AERIAL TORPEDOES.

Manawatu Times, Volume II, Issue 106, 24 October 1877, Page 3

AERIAL TORPEDOES.

» (From the London " Globe.") Humanitarians, who look for the suppression of war to the development of the deadliest engines of warfare, will read with satisfaction a suggestion* recently thrown out for a further employment of the torpedo. A torpedo balloon , the device is to be styled, and the name is a sufficient indication of its nature. A balloon is to be constructed capable of rising with a torpedo beneath it, and starting to windward of a camp or fortified city, or whatever it is desired to destroy, is to be burst or detached by means which it would be easy to contrive,^ and thus to allow its cargo of death' and destruction to fall into the midst of the enemy. The detachment of the torpedo, it is suggested, might be effected with great ease and certainty. by means of a thin electric wire, and the' proper moment for dropping the charge, m order to explode it on any given point, would be only a matter of instrumental observation and a little practice. The idea seems to be fearfully practicable, and apart from the consideration that the very perfection of modern warfare seems really to present the most hopeful prosp»-vt of universal peace, it might be (.lou-Krarod as too frightful an idea to be; onh-i'i .lined by civilised combatants. By mojms <;i' such an engine a forriiled piaeci might be attacked from a point from _ which no guns could be brought into action, and without the smallest opportunity of retaliation. The carnage and devastation by the explosion of a torpedo m a fortress or camp would be infinitely greater than a bombshell could produce ; and while to the besiegers even a failure need involve no harm, or even danger, the balloon might be kept out of the range of shot, and to the besieged would be fraught with ruin, against w<hich no conceivable defence would avail anything. The effect of a torpedo dropped into a garrisoned fortress or fortified camp would be something really dreadful to contemplate.