SOME FEATURES OF AËRIAL WARFARE
6:17 PM // 0 comments // sb blogger // Category: Aircraft , airplane , Aviation , War , Weapons //As devices to translate German hate for England into deeds of bloody malignancy and cowardly murder the German aircraft have ranked supreme. The ruthless submarine war has indeed done something toward working off this peculiar passion, but it lacked the spectacular qualities which German wrath demanded. As the war proceeded, and it became apparent that the participation of Great Britain—at first wholly unexpected by the Kaiser's advisers—was certain to defeat the German aims, the authorities carefully inculcated in the minds of the people the most malignant hatred for that power. As Lissauer's famous hymn of hate had it—
French and Russians it matters not,
A blow for a blow, and a shot for a shot.
............
We have one foe and one alone—
England!
A blow for a blow, and a shot for a shot.
............
We have one foe and one alone—
England!
By way of at once gratifying this hatred and still further stimulating it the German military authorities began early in the war a series of air raids upon English towns. They were of more than doubtful military value. They damaged no military or naval works. They aroused the savage ire of the British people who saw their children slain in schools and their wounded in hospitals by bombs dropped from the sky and straightway rushed off to enlist against so callous and barbaric a foe. But the raids served their political purpose by making the German people believe that the British were suffering all the horrors of war on their own soil, while the iron line of trenches drawn across France by the German troops kept the invader and war's agonies far from the soil of the Fatherland.
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| International Film Service. The U. S. Aviation School at Mineola. |
The first German air raids were by Zeppelins on little English seaside towns—Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Harwich. Except in so far as they inflicted mutilation and death upon many non-combatants, mostly women and children, and misery upon their relatives and friends they were without effect. But early in 1915 began a systematic series of raids upon London, which, by October of 1917, had totalled thirty-four, with a toll of 865 persons killed, and 2500 wounded. It seems fair to say that for these raids there was more plausible excuse than for those on the peaceful little seaside bathing resorts and fishing villages. London is full of military and naval centres, arsenals and navy yards, executive offices and centres of warlike activity. An incendiary bomb dropped into the Bank of England, or the Admiralty, might paralyze the finances of the Empire, or throw the naval organization into a state of anarchy. But as a matter of fact the German bombs did nothing of the sort. They fell in the congested districts of London, "the crowded warrens of the poor." They spread wounds and death among peaceable theatre audiences. One dropped on a 'bus loaded with passengers homeward bound, and obliterated it and them from the face of the earth. But no building of the least military importance sustained any injury. It is true, however, that the persistent raiding has compelled England to withhold from the fighting lines in France several thousand men and several hundred guns in order to be in readiness to meet air raids in which Germany has never employed more than fifty machines and at most two hundred men, including both aviators and mechanics.
It is entirely probable that the failure of the Germans to strike targets of military importance and the slaughter they wrought among peaceful civilians were due to no intent or purpose on their part. Hitting a chosen target from the air is no matter of certainty. The bomb intended for the railway station is quite as likely to hit the adjacent public school or hospital. If the world ever recurs to that moderate degree of sanity and civilization which shall permit wars, but strive to regulate them in the interest of humanity this untrustworthiness of the aircraft's aim will compel some form of international regulation, just as the vulnerability of the submarine will force the amendment of the doctrine of visitation and search. But neither problem can be logically and reasonably solved in the middle of a war. And so, while the German violation of existing international law had the uncomfortable result for Germany of bringing the United States into the war, the barbarous raids upon London caused the British at last to turn aside from their commendable abstention from air raids on unfortified and non-military towns and prepare for reprisals in kind.
From the beginning of the war the British had abstained from bombing peaceful and non-military towns. They had not indeed been weak in the employment of their air forces. General Smuts speaking in October, 1917, said that the British had, in the month previous, dropped 207 tons of bombs behind the lines of the enemy. But the targets were airdromes, military camps, arsenals and munitions camps—not hospitals or kindergartens. The time had now come when this purely military campaign no longer satisfied an enraged British people who demanded the enforcement of the Mosaic law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, against a people whom General Smuts described as "an enemy who apparently recognizes no laws, human or divine; who knows no pity or restraint, who sung Te Deums over the sinking of the Lusitania, and to whom the maiming and slaughter of women and children appear legitimate means of warfare."
And Premier Lloyd George, speaking to an audience of poor people in one of the congested districts which had suffered sorely from the aërial activities of the Hun, said:
"We will give it all back to them, and we will give it soon. We shall bomb Germany with compound interest."
But whether undertaken as part of a general programme of frightfulness or as reprisals for cruel and indefensible outrages air raids upon defenceless towns, killing peaceable citizens in their beds, and children in their kindergartens, are not incidents to add glory to aviation. The mind turns with relief from such examples of the cruel misuse of aircraft to the hosts of individual instances in which the airman and his machine remind one of the doughty Sir Knight and his charger in the most gallant days of chivalry. There were hosts of such incidents—men who fought gallantly and who always fought fair, men who hung about the outskirts of an aërial battle waiting for some individual champion of their own choosing to show himself and join in battle to death in the high ranges of the sky. Some of these have been mentioned in this book already. To discuss all who even as early as 1917 had made their names memorable would require a volume in itself. A few may well be mentioned below.
There, for example, was Captain Georges Guynemer, "King of the French Aces." An "ace" is an aviator who has brought down five enemy aircraft. Guynemer had fifty-three to his credit. Still a youth, only twenty-three years of age at the time of his death, and only flying for twenty-one months, he had lived out several life times in the mad excitement of combat in mid-air. Within three weeks after getting his aviator's license he had become an "Ace." Before his first year's service had expired he was decorated and promoted for gallantry in rushing to the aid of a comrade attacked by five enemy machines. He entered the combat at the height of ten thousand feet, and inside of two minutes had dropped two of the enemy. The others fled. He pursued hotly keeping up a steady fire with his machine gun. One Boche wavered and fell, but just then an enemy shell from an "Archie" far below exploded under Guynemer, tearing away one wing of his machine. Let him tell the rest of that story:
I felt myself dropping [he said later]. It was ten thousand feet to the earth, and, like a flash, I saw my funeral with my saddened comrades marching behind the gun carriage to the cemetery. But I pulled and pushed every lever I had, but nothing would check my terrific descent.
Five thousand feet from the earth, the wrecked machine began to turn somersaults, but I was strapped into the seat. I do not know what it was, but something happened and I felt the speed descent lessen. But suddenly there was a tremendous crash and when I recovered my senses I had been taken from the wreckage and was all right.
Five thousand feet from the earth, the wrecked machine began to turn somersaults, but I was strapped into the seat. I do not know what it was, but something happened and I felt the speed descent lessen. But suddenly there was a tremendous crash and when I recovered my senses I had been taken from the wreckage and was all right.
Two records Guynemer made which have not yet been surpassed—the first, the one described above of dropping three Fokkers in two minutes and thirty seconds, and rounding off the adventure by himself dropping ten thousand feet. The second was in shooting down four enemy machines in one day. His methods were of the simplest. He was always alone in his machine, which was the lightest available. He would rather carry more gasoline and ammunition than take along a gunner. The machine gun was mounted on the plane above his head, pointing dead ahead, and aimed by aiming the whole airplane. Once started the gun continued firing automatically and Guynemer's task was to follow his enemy pitilessly keeping that lead-spitting muzzle steadily bearing upon him. In September, 1917, he went up to attack five enemy machines—no odds however appalling seemed to terrify him—but was caught in a fleet of nearly forty Boches and fell to earth in the enemy's country.
One of the last of the air duels to be fought under the practices which made early air service so vividly recall the age of chivalry, was that in which Captain Immelman, "The Falcon," of the German army, met Captain Ball of the British Royal Flying Corps. Immelman had a record of fifty-one British airplanes downed. Captain Ball was desirous of wiping out this record and the audacious German at the same time, and so flying over the German lines he dropped this letter:
Captain Immelman:
I challenge you to a man-to-man fight to take place this afternoon at two o'clock. I will meet you over the German lines. Have your anti-air craft guns withhold their fire, while we decide which is the better man. The British guns will be silent.
BALL.
Presently thereafter this answer was dropped from a German airplane:
Captain Ball:
Your challenge is accepted. The guns will not interfere. I will meet you promptly at two.
IMMELMAN.
The word spread far and wide along the trenches on both sides. Tacitly all firing stopped as though the bugles had sung truce. Men left cover and clambered up on the top to watch the duel. Punctually both flyers rose from their lines and made their way down No Man's Land. Let an eye witness tell the story:
From our trenches there were wild cheers for Ball. The Germans yelled just as vigorously for Immelman.
The cheers from the trenches continued; the Germans increased in volume; ours changed into cries of alarm.
Ball, thousands of feet above us and only a speck in the sky, was doing the craziest things imaginable. He was below Immelman and was apparently making no effort to get above him, thus gaining the advantage of position. Rather he was swinging around, this way and that, attempting, it seemed, to postpone the inevitable.
We saw the German's machine dip over preparatory to starting the nose dive.
"He's gone now," sobbed a young soldier, at my side, for he knew Immelman's gun would start its raking fire once it was being driven straight down.
Then in a fraction of a second the tables were turned. Before Immelman's plane could get into firing position, Ball drove his machine into a loop, getting above his adversary and cutting loose with his gun and smashing Immelman by a hail of bullets as he swept by.
Immelman's airplane burst into flames and dropped. Ball, from above, followed for a few hundred feet and then straightened out and raced for home. He settled down, rose again, hurried back, and released a huge wreath of flowers, almost directly over the spot where Immelman's charred body was being lifted from a tangled mass of metal.
Four days later Ball too was killed.
The cheers from the trenches continued; the Germans increased in volume; ours changed into cries of alarm.
Ball, thousands of feet above us and only a speck in the sky, was doing the craziest things imaginable. He was below Immelman and was apparently making no effort to get above him, thus gaining the advantage of position. Rather he was swinging around, this way and that, attempting, it seemed, to postpone the inevitable.
We saw the German's machine dip over preparatory to starting the nose dive.
"He's gone now," sobbed a young soldier, at my side, for he knew Immelman's gun would start its raking fire once it was being driven straight down.
Then in a fraction of a second the tables were turned. Before Immelman's plane could get into firing position, Ball drove his machine into a loop, getting above his adversary and cutting loose with his gun and smashing Immelman by a hail of bullets as he swept by.
Immelman's airplane burst into flames and dropped. Ball, from above, followed for a few hundred feet and then straightened out and raced for home. He settled down, rose again, hurried back, and released a huge wreath of flowers, almost directly over the spot where Immelman's charred body was being lifted from a tangled mass of metal.
Four days later Ball too was killed.
But the Germans, too, had their champion airmen, mighty fliers, skillful at control and with the machine gun, in whose triumphs they took the same pride that our boys in France did in those of Chapman, Rockwell or Thaw, the British in Warneford, or the French in Guynemer. Chief of these was Captain Boelke, who came to his death in the latter part of 1917, after putting to his credit over sixty Allied planes brought down. A German account of one of his duels as watched from the trenches, will be of interest:
For quite a long time an Englishman had been making circles before our eyes—calmly and deliberately.... My men on duty clenched their fists in impotent wrath. "The dog—!" Shooting would do no good.
Then suddenly from the rear a harsh, deep singing and buzzing cuts the air. It sounds like a German flyer. But he is not yet visible. Only the buzz of an approaching motor is heard in the clouds in the direction of the Englishman. More than a hundred eyes scanned the horizon. There! Far away and high among the clouds is a small black humming bird—a German battle aeroplane. Its course is laid directly for the hostile biplane and it flies like an arrow shot with a clear eye and steady hand. My men crawl out of the shelters. I adjust my field glasses. A lump rises in our throats as if we are awaiting something new and wonderful.
So far the other does not seem to have noticed or recognized the black flyer that already is poised as a hawk above him. All at once there is a mighty swoop through the air like the drop of a bird of prey, and in no time the black flyer is immediately over the Englishman and the air is filled with the furious crackling of a machine gun, followed by the rapid ta-ta-ta of two or three more, all operated at the highest speed just as during a charge. The Englishman drops a little, makes a circle and tries to escape toward the rear. The other circles and attacks him in front, and again we hear the exciting ta-ta-ta! Now the Englishman tries to slip from under his opponent, but the German makes a circle and the effort fails. Then the enemy describes a great circle and attempts to rise above the German. The latter ascends in sharp half circles and again swoops down upon the biplane, driving it toward the German trenches.
Will the Englishman yield so soon? Scattered shouts of joy are already heard in our ranks. Suddenly he drops a hundred yards and more through the air and makes a skillful loop toward the rear. Our warrior of the air swoops after him, tackles him once more and again we hear the wild defiant rattle of the machine guns over our heads. Now they are quite close to our trenches. The French infantry and artillery begin firing in a last desperate hope. Neither of them is touched. Sticking close above and behind him the German drives the Englishman along some six hundred yards over our heads and then just above the housetops of St. A. Once more we hear a distant ta-ta-ta a little slower and more scattered and then as they drop both disappear from our view.
Scarcely five minutes pass before the telephone brings up this news: Lieutenant Boelke has just brought down his seventh flyer.
Then suddenly from the rear a harsh, deep singing and buzzing cuts the air. It sounds like a German flyer. But he is not yet visible. Only the buzz of an approaching motor is heard in the clouds in the direction of the Englishman. More than a hundred eyes scanned the horizon. There! Far away and high among the clouds is a small black humming bird—a German battle aeroplane. Its course is laid directly for the hostile biplane and it flies like an arrow shot with a clear eye and steady hand. My men crawl out of the shelters. I adjust my field glasses. A lump rises in our throats as if we are awaiting something new and wonderful.
So far the other does not seem to have noticed or recognized the black flyer that already is poised as a hawk above him. All at once there is a mighty swoop through the air like the drop of a bird of prey, and in no time the black flyer is immediately over the Englishman and the air is filled with the furious crackling of a machine gun, followed by the rapid ta-ta-ta of two or three more, all operated at the highest speed just as during a charge. The Englishman drops a little, makes a circle and tries to escape toward the rear. The other circles and attacks him in front, and again we hear the exciting ta-ta-ta! Now the Englishman tries to slip from under his opponent, but the German makes a circle and the effort fails. Then the enemy describes a great circle and attempts to rise above the German. The latter ascends in sharp half circles and again swoops down upon the biplane, driving it toward the German trenches.
Will the Englishman yield so soon? Scattered shouts of joy are already heard in our ranks. Suddenly he drops a hundred yards and more through the air and makes a skillful loop toward the rear. Our warrior of the air swoops after him, tackles him once more and again we hear the wild defiant rattle of the machine guns over our heads. Now they are quite close to our trenches. The French infantry and artillery begin firing in a last desperate hope. Neither of them is touched. Sticking close above and behind him the German drives the Englishman along some six hundred yards over our heads and then just above the housetops of St. A. Once more we hear a distant ta-ta-ta a little slower and more scattered and then as they drop both disappear from our view.
Scarcely five minutes pass before the telephone brings up this news: Lieutenant Boelke has just brought down his seventh flyer.
Methods of air-fighting were succinctly described in a hearing before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, in June, 1917. The officers testifying were young Americans of the Lafayette Escadrille of the French army. To the civilian the testimony is interesting for the clear idea it gives of military aviation. The extracts following are from the official record:
Adjt. Prince: Senator, there are about four kinds of machines used abroad on the western front to-day. The machines that Adjt. Rumsey and myself are looking after are called the battle machines. Then there are the photography machines, machines that go up to enable the taking of photographs of the German batteries, go back of the line and take views of the country behind their lines and find out what their next line of attack will be, or, if they retreat from the present line, then everything in that way. Probably we have, where we are, in my group alone, a hundred and fifty photographers who do nothing all day long except develop pictures, and you can get pictures of any part of the country that you want. When the Germans retreated from the old line where they used to be, by Peronne and Chaulnes, we had absolute pictures of all the Hindenburg line from where they are now right down to St. Quentin, down to the line the French are on. We had photographs of it all.
Senator Kirby: When they started on the retreat?
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| Kadel & Herbert. Miss Ruth Law at Close of her Chicago to New York Flight. |
Adjt. Prince: Yes, sir. So we knew exactly where their stand would be made. Then, besides that, those photograph machines do a lot of scouting. They have a pilot and a photographer aboard. He has not only a camera, but quite often he has a Lewis gun with him in order to ward off any hostile airmen if they should get through the battle planes that are above him; in other words, should get through us in order to fight him. They do a great deal of the scouting, because they fly at a lower level. The battle planes go up to protect photography machines, or to go man-hunting, as it is called; in other words, to fight the Germans. We fly all day, like to-day, as high as we can go, or as high as the French go as a rule, about 5500 metres, about 17,000 to 18,000 feet.
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| International Film Service. A French Aviator between Flights. |
Adjt. Rumsey: I think 5500 metres is about 19,000 feet. Some go up 6000 metres, which makes about 20,000 feet.
Adjt. Prince: We go up there, and we have a certain sector of the front to look after. If we are only man-hunting, we go backward and forward like a policeman to prevent the Germans from getting over our own lines. We usually fly by fours, if we can, and the four go out together, so as not to be alone. We are usually fighting inside of the German lines, because the morale of the French and English is better than that of the Germans to-day; and every fight I have had—I have never been lucky enough to have one inside of my own lines—they have all been inside of the German lines.
Senator Kirby: What is the equipment of a battle plane such as you use?
Adjt. Prince: I use the 180 horse-power machine. It is called a "S. P. A. D.," which has a Spanish motor. But a great many of the motors to-day are being built here in America.
Senator Kirby: How many men do you carry?
Adjt. Prince: We go up alone in these machines. We did have two guns. We had the Lewis gun on our upper wing and the Vickers down below, that shoots through the propeller as the propeller turns around. Then we gave up the Lewis above. It added more weight, and we did not need it so much. The trouble with the Lewis gun is that it has only ninety-seven cartridges, while the Vickers has five hundred, and you can do just as much damage with the Vickers as you could with them both.
Adjt. Prince: Yes, sir.
Adjt. Rumsey: The machine gun is fixed.
Adjt. Prince: It is absolutely fixed on the machine, and if I should want to adjust it to shoot you, I would adjust my machine on you.
The witness then took up the nature and work of some of the heavier machines. He testified:
Adjt. Prince: Then comes the artillery regulating machine. That machine goes up, and it may be a Farman or a bi-motor, or some other kind of heavier machine, a machine that goes slowly. They go over a certain spot. They have a driver, who is a pilot, like ourselves; then they have an artillery officer on board, whose sole duty it is to send back word, mostly by Marconi, to his battery where the shots are landing. He will say: "Too far," "Too short," "Right," or "Left," and he stays there over this battery until the work done by the French guns has been absolutely controlled, and above him he has some of these battle planes keeping him from being attacked from above by German airmen. Of course, they may be shot at by anti-aircraft guns, which you can not help. That is artillery regulating.
The Chairman: Are you always attacked from above?
Adjt. Prince: By airplanes; yes, sir. It is always much safer to attack from above.
Then you have the bomb-dropping machines, which carry a lot of weight. They go out sometimes in the daytime, but mostly at night, and they have these new sights by which they can stay up quite high in the air and still know the spot they are going at. They know the wind speed, they know their height, and they can figure out by this new arrangement they have exactly when the time is to let go their bombs.
Senator Kirby: Something in the nature of a range-finder?
Adjt. Prince: A sort of range-finder.
Adjt. Rumsey: It is a sort of telescope that looks down between your legs, and you have to regulate yourself, observing your speed, and when you see the spot, you have to touch a button and off go these things.
Adjt. Rumsey: In a raid my brother went on there were sixty-eight machines that left; the French heavy machines, the English heavy machines, and then the English sort of half-fighting machine and half-bombing machine. They call it a Sopwith, and it is a very good machine. They went over there, and the first ones over were the Frenchmen, and they dropped bombs on these Mauser works, and the only thing that the English saw was a big cloud of smoke and dust, and they could not see the works so they just dropped into them. Out of that raid the fighting machines got eight Germans and dropped them, and the Germans got eight Frenchmen. So, out of sixty-eight they lost eight, but we also got eight Germans and dropped six tons of this stuff, which is twenty times as strong as the melinite. We do not know what the name of the powder is. The fighting machines on that trip only carried gasolene for two hours, and the other ones carried it for something like six hours, so we escorted them out for an hour, came back to our lines, filled up with gasolene, went out and met them and brought them back over the danger zone.
Adjt. Prince: Near the trenches is where the danger zone is, because there the German fighting machines are located.
Senator Kirby: How far was it from your battle front that you went?
Adjt. Rumsey: I think it was about 500 miles, 250 there and 250 back; it was between 200 and 250 miles there.
Senator Kirby: Beyond the battle front?
Adjt. Rumsey: Yes; or, to be more accurate, I think it was nearer 200 than 250.
The Chairman: What do you think of the function of the airplane as a determining factor?
Adjt. Prince: There is no doubt that if we could send over in huge waves a great number of these bomb-dropping machines, and simply lay the country waste—for instance, the big cities like Strassburg, Freiburg, and others—not only would the damage done be great, but I guess the popular opinion in Germany, everything being laid waste, would work very strongly in the minds of the public toward having peace. I do not think you could destroy an army, because you could not see them, but you could go to different stations; you could go to Strassburg, to Brussels, and places like that.
The Chairman: Then, sending them over in enormous numbers would also put out of business their airplanes, and they would be helpless, would they not?
Adjt. Prince: Absolutely. You not only have on the front a large number of bomb-dropping machines, but a large number of fighting machines. When the Somme battle was started in the morning the Germans knew, naturally, that the French and British were going to start the Somme drive, and they had up these Drachens, these observation balloons, and the first eighteen minutes that the battle started the French and the English, I think, got twenty-one "saucisse"; in other words, for the next five days there was not a single German who came anywhere near the lines, but the French and English could go ahead as they-felt like.
Admiral Peary: Have you any idea as to how many airplanes there are along that western front on the German side?
Adjt. Prince: There must be about 3000 on that line in actual commission.
Admiral Peary: That means, then, about 10,000 in all, at least?
Adjt. Prince: I should think so; I should say the French have about 2000 and the English possibly 1000, or we have about 2500.
Adjt. Rumsey: If they have 3000 we have 4000; that is, right on the line.
Adjt. Prince: We have about 1000 more than they have, and we are up all the time. The day before I left the front I was called to go out five times, and I went out five times, and spent two hours every time I went out.
It would be gratifying to author and to reader alike if it were possible to give some account of the progress in aërial equipment made by the United States, since its declaration of war. But at the present moment (February, 1918), the government is chary of furnishing information concerning the advance made in the creation of an aërial fleet. Perhaps precise information, if available, would be discouraging to the many who believe that the war will be won in the air. For it is known in a broad general way that the activities of the Administration have been centred upon the construction of training camps and aviation stations. Orders for the actual construction of airplanes have been limited, so that a chorus of criticism arose from manufacturers who declared that they might have to close their works for lack of employment. The apparent check was discouraging to American airmen, and to our Allies who had expected marvellous things from the United States in the way of swift and wholesale preparation for winning battles in the air. The response of the government to all criticism was that it was laying broad foundations in order that construction once begun would proceed with unabated activity, and that when aircraft began to be turned out by the thousands a week there would be aviators and trained mechanics a-plenty to handle them. In this situation the advocates of a special cabinet department of aeronautics found new reason to criticize the Administration and Congress for having ignored or antagonized their appeals. For responsibility for the delay and indifference—if indifference there was—rested equally upon the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of War. Each had his measure of control over the enormous sum voted in a lump for aviation, each had the further millions especially voted to his department to account for. But no single individual could be officially asked what had been done with the almost one billion dollars voted for aeronautics in 1917.
But if the authorities seemed to lag, the inventors were busy. Mention has already been made of the new "Liberty" motor, which report had it was the fruit of the imprisonment of two mechanical experts in a hotel room with orders that they should not be freed until they had produced a motor which met all criticisms upon those now in use. Their product is said to have met this test, and the happy result caused a general wish that the Secretaries of War and of the Navy might be similarly incarcerated and only liberated upon producing plans for the immediate creation of an aërial fleet suited to the nation's needs. If, however, the Liberty motor shall prove the complete success which at the moment the government believes it to be, it will be such a spur to the development of the airplane in peace and war, as could not otherwise be applied. For the motor is the true life of the airplane—its heart, lungs, and nerve centre. The few people who still doubt the wide adoption of aircraft for peaceful purposes after the war base their skepticism on the treachery of motors still in use. They repudiate all comparisons with automobiles. They say:
The Chairman: Are you always attacked from above?
Adjt. Prince: By airplanes; yes, sir. It is always much safer to attack from above.
Then you have the bomb-dropping machines, which carry a lot of weight. They go out sometimes in the daytime, but mostly at night, and they have these new sights by which they can stay up quite high in the air and still know the spot they are going at. They know the wind speed, they know their height, and they can figure out by this new arrangement they have exactly when the time is to let go their bombs.
Senator Kirby: Something in the nature of a range-finder?
Adjt. Prince: A sort of range-finder.
Adjt. Rumsey: It is a sort of telescope that looks down between your legs, and you have to regulate yourself, observing your speed, and when you see the spot, you have to touch a button and off go these things.
Adjt. Rumsey: In a raid my brother went on there were sixty-eight machines that left; the French heavy machines, the English heavy machines, and then the English sort of half-fighting machine and half-bombing machine. They call it a Sopwith, and it is a very good machine. They went over there, and the first ones over were the Frenchmen, and they dropped bombs on these Mauser works, and the only thing that the English saw was a big cloud of smoke and dust, and they could not see the works so they just dropped into them. Out of that raid the fighting machines got eight Germans and dropped them, and the Germans got eight Frenchmen. So, out of sixty-eight they lost eight, but we also got eight Germans and dropped six tons of this stuff, which is twenty times as strong as the melinite. We do not know what the name of the powder is. The fighting machines on that trip only carried gasolene for two hours, and the other ones carried it for something like six hours, so we escorted them out for an hour, came back to our lines, filled up with gasolene, went out and met them and brought them back over the danger zone.
Adjt. Prince: Near the trenches is where the danger zone is, because there the German fighting machines are located.
Senator Kirby: How far was it from your battle front that you went?
Adjt. Rumsey: I think it was about 500 miles, 250 there and 250 back; it was between 200 and 250 miles there.
Senator Kirby: Beyond the battle front?
Adjt. Rumsey: Yes; or, to be more accurate, I think it was nearer 200 than 250.
The Chairman: What do you think of the function of the airplane as a determining factor?
Adjt. Prince: There is no doubt that if we could send over in huge waves a great number of these bomb-dropping machines, and simply lay the country waste—for instance, the big cities like Strassburg, Freiburg, and others—not only would the damage done be great, but I guess the popular opinion in Germany, everything being laid waste, would work very strongly in the minds of the public toward having peace. I do not think you could destroy an army, because you could not see them, but you could go to different stations; you could go to Strassburg, to Brussels, and places like that.
The Chairman: Then, sending them over in enormous numbers would also put out of business their airplanes, and they would be helpless, would they not?
Adjt. Prince: Absolutely. You not only have on the front a large number of bomb-dropping machines, but a large number of fighting machines. When the Somme battle was started in the morning the Germans knew, naturally, that the French and British were going to start the Somme drive, and they had up these Drachens, these observation balloons, and the first eighteen minutes that the battle started the French and the English, I think, got twenty-one "saucisse"; in other words, for the next five days there was not a single German who came anywhere near the lines, but the French and English could go ahead as they-felt like.
Admiral Peary: Have you any idea as to how many airplanes there are along that western front on the German side?
Adjt. Prince: There must be about 3000 on that line in actual commission.
Admiral Peary: That means, then, about 10,000 in all, at least?
Adjt. Prince: I should think so; I should say the French have about 2000 and the English possibly 1000, or we have about 2500.
Adjt. Rumsey: If they have 3000 we have 4000; that is, right on the line.
Adjt. Prince: We have about 1000 more than they have, and we are up all the time. The day before I left the front I was called to go out five times, and I went out five times, and spent two hours every time I went out.
It would be gratifying to author and to reader alike if it were possible to give some account of the progress in aërial equipment made by the United States, since its declaration of war. But at the present moment (February, 1918), the government is chary of furnishing information concerning the advance made in the creation of an aërial fleet. Perhaps precise information, if available, would be discouraging to the many who believe that the war will be won in the air. For it is known in a broad general way that the activities of the Administration have been centred upon the construction of training camps and aviation stations. Orders for the actual construction of airplanes have been limited, so that a chorus of criticism arose from manufacturers who declared that they might have to close their works for lack of employment. The apparent check was discouraging to American airmen, and to our Allies who had expected marvellous things from the United States in the way of swift and wholesale preparation for winning battles in the air. The response of the government to all criticism was that it was laying broad foundations in order that construction once begun would proceed with unabated activity, and that when aircraft began to be turned out by the thousands a week there would be aviators and trained mechanics a-plenty to handle them. In this situation the advocates of a special cabinet department of aeronautics found new reason to criticize the Administration and Congress for having ignored or antagonized their appeals. For responsibility for the delay and indifference—if indifference there was—rested equally upon the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of War. Each had his measure of control over the enormous sum voted in a lump for aviation, each had the further millions especially voted to his department to account for. But no single individual could be officially asked what had been done with the almost one billion dollars voted for aeronautics in 1917.
But if the authorities seemed to lag, the inventors were busy. Mention has already been made of the new "Liberty" motor, which report had it was the fruit of the imprisonment of two mechanical experts in a hotel room with orders that they should not be freed until they had produced a motor which met all criticisms upon those now in use. Their product is said to have met this test, and the happy result caused a general wish that the Secretaries of War and of the Navy might be similarly incarcerated and only liberated upon producing plans for the immediate creation of an aërial fleet suited to the nation's needs. If, however, the Liberty motor shall prove the complete success which at the moment the government believes it to be, it will be such a spur to the development of the airplane in peace and war, as could not otherwise be applied. For the motor is the true life of the airplane—its heart, lungs, and nerve centre. The few people who still doubt the wide adoption of aircraft for peaceful purposes after the war base their skepticism on the treachery of motors still in use. They repudiate all comparisons with automobiles. They say:
It is perfectly true that a man can run his car repeatedly from New York to Boston without motor trouble. But the trouble is inevitable sooner or later. When it comes to an automobile it is trifling. The driver gets out and makes his repairs by the roadside. But if it comes to the aviator it brings the possibility of death with it every time. If his motor stops he must descend. But to alight he must find a long level field, with at least two hundred yards in which to run off his momentum. If, when he discovers the failure of his motor, he is flying at the height of a mile he must find his landing place within a space of eight miles, for in gliding to earth the ratio of forward movement to height is as eight to one. But how often in rugged and densely populated New England, or Pennsylvania is there a vacant level field half a mile in length? The aviator who made a practice of daily flight between New York and Boston would inevitably meet death in the end.
The criticism is a shrewd and searching one. But it is based on the airplane and the motor of to-day without allowance for the development and improvement which are proceeding apace. It contemplates a craft which has but one motor, but the more modern machines have sufficient lifting power to carry two motors, and can be navigated successfully with one of these out of service. Experiments furthermore are being made with a device after the type of the helicopter which with the steady lightening of the aircraft motor, may be installed on airplanes with a special motor for its operation. This device, it is believed, will enable the airplane so equipped to stop dead in its course with both propellers out of action, to hover over a given spot or to rise or to descend gently in a perpendicular line without the necessity of soaring. It is obvious that if this device prove successful the chief force of the objections to aërial navigation outlined above will be nullified.
The menace of infrequent landing places will quickly remedy itself on busy lines of aërial traffic. The average railroad doing business in a densely populated section has stations once every eight or ten miles which with their sidings, buildings, water tanks, etc., cost far more than the field half a mile long with a few hangars that the fliers will need as a place of refuge. Indeed, although for its size and apparent simplicity of construction an airplane is phenomenally costly, in the grand total of cost an aërial line would cost a tithe of the ordinary railway. It has neither right of way, road bed, rails, nor telegraph system to maintain, and if the average flyer seems to cost amazingly it still foots up less than one fifth the cost of a modern locomotive though its period of service is much shorter.
Just at the present time aircraft costs are high, based on artificial conditions in the market. Their construction is a new industry; its processes not yet standardized; its materials still experimental in many ways and not yet systematically produced. A light sporting monoplane which superficially seems to have about $250 worth of materials in it—exclusive of the engine—will cost about $3000. A fighting biplane will touch $10,000. Yet the latter seems to the lay observer to contain no costly materials to justify so great a charge. The wings are a light wooden framework, usually of spruce, across which a fine grade of linen cloth is stretched. The materials are simple enough, but every bit of wood, every screw, every strand of wire is selected with the utmost care, and the workmanship of their assemblage is as painstaking as the setting of the most precious stones.
"REMEMBER THE LEAST NEGLIGENCE MAY COST A LIFE!" is a sign frequently seen hanging over the work benches in an airplane factory.
When stretched over the framework, the cloth of the wings is treated to a dressing down of a preparation of collodion, which in the jargon of the shop is called "dope." This substance has a peculiar effect upon the cloth, causing it to shrink, and thus making it more taut and rigid than it could be by the most careful stretching. Though the layman would not suspect it, this wash alone costs about $150 a machine. The seaplanes too—or hydroaëroplanes as purists call them—present a curious illustration of unexpected and, it would seem, unexplainable expense. Where the flyer over land has two bicycle wheels on which to land, the flyer over the sea has two flat-bottomed boats or pontoons. These cost from $1000 to $1200 and look as though they should cost not over $100. But the necessity of combining maximum strength with minimum weight sends the price soaring as the machine itself soars. Moreover there is not yet the demand for either air-or seaplanes that would result in the division of labour, standardization of parts, and other manufacturing economies which reduce the cost of products.
To the high cost of aircraft their comparative fragility is added as a reason for their unfitness for commercial uses. The engines cost from $2000 to $5000 each, are very delicate and usually must be taken out of the plane and overhauled after about 100 hours of active service. The strain on them is prodigious for it is estimated that the number of revolutions of an airplane's engine during an hour's flight is equal to the number of revolutions of an automobile's wheels during active service of a whole month.
It is believed that the superior lightness and durability of the Liberty motor will obviate some of these objections to the commercial availability of aircraft in times of peace. And it is certain that with the cessation of the war, the retirement of the governments of the world from the purchasing field and the reduction of the demand for aircraft to such as are needed for pleasure and industrial uses the prices which we have cited will be cut in half. In such event what will be the future of aircraft; what their part in the social and industrial organization of the world?
Ten or a dozen years ago Rudyard Kipling entertained the English reading public of the world with a vivacious sketch of aërial navigation in the year 2000 A.D. He used the license of a poet in avoiding too precise descriptions of what is to come—dealing rather with broad and picturesque generalizations. Now the year 2000 is still far enough away for pretty much anything to be invented, and to become commonplace before that era arrives. Airships of the sort Mr. Kipling pictured may by that period have come and gone—have been relegated to the museums along with the stage-coaches of yesterday and the locomotives of to-day. For that matter before that millennial period shall arrive men may have learned to dispense with material transportation altogether, and be able to project their consciousness or even their astral bodies to any desired point on psychic waves. If a poet is going to prophecy he might as well be audacious and even revolutionary in his predictions.
Mr. Kipling tried so hard to be reasonable that he made himself recognizably wrong so far as the present tendency of aircraft development would indicate. With the Night Mail, is the story of a trip by night across the Atlantic from England to America. It is made in a monster dirigible—though the present tendency is to reject the dirigible for the swifter, less costly, and more airworthy (leave "seaworthy" to the plodding ships on old ocean's breast) airplanes. If, however, we condone this glaring improbability we find Mr. Kipling's tale full of action and imaginary incident that give it an air of truth. His ship is not docked on the ground at the tempest's mercy, but is moored high in air to the top of a tall tower up which passengers and freight are conveyed in elevators. His lighthouses send their beams straight up into the sky instead of projecting them horizontally as do those which now guard our coasts. Just why lighthouses are needed, however, he does not explain. There are no reefs on which a packet of the air may run, no lee shores which they must avoid. On overland voyages guiding lights by night may be useful, as great white direction strips laid out on the ground are even now suggested as guides for daylight flying. But the main reliance of the airman must be his compass. Crossing the broad oceans no lighted path is possible, and even in a voyage from New York to Chicago, or from London to Rome good airmanship will dictate flight at a height that will make reliance upon natural objects as a guide perilous. The airman has the advantage over the sailor in that he may lay his course on leaving his port, or flying field, and pursue it straight as an arrow to his destination. No rocks or other obstacles bar his path, no tortuous channels must be navigated. All that can divert him from his chosen course is a steady wind on the beam, and that is instantly detected by his instruments and allowance made for it. On the other hand the sailor has a certain advantage over the airman in that his more leisurely progress allows time for the rectification of errors in course arising from contrary currents or winds. An error of a point, or even two, amounts to but little in a day's steaming of perhaps four hundred miles. It can readily be remedied, unless the ship is too near shore. But when the whole three thousand miles of Atlantic are covered in twenty hours in the air, the course must be right from the start and exactly adhered to, else the passenger for New York may be set down in Florida.
It is not improbable that even before the war is over the crossing of the Atlantic by plane will be accomplished. Certainly it will be one of the first tasks undertaken by airmen on the return of peace. But it is probable that the adaptation of aircraft to commercial uses will be begun with undertakings of smaller proportions. Already the United States maintains an aërial mail route in Alaska, while Italy has military mail routes served by airplanes in the Alps. These have been undertaken because of the physical obstacles to travel on the surface, presented in those rugged neighbourhoods. But in the more densely populated regions of the United States considerations of financial profit will almost certainly result in the early establishment of mail and passenger air service. Air service will cut down the time between any two given points at least one half, and ultimately two thirds. Letters could be sent from New York to Boston, or even to Buffalo, and an answer received the same day. The carrying plane could take on each trip five tons of mail. Philadelphia would be brought within forty-five minutes of New York; Washington within two hours instead of the present five. Is there any doubt of the creation of an aërial passenger service under such conditions? Already a Caproni triplane will carry thirty-five passengers beside guns—say, fifty passengers if all other load be excluded, and has flown with a lighter load from Newport News to New York. It is easily imaginable that by 1920 the airplane capable of carrying eighty persons—or the normal number now accommodated on an inter-urban trolley car—will be an accomplished fact.
The lines that will thus spring up will need no rails, no right of way, no expensive power plant. Their physical property will be confined to the airplanes themselves and to the fields from which the craft rise and on which they alight, with the necessary hangars. These indeed will involve heavy expenditure. For a busy line, with frequent sailings, of high speed machines a field will need to be in the neighbourhood of a mile square. A plane swooping down for its landing is not to be held up at the switch like a train while room is made for it. It is an imperative guest, and cannot be gainsaid. Accordingly the fields must be large enough to accommodate scores of planes at once and give each new arrival a long straight course on which to run off its momentum. It is obvious therefore that the union stations for aircraft routes cannot be in the hearts of our cities as are the railroad stations of to-day, but must be fairly well out in the suburbs.
A form of machine which the professional airmen say has yet to be developed is the small monoplane, carrying two passengers at most, and of low speed—not more than twenty miles an hour at most. In this age of speed mania the idea of deliberately planning a conveyance or vehicle that shall not exceed a low limit seems out of accord with public desire. But the low speed airplane has the advantage of needing no extended field in which to alight. It reaches the ground with but little momentum to be taken up and can be brought up standing on the roof of a house or the deck of a ship. Small machines of this sort are likely to serve as the runabouts of the air, to succeed the trim little automobile roadsters as pleasure craft.
The beginning of the fourth year of the war brought a notable change in aërial tactics. For three years everything had been sacrificed to speed. Such aërial duels as have been described were encouraged by the fact that aircraft were reduced to the proportions needful for carrying one man and a machine gun. The gallant flyers went up in the air and killed each other. That was about all there was to it. While as scouts, range finders, guides for the artillery, they exerted some influence on the course of the war, as a fighting arm in its earlier years, they were without efficiency. The bombing forays were harassing but little more, because the craft engaged were of too small capacity to carry enough bombs to work really serious damage, while the ever increasing range of the "Archies" compels the airmen to deliver their fire from so great a height as to make accurate aim impossible.
But Kiel, Wilhelmshaven and Zeebrugge are likely to change all this. The constant contemplation of those nests for the sanctuary of pestiferous submarines, effectively guarded against attack by either land or water, has stirred up the determination of the Allies to seek their destruction from above. Heavy bombing planes are being built in all the Allied workshops for this purpose, and furthermore to give effect to the British determination to take vengeance upon Germany, for her raids upon London. It is reported that the United States, by agreement with its Allies, is to specialize in building the light, swift scout planes, but in other shops the heavy triplane, the dreadnought of the air is expected to be the feature of 1918. With it will come an entirely novel strategic use of aircraft in war, and with it too, which is perhaps the more permanently important, will come the development of aircraft of the sort that will be readily adaptable to the purposes of peace when the war shall end.
The criticism is a shrewd and searching one. But it is based on the airplane and the motor of to-day without allowance for the development and improvement which are proceeding apace. It contemplates a craft which has but one motor, but the more modern machines have sufficient lifting power to carry two motors, and can be navigated successfully with one of these out of service. Experiments furthermore are being made with a device after the type of the helicopter which with the steady lightening of the aircraft motor, may be installed on airplanes with a special motor for its operation. This device, it is believed, will enable the airplane so equipped to stop dead in its course with both propellers out of action, to hover over a given spot or to rise or to descend gently in a perpendicular line without the necessity of soaring. It is obvious that if this device prove successful the chief force of the objections to aërial navigation outlined above will be nullified.
The menace of infrequent landing places will quickly remedy itself on busy lines of aërial traffic. The average railroad doing business in a densely populated section has stations once every eight or ten miles which with their sidings, buildings, water tanks, etc., cost far more than the field half a mile long with a few hangars that the fliers will need as a place of refuge. Indeed, although for its size and apparent simplicity of construction an airplane is phenomenally costly, in the grand total of cost an aërial line would cost a tithe of the ordinary railway. It has neither right of way, road bed, rails, nor telegraph system to maintain, and if the average flyer seems to cost amazingly it still foots up less than one fifth the cost of a modern locomotive though its period of service is much shorter.
Just at the present time aircraft costs are high, based on artificial conditions in the market. Their construction is a new industry; its processes not yet standardized; its materials still experimental in many ways and not yet systematically produced. A light sporting monoplane which superficially seems to have about $250 worth of materials in it—exclusive of the engine—will cost about $3000. A fighting biplane will touch $10,000. Yet the latter seems to the lay observer to contain no costly materials to justify so great a charge. The wings are a light wooden framework, usually of spruce, across which a fine grade of linen cloth is stretched. The materials are simple enough, but every bit of wood, every screw, every strand of wire is selected with the utmost care, and the workmanship of their assemblage is as painstaking as the setting of the most precious stones.
 |
| International Film Service. A German "Gotha"—their Favorite Type. |
"REMEMBER THE LEAST NEGLIGENCE MAY COST A LIFE!" is a sign frequently seen hanging over the work benches in an airplane factory.
When stretched over the framework, the cloth of the wings is treated to a dressing down of a preparation of collodion, which in the jargon of the shop is called "dope." This substance has a peculiar effect upon the cloth, causing it to shrink, and thus making it more taut and rigid than it could be by the most careful stretching. Though the layman would not suspect it, this wash alone costs about $150 a machine. The seaplanes too—or hydroaëroplanes as purists call them—present a curious illustration of unexpected and, it would seem, unexplainable expense. Where the flyer over land has two bicycle wheels on which to land, the flyer over the sea has two flat-bottomed boats or pontoons. These cost from $1000 to $1200 and look as though they should cost not over $100. But the necessity of combining maximum strength with minimum weight sends the price soaring as the machine itself soars. Moreover there is not yet the demand for either air-or seaplanes that would result in the division of labour, standardization of parts, and other manufacturing economies which reduce the cost of products.
To the high cost of aircraft their comparative fragility is added as a reason for their unfitness for commercial uses. The engines cost from $2000 to $5000 each, are very delicate and usually must be taken out of the plane and overhauled after about 100 hours of active service. The strain on them is prodigious for it is estimated that the number of revolutions of an airplane's engine during an hour's flight is equal to the number of revolutions of an automobile's wheels during active service of a whole month.
It is believed that the superior lightness and durability of the Liberty motor will obviate some of these objections to the commercial availability of aircraft in times of peace. And it is certain that with the cessation of the war, the retirement of the governments of the world from the purchasing field and the reduction of the demand for aircraft to such as are needed for pleasure and industrial uses the prices which we have cited will be cut in half. In such event what will be the future of aircraft; what their part in the social and industrial organization of the world?
Ten or a dozen years ago Rudyard Kipling entertained the English reading public of the world with a vivacious sketch of aërial navigation in the year 2000 A.D. He used the license of a poet in avoiding too precise descriptions of what is to come—dealing rather with broad and picturesque generalizations. Now the year 2000 is still far enough away for pretty much anything to be invented, and to become commonplace before that era arrives. Airships of the sort Mr. Kipling pictured may by that period have come and gone—have been relegated to the museums along with the stage-coaches of yesterday and the locomotives of to-day. For that matter before that millennial period shall arrive men may have learned to dispense with material transportation altogether, and be able to project their consciousness or even their astral bodies to any desired point on psychic waves. If a poet is going to prophecy he might as well be audacious and even revolutionary in his predictions.
Mr. Kipling tried so hard to be reasonable that he made himself recognizably wrong so far as the present tendency of aircraft development would indicate. With the Night Mail, is the story of a trip by night across the Atlantic from England to America. It is made in a monster dirigible—though the present tendency is to reject the dirigible for the swifter, less costly, and more airworthy (leave "seaworthy" to the plodding ships on old ocean's breast) airplanes. If, however, we condone this glaring improbability we find Mr. Kipling's tale full of action and imaginary incident that give it an air of truth. His ship is not docked on the ground at the tempest's mercy, but is moored high in air to the top of a tall tower up which passengers and freight are conveyed in elevators. His lighthouses send their beams straight up into the sky instead of projecting them horizontally as do those which now guard our coasts. Just why lighthouses are needed, however, he does not explain. There are no reefs on which a packet of the air may run, no lee shores which they must avoid. On overland voyages guiding lights by night may be useful, as great white direction strips laid out on the ground are even now suggested as guides for daylight flying. But the main reliance of the airman must be his compass. Crossing the broad oceans no lighted path is possible, and even in a voyage from New York to Chicago, or from London to Rome good airmanship will dictate flight at a height that will make reliance upon natural objects as a guide perilous. The airman has the advantage over the sailor in that he may lay his course on leaving his port, or flying field, and pursue it straight as an arrow to his destination. No rocks or other obstacles bar his path, no tortuous channels must be navigated. All that can divert him from his chosen course is a steady wind on the beam, and that is instantly detected by his instruments and allowance made for it. On the other hand the sailor has a certain advantage over the airman in that his more leisurely progress allows time for the rectification of errors in course arising from contrary currents or winds. An error of a point, or even two, amounts to but little in a day's steaming of perhaps four hundred miles. It can readily be remedied, unless the ship is too near shore. But when the whole three thousand miles of Atlantic are covered in twenty hours in the air, the course must be right from the start and exactly adhered to, else the passenger for New York may be set down in Florida.
It is not improbable that even before the war is over the crossing of the Atlantic by plane will be accomplished. Certainly it will be one of the first tasks undertaken by airmen on the return of peace. But it is probable that the adaptation of aircraft to commercial uses will be begun with undertakings of smaller proportions. Already the United States maintains an aërial mail route in Alaska, while Italy has military mail routes served by airplanes in the Alps. These have been undertaken because of the physical obstacles to travel on the surface, presented in those rugged neighbourhoods. But in the more densely populated regions of the United States considerations of financial profit will almost certainly result in the early establishment of mail and passenger air service. Air service will cut down the time between any two given points at least one half, and ultimately two thirds. Letters could be sent from New York to Boston, or even to Buffalo, and an answer received the same day. The carrying plane could take on each trip five tons of mail. Philadelphia would be brought within forty-five minutes of New York; Washington within two hours instead of the present five. Is there any doubt of the creation of an aërial passenger service under such conditions? Already a Caproni triplane will carry thirty-five passengers beside guns—say, fifty passengers if all other load be excluded, and has flown with a lighter load from Newport News to New York. It is easily imaginable that by 1920 the airplane capable of carrying eighty persons—or the normal number now accommodated on an inter-urban trolley car—will be an accomplished fact.
The lines that will thus spring up will need no rails, no right of way, no expensive power plant. Their physical property will be confined to the airplanes themselves and to the fields from which the craft rise and on which they alight, with the necessary hangars. These indeed will involve heavy expenditure. For a busy line, with frequent sailings, of high speed machines a field will need to be in the neighbourhood of a mile square. A plane swooping down for its landing is not to be held up at the switch like a train while room is made for it. It is an imperative guest, and cannot be gainsaid. Accordingly the fields must be large enough to accommodate scores of planes at once and give each new arrival a long straight course on which to run off its momentum. It is obvious therefore that the union stations for aircraft routes cannot be in the hearts of our cities as are the railroad stations of to-day, but must be fairly well out in the suburbs.
A form of machine which the professional airmen say has yet to be developed is the small monoplane, carrying two passengers at most, and of low speed—not more than twenty miles an hour at most. In this age of speed mania the idea of deliberately planning a conveyance or vehicle that shall not exceed a low limit seems out of accord with public desire. But the low speed airplane has the advantage of needing no extended field in which to alight. It reaches the ground with but little momentum to be taken up and can be brought up standing on the roof of a house or the deck of a ship. Small machines of this sort are likely to serve as the runabouts of the air, to succeed the trim little automobile roadsters as pleasure craft.
 |
| International Film Service. A French Monoplane. |
The beginning of the fourth year of the war brought a notable change in aërial tactics. For three years everything had been sacrificed to speed. Such aërial duels as have been described were encouraged by the fact that aircraft were reduced to the proportions needful for carrying one man and a machine gun. The gallant flyers went up in the air and killed each other. That was about all there was to it. While as scouts, range finders, guides for the artillery, they exerted some influence on the course of the war, as a fighting arm in its earlier years, they were without efficiency. The bombing forays were harassing but little more, because the craft engaged were of too small capacity to carry enough bombs to work really serious damage, while the ever increasing range of the "Archies" compels the airmen to deliver their fire from so great a height as to make accurate aim impossible.
 |
Photo Press Illustrating Service. A German Scout Brought to Earth in France. |
But Kiel, Wilhelmshaven and Zeebrugge are likely to change all this. The constant contemplation of those nests for the sanctuary of pestiferous submarines, effectively guarded against attack by either land or water, has stirred up the determination of the Allies to seek their destruction from above. Heavy bombing planes are being built in all the Allied workshops for this purpose, and furthermore to give effect to the British determination to take vengeance upon Germany, for her raids upon London. It is reported that the United States, by agreement with its Allies, is to specialize in building the light, swift scout planes, but in other shops the heavy triplane, the dreadnought of the air is expected to be the feature of 1918. With it will come an entirely novel strategic use of aircraft in war, and with it too, which is perhaps the more permanently important, will come the development of aircraft of the sort that will be readily adaptable to the purposes of peace when the war shall end.
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