INEFFECTIVE ASTI-AIRCRAFT GUNS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1382, 6 April 1915, Page 3

INEFFECTIVE ASTI-AIRCRAFT GUNS.

Tlio anti-aircraft guns invented for tins war have not proved very successful -so tar to any of the armies using illein- Their comparative failure has caused them to he dubbed "Archibalds” by British soldiers, from a popular London catch phrase, which is supposed to bo uttered by the airmen on scouting duty when ho sees—or hoars—the antiaircraft guns trying to bring Ins machine down—''''Archibald. Certainly nor,” So far “Archibald" bus )ailed on both sides to bring down an eiuuuy machine, for, though in a iow cases machines have been hit by splinters or bullets from his shells, the pilots have always managed to get back into their own lines. Latterly, the British have been trying as aim-aircraft guns some of the old “pompoms" which were Used in the South African war. but with little success. The reasons for the failure of the aircraft guns are thus summed up by a Hying man at the front

“There is only one way id stopping aeroplane raids," be said, ''and that way is I lie possession of, faster aeroplanes than the enemy-—small, light, scouting planes, capable of rising with great rapidity. We have been witnessing at Dunkirk the noisy and costly farce which attend the appearance ol an enemy plane anywhere. From ships, from forts, from massed naval and military riflemen, ten (fermau Taubes and Avialika were bred upon for nearly an hour, Shrapnel poured up continuously into the sunshine and hurst, roeketlike, all about the (.'ermau airmen, who look not the least uolico. They proceeded to drop their bombs, and then contemptuously returned across the very line of tiro which had greeted their arrival. Trying to bring down an aeroplane with any existing aircraft gnu is about as useful its shooting at a hundred yards up mosquito with tl pea shooter,”