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Aviation History
1915
1915 - 0601.PDF
AUGUST 13. 1915. as casually, almost as unconcernedly, as one might go for a stroll in the Park. And for nine months the Germans have had to submit to it. They have watched our aircraft sailing as they pleased above their lines, impotent to interfere with them. Thanks to that im potence they lost a Zeppelin ; thanks to it, possibly, no airship has been seen for long over London. On the other hand, what have the Germans done, even since the delivery of their new craft ? They conducted a startling attack on the French lines, they have three times penetrated into Allied territory, they have at last attempted to interfere with our daily reconnaissance, and they have made several magnificent threats. That is not a long nor very notable list, con sidering the real superiority both in climb and speed that their new machines possess, and though it is likely that additions will be made to it we need not find them alarming. " Being able to count on war, the Germans were able to accumulate a large reserve of aircraft, and, when their machines were proved inferior, they could devote all their energies to the invention of a new type. We, from a constitutional inability to believe in war, found ourselves when war broke out obliged to devote all our energies to production, and we had to shelve for the moment any advance in design. We had to pay for the failure of our rulers to realise the meaning of the new arm, and to establish it, at any cost, on a sound basis of British manufacture. The military authorities did all they could with the means at their disposal ; but the men they had to face had been given the spending of four million pounds, and money talks, very loudly indeed, when you put it on aircraft. " That we should be yet at the end of our troubles is not to be expected. Fate does not so easily forgive the fool; but if co operation can be substituted for competition between home manu facturers, every week should put us on a more satisfactory footing. Hitherto, in aircraft construction at home every man's hand has been against his neighbour's ; which may bj well enough in peace time, [/DCMT] but in war a different principle has to be followed, and the only competition that can be permitted is emulation in self-sacrifice. " One would add a word of warning as to the care with which all new ideas should be guarded from any sort of publication. From the reasons already given it will be gathered that we are not at present well placed to deal with novelties and the inventor may easily grow impatient of the reception accorded to his ingenuity, and seek the publicity of the 1'ress. But the Germans have shown such dexterity in adapting to a practical end even imaginative sketches published in this country that it is almost impo»sible to overdo precaution, and, like the oracles of fashion who jealously keep their latest ' creations' out of the shop windows, it behoves our clever young men to keep their models and drawings out of reach of the German eye, which searches every technical and illustrated paper in the hope of such gleanings. " Meanwhile, let it not be imagined for an instant that we have resigned, or have any intention of resigning, the mastery of the air. Only the other day one of our unaccompanied pilots, challenged by three German planes, each of them with an observer, sent one to the ground within his own lines, brought down another for our men to capture, and drove off the third—no mean achievement with the odds six to one against you. " Also, in spite of their new machines, which seem, by the way, to have abandoned the wing line of the Taube, the Germans show no increased disposition to face our men single-handed. " They wait, high up, two or three together, for the chance of being able to pounce upon a lonely flyer ; but they have done nothing yet which would suggest very great confidence in themselves or their machines. A young German airman in the early days of the war asked how he would know the British machines if he met them. " ' Oh, you'll know Ihem right enough,'was the reply. ' They'll attack you.' The German can still count on that distinguishing feature." ® ® ® ® AIRCRAFT AND THE, WAR. WRITING from the Eastern Mediterranean to the DAILY TELEGRAPH, under date July i6th, Mr. E. Ashmead- Bartlett said of the Turkish position at Quinn's Post near Sari Bair:— " The Turk is taught before all else to keep concealed, so that his real numbers shall never be accurately known ; but a short time ago, just when the Australians, chafing at their inactivity, were wondering if he was still on their front in any strength, he involuntarily gave himself away. One of our aeroplanes passed over his lines, flying very low. This was too much for the stolid Ottoman infantry, who, rising in their trenches, poured volley after volley at the intrepid airmen. It was then seen that every line of trench was fairly bristling with bayonets, showing the importance which the enemy attach to the position." Mr. Stanley Washburn, writing to the TIMES from Warsaw under date of August 4th, said :— " Across the Vistula hangs our observation balloon, while the sky is dotted with German aeroplanes soaring hither and thither amidst smoke puffs of bursting shrapnel from our guns. I counted 14 shells aimed at one aeroplane .... " Meantime the German aeroplanes continue their senseless destruction of lives and property. On Monday many bombs were dropped, and it is reported that 25 people were killed. One bomb fell between the H6tel de l'Europe and the new church, and others in all quarters of the city " While I was crossing a bridge this afternoon four bombs fell on Praga, the suburb on the eastern bank of the river, making terrific detonations and sending the people in every direction." In the Turkish communique issued on the 5th inst. there was the following :— " An enemy aviator dropped bombs on Eznie, south of Kum Kale. A wounded man was killed. On August 3rd a cruiser and four torpedo boats appeared off Sighadjik Limin to the south of Smyrna. An aviator ascended from one of these vessels and dropped three bombs. One person was killed. The warships then fired 200 shells upon Sighadjik Limin. One house was destroyed." Mr. F. Prevost Battersby, writing to the MORNING POST from the British Headquarters under date of August 6th, said :— " Little happens that is new along the line of battle, but one feature has distinguished it during the last few weeks—it has been outlined, more or less roughly, by observation balloons. This is not the spherical captive balloon to which military operations in the past have accustomed us, but is shaped like an old fashioned pistol with the handle hanging down and the muzzle nosing every change of wind. Londoners may, indeed, have made acquaintance with the type from having seen one floating as a guardship not far from the City. The chiel advantage of the type is its greater steadiness for the observer, who occupies a rxit very enviable position when the enemy develops an inclination, as he frequently does, to bring down a balloon. " These guardians of the air look rather impressive when one can see enough of them to follow the line of front over which they floal, while, grimly watching them, showing faintly through the grey air, are their unlovely counterparts over the German lines. It is s gnificant of the future, this lifting, as it were, of the frontiers into the air, where the battles which are to come shall be so ruthlessly decided ; and one looks at these queer hulks, anchored in the airway, with the sense of seeing something which, though so new, has been superseded already, by man's mental processes, if not yet by his invention ; and yet, seeing something that points the way to a fresh tension which is being devised for the undoing of humanity, a fresh apprehension which is going to be imposed upon it, which will make the horrors of the present war seem insignificant by comparison. " It happened the other day that the enemy began shelling one of these ponderous creatures, which look like the apotheosis of gome antediluvian monster, just as one was approaching it. One has grown used to seeing aeroplanes chased about the sky by anti aircraft guns, and the airmen has always looked to have a fair sporting chance, though sometimes he might conceivably not be so regarding it; but to shoot at this helpless ' sitter' appeared to have about it no element of sport whatever. Though the range was, of course, considerable for the weapons used, which appeared to be ordinary field guns firing shrapnel, one felt from the first burst of smoke, five hundred feet beneath it, that the gun was certain to account for so tame a prey. It looked for all the world like some helpless kid tied out to draw a tiger. " The wotld beneath the balloon quickly became excited by the bombardment. It came out of its houses and stared up into the air ; foolishly enough, since, though the shrapnel bullets might fail to reach the observer, they were quite certain to return to the ground ; and the road along which we were travelling, on which these people stood, was directly in the line of the enemy's fire ; indeed, a fragment of shell from one of the first discharges ripped up the back of a horse browsing by the roadside. " But this ' sitter' was not the soft thing it looked. Shell bunts would creep nearer and nearer, till it seemed a certainty that the next must split that frail envelope asunder. But the next would l>e wide by a hundred yards, perhaps, or hopelessly at fault in elevation. " Had an aeroplane been present to register for the gunners, the 6oi
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