Guns and bomb tubes—Launching a plane from a ship at sea—Transporting troops by aeroplane—Battles in the air.

Nations, in their preparations for war, make a succession of moves and counter-moves. For instance, a torpedo-boat is perfected; immediately it is launched, and ready for its deadly rÔle, a larger and swifter craft is built which may sink it or chase it off the seas. A huge battleship, supreme in its might to-day, is eclipsed to-morrow and made to appear obsolete.

As soon as they became reliable, and could be used in war, aeroplanes and airships were pressed into service as scouts—their task being to ascend, spy out the land below, and return with news to their starting-points. That was the first conception of their use, and War Departments looked no farther. But when machines were built in numbers, and air fleets began to form, strategists saw the complications that would ensue. If A has a fleet of aircraft and B also, and A and B are at war, then the aim of each will be to hamper the other’s air-scouts, and destroy them whenever possible. Here, again, is the theory of move and counter-move. The air-scout, flying above an army, may see its secret at a glance; therefore steps must be taken to keep him off, to drive him away, to blow him to pieces and all of his kind.

This may be done with a cannon from the ground, but the method is not certain. Special guns have been built which will point into the air, can be sighted quickly, and will fire a shell to a great height. If an aircraft comes within range of them, and the gunner has time to aim correctly, a bursting shell may bring the machine to ground. But there are the “ifs” to be remembered. The scout—favoured by a clear day and using his own judgment—may be able to do his spying without venturing within range of a land gun; and, even should he come into firing distance, he may be shot at and missed. Such guns are valuable, of course—mounted upon motor-cars for speedy transport from place to place, and used also to guard fortifications, and against aerial foes by a ship at sea.

Other guns are possible, besides those which fire shells. Attention has been directed to the feasibility of using a form of vortex-gun. This is a weapon rather like a huge air-gun. It compresses a charge of air and discharges it at a high velocity in a whirling vortex or ring. This, invisible but immensely destructive, strikes its target like a cyclone, and has been known—even with the use of an experimental gun—to tear up fences at a distance of several hundred yards. If such a gun was discharged at an aircraft, and the aim was accurate, it is argued that the machine would be hurled over and wrecked by the force of the artificial hurricane.

But something more than a land gun is necessary to fight this new foe—something more certain; it must, in a word, be sought and attacked in its own element, the air. There are two ways at present in which aircraft can engage each other; one machine may rise above its adversary, and drop bombs upon it, or two craft may seek to cripple each other by a fire from machine-guns. Other and more deadly methods are discussed, and may even be employed. Attacking an airship, for instance, a man might ascend in a fast monoplane and charge directly at his bulky foe; then, just before the impact, he might spring from his machine and descend by means of a parachute, leaving his empty craft to crash into the airship and cut a gash through its hull. Many things may be done, in fact, when aerial war is faced; but as tactics are now discussed, and plans made, machine-guns and bombs are the weapons reckoned feasible.

When one imagines two craft manoeuvring for position, and about to engage in a duel in the air, speed would seem a vital need; and here, when opposed to the airship, an aeroplane has advantage. But airships are being built larger and faster in flight; and the speed of an aeroplane, when it has to carry the burden of a gun, is lessened perceptibly; added to which is the fact that, owing to its weight-lifting capacity, the airship can raise a heavier type of gun. The airship may be likened to the battleship of the sky, and the fighting aeroplane to a cruiser; and it seems likely that, in actual warfare, several of the latter will be detailed to attack an airship.

Already, anticipating war in the air, a fighting aeroplane has been evolved; and a machine of this type is shown in Fig. 83. The body, in which pilot and gunner sit, is armoured lightly with plates which will resist the penetration of a bullet. Such armouring was found necessary after the use of aeroplanes in Tripoli and the Balkans. When flying unavoidably low in these campaigns, and when fired at from the ground, the wooden bodies of machines were pierced by shot, and in several instances their occupants wounded.

The fighting aeroplane sketched is an experimental machine—as are all those built at present for aerial war. It carries no very powerful gun, and is not the formidable craft the future will evolve; but it would have, none the less, a definite value in time of war. When used with an army in the field it would drive off an enemy’s scouts, attack armed and hostile craft, and harass and cripple an airship should it chance to meet one. It need not rely solely upon its gun. Bombs may be carried and dropped when opportunity offers; and as an improvement upon the early method, which was simply to throw these from the machine, there are releasing mechanisms now devised which carry a number of projectiles and drop them one by one as a lever is moved (see Fig. 84). The bombs, which are long, pointed, and balanced so that they will fall head first, are clipped round a barrel rather like that of a revolver, which is fixed beneath the aeroplane’s hull just below the occupants’ seat. Mechanism causes the carrying chamber to revolve and bring each bomb against a releasing catch, which—at a movement of the marksman’s lever—throws it outwards and downward.

Bomb-sighting instruments are now being tested, so that a pilot may drop a missile with accuracy upon a given spot. In the early experiments, when a pilot merely leaned forward as he flew, bomb in hand, and guessed his aim, the majority went wide of their mark. Several factors enter into this problem of aim. There is the speed of the machine, its height above the ground, and the question whether a wind may affect the fall of the bomb. Dropped haphazard, a bomb is unlikely to reach its mark. In sighting instruments now provided the marksman finds his altitude, estimates his speed by the time his craft takes to pass between two points on the land below, and then makes an allowance for side-drifting owing to the influence of the wind.

Bombs of many types are being made. Some weigh about 10 lbs., and are filled with several pounds of an extremely high explosive. Others are what is known as incendiary bombs; when they strike an object they burst into flames, and are intended to cause fires on the roofs of buildings or supply stores. A single aeroplane, dropping bombs in war, would not be likely to have much effect; but the plan will be to equip squadrons of these machines, their crews trained to sweep in unison over the point attacked, and rain down bombs in a ceaseless and destructive stream.

There is a risk for airmen when they carry a load of explosives. Should they make a bad landing, or fall to the ground and wreck their craft, there is the probability that their bombs would explode from the impact and blow them to pieces. This danger has been realized, and a form of safety bomb is now being used in tests. Each bomb is fitted with a safety catch, and unless this is released the bomb cannot explode, no matter how hard it strikes the ground. The manner in which the catch disengages itself is ingenious. Upon the rear of the bomb is a tiny propeller, which spins in the air as the bomb drops from the machine; and as it turns it uncoils a spring, which releases the safety catch and makes the bomb operative—but not until after it has fallen about 100 feet.

Airships, like aeroplanes, are being armed with guns and bombs; and their power of raising weights enables them to carry heavy weapons. Large and highly destructive bombs have been tested in the German airships, being released over the sea and aimed at targets in the form of rafts. Latest-type airships also carry guns in their cars; and the Zeppelins have a platform upon the tops of their hulls, reached by a ladder through the middle of the ship, from which a machine-gun can be fired upward. This is a very necessary precaution, and is intended to frustrate the attack of an aeroplane. It would be the aim of the latter, whenever possible, to manoeuvre above its big enemy—as suggested in Fig. 85—and drop a bomb upon its hull. Hence the construction of the top platform of the airship, from which her gunners can direct a vigorous fire aloft.

The ability of an airship to navigate at night, and steal unobserved above the land, gives it grim possibilities as a weapon of destruction. It motors quiet, and no lights showing, it can drift with the wind over a harbour or fortification, and drop bombs which will fall upon those below out of an empty sky. Searchlights would be used, of course, from the positions attacked, and artillery fired upward, but the airship would be a silent, elusive shape—difficult to see and more difficult to hit.

Here, though, would be work for land or sea planes. It would be the aim of our Admiralty, upon the outbreak of war, to patrol the coast with a service of armed aircraft. A number of air-stations, at which machines are housed, are already in existence—mainly along the north-east coast. Between station and station the craft would fly in war, providing a continuous patrol, the aim being to shut out hostile craft, and attack a squadron of the enemy, should it approach land.

The observer in a sea-plane, under favourable conditions, can also detect the movements of a sub-marine, his height above the water enabling him to see beneath its surface and discern the shape of the vessel, even when it is submerged. This would be of value in war, as proved in manoeuvres with our fleets. A sea-plane, patrolling the entrance to a harbour, can send a warning by wireless should hostile submarines—invisible to all save the aerial watcher—seek to steal in upon a destructive raid.

The air-patrol would play its part, too, if an enemy attempted to land troops. Flying above transports as they neared the coast, the planes would drop bombs upon them. Many of the patrols, also, would be equipped with wireless, and would scout in search of an enemy’s fleet, reporting constantly to the land stations as they flew.

A coastal sea-plane, as now planned, is a craft having, say, two engines, each devolving 120 h.p., with a wing span of some 80 feet, and an accommodation in its hull for three men—the pilot, a combatant with a machine-gun, and an observer with an installation of wireless. But types are changing constantly, and the tendency is to build larger craft. A machine weighing a couple of tons is shown in Fig. 86, and a novelty in regard to it is that it has wheels upon either side of its boat-shaped car, upon which it can move on land, and which fold upward when it rests upon the water.

Long flights over-sea, in search, say, of the assembling point of an enemy’s fleet, would be undertaken by the naval airships. They will be relied upon, for example, to scour the North Sea by day and night; and, poised high above the water, they would be able to locate an enemy’s fleet when at an immense distance.

There is a type of aeroplane which will be carried to sea when a fleet sails, stowed in sections within the hull of a transport ship. This machine—a light, high-speed craft—will be assembled upon the deck of its parent ship, and launched into the air by special mechanism, as there is not room for a machine to run upon wheels, and leave the ship’s deck as it might do upon land; the vessel, besides, might be rolling in a high sea. In some cases a platform is built upon the deck, either at the bow or stern, and along this the aircraft moves, so as to gain speed for its planes to lift. In one device, seen in Fig. 87, the machine is mounted upon a light wheeled cradle, and this is placed upon the starting-rail. Then, driven by its propeller, the plane runs forward upon the cradle till it reaches the end of the rail, when it glides into the air, the cradle falling from it and dropping into the sea, from which it is retrieved and drawn back on board the ship. By another method, shown in Fig. 88, the sea-plane is launched from a cable suspended between two masts, and can come to rest upon the cable again after a flight has been made. The machine is hung upon the cable prior to making an ascent; then the pilot starts his engine, and as his machine glides forward along the cable he releases a catch and soars into the air. Upon returning he flies beneath the cable, and makes his craft rise until the “V”-shaped apparatus above his head is caught by the cable and the catch becomes operative; then he stops his motor, and his craft hangs from the cable as it did before.

A flying scout, operating with a fleet at sea and rising from the deck of a ship, would be of very distinct value. When approaching an enemy he would be sent aloft to reconnoitre, and would locate hostile craft before men could see them from the ships below. The utility of such a scout is proved by the lessons of history. On one occasion, for instance—it was in 1805—Nelson was waiting to intercept a French fleet at Toulon. But they managed to steal out unobserved, and Nelson chased them to the West Indies before he caught them. If he had had an aeroplane to send up and keep watch, he would not have missed his enemy.

The air-scouts of a fleet would note also the approach of airships, and could spy upon harbours or fortifications when an attack was being made upon them from the sea.

At present, it must be remembered, the possibilities of an air-fleet are vague—all at least save one; and that is the utility of an airship or plane for scouting. The value of aircraft in this direction has been proved, not only in peace manoeuvres but in war; but as to what destructive work an aeroplane can accomplish, or how machines will fight when they meet in mid-air, there is only theory for a guide. That an aircraft may carry explosives, and drop them with accuracy, is now an established fact; also that a machine-gun can be mounted upon a machine, and fired successfully at a target while the craft is in flight. But no country, as yet, has equipped itself with a squadron of fighting aeroplanes. For one thing, owing to the fact that powerful aviation motors are only just becoming available, craft are still small in size; and this limits them to the carrying of a light gun. What is wanted, and what will be built in time, is a large, armoured, high-speed craft, having more than one engine, carrying a crew, and being able to bear the load of a powerful gun. In war, had a Commander a squadron of such machines, he would use them for attacking an enemy’s supply stores and ammunition parks, for blowing up railway lines, and for harassing troops when they were on the march; and he would launch them, of course, when necessary against hostile aircraft which might approach his own lines.

In the first instance, in the case of a great war, there will be a battle in the air; and how severe this will be must depend upon the strengths of the air-fleets opposed to each other. Command of the air, like command of the sea, will be all-important. If one Commander-in-Chief can cripple and disorganise his opponent’s air-fleet, it will be like blinding his enemy. He himself, still well served by his air-scouts, will note all the movements of his enemy; but this enemy, with an air fleet driven back, and most of its machines disabled, will be enveloped in what has been called “the fog of war”; he will glean no more as to his enemy’s tactics, that is to say, than can be obtained by cavalry or foot scouts.

Not only the fighting aeroplanes, but the general equipment of the air-fleet, will play a part in the aerial battles of the future. Surprisingly intricate, and little known, is the organisation of a squadron of war machines. There must be trained mechanics in large numbers, and they must be driven from place to place in motors, according to the movements of the machines they serve. Then the aeroplanes, if necessary, must be packed on lorries and taken across country by road; and there must be portable sheds upon the landing grounds, in which they may be housed at night. There needs to be an equipment of spare machines also; and a number of travelling workshops with skilled engineers, which can be rushed from place to place for the repair of damaged craft. A sketch of one of these workshops on wheels, which are vital to the organisation, is seen in Fig. 89.

It seems likely that the air-fleet of the future will be composed of craft of many types. There will be the long-distance scout—a machine capable of flying for many hours at moderate speed and surveying wide tracts of country. Then there will be a flotilla of very fast, single-seated machines, used for a dash above an enemy’s force. These high-speed scouts will run the gauntlet of the enemy’s destroyers, rushing into the danger zone and sweeping out again, rather like a torpedo-boat in naval war. Then there will be the fighting squadron—machines armoured and carrying powerful guns, which will fight the enemy’s war-planes and give battle to hostile airships; and there may be a further type of destructive plane for use against the forces on land. This would be a machine well armoured, with its motors silenced, and perhaps with transparent wings. It would steal upon ammunition parks and supply trains, firing with its guns and raining down bombs; and such a craft would be used, also, to seek and attack the aircraft stations of the enemy. These would be protected, of course, by high-angle guns and patrol planes. Immense damage might be wrought by bombs were hostile craft to discover, and attack without resistance, a squadron of machines in their sheds.

A machine which does not exist now, but which may be built before long, is an aeroplane transport for troops. This would be a very large craft, built entirely for weight-lifting. It would raise a load of say ten or more men; and such machines would be held in readiness so that a relief column could be embarked in them and carried at high speed to some point, perhaps a number of miles distant, at which reinforcements were needed urgently. Could such aeroplane transport be organised, and handled with success, it might be of the highest value during a battle. If a thousand machines were built, each carrying ten men, and they made three flights to some given spot, a force of 30,000 men could be transported by air; and even with a slow-flying, weight-carrying machine, a distance of say 30 miles should be transversed in half-an-hour. Battles have been won by virtue of forced marches, thus bringing troops to some vantage-point before an enemy expects them. Napoleon, for example, was a master of such quickly-delivered blows. Day and night, on many occasions, he hurried his tired troops across country; and what would he have given to embark a column upon aeroplanes, and send them high over hills and forests at the speed of an express train?

Experts do not care to prophesy what will happen, say in the next great war, if flying machines fight in large numbers. That there will be such fighting is agreed; but what form it will take, and what damage the combatants will do each other, are problems time alone can solve. When the tactics of fighting aircraft are studied there is one point always to be remembered; and this is, that machines can steer not only to and fro and from side to side, but can also move up and down; and this introduces a confusion which does not exist in any other form of war. On the land, and upon the sea, two machines fighting must move always on the same plane; but in the air one may rise above the other, or dive swiftly below it, in addition to the manoeuvres possible by wheeling and circling, and sweeping in suddenly to an attack.

Mr. H. G. Wells, in his novel The War in the Air, considers that aerial battles will develop into a series of duels, fought between isolated machines. By this he means that, although a squadron of fighting craft may move into action in regular formation, the speed at which they are able to fly, and the fact that they can rise or descend, will soon scatter them in all directions; with the consequence that a couple of machines, singling each other out for combat, will wheel and circle away from the other craft and fight their duel alone. Such a scattered, indecisive form of fighting would undoubtedly take place to-day were aircraft called to meet in war, and for the reason that the machines forming a squadron would have no satisfactory means of communicating with each other. In a fleet of warships, when it fights, the discipline is perfect, and the signals from the flagship instantly obeyed. A number of units can in this way be made to fight as one. But in the air, until wireless telegraphy is applied with greater certainty, it will be difficult for a commander to guide the movements of his craft. Flag-signalling would be slow; the flags might not be seen. What would be needed is some almost instantaneous method of altering a battle position, or of turning and sweeping suddenly upon an enemy. An ideal communication, in the delivery of some swift blow, would be by wireless telephone. Then a Commander, taking up his instrument as he flew high above the contending craft, could speak an order in an easily-read code, which would make the vessels of his fleet turn swiftly and correctly upon any new course.

First of all, in aerial warfare, there will come a chase between the light, fast-flying scouts and the armoured planes which will be on watch for them. As two armies approach each other, upon the eve of battle, there will be one definite question which a Commander-in-Chief will ask of the officer who is in command of his aeroplanes. He will say: “Find out for me how the enemy is massing his men.” This information will be needed as quickly as it can be obtained; unless he knows, approximately, the formation of his opponent’s troops, he will be unable to plan the disposition of his own forces. To obtain this news, without a moment’s waste of time, the officer in charge of the aeroplanes will send out high-speed scouts—expert officers, mounted upon single-seated craft; just as, in the days before flying, the Duke of Wellington would choose special men, mount them upon picked horses, and send them out to obtain news at all costs.

These high-speed scouts, flying at more than 100 miles an hour, will sweep in towards the enemy, seeking the shelter of clouds or of banks of mist, and making long detours when necessary so as to try and avoid the patrols. It will be the same story in the air as was told formerly on land; there will be the spy trying to creep through, and the chain of flying outposts making it their business to stop him. Speedy in flight, and yet carrying a formidable gun, these patrols will rush upon the unarmed scout and strive to put him out of action. His only protection will be his speed. He will wheel, dodge, and eventually turn tail. All the time his aim will be to see what lies below him, to watch the marchings of the troops which will look so tiny and remote, and form an opinion in his mind as to what the battle line will be. These single scouts will need to be picked men. A great responsibility will be theirs, and a great risk also. They will, in fact, take their lives in their hands, and nothing will save them from being sent crashing to their death but their own wit and skill in the handling of their machines.

This perilous work done, there may come a clash between the lighter fighting craft—the machines which form the screens of outposts, as they move gradually nearer to each other. One or other may be forced to yield and fly, scattering in confusion; and after this there may be the aerial battle proper, in which the large, heavily-armed craft, and the giant airships with their batteries of guns, will come into action. The aeroplane, in fighting an airship, will have the advantage that it offers a smaller mark, and one also which is moving rapidly through the air. It may also be struck many times before it is crippled or put out of action. Shot passing through its planes will make little difference to it; and the occupants will sit in a hull which is armoured. But an accurately-placed shell, bursting in the heart of the machine—that is to say, among its machinery and crew—will no doubt prove disastrous; and the airship, with its long fragile hull, must prove vulnerable also. Well-aimed shots will pierce it; a bomb from above may set it on fire. In the case of the Zeppelin, though carrying its gas in a series of compartments, a number of hits may be sustained before the vessel is out of action. But, when all is said and done, both aeroplanes and airships are frail machines—the one with slender, lightly built planes, and the other with a hull which is protected by nothing stouter than a rubbered fabric. So if guns are well handled, craft must suffer. To reflect upon such fighting reminds one of a remark of Mr. Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty. Commenting upon the growing power of a warship’s guns, and showing how the armour with which craft are protected has not grown in efficiency to keep pace with the striking force of a modern projectile, he said that the fighting between two heavily armed leviathans would be like “two egg-shells battering at each other with hammers.” So with armed aircraft; well-placed shells will rip and tear; and the destruction of a hard-fought engagement must undoubtedly be heavy.

Straight shooting, as in naval war, will be the vital need—that and a cool, quick skill in the manoeuvring of a machine. The airship gunners, having a steady firing platform, will be at an advantage over aeroplane crews; but the latter in their turn will have quick manoeuvring power and high speed. In the engagement between an airship and several planes, such as is certain to take place, the latter will be in the position of torpedo-boats when they attack a battleship. They will dash in, relying upon speed and the suddenness of their onslaught; and the saving of the craft attacked will rest upon the skill of her gunners. By a vicious, accurate fire they will seek to check the rush; and one or more of their assailants will crumple and fall headlong. The survivors, delivering their fire point-blank into the hull and cars of their opponent, will dive and swerve out of range; and while they are engaging the airship upon either side, one or more of their consorts will climb to a higher altitude, and endeavour to drop bombs upon the airship from above. To prevent them swooping near, as they circle above, marksman will be busy with machine-guns upon the top platform of the airship.

Before and after the meeting of the main air-fleets, there will be duels and scattered fighting. Swift raids will be made by bomb-dropping craft, which will sweep above the supply stores of their enemy, attack his troops on the march, or seek to blow up the railway lines along which he is bringing his reinforcements. To drive off these raiders there will be the vigilant patrols; all vulnerable points being guarded by air as well as by land.

This aerial fighting, which will wax and wane, dying down only to be renewed with a greater fierceness, must precede the battles of land or sea; and so, while the aerial armies are struggling for supremacy, those moving upon the land, or the fleets steaming upon the water, will be manoeuvring for position and creeping stealthily nearer. A conquest in the air, if it be decisive, may spell also a victory upon land and sea. A nation which has its air-fleet destroyed or crippled will lie helpless before the attacks of hostile craft, and will lose also the aid of its aerial scouts and spies. It will fight, therefore, in the dark, assailed by a foe against which it cannot defend itself.

All-important will be these aerial battles; granted a country wins supremacy in the air, its blows by land or sea can be delivered with a crushing force, unhampered either by attacks or spying from above. This fact is realised by every War Department of Europe. Aerial warfare is being studied closely; and the first armed craft, though they carry small guns, will pave the way for a powerful, armoured, multi-engined cruiser of the clouds.