CONTROL OF WARFARE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 695, 22 November 1933, Page 3

CONTROL OF WARFARE

IMPORTANT DEYELOPMENTS SHOWN IN RECENT MAN OEUYRES. ADVENT OF AUTOGIRO. New features were few in this year's Army training, but one was of far-reaehing importance — in every sense. This was tbe advent' of the autogiro as an aerial staff car in last week's big exercises, writes Captain B. H. Liddell Hart in the London Daily Telegraph. It did enough t0 suggest tbat we are on the eve of a revolutionary development in the means of communication and control in mohile warfare. And this promise was extended (by the latest type of autogiro, which came down later to give a special demonstration, although it did not actually take part in the operations. This has no wings and its "windmill" has only tv/o hlades. Because of its wing-lessness it provides wonderful observation — like sitting in an j armchair hoisted in the air. And | when flying low over the countrysido it is said to be very difncult to detect from a'bove by hostile aircraft. In still air it can "take off" in about fourteen yards, and against a sl;ght breeze it rose within the length of an ordinary room. In coming down it hovered about eight feet off the ground and then dropped flat, its whef ls hardly turning over. Among the more startling of its feats is its ability to hover alongside a marching column just clear of the iground, so that notes can be passed by hand, for its speed can he reduced as low as 10 m.p.h., although is can travel at over 100 m.p.h. — 'the speed range of the older type is from 25-70 m.p.h. The Old System. (Even this type proved of remarkable utility in the operations, and made all the greater impression by contrast with the normal means of intercommunication. Nothing, indeed, was more depressI ing for the prospects of mobile wari fare than the long time taken by re- | ports to filter back to the divisional ! and corps headquarters. There were j a multiplicity of means — cahle, wireless, dispatch riders — but often a paucity of information. In some cases several hours elapsed before corps headquarters received news that was vital to their decisions. I have many times remarked in recent years that dispatch riders and staff offictrs in motor cars are more reliable and more rapid news-hringers than telephone and wireless. But they are apt to get caught in traffic ihlocks, and also hy enemy patrols. The autogiro is not only much faster, hut "hops" over obstructions. General Jackson, commanding the Second Division, was the first to exploit this new means. On one occasion, havinig made his plan he left his headquarters, visited one of his forward ibrigades, then flew on to see the other,' and was hack again within forty minutes at his headquarters, just as his staff had finished getting out the written orders. Throughout the final operations General Harington was using his personal staff more or less in this way, and seemed t0 he finding it the most effective means of keeping touch with the hattle. On Friday he went further f and sent his aide-dc-camp, Lieut. Smith-Dorrien, round in an autogiro.