MENACE FROM THE AIR.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3146, 4 December 1922, Page 2

MENACE FROM THE AIR.

(By Ca.pt. Francis McCuillagh.)

It is not generally realised that Lithuania is a very important country from the aerial point of view, forming, as it does, a link between Russia, and Germany. Lithuania realises this fact herself, so that she has equipped' herself with an excellent air force, and is busily training young military airmen on one of the best aerodromes that I have ever scon. It is situated at a distance of about half a mile from Kovno, and not more than ten minutes by motor car from the centre of the town, so. that in respect of accessibility it is. perhaps the handiest aerodrome in the world. The Lithuanian Air Marshal is General Kraueevicius, who was formerly in the Imperial Russian Service, and is a really great expert, not only in the organisation of aerial work hut also in the actual leading of a. squadron in the air. He has over a. hundred machines (Fokkers, Handley-Pages and other English as well as some German makes, mostly with Rolls-Royce engines), a thousand men in all, and every kind of supply needed for his work. The young Lithuanian aviators whom he is training seem in the last degree tit.

When 1 visited the aerodrome yesterday. .by kind permission of the Lithuanian Minister of Defence, General Kraueevicius received me courteously, allowed me to. go up in a machine, and directed one of his. airmen, to perform for my edification every possible kind of stunt, of which “looping the loop,” aud performing the “falling leaf” trick were the simplest. After watching him performing several hundred feet up. I got the impression that that particular aviator could not fall. For he went upside down ; lie Hew with the wings at right angles to the ground instead of parallel to it; he spun like a top; he circled; he did, in short, everything that the ordinary man would imagine to lie fatal. Yet he is only a young pupil who began flying about a month sign- ...

All the pupils who can fly are kept very busy every day save Sunday. At present they are bombing various marks in the sandy plain on the banks of the Niemn, near the Armenian Monastery of Mens Pads, aind in this work they are extraordinarily accur-

ate. To start with .they are very fit, physically, for in this -quiet, agricultural country you get an inexhaustible supply of healthy lads with great physical strength, perfect eyesight, and perfect nerves. It takes a year and a half to turn out a Lithuanian airman, six months in theoretical study, six

months in intensive practical training. Any young officer who. after a year at the work, shows signs of lagging behind. is at once got rid of, for the Air Marshal wants only the keenest of the keen.

It may seem ridiculous to write at such length about the air force of such a small country as Lithuania, but owing to the high reputation of General Krancevicins as an Air Marshal in the Czar’s service and' to the unusual excellence of the young human material now at bis disposal, as well as to the peculiarly favorable situation of Lithuania for air work, the progress of aviation in this country deserves to he watched with sympathy and interest. All the Lithuanian airmen arc, of course, expert photographers and radiotelegraphists; and 1 in case of a Polish invasion—the only thing to be feared';— the Lithuanian army will have no need for cavalry scouts as all the scouting can bo done by air, from which mes*sages can be flashed to the central wireless station at Kovno. Moreover, the bombing: which such a large air force could carry out on the advancing Poles would, when the efficiency of the Lithuanian infantry and artillery is taken into consideration, make the. success of such an advance very problematical. A short conversation which I had with the General after coining down myself from a spin among the clouds, made it clear to me that he not only keeps' up to date in his profession but that he studios very closely the development of military aviation cveryw here. To condense his remarks to me on this subject; “The potentialities of the airplane for war have been greatly increased since 191S both in the improvements made in the machine itself and in the vastly increased power of the bombs which it carried. Bombardinent from

airplanes can now replace bombardment from artillery, and the former is impossible to guard against, for there is no shelter from it. Aerial explosives of a strength far greater than was ever dreamt of in the last war can easily penetrate the deepest subterranean chambers and cause the most awful havoc. Airplane attack can seriously impede an enemy’s mobilisation, and such attack on a grand scale will be a feature of every future war. It will even be a feature of every naval war; and battleships will be as much worried by airplanes overhead as by submarines underneath. “France has since the armistice greatly extended her service of commercial airplanes; but from all I can learn England, despite the complaints of the London press, I pis really made great progress in research and experimental work connected with aerial warfare at sea. France has made no progress in this direction, at least no progress to be compared to that which England has quietly and unostentatiously made ; . thoijgh the laudatory accounts of her achievements which appear almost daily in the Daily Mail, the Times, the Morning Post, and other English newspapers might give the impression that Franco has made gigantic progress while England has made none at all.

“Germany, despite l the limitations imposed on her aerial development by the Treaty of Versailles, has made greater progress than France in aerial research work for military purposes; and America, apparently, has also made great progress. All the nations 1 have mentioned suffer from want of money for purposes of military experiment, and from a gencHil reaction against war and everything connected with it; but the development of aviation is certain to go om, new and important discoveries are certain to take place, and by this development and those discoveries military aviation is certain to benefit.

“Already the airplane as a military weapon is vastly more efficient than the airplane of 1914. It now flies in all sorts of weather; it can carry more and deadlier bombs; instead of being more or less of a toy it is an indispensable part of a modern army, (t replaces cavalry for reconnaissance and is not only a most valuable adjunct for artillery in spotting enemy positions, hut may almost at times replace artillery in shelling forts and entrenched infantry. “Even a. military man is sometimes appalled by the vision of what great aerial navies may do in future wars. What is to prevent them, for example, from burning whole cities, ravaging whole countries, poisoning with gasgroat numbers of civilians far behind the battle lineP Millions of soldiers entrenched at a. frontier ami forming there an impassable fine, may findl that country overwhelmed by flames and bombs and clouds of poison gas with the result that the war will he lost without their losing a battle, or a gun or a man. For an army is use-

less if the country which sent it out to fight has itself gone to blazes. “There is danger indeed that the brunt of future wars will fall almost entirely on the civilian population behind the lines, hundreds of miles behind the lines. The soldier with his head in a gas mask and hie whole person immured in a dugout provided with, a periscope and covered with 15 layers of sandbags may suddenly lind that no news, ammunition or food is coming from the rear, and when he goes to the trench telephone to inquire what has -t happened he will be told that his cithpw have been burned, his civilian relatiws killed, his munition works blown his food supplies poisoned' or destroyed, and his country wiped off the map. “In that case there will be a reversal of the usual conditions, and it will be the women and children who will bear the brunt of war instead of the men ; and if anything ever succeeds in abolishing war altogether it will be this terrific development of it, a dedevelopment to which modern warfare is clearly tending.”