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Aviation History
1912
1912 - 1130.PDF
jpjHT Opposed to the best principles of military reconnaissance. The accomplishment of the return journey is the only criterion of the scout's success; the amount of his in formation is merely a question of relative merit. He who sees everything and stays too long is useless, while he who wei something and flies back in time may win the fight. The onus of opposing air scouts must therefore devolve upon another class of machine, which is, as General Henderson described it in a former meeting of the Society, the "destroyer." The aerial destroyer will carry • gun, and the man in charge of that gun must be reasonably sure of putting any air scout within sight out of action if he attempts to cross the line. That it will all work out this way is, of course, a matter of pure conjecture. It may be that the fast scout will get the better of any slower speed machine, whether it has a gun or not. But even this assumed difference of speed depends on how far the difference between the design of one type and the other is found necessary to effect their respective qualities in the air. These things the future can alone decide, but what the present has to make sure of is that obvious future contingencies are provided against. In this matter the phrase used by Sir James Grierson speaks for itself: " it is impossible to carry on warfare unless we have the mastery of the air." • • • And now we come to the sequel, which is A^r*" ft '^e development of the aerial fighting force. Anyone who cursorily reviews the state of international aeronautics will naturally come to the conclusion that France leads with aeroplanes, while Germany is ahead of other nations in the matter of dirigibles. Replying to Mr. Eyres-Monsell in Parliament last week, Mr. Churchill said " there is no doubt that in this branch of aeronautics Germany has won a great pre-eminence." When the First Lord of the Admiralty makes a statement like this it is time that a community of islanders such as we are should take action. , We have pointed out above how General Grierson's comment essentially led to the necessity of developing some form of aircraft capable of taking the offensive in the air. It is necessary to assume, in the absence of any contrary experience, that the chief weapon of offence will be a gun. Future developments may prove otherwise, but it is necessary at any rate to develop along this line at present. Now the question of carrying a gun resolves itself into the question of being able to carry a considerable amount of weight, of being able to afford a sufficiently steady platform wherefrom to use that gun effectively, and, more important than all, of providing a sufficiently wide angle of uninterrupfed attack such as will ensure that gun being operated effectively against the enemy without doing damage to its own ship. It is notorious that anyone with an eye on a sight will shoot through anything the moment he gets into line, and it is a foregone conclusion that no man in charge of a gun in the'air will be able to make effective use of it if he has to be particular how he shoots. The gun will have its range of angular movement, and anything that curtails that range is just by so much at a disadvantage. Propellers, elevators and other essential organs of an aeroplane must be out of the way, there is absolutely no other alternative. That this is also the official view may be seen from the fact that the Judges, in their Report of the Military Trials, went out of their way to refer especially to the ill-fated Mersey monoplane as the only endeavour that had been made to fit the design to DECEMBER 7, 1912. the requirements of actual war. Now this is surely of the very utmost importance to designers and constructors, for it is quite clear that now is the time for enterprising firms to evolve something along new lines. Individual ideas of how to carry th- general scheme into effect will vary, of course, and many of them will doubtless involve considerable departure from what is now regarded as orthodox. Very possibly a few of the present machines could be modified to suit the requirements. Quite recently, Mr. F. Strickland, whose views on these subjects are always interesting, was speaking to us about the possi bility of adapting the Avro biplane to this class of work, by rigging a pair of propellers behind the main planes and giving the gunner the whole nose of the enclosed body, with a hole in the roof for his outlook. It appears to us that something of this sort might be extremely useful, at any rate we put forward the suggestion for what it is worth. The Cody and the Farman machines, both of which are big enough to carry guns, are both liable, so far as we can see at the present time, to have their elevators shot away by their own gunners at any moment, for, as we have already observed, a man with his eye along the sight is blind to everything else but the target. But, the fighting aeroplane of the destroyer class is only one aspect of this side of military aeronautics. The dirigible, which might well prove to have very consider able merits in this direction, is far too apt to be ignored. It is scarcely our fault if the dirigible has been put into the mental background, because there has been so little money to spend in this country that it has seemed to us essential to advocate the development of aeroplanes in the first instance. It has always seemed clear to us that any adequate establishment for the use of this form of aircraft must necessarily involve an organisation of just such a kind as has at last been realised in the creation of the R.F.C. That having been settled, however, and the germ of efficiency having been so well sown, it behoves us to bring the dirigible into the light of day. Happily, the airship has been less neglected in England than some people think, for although we have nothing to compare with the German mammoths, experiments at the Royal Aircraft Factory have at least been productive of important data relating to the design and use of small airships, such as might quite well prove of equal if not superior utility in the long run. No one knows which type will prove the better of the two, but both will doubtless have their uses and, in the matter of small airships, we venture to think that as successful a type could be built immediately in this country as could be provided by any other nation: it is merely a question of having sufficient money to build them in numbers. In the matter of large airships, of which class the Zeppelin is pre-eminently first, England has no experience beyond the one regrettable incident of last year. A large airship, however, is so costly, not only to build but to use, that one such vessel can quite easily absorb the whole of the moderate sum hitherto available for aero nautics in England, and from the first we have opposed any mixing up of the research into this class of aircraft with that devoted to the development of aeroplanes and small dirigibles, which are relatively inexpensive. We still incline to the opinion that any development of mammoth dirigibles should essentially be carried out at the expense of a separate fund, devoted specifically to that purpose and having no relation to nor influence upon the magnitude of the sum allocated for aeroplane work. 1130
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