PRACTICAL FLIGHT TRAINING
By Lieutenant Commander Barrett Studley '16. New York: Macmillan. 433 pages. 12.50.
Mr. Studley's book, which now appears in a revised edition, is intended primarily as a manual for student fliers. The material is chosen and admirably presented with this aim in view. How well the author has succeeded in his purpose may be judged by the fact that it is used as the official manual in the great naval flyingschool at Pensacola. At the same time, it is a book that anybody at all curious about flying should find full of interest.
Assuming the reader to be as innocent of aeronautical knowledge as were his Neanderthal ancesters, Mr. Studley sets about to provide him with all the information "essential for the safe and effective handling of an airplane in the air." He touches only in the most summary manner on such subjects as construction, engines and aerodynamics, judging that, useful and interesting as these topics are, they lie outside of the immediate scope of a training manual. Clarity and simplicity are requisites in a good text-book, and these are qualities in which Mr. Studley's work excels. His explanations and vocabulary are so easily intelligible that an old-fashioned grandmother could pick the book up and understand at the end of a few minutes reading the difference between a split-S and an Immelmann turn and exactly how each was executed.
The author's wide experience in teaching students to fly, including a recent tour of duty as Chief Flight Instructor in the Primary Training Squadron at Pensacola, has given him as expert a knowledge of aerial pedagogy as of airplanes themselves. He knows, for instance, that even in this year of grace there are people who, unless persistent precautions and vigilance are exercised to thwart them, will seize on an opportunity to step into the way of a propeller, "freeze" on the double-controls, attempt to turn back into a field with a dead motor, or try acrobatics for the supposed edification of groundlings before they have mastered the essentials of ordinary flying. One of the most valuable features of Practical Flight Training is that there seems to be no error, be it due to ignorance, carelessness or stupidity, that a young flyer could commit, against which the author fails to issue pithy and repeated warnings. Flying as Mr. Studley points out, is an art that can be learned only in the air; but as a supplement to even the best instruction, the present book should be invaluable.
