OVERCOMING THE ZEPPELINS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 238, 29 December 1916, Page 8 (Supplement)

OVERCOMING THE ZEPPELINS.

It is indent from English papers lo hand bv recent mails, that the British public i> brgmning to take a less serious view of the Zeppelin menace now that the authorities have succeeded in solving the difficult problem which tho earlier visitj presented. A little of r,n<a excitement evinced on the occasion oi the fall of the first of the raiders was displayed again over the latest success of the anti-aircraft defences of Englaud, but the importance of the event docs not appear to have heen unduly magnified. While, as one writer puts it, thi; may have been due to the fact that the two latest victims fell into the sea, and therefore did not give the sightseers and curio-hunters an opportunity for embarking on a pilgrimage to tiie scene of the wreckage, it also suggests that the British people are confident concerning the efficiency of the men, guns and machines promoting them against attacks from the air. Of course, the actual loss of men sustain.*! by the .enemy is comparatively small, and the monetary loss involved is not very great. There seems to be a variety of opinion as to the actual cost of a Zeppelin. Journalists who visited the undestroyed Zeppelin which was brought to earth on September 23 last in Essex, stated that she was supposed to hava occupied a year in building, and had cost anything between £250,000 and £500.000, while Lord Montagu, whose opinion should carry more weight, has stated that the newest typo of Zeppelin does not cost more than £125,000, and that Germany is turning them out at the rate of about three a month. If, however, the fall of a Zeppelin may not be as important as the sinking of a cruiser from the point of view of actual loss, the moral effect may be even greater. The enemy's aim is directed towards creating a panic amongst tho people as well as causing serious military damage, and it is clear that each Zeppelin which is brought down in flames has the effect of considerably minimising the value of these vessels as weapons of ruthlessness. The mere results of recent air raids over England are sufficient to show the marked improvement. which has been effected in Britain's air defences. The moans by which this improvement has been brought about must naturally be kept secret, but it is evident that the change is largely due to the more systematic use of the most modern anti-aircraft guns and searchlights, closely co-operating with attacking aeroplanes. Lewis R. Freeman, writing in "Land and Water',' r refers to the systematic manner in which the raiders of September last were attacked, and compares their reception with that accorded to the earlier Zeppiins. "I have always thought," he writes, "of tho»3 arrogant, merciless, low-flying airships of the first raid as sharks in their element, sharks nosing indolently around a helpless prey that was powerless to escape them. A year ago the raiders unquestionably knew to a nicety the weakness of London's embryo air defences, and governed their action accordingly. But the hunted thing which zigzagged in erratic flight across the London heavens in this latest raid, relentlessly pursued by ordered searchlights' beams and artillery fire, far from suggesting the coolly purposeful 'man-eater' in its element, called up rather the picture of a fugitive leviathan that had been left by the receding tide in some land-locked lagoon, and was being cornered by fishermen, who were so sure of their game that they did not even have to try to hasten the harpooning. There was no indiscriminate slushing about of the searchlights this time, as in the raids of last year, but only a methodical searching by a score or so of them of what were doubtless definitely allotted areas of the overcast heavens. . . . The firing, when it began, was as ordered and methodical as the searchlight work had been. It seemed to come in one great sal.-o from the guns of a carefully determined area to which the order had doubtless gone at the same instant. . . . Few of the shots fell far short or went wide to any length, as had those directed at last year's raiders. The problem of ranging and hitting the Zeppelin had apparently been solved." After describing the fall of the flaming Zeppeiin thj writer concludes as follows: — "Such was my experience of the 'receding' Zeppelin. Pondering on how the first one was a veritable 'Bolt of Wrath' that nearly swept me from ay feet with the wind stirred up in its passage, how others were mere will-o'-the-wisps, melting into the mists of the horizon, and how the last was reduced to an insignificant heap of charred wrecKage in a country field, the thought conies that perhaps this may be taken to symbolise the dwindling of the Zeppelin menace to England."