SILENT AND INVISIBLE TERROR OF THE AIR.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3144, 20 November 1922, Page 7

SILENT AND INVISIBLE TERROR OF THE AIR.

(By the Daily Chronicle Aeronautical 1 Correspondent). Silent, deadly, almost impossible, apparently, to combat, a new terror now faces the world. This peril lies in the perfection of weight-carrying, engineless gliders, and in the development of super-scientific methods of controlling and "focussing" along a defined path, of an electrical wireless beam or ray. First of its kind in the world, a huge war-transport airship, capable of taking up with it largo numbers ot motorless gliders, and 'launching them, one after another, from a mechanism beneath the keel, has not only been designed by experts in America, but is just on the point of construction. A feature of this vast vessel will be a wireless plant embodying devices ol an official and highly confidential nature, and developing a power never before exercised from the air. Fascinating experiments, fearful m their potentiality, are to be made on secret cruises by this great aerial transport. Gliders which arc not onl motorless, but also pilotless, will be launched from mid-air; and their wings will be •;o efficient, and their rate of descent so gradual, that when shot forth from a height of. two miles they will soar more than 30 miles before they touch the earth. . The grim, underlying theory or sucli tests is this—to obtain power if required, in war, of replacing a man, in a small enginel'ess glider, by a corresponding weight of high; explosives, and then of controlling and directing the little machine by wireless as it glides mile after mile earthward, from an airship lurking high, and far-dis-tant in the sky. Amazing, and fearful also in its significance, is a method to be experimented witfc of guiding an explosive glider long after it has passed beyond the vision of those on the airship. The little pilotless machine will be equipped with a mechanism, wirelessly controlled, operating its rudder and elevators; and means are also to be sought, by the experimental projection of an immensely powerful, short-focus, wireless beam, or ray, of keeping the glider, on its journey earthward, within the confines of that ray. Diabolical, one might almost say, in scientific ingenuity, will be the method by which this winged machine, without either motive-power or occupant, but merely moving forward and downward under the pull of gravity, may be kept moving along a predetermined path, even when those who are guiding it have lost sight of it entirely. The tremendously powerful wireless "wave," emanating*from the specialised plant of the monster airship, and directed—although, of course, utterly invisible—like the beam of some colossal searchlight, will have an area of maximum intensity in its centre, the power falling away, progressively, towards the outer fringes of the ray. The bomb-laden gliders, each containing an extraordinary sensitive wireless receiving mechanism, capable, through the medium of a. small, com-pressed-air motor, of operating their control-surfaces just as though a pilot's hand was on the lever, will be launched from the airship down the centre ol the locussod ray. And here canics the crux of the experiment. The controlling apparatus of the glider, receiving ceaselessly the intangible power of the "beam" down which the little machine is gliding, will he so marvellously "tuned" that, while it keeps the craft gliding straight ahead so long as it is in the path of maximum power, any deviation either side into ray-fringes of lower intensity, will be checked bv an automatic action of the controls, and the glider steered back again—though pilotless—to the preordained path. It is, one might say. a gigantic "aerial gun," employing no force other than that provided "naturally and constantly by the downward pull of gravity. The missile, its bomb-load exploding with terriblv destructive effectwhen it strikes earth, is the motorless o-lider of an improved, weight-support-ing type; while what one might call the "barrel" of this fantastic, invisible weapon is an unseen, high-power raypath of wireless. That any precise aim would be secured, or accuracy in the sense of that of ordinary artillery, is not, of course, expected—nor, -for the "tatter of that, particularly desired. those at the "breach" of this extraordinary "eun"—that is to say, the expert crew on the airship—will lurk many miles away from some large military or civil munition-making area which it is desired to attack Then, at a height probably ol several miles above the earth, and screened cunningly by favoring cloud-hanks the airship will despatch a stream of death-dealing gliders, and, although the exact spot at which they strike and explode cannot he governed, they will all of them pass down the wireless beam in. such a way that they reach earth, and do their dread work within such a. • well-defined prescribed area that the general object of the bombardment will be only too well served. Picture such a demoralising, nervewracking onslaught upon, say, some stretch of coast-line! Creeping along insidiously will come the great airship with its frightful powers of destruction ; and when riding skyward, perhaps at an altitude; as great as four miles above the surface of the sea, and when more than GO miles distant from the coastal area to be attacked, the stream of glider-bombs will be released, and will soar without sound towards their target. .