My Airships/Chapter 21

by Alberto Santos-Dumont

THE FIRST OF THE WORLD'S AIR-SHIP STATIONS

AIR-SHIP experimenters labour under one peculiar disadvantage, quite apart from the proper difficulties of the problem. It is due to the utter newness of travel in a third dimension, and consists in the slowness with which our minds realise the necessity of providing for the diagonal mountings and descents of the air-ships starting from and returning to the ground.

When the Aéro Club of Paris laid out its grounds at St Cloud it was with the sole idea of facilitating the vertical mounting of spherical balloons. Indeed, no provisions were made even for the landing of spherical balloons, because their captains never hoped to bring them back to the St Cloud balloon park otherwise than by rail, packed in their boxes. The spherical balloon lands where the wind takes it.

When I built my first air-ship house in the Club's grounds at St Cloud I dare say that the then novel advantages of possessing my own gas plant, workshop, and a shelter in which the inflated dirigibles could be housed indefinitely withheld my attention from this other almost vital problem of surroundings. It was already a great progress for me not to be obliged to empty the balloon and waste its hydrogen at the end of each trip. Thus I was content to build simply an air-ship house with great sliding doors without even taking precautions to guarantee a flat, open space in front, and, less still, on either side of it. When, little by little, trenches something like a metre (yard) deep—vague foundation outlines for constructions that were never finished—began appearing here and there to the right of my open doors and on beyond I realised that my aids might risk falling into them in running to catch my guide rope when I should be returning from a trip. And when the gigantic skeleton of M. Henry Deutsch's air-ship house, designed to shelter the air-ship he built on the lines of my "No. 6," and called "La Ville de Paris," rose directly in front of my sliding doors, scarcely two air-ships' lengths distant from them, it dawned on me at last that here was something of a peril, and more than a simple inconvenience due to natural crowding in a club's grounds. In spite of the new peril the Deutsch prize was won. Returning from the Eiffel Tower I passed high above the skeleton. I may say here, however, that the foundation trenches innocently caused the painful controversy about my time, to which I have made a brief allusion in the chapter. Seeing that they might easily break their legs by stumbling into those foundation trenches I had positively forbidden my men to run across that space to catch my guide rope with their eyes and arms up in the air. Not dreaming that such a point could be raised, my men obeyed the injunction. Observing that I was quite master of my rudder, motor, and propeller, able to turn and return to the spot where the judges stood, they let me pass on over their heads without seeking to catch and run along with the guide rope, a thing they might have done easily—at the risk of their legs.

Again, at Monaco, after a well-planned air-ship house had been erected in what seemed an ideal spot, we have seen what dangers were, nevertheless, threatened by the sea wall, the Boulevard de la Condamine with its poles, wires, and traffic, and the final disaster, due entirely to the absence of a weighing ground beside the aerodrome. These

"SANTOS-DUMONT No. 5

SHOWING HOW AËRO CLUB GROUNDS WERE CUT UP

are dangers and inconveniences against which we come in time to be on our guard by actual and often dire experience.

During the spring and summer of 1902 I took trips to England and the United States, of which I shall have a word to say later. Returning from those trips to Paris I at once set about selecting the site of an aerodrome that should be all my own and in which the experience gained at such cost should be taken advantage of. This time I resolved my air-ship house should have an ample space around it. And, succeeding in a way, I realised—if I may say it—the first of the air-ship stations of the future.

After long search I came on a fair-sized lot of vacant ground surrounded by a high stone wall, inside the police jurisdiction of the Bois de Boulogne, but private property, situated on the Rue de Longchamps, in Neuilly St James. First, I had to come to an understanding with its owner; then I had to come to an understanding with the Bois authorities, who took time to give a building permit to such an unusual construction as a house from which air-ships would go and come.

The Rue de Longchamps is a narrow suburban street, little built on at this end, that gives on the Bagatelle Gate to the Bois de Boulogne, beside the training ground of the same name. To go and come in my air-ships from this side is, however, inconvenient because of the walls of the various properties, the trees that line the Bois so thickly, and the great park gates. To the right and left of my little property are other buildings. Behind me, across the Boulevard de la Seine, is the river itself, with the Ile de Puteaux in it. It is from this side that I must go and come in my air-ships. Mounting diagonally in the air from my own open grounds I pass over my wall, the Boulevard de la Seine, and turn when well above the river. Regularly I turn to the left and make my way, in a great arc, to the Bois by way of the training ground, itself a fairly open space.

There it stands in its grounds, the first of the air-ship stations of the future, capable of housing seven air-ships all inflated and prepared to navigate at an instant's notice! But in spite of all the needs that I attempted to provide for in it what a small and hampered place it is compared with the great, highly-organised stations which the future must produce for itself, with their high-placed and spacious landing-stages, to which

FIRST OF THE WORLD'S AIRSHIP STATIONS (NEUILLY ST JAMES)

air-ships will descend with complete safety and convenience, like great birds that seek nests on flat rocks! Such stations may have little car tracks running out from their interior to the wide landing-spaces. The cars that run over them will pull the air-ships in and out by their guide ropes, without loss of time or the aid of a dozen or more men. Their observation towers will serve for judges' timing stations in aerial races; fitted with wireless telegraph apparatus they may be able to communicate with distant goals and, perhaps, even with the air-ships in motion. Attached to their air-ship stations there will be gas-generating plants. There may be a casemated workshop for the testing of motors. There will certainly be sleeping-rooms for experimenters who desire to make an early start and profit by the calm of the dawn. It is quite probable that there will also be balloon envelope workshops for repairs and changes, a carpenter shop, and a machine shop, with intelligent and experienced workmen ready and able to seize an idea and execute it.

Meanwhile my air-ship station of the present is said to resemble a great square tent, striped red and white, set in the midst of a vacant lot surrounded by a high stone wall. Its tent-like appearance is due to the fact that, being in a hurry to utilise it, I saw no reason to construct its walls or roof of wood. The framework consists of long rows of parallel wooden pillars. Across their tops is stretched a canvas roof, and the four sides are made of the same striped canvas. This makes a construction stronger than it at first appears, the outside tent stuff weighing some 2600 kilogrammes (5720 lbs.), and being sustained between the pillars by metallic cordage.

Inside, the central stalls are 9${\tfrac {1}{2}}$ metres (31 feet) wide, 50 metres (165 feet) long, and 13${\tfrac {1}{2}}$ metres (44${\tfrac {1}{2}}$ feet) high, affording room for the largest dirigibles without permitting them to come into contact with each other. The great sliding doors are but a repetition of those of Monaco.

When in the spring of 1903 I found my air-ship station completed I had three new air-ships ready to house in it. They were:

My "No. 7." This I call my racing air-ship. It is designed and reserved for important competitions, the mere cost of filling it with hydrogen being more than 3000 francs (£120). It is true that, once filled, it may be kept inflated for a month at the expense of 50 francs (£2) per day

"No. 7"

for hydrogen to replace what is lost by the daily play of condensation and dilatation. Having a gas capacity of 1257 cubic metres (nearly 45,000 cubic feet) it possesses twice the lifting power of my "No. 6," in which the Deutsch prize was won; and such is the necessary weight of its 60 horse-power, water-cooled, four-cylinder motor and its proportionally strong machinery that I shall probably take up no more ballast in it than I took up in the "No. 6." Comparing their sizes and lifting powers, it would make five of

My "No. 9," the novel little "runabout," which I shall describe in the succeeding chapter. The third of the new air-ships is

My "No. 10," which has been called "The Omnibus." Its gas capacity of 2010 cubic metres (nearly 80,000 cubic feet) makes its balloon greater in size and lifting power than even the racing "No. 7"; and should I, indeed, desire at any time to shift to it the latter's keel, all furnished with the racing motor and machinery, I might combine a very swift air craft capable of carrying myself, several aids and a large supply of both petroleum and ballast—not to speak of war munitions were the sudden need of a belligerent character.

The prime purpose of my "No. 10," however, is well indicated in its name: "The Omnibus." Its keel, or, rather, keels, as I have fashioned them, are double—that is to say, hanging underneath its usual keel, in which my basket is situated, there is a passenger keel that holds three similar

baskets and a smaller basket for my aid. Each passenger basket is large enough to contain four passengers; and it is to carry such passengers that "The Omnibus" has been constructed.

Indeed, after mature reflection, it seemed to me that this must be the most practical and rapid way to popularise aerial navigation. In my other

"No. 10"

WITHOUT PASSENGER KEEL

air-ships I have shown that it is possible to mount and travel through the air on a prescribed course with no greater danger than one risks in any racing

automobile. In "The Omnibus" I shall demonstrate to the world that there are very many men—and women—possessed of sufficient confidence in the aerial idea to mount with me as passengers in the first of the air omnibuses of the future.