Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 209, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 September 1917 — Page 2

How Uncle Sam Is Goinn to Whip the Germans in the Air

ITHIN ten months the United States will have 25,tXH) battle planes in service in Europe. The planes will be equipped with American motors of 250horsepower, capable of driving them at a maximum speed of 100 miles an hour. Furthermore, these motors will be constructed principally of aluminum and will be of less weight per horsepower than any airplane motor here~~tofore~bullt. ThusTlhe plans of the

•irciaft board of the council of national defense, adopted by the war department and financed by congress, are in a fair way to be speedily consummated. Not long ago, the Washington correspondent of the Kansas City Star, who signs himself “H. J. Stt,” went to Dayton, 0., to interview one of the inventors of the airplane about America's great aerial program, planned to “blind” the German *nny. Portions of the reporter’s story are printed {below. It gives some details of what Uncle Sam hs doing in the production of an army of mantlrda :• — A young man jumped and caught the propeller {blade of the biplane and gave it a pull. It turned thuir way nrounri and stopped, lie repeated the

performance two or three times. Suddenly there was a roar and the propeller became a blur. It was a hot morning In Dayton and the breeze from the revolving propeller fan looked refreshing. The plane

'wasn’t going up. It was blocked on the ground and they were merely trying out the engine. I (Stepped forward into the breeze. “The power isn’t turned on yet, - ” said Orville 'Wright, at my side. “It won’t be so pleasant here when it is.” The roar turned into thunder. The ground iseemed to be blowing away in a cloud of dust. +We grabbed for our hats and retreated. “Just one of the training planes,” Mr. Wright lexplaiaed. - “Only a hundred horsepower.” Of no importance on a battle line, perhaps. But one of the gathering squadrons that even now are beginning to cast a faint black shadow across the German horizon.

who invented the airplane, is the little, weathersbeaten shed which was used by the brothers as the hangar for their original plane, only thirteen years ago. It Is Just a plain shed, and beyond It stretches the Imposing line of hangars off into the distance — pretty nearly two miles of buildings, calculated to house the 240 planes that are to be assembled fn the fleld eight miles east of Dayton. And, yet, it is fittingly preserved as a memorial to the days •when air flight was being slowly and painstakingly developed by the daring scientific genius of the 'Wright brothers. In Washington I had talked with the men whose imagination had conceived the great 640-million dollar aircraft program, and who are now in charge of its execution. They are engineers and executives, not practical aircraft men. They know America’s industrial and engineering resources. Their enthusiasm is contagious. I went to Dayton to talk with the world’s foremost aeronautical engineer and to learn some of the difficulties that must be overcome before we can put out the eyes of the Germans in the air, organize our surprise attacks, destroy the enemy communications and blow up the Krupp works at Essen. Orville Wright is a man of 46, of medium size. Modest and unassuming, he gives the impression of .independence In thought and action. He is deliberative in manner, well-organized, perfectly controlled, clear thinking. “We can do the job,” he said, as we drove to the aviation field. “And it’s worth doing. It offers us the one big hope of winding up this war next year, instead of permitting it to drag along for years to come. All our information is that Germany and the allies are keeping about an equid number of planes on the battle front. IN e can t be sure, but their resources in building seem about equal. Each side probably has about 3,500 planes in active service on the western front, aside from their reserves and training planes. “If we were in a position to put several thousand planes, manned by trained aviators, on the western front today, we might bring the war to an iearly end.” “By using the planes to extend the range of lartlllery, and bombing the enemy lines of com,munication and his munition plants and naval i “Possibly, to some extent. I am not particularly sanguine over bombing, and I do not believe other flyers are. The men who have never flown are the most enthusiastic over the possibilities of propping bombs. The antiaircraft guns keep the (flyers at a height of above two miles. Anyone 'who has ever flown at that height knows the tremendous difficulty of hltting a target. There is iDothlng for him to gauge his speed by. The bomb drops through air currents movingin different di-

successfully attacked.. JJnder favorable conditions Other bombing operations might be carried out successfully. But my idea of the effectiveness of supremacy in the air is along different lines.” "Which ones." ,— ~~ "In other wars the element of surprise has determined the outcome when the forces were of approximately equal strength. The general who could mass his men so as to fall on a smaller force Of the enemy won the battle. The airplane has stopped that. Now a commander on the western front knows exactly what his opponent is doing. is no chance to mass men for surprise

For this field? with its four square miles, is to be one of the great centers Of the aircraft work which is relied on to turn the scale of battle on the western front. And there at one end of the field, which has been named the Wilbur Wright field, in honor of one of the two brothers

rections which deflect it from its course. "The Krupp works at Essen offer a large enough target so that a squadron of airplanes might be able to put them out of business. Other plants might be

attacks. Consequently, we have the present deadlock in France. “What we must do is to drive every enemy airplane out of the air. By doing this we not only prevent the Germans from knowing what we are doing, but we also cripple their artillery, for artillery fire has been directed by the airplanes. Then we can plan surprise attacks and can drive the enemy back. In modern warfare the side without airplanes is at a hopeless When we gain complete command of the air, when we have literally smothered the enemy airplanes, we

break the deadlock and win the war. “The airplane has produced the deadlock. The airplane can end it.” “How soon can we hope to do this?” “We have the best men In the country at

work on the problem. But people must not be impatient if at first our progress seems slow. Only men who have tried it know the difficulties of building a high-power airplane motor.” In the matter of personnel. It may be noted, our aircraft promoters believe we have a great superiority over the rest of the world, for this reason: Jt takes an exceptional sort of man to make a good flyer. He Ynust be quick-witted and have the steadiest sort of nerves. Otherwise, he comes to grief and smashes an expensive machine. Men of this type volunteered extensively in Britain and Canada jzarly in the war. They constituted the armies that went into the battle line without adequate artillery protection and so were largely destroyed. The same forces operated to destroy the strong and vigorous young men of France and Germany who would have made good aviators. So today America is the greatest reservoir in “he world of the right soft of material for the personnel of the aircraft service. While the other countries are having difficulty in getting proper men for flyers—England has invited us to send men to her aviation schools because she cannot keep them filled —our problem is merely to train them and provide them with equipment. I asked Mr. Wright what speed plane we might •'xpect to develop.

“It is a complicated problem, the limit oFUseful speed,” he replied. “A good many reckless statements aije made on the subject by persons with vivid imaginations. It is safe to say there are machines on the western front that can make 130 miles an hour. So far asTspeed Is concerned there are no inherent impossibilities in developing a plane that might make as high ns two hundred miles an hour. The difficulty is in the landing. “A machine’s landing speed is about half its maximum speed. That is, if a plane is designed to make a speed of fifty miles an hour its wings will "not sustalh it in the air ifjt travels slower than twenty-five miles. It must T>e moving at a “peed of at least twenty-five miles an hour to make a successful landing. So a plane with a speed of 130 miles an hour cannot land at a speed of much less than slxty-flve miles.” From the field we drove to the laboratory. It is simply a development of the crude shop in which he and his brother together worked out the problem of air flight. The airplane was no lucky find. It was not developed by rule of thumb. Wilbur and Orville Wright, sons of a Dayton United Brethren bishop, after getting through high school, set up a bicycle repair shop. They had a natural taste for mechanics and for sports. Twen-ty-one years ago they became interested in the experiments of Lillenthal, the German experimenter, in a glider. His death attracted their attention to his work. For two years they worked on data and "laws” that other investigators had produced, only to find that the work so far done was worthless.

So in their own shop in Dayton they devised a “wind tunnel’’—a chute through which an air blast was driven by an electric fan. and set to wprji measuring the resistances of'curved surfaces by a wonderfully Ingenious method of their own devising. By a long series of exact measurements and elaborate mathematical calculations involving sines and cosines and such, they worked out the problem of the curvature of the planes and of the propellers. The problems of balance were enormously intricate, But these, too, they solved. They were pioneers. They had to discover the difficulties and then find the way out. So they had to devise the methods. It took unlimited patience, resourcefulness and hard thinking to win success. They were impatient to devote themselves to the

the scientific work where his heart has always been. In his well-equipped laboratory in Dayton he is now conducting two lines Of work which will be of immediate value in the great aircraft program planned by the government. One is the measurement of the air resistance of curved surfaces; the other the development of a stabilizer to make the control of the airplane more nearly automatic. Other aeronautical laboratories the world over have made these measurements of air resistance, but the figures have sometimes been as far as 100 or 200 per cent apart. The results obtained by the Wright method fourteen years ago proved substantially accurate, and now Orville Wright is taking up the work where he left it off. “Ihope to provide the proper measurements for a large variety of planes,” he said, “so-that in building different sorts we shall not have to depend on cut and try/’ The stabilizer Is an intricate device by which the action of a revolving fan holds the airplane steady. * “We can set the stabilizer,” the Inventor explained, “in such a way, for instance, as to keep the plane moving In a circle, leaving the pilot free to use his hands for making photographs.” The stabilizer has been tried out successfully, but needs further refinements so as to do away with the need of daily adjustments before Mr. Wright is willing to put it into service. He is

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN. RENSSELAER. IND.

scientific side of furthering the development of aeronautics. But they necessarily had to finance companies, fight patent suits and conduct the business of establishing a new industry. Wilbur Wright died five years ago, and in 1915 Orville Wright was able to dispose of his business interests and devote himself to

on Intimate terms with members of the government’s aircraft production board, and all his results are at the disposal of the government for the prosecution of the war. He has great expectations of the development of aircraft in practical use after the war, when thousands of trained flyers shall return to civil Hfe, and when we shall have enormous factory capacity for turning out the best machines in the world. . But that, again, Is another story. The Joy and Chivalry of Air Fighting. • Flying has become as much a matter of routine in war as marching on land or steaming «t>n the sea, and men are ordered to fly, at fixed hours and for stated periods, as thbugh flying were a natural act, and not the organized miracle that It really Is. A correspondent of the London Times writes interestingly about it, saying: Out In France the last chivalries, the last beauties of battle have taken refuge In the air. From the labors, butcheries, miseries, horrors and ashpit desolation of the earth, the fighting romance of war has taken wings and climbed sunwards. There alone combat is individual, visual, decisive. There alone has the combatant toj-ely solely on

himself. There alone is the battle decided not through veils of distance, between Impersonal and unknown hosts, but wing to wing and face to face. There alone are the rare courtesies of warfare still possible; it was a British squadron that suggested, and a British airman who executed, the dropping of a funeral

wreath over the German lines as a tribute to the air-warrior Immelmann. And there alone can individual skill and courage have their swift reward. For one flash, between a dip and a climb of his swallow flight, the fighting airman may catch the glint of his opponent’s eye, and, if the momentary burst of fire be truly directed, see him crumple up in his seat and the nose of his machine dip and begin its fatal spinning (jive, while the victor soars up again to safety and solitude. And what a solitude is his! From the moment in the airplane when the mechanic has given, his last heave, and the last curt verbal exchange, " ‘Contact, sir’—‘Contact, ” has been given, and the engine sets up its mighty droning song, the airman Is alone, submerged in that roaring music, deaf and dumb. For perhaps a minute he sits there testing his engine, fingering his levers, assuring himself that all is well; and then, as the

drone sinks to a hum, he makes his last ’communication the characteristic quick outward wave of the hands and arms. The chocks are pulled away, the hum rises to a drone, breaks into a roar, and he is off, bumping over the uneven earth until his speed gives his wings their

life, the rough ground is. shed away from beneath his feet, and he rises into the sudden peace of the air. The “peace of the air” may seem like a contradiction in terms in war time; but it is the supreme sensation of fair-weather flying, apart from flying and fighting. Once you have got your height, whether it be a thousand or ten thousand feet, you seem to be absolutely at rest —at rest In sunshine and a strong gale. The dinj carpet or map beneath you hardly moves; and although the trembling fingers of the little clocks and dials before you witness to the fluidity of your element and the tenderness of your hold on it, yet the

shut off, and you begin to plane in mighty circles toward the earth again, that you get, in that delicious rush down the hill of air, any sensation of speed; and not until, a moment before landing you skim over the earth at 80 miles an hour, that you realize with what pace you have been rushing through the'airy vacancy. But these are the sensations of mere joy-riding Ten or twenty minutes may take the fighting pilot to his statioh in the air over the enemy’s lines. How puny the absurdity of the greatest war of all time can appear is only known to the airman as he sits in the breeze and the sun, high above it all; the danger to him is not down there, although to ascend into his remote sphere he has to pass through the zone of anti-aircraft fire; his own particular enemy is the German fighting machine, which may come down to harry or destroy the observer, and which he must himseif attack the moment it makes its appearance. Between these two he watchfully patrols, and all this time, although a battle may be raging beneath him, he hears nothing but the strong, rasping hum of his engine. He flies and fights alone.

The daring of the American girl of a century ago and the Frenchman’s traditional habit of yielding to the will of “the ladies” form the fabric of an amusing bit of family record that. Mr. William Allen Butler gives In “A Retrospect of Forty Years.” My aunt. Mary Allen, having spent some time In France, was proficient in her knowledge of the French language and manners, he says. On a visit that she paid to Lafayette, who was always exceedingly courteous to Americans, she told him that site had a great favor to ask. He indicated that he would grant it,-and she begged him for a lock of his hair. “Madam," said the general, “I wear a wig!" But to show his willingness to meet her wishes, he proposed to remove the wig and let her appropriate’ any remaining natural hairs that she could find. She accepted his offer and proved herself to be a good searcher by 4?ettlng a few clippings, which she brought home, as a great treasure, and divided honorably with my mother. Each sister carefully preserved her quota of hairs In a ring.

RAVAGING A WASTED COUNTRY.

only things that do not seem to move are the wings and stays of your machine which surround you, a rigid cage from which you look forth upon the slow-turning earth or the rushing clouds. It is not until the engine has been

Battles Which Made the World

PULTOWA* - The Comment of Napoleon.

The battle of Pultowa (or Pultava), fought in 1709, wins place as one of the struggles which have fashioned the world into what it is today, because It broke the power of the Swedes, then the dominant nation of northern Europe, and really brought into being the vast Russian structure of the present time. Byron sings of it as: Dread Pultowa’s day When fortune left the royal Swede And Napoleon found in it the basis for his prophecy at St. Helena that Europe would become either all republican or all Cossack. It has to be remembered that two hundred years ago Russia was but a paltry, feeble world figure, just emerging from semi-barbarism under Peter the Great Chancellories then reckoned Russia little more than they now reckon Timbuetoo. On the other hand, Sweden was a really great and powerful nation,'with extensive holdings now mostly in Russian possession. Her people were Germanic, as the Russians are Slavonic. Had Sweden won at Pultowa and continued her course of good fortune in the world, the central European empires in the war now raging would possess an ally, the resources and stamina of which might well be held to insure them vic-

tory. Russia in 1709 possessed a population of less than 17,000,000, but the genius of Peter was building It Into an empire. Charles XII of Sweden viewed the rise with concern. It was his avowed purpose to smash the growing state and reduce it to a condition of subjugation such as it had known under the Tartars and the Poles. There would be no more Russia. No such commanding military genius as Gustavus Adolphus, Charles was nevertheless a brave and resolute general, holding at his command a —great army composed of soldiers as fine as any known to Europe. He would, he declared, take Moscow, and dictate terms of peace to Peter in the Kremlin. Charles set out from Alstadt, not far from Leipsic, in September, 1707, at the head of 45,000 men. He marched through Poland. Count Lewenhaupt with 20,000 more debarked at Riga. A third army of 15,000 had station in Finland. Charles was therefore in position to bring against the czar 80,000 of the most formidable troops known to civilization. Napoleon, in his St. Helena memoirs, bitterly condemns Charles for his failure to keep his forces consolidated, a failure which Indeed seems to have been a grave tactical error and for which Charles paid a bitter price. He left 10,000 men at Warsaw, wintered at Grodno and In the following June crossed the Minsk, fought and defeated a force of 20,000 Russians on the left bank of the Beresina, beat 16,000 more near Smolensko and was within ten days’ march of the capital where the czar was already formulating proposals of peace, when he quitted the high road to march toward the Ukraine that he might form a junction with Mazeppa, who had with him 6,000 men. Thus his line of communication was left exposed for 400 leagues, protected only by Lewenhaupt, who with a large force and an invaluable convoy of supplies marched a full twelve days’ march behind his lord. Napoleon condemns this disposition as inexcusable blundering. The czar meanwhile had collected a force of 100,000. In personnel it was much Inferior to the conquering Swedes, but it seemed to* learn stead-

Iness and generalship from Its defeats. In September Peter with an overwhelming force of 50,000 fell upon the floundering Lewenhaupt, who was striving to join Charles in the Ukraine. For three days Lewenhaupt struggled against the Impossible odds, finally cutting himself loose, but abandoning his cannon fend ammunition, together with his convoy of provisions, and reaching Charles with only 4,000 of his original 10,000. On very short rations the stout-hearted Swedes pulled through the winter in the Ukraine, advancing in the spring until they brought up against the town of Pultowa, which commanded the passes to Moscow and which had been made by the Russians a great depot; of supplies. It was heavily fortified, its garrison resisted sturdily and Peter, keenly alive to the Importance of the post, advanced to its relief in June with an army of 60,000 men.

Possession of Pultowa would give Charles the supplies he needed so sorely, as well as a secure base for his operations against Moscow. He .pressed the siege hotly, his cannon thundering night and day, but the czar, maneuvering with no mean Skill, crossed the Vorskla and posted his army on the same side of the river with the besiegers but a little higher up. Tho Vorskla falls into the Borysthenes fifteen leagues below Pultowa. The Russian line stretched from river to river. It was Peter’s design to drive the Swedes back into the acute angle formed by the two rivers and there overwhelm them. Against the Muscovites Charles opposed 24,000 men, his force Aaving been greatly reduced by battle, sick-

By CAPT. ROLAND F. ANDREWS

(Copyright, WIT, by McClure Kewapcper Syndicate)

ness and famine. He himself had been severely wounded in the'foot during a recent skirmish, but maintaining that his dignity required he should be the assailant and that he should lead the attach in. person he had Mnurelf carried to the front in a litter and waving. on command and encouragement from this couch he headed his army out of the trenches. . »So furious was the Swedish onslaught that two of the Russian redoubts were actually carried and the Swedish infantry raised the cry of victory, yet the Russian artillerymen stood steadily by their guns while fresh masses of troops were poured into their support. Never was the ancient Swedish valor more gloriously exemplified than upon that dreadful day, "yet the Swedish line finally broke before the Russian works, whereupon the czar himself led the Infantry and cavalry outside the fortifications, formed them steadily under fire and advanced over the open ground. Both sovereigns were in the thick of the fray. They battled as medieval knights, wielding sword alongside the cavalrymen of their bodyguards and Striving desperately to turn the day which for more than two hours hung in the balance.

But. heavily outnumbered -- the Swedes finally fell Into disorder. Instantly the Russians launched a terrific charge. The Swedes were completely routed, rushing down to the junction of the rivers, where they perished in the waters or surrendered to their enemies. Only a few hundred escaped by swimming the river, among them Charles and Mazeppa, who made their way into Turkish territory. Nearly 10,000 lay dead or wounded on the bloody field. The peace of' Nystadt transferred the fairest possessions of Sweden to Russia. Russian attacks on Turkey and Persia began almost at once. The tremendous Russian fabric of the present was then and there put under way. The vast power of Sweden, which had kept the north world under her sway, was gone. . . ■. ,

WAR PROFITS OF SPANIARDS

Wine Sent to Soldier* In Philippine* Didn’t Need Any Water by Timo It Reached the Privates. A good story of the war in the Philippine islands occurs in Major General Younghusband’s recently ■ published book, “A Soldier’s Memories.” Two Englishmen strolling round the Spanish outpost line near Manila chanced across a small picket, consisting of three men in charge of a sergeant. The latter hospitably offered the Englishmen a share of their ration of red wine, which they gladly accepted, though, as it was a very hot day, they asked that a little water might be added. This, writes General Younghusband, was evidently considered a capital joke, for all fopr Curst into roars of laughter. “Wherefore this merriment?” asked the Englishmen in some bewilderment. “Pardon us, sir,” said the sergeant, “but I will explain. That wine is a very good wine, and comes from Barcelona. It starts off In large casks addressed to the adjutant general. Out of each cask the adjutant general makes two, and hands it on to our colonel. Our colonel out of these two diluted casks makes three. Next the company commander has It to make his profit, and I also have to make mine. So you see, sir, there Is not much need to add any more water."

Old-Time Humor.

Upon one occasion Lord Chatham asked Doctor Hennjker to define “wit,” and received the reply, "Wit is what a pension would be if given by your lordship to your humble servant —a good thing well applied.” In “A Book of Famous Wits,” Walter Jerrold records a happy jest addressed to Queen Elizabeth. Mr. Popham, when he was speaker, and the lower house had sat long and done tn effect nothing, coming one day to Queen Elizabeth, she said to him: “Now, Mr. Speaker, what has passed in the lower house?” He answered: “If it please your majesty, seven weeks.”

Island of St. John.

The Island of St. John, now Prince Edward, was English from Its early settlement, the method being a quasifeudal system, which was not finally extinguished until the middle 70’s of the nineteenth centpry. In 1769 it became a British province through a commission Issued to Governor Patterson, and it became similarly autonomous. The United Empire Loyalists, who settled in the valley of the St. John river after the asked and obtained for their "plantation” in 1784 a provincial status ihat carried with it a local legislature.

The Old Crouch Talks.

“He flatters himself a great deal." “In what way?” “He told me that he believed he could make my daughter happy and contented. Tl’d like to see the maa who could ao that for any woman." ,