Tony’s Short Stories: Flying Without Tears

I’m digging deep into my father’s collection of magazines for this piece, way back to 1916, when he was just four years old. So obviously, he wasn’t reading these articles just yet. So he must have acquired this collection of aviation magazines later in his life, or maybe someone in his family saved it for him. See, he and his parents didn’t immigrate to America until June 1920, so I do see the connection to this European-published magazine.

The article ‘Flying Without Tears,’ a significant piece published in The Aeroplane magazine on January 5, 1916, delves into the art of piloting aeroplanes from a perspective that harks back to the early days of aviation. The author’s argument that youth is a key factor in excelling in this field, as they are more likely to embrace flying without the burden of caution and preconceived notions, resonates with the pioneering spirit of that era. They view aviation not as a miraculous innovation, but as a natural part of life, akin to motorized transport.

This article emphasizes four essential qualities necessary for a pilot: imagination, rhythm, a sense of humor, and, most importantly, youth. Imagination is described not as fear of danger but as a hopeful anticipation of the future of aviation and the ability to visualize complex flight maneuvers and situations. Rhythm is linked to the innate sense of curves and motion in flying, suggesting that pilots experience a form of artistry in their control of the aircraft. Pilots find humor essential for maintaining composure and patience in the face of the unpredictable nature of weather and machines.

---

Flying Without Tears

By the author of “Essays of An Aviator”

Published in The Aeroplane magazine on January 5, 1916

It may be taken as a working hypothesis that the art of piloting an aeroplane is an accomplishment in which youth only can excel. A man over thirty has vested interests, cherished hobbies, possibly a wife and family, to caution prudence and to cloud his faculties. Or, if he has none of these things, he can, at any rate, remember too well the time when flying was not, when the very idea was fantastic and incredible.

To educated youth flying is quite natural. They have, as it were, grown up with it; they can hardly imagine life without it, as most of us find a difficulty in remembering life without motor-traction. For them no re-adjustment of ideas is needed. The latest gift of the gods is no wonder, but a regular occupation.

And although the stable aeroplane is an established fact and it is possible to fly in ignorance-after a fashion, certainly-and still live, excellence comes only where certain qualities are assembled: the first and foremost being youth with its clear-eyed quickness, its dash, and its insatiable curiosity in full flood.

Three other essentials follow: imagination, a sense of rhythm, and a sense of humour.

Imagination in flying, it should be noted, is not necessarily the idea that one is going to be killed. (Though in these days the thought of death rouses but little interest; tragedy is a commonplace, and ancient beliefs based on the fear of dissolution are inexorably vanishing.)

Imagination may picture a shattered wreck plunging earthwards from a vast height, but there is always a saving element of hope in such workings of the brain : faith in the future of the race, glory in the future of aviation—a specialised afterthought for one’s own safe passage across airy floors.

Let a definite aspect of this strange quality of imagination be considered.

Hung up some six thousand feet in the air, north of the canal, moving swiftly backwards and forwards over five miles or so of our trenches, one looked contemplatively across the wide expanse of country, but thought of nothing save the tune of the motor, the regular periods in which to turn, and wondered now and then whether some far-off speck was a hostile aeroplane.

The observer tip-tapping on his key kept his eyes fixed steadily on the target, smiling in an absentminded way as shots from the battery he was ranging fell nearer and nearer. The white lines of trenches below curved in and out, now approaching each other, now retreating, leaving between them brown and blasted patches pock-marked with shell-holes and mine craters. 

Here they appeared in regular formation, there so blended, criss-crossed, blown to pieces, and merged, British with Hun, that one could not distinguish them.

To the north-east a great city lay like a blurred shadow, and in the shattered township crouching behind the German lines a house or two burnt steadily—grey smoke with a faint flicker of flame. Southwards the French were bombarding heavily, the white smoke drifting in little clouds.

Backwards and forwards: bank and turn: and, then, in turning southwards, one saw a score of black bursts, and a machine in their midst heading towards home. Like ink-blots that fall and spread on blotting-paper, those shell-bursts were. It was as if one dabbed with a charcoal point at an insect racing across a piece of paper and left a black smudge with each dab. Thicker came the shells, and the machine was suddenly hidden. Bank and turn. The observer smiled, with his eyes still glued to his target. Again, turning southwards, the sky was speckled with faint persisting blotches, but there was no machine.

In such a case the imagination refuses to act, or, rather, acts humanely and perversely. Gravely the mind appreciates it as a spectacle and goes no further.

The intensifying of the nervous system whereby the machine and its pilot become one sentient unity may be assumed to be another function of the imagination. Most pilots who have experienced the “deadness” of an aeroplane which has lost flying speed, whether intentionally or otherwise, know how this feeling is instantly communicated to their own nervous system, and as suddenly vanishes when the machine again becomes air-borne and lively. These are times, indeed, when one can almost feel the machine quivering with excitement. 

So, with this eye of the mind, the practised pilot sees in the instant that his motor stops the curving pathway of his glide to a likely landing-place, and feels in the first tremor of his machine against a gust its inevitable sequence of attitudes.

“Every flight is an adventure,” said the gallant Cody, and in such imaginative spirit he reaped his brief but splendid triumph.

As for rhythm, it is incarnate in flying. In no other form of profession does the poetry of motion—that hackneyed but indispensable phrase—find higher expression. For if a pilot need not have the soul of a poet, he should at least have an appreciation of poetry, or of music, and feel in the execution of a perfect loop something of the fine rapture of the artist over his creation. 

The sense of rhythm, in flying, is a sense of curves. It is the most mystical of all the attributes of a flier, so much so, indeed, that it may one day rescue Flight from its obvious destiny in War and in Commercialism, and reveal through some strange religious cult an undreamt-of form of art. But this matter may be reserved for future discussion.

Upon the need for humour it is not intended—nor is it needful—to dilate, as it is the grain of Attic salt that sweetens all the activities of life. To him that cranes his neck at the wind-tossed argosy, the reflection comes of a fool and his folly, or of a hero and his intrepidity, according to his temperament. But to the man aloft no such opinions should disturb or irritate. 

For him merely the chuckle of contentment at something achieved and a lively reverence for the art of which he knows only the rudiments. To regard the vagaries of weather and machines with good-tempered indulgence; to cultivate patience to an extent unknown to anglers; to see in flying the promise of a red and thunderous dawn—this is the true humour of the pilot. 

---

In essence, the author presents the pilot as more than just a skilled individual. They are an artist and an explorer, whose abilities are amplified by the qualities of imagination, rhythm, humor, and youth. This perspective, when combined with the energy and bravery of youth, forms the core of the article’s argument.

The article posits that these attributes, when cultivated in pilots, cannot only enhance their craft but also contribute to the broader development of aviation. It suggests that these qualities could potentially transform aviation into a higher form of artistic expression in the future, a concept that is both intriguing and significant in the context of aviation history.

Have you ever thought of flying as an art form? The more I think about it, the more it seems true. Imagine someone gracefully moving through the air, following a traffic pattern during a final approach, or landing in a cross-wind. We are all artists in one way or another. Therefore, a pilot is an artist of motion, adept in manipulating machines and navigating the unpredictable nature of a moving airstream.

We’ve reached the end of another episode of Tony’s Short Stories. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you in the next one!