CONTROL IN WARFARE

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 107, 2 November 1933, Page 12

CONTROL IN WARFARE

IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT

USED AT MANOEUVRES

New features were few in this year's Army training, but one was of farreaching importance —in every sense. This was the advent of the autogiro as an aerial staff ,car in last week's big exercises, writes Captain B. H. Liddell Hart in the London "Daily Telegraph." It did enough to suggest that wo are on the eve of a revolutionary development in the means of communication and control in mobile warfare. And this promise was extended by the latest type of autogiro, which came down later to give a special demonstration, although it did not actually take part in the operations. This has no wings and its "windmill" has only two blades. Because of its winglessness it provides wonderful observation— like sitting in an armchair hoisted in the air. And when flying low over the countryside it is said to be very difficult to detect from above by hostile aircraft. In still air it can "take off" in about fourteen yards, and against a slight breeze it rose within the length of "an ordinary room. In coming down it hovered abouf eight feet off the ground. and then dropped flat, its wheels hardly turning over. Among the more startling of its feats is its ability to hover alongside a marching column just clear of the ground, so that notes can be passed by hand, for its speed can be reduced as low as 10 m.p.h., although it can travel at ovef 100 m.p.h.—the speed range of the older type is from 25-70 m.p.h. ■■■"•.. THE OLD SYSTEM. Even this type proved of remarkable utility, in the operations, and made all the greater impression by contrast with the normal means of intercommunication. Nothing, indeed, was more depressing for the prospects of mobile warfare than the long time taken by reports to filter back to the divisional and corps headquarters. There were a multiplicity of means—cable, wireless, dispatch riders—but i often'a paucity of information. In some, cases several hours .elapsed before corps headquarters received neVs that was vital to their decisions. . I have many times remarked in recent years that dispatch riders and staff officers in motor-cars are more reliable and more rapid news-bringers than telephone or wireless. But they are apt to get caught in traffic blocks, and also by enemy patrols. The autcgiro is not only much faster, but "hops" over obstructions. . • General Jackson, commanding the Second Division, was the first to exploit this new means. On one occasion, having made his plan he left his headquarters, visited one of his forward brigades, then flew.on to see the other, and was back again within forty minutes at his headquarters, just as his staff had finished getting out the written orders. Throughout the final operations General Harington was using his per-sonal-staff more or less in this way, and seemed to bo finding it the most effective means of keeping touch with the battle. On Friday he went further and sent his aide-de-camp, Lieut. SmithDorrien, round in an autogiro.