Yet the records of those years show that here and there an outstanding design was capable of great things. On the 9th September, 1912, Vedrines, flying a Deperdussin monoplane at Chicago, attained a speed of 105 miles an hour. On August 12th G. de Havilland took a passenger to a height of 10,560 feet over Salisbury Plain, flying a B.E. biplane with a 70 horse-power Renault engine. The work of de Havilland may be said to have been the principal influence in British military aeroplane design, and there is no doubt that his genius was in great measure responsible for the excellence of the early B.E. and F.E. types.
On the 31st May, 1913, H. G. Hawker, flying at Brooklands, reached a height of 11,450 feet on a Sopwith biplane engined with an 80 horse-power Gnome engine. On June 16th, with the same type of machine and engine, he achieved 12,900 feet. On the 2nd October, in the same year, a Grahame White biplane with 120 horse-power Austro-Daimler engine, piloted by Louis Noel, made a flight of just under 20 minutes carrying 9 passengers. In France a Nieuport monoplane piloted by G. Legagneaux attained a height of 6,120 metres, or just over 20,070 feet, this being the world’s height record. It is worthy of note that of the world’s aviation records as passed by the International Aeronautical Federation up to June 30th, 1914, only one, that of Noel, is credited to Great Britain.
Just as records were made abroad, with one exception, so were the really efficient engines. In England there was the Green engine, but the outbreak of war found the Royal Flying Corps with 80 horse-power Gnomes, 70 horse-power Renaults, and one or two Antoinette motors, but not one British, while the Royal Naval Air Service had got 20 machines with engines of similar origin, mainly land planes in which the wheeled undercarriages had been replaced by floats. France led in development, and there is no doubt that at the outbreak of war, the French military aeroplane service was the best in the world. It was mainly composed of Maurice Farman two-seater biplanes and Bleriot monoplanes--the latter type banned for a period on account of a number of serious accidents that took place in 1912.
America had its Army Aviation School, and employed Burgess-Wright and Curtiss machines for the most part. In the pre-war years, once the Wright Brothers had accomplished their task, America’s chief accomplishment consisted in the development of the ‘Flying Boat,’ alternatively named with characteristic American clumsiness, ‘The Hydro-Aeroplane.’ In February of 1911, Glenn Curtiss attached a float to a machine similar to that with which he won the first Gordon-Bennett Air Contest and made his first flying boat experiment. From this beginning he developed the boat form of body which obviated the use and troubles of floats--his hydroplane became its own float.