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Aviation History
1920
1920 - 1297.PDF
DECEMBER 23, 1920 that of the aeroplane carrying it, but accuracy, or even anything approaching accuracy, in dropping bombs from the air has not yet been attained. " Once real and consistent accuracy has been reached the gun may have to be shelved, and the ship with it, but this refers to tomorrow, not today. " Granted, then, that the gun has to remain for the present, what ship is to carry it—and is this ship to be a small or large one ? The gun must have a steady platform, or its , comparative accuracy will disappear—the ship must there- fore be a large one, and such an advance must be made in the design of this ship and its guns that we shall be as far in front of our rivals today as we were when the first Dread- nought was launched." " How is this to be brought about ? " " Breechscrew " asks. " The answer is, by aircraft : this may appear to be a curious reply, but it is nevertheless a strictly correct one. " Battles are won, and will be won, by that side which is able, owing to the superiority of its armament, to hit its adversary, and keep on hitting him, and yet remain itself immune. " At the present time such a desirable state of affairs from our point of view can only be attained by mounting the • Big Bertha type of gun on the fastest ship, with the most up-to-date anti-torpedo devices that can be devised. " Such a ship will immediately cause the scrapping of all existing types, and we shall be ahead again—until such time as the Navy is absorbed by the air. " Now the building of such a ship carrying guns with a range of about 40 or 50 miles is made possible only by the advent and development of the aeroplane, because the ship will have to rely solely on the aeroplane for observation of fire or ' spotting,' as it is called. " The ship will be blind ; it will not see the targets its guns engage ; all directions as to ranges, bearings and correc- tions for these will come from the aircraft, by wireless and directional wireless. Indirect fire was, as every soldier knows, the normal method of shelling used in France and elsewhere during the War by our artillery, spotting being done by Artillery Observation Flying Squadrons." " THE idea is, therefore, no foolish one," continues "Breech- - screw, " but a sound, reasonable and proved proposition." In addition the aircraft will render invaluable assistance in the protection of this big gun ship, and the result of seawarfare in the immediate future will depend solely upon air supremacy. For every two or three big-gun ships thatare ordered, at least one aircraft-carrier will be necessary, and steps should be taken immediately to decide upon the typesof aircraft to act as spotters for the Battle Fleet. " Only by a whole-hearted and concentrated effort nowcan we hope to lay the foundations for the solving of this question. A few years hence, after much patient observationand probably some bitter experiences, ' Scrap the lot, and transfer the Navy to the Air,' is a saying that will undoubtedlybecome our policy—but the time is not yet. SURREY justices have the reputation of being merry wits— at other folks' expense. Kingston is well famed for its exploitation of motorists in this connection, the moral as a rule being pointed with anything up to " £10 or a month." Mortlake justices also appear to have a great unpaid of the joke-with-deeficulty order in one Sir James Szlumper, its chairman, who apparently aspires to run his neighbouring Bench, not to say Mr. Justice D , pretty hard for the " cap and bells." This great personage and his brethren were the other day kept waiting a short time for a prisoner whose case was down for hearing. From a remark by the Divisional Inspector in the Court it would seem that the sudden and big snowfall and the consequent state of the roads were probably the cause of the delay, as the accused had to be conveyed from Wandsworth for the honour of an interview with the great great. But Sir James was taking no back- chat of that calibre. After a lengthy Y.M.C.A. lecture to the Inspector in particular and the police in general upon the enormity of keeping the Bench waiting—wonder if J. S. has ever had experience in waiting as a juror or a witness—the chairman crushed all further argument flat - with the following illuminating remarks :—" I don't care how the prisoners are brought here so long as they are here when we want them. You can bring them by aeroplane if you like. I repeat that the Home Office officials and the police are well paid. We are not." " AFTER all, an article is generally said to be somewhere about the value you pay for it, and therefore—but anyway has the Mortlake Court House a flat roof for an aeroplane 6to alight on, bird-like, or has Sir James in mind an entranc by the window ? REGARDING the Jutland discussion and the future of this Empire's power, Lieut. Guy E. Cooper, R.N. (retired), is amongst those who plead for a little light upon the aircraft side of future power, and at the same time he names an historic anniversary—December 21, 1914, the first German Aeroplane Raid—and gives details of happenings six years ago last Tuesday, which we do not remember having seen before. Lieut. Cooper in his letter sets out that " I venture to draw your attention to the anniversary of an event of which I was one of the few witnesses, and which—to the best~ of my knowledge—has never been brought to the notice of the public. " On December 21, 1914, a German aeroplane dropped two bombs in the sea off Dover Breakwater, and this was the first attempt in history to attack the British Islands from the air. I was at the time officer of the watch in H.M.S. Afridi patrolling off the port, and on seeing the explosions in the water connected them with the aircraft overhead and gave the alarm. We then opened fire on the enemy with the 12 rifles which were our sole anti-aircraft armament. This fire was inevitably ineffective, but none the less it was the only attempt made to harass the raider. " The naval authorities at Dover saw the splashes, and requested the military not to carry out target practice so close to the harbour entrance. The military authorities informed the Navy that, apparently, a ship at sea had fired two shots toward the harbour. The anti-aircraft defences saw the hostile aircraft, but thought it was a British machine which was expected on its way to France, and such is the natural inertia of the human mind that the captain of another destroyer, who passed close to us while we were engaging the enemy, said subsequently that he couldn't make out what on earth we were doing firing a feu-de-joie in the air. Yet everyone concerned had known for long that an air raid on Dover was possible." "Now, surely," continues Lieut. Cooper, "the moral of this little story is that a change in the conditions of warfare is not formally ushered in with the pomp and ceremony of a general action. The first attack by air on the British Islands was a fact of such intrinsic importance that it might have been expected to be impressive ; yet the details were so petty, the results so futile, that it was shrouded in a haze of misunderstanding, and had the War ended immediately afterwards the significance of the event would have been utterly lost. " Goethe once said of Valmy that ' we entered on a new world then,' but on the night of September 20, 1792, no one in the sodden bivouacs under Argonne realised that the armies of the Revolution had commenced their victorious progress. I would therefore plead that, while it is very proper attention should be concentrated for the moment on the special instance of Jutland, such concentration should not lead to any neglect of the general problems which confront those who must be prepared to wage naval warfare in the future. These problems lose neither their urgency nor their difficulty as a result of the publication of the Jutland Report." SEVERAL times the question has been raised as to the date of the first enemy aeroplane raid on this country. The above incident should certainly be well in the running in case of any future query being put. M Aerial Trappist, somewhere about 1925: "Shall I 'ead'im hoff himmediately, or wait till 'e gets goin' above th' two-'undred m.p.h. ?" T299 ••s.
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