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Aviation History
1915
1915 - 0989.PDF
to aerial scouting, in that the enemy realised that their whereabouts was always known to us and their doubling tactics fully interpreted. The moral effect must have been of great service to our troops and' of great discomfiture to the enemy. There is little more to be said. The next few weeks were devoted to dismantling the machines and repacking. The members landed at Cape Town on July 29th, proudly elated, and justifiably so, at the part they had taken in the G.S.W. campaign. There is, and there ever must be, associated with aerial naviga tion mishaps occurring in those regions where the air conditions are practically unknown, as was the case in G.S.W., and it says much for the experience, pluck and ability of those concerned that, despite the lack of any knowledge of the aerial, conditions existing, the aerial work was conducted without a single casualty. ® ® ® ® SUBMARINES AND ZEPPELINS. " The next thing we did, we rose under a Zeppelin, With his shiny big belly half blocking the sky. But what in the Heavens can you do with six-pounders ? So we fired what we had and we bade him good-bye." IN Mr. Rudyard Kipling's vivid series of sketches, which are now appearing in the Daily Telegraph under the title " The Fringes of the Fleet," there are one or two little glimpses of Zeppelins and their ways. In his third article—prefaced by a poem of which the above is the last stanza—Mr. Kipling, describing the return of some submarine commanders, relates the following :— This was their first chance to compare notes at close hand. Together they lamented the loss of a Zeppelin—"a perfect mug of a Zepp.," who had come down very low and offered one of them a sitting shot. " But what can you do with our guns? I gave him what I had, and then he started bombing." " I know he did," another said. " I heard him. That's what brought me down to you. I thought he had you that last time." " No, I was forty foot under when he hove out the big 'un. What happened to you ? " " My steering-gear jammed just after I went down, and I had to go round in circles till I got it straightened out. But wasn't he a mug ! " " Was he the brute with the patch on his port side ? " a sister- boat demanded. "No! This fellow had just been hatched. He was almost sitting on the water, heaving bombs over." and chose then to go I thought his last little "And my blasted steering-gear went wrong," the other commander mourned. * egg was going to get me ! " In the fourth article Mr. Kipling returns to the subject of mines and Zepps. in his own inimitable way, thus :— " Then bumping mines isn't exciting ? " " Not one little bit. Yon can't bump back at 'em. Even with a Zepp •' " Oh, now and then," one interrupted, and they laughed as they explained. " Yes, that was rather funny. One of our boats came up slap underneath a low Zepp. Looked for the sky, you know, and couldn't see anything except this fat, shining belly almost on top of 'em. Luckily, it wasn't the Zepp's stinging end. So our boat went to windward and kept just awash. There was a bit of sea, and the Zepp. had to work against the wind. (They don't like that.) Our boat sent a man to the gun. He was pretty well drowned, of course, but he hung on, choking and spitting, and held his breath, and got in shots where he could. This Zepp. was strafing bombs about for all she was worth, and—who was it ?— Macartney, I think, potting at her between dives : and naturally all hands wanted to look at the performance, so about half the North Sea flopped down below and—oh, they had a Charlie Chaplin time of it! Well, somehow, Macartney managed to rip the Zepp. a bit, and she went to leeward with a list on her. We saw her a fortnight later with a patch on her port side. Oh, if Fritz only fought clean, this wouldn't be half a bad show. But Fritz can't fight clean." ® ® ® ® AIRCRAFT AND THE WAR. THE Morning Post correspondent at Budapest, writing under date of November 16th, gave the following details of an Austrian air raid on Venice:— "The naval officer who was in charge of the seaplane which bombarded Venice from the air not long ago has given an account of the bombardment to a Hungarian journalist in Trieste. The pilot is described by the correspondent as a very young man, who left the naval school just before the war began. " ' I left the base with an observer at nine o'clock in the evening,' he said, 'and arrived over Venice at 10.15. We were over the town a quarter of an hour, and arrived back before midnight. Originally we intended to throw bombs on the naval arsenal, on the railway station, on the electric depot, and on other military objects a? a reprisal for the aerial bombardment of Trieste. It was a beautiful night, a full moon allowed us at the outset to see everything quite clearly, but afterwards thick clouds ob scured the view. I cannot describe the route we took, for it would reveal our starting point. The railway line outside the city on the long bridge gave us the first hint as to where we were. At this point the moon disappeared, and we flew towards the city in total darkness. We could hardly find it, for the Italians are very cautious, not one lamp is lighted in the streets, not one illuminated window can be found, making it almost impossible to direct oneself at a height of 3,000 feet. "'The first object we could distinguish was the Tower of A batch of Curtiss fuselages, in various stages of completion, at the Curtiss works at Buffalo, N.Y. 953
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