FRENCH AIR FLEETS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 13, 17 January 1916, Page 7

FRENCH AIR FLEETS.

NEWS BY WIRELESS. A Paris message says; No fleet or the sea is more thoroughly organised, equipped, and drilled than France’s fleet of the air. The days of haphazard aerial scouting or privateering in the sky ar e as much gone for ever as similar days at sea. France’s air fighters are drilled and organised in tactical units of nine aeroplanes to the squadron; they artequipped with signalling devices and with wireless, and aerial tactics have become as much of a science as land, or sea tactics—more so, for whores on land and sea the fighting forces can manoeuvre in only two dimensions, in the air they manoeuvre in three. SEND WIRELESS 220 MILES.

The extent to which wireless is used for communicating with areoplanos In flight is one of the most remarkable developments of th e war. The big battle aeroplane and scouting machines are fitted with apparatus having r

radius of 220 miles, and are thus able to instantly report anything they see or to receive orders when far within the German lines.

Thus, for instance, a scouting machine above the German lines of communication in Luxemburg or Belgium. 100 miles from its base, observing a remarkable movement of troops cr guns in any direction, need not wait for its return home to report. A wireless message can be sent instantly, and in a few minutes General .Toffre himself knows what is afoot.

For the important duty of spotting artillery fire, the aeroplane carries a signalling apparatus consisting of small glass bottles tilled with chemicals, which explode five seconds after the cork is drawn. Tossed over the side, those bottles explode in the air. Some of them are so planned as to give a little round puff of lilac • smoke, visible miles away, while others burn longer, and make a lilac--smoke trail on the sky. Thus provided with dots and dashes, the observer can signal "too high," "too low,"

"left," "right," or "hie," after

every shell. The development of aerial tactics has to a considerable extent followed along lines similar to those of sea tactics. Just as, at sea, there ar o the small, fast scout cruisers, a large pro portion of an aerial squadron consists of fast scouting aeroplanes. But at sea there followed the developrant of the fast, heavily armed battlecruiser, for the purpose of driving *n the scouts of the enemy. Just there has been developed a cruiser-plane, avion de chasse (chasing aeroplane), as the French call it.

RISE 0.000 FEET IN 2 MINUTES. The sole duty of this cruiser-plane is to drive off the scouting aeroplane of the Germans, and for this purpose it has been developed primarily for speed and power. One of these machines can mount almost straight

from the ground to a height of nearly 6,000 ft in two minutes, so as to pounce on an enemy as soon as lie makes an appearance. Finally, as at sea, there is the huge dreadnought of the line, in the an there is the enormous armoured battleaeroplane, which can carry a crew of 12 men, and has a battery of two 3-m guns, and a small rapidfire gun. The 3-in guns are mounted one at the tip of each wing, and thd quick in the middle, on top of the conning tower.

The cruiser-plane carries one "'‘ n gun, mounted on a platform in fiont of the pilot’s station, and the scouting acres carry only a machine-gun. The actical unit, or squadron, consists of six scouting planes, two chuiser planes, and one battle-ncropiane, with their respective motor-lorries trailers, portable canvas sheds, and three fast automobiles.”