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Updated: May 14, 2025
Before a machine is under control we must be able to climb, or come down to the ground for a landing. Vertical control of an airplane is attained by the use of elevators, flaps on the tail plane acting as horizontal rudders. A pull-back on the joy-stick lifts the flaps, raises the nose of the machine, and causes it to gain height.
"One of my best pilots took her up and didn't like her," said Blackie. "Didn't like her? What's wrong with her cold feet, eh? Bless you, they all get it sooner or later 'the pitcher goes often to the well, et cetera. That's a proverb that every flying man should unlearn, eh?" He leapt lightly into the machine and jiggled the joy-stick.
Push the joy-stick forward, the elevators are turned down, and the machine goes into a dive for the ground. In making many maneuvers all three controls, rudder, ailerons, and elevators, are used at once and the pilot feels his way with the machine, guiding it with the stick and the rudder-bar.
It looked like a yellow plum, and no larger than one; but ripe, ready to be plucked. A burst of flame far to the left attracted my attention, and almost at the same moment, one to the right. Ribbons of fire flapped upward in clouds of black oily smoke. Drew signaled with his joy-stick, and I knew what he meant: "Hooray! two down! It's our turn next!" But we were still three or four minutes away.
With left aileron down, the lift of the left wing is increased, and it tips up; at the same time the lift of the right wing is decreased, and it sags down. In that way the airplane is tipped up for a bank. These ailerons, wing sections, really, are controlled by a device known as the joy-stick in the cockpit. We have seen how an airplane is made to tip and turn.
A girl sat at the joy-stick looking as if carved out of wood. There was no more expression on her face than if she were sitting in the gallery at a rather dull play. Her lover and six brothers were dead in France. She had watched her little brother and her old grandmother die of malnutrition. Her sister was "officially pregnant" and under surveillance lest she kill herself.
"Everybody climb in," ordered Tom, with a wave of his hand. "I'll crank her up. You take the joy-stick, John." All hands complied. Then Tom began to turn the big burnished propeller, just as John threw a lever from the inside which caused the auxiliary ground wheel to shoot down and engage the sod. At the same time the movement of another lever by Paul set the airplane's brakes.
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