FLYING TORPEDOES.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 14726, 3 August 1921, Page 6

FLYING TORPEDOES.

* CONTROL BY WIRELESS. Experiments, throwing a new light on the problems of aerial war are reported as having taken place, under official auspices and with great secrecy, dt Villacoublay, near Paris. “Tele-avions,” small heavier-than-air machines, really torpedoes with wings, are sent up into the air under their own power, and are then controlled by wireless telegraphy. This • control, imperfect at first and presenting difficulties, is now said to be greatly improved, machines being flown for .considerable distances and made to carry out all sorts of manoeuvres while under wireless direction from the ground..

A further development contemplated is for a method to be perfected by which a pilot in an aeroplane can control the movements of one of these air torpedoes. This would mean that after a torpedo had been launched and controlled up to a certain height by the land station its direction would be taken over by a pilot in a special aeroplane, who would send it on ahead of him till he had guided it to its target, he himself remaining at some distance.

Another refinement in view is the control of movements of an air torpedo by a ground station even when it has passed out of sight of those in the station.

It has been calculated that a series of these torpedoes could be sent several' hundred miles to fall pn any large objective, such, as a city or military centre, and that thousands of tons of explosives could be dropped in 24 hours.