About the extent to which the belligerent governments developed their air forces after the outbreak of war there was during the continuance of that conflict great reticence maintained by all of them. At the outset there was little employment of the flyers except on scouting reconnaissance work, or in directing artillery fire. The raids of Zeppelins upon England, of seaplanes on Kiel and Cuxhaven, of airplanes on Friedrichshaven, Essen, and Venice came later. It has been noted by military authorities that, while Germany was provided at first with the largest aviation force of all the belligerents, she either underestimated its value at the outset, or did not know how to employ it, for she blundered into and through Belgium using her traditional Uhlans for scouts, to the virtual exclusion of airmen. The effectiveness of the Belgian fight for delay is ascribed largely to the intelligent and effective use its strategists made of the few aircraft they possessed.

Wellington was wont to say that the thing he yearned for most in battle was to "see the other side of that hill."

Napoleon wrote:

Nothing is more contradictory, nothing more bewildering than the multitude of reports of spies, or of officers sent out to reconnoitre. Some locate army corps where they have seen only detachments; others see only detachments where they ought to have seen army corps.



So the two great protagonists of the opening years of the nineteenth century deplored their military blindness. In the opening years of the twentieth it was healed. All that Wellington strove to see, all that the cavalry failed to find for Napoleon is to-day brought to headquarters by airmen, neatly set forth in maps, supported by photographs of the enemy's positions taken from the sky.

Before describing the exploits of the airmen in actual campaign let us consider some account of how they were trained for their arduous and novel duties.

To the non-professional an amazing thing about the employment of aircraft in war has been the rapidity with which pilots are trained. The average layman would think that to learn the art of manoeuvring an airplane with such swiftness as to evade the attacks of an enemy, and to detect precisely the proper moment and method of attacking him in turn, would require long and arduous practice in the air. But as we have seen in earlier chapters, inventors like the Wrights, Bleriot, and Farman learned to fly with but a few hours spent in the air, with flights lasting less than ten minutes each. So too the army aviators spent but little time aloft, though their course of instruction covered in all a period of about four months.

Some account of the method of instruction as reported by several out of the hundred or more American boys who went to fly for France may be interesting.

As a rule the aviators were from twenty to twenty-five years of age. "Below twenty boys are too rash; above twenty-five they are too prudent," said a sententious French aviator. A slight knowledge of motors such as would be obtained from familiarity with automobiles was a marked advantage at the start, for the first task of the novice was to make himself familiar with every type of airplane engine. The army pilot in all the armies was the aristocrat of the service. Mechanics kept his motor in shape, and helpers housed, cleaned, and brought forth his machine for action. But while all but the actual piloting and fighting was spared him, there was always the possibility of his making an untimely landing back of the enemy's lines with an engine that would not work. To prepare for such an emergency he was taught all the intricacies of motor construction, so that he might speedily correct any minor fault.

In our army, and indeed in all others, applicants for appointment to the aviation corps were subjected to scientific tests of their nerves, and their mental and physical alertness. How they would react to the sudden explosion of a shell near their ears, how long it took the candidate to respond to a sudden call for action, how swiftly he reacted to a sensation of touch were all tested and measured by delicate electric apparatus. A standard was fixed, failing to attain which, the applicant was rejected. The practical effect might be to determine how long after suddenly discovering a masked machine gun a given candidate would take before taking the action necessary to avoid its fire. Or how quickly would he pull the lever necessary to guard against a sudden gust of wind. To the layman it would appear that problems of this sort could only be solved in the presence of the actual attack, but science, which enables artillerists to destroy a little village beyond the hills which they never see, was able to devise instruments to answer these questions in the quiet of the laboratory.

One of the best known flying schools of the French army was at Pau, where on broad level plains were, in 1917, four separate camps for aviators, each with its group of hangars for the machines, its repair shops, and with a tall wireless tower upstanding in the midst for the daily war news from Paris. On these plains the Wright Brothers had made some of their earliest French flights. A little red barn which they had made their workshop was still standing there when war suddenly turned the spot into a flying school often with as many as five thousand pupils in attendance. "To-day that little red barn," writes Carroll Dana Winslow, one of the Americans who went to fly for France, "stands as a monument to American stupidity, for when we allowed the Wrights to go abroad to perfect their ideas instead of aiding them to carry on their work at home we lost a golden opportunity. Now the United States which gave to the world the first practical airplane is the least advanced in this all-important science."

Arrived at the school the tyro studies the fundamentals of flying in the classroom and on the field for two months before he is allowed to go up—to receive as they express it, his bapteme de l'air. He picks motors to pieces, and puts them together, he learns the principles of airplane construction, and can discourse on such topics as the angle of attack of the cellule, the incidence of the wings, and the carrying power of the tail-plane. More than any other science aviation has a vocabulary of its own, and a peculiarly cosmopolitan one drawn from all tongues, but with the French predominating. America gave the airplane to France, but France has given the science its terminology.

The maps of the battlefields of this war are the marvels of military science. Made from the air they show every road and watercourse, every ditch and gully, every patch of woodland, every farmhouse, church, or stonewall. Much of the early work of the aviator is in learning to make such maps, both by sketches and by the employment of the camera. It is no easy task. From an airplane one thousand feet up the earth seems to be all a dead level. Slight hills, gentle elevations, offer no contrast to the general plain. A road is not easy to tell from a trench. All these things the aviator must first learn to see with accuracy, and then to depict on his map with precision. He must learn furthermore to read the maps of his fellows—a task presupposing some knowledge of how they had been made. He must learn to fly by a map, to recognize objects by the technical signs upon it, to estimate his drift before the wind because of which the machine moves sidewise en crabe—or like a crab as the French phrase it.

His first flight the novice makes in a machine especially fitted for instruction. The levers are fitted with double handles so that both learner and tutor may hold them at once. If the greenhorn pushes when he should pull the veteran's grip is hard on the handle to correct the error before it can cost two lives—for in the air there is little time to experiment. Either set of controls will steer the machine. The pupil grasps his levers, and puts his feet on the pedals. At first the instructor will do the steering, the pupil following with hands and feet as the motions made by the instructor are communicated to him by the moving levers. For a time the two work together. Then as the instructor senses that the student himself is doing the right thing he gradually lessens his own activity, until after a few days' practice the student finds that he is flying with a passenger and directing the machine himself. In France, at any rate, they teach in brief lessons. Each flight for instruction is limited to about five minutes. At first the student operates in a "penguin"—a machine which will run swiftly along the ground but cannot rise. It is no easy trick at first, to control the "penguin" and keep its course direct. Then he will try the "jumps" in a machine that leaps into the air and descends automatically after a twenty to forty yards' flight. As Darius Green expressed it so long ago, the trouble about flying comes when you want to alight. That holds as true to-day with the most perfect airplanes, as in boyhood days when one jumped from the barn in perfect confidence that the family umbrella would serve as a parachute. To alight with an airplane the pilot—supposing his descent to be voluntary and not compelled by accident or otherwise—surveys the country about him for a level field, big and clear enough for the machine to run off its momentum in a run of perhaps two hundred yards on its wheels. Then he gets up a good rate of speed, points the nose of the 'plane down at a sharp angle to the ground, cuts off the engine, and glides. The angle of the fall must be great enough for the force of gravity to keep up the speed. There is a minimum speed at which an airplane will remain subject to control. Loss of speed—"perte de vitesse," as the French call it—is the aviator's most common peril in landing. If it occurs after his engine is cut off and he has not the time to start it again, the machine tilts and slides down sideways. If it occurs higher up a vrille is the probable result. In this the plane plunges toward the ground spinning round and round with the corner of one wing as a pivot. In either case a serious accident is almost inevitable.

In fact the land is almost as dangerous to the navigator of the air as it is to him of the sea. To make good landings is an art only perfected by constant practice. To shut off the engine at precisely the right moment, to choose an angle of descent that will secure the greatest speed and at the same moment bring you to your landing place, to change at the most favourable time from this angle to one that will bring you to the ground at the most gentle of obtuse angles, and to let your machine, weighing perhaps a ton, drop as lightly as a bird and run along the earth for several hundred feet before coming to a full stop, are all features of making a landing which the aviator has to master.

In full air there are but few perils to encounter. All airmen unite in declaring that even to the novice in an airplane there is none of that sense of dizziness or vertigo which so many people experience in looking down from high places. The flyer has no sense of motion. A speed of forty miles an hour and of one hundred miles are the same to him. As he looks down the earth seems to be slipping away from him, and moving by, tailwards, like an old-fashioned panorama being unwound.

Everything about the control of an airplane has to be learned mechanically. Once learned the aviator applies his knowledge intuitively. He "senses" the position and progress of the craft by the feel of the controls, as the man at the yacht's tiller tells mysteriously how she is responding to the breeze by "the feel." Even before the 'plane responds to some sudden gust of wind, or drops into a hole in the air, the trained aviator will foresee precisely what is about to happen. He reads it in some little thrill of his lever, a quiver in the frame, as the trained boxer reads in his antagonist's eyes the sort of blow that is coming. This instinctive control of his machine is absolutely essential for the fighting pilot who must keep his eyes on the movements of his enemy, watch out for possible aircraft guns below, and all the time be striving to get an advantageous position whence he can turn his machine gun loose. A row of gauges, dials, a compass, and a map on the frame of the car in which he sits will engage his attention in any moments of leisure. It is needless to remark that the successful pilot must have a quick eye and steady nerves.

Nerve and rapidity of thought save the aviator in many a ticklish position. It is perhaps a tribute to the growing perfection of the airplanes that in certain moments of peril the machine is best left wholly to itself. Its stability is such that if freed from control it will often right itself and glide safely to earth. This not infrequently occurs in the moment of the dreaded perte de vitesse, to which reference has been made. In his book, With the French Flying Corps, Mr. Carroll Dana Winslow, a daring American aviator, tells of two such experiences, the one under his observation, the other happening to himself:

The modern airplane is naturally so stable [he says] that if not interfered with it will always attempt to right itself before the dreaded vrille occurs, and fall en feuille morte. Like a leaf dropping in an autumn breeze is what this means, and no other words explain the meaning better.

A curious instance of this happened one day as I was watching the flights and waiting for my turn. I was particularly interested in a machine that had just risen from the "Grande Piste." It was acting very peculiarly. Suddenly its motor was heard to stop. Instead of diving it commenced to wabble, indicating a perte de vitesse. It slipped off on the wing and then dove. I watched it intently, expecting it to turn into the dreaded spiral. Instead it began to climb. Then it went off on the wing, righted itself, again slipped off on the wing, volplaned, and went off once more. This extraordinary performance was repeated several times, while each time the machine approached nearer and nearer to the ground. I thought that the pilot would surely be killed. Luck was with him, however, for his slip ceased just as he made contact with the ground and he settled in a neighbouring field. It was a very bumpy landing but the airplane was undamaged.

The officers rushed to the spot to find out what was the matter. They found the pilot unconscious, but otherwise unhurt. Later in the hospital he explained that the altitude had affected his heart and that he had fainted. As he felt himself going he remembered his instructions and relinquished the controls, at the same time stopping his motor. His presence of mind and his luck had saved his life—his luck I say, for had the machine not righted itself at the moment of touching the ground it would have been inevitably wrecked.

The spectacle, though terrifying, proved valuable as an education to young Winslow who a few days later was ordered to a test of ascension of two thousand feet. This is his story:

I had a narrow escape. I had received orders to make a flight during a snow-storm. I rose to the prescribed height and then prepared to make my descent. A whirling squall caught me in the act of making a spiral. I felt the tail of my machine go down and the nose point up. I had a classical perte de vitesse. I looked out and saw that I was less than eight hundred feet above the ground and approaching it at an alarming rate of speed. I had already shut off the motor for the spiral, and turning it on, I knew, would not help me in the least. Suddenly I remembered the pilot who fainted. I let go of everything, and with a sickening feeling I looked down at the up-rushing ground. At that instant I felt the machine give a lurch and right itself. I grabbed the controls, turned on the motor, and resumed my line of flight only two hundred feet in the air. All this happened in a few seconds, but my helplessness seemed to have lasted for hours. I had had a very close call—not as close as the man who fainted, but sufficiently so for me.



We have said that the process of training a flyer is remarkably expeditious. So far as the fundamentals of his profession are concerned it is. But his education in fact never ends. In the mere matter of reconnaissance, for example, experience is everything. One might imagine that ten thousand men marching on a road would look alike in numbers whatever the nationality. Not so. To the untrained eye five thousand or six thousand French troops will look as numerous as ten thousand British or Germans. Why? Because the French march in much more extended order. Into their democratic military methods the precision and mechanical exactitude of German drill do not enter. With the same number of troops they will extend further along the road by at least a third than would a detachment of either of the other armies.



And again. Great skill has been developed in the course of the war in the art of concealing positions and particularly in disguising cannon. The art has given a new word to the world—camouflage. Correspondents have repeatedly told of their amazement in suddenly coming across a battery of 75's, or a great siege gun so cunningly hidden in the edge of a thicket they would be almost upon it before detecting it. From an airplane 2500 feet or more in the air it requires sharp eyes to penetrate artillery disguises. A French poilu in a little book of reminiscences tells with glee how a German observation aviator deceived his batteries. A considerable body of French troops being halted in an open field, out of sight of the enemy batteries, found the glare of the sun oppressive, and having some time to wait threw down their equipment and betook themselves to the cool shadows of a neighbouring wood. Along came an enemy aviator. From his lofty height the haversacks, blanket-rolls, and other pieces of dark equipment lying upon the grass looked like a body of troops resting. After sailing over and around the field twice as though to make assurance doubly sure he sailed swiftly away. In a very few minutes shells from a concealed battery began dropping into that field at the rate of several a minute. Every foot of it was torn up, and the French soldiers from their retreat in the woods saw their equipment being blown to pieces in every direction. The spectacle was harrowing, but the reflection that the aviator undoubtedly thought that he had turned his guns on a field full of men was cheering to them in their safety.

An art which the fighting aviator must master early in his career is that of high diving. Many of us have seen a hawk, soaring high in air, suddenly fold his pinions and drop like a plummet full on the back of some luckless pigeon flapping along ungainly scores of feet below, or a fishhawk drop like a meteor from the sky with a resounding splash upon the bosom of some placid stream and rise again carrying a flapping fish to his eyrie in the distant pines. The hunting methods of the hawk are the fighting methods of the airman. But his dives exceed in height and daring anything known to the feathered warriors of the air.

Boelke, most famous of all the German airmen—or for that matter of all aerial fighters of his day—who in 1917 held the record for the number of enemy flyers brought down, was famed for his savage dives. He would fly at a great height, fifteen thousand or more feet, thus assuring himself that there was no enemy above him. When he sighted his prey he would make an absolutely vertical nose dive, dropping at the rate of 150 miles an hour or more and spattering shots from his machine gun as he fell. Six hundred shots a minute and the sight of this charging demon were enough to test the nerve of any threatened aviator. In some fashion Boelke was enabled to give a slight spiral form to his dive so that his victim was enveloped in a ring of bullets that blocked his retreat whichever way he might turn for safety.

Personality in fighting counted much for success. Boelke's method, its audacity and fierceness, placed him first in the list of airmen with killing records. Captain Immelman, also a German, who rolled up a score of thirty enemies put out of action before he himself was slain, followed entirely different tactics. His battle manoeuvre savoured much of the circus, including as it did complete loop-the-loop. For instead of approaching his adversary from the side, or as would be said in the sea navy, on the beam, he followed squarely behind him. His study was to get the nose of his machine almost on the tail of the aircraft he was pursuing. This gave him, to begin with, what used to be called in the navy a raking position, for his shots would rake the whole body of the enemy airplane from tail to nose with a fair chance of hitting either the fuel tank, the engine, or the pilot. Failing to secure the position he most coveted, this daring German would surrender it with apparent unconcern to the enemy who usually fell into the trap. For just as the foeman's machine came up to the tail of Immelman's craft the latter would suddenly turn his nose straight to earth, drop like a stone, execute a backward loop, and come up behind his surprised adversary who thus found the tables suddenly turned.

These two German aviators long held the record for execution done in single combat. Boelke was killed before the air duel vanished to be replaced by the battle of scores of planes high in air. Immelman survived longer, but with the incoming of the pitched battle his personal prowess counted for less and his fame waned.

In July, 1917, arrangements were complete in the United States for the immediate training in the fundamentals of aviation of ten thousand young Americans. The expectation was that long before the end of the year facilities would be provided for the training of many more. Both France and Great Britain sent over squads of their best aviators, some of them so incapacitated from wounds as to be disqualified for further fighting, but still vigorous enough for the work of an instructor. The aerial service took hold upon the imagination and the patriotism of young America as did no other. The flock of volunteers was far beyond the capacity of the government to care for, and many drifted over into private aviation schools which were established in great numbers. The need for the young students was admittedly great. More and more the impression had grown in both Great Britain and France that the airplane was to be the final arbiter in the war. It was hailed at once as the most dangerous enemy of the submarine and the most efficient ally of troops in the field. No number seemed too great for the needs of the entente allies, and their eagerness to increase their flying force was strengthened by the knowledge of the fact that Germany was building feverishly in order that its fleet in the air might not be eclipsed.

Perhaps the best description of an idealized aviator was given by Lieutenant Lufbery, of the Lafayette Escadrille, who came to the United States to assist in training the new corps of American flying men. Lufbery himself was a most successful air fighter—an "ace" several times over. Though French by lineage, he was an American citizen and had been a soldier in the United States Army. In October of 1917 his record was thirteen Boches brought down within the allied lines. In the allied air service one gets no credit for the defeated enemy plane if it falls within the enemy lines.

While young Americans were being drilled into shape for service in the flying corps, Lufbery gave this outline of the type of men the service would demand:

It will take the cream of the American youth between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six to man America's thousands of airplanes, and the double cream of youth to qualify as chasers in the Republic's new aerial army.

Intensive and scientific training must be given this cream of youth upon which America's welfare in the war must rest. Experience has shown that for best results the fighting aviator should be not over twenty-six years old or under eighteen. The youth under eighteen has shown himself to be bold, but he lacks judgment. Men over twenty-six are too cautious.

The best air fighters, especially a man handling a chaser, must be of perfect physique. He must have the coolest nerve and be of a temperament that longs for a fight. He must have a sense of absolute duty and fearlessness, the keenest sense of action, and perfect sight to gain the absolute "feel" of his machine.

He must be entirely familiar with aerial acrobatics. The latter frequently means life or death.

Fighting twenty-two thousand feet in the air produces a heavy strain on the heart. It is vital therefore that this organ show not the slightest evidence of weakness. Such weakness would decrease the aviator's fighting efficiency.

The American boys who come over to France for this work will be subject to rapid and frequent variations in altitude. It is a common occurrence to dive vertically from six thousand to ten thousand feet with the motor pulling hard.

Sharpness of vision is imperative. Otherwise the enemy may escape or the aviator himself will be surprised or mistake a friendly machine for a hostile craft. The differences are often merely insignificant colours and details.

America's aviators must be men who will be absolute masters of themselves under fire, thinking out their attacks as their fight progresses.

Experience has shown that the chaser men should weigh under 180 pounds. Americans from the ranks of sport, youth who have played baseball, polo, football, or have shot and participated in other sports will make the best fighting aviators.



CHAPTER VII

SOME METHODS OF THE WAR IN THE AIR

The fighting tactics of the airmen with the various armies were developed as the war ran its course. As happens so often in the utilization of a new device, either of war or peace, the manner of its use was by no means what was expected at the outset. For the first year of the war the activities of the airmen fell far short of realizing Tennyson's conception of

The nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue.

The grappling was only incidental. The flyers seemed destined to be scouts and rangefinders, rather than fighters. Such pitched combats as there were took rather the form of duels, conducted with something of the formality of the days of chivalry. The aviator intent upon a fight would take his machine over the enemy's line and in various ways convey a challenge to a rival—often a hostile aviator of fame for his daring and skill in combat. If the duel was to the death it would be watched usually from the ground by the comrades of the two duellists, and if the one who fell left his body in the enemy's lines, the victor would gather up his identification disk and other personal belongings and drop them the next day in the camp of the dead man's comrades with a note of polite regret.

It was all very daring and chivalric, but it was not war according to twentieth century standards and was not long continued.



When at first the aviators of one side flew over the enemy's territory diligently mapping out his trenches, observing the movements of his troops, or indicating, by dropping bunches of tinsel for the sun to shine upon or breaking smoke bombs, the position of his hidden battery, the foe thus menaced sought to drive them away with anti-aircraft guns. These proved to be ineffective and it may be said here that throughout the war the swift airplanes proved themselves more than a match for the best anti-aircraft artillery that had been devised. They could complete their reconnaissances or give their signals at a height out of range of these guns, or at least so great that the chances of their being hit were but slight. It was amazing the manner in which an airplane could navigate a stretch of air full of bursting shrapnel and yet escape serious injury. The mere puncture, even the repeated puncture, of the wings did no damage. Only lucky shots that might pierce the fuel tank, hit the engine, touch an aileron or an important stay or strut, could affect the machine, while in due course of time a light armour on the bottom of the fusillage or body of the machine in which the pilot sat, protected the operator to some degree. Other considerations, however, finally led to the rejection of armour.



Accordingly it soon became the custom of the commanders who saw their works being spied out by an enemy soaring above to send up one or more aircraft to challenge the invader and drive him away. This led to the second step in the development in aerial strategy. It was perfectly evident that a man could not observe critically a position and draw maps of it, or seek out the hiding place of massed batteries and indicate them to his own artillerists, and at the same time protect himself from assaults. Accordingly the flying corps of every army gradually became differentiated into observation machines and fighting machines—or avions de reglage, avions de bombardement, and avions de chasse, as the French call them. In their order these titles were applied to heavy slow-moving machines used for taking photographs and directing artillery fire, more heavily armed machines of greater weight used in raids and bombing attacks, and the swift fighting machines, quick to rise high, and swift to manoeuvre which would protect the former from the enemy, or drive away the enemy's observation machines as the case might be. In the form which the belligerents finally adopted as most advantageous the fighting airplanes were mainly biplanes equipped with powerful motors seldom of less than 140 horse-power, and carrying often but one man who is not merely the pilot, but the operator of the machine gun with which each was equipped. Still planes carrying two men, and even three of whom one was the pilot, the other two the operators of the machine guns were widely adopted. They had indeed their disadvantages. They were slower to rise and clumsier in the turns. The added weight of the two gunmen cut down the amount of fuel that could be carried and limited the radius of action. But one curious disadvantage which would not at first suggest itself to the lay mind was the fact that the roar of the propeller was so great that no possible communication could pass between the pilot and the gunner. Their co-operation must be entirely instinctive or there could be no unity of action—and in practice it was found that there was little indeed. The smaller machine, carrying but one man, was quicker in the get-away and could rise higher in less time—a most vital consideration, for in the tactics of aerial warfare it is as desirable to get above your enemy as in the days of the old line of battleships it was advantageous to secure a position off the stern of your enemy so that you might rake him fore and aft.

The machines ultimately found to best meet the needs of aerial fighting were for the Germans always the Fokker, and the Taube—so called from its resemblance to a flying dove, though it was far from being the dove of peace. The wings are shaped like those of a bird and the tail adds to the resemblance. The Allies after testing the Taube design contemptuously rejected it, and indeed the Germans themselves substituted the Fokker for it in the war's later days.

The English used the "Vickers Scout," built of aluminum and steel and until late in the war usually designed to carry two aviators. This machine unlike most of the others has the propeller at the stern, called a "pusher" in contradistinction to the "tractor," acting as the screw of a ship and avoiding the interference with the rifle fire which the pulling, or tractor propeller mounted before the pilot to a certain degree presents. The Vickers machine is lightly armoured. The English also use what was known as the "D. H. 5," a machine carrying a motor of very high horse-power, while the Sopwith and Bristol biplane were popular as fighting craft.

The French pinned their faith mainly to the Farman, the Caudron, the Voisin, and the Moraine-Saulnier machines. The Bleriot and the Nieuport, which were for some reason ruled out at the beginning of the war, were afterwards re-adopted and employed in great numbers.

It would be gratifying to an American author to be able to describe, or at least to mention, the favourite machine of the American aviators who flocked to France immediately upon the declaration of war, but the mortifying fact is that having no airplanes of our own, our gallant volunteer soldiers of the air had to be equipped throughout by the French with machines of their favourite types. After we entered the war we adopted a 'plane of American design to which was given the name "Liberty plane."

It may be worth while to revert for a moment to the distinction drawn in a preceding paragraph between the pusher propeller and the tractor which revolved in front of the aviator and of his machine gun. It would seem almost incredible that two heavy blades of hard wood revolving at a speed not less that twelve hundred times a minute, a speed so rapid that their passage in front of the eyes of the aviator interfered in no way with his vision, should not have blocked a stream of bullets falling from a gun at the rate of more than six hundred a minute. Nevertheless it was claimed during the earlier days of the war that these bullets were not appreciably diverted by the whirling propellers nor were the latter apparently injured by the missiles. The latter assertion, however, must have been to some extent disproved because it came about that the propellers of the later machines were rimmed with a thin coating of steel lest the blades be cut by the bullets. But the amazing ability of modern science to cope with what seemed to be an insoluble problem was demonstrated by the invention of a device light and compact enough to be carried in an airplane, which applied to the machine gun and timed in accordance with the revolutions of the propeller so synchronized the shots with those revolutions that the stream of lead passed between the whirling blades never once striking. The machine was entirely automatic, requiring no attention on the part of the operator after the gun was once started on its discharge. This device was originally used by the Germans who applied it to their Fokker machines. It was claimed for it that by doing away with the wastage caused by the diversion of the course of bullets, which struck the revolving propellers, it actually saved for effective use about thirty per cent. of the ammunition employed. As the amount of ammunition which can be carried by an airplane is rigidly limited this gave to the appliance a positive value.



Reference has been made to the extraordinary immunity of flying airplanes to the attacks of anti-aircraft guns. The number of wounds they could sustain without being brought to earth was amazing. Grahame-White tells of a comparison made in one of the airdromes of the wounds sustained by the machines after a day's hard scouting and fighting. One was found to have been hit no less than thirty-seven times. Curiously enough the man who navigated it escaped unscathed. Wounds in the wings are harmless. But the puncture of the fuel tank almost certainly means an explosion and the death of the aviator in the flame thousands of feet in the air. During an air battle before Arras, a British aviator encountered this fate. When his tank was struck and the fusillage, or body, of his machine burst into flames, he knew that he was lost. By no possibility could he reach the ground before he should be burned to death. A neighbouring aviator flying not far from him told the story afterwards:

Jack was not in the thick of this fight [said he]. He was rather on the outskirts striving to get in when I suddenly saw his whole machine enveloped in a sheet of flame. Instantly he turned towards the nearest German and made at him with the obvious intention of running him down and carrying him to earth in the same cloud of fire. The man thus threatened, twisted and turned in a vain effort to escape the red terror bearing down upon him. But suffering acutely as he must have been, Jack followed his every move until the two machines crashed, and whirling over and over each other like two birds in an aerial combat fell to earth and to destruction. They landed inside the German lines so we heard no more about them. But we could see the smoke from the burning debris for some time.

As the range of anti-aircraft guns increased the flyers were driven higher and higher into the air to escape their missiles. At one time 4500 feet was looked upon as a reasonably safe height, but when the war had been under way about two years the weapons designed to combat aircraft were so improved that they could send their shots effectively 10,000 feet into the air. If the aircraft had been forced to operate at that height their usefulness would have been largely destroyed, for it is obvious that for observation purposes the atmospheric haze at such a height would obscure the view and make accurate mapping of the enemy's position impossible. For offensive purposes too the airplanes at so great an elevation would be heavily handicapped, if not indeed rendered impotent. As we shall see later, dropping a bomb from a swiftly moving airplane upon a target is no easy task. It never falls direct but partakes of the motion of the plane. It is estimated that for every thousand feet of elevation a bomb will advance four hundred feet in the direction that the aircraft is moving, provided its speed is not in excess of sixty miles an hour. As a result marksmanship at a height of more than five thousand feet is practically impossible.

In the main this situation is met, as all situations in war in which efficiency can only be attained at the expense of great personal danger are met, namely, by braving the danger. When the aviators have an attack in contemplation they fly low and snap their fingers at the puff balls of death as the shrapnel from their appearance when bursting may well be called. Naturally, efforts were made early in the war to lessen the danger by armouring the body of the machine sufficiently to protect the aviator and his engine—for if the aviator escaped a shot which found the engine, his plight would be almost as bad as if the missile had struck him.

The main difficulty with armouring the machines grew out of the added weight. The more efficient the armour, the less fuel could be carried and the less ammunition. If too heavily loaded the speed of the machine would be reduced and its ability to climb rapidly upon which the safety of the aviator usually depends, either in reconnaissance or fighting, would be seriously impeded. The first essays in protective armour took the form of the installation of a thin sheet of steel along the bottom of the body of the craft. This turned aside missiles from below provided the plane were not so near the ground as to receive them at the moment of their highest velocity. But it was only an unsatisfactory makeshift. At the higher altitudes it was unnecessary and in conflict with other airplanes it proved worthless, because in a battle in the air the shots of the enemy are more likely to come from above or at least from levels in the same plane. The armoured airplane was quickly found to have less chance of mounting above its enemy, because of the weight it carried, and before long the principle of protecting an airplane as a battleship is protected was abandoned, except in the case of the heavier machines intended to operate as scouts or guides to artillery, holding their flights near the earth and protected from attack from above by their attendant fleet of swift fighting machines. Of these the Vickers machine used mainly by the British is a common type. It is built throughout of steel and aluminum, and the entire fusillage is clothed with steel plating which assures protection to the two occupants from either upward or lateral fire. The sides of the body are carried up so that only the heads of the aviators are visible. But to accomplish this measure of protection for the pilot and the gunner who operates the machine gun from a seat forward of the pilot, the weight of the craft is so greatly increased that it is but little esteemed for any save the most sluggish manoeuvre.

Indeed just as aircraft, as a factor in war, have come to be more like the cavalry in the army, or the destroyers and scout cruisers in the navy, so the tendency has been to discard everything in their design that might by any possibility interfere with their speed and their ability to turn and twist, and change direction and elevation with the utmost celerity under the most difficult of conditions. It is possible that should this war run into the indefinite future we may see aircraft built on ponderous lines and heavily armoured, and performing in the air some of the functions that the British "tanks" have discharged on the battlefields. But at the end of three years of war, and at the moment when aerial hostilities seemed to be engaging more fully than even before the inventive genius of the nations, and the dash and skill of the fighting flyers, the tendency is all toward the light and swift machine.



The attitude of the fighting airmen is somewhat reminiscent of that of America's greatest sea-fighter, Admiral Farragut. Always opposed to ironclads, the hero of Mobile Bay used to say that when he went to sea he did not want to go in an iron coffin, and that when a shell had made its way through one side of his ship he didn't want any obstacle presented to impede its passing out of the other side.



The all important and even vital necessity for speed also detracted much from the value of aircraft in offensive operations. It was found early that you could not mount on a flying machine guns of sufficient calibre to be of material use in attacking fortified positions. If it was necessary for the planes to proceed any material distance before reaching their objective, the weight of the necessary fuel would preclude the carriage of heavy artillery. In the case of seaplanes which might be carried on the deck of a battleship to a point reasonably contiguous to the object to be attacked, this difficulty was not so serious. This was demonstrated to some extent by the British raids on the German naval bases of Cuxhaven and Wilhelmshaven, but even in these instances it was bombs dropped by aviators, not gunfire that injured the enemy's works. But for the airplane proper this added weight was so positive a handicap as to practically destroy its usefulness as an assailant of fortified positions.

The heavier weapons of offence which could be carried by the airplane even of the highest development were the bombs. These once landed might cause the greatest destruction, but the difficulty of depositing them directly upon a desired target was not to be overcome. The dirigible balloon enjoyed a great advantage over the airplane in this respect, for it was able to hover over the spot which it desired to hit and to discharge its bombs in a direct perpendicular line with enough initial velocity from a spring gun to overcome largely any tendency to deviate from the perpendicular. But an airplane cannot stop. When it stops it must descend. If it is moving at the moderate speed of sixty miles an hour when it drops its missile, the bomb itself will move forward at the rate of sixty miles an hour until gravity has overcome the initial forward force. Years before the war broke out, tests were held in Germany and France of the ability of aviators to drop a missile upon a target marked out upon the ground. One such test in France required the dropping of bombs from a height of 2400 feet upon a target 170 feet long by 40 broad—or about the dimensions of a small and rather stubby ship. The results were uniformly disappointing. The most creditable record was made by an American aviator, Lieutenant Scott, formerly of the United States Army. His first three shots missed altogether, but thereafter he landed eight within the limits. In Germany the same year the test was to drop bombs upon two targets, one resembling a captive Zeppelin, the other a military camp 330 feet square. The altitude limit was set at 660 feet. This, though a comparatively easy test, was virtually a failure. Only two competitors succeeded in dropping a bomb into the square at all, while the balloon was hit but once.

The character and size of the bombs employed by aircraft naturally differed very widely, particularly as to size, between those carried by dirigibles and those used by airplanes. The Zeppelin shell varied in weight between two hundred and two hundred and fifty pounds. It was about forty-seven inches long by eight and a half inches in diameter. Its charge varied according to the use to which it was to be put. If it was hoped that it would drop in a crowded spot and inflict the greatest amount of damage to human life and limb it would carry a bursting charge, shrapnel, and bits of iron, all of which on the impact of the missile upon the earth would be hurled in every direction to a radius exceeding forty yards. If damage to buildings, on the other hand, was desired, some high explosive such as picric acid would be used which would totally wreck any moderate-sized building upon which the shell might fall. In many instances, particularly in raids upon cities such as London, incendiary shells were used charged with some form of liquid fire, which rapidly spread the conflagration, and which itself was practically inextinguishable.

Shells or bombs of these varying types were dropped from airplanes as well as from the larger and steadier Zeppelins. The difference was entirely in the size. It was said that a Zeppelin might drop a bomb of a ton's weight. But so far as attainable records are concerned it is impossible to cite any instance of this being done. The effect on the great gas bag of the sudden release of a load so great would certainly cause a sudden upward flight which might be so quick and so powerful as to affect the very structure of the ship. So far as known 250 pounds was the topmost limit of Zeppelin bombs, while most of them were of much smaller dimensions. The airplane bombs were seldom more than sixty pounds in weight, although in the larger British machines a record of ninety-five pounds has been attained. The most common form of bomb used in the heavier-than-air machines was pear-shaped, with a whirling tail to keep the missile upright as it falls. Steel balls within, a little larger than ordinary shrapnel, are held in place by a device which releases them during the fall. On striking the ground they fall on the explosive charge within and the shell bursts, scattering the two or three hundred steel bullets which it carries over a wide radius. Bombs of this character weigh in the neighbourhood of six pounds and an ordinary airplane can carry a very considerable number. Their exploding device is very delicate so that it will operate upon impact with water, very soft earth, or even the covering of an airship. Other bombs commonly used in airplanes were shaped like darts, winged like an arrow so that they would fall perpendicularly and explode by a pusher at the point which was driven into the body of the bomb upon its impact with any hard substance.

It seems curious to read of the devices sometimes quite complicated and at all times the result of the greatest care and thought, used for dropping these bombs. In the trenches men pitched explosive missiles about with little more care than if they had been so many baseballs, but only seldom was a bomb from aloft actually delivered by hand. In the case of the heavier bombs used by the dirigibles this is understandable. They could not be handled by a single man without the aid of mechanical devices. Some are dropped from a cradle which is tilted into a vertical position after the shell has been inserted. Others are fired from a tube not unlike the torpedo tube of a submarine, but which imparts only slight initial velocity to the missile. Its chief force is derived from gravity, and to be assured of its explosion the aviator must discharge it from a height proportionate to its size.

In the airplane the aviator's methods are more simple. Sometimes the bombs are carried in a rack beneath the body of the machine, and released by means of a lever at the side. A more primitive method often in use is merely to attach the bomb to a string and lower it to a point at which the aviator is certain that in falling it will not touch any part of the craft, and then cut the string. Half a dozen devices by which the aviator can hold the bomb at arm's length and drop it with the certainty of a perpendicular fall are in use in the different air navies. It will be evident to the most casual consideration that with any one of these devices employed by an aviator in a machine going at a speed of sixty miles an hour or more the matter of hitting the target is one in which luck has a very great share.

There is good reason for the pains taken by the aviators to see that their bombs fall swift and true, and clear of all the outlying parts of their machines. The grenadier in the trenches has a clear field for his explosive missile and he may toss it about with what appears to be desperate carelessness—though instances have been known in which a bomb thrower, throwing back his arm preparatory to launching his canned volcano, has struck the back of his own trench with disastrous results. But the aviator must be even more careful. His bombs must not hit any of the wires below his machine in falling—else there will be a dire fall for him. And above all they must not get entangled in stays or braces. In such case landing will bring a most unpleasant surprise.

A striking case was that of a bomber who had been out over the German trenches. He had a two-man machine, had made a successful flight and had dropped, effectively as he supposed, all his bombs. Returning in serene consciousness of a day's duty well done, he was about to spiral down to the landing place when his passenger looked over the side of the car to see if everything was in good order. Emphatically it was not. To his horror he discovered that two of the bombs had not fallen, but had caught in the running gear of his machine. To attempt a landing with the bombs in this position would have been suicidal. The bombs would have instantly exploded, and annihilated both machine and aviators. But to get out of the car, climb down on the wires, and try to unhook the bombs seemed more desperate still. Stabilizers, and other devices, now in common use, had not then been invented and to go out on the wing of a biplane, or to disturb its delicate balance, was unheard of. Nevertheless it was a moment for desperate remedies. The pilot clung to his controls, and sought to meet the shifting strains, while the passenger climbed out on the wing and then upon the running gear. To trust yourself two thousand feet in mid-air with your feet on one piano wire, and one hand clutching another, while with the other hand you grope blindly for a bomb charged with high explosive, is an experience for which few men would yearn. But in this case it was successful. The bombs fell—nobody cared where—and the two imperilled aviators came to ground safely.

A form of offensive weapon which for some reason seems peculiarly horrible to the human mind is the flechette. These are steel darts a little larger than a heavy lead pencil and with the upper two thirds of the stem deeply grooved so that the greater weight of the lower part will cause them to fall perpendicularly. These are used in attacks upon dense bodies of troops. Particularly have they proved effective in assailing cavalry, for the nature of the wounds they produce invariably maddens the horses who suffer from them and causes confusion that will often bring grave disaster to a transport or artillery train. Though very light, these arrows when dropped from any considerable height inflict most extraordinary wounds. They have been known to penetrate a soldier's steel helmet, to pass through his body and that of the horse he bestrode, and bury themselves in the earth. In the airplane they are carried in boxes of one hundred each, placed over an orifice in the floor. A touch of the aviator's foot and all are discharged. The speed of the machine causes them to fall at first in a somewhat confused fashion, with the result that before all have finally assumed their perpendicular position they have been scattered over a very considerable extent of air. Once fairly pointed downward they fall with unerring directness points downward to their mark.



It is a curious fact that not long after these arrows first made their appearance in the French machines, they were imitated by the Germans, but the German darts had stamped upon them the words: "Made in Germany, but invented by the French."



One of the duties of the fighting airmen is to destroy the observation balloons which float in great numbers over both the lines tugging lazily at the ropes by which they are held captive while the observers perched in their baskets communicate the results of their observations by telephone to staff officers at a considerable distance. These balloons are usually anchored far enough back of their own lines to be safe from the ordinary artillery fire of their enemies. They were therefore fair game for the mosquitoes of the air. But they were not readily destroyed by such artillery as could be mounted on an ordinary airplane. Bullets from the machine-guns were too small to make any rents in the envelope that would affect its stability. Even if incendiary they could not carry a sufficiently heavy charge to affect so large a body. The skin of the "sausages," as the balloons were commonly called from their shape, was too soft to offer sufficient resistance to explode a shell of any size. The war was pretty well under way before the precise weapon needed for their destruction was discovered. This proved to be a large rocket of which eight were carried on an airplane, four on each side. They were discharged by powerful springs and a mechanism started which ignited them as soon as they had left the airplane behind. The head of each rocket was of pointed steel, very sharp and heavy enough to pierce the balloon skin. Winslow was fortunate enough to be present when the first test of this weapon was made. In his book, With the French Flying Corps, he thus tells the story:

Swinging lazily above the field was a captive balloon. At one end of Le Bourget was a line of waiting airplanes. "This is the second; they have already brought down one balloon," remarked the man at my elbow. The hum of a motor caused me to look up. A wide-winged double motor, Caudron, had left the ground and was mounting gracefully above us. Up and up it went, describing a great circle, until it faced the balloon. Everyone caught his breath. The Caudron was rushing straight at the balloon, diving for the attack.

"Now!" cried the crowd. There was a loud crack, a flash, and eight long rockets darted forth leaving behind a fiery trail. The aviator's aim however was wide, and to the disappointment of everyone the darts fell harmlessly to the ground.

Another motor roared far down the field, and a tiny appareil de chasse shot upward like a swallow. "A Nieuport," shouted the crowd as one voice. Eager to atone for his copain's failure, and impatient at his delay in getting out of the way, the tiny biplane tossed and tumbled about in the air like a clown in the circus ring.

"Look! he's looping! he falls! he slips! no, he rights again!" cried a hundred voices as the skilful pilot kept our nerves on edge.

Suddenly he darted into position and for a second hovered uncertain. Then with a dive like that of a dragon-fly, he rushed down to the attack. Again a sheet of flame and a shower of sparks. This time the balloon sagged. The flames crept slowly around its silken envelope. "Touchez!" cried the multitude. Then the balloon burst and fell to the ground a mass of flames. High above the little Nieuport saucily continued its pranks, as though contemptuous of such easy prey.



It may be properly noted at this point that the captive balloons or kite balloons have proved of the greatest value for observations in this war. Lacking of course the mobility of the swiftly moving airplanes, they have the advantage over the latter of being at all times in direct communication by telephone with the ground and being able to carry quite heavy scientific instruments for the more accurate mapping out of such territory as comes within their sphere of observation. They are not easy to destroy by artillery fire, for the continual swaying of the balloon before the wind perplexes gunners in their aim. At a height of six hundred feet, a normal observation post, the horizon is nearly thirty miles from the observer. In flat countries like Flanders, or at sea where the balloon may be sent up from the deck of a ship, this gives an outlook of the greatest advantage to the army or fleet relying upon the balloon for its observations of the enemy's dispositions.



Most of the British and French observation balloons have been of the old-fashioned spherical form which officers in those services find sufficiently effective. The Germans, however, claimed that a balloon might be devised which would not be so very unstable in gusty weather. Out of this belief grew the Parseval-Siegfeld balloon which from its form took the name of the Sausage. In fact its appearance far from being terrifying suggests not only that particular edible, but a large dill pickle floating awkwardly in the air. In order to keep the balloon always pointed into the teeth of the wind there is attached to one end of it a large surrounding bag hanging from the lower half of the main envelope. One end of this, the end facing forward, is left open and into this the wind blows, steadying the whole structure after the fashion of the tail of a kite. The effect is somewhat grotesque as anyone who has studied the numerous pictures of balloons of this type employed during the war must have observed. It looks not unlike some form of tumor growing from a healthy structure.

Captive or kite balloons are especially effective as coast guards. Posted fifty miles apart along a threatened coast they can keep a steady watch over the sea for more than twenty-five miles toward the horizon. With their telephonic connections they can notify airplanes in waiting, or for that matter swift destroyers, of any suspicious sight in the distance, and secure an immediate investigation which will perhaps result in the defeat of some attempted raid. Requiring little power for raising and lowering them and few men for their operation, they form a method of standing sentry guard at a nation's front door which can probably be equalled by no other device. The United States at the moment of the preparation of this book is virtually without any balloons of this type—the first one of any pretensions having been tested in the summer of 1917.

As late as the third year of the war it could not be said that the possibilities of aerial offense had been thoroughly developed by any nation. The Germans indeed had done more than any of the belligerents in this direction with their raids on the British coast and on London. But, as already pointed out, these raids as serious attacks on strategic positions were mere failures. Advocates of the increased employment of aircraft in this fashion insist that the military value to Germany of the raids lay not so much in the possibility of doing damage of military importance but rather in the fact that the possibility of repeated and more effective raids compelled Great Britain to keep at home a force of thirty thousand to fifty thousand men constantly on guard, who but for this menace would have been employed on the battlefields of France. In this argument there is a measure of plausibility. Indeed between January, 1915, and June 13, 1917, the Germans made twenty-three disastrous raids upon England, killing more than seven hundred persons and injuring nearly twice as many. The amount of damage to property has never been reported nor is it possible to estimate the extent of injury inflicted upon works of a military character. The extreme secrecy with which Great Britain, in common with the other belligerents, has enveloped operations of this character makes it impossible at this early day to estimate the military value of these exploits. Merely to inflict anguish and death upon a great number of civilians, and those largely women and children, is obviously of no military service. But if such suffering is inflicted in the course of an attack which promises the destruction or even the crippling of works of military character like arsenals, munition plants, or naval stores, it must be accepted as an incident of legitimate warfare. The limited information obtainable in wartime seems to indicate that the German raids had no legitimate objective in view but were undertaken for the mere purpose of frightfulness.

The methods of defence employed in Great Britain, where all attacks must come from the sea, were mainly naval. What might be called the outer, or flying, defences consisted of fast armed fighting seaplanes and dirigibles. Stationed on the coast and ready on the receipt of a wireless warning from scouts, either aerial or naval, that an enemy air flotilla was approaching the coast, they could at once fly forth and give it battle. A thorough defence of the British territory demanded that the enemy should be driven back before reaching the land. Once over British territory the projectiles discharged whether by friend or foe did equal harm to the people on the ground below. Accordingly every endeavour was made to meet and beat the raiders before they had passed the barrier of sea. Beside the flying defences there were the floating defences. Anti-aircraft guns were mounted on different types of ships stationed far out from the shore and ever on the watch. But these latter were of comparatively little avail, for flying over the Channel or the North Sea the invaders naturally flew at a great height. They had no targets there to seek, steered by their compasses, and were entirely indifferent to the prospect beneath them. Moreover anti-aircraft guns, hard to train effectively from an immovable mount, were particularly untrustworthy when fired from the deck of a rolling and tossing ship in the turbulent Channel.

Third in the list of defences of the British coast, or of any other coast which may at any time be threatened with an aerial raid, are defensive stations equipped not only with anti-aircraft guns and searchlights but with batteries of strange new scientific instruments like the "listening towers," equipped with huge microphones to magnify the sound of the motors of approaching aircraft so that they would be heard long before they could be seen, range finders, and other devices for the purpose of gauging the distance and fixing the direction of an approaching enemy.

Some brief attention may here be given to the various types of anti-aircraft guns. These differ very materially in type and weight in the different belligerent armies and navies. They have but one quality in common, namely that they are most disappointing in the results attained. Mr. F. W. Lancaster, the foremost British authority on aircraft, says on this subject:

"Anti-aircraft firing is very inaccurate, hence numbers of guns are employed to compensate."



That is to say that one or two guns can be little relied upon to put a flyer hors du combat. The method adopted is to have large batteries which fairly fill that portion of the air through which the adventurous airman is making his way with shells fired rather at the section than at the swiftly moving target.

"Archibald," the British airmen call, for some mysterious reason, the anti-aircraft guns employed by their enemies, sometimes referring to a big howitzer which made its appearance late in the war as "Cuthbert." The names sound a little effeminate, redolent somehow of high teas and the dancing floor, rather than the field of battle. Perhaps this was why the British soldiers adopted them as an expression of contempt for the enemy's batteries. But contempt was hardly justifiable in face of the difficulty of the problem. A gun firing a twenty-pound shrapnel shell is not pointed on an object with the celerity with which a practised revolver shot can throw his weapon into position. The gunner on the ground seeing an airplane flying five thousand feet above him—almost a mile up in the air—hurries to get his piece into position for a shot. But while he is aiming the flyer, if a high-speed machine, will be changing its position at a rate of perhaps 120 miles an hour. Nor does it fly straight ahead. The gunner cannot point his weapon some distance in advance as he would were he a sportsman intent on cutting off a flight of wild geese. The aviator makes quick turns—zigzags—employs every artifice to defeat the aim of his enemy below. Small wonder that in the majority of cases they have been successful. The attitude of the airmen toward the "Archies" is one of calm contempt.

The German mind being distinctly scientific invented early in the war a method of fixing the range and position of an enemy airplane which would be most effective if the target were not continually in erratic motion. The method was to arrange anti-aircraft guns in a triangle, all in telephonic connection with a central observer. When a flyer enters the territory which these guns are guarding, the gunner at one of the apexes of the triangle fires a shell which gives out a red cloud of smoke. Perhaps it falls short. The central observer notes the result and orders a second gun to fire. Instantly a gunner at another apex fires again, this time a shell giving forth black smoke. This shell discharged with the warning given by the earlier one is likely to come nearer the target, but at any rate marks another point at which it has been missed. Between the two a third gunner instantly corrects his aim by the results of the first two shots. His shell gives out a yellow smoke. The observer then figures from the positions of the three guns the lines of a triangular cone at the apex of which the target should be. Sometimes science wins, often enough for the Germans to cling to the system. But more often the shrewd aviator defeats science by his swift and eccentric changes of his line of flight.

At the beginning of the war Germany was very much better equipped with anti-aircraft guns than any of her enemies. This was due to the remarkable foresight of the great munition makers, Krupp and Ehrhardt, who began experimenting with anti-aircraft guns before the aircraft themselves were much more than experiments. The problem was no easy one. The gun had to be light, mobile, and often mounted on an automobile so as to be swiftly transferred from place to place in pursuit of raiders. It was vital that it should be so mounted as to be speedily trained to any position vertical or horizontal. As a result the type determined upon was mounted on a pedestal fixed to the chassis of an automobile or to the deck of a ship in case it was to be used in naval warfare. The heaviest gun manufactured in Germany was of 4-1/4-inch calibre, throwing a shell of forty pounds weight. This could be mounted directly over the rear axle of a heavy motor truck. To protect the structure of the car from the shock of the recoil these guns are of course equipped with hydraulic or other appliances for taking it up. They are manufactured also in the 3-inch size. Germany, France, and England vied with each other in devising armored motor cars equipped with guns of this type—the British using the makes of Vickers and Hotchkiss, and the French their favourite Creusot. The trucks are always armoured, the guns mounted in turrets so that the effect is not unlike that of a small battleship dashing madly down a country road and firing repeatedly at some object directly overhead. But the record has not shown that the success of these picturesque and ponderous engines of war has been great. They cannot manoeuvre with enough swiftness to keep up with the gyrations of an airplane. They offer as good a target for a bomb from above as the aircraft does to their shots from below. Indeed they so thoroughly demonstrated their inefficiency that before the war had passed its third year they were either abandoned or their guns employed only when the car was stationary. Shots fired at full speed were seldom effective.

The real measure of the effectiveness of anti-aircraft guns may be judged by the comparative immunity that attended the aviators engaged on the two early British raids on Friedrichshaven, the seat of the great Zeppelin works on Lake Constance, and on the German naval base at Cuxhaven. The first was undertaken by three machines. From Belfort in France, the aviators turned into Germany and flew for 120 miles across hostile territory. The flight was made by day though indeed the adventurous aviators were favoured by a slight mist. Small single seated "avro" machines were used, loaded heavily with bombs as well as with the large amount of fuel necessary for a flight which before its completion would extend over 250 miles. Not only at the frontier, but at many fortified positions over which they passed, they must have exposed themselves to the fire of artillery, but until they actually reached the neighbourhood of the Zeppelin works they encountered no fire whatsoever. There the attack on them was savage and well maintained. On the roofs of the gigantic factory, on neighbouring hillocks and points of vantage there were anti-aircraft guns busily discharging shrapnel at the invaders. It is claimed by the British that fearing this attack the Germans had called from the front in Flanders their best marksmen, for at that time the comparative worthlessness of the Zeppelin had not been demonstrated and the protection of the works was regarded as a prime duty of the army.



The invading machines flew low above the factory roofs. The adventurers had come far on an errand which they knew would awaken the utmost enthusiasm among their fellows at home and they were determined to so perform their task that no charge of having left anything undone could possibly lie. Commander Briggs, the first of the aviators to reach the scene, flew as low as one hundred feet above the roofs, dropping his bombs with deadly accuracy. But he paid for his temerity with the loss of his machine and his liberty. A bullet pierced his petrol tank and there was nothing for him to do save to glide to earth and surrender. The two aviators who accompanied him although their machines were repeatedly hit were nevertheless able to drop all their bombs and to fly safely back to Belfort whence they had taken their departure some hours before. The measure of actual damage done in the raid has never been precisely known. Germany always denied that it was serious, while the British ascribe to it the greatest importance—a clash of opinion common in the war and which will for some years greatly perplex the student of its history.

The second raid, that upon Cuxhaven, was made by seaplanes so far as the air fighting was concerned, but in it not only destroyers but submarines also took part. It presented the unique phenomenon of a battle fought at once above, upon, and below the surface of the sea. It is with the aerial feature of the battle alone that we have to do.

Christmas morning, 1915, seven seaplanes were quietly lowered to the surface of the water of the North Sea from their mother ships a little before daybreak. The spot was within a few miles of Cuxhaven and the mouth of the River Elbe. As the aircraft rose from the surface of the water and out of the light mist that lay upon it, they could see in the harbour which they threatened, a small group of German warships. Almost at the same moment their presence was detected. The alarms of the bugles rang out from the hitherto quiet craft and in a moment with the smoke pouring from their funnels destroyers and torpedo boats moved out to meet the attack. Two Zeppelins rose high in the air surrounded by a number of the smaller airplanes, eager for the conflict. The latter proceeded at once to the attack upon the raiding air fleet, while the destroyers, the heavier Zeppelins, and a number of submarines sped out to sea to attack the British ships. The mist, which grew thicker, turned the combat from a battle into a mere disorderly raid, but out of it the seaplanes emerged unhurt. All made their way safely back to the fleet, after having dropped their bombs with a degree of damage never precisely known. The weakness of the seaplane is that on returning to its parent ship it cannot usually alight upon her deck, even though a landing platform has been provided. It must, as a rule, drop to the surface of the ocean, and if this be at all rough the machine very speedily goes to pieces. This was the case with four of the seven seaplanes which took part in the raid on Cuxhaven. All however delivered their pilots safely to the awaiting fleet and none fell a victim to the German anti-aircraft guns.

In May of 1917, the British Royal Naval Air Service undertook the mapping of the coast of Belgium north from Nieuport, the most northerly seaport held by the British, to the southern boundary of Holland. This section of coast was held by the Germans and in it were included the two submarine bases of Zeebrugge and Ostend. At the latter point the long line of German trenches extending to the boundary of Switzerland rested its right flank on the sea. The whole coast north of that was lined with German batteries, snugly concealed in the rolling sand dunes and masked by the waving grasses of a barren coast. From British ships thirty miles out at sea, for the waters there are shallow and large vessels can only at great peril approach the shore, the seaplanes were launched. Just south of Nieuport a land base was established as a rendezvous for both air-and seaplanes when their day's work was done. From fleet and station the aerial observers took their way daily to the enemy's coast. Every mile of it was photographed. The hidden batteries were detected and the inexorable record of their presence imprinted on the films. The work in progress at Ostend and Zeebrugge, the active construction of basins, locks, and quays, the progress of the great mole building at the latter port, the activities of submarines and destroyers within the harbour, the locations of guns and the positions of barracks were all indelibly set down. These films developed at leisure were made into coherent wholes, placed in projecting machines, and displayed like moving pictures in the ward rooms of the ships hovering off shore, so that the naval forces preparing for the assault had a very accurate idea of the nature of the defences they were about to encounter.

This was not done of course without considerable savage fighting in mid-air. The Germans had no idea of allowing their defences and the works of their submarine bases to be pictured for the guidance of their foes. Their anti-aircraft guns barked from dawn to dark whenever a British plane was seen within range. Their own aerial fighters were continually busy, and along that desolate wave-washed coast many a lost lad in leather clothing and goggles, crumpled up in the ruins of his machine after a fall of thousands of feet, lay as a memorial to the prowess of the defenders of the coast and the audacity of those who sought to invade it. But during the long weeks of this extended reconnaissance hardly a spadeful of dirt could be moved, a square yard of concrete placed in position, or a submarine or torpedo boat manoeuvred without its record being entered upon the detailed charts the British were so painstakingly preparing against the day of assault. When peace shall finally permit the publication of the records of the war, now held secret for military reasons, such maps as those prepared by the British air service on the Belgian coast will prove most convincing evidence of the military value of the aerial scouts.

What the lads engaged in making these records had to brave in the way of physical danger is strikingly shown by the description of a combat included in one of the coldly matter-of-fact official reports. The battle was fought at about twelve thousand feet above mother earth. We quote the official description accompanied by some explanatory comments added by one who was an eye-witness and who conversed with the triumphant young airman on his return to the safety of the soil.

"While exposing six plates," says the official report of this youthful recording angel, "I observed five H. A.'s cruising."

"H. A." stands for "hostile aeroplane."

"Not having seen the escort since returning inland, the pilot prepared to return. The enemy separated, one taking up a position above the tail and one ahead. The other three glided toward us on the port side, firing as they came. The two diving machines fired over 100 rounds, hitting the pilot in the shoulder."

As a matter of fact, the bullet entered his shoulder from above, behind, breaking his left collarbone, and emerged just above his heart, tearing a jagged rent down his breast. Both his feet, furthermore, were pierced by bullets; but the observer is not concerned with petty detail.

The observer held his fire until H. A., diving on tail, was within five yards.

Here it might be mentioned that the machines were hurtling through space at a speed in the region of one hundred miles an hour.

The pilot of H. A., having swooped to within speaking distance, pushed up his goggles, and laughed triumphantly as he took sight for the shot that was to end the fight. But the observer, had his own idea how the fight should end.

"I then shot one tray into the enemy pilot's face," he says, with curt relish, "and watched him sideslip and go spinning earthward in a train of smoke."

He then turned his attention to his own pilot. The British machine was barely under control, but as the observer rose in his seat to investigate the foremost gun was fired, and the aggressor ahead went out of control and dived nose first in helpless spirals.

Suspecting that his mate was badly wounded in spite of this achievement, the observer swung one leg over the side of the fusillage and climbed on to the wing—figure for a minute the air pressure on his body during this gymnastic feat—until he was beside the pilot, faint and drenched with blood, who had nevertheless got his machine back into complete control.

"Get back, you ass!" he said through white lips in response to inquiries how he felt. So the ass got back the way he came, and looked around for the remainder of the H. A.'s. These, however, appeared to have lost stomach for further fighting and fled.

The riddled machine returned home at one hundred knots while the observer, having nothing better to do, continued to take photographs.

"The pilot, though wounded, made a perfect landing"—thus the report concludes.

When the time came for the assault upon Zeebrugge the value of these painstaking preparations was made evident. The attack was made from sea and air alike. Out in the North Sea the great British battleships steamed in as near the coast as the shallowness of the water would permit. From the forward deck of each rose grandly a seaplane until the air was darkened by their wings, and they looked like a monstrous flock of the gulls which passengers on ocean-going liners watch wheeling and soaring around the ship as it ploughs its way through the ocean. These gulls though were birds of prey. They were planes of the larger type, biplanes or triplanes carrying two men, usually equipped with two motors and heavily laden with high explosive bombs. As they made their way toward the land they were accompanied by a fleet of light draft monitors especially built for this service, each mounting two heavy guns and able to manoeuvre in shallow water. With them advanced a swarm of swift, low-lying, dark-painted destroyers ready to watch out for enemy torpedo boats or submarines. They mounted anti-aircraft guns too and were prepared to defend the monitors against assaults from the heavens above as well as from the sinister attack of the underwater boats. Up from the land base at Nieuport came a great fleet of airplanes to co-operate with their naval brethren. Soon upon the German works, sheltering squadrons of the sinister undersea boats, there rained a hell of exploding projectiles from sea and sky. Every gunner had absolute knowledge of the precise position and range of the target to which he was assigned. The great guns of the monitors roared steadily and their twelve and fourteen-inch projectiles rent in pieces the bomb proofs of the Germans, driving the Boches to cover and reducing their works to mere heaps of battered concrete. Back and forth above flew seaplanes and airplanes, giving battle to the aircraft which the Germans sent up in the forlorn hope of heading off that attack and dropping their bombs on points carefully mapped long in advance. It is true that the aim of the aviators was necessarily inaccurate. That is the chief weakness of a bombardment from the sky. But what was lacking in individual accuracy was made up by the numbers of the bombing craft. One might miss a lock or a shelter, but twenty concentrating their fire on the same target could not all fail. This has become the accepted principle of aerial offensive warfare. The inaccuracy of the individual must be corrected by the multiplication of the number of the assailants.

The attack on Zeebrugge was wholly successful. Though the Germans assiduously strove to conceal the damage done, the later observations of the ruined port by British airmen left no doubt that as a submarine base it had been put out of commission for months to come. The success of the attack led to serious discussion, in which a determination has not yet been reached, of the feasibility of a similar assault upon Heligoland, Kiel, or Cuxhaven, the three great naval bases in which the German fleet has lurked in avoidance of battle with the British fleet. Many able naval strategists declared that it was time for the British to abandon the policy of a mere blockade and carry out the somewhat rash promise made by Winston Churchill when First Lord of the Admiralty, to "dig the rats out of their holes." Such an attack it was urged should be made mainly from the air, as the land batteries and sunken mines made the waters adjacent to these harbours almost impassable to attacking ships. Rear-Admiral Fiske, of the United States Navy, strongly urging such an attack, wrote in an open letter:

The German Naval General Staff realizes the value of concentration of power and mobility in as large units as possible. The torpedo plane embodies a greater concentration of power and mobility than does any other mechanism. For its cost, the torpedo plane is the most powerful and mobile weapon which exists at the present day.

An attack by allied torpedo planes, armed with guns to defend themselves from fighting airplanes, would be a powerful menace to the German fleet and, if made in sufficient numbers, would give the Allies such unrestricted command of the North Sea, even of the shallow parts near the German coast, that German submarines would be prevented from coming from a German port, the submarine menace abolished, and all chance of German success wiped out.

I beg also to point out that an inspection of the map of Europe shows that in the air raids over land the strategical advantage lies with Germany, because her most important towns, like Berlin, are farther inland than the most important towns of the Allies, like London, so that aeroplanes of the Allies, in order to reach Berlin, would have to fly over greater distances, while exposed to the fire of other aeroplanes, than do aeroplanes of the Germans in going to London for raids on naval vessels.

However, the strategical advantage over water lies with the British, because their control of the deep parts of the North Sea enables them to establish a temporary aeronautical base of mother ships sufficiently close to the German fleet to enable the British to launch a torpedo-plane attack from it on the German fleets in Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, while the Germans could not possibly establish an aeronautical base sufficiently close to the British fleet.



This gives the Allies the greatest advantage of the offensive. It would seem possible, provided a distinct effort is made, for the Allies to send a large number of aeroplane mother ships to a point, say, fifty miles west of Heligoland, and for a large force of fighting aeroplanes and torpedo planes to start from this place about two hours before dawn, reach Kiel Bay and Wilhelmshaven about dawn, attack the German fleets there and sink the German ships.

The distance from Heligoland to Kiel is about ninety land miles, and to Wilhelmshaven about forty-five.

The torpedo planes referred to are an invention of Admiral Fiske's which, in accordance with what seems to be a fixed and fatal precedent in the United States, has been ignored by our own authorities but eagerly adopted by the naval services of practically all the belligerents. One weakness of the aerial attack upon ships of war is that the bombs dropped from the air, even if they strike the target, strike upon the protective deck which in most warships above the gunboat class is strong enough to resist, or at least to minimize, the effect of any bomb capable of being carried by an airplane. The real vulnerable part of a ship of war is the thin skin of its hull below water and below the armor belt. This is the point at which the torpedo strikes. Admiral Fiske's device permits an airplane to carry two torpedoes of the regular Whitehead class and to launch them with such an impetus and at such an angle that they will take the water and continue their course thereunder exactly as though launched from a naval torpedo tube. His idea was adopted both by Great Britain and Germany. British torpedo planes thus equipped sank four Turkish ships in the Sea of Marmora, a field of action which no British ship could have reached after the disastrous failure to force the Dardanelles. The Germans by employment of the same device sank at least two Russian ships in the Baltic and one British vessel in the North Sea. The blindness of the United States naval authorities to the merits of this invention was a matter arousing at once curiosity and indignation among observers during the early days of our entrance upon the war.



CHAPTER VIII

INCIDENTS OF THE WAR IN THE AIR

In time, no doubt, volumes will be written on the work of the airmen in the Great War. Except the submarine, no such novel and effective device was introduced into the conduct of this colossal struggle as the scouting airplane. The development of the service was steady from the first day when the Belgian flyers proved their worth at Liege. From mere observation trips there sprang up the air duels, from the duels developed skirmishes, and from these in time pitched battles in which several hundred machines would be engaged on each side. To this extent of development aerial tactics had proceeded by midsummer of 1917. Their further development must be left to some future chronicler to record. It must be noted, however, that at that early day the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, pleading for a larger measure of preparation for the perils of war, asserted that the time was not far distant when this country would have to prepare to repel invading fleets of aircraft from European shores. This may have been an exaggeration. At that moment no aircraft had crossed the Atlantic and no effort to make the passage had been made save those of Wellman and Vanniman. When the guns began to roar on the Belgian frontier there was floating on Keuka Lake, New York, a huge hydro-airplane with which it was planned to make the trans-Atlantic voyage. The project had been financed by Mr. Rodman Wanamaker, of Philadelphia, and the tests of the ship under the supervision of a young British army officer who was to make the voyage were progressing most promisingly. But the event that plunged the world into war put a sudden end to experiments like this for the commercial development of the airplane. There is every reason to believe, however, that such a flight is practicable and that it will ultimately be made not long after the world shall have returned to peace and sanity.



Airmen are not, as a rule, of a romantic or a literary temperament. Pursuing what seems to the onlooker to be the most adventurous and exhilarating of all forms of military service, they have been chary of telling their experiences and singularly set upon treating them as all in the day's work and eliminating all that is picturesque from their narratives. Sergeant James R. McConnell, one of the Americans in the French flying corps, afterwards killed, tells of a day's service in his most readable book, Flying for France, in a way that gives some idea of the daily routine of an operator of an avion de chasse. He is starting just as the sky at dawn is showing a faint pink toward the eastern horizon, for the aviator's work is best done in early morning when, as a rule, the sky is clear and the wind light:



Drawing forward out of line, you put on full power, race across the grass, and take the air. The ground drops as the hood slants up before you and you seem to be going more and more slowly as you rise. At a great height you hardly realize you are moving. You glance at the clock to note the time of your departure, and at the oil gauge to see its throb. The altimeter registers 650 feet. You turn and look back at the field below and see others leaving.

In three minutes you are at about four thousand feet. You have been making wide circles over the field and watching the other machines. At forty-five hundred feet you throttle down and wait on that level for your companions to catch up. Soon the escadrille is bunched and off for the lines. You begin climbing again, gulping to clear your ears in the changing pressure. Surveying the other machines, you recognize the pilot of each by the marks on its side—or by the way he flies.

The country below has changed into a flat surface of varicoloured figures. Woods are irregular blocks of dark green, like daubs of ink spilled on a table; fields are geometrical designs of different shades of green and brown, forming in composite an ultra-cubist painting; roads are thin white lines, each with its distinctive windings and crossings—from which you determine your location. The higher you are the easier it is to read.

In about ten minutes you see the Meuse sparkling in the morning light, and on either side the long line of sausage-shaped observation balloons far below you. Red-roofed Verdun springs into view just beyond. There are spots in it where no red shows and you know what has happened there. In the green pasture land bordering the town, round flecks of brown indicate the shell holes. You cross the Meuse.

Immediately east and north of Verdun there lies a broad, brown band. From the Woevre plain it runs westward to the "S" bend in the Meuse, and on the left bank of that famous stream continues on into the Argonne Forest. Peaceful fields and farms and villages adorned that landscape a few months ago—when there was no Battle of Verdun. Now there is only that sinister brown belt, a strip of murdered Nature. It seems to belong to another world. Every sign of humanity has been swept away. The woods and roads have vanished like chalk wiped from a blackboard; of the villages nothing remains but grey smears where stone walls have tumbled together. The great forts of Douaumont and Vaux are outlined faintly, like the tracings of a finger in wet sand. One cannot distinguish any one shell crater, as one can on the pockmarked fields on either side. On the brown band the indentations are so closely interlocked that they blend into a confused mass of troubled earth. Of the trenches only broken, half-obliterated links are visible.