fatalities on the training-fields of every country during the
period of training in war, and before and after the war, testify only
too surely that flying cannot be absolutely safe. It is no reflection
on the future of flying to realize that it has not been safe, and that
it can never, perhaps, be made fool-proof. One or two things must be
remembered before we become despondent over the future safety of
flying.

When the United States entered the war the entire personnel of the
Signal Corps numbered one hundred and sixty officers and men. At the
time the armistice was signed more than thirty thousand pilots had
been trained. They were trained in great numbers under high pressure.
We did not have the machines to train them in or the instructors to
fly with them. We had not the experience in wholesale training of
flying-men, and yet we turned out vast numbers. It was a question of
getting the men through their flying and getting them overseas as
quickly as possible. We had no adequate methods of inspection of
machines, and no laid-out course in flying-training. We had to learn
by our own experience, in spite of the fact that England at all times
gave unstinted aid.

The wonder is really that we did not have more flying accidents. There
were few men in the country who really understood what conditions
tended toward a flying accident. There were few who had ever gone into
a spin and lived to tell about it. At that time a spinning-nose dive
was a manifestation of hard luck--like a German shell. If you once got
into it, it was only the matter of waiting for the crash and hoping
that the hospital might be able to pull you through.

Toward the end, of course, this situation had been largely overcome,
the Gosport system of flying had been tried out, and there was a vast
increase in the knowledge of flying among the instructors and pupils.
The spin had been conquered, training was on a sound basis, and
accidents were being rapidly cut down.

One of the most obvious ways to cut down crashes was by making sure
that the pilot was in good condition physically. Flight surgeons
assigned to every camp were detailed to make a study of the very
delicate relationship between a sick and stale pilot and the crash. It
was discovered, for instance, that a man who went up not in the best
condition multiplied by many times the ordinary hazards in the air. It
became the duty of these surgeons to conduct recreation and exercises
so that pilo