RIVAL AIRSHIPS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 52, 29 August 1914, Page 3

RIVAL AIRSHIPS

THE FAILURE OF THE ZEPPELIN GERMAN AIR FLEET HALF DESTROYED ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUNS.

(For The Post.) While the aeroplane has already, according to news received by cable, done notable service in the war, chiefly by way of reconnaissance, the airship has little enough to its credit, and, so far as the German Zeppelins are concerned, seems to have been a failure. Apart from dropping bombs on the city of Antwerp and killing a score or so noncombatants, including women and children, and occasional voyages on which as often as not disaster has befallen them, the great Zeppelin airships have done practically nothing to justify the reputation they held before the war. It will be remembered then what scares there were in England of aerial raids by these monster dirigible balloons, some of them as big nearly as an ocean liner. Maps were drawn to show how airships could fly over London and drop bombs in practically unlimited quantities. What are the facts as now presented? At least five out of the dozen - Zeppelins the Germans were known to possess at the beginning of the war have been brought down, like great, clumsy birds, by fire from the ground, and been' wrecked with all hands. French reports state that these rigid airships have /proved unable to rise sufficiently to escape the French artillery, and their huge bulk must have made them easy targets. THE RIGID DIRIGIBLE. Germany, of course, has a large airship fleet, about half being Zeppelins and half non-rigid or semi-rigid dirigible balloons of the Parseval or Gross type. There are given in the latest publications some thirteen Zeppelins, including three which were privately armed prior to the outbreak of war. The largest of these i 6 said to be of 32 tons displacement, able to carry nearly eight tons useful load in ebape of explosives, if necessary, 'ihe maximum speed is 50 knots, horse-power nearly 1000, and fuel endurance for 30 houre. The Zeppelins are built of very expensive aluminium alloy for the framework, and cost from £30,000 to £50,000 apiece, equal to the cost of more, than twenty first-class aeroplanes. Their vast bulk — 550 ft long by . 60ft .diameter for the largest — renders them extremely difficult to handle on the ground, and many accidents have already occurred in landing. Half a regiment of soldiers is required to anchor And house a Zeppelin in a wind. Both England and Franc© have experimented with the rigid airship, but without satisfaction. The first English Zeppelin broke its back at Barrow in coming put of its hangar, and the French Zeppelin, the Spiess, has not -yet been duplicated. The cost of these airships is so great and their fragility and liability to damage or destruction so formidable also that both Britain and France have turned down the Zeppelin type as unsatisfactory. ITALY'S EXPERIENCE. The only country which 'prior to the present war had any real experience with airships and aeroplanes in military operations is Italy. In the war in Tripoli ■both aeroplanes and airships were actively engaged in both reconnaissance and bomb-dropping, and did a great deal of good work, though against negligible opposition from the Turks, who had no form of aircraft whatever and no antiaircraft guns. The bomb-dropping was futile enough, and after a while ceased even to interest the Turks. The Italians realised that bombs to be successful must be very big, and big bombs cannot be carried by aeroplanes, nor even by the ordinary small airship. Where the Italians chiefly succeeded was in reconnaissance work. They devoted much attention to aerial telephotography, and made beautifully accurate and detailed maps of the country, and also of the enemy's positions. They were able to discover trenches of which, owing to the scattering in front of the trench of the sand dug out from it, no sign was visible from belov. The Italians are now said to be producing wonderful telephotographs which are said to enable an enemy to be detected in position at' a distance of twenty-three miles! SUCCESS OF SMALL AIRSHIPS. The airships used in Tripoli were quite small, only 4g tons displacement, as compared with the Zeppelin's 20 to 30 tons. During the continuance of hostilitias they made 91 flights, 46 of them with the intention of molesting the enemy. Pho tographs were taken on 58 occasions. Tho crews consisted of three officers and a mechanic. The airships threw 330 bombs altogether from a height varying between 3000 and 4000 feet. Between the conclusion of hostilities and January, 1913, 127 further flights were made, and between 6th April and 29th July one of these war-worn dirigibles made uo fewer than 49 flights and proved its handiness by frequently alighting for the sake of practice, where no large and trained "landing party," was available such as is always required with Zeppelins. Of these Italian airships and some 12-tonners built and building, an expert British authority says that they are extraordinarily efficient. Italy has also the Forlaiiini airship "Citta de Milano," which represents to-day probably the most useful type of airship in existence. The car, wliieh is totally enclosed, runs like a keel underneath the wholb length of the non-rigid balloon to which it gives the necessary rigidity without detracting from the equally necessary elasticity required in airships, and in which the Zeppelins are deficient. The balloon is divided into fourteen separate compartments, and in general the whole airship seems to have all the advantages of the Zeppelin without its grave disadvantages. It may lie added that the Forlanini typt? of airship has been adopted by the ' British War Office, which has now tried out practically every type of airship in existence from the Zeppelin to the simplesi non-rigid balloon. It is a testimony to English engineering that the Forlanini and other Italian airships all employ the Wolseley aero motor to drive the propellers. FRANCE'S EQUIPMENT. France ha* a large number and a great variety of airships, one or two of them dating back as far as 1909. They are of all types and all capacities, but with the exception of the Spices, a. rigid airship with woodeu three-ply framework after the pattern of the German Schutte-Lanz, they are all non-rigid or semi-rigid. By rigid it should be understood airships which carry their lifting balloons, inside a rigid Irtimework of aluminium alloy or wood. Semirigid amstups are those wliich have the balloon directly attached to a rigid keel or car. Non-rigid is the term applied to airships in which" the balloon carries the ear simply by a network of ropes. It may be explained also here that 1000 cubic metres of hydrogen will life a weight of one ton, and a "20-ton" ship is one with a capacity of 20,000 cubic metres. So far as can be gathered now the French have something over a score of more or less efficient airships in commission. The largest has a capacity of 20 tons and a t.pced of about 45 miles <uj hour.. France haa 12 ainhip

| stations as opposed to Germany's 27 stations. In both countries the hangars were originally built too small, and in many cases have had to be replaced at a. great cost. With all airships, but most particularly with Zeppelins, getting them into and out of the hangar or ! ehed is a delicate and dangerous operation. England has five airships, rangl ing from 5.3 to 10 tons, with maximum speeds of 45 mile-s per hour. PROTECTION AGAINST AIRCRAFT. The protection afforded against airships by fast-climbing aeroplanes has been noted in a previous article, and an instance has been recorded in the present war of the destruction of a Zeppe- | lin by a French airman, Perrin, who [ climbed - up high above the Zeppelin, and dropping bombs from aloft completely wrecked the airship. Aeroplanes have climbed up to 26,000 feet from the . sea level, and frequently up to 15,000 I feet, while the absolute record for a Zeppelin is 10,000 feet, and that probably with only a light load. Fully loaded a Zeppelin could- not rise normally above 6000 feet, where it would be I easily withfn range of anti-aircraft highangle guns. These -are now manufactured in all the principal countries, and probably each of the belligerent nations is armed with them, in numbers great or small. In England they are made by Vickens, Armstrong, and the Coventry Ordnance firms among others, while Schneider makes them in France, and Krupp and Ehrhardt in Germany — the firm which supplied field guns to Britain in the Boer war. These anti-aircraft guns range from machine guns using rifle ammunition to 3-inch calibre guns firing 10-pound special shell. They are all automatic in action, and all throw from 500 to 200 rounds per minute according to calibre up to a height of 15,000 feet, or nearly three miles — a height far beyond the power of the Zeppelin to reach and also beyond the limits of useful reconnaissance. Ehrhardt's gun is said, to have ■an even greater range — over 20,000 feet high, according to report, and throw* an ingenious shell, part of which bursts as shrapnel and p al .t — the head of .Che projectile — goes on to perforate and explode in any object it strikes. The chances of^an airship, or even of an aeroplane, once sighted, escaping these guns, which are built, for carrying in motor-cars or for field artillery purposes, seem to be extraordinarily small. Thus, on the whole, in the present war the odds are against the aeroplane and vastly against the airship, unless it is used over towns like Antwerp or flies at night or in the clouds. As in every other branch of war chance, luck and skill in the choice of conditions will play a greater part today than ever before. Aircraft are not diflicult to destroy, but they are mighty dangerous until destroyed.