RECORDS OF ALLIED AND ENEMY ACES WITH NUMBER OF PLANES BROUGHT DOWN. APPENDIX III 362 NOMENCLATURE FOR AERONAUTICS. ILLUSTRATIONS The NC-4 flying-boat, showing the arrangement of the motors _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE Observation balloon about to ascend 10 The Wright flyer after the epoch-making flight at Kitty Hawk, N. C., December, 1903 20 A Shortt “pusher” seaplane equipped with a one-and-a-half-pounder gun 32 British-built Curtiss flying boat, at Brighton, England 32 The Farman “Goliath” contrasted with a Farman “Mosquito” 56 The huge four-motored Handley Page bomber 64 The Martin bomber 84 The pathfinding aerial mail flight, New York-Cleveland-Chicago 144 The reconstructed De Haviland biplane, showing the limousine accommodations for passengers 146 Diagrams showing an “aerial skid,” “tail slide,” and the “spinning dive” 154 The so-called “Immelman turn” 156 Diagrams illustrating the reversal of position effected by a “loop” and the execution of the so-called “Immelman turn” 158 Interior view of the Graham White twenty-four-seater aeroplane in flight 170 The Vickers-“Vimy” bomber 200 The C-5 leaving its hangar at Montauk Point en route to accompany the NC’s on their trans-Atlantic flight 202 The R-34, the British rigid dirigible 222 AIRCRAFT CHAPTER I THE FIRST BALLOONS THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FREE BALLOON—THE CAPTIVE BALLOON—THE DIRIGIBLE—THE BLIMP—THE KITE BALLOON Ever since man first noticed the flight of a bird through the air he has longed to fly. How often, during the countless ages of unrecorded time, he attempted to soar above the earth we cannot know. That he tried often and failed always we have ample proof; indeed, the phrase, “might as well try to fly,” expressed the acme of the impossible. That many scientific men for nearly two thousand years believed that eventually a mechanical means could be devised to lift man off the ground like the wings of a bird and to propel him through the air, we have evidence in their writings and the history of their lives. Ancient mythology is full of stories of the heroes who attempted to imitate the flight of the fowls of the air. The earliest efforts of the aeronauts themselves appear to have been along this line. Naturally many of the experimenters lost their lives. A mere enumeration of their names would take too much space for this volume.