Page:Aircraft in Warfare (1916).djvu/204

§ 106 bad ground in peace-time flying. Testing to destruction is good in its way, but the particular article so tested must not be subsequently used. With regard to the men themselves, the argument that a bad ground is better than a good one is almost as gravely at fault. One hundred alightings on a good ground (with a fair surface and without obstructions) will carry less risk than, say, 20 or 30 on a poor or bad ground, and the man who has made his 100 alightings, with, if we wish, imaginary obstacles, is a better man than the one who has only done his 20 or 30, especially if the latter is disabled or dead. A man who practises jumping uses a light lath, which will do him no injury if he falls, in spite of the fact that his object may be to join a club of harriers and jump a five-bar gate.

The need for improvement in our flying grounds is very much emphasised, when the importance of night flying is taken into consideration. With bad or indifferent flight grounds, such as existent at the time of the outbreak of war, alighting by night is an operation of extreme risk, and is only possible for a pilot of great experience. There is no real reason why alighting by night should be unduly dangerous; flight grounds of adequate area, properly drained, and of good surface, are however essential. There are many ways, by means of artificial lights, by which the difficulty of judging the distance from the ground may be overcome.

It is more than possible that, in some respects and from certain points of view, flying by night may become less hazardous than by daylight, just as, for example, there are many conditions under which navigation at sea is actually safer by night than by day.

The military importance of night flying is in part due to the need for countering the activity of the larger dirigible or Zeppelin, but the question is far wider than