Airplanes, bombs, and air-guns

FRANK C. HANICHEN

An epitaph on war, as we have known it, and a prophetic glance at the vertical battles of the next struggle

Most of the military experts admit that the next war will be fought, to a large extent, in the air. It is this sort of war that they, in the laboratories and council chambers, are preparing to fight.

A mass of new developments has been adopted by all the more alert air services—planes of phenomenal swiftness, long-range anti-aircraft guns, accurate bombing apparatus. new and powerful searchlights. These will he the essential weapons of future air warfare.

Because these new weapons are easily available, all the Great Powers of Europe have them in different styles. If spies do not relay the latest war plans of one country to their employers in another, then the arms manufacturers offer them quite baldly over the counter. Few of these new devices can be kept secret and, for this reason, a clear view of aerial progress in Europe is possible, a view that makes the airplane equipment of the World War appear medieval, since the changes are so rapid that the up-to-date plane of a year ago is merely an obsolete "crate" today.

The most deadly weapon of attack is the bombing plane. It is no novelty, for, during the last war, German Gothas dropped bombs on London, and some English Handley-Pages returned the compliment on the cities of the Rhine. The raids were sketchy and amateurish and the damage they did was negligible. A Gotha used to discharge a lew hundred pounds of bombs on London and hurry back to the hangar—at 75 miles an hour before its petrol gauge showed zero. But, today, it is a different and more dangerous matter. The modern bomber has been improved and tested until it can carry from three to four tons of missiles; it can drone along at 200 miles an hour, and, with a flying range of 2000 miles, a bomber can spread havoc over a much wider area.

And. since 1914, the havoc itself has increased. General Armangaud of the French Stall estimates that a German squadron of average size' could deposit over 500 tons of bombs on Paris. If it be remembered that only about 30 tons were dropped on London by the Germans, during the whole of the last war, and that they made 1880 casualties, one can arrive at some rather macabre arithmetic. According to General Armangaud s gloomy computations, Paris, in the next war, may expect at least 30,000 casualties a day.

But it is one thing to drop a bomb and another to hit the mark with it. Most of the bombs which the Gothas released over England fell harmlessly in open country. If the pilot was flying at 15,000 feet, it was, in those days, often difficult to hit even a large city, much less a railroad station or a munitions dump, like Woolwich Arsenal, which was the German target in half a dozen air raids on London. For the last fifteen years, ordnance technicians have labored and they have finally developed a machine which will make bombing almost perfectly, instead of only partially, destructive.

The bomb-sight is a wonderfully delicate little gadget and it is an absolute necessity to bombing planes. As quickly as a vaudeville mathematician, it can compute the speed of the plane, the altitude, the wind velocity, the allowance for drift, and can sight on the target, with results almost as accurate, according to army experts, as artillery fire.

But no matter how deadly exact the bomb-sights are, or how swift the plane, other obstacles—rain, fog, and the dead of night —might conceivably render the most modern improvements useless. There are some rather foolish-looking files in the German military archives which insist that their air squadrons dropped bombs on Liverpool in 1916, while the British records show that Liverpool, shielded by the typical mist of the island, was never touched during the war. In the next conflict, there will be no such quibbling and counterclaims, for the radio beam has become a great factor in bombing operations. If this device can steer passenger transports from London to Paris in the thickest fogs, it is certain to he used in warfare. The largest German bombers are already equipped with it.

There is no European air force that is not overhauled and improved every few months. It is obvious that a few planes equipped with a trick super-charger are more effective than a hundred old and pedestrian "ships." For example, France has the largest air fleet in Europe—over 3000 planes. But last year, the French learned that some of Italy's bombers were faster than their own pursuit planes, and, with great alacrity, they appropriated nearly a billion francs for the renovation of the French air service.

Russia has been more progressive. She is said to have nearly 3000 planes. Most of these arc bombers which are fast, capacious and well-equipped.

Italy has but 1600 planes, but, as a result of the aggressive ideas of her air zealot. General Drouet, her force is regarded as one of the finest in Europe. ("Finest ", of course, means effective; and "effective' means "capable of spreading vast destruction.")

England has barely ] 000, but shortly after Stanley Baldwin startled a drowsy Parliament by pointing out. that England's frontier was no longer the Channel but the Rhine, a new air program was promptly adopted.

From Germany there are no reliable figures. Until last spring. Germany had an unofficial air force of civilian planes—the fast and powerful Lufthansa transport ships which were used in commercial flying, and hundreds of "private sport" planes. Both of these types were built to military specifications and they could lie converted into bombers and pursuit planes within four hours. In April, Hitler and Goering openly declared hitherto secret resources, and reviewed them publicly. How large this force is, no one knows exactly, but a German émigré, Helmut Klotz, who has written extensively on Germany's rearmament, stated last year that the Reich could call on 2000 planes for military use on a few hours notice.

So far I have tried to give some idea of what may he expected in the air attacks of the next war. The defensive preparations against these attacks are reputedly just as effective and certainly just as ingenious.

During the last war, anti-aircraft artillery made a miserable showing against heavier-than-air attackers. But today the experts in this field claim that their new equipment can break up an air raid unaided. Some of the reports of war games make the boasts of this military guild, perhaps overeager to vindicate itself, hardly credible to military observers, and even less comforting to the city dweller who places such a pathetic hope in their efforts.

The new 105 millimeter gun can send a shell 3000 feet a second with a vertical range of eight miles. No airplane carrying bombs can fly so high. Moreover, the guns are often mounted on motor trucks and they can he moved quickly from point to point. Improved ordnance has provided them with removable liners which can he replaced in the field. Hut even more wonderful is the auxiliary apparatus with which they can draw a bead on a moving object miles in the air.

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The Vickers Detector has been dubbed "The Magic Box". Mechanically it is somewhat like the bomb-sight. It can obtain instantaneously a combined calculation of speed, course, and height of an attacking plane and transmit the information to the guns by electricity. No quick-witted observers, scholars in trigonometry, are necessary for a battery of guns which is supplied with the Detector. The erring human element is virtually eliminated.

At night, Major Savage's Air Grid is a great aid in discouraging air raids. It is a mammoth search-light, and it throws upon the sky a pattern of lines in the form of a square or parallelogram which is subdivided by cross-lines into smaller squares, like a checkerboard. As soon as an enemy plane has crossed two lines of this enormous grid, calculating apparatus on the ground can immediately determine the height, speed and direction of the plane. The beam is very powerful and it can light up the sky to a height of 15,000 feet. In this spider-web of light, a pilot cannot tell which way to turn to escape.

While the anti-aircraft guns assisted by these gauges and search-lights are shelling the attacking planes, defensive craft are also busy. Pursuit and combat planes are now in use with speeds of 225 miles an hour and over. Japan has a large fleet of this kind, since she feels some anxiety about the Russian bombing armada in nearby Vladivostok. She has purchased many of the German "Junker" and the British "Fury" types, which have remarkable speed records. The French have fitted out their Breguet "armored air Cruisers" with several machine guns and a small cannon apiece. These elaborate defensive preparations may give the civilian populations some feeling of safety.

Finally, protection has been given to airdromes, in the form of subterranean hangars. In Gormund, Germany, there is an airplane cellar which can accommodate 200 planes, with repair shops, accessory store-rooms and fuel tanks. The cellar is camouflaged by growing turf so that even an observer on the ground notices nothing unusual when the large doors are shut.

Since air defense and attack have become matters of high organization, the next war will see a much different technique in air combat. There will be no more acrobatics, no more duels between "aces", like Bishop or Richthofen of the last war. Future aerial tactics will consist of mass-formation bombing and collectivized defense. In a debate recently conducted in the columns of Les Ailes, the French air journal, many of the opinions were that chivalry and knight-errantry among aviators are things of the past.

They will surely be, if some of the experiments now on foot are successful. Bold, almost fantastic, innovation is now the rule of a caste which was formerly hidebound by traditional rules. It is related that, after the World W ar. a plan for a tank, submitted in 1912. was found in the files of the British War Office, marked with this official comment, "The man is mad." No such inhospitable spirit is visible today. In fact, the British Government has appointed a committee provided with ample funds to test new inventions for aerial defense.

According to reports, there has been some success in the "fouling" of airplanes by radio. By "fouling" is meant projecting, against an attacking plane, a radio beam which will prevent its spark plugs from igniting, which stops the motor. Tittle confirmation is forthcoming about the practicality of this development.

Aside from the implements of attack and defense, the experts have taken some kindly thought for the protection of civilian non-combatants. It is possible for a city dweller to buy an oxidized gas shelter, or one of many varieties of gas masks. So many gas masks are being sold in France that the French Government has been obliged to pass laws regulating the standard of the masks. In Italy, the trade lias been so brisk that clothing store windows display masked dummies.

Although some authorities deny the effectiveness of aerial gas nearly all the European governments, through their army services and the Red Cross, are instructing their civilians in ways of gas defense.

In Versailles, there is a, gas shelter, accommodating 200, fully equipped with a motor ambulance, and hospital apparatus. The Paris Prefecture of Police has sponsored a pamphlet, selling for 50 centimes at all newsstands, which tells how to act during an air raid. The illustrations look like a Chamber of Horrors, and it is full of grisly injunctions: "Don't stay on the upper floors of buildings," "Never run. especially if you have your gas mask on," "Don't use a candle in a gas shelter; it consumes precious oxygen."

In Germany, boxes of educational gas matches are on sale. Each match is tipped with a preparation containing a minute and harmless quantity of one of the standard poison gases; when ignited, the gas is released, and the earnest German can become familiar with the smell of the gas and bis own symptoms of suffocation. Masks, with typical German efficiency, have been made more serviceable, and stylish. During gas mask drills, it was found that children grew frightened of their parents because the regulation gas mask is pretty ugly. The Busher mask was evolved which has not only an improved air filter, but an open celluloid front. Now the faces are visible and children are no longer afraid of their parents.

All these frenzied preparations may be unnecessary. Aircraft, as the conservatives insist, may serve merely as an auxiliary and comparatively innocuous arm in the next war, while the real conflict goes on, as before, in the trenches. But whatever happens or where—in air or on earth—Europe is taking no chances.