th Century. Even more than the automobile, powered flight may be the defining motif of the last 100 years. It changed how long it took to travel to far places of course, but it also changed how we thought about things. Quite a few flight oriented words crept into the lexicon too. Before 1903 no one would ever talk about an idea "taking off" or bringing a presentation "in for a landing." Even the word joystick, which is used more around computers these days, is actually an aircraft term. In early biplanes, the controller wasn't a steering wheel, it was an upright rod in the middle of the cockpit that controlled movement in three dimensions. It came up between the pilot's legs. The reason the they called it a joystick was because it was well, standing erect there right between the pilot's legs and gripped in a very similar way as if you had ahold of your, umm, you know, a joystick! Cockpit by the way is borrowed from naval lore, it's a sunken area of the deck where a steersman used to sit, but open at the top so instructions could be shouted into it. It was called the cockpit because it was the size of a pit used to fight cocks for fun and profit. Perhaps it isn't so strange that you should find a joystick in a cockpit!

Likewise pilot was a nautical term first, the name for a special steersman, usually a local expert on the harbor who ferried out to make sure each ship got to the dock safely. Now it's equivalent to captain when in flight. Copilot is exclusively an aircraft term. Speaking of copilot, here's a really obscure trivia question: when the Firesign Theater's Pastor Flash turned over his plane in a power dive and said "No problem, just a little argument with my copilot!" (on Dwarf), what were they referring to? Give up? It's reference to the title of a famous book, "God Is My Copilot" which was written by Robert L. Scott, a B-25 pilot in the first bombing raid on Tokyo in 1942. So, after 30 years aren't you glad you finally know who was the copilot that the good pastor was arguing with?

Since airplanes changed the way wars are fought, it's no surprise that many aircraft terms have a military origin -- dogfight, for example. An ace went from a playing card to a pilot who shot down at least five enemies. Saying "Mayday!" dates back to World War I when Americans pilots flew for the Lafayette Escadrille. It's simply French for "help me:" M'aidee! "Dropping a bomb" on someone now means to crush their spirit with bad news, but of course the phrase didn't exist until airplanes did it first. Some of the military words only reflect mystery. As aircrews flew over Europe in World War II looking for enemies, they often saw strange lights which they called foo fighters. Later in the Cold War, the air force gave us flying saucers and UFOs.

[Foo Fighters photographs are very rare. Two of them are seen here following Lysanders aircraft of the RAF during World War II in Europe. ]

It took only 44 years to get from Wilbur and Orville's 12 second flight to Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier. In the 50s new and speedier aircraft were developed at a dizzying rate and by the 60s we were accelerating off the planet entirely, bringing words like countdown, blastoff, liftoff, orbit, astronaut, splashdown and AOK into the language. The phrase "Houston, we have a problem!" came in with Apollo 13's near disaster in the 70s. Flying terms also invaded sports -- Houston's basketball team is called the Rockets, we also have the Supersonics, and a football team called the Jets.

The airplane affected us in other ways too. Smooth aerodynamic curves found their way onto cars and trains, even on buildings during the Art Deco period. When jet power was new, cars started sprouting fins and taillights were designed to look like they could spout flames. Automotive fins reached their peak with the 1959 Chevrolet, which almost sprouted wings on the back. Everyone wanted to feel like a pilot at supersonic speed. Perhaps that's why they needed another aircraft innovation -- seat belts.

The biggest effect of powered flight is more subtle and pervasive than all these things. In the 19th century Darwin's scientific thought shook the faith of intellectuals, but it didn't quite get down to the man in the street. However, after 1903, everyone saw proof of science's power. After centuries of fantasizing about it, mankind was now able to fly, and our place in the Universe had changed. Science and reason trumped everything; religious superstitions that had endured for centuries fell like ten pins. As physicists, chemists, biologists, mathematicians and doctors made new discoveries, all manner of technology came into the workplace and the home, changing everything. Faith in Science was absolute; it seemed like a Scientific Utopia was right around the corner.

In 1933 the great visionary H.G. Wells wrote one of his last books, The Shape Of Things To Come, which was made into a movie three years later. Things To Come starred Raymond Massey and Ralph Richardson; it's touchingly quaint next to today's sci-fi, but Wells's story of faith in scientific progress does have some interesting parallels to our time. His prediction of a terrible war in 1940 was only a year off; World War II started in 1939. In the war's aftermath he foresaw a terrible sickness killing off much of the world's population. AIDS anyone? At least civilization did not fall in many areas of the world like he predicted. Barbecuing Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo plus nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, now that's what a real civilization does, right? It must be said that science doesn't always bring us good things.

Let me digress a little further into that last thought with another airplane story. Anyone remember the name Enola Gay? That was the name of the B-29 bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The airplane still exists and it's on display at the Smithsonian Institution. Can you guess the one fact they left out of the Enola Gay display? THERE IS NO MENTION THAT THIS AIRCRAFT DROPPED THE FIRST ATOMIC BOMB, KILLING MORE THAN 180,000 PEOPLE. It is simply identified as an example of a B-29, one of thousands. To ignore history is the same as rewriting it. Learn more at Doublethink.com and write your Congresspeople. Thanks for letting me do this little loop-de-loop, and now back to our cruising altitude.

In the movie, a cruel dictator came to rule over the rubble, but in time he was defeated by an enlightened group of scientific soldiers, The Airmen. In the movie they resembled paratroopers in black jump suits, dropping out of huge airships and wielding a non-lethal gas that took the fight out of all that opposed them. After their triumph over the final dictator, the world was made safe for -- space flight. The last scene is the firing of a huge gun to send the first ship into outer space. I still think that would be a good place to spend the military's budget -- send them exploring. Computers certainly came out of military development and the Internet you're reading this on had a military origin too, but the laptop I write on wouldn't have happened without the need to miniaturize for space flight. Spaceflight would give the boys in uniform something to do that doesn't involve killing and still give us a steady stream of innovation.

Even today in Iraq, we still want to be like The Airmen in a way, doing good and vanquishing all evil in the world. At least that's the rhetoric Resident Bush employs. Too bad we aren't using sleepy time gas like The Airmen; instead we use bombs and bullets. I am certain our troops want to do the right thing, but quite a lot of the locals seem to have gotten the wrong impression about us. We are creating more enemies than friends with our unreasoned strategy and hamhanded tactics. Our leader's goals may not be as noble as The Airmen. We might simply be there to ensure a steady supply of the magic black elixir that powered all the amazing aeronautical advances of the last century -- oil.

Michael Moore also had a Things-To-Come-like chapter in his new book, Dude Where's My Country, a dream where he's talking to his great-grandaughter fifty years into the future. Sadly, we had no more oil to make computers, toys, tires and drugs. Worse, the world population had become a small fraction of what it is now because we couldn't make fertilizers from oil to help grow food. We couldn't even run tractors, much less drive SUVs and fly airliners at 500 MPH. Moore may be right. I remember in elementary school science class when we were told that oil would last us another 200 years. Even using that optimistic prediction, we've already used up 40 of those years, but both population and oil consumption are higher now than they have ever been. Sure, we have found more oil during that time too, but we WILL run out of it eventually, there's no escaping that.

Long before that point it will become too expensive to burn JP-8 jet fuel and the Golden Age Of Powered Flight will come to an end. I'll be telling my grandkids about how we flew to Honolulu in only six hours and they will laugh and tell me to stop fibbing. We'll probably have to go back to those lovely art deco zeppelins, maybe solar powered ones filled with helium, if we fly at all. Ships will have sails again. On the ground, say hello to bicycles and mass transit.

Maybe the lakes of animal waste from today's factory farms will give us enough methane to get by, who knows? Fortunately half the planet is always taking an energy bath, sunlight. I believe we can find ways to mitigate the dire consequences of running out of oil, but not if we keep putting our heads in the sand. Government needs to guide these efforts, a government that looks beyond the latest opinion poll and admits there are threats in this world much bigger than terrorism. New energy sources must be developed now, before the energy gets too expensive to develop them.

Alas for the Utopia of the Airmen. Will we ever make the world perfect?

Such perfection implies a society without change, but in real life the equation is always changing. A perfect world is in dynamic balance, not a static unchanging state. Real perfection needs to include the wisdom to see the big picture, taking the long view and eschewing short term gain. We would do well to mend our rapacious ways. My dad the pilot would say that first we need to "straighten up and fly right!" We've been barnstorming through this life too much and expecting the stewardesses, sorry, the flight attendants to come fetch our air sickness bags.

Anyway, it's about time to finish this column so I'd better line up the glide path, lower the flaps and prepare for arrival, but before I do let me point out that it's our 100th issue of Cosmik Debris, whoo-hoo! I am happy to see this milestone and my heartfelt thanks go to DJ and Louise Johnson for keeping this magazine going so I can continue posting these little strafing runs of thought every month!

That'll have to do for a nod to Thanksgiving this November, and that reminds me, I have to start thawing that factory farm turkey I have in the freezer back in the Closet. Right after I do a quick barrel roll. Thanks for reading and until next month, the Closet is closed.

(C) 2003 - Rusty Pipes

Official Disclaimer: The editors and publisher of Cosmik Debris would just like to state, on behalf of our corporate sponsor, Halibrutish Fuel & Junk Bonds Inc., that the opinions stated in this column are those of the author and his alone. There's every reason to believe there will be plenty of JP-8 jet fuel for a long time to come, available for nothing more than a 2,400 percent markup. Do not panic. Remain seated. Those of you with thoughts of your own will be rounded up shortly. The rest of you, continue to consume at your regular rate. Thank you.