The Zeppelin Menace.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 138, 28 January 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

The Zeppelin Menace.

A year ago the Zeppelin was a bogey: to-day it is an infliction. N» longer is it open to reasonable doubt that the greatest city of the world is 0 Zeppelin magnet, and so it will remain until the day comes, as come it v ill, that the German assassins of the ail - make one journey too many. In the small hours of some morning, not far distant, these hawks of civilisation will get the fright of their lives, their last fright in this world. They will sneak up the Thames valley for the last time, to be overwhelmed by as hideous a death as they had planned for others. But until such a disaster overtakes them, it is idle to expect that Zeppelins will rest on their laurels. WHY LONDON IS TDK FAVOURITE RESORT. But why should London be once more made the scapegoat of the Empire? Because the enemy has satisfied himself that the British Metropolis is well within Its radius of travel: because he lias virtually made a beaten track in the air London wards: and, not least of all, damage of some kind can always be relied on from such a visit. Already there have been three afl" raids on London, the last more daring than the second, and the second more so than the first. Consequently, the damage to life and property has increased with its visit. It is fatuous to attempt to hide or even minimise the havoc wreaked in a great city, for people will speak, and in the alwence of frank official avowals tales outgrow the truth till they depict visionary horror greedily swallowed by the morb'd-niinded. There are other reasons why London should continue to be the bull's-eye in the Zeppelin target. That city has so far failed to hit back effectively at the air fiends. Her very attempts to disguise herself have assisted rather than hindered them. The dark shadows of the inner city, accentuated by the more generously lighted suburbs, have been lingers pointing to her heart. And there are sights and sounds she cannot disguise. The tell-tale gleam of Father Thames, the moving traffic lights which cannot be eradicated, aye and the hum and whistles of whee's and engines, for sound travels with little diminution into the silence of cloudland, all the air pilots they are arriving at the very hub of the British Empire. The wonder is that London, with her 150 square miles of urban treasure, was not sooner selected as a victim to Zeppelin atroc'ty.

WITHIN EASY DISTANCE. The Belgian coast is only 140 miles distant, a 280 mile journey in all, just a mere fraction of the travelling powers of even the poorest Zeppelin. Then no inimical lines, fitrictl'y speaking, have to be negotiated an would be the case were Paris the objective. And there is another feature about Britan's Metropolis which is immensely tempting to the airship roamer. It has an atmosphere of its own, an ideal one both for springing an aerial surprise and escaping the penalties. An aii' raider detests a clear atmosphere. ;md preers even fog to wind, and a smoke-laden sky to anything. A pall of opaqueness overhangs London for four days out of every six, and as a Zeppelin i.s as nearly the colour of a murky sky as human art can make it, once London proper is attained it really is out of the chief danger zone. This, and this alone, explains why these fell craft have tarried for many minutes at a time over the very centre of the city. Nevertheless, amazement is being openly expressed how Zeppelins could have remained literally anchored fifteen, aye twenty, minutes over the heart of London and live. The fact has filled many of us with disquiet, if not alarm. Where are the anti-aircraft guns, or these peerless gunners who can smash things that are out of sight, and where is the worrying shrapnel to tear jagged holes in the Zeppelin's air compartments:' These are questions apt to rise to the lips of even the reasonable man. But they present no mystery; they may be readily answered. To hit a distant object in the daylight calls for rangefinders and telescopic sights, but how is a target in the darkened air to be focussedr 1 it is indifferently seen one moment, only to dissolve into shadowy nothingness the next. It is no fault of the antiii'rcraft guns or yet of the shrapnel that the raiders are left to go as they tame. The former will lire a projectile higher from a sheer vertical position than it will from an angle, while the dispersion of shrapnel naturally increases in the limitless n'r. But the enormous disadvantage our gunners labour under when firing vertically in a teeming city is the return of portions of the projectiles. Falling from thousands of feet in the air, these shell by-products may become deathdealing missiles, and may work havoc among the very people they were intended to deefnd.

No doubt in some plates, where Zeppel ns call, alarm bells arc rung and .syrens and steam whistles are kept going, the object being to warn people to remain indoors. But the experience, •o far, has been that the inhabitants hasten to the street-—curious people who must see at any cost, and frightened people who regard tin roadway under the dome of heaven as a safer sanctuary than their own mof-tree. Xow. it is almost a certainty that tlie.-e German air raider- have time and again been struck with British mis. sih -, but here enters a peculiarity which is apt to be overlooked. Shots c .mine from the earth are much more likely to strike the lower parts of the Zeppelin, perhaps even r.ppUig open the gas envelopes, but affecting stability only to a -mail degn-e, for the t-im-I '•• reason that the gas, being much lighter than air. is disinclined to escape below it- own level. Sonic wonder, tun. ha- been expressed why the exposed propollois ol the meat a i.-hip -should escape disaster ii "in -i inc of the myr'ad bullets dim-t----ed at them. Not much oi a -mack >-. 1 iquiri I to w ii :-k those propeMors : u..| 1.-jtVi- the Vi- -e| ;it the meny ol the '■'■ i.'ld. lill! hell, ait ,'ll :l :;:\ i|)g • ■'■. ii tin l shape nl a siiignijic pheiioincnii fiit.-is. So furious ile- cm rent •: !no h. tic lightning-like r- voluihui:. ol the propeller blade- ih.u bullet- a"- actual!, drilectcd bv it.

AND HOW TO DEAL WITH IT

POINTS THAT HELP THE ZEP. I If Zeppelins arc t. bo destroyed ' with a frequency that will nauseate the ! German nation, then wo must go a lit- ■ tie outside the beaten track of defon- ! sive tactics to accomplish it. All the : preventive expedients so far adopted by us have probably been foreseen by ! the enemy and steps taken to combat j them. Every advantage winch nature offers to the airship in a duel between earth and sky has been seized with avidity. There is the advantage of perspective. At the height of 1000 feet a Zeppelin commander has the poKsibilitv of seeing 42 miles ahead of ! him: at 2000 feet GO miles: 72 miles 'at 3000 feet, and so on. He knows that there are recognised cloud legions j at specified altitudes well within his compass to which he may betake himself if seriously menaced. And there is another strange natural phenomena of special service to him m a raid on England. If he has run short of petrol, | perhaps through fight ng against an ad- ! verse wind on the outward journey—and it must here be remembered that ; the gentle zephyrs of the valley may be a 30-knot breeze a thousand feet up—he knows that there ever is a strong ■ probability of his rinding a westerly ' wind to help him home if lie mounts | high enough. In his cabin are every conceivable in. ' strument concocted by .science to help ! him along. The prismatic compass I faithfully affords him. despite the j proximity of the motor magneto, Irs [ direction. The wonderful statoseopo | announces the slightest rise and fall of I the ship, while a third instrument rings a bell whenever certain altitudes ! have been attained. Then there is the ; marvellous meteorgraph busily record--1 ing all tile time on pen and paper in j three places the altitude, temperature, • and humidity of the air. If, in thick 1 weather, he is not satisfied with these j tell-tale helpers, he can fix a long drag- ' rope so arranged that an electric bell . is tinkled immediately the slack of the | line fouls an object. Everything, in : short, that can establish confidence has i been given him.

BIT THERE ARE INCURABLE WEAKNESSES. But the Zeppelin suffers from many outstanding and incurable weaknesses, and it is in a scrutiny of these that wo may ascertain how host the obnoxious plague may be given its conge. There is, strictly speaking, a Zeppelin season and a Zeppelin close time. For whole weeks together in the year an aircraft raid in out of the question. In winter, with a low barometer, it would be suicidal to attempt it. A gale an aeroplane will weather and even glory in will make a Zeppelin unmanageable, and attempts on its part to land are almost certain to lead to buckling. With her very aluminium parages shut off with balloon cloth, she offers a tremendous resistance to the air. and in tin? teeth of a 40-knot wind will .not make a yard of headway. Her unexcelled rising powers, which so often have saved her from destruction, arc negatived when the thermometer on earth is under freezing point. Every thousand feet she soars aloft iinds the frost keener and keener till ice forms on the very instruments the lives of the crew depend upon. These arc a few of the disadvantages limiting the scope of the air terror, and are, therefore, cheerful reading; but they are not enough. There are whole weeks together in November and December devoid of either a modest breeze or yet a snap of frost. We shall thankfully take all the assistance Nature has to offer us, but we must and will play on these structural weaknesses of the Zeppelin !

SHE HAS A WEAK BACK. She has a weak back. You may lip the belly almost entirely away, but it will not surpass in disastrous effect that produced by one little shell droppod plump on her shoulders. The light gas of its own volition will escape in a gush from a mere puncture received aloft. How to manage the back stab is the problem, or the Zeppelin, if assailed by aeroplanes anxious to secure vantage, can spurt aloft in one steep run, whereas the latter mint spiral up :n much slower corkscrew fashion. The most feasible way would be by the medium of shells on long-time fuse des:gned to burst above her.

Jim there is another and more vital feature concerning the airship's breath of life, which may he niside to .sound the doom of the bloated monster. She carries over half a million cubic feet of inflammable gas. This gas can be fired. It has hern on more than one occasion, and invariably with disaster to nil concerned. How to explode this gas from earth must assuredly be al- . ready exercising our military authorities, (inns to project Hare .shells would serve the double object of showing up their quarry and exploding the gas when one did hit. When Germany seriously set herself to des gn airships as an engine of war. she, not long afterwardri, tackled the problem of repelling the airships of possible enemies. We might, therefore, with profit, take a leaf out of her own book. She has a special gun for the jo!), mounted on a speedy automobile I carriage, fir tig a high explosive shell I -1(1 lb. in weight almost vertically at ; the extraordinary initial velocity of L' 17d feet per second. This shell" does not require to actually strike the intruder. If it bursts near enough then 1 s all end to him. Such s the power oi the explosive charge that little more than infinitesimal fragments oi the shell reach the earth. Ii measures of offensive defence, such . as these narrated above, should be tried only to fail, there i- always open In us a campaign of reprisals. If it is not po.-sihle M smash at the root ol the trouble by clemol shmg Zeppel n she : -. iw call drop shells, into the handled U-rman towns and still look the world in the lace. Such an expedient is admittedly hateful to Hriti-.h I peop'o, but if the only way to protect .on cv.n ciiiz' n- in by risk ng the live-. of tho-o ni German c t es, then self- [.'" e.s»:-\ at ion den ae.da that it „hoiild be don .