TORPEDOPLANES.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 17074, 30 August 1917, Page 5

TORPEDOPLANES.

A German seaplane off the Suffolk coast the other day introduced, to us a method of naval warfare which is a pure novelty to the great majority of people in this country —namely, the attack with, torpedoes from aircraft.

The Admiralty has since \told us that this mode of attack was, successfully employed by our airmen in the Dardanelles nearly two years ago, hut I believe I am right in saying that the whole idea originated with Rear-Admiral Bradley A. Fiske, of the United States Navy, who in 1912 executed a patent "covering both a method and a;.1, apparatus for delivering submarine torpedoes from an airship."

This new type of fighting craft, whose possibilities .can as yet be only vaguely realised, will be known quite naturally Vs the torpedoplane. Generally speaking, the method of carrying and "firing", the torpedo is much the same as that which was used in the small and early types of topedo-boats, and which is put to such effective use by the picket-boats of the Triumph and Majestic when they torpedoed' and destroyed the stranded E 15 in the Dardanelles in April, 1915 to prevent her from falling intact into the hands of the enemy. The torpedo is slung in an inverted cradle, where it is held by tongs, and at the requisite moment the tongs are opened and the weapon, its engines simultaneously set ; in motion, drops into the water and heads away for the target.

In the torpedoplane the dropping gear would be suspended between the floats. , The lifting power of modern aircraft is such that it would be quite possible to carry two torpedoes, weighing up to I,ooolb. each, one on either side of the body. Aiming would be done in the same manner as with a fixed tube in a submarine—that is, the 'plane would have to be brought dead head-on to the target. A captain in the Italian Navy, experimenting with a torpedoplane a year or two back, is/said to have made nine hits in ten attempts at a range of 3,000 yards. ' >

HARBOUR ATTACKS

Operating between the lights—at dusk or early dawn—a flotilla of torpedoplanes would be an unpleasant adversary to meet at sea. Approaching at a great height, the aircraft would plane steeply down to, reach the water at a distance of five/ thousand yards from their objective. High-angle fire would be ineffective against such tactics, and although a destroyer screen would be useful (assuming the aircraft to have to alight on the water, which does not necessarily follow), the destroyers' inferiority in speed would be a great factor in favour of the attack. In any case, the loss of thirty torpedoplanes would not equal, either .-in men, money, or time to build; the! loss of a single destroyer. To be effective the defence would have to I meet the attack in its own element I —in other words, a fleet would need | to be protected in the air by "tor-pedoplane-rlestroyers," as it is protected on the surface by torpedo-boat destroyers.

There are some who will see in the tcrpedoplane a possible means of effectively attacking fleets in harbours where they cannot otherwise be reached. Fleet bases nowadays are strongly boomed and netted" and mined against submarine, and, generally speaking, are not susceptible to attack from the water, whether on the surface or belcw. No boom or net would keep out a torpedoplane. Given the necessary conditions, it could discharge its weapons within the defences; and if the torpedoes were so adjusted as to move in circles instead of straight lines, the chance of doing considerable damage inside a harbour would be greatly increased. A few weeks before the war Sir Percy Scott said: "With a flotilla of submarines commanded by dashing young officers, of whom we have plenty, I would undertake to get through any boom into any harbour and sink or materially damage all the ships in that harbour." That offer does not seem to have been taken advantage of, but it certainly suggests one of the most momentous possibilities of the torpedoplane. RICHARD THIRKELL.