ritish early established a communication squadron for
this specific purpose. In the last three months of the war 279
cross-country passenger flights were made to such places as Paris,
Nancy, Dunkirk, and Manchester, all of them without a single accident!
Moreover, a Channel ferry service was created which in seventy-one
days of flying weather made 227 crossings, covered over 8,000 miles,
and carried 1,843 passengers.

With trains seldom going above 60 miles an hour, the slowest airplane
went 80 and the average daylight plane on the front probably equaled
110. The fast fighters went up to 120, 130, and even 140 miles an
hour, over twice as fast as any method of travel previously known.
Just as the curtain closed on the war, there had been developed in the
United States a plane credited with 162-2/3 miles an hour, and no one
for a moment believed that the limit had been reached.

Altitude likewise had been obliterated. The customary height for
two-seated observation and bombing planes was between one and two
miles, and of single-seated scouts between two and four miles. These
altitudes were not the freakish heights occasionally obtained by
adventurous fliers; on the contrary they were the customary levels at
which the different kinds of duties were carried out. Many men, of
course, went far higher. Since then an American, Roland Rohlfs, flying
a Curtiss "Wasp" set the unofficial altitude record at 34,610
feet--higher than the world's highest mountain.

Life at these altitudes was not possible, of course, under ordinary
conditions. The temperature fell far below zero and the air became so
thin that neither man nor engine could function unaided. As a result
the fliers were kept from freezing by electrically heated clothing and
from unconsciousness from lack of air by artificially supplied oxygen.
Similarly the oil, water, and gasolene of the engine were kept working
by special methods.

The armistice threw the different nations into a dilemma as to their
aviation plans. Obviously the huge war planes which were still in the
building in all the belligerent countries were no longer necessary.
Almost immediately, therefore, the placing of new contracts was halted
by the various governments, enlistments stopped, and plans set in
motion for the new requirements.

Within a very short time the United States canceled several hundred
million dollars' worth of contracts on which little actual
expenditure had been made by the man