AEROPLANES V. BATTLESHIPS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 475, 19 June 1912, Page 7

AEROPLANES V. BATTLESHIPS.

The question of what influence the skill of an aviator who can fly over a navy dropping bombs as he goes will have on warfare of the future is discussed in the "Scientific American." In the interests of truth and logic, says the journal in question, we feel compelled to give it as our opinion that, so far as the future of naval warfare is concerned, this dexterous feat of the aviator has but little significance. It was inevitable, when an art so difficult and seemingly impossible as that of human flight had once been demonstrated, that the enthusiasm of its votaries would carry them into the fields of wild speculation and prophecy, and that each initial success, however modest, would be taken as proving to & demonstration many a difficult problem, whose practical solution could be arrived at by only the well-beaten road of experiment and accumulated experience.

Now, of all the bewildering tasks which, by common consent, seem to have been assigned to the aeroplane —the most sensitive, delicate, and, in its manipulation at least, by far the most difficult means of human locomotion —that of dropping missiles from the air with such accuracy as to hit an object lying at least a thousand feet below, is by long odds the most difficult of accomplishment. To hit a battleship with aeroplane bombs, even if they be let go from the perfected flier of the future, is a problem most complicated. We do not hesitate to say that to take accurate aim from a safe height, clear of shrapnel fire, would involve such very accurate data and such complicated calculations of height, speed of aeroplane, speed of ship, speed ol falling shell, wind velocity, direction Df aeroplane flight, etc., and the shell if it did strike home would dc such insignificant damage, that to affirm that the aeroplane is going tc "revolutionise" the naval warfare ol the future is to be guilty of the wildest exaggeration. Far be it from us to deny that the vision of a fleet of aeroplanes sweeping like a cloud of mosquitoes above the doomed fleet of the enemy, and dropping a rain of deadly bombs into the very vitals of a fleet of cumbersome and costly battleships, which lie below utterly incapable of defence .s a picture altogether ' dramatic and awe-inspiring but we cannot forget that outside of the question of the ability of the aeroplane to hit a battleship with some form of high explosive missile, there lies the funiamental fact that attack by high explosives falling out of the heavens has already, in the test of actual warfare, been proved to be very dis--appointing in the amount of damage which it is able to effect.

The siege of Port Arthur has not moved so far back among the pages of history, but that the public in general will remember how the Japanese planting their mortar batteries three miles back from the city, proceeded to sink the Russian Port Arthur fleet which lay huddled, supine and useless, within the harbour. They will remember that the Japanese having captured 203 Meter Hill, by observation and telephone directed the fire of the mortar batteries ipon the ships with deadly accuracy. Day after day, high explosive arm-jur-piercing shells, weighing 500 pounds apiece (which is about equal to the weight of some of the present aeroplanes) were hurled high into the air and fell almost vertically upon ;he Russian battleships, which, one by ona, apparently succumbed to the attack and sank to the bottom. It was naturally supposed that these huge, high-explosive missiles had either passed entirely through the ship, or, bursting within, had torn asunder the shell plating and opened a way for the inrushing water. At the closo of the war, the Japanese raised these vessels, and of course, made a very careful examination to determine what damage this rertical or "high-angle" fire, as it is technically called, had done. To the great surprise both of themselves and the whole naval and military world, it was found that the majority of the battleships had survived the impact of the falling projectiles with remarkable little damage of a critical character, and that the ships had been sunk, not by the Japanese fire, but by the Russians themselves, who had opened the seacocks for that purpose. In the majority of cases, when a hit was made the first impact, say against a wooden upper deck, a stanchion, a companion way, etc., would burst the shell, and the damage, ncvei vital in character, would be confined to that particular deck. The steel, protective deck was rarely penetrated ; and in only one case, if we remember rightly, were the vitals seriously injured. Applying these facts to the proposed bombardment from aeroplanes, we can see how the comparative failure of the Japanese shells settles once and for all the question of the possibility of striking or vitally wounding battleships by little bombs, let go haphazard from a swaying a nd swift-moving object a thousand or more feet in mid-air. If a 500 pound high-explosive shell, falling from a height of about two miles, failed tc pass through or seriously disable a battleship, how little can be expected of Lilliputian shells, dropped from one-tenth of that height and witt not one-tenth of the accuracy of aim, should they happen to make a lucky hit.

No ; we cannot believe that tin aeroplane is destined to "revolutionise" naval warfare of the future. Another consideration —to aim a iioinb from a moving airshin. a thou

sand ieet above tne object, would involve an accurate and instant knowledge of many conditions, each of which would have its bearing upon the line of flight of the projectile. In the first place, the shell would not drop vertically, but on a curved resultant line, made up of the forward velocity imparted to the shell by the moving aeroplane and the vertical velocity due to the acceleration of gravity. The shell must be let go at a pre-determined distance ahead of the object below, and the aviator must know with a reasonable degree of accuracy the following facts : The height above the object to be strucs, the forward: velocity of his aeroplane, the velocity and direction of tho wind. He must not only know his horizontal distance from a vertical drawn through the ship, but he must be able to ascertain whether his line of flight would pass through that vertical. In other words, if he were not steering straight for the ship at the time he lets go, the shell, although correctly aimed and timed for the horizontal distance between him and the mark, would fall in a plane which would cause it to drop either to right or. left of the object. But by what means is the aviator to gather these many data, translate them into a final result, and drop his shell at the one critical instant of time that would insure a hit ? The problem would be serious were he seated quietly at a desk on shore. By what magic, then, shall he work it out when he is winging it, a thousand or fifteen hundred feet in midair, with the roar and scream of tho bursting shrapnel about him ?