WAR IN THE AIR.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3134, 11 September 1922, Page 8

WAR IN THE AIR.

("By 11. A. Scott-Tamos.) It is part of the strange topsy-turvy-dom produced by the war that Professor Sir Walter Raleigh should have become the author of the official "War in the Air." This brilliant, informing work is itself an illustration of the upheaving force which diverted men froni the routine of a lifetime, and revealed in middle-aged men as in boys undreamt-of aptitudes. True, the late Sir Walter was far beyond the age which made it possible for him to learn to inarch, or shoot, or fly; but it is a scarcely less remarkably change in intellectual gymnastics for this fastidious student of literature, critic of Shakespeare and Johnson, exponent of the theory of style, to soak his mind in the science of aeronautics and the mechanical details which an historian of living must understand. For Sir Walter, attracted as he may have been by the romantic part played by the Royal Air Puree in tine great war. has not been content to leave it at that. It is. indeed, with a kind of boyish simplicity that be delights in tin- ilevil-iuay-caiv pluck of the flying man and even in the successful British habit of "muddling through"; but his is not. the simplicity of ignorance, lie has mastered his subjects up and down: he has probed the earlier history of living, no less lhan oath detail in the lirs( campaign of the war. And if be cares most lor the personal initiation which entered into (he triumphs of the R.K.C., in- has given equal care to the study of the mechanical problems which harassed inventors, the difficulties of manufacture, and the task" of the organisers. He begins his history with Ibe daring experiments which preceded Ihe conquest of the air. Balloons, of course. wore used in warfare in days when the heavior-than-air machine seemed still a fantastic dream. In the ■nineties of la<t century LiJienthal was still throwing himself into th>.< air on gliders which aroused the mirth of contemporaries. ■' was nol Oil U)(Y.] thai the \\ right Brothers first flew : not lill |'.)!)s that they established I heir claims in the sight of the world. |( was only in the ten years before the war that men like Korlior and Karinan and Uleriol m Kraiiec. like Cotly and A. V. l!oe audi Sopwilh in England, were making lirsl ascents and establishing ihe lirsl records, supported mainly liy private enterprise in structure and design. The Royal Keying Corps itself onl\ came into existence two years hefore Ihe war. I' was little more than a skeleton lone which jlew over to Kranee in August 11)11 and look up iis duties with the Kxpedil ionary Army. On ihe ISth of I hat inoni hj a wire was dispatched from Boulogne to G.H.0.. saving : ''An uiinuinliered unit wit lioiil aeroplanes which calls itself an Aircraft Park has jirrived. What are we to »lo with it'" So little were I lie functions of the Klyinu Corps I hen realised ! Bill wi I Inn a lU'ck I I'oin I hen ma chines w ere ll\ ing over Ihe enenn lines. Within yet another week I hc\ were to bring vital news of i lie enveloping efl'orls made liy Yon Klnck. In October t hex kept Sir John Kroneh in communication with Antwerp. Km in. that time onwards they became increasingly the eyes of the British Army. That, alter all. was their essential function during Ihe war—to see what was happening behind the lines. They fought one another in the air; they were to light infant r\ and machine guns: the\ were to drop destructive, bombs. lint nothing compared in importance with the bringing to light the secrets ol' I lie eneinv . Kvery soldier mi active service leariH how- great a pari of the art of defence consisted ; n remaining liioV.cn, A few

.strips of good camouflage were often better than the deepest dugout. Jt was the task of the Flying Corps to see troops and transport on the road, to produce photographs of enemy country for the purpose of mapmaking, to spot and photograph artillery positions, to observe the rounds of our own artillery and thus direct its fire—visible itsell', to destroy, by seeing, the invisibility of the enemy. How elaborate became I lie differentiation between classes of machine and Squadron as the war went on, and what improvements in air photography and wireless and methods of signalling and observation! In this first campaign, which Sir Walter Raleigh has recorded, the air war was in its inlancy; the same pioneers attempted all Urn tasks. They founded the traditions, which were taken up in their turn by thousands of recruits. "Their (raining lasted only a. few months. They. . . threw themselves with fervour and abandon into the work to he done. Pride in their squadion became a part of the irreligion. 'lho demands made, upon them, which, it. might reasonably have been believed, were greater than human nature can endure, were taken by them as a matter of course; they fulfilled them, and went beyond. They were not a melancholy company; they bad something of the lightness of the element in which they moved. Indeed, it would be difficult to find, in the world's history, any body of fighters who, for .sheer gaiety and zest, coufd bold a candle to them. Their story. . . is the epic of youth."