EAGLES AND AEROPLANES

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 154, 29 June 1912, Page 15

EAGLES AND AEROPLANES

' A NOVEL EXPERIMENT. If bullets cannot reach aeroplanes, eagles may (writes the Paris correspondent of a London paper). This is an ingenious idea which some officers at Nice are said to bo trying to demonstrate. It was just a year ago, during the famous flight from Paris to Madrid, that M. Gibert, one of the competitors of M. Vedrines, reported that he had been attacked by an eagle when flying across the Pyrenees. Ho was so annoyed by the bird that ho had to take out his revolver and frighten it away by firing several shots, but the result was that ho lo3t his bearz-ijje, and had to come down. The eagle prevented him from continuing his flight. Perhaps it was the report of this adventure that) suggested a novel idea to the officers at Nice. They decided to train six strong, young eagles for destroying aeroplanes. They starved the birds, and then placed meat for them on the wings of an aeroplane. The eagles darted for the meat' with such ravenous 'appetites that they tore the wings of the aeroplane to pieces. Tho idea is that a host of eagles set loose in the neighbourhood, of hostile aeroplanes would dart on them and destroy them, or, at least disconcert the pilot. The' Btory is told in the Armee Moderns, and we are assured that the eagles have also been trained not to be frightened by shots and the explosions of the motor. Meat was placed in a similar way on -models of' a steerablo balloon, and the eagles, in getting at tho meat, also destroyed the balloon. But we are not told how the birds are to be trained not to destroy the aeroplanes of the army they are intended to protect, and to exorqiso their claws onl^ on tho aeroplanes of the enemy.