WAR IN THE AIR.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19473, 7 May 1925, Page 10

WAR IN THE AIR.

TERRORS OF NEXT CONFLICT

BEATING A WHOLE NATION

History has started upon one of its great marches, and the old order of things is doomed already. No doubt we shall still have battles by land and sea, the shock of contending armies and fleets: but all these things will be only survivals. We are in face of a new fonje of almost limitless potentialities. Properly trained and directed, it is capable r>f transforming the whole face of war beyond recognition It can turn the old crude, hideous, bloodletting business into an almost bloodless surgery of forcible international adjustment, to the immeasurable advantage of mankind. These preliminary stages, the slaughter of armies, the destruction of fleets, are not the end of war. but only the means to an end. The real end is a purely mental one; it is entirely a question of persuading minds, and nothing else. That is the reasoned conviction of a famous aircraft authority, Mr .1. M Speitrht. author c/ “Air Power and "War Rights.” ITe writes;— “Now, for the first time in history, it has become possible to dispense with the preliminary stayes. Air power can strike at might at tire heart of the, enemy state. It can ignorei armies and fleets. It will not waste time on the slaughter of those who are only tbe armed instruments of the sovereign people of enemy nabou. However in tejnse the" fighting iti the air. the slaughter will be as nothing compared with that, of the older war. In its newer of ‘direct action’ it will see an effective means of attaining its end wtlimit resorting to the slow, costly, ineffective, murderous procedure of cond-’diug a campaign or bringing a hostile ffeet into action. Armies which dig themselves mto lines of Ironies, fleets which shelter themselves behind harbour defences and minefields and venture whole-heartedly upon a major engagement only bv a sort of mischance, will be left to wage their own war of attrition.” NO LONGER A SIDELINE.

Air power was almost non-oxiatent in 1914, and at the armistice there were giant bombers waiting to launch their attacks, the effect of which to the strength of the Allied forces must have been enormous. Air attack will no longer be a mere sideline, as it was compelled to bo throughout the war. For every bomb that fell in a town outside the zone of operations there was a bomb less to drop within that zone. In the next war the operations of the Beets and the armies will be. to some extent, the “side-shows.” Wars will be lost and won above and behind the trenches and the tide water frontiers “ho amount of composure, no surplusage of bulldog tenacity can save a people raided copiously, scientifically, systematically. No people on earth can maintain the efficiency of its war activities under the regular intensive bombing of its centres of population.” It is the opinion of a French expert that a modern bombing fleet could utterly destroy a city as large as Paris in two or tb reo weeks of war. Such a fleet would cost loss than three warships. If gas bombs were used, the disaster would be immense.

In the future it will be wiser to enlist in the air corps than to stay at home; it is the whole population that will bear the main shock of attacJc. There is ample evidence that purely military objectives ;;re by no means solely contemplated as legitimate targets of an attack. MUST BEAT WHOLE NATION. In the tiina of Louis XIV, "it was enough to force a great State to give in if. one fine day, a small army was defeated. In future it will be necessary that the entire nation should feel itself overwhelmed, with its armies and fleets." Aircraft has a terrible lesson in store for mankind. Shall we ever learn that lesson properly until it is hurled at us in thunder and flame ':

The author of this valuable book suggests that the development of air-bombing in war will take an obvious course. Only military objectives will be bombed; but if those happen to be in centres of population the citizen must suffer the inconvenience of being killed. Ultimately with the removal of all military objectives from the cities, leaving them quite undefended, for if defended they would bo attacked, war will become a campaign of propertywrecking on ihe grand scale without any material loss of human life. It will be capitalism, rather than flesh and blood, that will suffer.

How picturesque the airplanes became towards the end of the war, when every pilot, put his own private mark on his macine, is graphically described. Major Bishop tolls of the scarlet machines ot Baron von Richardson’s crack squadron, sometime; called The Circus. Later nothing was too gaudy for the Huns. ‘Tin re wore machines with green planes and yellow noses, silver ’planes with gold noses; khaki-coloured bodies with greeuish-grov ‘planes; rod bodies with green wings; light blue bodies and rod wings. One of tie most fantastic we over met had a scarlet body, a brown tail, reddish-brown ’planes, the enemy markings being while crosses on u bright green background.” FIGHTING BIRDS OF PARADISE.

“It is hko going out to fight birds of paradise,’’ said one pilot. “Never has there been such an orgy of kaleidoscopic effects on the earth or above it. The Hurl has taken to daubing his machine fantastically, after the manner of a savage who hope- in frighten his foe to death. A child iet loose with a box of paints could not achieve more lurid results.” The English and the French were also fantastically coloured. Camouflage was also largely adopted. Ihe names painted on the machines were also often humorous. Jules Vedrines insulted his machine by writing on it, in large letters. “La Vacho."’

Air power, as has been abundantly shown, will revolutionise war by the wholesale destruction it will cause, hut it will have an equally remarkable effect upon the usages of war. Strangely enough, romance- and chivalry have come back —in the air. Aircraft has restored to modern warfare something of the spirit that went out in the Middle Ages. The evidence that the air forces fought with a greater mutual respect than the other arms is unchallengeable.

Some of the incidents, especially challengel - to duels, read like extracts from "Tvanhoe." Mr Cutlaek _ says of one Australian incident that it afforded a pleasing picture of the knightly fashion, in which airmen frequently treated each other between determined duels. On 0110 oecassion English pilots invited the German pilots to have ia cup of tea with thci':, ; n n neutral landing place, but the invitation was not accepted. British flying' men frequently dropped complimentary Tnessages for their foes, air.l received assurances of respect from them. Especially was this trait marked in the chivalrous tributes to the dead by both air forces. News of the death or fate of their enemies was regularly sent by air messages. Pilots brought down in the enemy's lines were always courteously treated by the personnel of the aviation service which captured them. Sir Philip Gibbs remarks: "Although, there is no mercy shown during ' these acrid combats the batlle of the air is enlivened by touches of chivalry and humour which lielonged to old-fashioned warfare. - ' " LEAST GKOSS IN THE AIR." '•The Hun's nature," said an English pilot, "seems to improve with the elements he frequents—Most gross on earth, less gross at sea, least gross in the air." There (s a delightful picture of two aerial antagonists who had both exhausted their a_n;munition : '"'We flew side hy side laughing at each 'other, '-ind then waved adieu. He was a real sport, that Hun." Hut, of course, there is no chivalry in the air whicii forbids the bagging of a single machine by three or four, should a "lame duck " be delivered into the enemy's hands. Liu* even this perfectly good rule of warfare was, here and there, regarded as unsportsmanlike. It was felt unfair to shoot down a pilot, whose machine had been stalled. The American '' aoe " Riekenbaoker recorded in his diary: "Resolved to-day that hereafter I will never shoot at a Hun who is at a disadvantage, regardless of what he would do if lie were in iny place."

That battles in the air wore fought a entrance, despite this chivalary, is abundantly evidenced. There were in the war actually cases of aviators who deliberately rammed each other in mid-air, invariably causing the death of both pilots. More heroic, however, were (he. cases in whhh one machine aad been set on fire, and Ihc pilot decided to take his enemy to death with him by ramming the victor. There was the case of an Italian aviator who, finding his machine gun jammed during a fight, hurled bis machine, against his opponent’s. and both crashed. Pelf-sacrifice is not banned by international law.