4

Pnm*

m:\v-yohk

daily

tiuwnk.

sinday.

ormm-u

it. _i!H.o.

BUT THE DAY IS or NATION HAVE SO FAR BEEN CONFINED TO THE AVIATORS.
weight of the motor died Instantly.

APPROACHING
The and he

rapidly to earth. over and he was borne chest,

crushed his

Of equal prowess was E. L*>febvr\ a won lately taken to airknown engineer, who had r ships, and was killed at Juvisy-sur-Orge on Sepwhile practising over the aviation field tember 0. at that place. Lefebvre, one of the new school darinp. He had of aviators, was famed for his been fined for reckless piloting in the Rhebna

races.

The death of Lieutenant Thomas E. Se!fr!r!ge year at Fort Myer, Vir- ; on September 17 of last ginia, gave the American public a deep impression of aerial perils. Himself a pioneer aviator, passenger. The he Joined Orville Wright an a breaking of a propeller disabled the steering
machine, "sliding off the air." gear, and the fridge received a Lieutenant struck hard. fractured skull and Wright had his left leg broken, which, however, did not keep him long from pursuing his life's vocation. a On July IS. 1905. Daniel Maloney went up i an aeroplane, accompanied by a balloon, at Santa Clara, Cal. The aeroplane was of light hickory, forty-two pounds in weight and spread-

'

WRECK OF THE BIPLANE IN WHICH

LEFEBVRE PERISHED

DISASTERS IX THE AIR.

Aviation's Mortality Record I*ong School for Flyers in Paris.

Teste: day's Jest about the danger of flying is a sober warning to-day. So many persons ar< Koins- up in tin air and getting hurt by coming >!o\\ ii too quickly that th peri's <>f .air to eclipse those of motoring. aviation Prof rsiona. flyers like the Wrights are the first t" give warning of the dangers o"f the they do not wish air Sport, doubtless because navigation to be diseredi! -d by an unnecessarily large record of fatalities. They do not want tin- statistics of Inevitable accidents swelled by foolhardy amateurs. Up to the present time the killed and Injured have been operators or then- companions who have fallen victims to Individual mishaps, but accidents by aerial collisio are soon due to occur. Ther- are alto perils in store for the conservative folk who keep th.-ir feet upon the earth while unable to protect themselves from devastation falling swiftly from the sky. Even a light aeroplane with pilot aboard weighs several hundred pounds and would have momentum enough, when descending from any height

in a wrecked condition, to smash through the roof of a house. It would slaughter many persons in a crowd. Perhaps this aspect of peril will cause the first aerial legislation, defining

the rules of the air highway and prescribing for various grades of misdemeanors and felonies in flight. The law-abiding aeroist. on his side, will be glad to be protected from the brickbats and shotguns of incensed
penalties

If outrages from above are not "grounders." prevented the honest people who stay down cannot be blamed if they use primitive remedies. They cannot le expected to retire to shipproof caves after sunset or to get a pain in the neck watching out all day for air speeders. While opinion is ripening for definite and complete regulation in the public interest, the insuring companies are said to be figuring the kind of policies which they care to issue on the

lives of aeronauts. A conservative form of policy bars collision, explosion, defects, breakjudgment of up.-, the will of God and the bad the operator. It is like some burglary policies which protect everything but money. A recent occurrence at Juvisy, near Paris, demonstrated the need of insuring air machines against disappolnted spectators. About 200,000 Parisians rushed out to the advertised flying meet, and in their wrath at the failure to fly some of them wrecked a number of machines. It was argued

SMASH-UP OF A VOISIN BIPLANE, IN WHICH CAPTAIN FERBER WAS KILLED. the mob that aviators who get ?fi,ooo a week to aviate had no valid excuse not to go upward whatever the state of the atmosphere. Eh Men' they were paid to entertain, and if they fell because of unfavorable weather that would be
by

A FALL * p**?ibility always FROMntAinBALLOON. prese such an undertaking.

_l*

Monde IllustiC

entertainment also. In order tha* there may be fewer casualties in the air a school of aviation has been opened in Paris. The beginner may take courses in the navigation of monoplanes, biplanes and multiplanes under competent professors. After receiving theoretical instruction indoors the stupractical flights over a dent is taken out for course that is clear for several miles Next year the school willhave mapped out an aerial road one hundred miles long from Betheny to the vicinity of Paris. Leading over low and unobstructed country, the route will be marked by pyramids ton kilometres apart, and there will be repair stations and housing sheds at short intervals. Among the recent air fatalities which shocked all France was the death of Captain Marchal and his three fellow officers in the military balloon Republique on September 25. A propeller axle broke, causing a big rent in the gas enveloped, and the Republique fell swiftly to earth from a height of six hundred feet. The emotions of men doomed to death by dashing from a considerable height in a wrecked airship may be imagined if not authentically described. Of course it is known that the sensation is not that of falling but of having the earth rising to meet the unfortunate aviator. It takes a number of seconds to go down in an airship longer than In the case of a man falling unimpeded from a building or a cliff and there is only too much time for the agonized brain to realize the full horror of the situation. A doomed aviator who went down apart from his machine would be comparatively lucky. He would descend faster and have less time to think. In the Republique accident Captain Marchal and Sub-Lieutenants Vincenot and Reux were immediately killed, and Lieutenant Phaure lived only a few minutes. This disaster occurred on a national road about five miles from Moulina, and followed fast upon the death of Captain Ferber and E. Lefebvre. It was on September 22 last that Captain Louis Ferdinand Ferber, known professionally as M. de Rue, was killed near Boulogne, France Detailed by the French military authorities to aeroplane work. Captain Ferber, then la of the army reservation at Belleville,near chare* Parts, was conductlnc a series of experiment*. During his manoeuvres on this day his aeroplane turned

FUNERAL OF THE FOUR MEN Xl The dirigible hid been manoeuvring ovti
ing 185 square feet of wings". When : sand feet above the ground a guy tvpt 're-m IB* balloon dropped on the machine, I tower which braced the two rear win-s and con-

trolled the tail.

Maloney was picked up lifeless. Ml enough, the only mark he bore HM a scratch on the neck. His death had occurred during the descent.

The machine isar*ais4 ar..l

SOT****^

ssssl

Before the modern era of sudden death ha the air Percy S. Pilcher was fatally injured In England In 1898 while riding an imperfectly conceived gliding machine. It was only two years

OCTOBER 17, 1909. 3 THOSK OX THK GROUND, WHILE VWATCHING FOR AUTOMOBILES, MUST ALSO BEWARE OF AEROPLANES.
rariior that Ok doth of LlHenthal occurred under similar circumstances. Otto Lilicnthal. known as "the father of modrm aviation," had made two thousand glides viCh the monoplane with which he had experimented from the time he was thirteen years old, and with the biplane proceeded to" conduct farther trials in France. During a flight on Aurust 10, IS9Q, his glider was brought to the crbund by the Joints of the ruts giving way. and he was kill.d. Lillenthal's contributions to ihe problem of flight, though lacking the princi;!e of mechanical propulsion, were the greatest U any made up to his time. His adoption of the theory of albatross soaring, as promoted by the eccentric French mariner L* Bris, foreEhadowed the career of the modern aeroplane. In 1874 a Belgian Bhoemaker named De Groof Invented a flyingmac!isne which was a cross between a pair of beating wings and a parachute, Th twenty-four feet wings could be moved by the arms of tho aviator, while a tail twenty feet 1,-rig was regulated by bis feet. After a safe descent at Cremorne Gardens, London, the shoei-.akcr, who did not stick to his last, cut loose from a housetop on July 5, 1874. The pressure

KEW-YORK DAILY TUIIUXE. SUNDAY.

DISENTANGLING THE BODIES

OF THE FOUR VICTIMS FROM THE RUINS OF LA

REPUBLIQUE.

Le Monde

Illustr*.

afterward. This happened In the course of the by an automobilist. Moreover, a mortality recFourth of July celebration, and the aeronaut ord of aerial adventures dating from the timo mistook the promiscuous firingof revolvers for when the Greeks of the classic ftri.l yearned to the signal to descend. fly would show that an unkindly fate has visited At the Farmers' Carnival, at Princeton, 111., the skilled and unskilled alike. on November 5, 1908, Peter Kramer, of St. Louis, was dashed against a chimney while asFALSE PRIDE. cending In a balloon and experienced a similar Wilbur Wright was discussing the splendid previous, Lester Elkins. fate. On March 8 work of th Wright aeroplanes at Rheima. twenty years old, of San Antonio, Tex., dropped "My pupils," he said, laughing, "didn't have to into the Pacific Ocean from a balloon one mile display the false pride of o!d Jack Rogers, of from Dead Man's Island, near San Pedro, Cal., Dayton. and the body was never recovered. Less than "We once had a walking race from Pleasant a month later a woman was drowned in the through West Union, Milton and Trot wood breakers a quarter of a mile from the coast of Hill to Dayton. Jack Rogers in his prime Constances, France, where she descended in a walked well, but he \\;is now getting on. had Ho balloon. shouldn't have entered !\u25a0! ;v West Union waa There are enthusiasts who, in spite of this reached Jack beg I and at Trotwood he, grewsome list, aver that aviation is no more was very far behind indeed. dangerous than automobiling. This statement "The Trotwood boys jogged alongside the old might be sustained by statistics, perhaps, in the same way that figures can be made to prove man. They urged him on warmly. "\u25a0''\u25a0'\u25a0 It!' they said. "Step out! You've still railroad travel saft-r than lying in bed at home, because more people die in their beds than in got a chance, Jack. Put some ginger into it and railroad smash-ups; but whether these enthu- you'll win yet.1 siasts are right or wrong in their contention "Jat-k frowned and waved the boys aside. Hsj the fact remains that the number of fatal acci- said haughtily as he plodded on: dents which have befallen aviators lately s> ryes I don't belong to that to show that carelessness by an aviator is, as Bquad in front I'm the first of another relay " a rule, more heavily penalized than care 1.

:.'

REMAINS OF BURNED MONOPLANE USED BY BLERIOT, THE CHANNEL FLYER. Besides those disasters which have occurrfd in the ranks of the professional aviators, numerous others which proved fatal to private experimenters, government employes and balloon parties have fully awakened public realization to the perils of the air. Nearly every aviator has had his tumLles, and the best have narrowly escaped with their lives. M. Elriot, who recently crossed the English Channel, is said to have fallen more times than any other of his fellow adventurers. In Fplte of this liability to accident the eight days of flying at RLeims did not consign a single individual to the hospital, and there is plenty
of evidence to show how much better the aerial traveller! of the present are protected than their predecessors. The misfortunes of the past have U-d to mere careful adjustment of the gravity of the airship, co that the livelihood of the motor fallingupon the pilot is small. Moreover, the construction of the aeroplane now greatly lessens the chance of the aviator sustaining injury. It is almost impossible for the up-to-date machine to turn turtle, and there is little danger The crushing of the of a head-on d scent. takes up some of the shock, light

framework and the pilot in l.is splinter proof suit and beadgear sits in his cagciike surroundings compara.re.

That there

V T-F

fiLL OF LA REPUBLIQL'E. :'. on a few days previo-s.

\u25a0

to

collai

B rules, and when Count Ri)stofftsefT pulU-d the rip cord by mistake it spelled instant

members of the newly organized Russian Aoro Club, were grossly ignorant of bal-

s from ignorance or unstaaces. The collapsing of the army balloon General Wannowski on the THE ACCIDENT TO THE DIRIGIBLE f St. Petersburg on June 19 last, LA REPUBLIQUE WHICH COS? .;.. d fata'.ly for Court Chan.: FOUR LIVES. *alitzjn, his wife and Count Rostoffts- rr. ;.s among these. Although Captain Korbe, The affair is thus described by a reI ] Hie balloon, was experienced, the porter of the "Matin, who seems to hay
1

is much still unexplored in the rtheless constantly atin

'

been the nearest eyewitness:

tttill earlier fatality, and the first recorded in iiffllioiriiii\ia.tion since the conception of the that which ''<>j>lanf\ wasThis inventor'sattended the effort 1 M. Letur. machine was also of the umbrella type, combined with wings and a tail, 'similar to that which De Groof later ;idt>ptd. He ascended in Cremorne Gardens, London, in 18G4, suspended eighty feet telow a . ..<-\u25a0 Cutting loose, he survived several evolutions, but v hile coming down in a strong wind '.ear Toftingham was dashed into trees and killed.
\u25a0

for all. Of the party, Captain Korbe with a broken leg, and the rest were 2, two killed. Previous to this, on February Bordeaux aeronauts were killed in a gale near Saint- Tons, France. Among the lesser lights who have succumbed recently was James Corcoran, who attempted to descend in a parachute at Portland, Me., when only five hundred feet above the ground. The parachute failed to open, and the young man struck violently the Bite of the proposed monument to the late Thomas B. Reed. He died soon disaster
escaped

the gas bag, all the gas escaping with a loud report. Then with a dizzy dive like an enormous arrow the Republique plunged head foremost to the earth. I was about three hundred yards from the spot, and in a moment of stunned terror heard the whole framework come to the ground with a fearful crash in a cloud of dust, covered as with a winding sheet by th limp envelope of the balloon, and Iuv nothing more." L'Uiuctraiioo

we saw something fly out past the castlo and strike the envelope, and then th awful horror happened. One of the propeller blades had broken and penetrated

"Suddenly