<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</SPAN><br/> <span class="subhead"><span class="smcap">The War in the Air</span></span></h2>
<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">We</span> Americans are a peace-loving people,
which is the very reason why we went
into the war. We had to help down the
power that was disturbing the peace of the
world. We do not believe in conquests—at
least of the type that Germany tried to force—and
yet there are certain conquests that we
do indulge in once in a while.</p>
<p>Eleven years before Germany undertook to
conquer Europe two young Americans made the
greatest conquest that the world has ever seen.
The Wright brothers sailed up into the heavens
and gained the mastery of the air. They offered
their conquest to the United States; but
while we accepted their offering with enthusiasm
at first, we did not know what to do with
the new realm after we got it. There seemed
to be no particular use in flying. It was just<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</SPAN></span>
a bit too risky to be pleasant sport, and about
all we could see in it was an exhibition for the
circus or the county fair.</p>
<p>Not so in Europe, however. Flying meant
something over there—there where the frontiers
have ever bristled with big guns and
strong fortifications, and where huge military
forces have slept on their arms, never knowing
what dreadful war the morning would bring
forth. The war-lovers hailed the airplane as
a new instrument with which to terrorize their
neighbors; the peace-lovers saw in it another
menace to their homes; it gave them a new frontier
to defend. And so the military powers of
Europe took up the airplane seriously and
earnestly and developed it.</p>
<p>At first military authorities had rated the
airplane chiefly as a flying scout. Some bomb-dropping
experiments had been made with it,
but it proved very difficult to land the bombs
near the target, and, besides, machines of those
days were not built to carry very heavy loads,
so that it did not seem especially profitable to
attack the enemy from the skies. As for actual
battles up among the clouds, they were dreamed
of only by the writers of fiction. But wild<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</SPAN></span>
dreams became stern realities in the mighty
struggle between the great powers of the world.</p>
<h3>EYES IN THE SKY</h3>
<p>As a scouting-machine the airplane did
prove to be far superior to mounted patrols
which used to perform scout-work. In fact, it
changed completely the character of modern
warfare. From his position high up in the
heavens the flying scout had an unobstructed
view of the country for miles and he could see
just what the enemy was doing. He could see
whether large forces of men were collecting for
an attack. He could watch the course of supply-trains,
and judge of their size. He could
locate the artillery of the enemy and come back
with information which in former times a scout
posted in a tall tree or even in a captive balloon
could not begin to acquire. Surprise attacks
were impossible, with eyes in the sky. The
aviator could help his own batteries by signaling
to them where to send their shell, and when
the firing began he would spot the shots as they
landed and signal back to the battery how to
correct its aim so as to drop the shell squarely
on the target.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</SPAN></span>
The French sprang a surprise on the Germans
by actually attacking the infantry from
the sky. The idea of attack from overhead
was so novel that armies did not realize the
danger of exposing themselves behind the battle-front.
Long convoys of trucks and masses
of infantry moved freely over the roads
behind the lines and they were taken by surprise
when the French began dropping steel
darts upon them. These were about the size
of a pencil, with pointed end and fluted tail,
so that they would travel through the air like
an arrow. The darts were dropped by the
hundred wherever the airmen saw a large
group of the enemy, and they struck with sufficient
velocity to pierce a man from head to
foot. But steel darts were not used very long.
The enemy took to cover and then the only way
to attack him was to drop explosives which
would blow up his shelter.</p>
<p>At the outset, air scouts were more afraid of
the enemy on the ground than in the sky. The
Germans had anti-aircraft guns that were fired
with accuracy and accounted for many Allied
planes. In those days, airplanes flew at comparatively
low altitudes and they were well<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</SPAN></span>
within the reach of the enemy's guns. But it
was not long before the airplanes began to fight
one another. Each side was very much annoyed
by the flying scouts of its opponents and
after a number of pistol duels in the sky the
French began to arm their planes with machine-guns.</p>
<p>Two months after the war started the first
airplane was sent crashing to earth after a battle
in the sky. The fight took place five thousand
feet above the earth, between a French
and a German machine. The German pilot was
killed and the plane fell behind the French
lines, carrying with it a Prussian nobleman
who died before he could be pulled out of the
wreckage. The war had been carried into the
skies. But if scouts were to fight one another,
they could not pay much attention to scouting
and spotting and it began to be realized that
there were four distinct classes of work for the
airplane to do—scouting, artillery-spotting, battling,
and bombing. Each called for special
training and its own type of machine. As air
fighting grew more specialized these classes
were further subdivided, but we need not go into
such refinements.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</SPAN></span></p>
<h3>AIR SCOUTS AND THEIR DANGERS</h3>
<p>The scouting-airplane usually carried two
men, one to drive the machine and the other to
make observations. The observer had to carry
a camera, to take photographs of what lay below,
and he was usually equipped with a wireless
outfit, with which he could send important
information back to his own base. The camera
was sometimes fitted with a stock like that of
a gun, so that it could be aimed from the
shoulder. Some small cameras were shaped so
that they could be held in the hand like a pistol
and aimed over the side of the fuselage, or body,
of the airplane; but the best work was done with
large cameras fitted with telescopic lenses, or
"telephoto" lenses, as they are called. Some
of these were built into the airplane, with the
lens opening down through the bottom of the
fuselage.</p>
<div id="ip_128" class="figcenter" style="width: 535px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/i_128.jpg" width-obs="535" height-obs="285" alt="" /><br/>
<div class="captionl">(C) Underwood & Underwood</div>
<div class="caption0">A Handley-Page Bombing Plane with One of its Wings Folded Back</div>
</div>
<p>The scouting-airplane carried a machine-gun,
not for attack, but for defense. It had to be a
quick climber and a good dodger, so that it
could escape from an attacking plane. Usually
it did not have to go very far into the enemy
country, and it was provided with a large wing-<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</SPAN></span>spread,
so that if anything happened to the
engine, it could <i>volplane</i>, or glide back, to its
own lines. As the scouting-planes were large,
they offered a big target to anti-aircraft guns,
and so the work of the air scout was to swoop
down upon the enemy, when, of course, the
machine would be traveling at high velocity,
because it would have all the speed of falling
added to that which its own propeller gave it.</p>
<div id="ip_129" class="figcenter" style="width: 271px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/i_129.jpg" width-obs="271" height-obs="505" alt="" /><br/>
<div class="captionh">How an object dropped from the Woolworth Building would
increase its speed in falling</div>
</div>
<p>It was really a very difficult matter to hit a
rapidly moving airplane; and even if it were
hit, there were few spots in which it could be
mortally wounded. Hundreds of shots could go
through the wings of an airplane without impairing
its flying in the least. The engine, too,
could be pretty well peppered with ordinary
bullets without being disabled. As for the men
in the machine, they furnished small targets,
and even they could be hit in many places without
being put entirely out of business. And so
the dangers of air scouting were not so great
as might at first be supposed.</p>
<p>One of the most vulnerable spots in the airplane
was the gasolene-tank. If that were
punctured so that the fuel would run out, the
airplane would have to come to the ground.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</SPAN></span>
Worse still, the gasolene might take fire and
there was nothing the aviator dreaded more
than fire. There were occasions in which he had
to choose between leaping to earth and burning
to death, and the former was usually preferred
as a quicker and less painful death.
In some of the later machines the gasolene-tank
could be pitched overboard if it took fire, by the
throwing of a lever, and then the aviator could
glide to earth in safety.</p>
<h3>THE SELF-HEALING GASOLENE-TANK</h3>
<p>One of the contributions which we made to
military aëronautics was a gasolene-tank that
was puncture-proof. It was made of soft rubber
with a thin lining of copper. There are
some very soft erasers on the market through
which you can pass a lead pencil and never find
the hole after it has passed through, because
the rubber has closed in and healed the wound.
Such was the rubber used in the gasolene-tank.
It could be peppered with bullets and yet would
not leak a drop of gasolene, unless the bullet
chanced to plow along the edge of the tank
and open a long gash.</p>
<p>The Germans used four different kinds of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</SPAN></span>
cartridges in their aircraft guns. The first
carried the ordinary bullet, a second type had
for its bullet a shell of German silver filled with
a phosphor compound. This was automatically
ignited through a small opening in the base of
the shell when it was fired from the gun and it
left a trail of smoke by which the gunner could
trace its course through the air and correct his
aim. At night the bright spot of light made
by the burning compound would serve the same
purpose. Such a bullet, if it hit an ordinary
gasolene-tank, would set fire to its contents.
The bullet would plow through the tank and out
at the opposite side and there, at its point of
exit, is where the gasolene would be set on
fire. Such incendiary bullets were repeatedly
fired into or through the rubber tanks and the
hole would close behind the bullet, preventing
the contents from taking fire. The two other
types of bullets referred to were an explosive
bullet or tiny shell which would explode on
striking the target and a perforating steel bullet
which was intended to pierce armor or penetrate
into vital parts of an airplane engine.</p>
<p>Machines with which artillery-spotting was
done were usually manned by a pilot and an observer,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</SPAN></span>
so that the latter could devote his entire
attention to noting the fire of the guns and
signaling ranges without being hampered by
having to drive the machine. These machines
were usually of the pusher type, so that the observer
could have an unobstructed view. They
did not have to be fast machines. It was really
better for them to move slowly. Had it been
possible for them to stop altogether and hover
over the spot that was being shelled, it would
have been a distinct advantage. That would
have given the observer a chance to note with
better accuracy the fall of the shell. Like the
scout, the spotter had to be a fast climber, so
that it could get out of the range of enemy guns
and run away from attacking planes.</p>
<h3>GIANTS OF THE SKY</h3>
<p>The largest war-planes were the bomb-dropping
machines. They had to be capable of
carrying heavy loads of explosives. They were
usually slow machines, speed being sacrificed
in carrying-capacity.</p>
<p>The Germans paid a great deal of attention
to big bomb-dropping machines, particularly
after their Zeppelins proved a failure. Their<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</SPAN></span>
huge Gothas were built to make night raids on
undefended cities. The Italians and the British
retaliated with machines that were even larger.
At first the French were inclined to let giant
planes alone. They did not care to conduct
long-distance bombing-raids on German cities
because their own important cities were so near
the battle-front that the Germans could have
done those places more harm than the French
could have inflicted. Later they built some
giant machines, although not so large as those
of the Italians and the British.</p>
<p>The large triplane Capronis built by the
Italians held a crew of three men. They were
armed with three guns and carried 2750 pounds
of explosives. That made a useful load of 4000
pounds. The machine was driven by three engines
with a total of 900 horse-power.</p>
<p>The big British plane was the Handley-Page,
which had a wing-spread of 125 feet and could
carry a useful load of three tons. These enormous
machines conducted their raids at night
because they were comparatively slow and could
not defend themselves against speedy battle-planes.
The big Italian machines used "search-light"
bombs to help them locate important<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</SPAN></span>
points on the ground beneath. These were
brilliant magnesium torches suspended from
parachutes so that they would fall slowly and
give a broad illumination, while the airplane itself
was shielded from the light by the parachute.</p>
<p>But these giants were not the only bombing-machines.
There were smaller machines that
operated over the enemy's battle-line and
dropped bombs on any suspicious object behind
the enemy lines. These machines had to be convoyed
by fast battle-planes which fought off
hostile airmen.</p>
<h3>HOW FAST IS A HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES PER HOUR?</h3>
<p>In naval warfare the battle-ship is the biggest
and heaviest ship of the fleet, but in the
air the battle-planes are the lightest and the
smallest of the lot. They are one-man machines,
as a rule, little fellows, but enormously
speedy. Speed is such an important factor in
aërial warfare that there was a continuous
struggle between the opposing forces to produce
the faster machine. Airplanes were constantly
growing speedier, until a speed of 150<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</SPAN></span>
miles per hour was not an uncommon rate of
travel. It is hard to imagine such a speed as
that, but we may gain some idea if we consider
a falling object. The observation platform of
the Woolworth Building, in New York, is about
750 feet above the ground. If you should drop
an object from this platform you would start
it on a journey that would grow increasingly
speedy, particularly as it neared the ground.
By the time it had dropped from the sixtieth
story to the fifty-ninth it would have attained a
speed of nearly 20 miles per hour. (We are not
making any allowances for the resistance of the
air and what it would do to check the speed.) As
it passed the fiftieth story it would be traveling
as fast as an express-train, or 60 miles per hour.
It would finally reach the ground with a speed
equal to that of a fast battle-plane—150 miles
per hour.</p>
<p>The battle-plane was usually fitted with a
single machine-gun that was fixed to the airplane,
so that it was brought to bear on the
target by aiming the entire machine. In this the
plane was something like a submarine, which
must point its bow at its intended victim in order
to aim its torpedo. The operator of the battle-plane<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</SPAN></span>
simply drove his machine at the enemy
and touched a button on his steering-lever to
start his machine-gun going.</p>
<h3>SHOOTING THROUGH THE PROPELLER</h3>
<p>Now, the fleetest machines and the most easily
manœuvered are those of the tractor type, that
is, the ones which have the propeller in front;
but having the propeller in front is a handicap
for a single-seater machine, for the gun has to
be fired through the propeller and the bullets
are sure to hit the propeller-blades. Nevertheless
the French did fire right through the propeller,
regardless of whether or not the blades
were hit; but at the point where they came in
line with the fire of the gun they were armored
with steel, so that there was no danger of their
being cut by the bullets. It was calculated that
not more than one bullet in eighteen would strike
the propeller-blade and be deflected from its
course, which was a very trifling loss; nevertheless,
it was a loss, and on this account a mechanism
was devised which would time the operations
of the machine-gun so that the shots would
come only when the propeller-blades were clear
of the line of fire.</p>
<div class="center"><div class="container">
<div id="ip_136" class="figleft" style="width: 349px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/i_136.jpg" width-obs="349" height-obs="236" class="p4" alt="" /><br/>
<div class="caption">Machine-Gun mounted to Fire over the Blades of the Propeller</div>
</div>
<div id="ip_136b" class="figright" style="width: 357px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/i_136b.jpg" width-obs="357" height-obs="370" alt="" /><br/>
<div class="in4 up4">
<div class="captionl">Courtesy of "Scientific American"</div>
<div class="caption0">Mechanism for Firing Between the Blades of the Propeller</div>
<p class="smaller">The cam <i>B</i> on the propeller shaft lifts the rod <i>C</i>, rocking the angle
lever <i>D</i> which moves the rod <i>E</i> and operates the firing-piece <i>F</i>.
Firing may be stopped by means of lever <i>H</i> and Bowden wire <i>G</i>.
<i>I</i> is the ejection-tube for empty cartridges.</p>
</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</SPAN></span></p>
<div id="ip_137" class="figcenter" style="width: 576px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/i_137.jpg" width-obs="576" height-obs="243" alt="" /><br/>
<div class="caption0">It would take a Hundred Horses to Supply the Power for a Small Airplane</div>
</div>
<p>A cam placed on the propeller-shaft worked
the trigger of the machine-gun. This did not
slow up the fire of the machine-gun. Quite the
contrary. We are apt to think of the fire of the
machine-guns as very rapid, but they usually
fire only about five hundred rounds per minute,
while an airplane propeller will make something
like twelve hundred revolutions per minute.
And so the mechanism was arranged to pull the
trigger only once for every two revolutions of
the propeller.</p>
<h3>FIGHTING AMONG THE CLOUDS</h3>
<p>There was no service of the war that began to
compare with that of the sky fighter. He had
to climb to enormous heights. Air battles took
place at elevations of twenty thousand feet.
The higher the battle-plane could climb, the better,
because the man above had a tremendous
advantage. Clouds were both a haven and a
menace to him. At any moment an enemy plane
might burst out of the clouds upon him. He
had to be ready to go through all the thrilling
tricks of a circus performer so as to dodge the
other fellow and get a commanding position.
If he were getting the worst of it, he might<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</SPAN></span>
feign death and let his machine go tumbling and
fluttering down for a thousand feet or so, only
to recover his equilibrium suddenly and dart
away when the enemy was thrown off his guard.
He might escape into some friendly cloud, but
he dared not hide in it very long, lest he get
lost.</p>
<p>It is a peculiar sensation that comes over an
aviator when he is flying through a thick mass
of clouds. He is cut off from the rest of the
world. He can hear nothing but the terrific
roar of his own motor and the hurricane rush
of the wind against his ears. He can see
nothing but the bluish fog of the clouds. He
begins to lose all sense of direction. His compass
appears to swing violently to and fro, when
really it is his machine that is zig-zagging under
his unsteady guidance. The more he tries to
steady it, the worse becomes the swing of the
compass. As he turns he banks his machine
automatically, just as a bicyclist does when
rounding a corner. He does this unconsciously,
and he may get to spinning round and round,
with his machine standing on its side. In some
cases aviators actually emerged from the clouds
with their machines upside down. To be sure,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</SPAN></span>
this was not an alarming position for an experienced
aviator; at the same time, it was not altogether
a safe one. A machine was sometimes
broken by its operator's effort to right it
suddenly. And so while the clouds made handy
shelters, they were not always safe harbors.</p>
<p>To the battle-plane fell the task of clearing
the air of the enemy. If the enemy's battle-planes
were disposed of, his bombing-planes,
his spotters, and his scouts could not operate,
and he would be blind. And so each side tried
to beat out the other with speedier, more powerful,
and more numerous battle-planes. Fast
double-seaters were built with guns mounted so
that they could turn in any direction.</p>
<h3>THE FLYING TANK</h3>
<p>The Germans actually built an armored battle-plane
known as the flying tank. It was a
two-seater intended mainly for attacking infantry
and was provided with two machine-guns
that pointed down through the floor of the
fuselage. A third gun mounted on a revolving
wooden ring could be used to fight off hostile
planes. The bottom and sides of the fuselage
or body of the airplane from the gunner's cockpit<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</SPAN></span>
forward were sheathed with plates of steel
armor. The machine was a rather cumbersome
craft and did not prove very successful. A flying
tank was brought down within the American
lines just before the signing of the armistice.</p>
<h3>AMERICA'S HELP</h3>
<p>Our own contribution to the war in the air
was considerable, but we had hardly started before
the armistice brought the fighting to an
end. Before we entered the war we did not
give the airplane any very serious consideration.
To be sure, we built a large number of
airplanes for the British, but they were not
good enough to be sent to the front; they were
used merely as practice planes in the British
training-schools. We knew that we were hopelessly
outclassed, but we did not care very
much. Then we stepped into the conflict.</p>
<p>"What can we do to help?" we asked our
allies, and their answer gave us a shock.</p>
<p>"Airplanes!" they cried. "Build us airplanes—thousands
of them—so that we can
drive the enemy out of the air and blind his
armies!"</p>
<p>It took us a while to recover from our surprise,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</SPAN></span>
and then we realized why we had been
asked to build airplanes. The reputation of the
United States as a manufacturer of machinery
had spread throughout the world. We Americans
love to take hold of a machine and turn it
out in big quantities. Our allies were sure that
we could turn out first-class airplanes, and many
of them, if we tried.</p>
<p>Congress made an appropriation of six hundred
and forty million dollars for aëronautics,
and then things began to hum.</p>
<h3>A BIRTHDAY PRESENT TO THE NATION</h3>
<p>The heart of an airplane is its engine. We
know a great deal about gasolene-engines, especially
automobile engines; but an airplane engine
is a very different thing. It must be tremendously
powerful, and at the same time extremely
light. Every ounce of unnecessary
weight must be shaved off. It must be built
with the precision of a watch; its vital parts
must be true to a ten-thousandth part of an inch.
It takes a very powerful horse to develop one
horse-power for a considerable length of time.
It would take a hundred horses to supply the
power for even a small airplane, and they would<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</SPAN></span>
weigh a hundred and twenty thousand pounds.
An airplane motor of the same power would
weigh less than three hundred pounds, which is
a quarter of the weight of a single horse. It
was this powerful, yet most delicate, machine
that we were called upon to turn out by the thousand.
There was no time to waste; a motor
must be designed that could be built in the
American way, without any tinkering or fussy
hand-work.</p>
<p>Two of our best engineers met in a hotel in
Washington on June 3, 1917, and worked for
five days without once leaving their rooms.
They had before them all the airplane knowledge
of our allies. American engine-builders
offered up their trade secrets. Everything was
done to make this motor worthy of America's
reputation. There was a race to have the motor
finished by the Fourth of July. Sure
enough, on Independence Day the finished motor
was there in Washington—the "Liberty motor,"
a birthday present to the nation.</p>
<p>Of course that did not mean that we were
ready at once to turn out Liberty motors by the
thousand. The engine had to undergo many
tests and a large number of alterations before it<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</SPAN></span>
was perfectly satisfactory and then special machinery
had to be constructed before it could
be manufactured in quantity. It was Thanksgiving
Day before the first manufactured Liberty
was turned out and even after that change
upon change was made in this little detail and
that. It was not until a year after we went to
war that the engine began to be turned out in
quantity.</p>
<p>There was nothing startlingly new about the
engine. It was a composite of a number of
other engines, but it was designed to be turned
out in enormous quantities, and it was remarkably
efficient. It weighed only 825 pounds and
it developed over 420 horse-power. Some machines
went up as high as 485 horse-power. An
airplane engine weighing less than 2 pounds per
horse-power is wonderfully efficient. Of course
the Liberty was too heavy for a light battle-plane
(a heavy machine, no matter how powerful,
cannot make sharp turns), but it was excellent
for other types of airplanes and large
orders for Liberty engines were made by our
allies. Of course we made other engines as
well, and the planes to carry them. We built
large Caproni and Handley-Page machines, and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</SPAN></span>
we were developing some remarkably swift and
powerful planes of our own when the Germans
thought it about time to stop fighting.</p>
<h3>FLYING BOATS</h3>
<p>So far we have said nothing about the seaplanes
which were used in large numbers to
watch for submarines. These were big flying
boats in which speed was not a very important
matter. One of the really big machines we developed,
but which was not finished until after
the war, was a giant with a 110-foot span and
a body or hull 50 feet long. During the war
seaplanes carried wireless telephone apparatus
with which they could call to destroyers and submarine-chasers
when they spotted a submarine.
They also carried bombs which they could drop
on U-boats, and even heavy guns with which
they could fire shell.</p>
<p>A still later development are the giant planes
of the N. C. type with a wing-spread of 126
feet and driven by four Liberty motors. They
carry a useful load of four and a half tons.</p>
<div id="ip_144" class="figcenter" style="width: 448px;"><SPAN href="images/i_144l.jpg">
<ANTIMG src="images/i_144.jpg" width-obs="448" height-obs="502" class="lborder" alt="" /></SPAN><br/>
<div class="captionl">(C) Underwood & Underwood</div>
<div class="caption0">The Flying-tank—an Armored German Airplane designed
for firing on troops on the march</div>
</div>
<p>Early in the war, large guns were mounted
on airplanes, but the shock of the recoil proved
too much for the airplane to stand. However,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</SPAN></span>
an American inventor produced a gun which
had no recoil. This he accomplished by using
a double-end gun, which was fired from the middle.
The bullet or shell was shot out at the
forward end of the gun and a dummy charge
of sand was shot out at the rear end. The sand
spread out and did no damage at a short distance
from the gun, but care had to be taken
not to come too close. These non-recoil guns
were made in different sizes, to fire 1½-inch to
3-inch shell.</p>
<h3>THE AUTOMATIC SEAPLANE</h3>
<p>Another interesting development was the target
airplane used for the training of aërial gunners.
This was a small seaplane with a span
of only 18½ feet, driven by a 12-horse-power
motor, the whole machine weighing but 175
pounds. This was sent up without a pilot and
it would fly at the rate of forty to fifty miles
per hour until its supply of gasolene gave out,
when it would drop down into the sea. It afforded
a real target for gunners in practice
machines.</p>
<div id="ip_145" class="figcenter" style="width: 520px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/i_145.jpg" width-obs="520" height-obs="285" alt="" /><br/>
<div class="captionl">(C) Underwood & Underwood</div>
<div class="caption0">An N-C (Navy-Curtiss) Seaplane of the type that made the first flight across the Atlantic</div>
</div>
<p>Early in the war an American inventor proposed
that seaplanes be provided with torpedoes<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</SPAN></span>
which they could launch at an enemy ship. The
seaplane would swoop down out of the sky to
within a short distance of the ship, drop its projectile,
and fly off again, and the torpedo would
continue on its course until it blew up the vessel.
It was urged that a fleet of such seaplanes protected
by a convoy of fast battle-planes could
invade the enemy harbors and destroys its powerful
fleet. It seemed like a rather wild idea,
but the British actually built such torpedo-planes
and tested them. However, the German
fleet surrendered before it was necessary to
blow it up in such fashion.</p>
<h3>AIRPLANES AFTER THE WAR</h3>
<p>With the war ended, all the Allied powers
have large numbers of airplanes on their hands
and also large numbers of trained aviators.
Undoubtedly airplanes will continue to fill the
skies in Europe and we shall see more and more
of them in this country. Even during the war
they were used for other purposes than fighting.
There were ambulances on wings—machines
with the top of the fuselage removable so that
a patient on a stretcher could be placed inside.
A French machine was furnished with a complete<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</SPAN></span>
hospital equipment for emergency treatment
and even for performing an operation in
case of necessity. The flying hospital could
carry the patient back to the field or base hospital
after treatment.</p>
<p>Mail-carrying airplanes are already an old
story. In Europe the big bombing-machines
are being used for passenger service between
cities. There is an air line between Paris and
London. The airplanes carry from a dozen to
as many as fifty passengers on a single trip. In
some cities here, as well as abroad, the police
are being trained to fly, so that they can police
the heavens when the public takes to wings.
Evidently the flying-era is here.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</SPAN></span></p>
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