TROOPS BY AIR

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1576, 20 November 1924, Page 2

TROOPS BY AIR

Wonderful aeroplanes, capable of transporting 50 fully armed soldiers — approximately a platoon of infantry—are being built for the Air Ministry. Even these, however, are not believed by experts to represent the last word in troop-carrying machines. They talk with confidence of flying troop trains able to carry 200 or 300 soldiers with equipment, who can be whirled through the sky at a speed of 100 miles an hour, says the Daily Express. The new aerial troop-trans-port machines are being constructed entirely of steel. In the roomy fuselage will be tip-up seats. Forced marches will be a thing of the past. Al'l the discomfort and all the hardships of movement over arid and possibly enemy-infested country will be unknown in the future.

The troop-carriers of the air will add a new and important factor to warfare. It will become possible for a small but highly trained body of troops to .cause damage out of all proportion to their numbers —to destroy railways, bridges, roads at important junctions, and military works, and then return as rapidly as they went. Lines of communication will therefore have to be guarded over an infinitely wider area than at present, for places far from the actual scope of operations. The first of the larger types of troopcarrying ’planes will be ready for practical tests early next year.