ITALY’S “DREADNOUGHT” BIPLANE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLVIII, Issue 4457, 26 January 1917, Page 3

ITALY’S “DREADNOUGHT” BIPLANE.

GIANT AIR CRUISERS

The Italians,' alone of all the western Powers, have adopted a type of aeroplane larger and much more powerful than any except the big Russian machines, writes Mr H. G. Wells in a recent article. They are not at all suitable for any present’purpose upon the Italian front, hut at.a later srage they 'would he invaluable on the western front, because of their enormous bomb or machine-gun carrying capacity. ! The big C'aproni machines which the Italians possess are of 300 horsepower; and there will presently bo biplanes of 500 horse-power. One gets up a gang-way into them as one gets into a yacht. They have a main deck, a forward machine-gun deck, and an aft machine-gun. One may walk about in them when in the air. In ' addition to guns and men they carry, a very considerable weight of bombs. 1 They cannot, of course, get up with ! the speed nor soar to the height of i Britain’s smaller aeroplanes; it is as * a carrier in raids behind a force of j fighting machines that they should ! find their use. I

CAMOUFLAGE. One consequence of the growing importance of the aeroplane in warfare is the development of a new military art. the art of “camouflage.” _ Camouflage is humbugging or deceiving an enemy. It is making things—and especially military things—to seem not what they are, but something peaceful and rural; to make them seem harmless and quite uninteresting to aeroplane observers. Tt is the art of making big guns look like haystacks and tents like level patches of field.

Also it includes the art of making attractive models of guns ,or camps, trenches, and the like that are not bona-fide guns, camps, or trenches at all. so that the aeroplane observer may waste his time and energies and the enemy gunfire be misdirected. In Italy I saw such dummy guns so made as to deceive the very elect at a distance of a thousand feet. The camouflage of concealment aims either at invisibility or imitation.

. I have seen a supply train look like a row of cottages, its smokestack a chimney, with the tops of sham palings running along the back line of the engines and creepers painted up its sides. But the commonest camouflage is merely to conceal stationary objects. Trees are brought up and planted near the object to he hidden ; it is painted in the same tones as its background; it is covered with an awning painted to look like grass or earth. I suppose it is only a matter of development before a dummy cow or so is put up to chew the end on the awning.