Series 01 Part 02: Hughes family correspondence, 3 April 1917-22 September 1918 - Page 125
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[Page 125]
9.
world was dangerous the chances are he would go up in it and kill himself straight away. It is the old old story of giving a dog a bad name. I was nervous myself the first time I flew it, though I had done a lot of flying, because its reputation was awful. But I found it was quite a nice machine and decided that the only trouble was that everyone was afraid of it. So I set myself to breaking its reputation and giving the pupils confidence in it. That was no easy task and I was not believed – even when a pupil flew it without doing himself any harm he could not get over his fears for a long time. I only put picked pupils on the machine, men who flew the elementary machines exceptionally well. My only means of giving them confidence was to take them up and do things with the machine that I did with other machines – at that time there was no satisfactory dual control in existence. In this way I turned out a dozen pilots without mishap and then little McNeil crashed and was badly injured. Then I realised that I had only solved half the problem and saw that I must have dual control. So I worked out my first idea for making a dual control for the machine. Since then I have turned out over forty pilots without a single one having a serious crash. And the reason why they havn't crashed is that they were properly taught and were not afraid of the machine. As time passed I gained