ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUNS

Evening Star, Issue 19789, 13 February 1928, Page 8

ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUNS

BLUFFING THE GERMANS “ TERRIBLE " STORIES OF THE WAR There would seem, even now, to be some secrets of the war which Kapilan-leulnant Breilhaupt does not know, and it can do no harm to reveal them. Some of the facts of this 13th day of October, 1915, remain in my memory, although, 1 confess, rather hazily. And i may oc allowed to add a footnote to his history since I was, so to speak, what (lie German communiques termed more than once ” tlie enemy batteries of Ipswich,” writes Guy C. Pollock, in the ‘ Morning Post.’ We oflicers and men of flics Eastern mobile section of the R.N.V.H. Anti-aircraft. Corps, at that time serving under Colonel Lucas, with headquarters at Newmarket, can make no pretensions of heroic or distinguished service. Ours, no doubt, was u '’cushy job,” and wc were, according to the German equivalent of Cocker, a comic force. lint that is strictly irrelevant. What, diverts me is to find the commander o£ Zeppelin 1.15 so seriously incommoded, not only by the inner defences of London—then in a sadly rudimentary and inadequate statebat. by gun tire and searchlights in the neighborhood of Ipswich on his return journey. Memory can scarcely disentangle two Zeppelin raids of that autumn, one in September and the other in October. But the procedure on our part was very similar in both. In each case my brother officer, Mr F. K, Site, an entirely elderly barrister, and f separated, each taking a gun and a .searchlight to shoot Zeppelins. On one occasion 1, was stopped on the road between Ipswich and Colcheter by two special constable', who protested that the enemy airship was above our heads. It was difficult to accept Ibis astounding information, as wo could hear nothing and see nothing. PREPARED FOR ACTION. Moreover, in consequence of heavy ground mist, my searchlight —a mere contraption of ucelylone gas mounted on a fast Lancia car —was some miles behind us. However, 1 pulled up iu a suitable position and prepared for action with the redoubtable Maxim gun (which had an honorable history sheet of service iu the Boer War) mounted on a Rolls-Royce car. IVe were also armed with a Martini-Henry id lie of respectable ancestry (how they used to kick on the range of my public school volunteer corps thirtysix years ago!) tiring a luminous—and perhaps incendiary—bullet with a maximum range of 500yds. Eventually I fired a shot with this in the supposed direction of the Zeppelin alleged to be hovering over us in the hope of showing it us. But my direction was wrong. “No, you fool,’’ said the special constable sfiinding" by my side, "100 much to the right.”

I fired again. “You blanked and blithering idiot,” murmured the special constable; “too much to the left.” Meanwhile the gun crew had no target, and our supposed airship was still silent and invisible.

So “Look here,” 1 said; “suppose you lake a shot.” And he did so. And in the light of this wretched bullet, which looked like a miniature star shell, burst and all the Zeppelin became instantly visible, a sharply-defined black pencil straight, above our heads in a clear and star-lit sky. So we let go. We loosed two bolts of Maxim ammunition into her—she was so low and so good a target that it would be no surprise lo find that her envelope was holed by a few stray bullets, and I snatched back the honorable Martini-Henry to have some private, but ineffectual, rifle practice of ray own. , , Then our bird woke up, and her engines roared, and a shower of bombs dropped all round and about tho village of Stratford St. Mary, lying just below us, and the only real damage vvas the leering from the ground of a couple of telephone posts. Incidentally my resourceful C.P.0., a landed proprietor in the North of England, seeking other ways to <ret into touch with headquarters, scared a village postmistress into fits, and sot abroad rumors of a Hun invasion by stating over the telephone that we had “the line” before "coming into action. And then the Zeppelin passed rapidly beyond reach, sight, and sound, making straight for Hie coast and homo. On tho oilier occasion I cannot remember that I got a shot at all. On the other hand, Sloe's gun—and 1 think we had then received one or two of the one-pounder pom-poms firing a shell only fitted with an impact fuse, also complete with Boor War history sheets, which had prudently been removed from the centre of London—discharged two belts of our deadly missiles at a Zeppelin intent on blowing holes iu the bunkers of Hie Ipswich golf course. COMMANDER’S ERRORS. But this Zeppelin was a taller bird, and the chance of a hit—without range-finders, heighl-linders, any table of deflections, fuserange dial, or an illuminated target—more remote. Indeed, it is not surprising to learn that “the last shell shot far away below us,” if one may call the missile a shell at all. Tho commander is mistaken in supposing that he was lit up anywhere near the coast, and he is, I ant sure, mistaken about the swarms of airplanes at Leyton. They did not exist. He is mistaken, also, about what he calls “light bombs.” After all, it would be absurd to imagine that the Germans could have believed that England was chiefly defended against airattack, even in the earliest days of war, by ancient machine-guns and obsolete, muskets, in the hands of very imperfectlytrained and middle-aged gunners. That was perhaps like a people who sang ‘Tipperary’ rather than ‘Hearts of Oak.’ But very possibly the Martini-Henry bullets were mistaken for star shells and the machine-gun fire for shrapnel. So may it have been, for thus our preposterous activities may have bad a sobering and even a deterrent effect far exceeding their merits. Anyhow, these wows the facts. By 1917 it was another story. But that story of the really efficient anti-aircraft defence of London, by air and land, is more widely known.