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of fellows, but although a pilot who was hurt in a crash came in for his due share of sympathy, it was the custom at Hendon to give him a dose of ridicule if he was fortunate enough to escape injury. 20
    This vignette of a typical flying accident a few months before the First World War is revealing on several counts, apart from acting as a reminder that even today, a century later, a stall on take-off still causes multiple fatalities each year around the world, especially in light aircraft like this. At the time it was a familiar occurrence and the writer, Louis Strange, was very lucky. Many such crashes caught fire and their trapped survivors, often still very much alive and all too audible, were burned to death in front of the horrified spectators and ground crews. Aviation spirit, together with the aircraft’s wooden construction covered in doped fabric, could produce a raging bonfire within seconds. Despite the rapid developments in aircraft design that the war was to expedite, flying remained a high-risk pastime for many years, as the aeronautical engineer and future popular novelist Nevil Shute was to discover when working for the de Havilland company in the 1920s.
    The jocular phrase that one was going out to flirt with death was not entirely jocular in 1923. Humour was grim at times on Stag Lane Aerodrome. There was a crash wagon with fire extinguishers on it ready at all times when flying was in progress, as is usual, and this crash wagon was provided with a steel rod about eighteen feet long with a large, sharpened hook at one end. This was for the purpose of hooking the body of the pilot out of the burning wreckage when the flames were too fierce to permit any gentler method of rescue. It was the custom at Stag Lane when a pupil was to do a first solo to get out this hook, to show him that his friends had it ready… 21
    As it turned out, Louis Strange’s luck went on holding to a phenomenal extent (as will shortly become even more apparent). He was the pilot mentioned in the previous chapter who had flown the first F.E.2b out to France and he was to have a most distinguished war, emerging practically unscathed from his years as a combat pilot and flying instructor, neither of which profession was noted for longevity. His pilot that day at Hendon, Philippe Marty, was not so lucky. He was to die only a few weeks later from stalling his machine once again, this time at 200 feet.
    The story shows vividly how very susceptible early aircraft could be to chance gusts of wind. This was because they were of the lightest possible construction, which in turn was the result of the aero engines of the day being generally weak. This further restricted what could be achieved by designers’ limited understanding of aerodynamics. Among the earliest pioneers the Wright brothers in America were the most consistently scientific and systematic in their approach to flight, and this undoubtedly formed the bedrock of their success. Not only did they build a primitive wind tunnel to test their wing shapes, they also designed the first true aero propeller. Various propellers had already been tried on dirigibles, but they were mostly based on ships’ screws and even on paddles. It was the Wright brothers who broke decisively with the nautical model and reasoned that a propeller blade was in effect a little narrow wing that needed to be given a twist to ensure it created more lift than drag along its entire length as it revolved. Since the engine was mounted horizontally this lift simply became thrust. The propellers they crafted out of wood for their ‘Flyer’ were a mere 4 or 5 per cent less efficient than are the best computer-designed propellers well over a century later. It was a stroke of engineering genius for two men calculating with paper and pencil in a bicycle workshop.
    Besides adequate thrust, powered flight depended on the aircraft being controllable. The Wrights and the German pioneer of man-carrying kites, Otto