War Time in London

Manawatu Times, Volume XL, Issue 13949, 30 July 1918, Page 7

War Time in London

AEROPLANE DEVELOPMENTS. LONDON, May 27. Air fighting grows more and more deadly and the aeroplanes engaged in it more and more formidable. As one result, it is increasingly obvious that the future battles of the air will play a great part in the ultimate incision of the war. Already it is seen that the strain upon and the loss of flying men and machines demand an increasing and a mammoth energy of training and of building for the due provision of pilots and observers, and scouts and battle-planes, and wc in London have not far to go to see what a marvellous development the construction of aeroplanes has undergone in England alone, where not in one locality but in dozens small and lightly staffed aeroplane works have grown into gigantic concerns covering acres of fields and employing thousands of men and women. But still the cry is for more machines, and still the aeroplane industry leaps and bounds with life and power. Part of that need is daily explaining itself on fhe western front, wliere nir "battles arc continuous and where on some days the opposing fliers swarm like flocks of marauding birds. But the lighting there and its daily toll of gallant lives is only part of the story, of which the rest writes itself in the increasing influence upon the struggles of the armies themselves of massed squadrons of aeroplanes that for ever" swoop and scatter above the masses of marching or resting men, v ith terrible and until now nndreamed-i J effect, and in the long-distance exploits of bombing machines which for ever groflr in menace and in bulk. In London we have reason to know that the enemy air raider

now employs a bigger machine and a more ferocious bomb than ever before. Even so, we arc ahead of him in the frequency and the deadliness of our own raids on German towns, our success in which is to him such a disaster that ho is crying, for a revision of the whole business of air-raiding. He is not in the least likely to get what he cries for, especially now when he is red-handed from one of the worst atrocities of the whole war, the bombing of our hospitals far behind the lines. For that he will receive no mercy, either from fliers or from the armies in the field. His now Gothas have a wingspan of 130 feet. He is proud of them. But in spite of them he is overmastered in the air, as all the results of recent lighting clearly show. And that he will remain overmastered is shown as clearly by the energy, the brains, the skill, and the resolve now feverishly active in this country and in France upon problems of aeroplane construction, and upon the art of flying.