Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 117, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 May 1911 — Vehicles of the Air [ARTICLE]

Vehicles of the Air

comprehensive book on vehicles of the air Victor Lougheed, engineer and student of aviation, emphasizes a few points on the relation of the aeroplane to warfare that serve to bring out his notion that the day is not far off when the expenditure of millions for dreadnaught battleships will be unknown. The engineer believe many things are possible with the aeroplane and compares the aviator dropping destructive shells into the vulnerable works of a modern battleship from his aerial position to bringing down ducks. with a little shotgun. M lf one aeroplane at a cost of, say, (600, does not destroy a battleship,” •ays Mr. Lougheed, "why, 50 or 100 might do the work. The West Point and Annapolis students may descant

upon getting guns that would destroy the daring aviator if he flew low enough to make accuracy possible in hitting a battleship, and they may say that if the aeroplane destroyer flies beyond the range of those guns be would not be able to drop a shell where it would do its work. "They may forget, however, that the funnel of a great battleship offers a wide target, and that a perfect swarm of the little, destructive biplane gnats might be turned loose over a battleship and some one of them might drop the shell in the funnel. You could construct a big fleet of these aeroplanes for less than the coat of one battleship. “Carry the parallel still further. Suppose. a hunter out after ducks

with a shotgun were to understand that if he left one of the flock that this one survivor might be able to annihilate him he would not place so much confidence in his shotgun.” Particularly interesting is the relation of navigation to warfare, and the subject obsesses many now that the governments are taking up the experiments along scientific lines. This latest of man’s inventions probably will serve first in adding to the terrors and then in laying the grim specter of the centuries. A very few of the military authorities have pointed out that in the development of the flying machine there is placed, for the first time In history, in the hands of the weak and strong combatants altke, a weapon capable of as effective and unpreventable direction against the Uqga, congresses, presidents and diplomats who declare war as It Is of direction against the

fighting men on *the faraway battle fronts. Already more than one great military and naval captain has suffered disquieting visions of what will happen when, maneuvering unopposed and unseen in the obscurity of the night, not merely one or a few, but veritable swarms of light aeroplanes, In 20,000 lots, costing no more than single dreadnaughts, commence trailing asortments of high explosives at the end of 1,000 foot lengths of piano wire over cities and palaces and through fleets and armies. Many authorities are inclined to disparage the fighting ability of the aeroplane, basing their views on the fact that it has been demonstrated exceedingly difficult to drop bombs with any considerable accuracy from great heights. But from a slow-moving aeroplane flying very low It should be an may matter to cast generous parcels of picric acid er fulminate of mer-

cury into the 20-foot diameters of a battleship’s funnels. Fancy for a moment the disillusionment to come when in some great conflict of the future a splendid up-ttrdate battleship fleet of the traditional or* tier, with traditional admiral and traditional tactics, finds itself beset in midseas by a couple of great, unarmored. liner-line hulls, engined to admit of speeds and steaming radii such as will permit them to pursue or runaway from any armored craft yet built, and designed with dear and level decks for aeroplane launching. Conceive them provided with storage room for hundreds of demountable aeroplanes, with fuel, repair facilities and explosives, and with housing for a regiment or two of expert air navigators. (Copyright, by International Press Sir * ream)