PASSING OF THE IRONCLAD

Evening Star, Issue 14513, 3 November 1910, Page 7

PASSING OF THE IRONCLAD

THE AEROPLANE’S PLACE IN NAVAL WAR. The inclusion of the submarine in this year’s naval manoeuvres and the astonishing development of power flight on both sides of the Atlantic suggest interesting speculations on the future of naval warfare, says a writer in the London ‘ Chronicle.’ It is difficult to avoid the suggestion that the day may be even now in sight that will pieseut ihe Dreadnought in the true light of its absurdity as the most disastrous means ever devised by humanity for the wasting of human lives and human shill and wealth and endeavor. The development of the submaring is limited, because the very conditions of its effective existence condemn it to purbiindness. Rut with the advent of the passenger-carrying aeroplane there is placed at the disposal of the nations for the first time what may prove to be a cheap and rapid and effective means of escape from the grinding burden of naval armaments. Present achievements afford an ample basis for speculation. If one man can fly at seventy miles an hour to-day, ten thousand may do the same. If four can soar above the clouds, it is open for any number who care to take the risk to follow them. It is no disparagement of the self-sacrificing endeavors of aeroplane pioneers to say that there is no secret of flight. Men have learned to fly in twenty minutes. At present, no doubt, safety lies in special individual aptitude. But safety is not the main consideration in war. —The Invulnerable Aeroplane.— No one at all familiar with modern artillery will ba likely to maintain the possibility of hitting a minute speck in the sky, travelling at three times the speed of a battleship, able to soar and dive, to wheel and dodge on the pivot of a wing’s lip. The aeroplane imports into human conflict the new and terrible element of absolute invulnerability. The tremendous armament of the Dreadnought, its devastating broadside of 12-inoh guns as well as its innumerable quick-firers, will be useless at ranges and trajectories so utterly incalculable. It is duo to no deficiency in the weapon itself, but to fho limitations of the roan behind it. Humanity has at last devised an engine of war that its own highest skill is incapable of hitting with artillery. To kill a foottoidier in warfare his own weight in bullets must be fired at him. No Dreadnought could store or discharge the tornado of projectiles necessary to stop one aeroplane in full flight. Examination of the achievements of the prst year leads inevitably to ihc belief that the bombardment or blockading of the coast -of a civilised nation has become finally impossible. Picture the position of a naval commander charged with the blockade of London and the reduction of ihe fortifications of the Thames. Grant, if you please, that the British Navy is occupied elsewhere, and that a progressive War Offiohas foreseen the contingency. The foreign admiral’s fleet of a dozen Dreadnoughts will have cost £20,000,PC0, and will be manned by perhaps 20,000 men, whose training represents almost as much again of sunken capital. —Aeroplanes in Action. — As the admiral fires his first shot, from the safety of a central camp at Aldershot, aeroplanes are hurried to wards the coast in special trains. A thousand of them, as a preliminary measure, would be deposited with their pilots on the coast of Kent, and their demountable parts assembled in an hour. They have cost less than half the price of a single Dreadnought, and the entire aerial fleet requires no more than a Dreadnought crew. In the dusk they depart in single file for the blockading warships, flyingjit the height of l,Qooft, or even 2,000. Some flutter and collapse at once. A few take fire and explode in mid-air. Still others plunge steeply to earth, and vanish in an angry spurt of flamt. We are considering the aeroplane at its present stage of efficiency. But the largo majority covet the twenty or thirty miles in safety, reaching the blockading fleet at a speed which it cannot rival, and at a height it canno' reach by gunfire. Probably the first warn mg. that, the warships will receive will be the splash of a bomb that has missed and the distant purr of the aviator’s engine as ho restarts it after planing down upon ihe battleships and sours preparatory to another swoop.

—An Attack from the Cloud*.— At once the Dreadnought fleet is transformed from a company of terrible engines of devastation manned by trained and confident fighters into so many impotent hulks animated by futile operators of small arms. The mighty broadside, the powerful turlxnes, tho thousands of tons of armor-plate—all are useless as if they had been left behind. Down towards the sputtering populous decks the aeroplanes will dive from the clouds m “vol plane"—a matter of seconds—perhaps trailing after them large parcels of high explosives at the end of steel wires connected with a battery. One after another they will swoop from every point of the compose, motors throttled into silence until the blow is struck. ’ As long as they have ammunition they will continue to rise and return and swoop, washing clear the decks of the apprehensive warships with blazing petrol, rendering their gun turrets immovable and uninhabitable, blinding their marksmen with smoke-shells, later flying low and seeking to cast bombs of lyddite or fulminate into the gaping funnels, and finally circling slowly above them and dropping the remainder of their cargo at leisure. —When the Smoke Clears. — When the. smoke cleared the sea would bo dotted with crippled aeroplanes, whose piloU have failed to restart their engines, or had lost their sense of balance in excitement or, too daringly, had entered the hail of rifle and machine gun fire and received a chance bullet. But oven at the present, stage most of the aeroplanes would be able to return to their base for fresh supplies of bombs. Whether by day or night the moral effect of such an attack would be beyond calculation. At a total risk in lives and

material amounting probably to only Olietwentieth of tho stake represented by the Dreadnought fleet, those huge complex and cod.lv mechanisms would have been diverted from the purpose for which they were built to one for which they were never intended, and to which they must always remain totally inadequate. Whether sunk or _ not, they would represent so much lost capital—so much splendid achievement consigned to the scraphtap. A Dreadnought is too big to hide, and too intr.cate to be replaced within the term of any conceivable war. Aeroplanes, on tie other hand, can be turned out by the score as long as the nation requiring them retains control of wood and canvas and a few acres of its land. They can hide in any railway station or be packed into a coachhouse. Command of the sea, won by blood and maintained by treasure, lasts indefinitely, but no nation can hope to secure absolute command of the air for a single month. It would mean wrecking every workshop in the a-remy's country, and imprisoning every mechanic. Aa long as a hostile warshm remained within sight of the coast of 'Britain, swarm after swarm of chnau and rapid aeroplanes could be launch d' ryn it. Sometimes by day in hordes, sometimes by night in spies, ihey won'd wear out the nerves of its demoralised crew, and Anally destroy it with a single lucky diet. Hundreds might fall into the sea, a thousand might fail, and leturn to Ivy again. But if only one succeeded in planting its load in a vital spot the victory would be to the British. If you are able at the expenditure of £150,000, 1o fnflicl £2,000,000 worth of damage, you have won.