FIGHTS OVER THE FLEET

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 144, 27 September 1910, Page 3

FIGHTS OVER THE FLEET

DISPLAY OF AERIAL TACTICS.

GRAHAME - WHITE'S FEAT,

Mr. Claude Grahame-White performed a great feat at Torquay on Wednesday. The fleet tactical exercises which Admiral of the Fleet King George "tad ordered were interfered with by weather conditions. Heavy drizzle in the early morning were succeeded by a thick Channel fog, which continued until noon and made the projected manoeuvrings of tile liostilc fleets invisible.

Towards half-past one, when Mr. Grahame-White had got his Fawnan biplane satisfactorily assembled in a field adjoining the abbey at the head of the bay, directly facing the royal yacht's anchorage inside the lines of the great fleet, the mist had thinned sufficiently for the sunlight to gjeam through and for the eye to carry over two or three miles of the grey water. Hardly a breath of wind was stirring. Mr. Grahame-White sprang in to the air and gave a magnificent display of aerial tactics. He gave the King and Queen that unforgettable thrill that comes with tne' first sight of the miracle of an aero plane in flight, but he also gave Admiral of the Fleet the King an illustration of th(j utility of the flying machine in the naval warfare of the future such as has never been possible before. Apply to the circumstances the rule of naval manoeuvres, and Mr. GrahameWhite may claim to have put the whole of. the fighting fleet out of action. The heavy broadsides of the super-Dread-; noughts were helpless and ineffective against ihim. Not a single gun could be elevated to, an angle that could reach him. Laden with a supposed cargo of the as yet uninvented X-power explosive which the advent of the aeroplane renders inevitable, he had £ 100,000,000 worth of British Nayv helpless beneath him, caught in the narrow waters of the enclosed bay.

The 200 fighting ships were unable to open out wide enough for- any one of them to bring the airman at the height to which he soared within its range of fire. The'swiftest of the cruisers and torpedo craft had not pace enough to escape him. The submarines, by swiftly diving, might have escaped his observations for a time, but sooner or later as they came up for breath among the wreckage of the rest of ' the fleet he would have.located and destroyed them. He captured the King and the Queen and carried off Princess Mary'and little Prince George as hostages to the unlocated eyrie somewhere up in the perpendicular from which he ha'd so suddenly made his appearance., A hundred million pounds' worth of fighting ships aibout to engage in the newest and latest developments of tactics in the plane of the horizontal suddenly found themselves faced by the necessity for tactics in the. plane of the perpendicular for which they were not prepared. ' 1600 FEET ABOVE THE'FLEET.

Mr. Grahame-White, indeed;, has today given to the King an exhibition of J warfare in an added dimension. He .made two flights. The first, in the early 1 afternoon, may be said to have exhibited the, possibilities of the aeroplane in attack ; the second, which he made this evening, showed its use for defence against invading warships. "In the morning the whole of the fleet, unable to put - to sea. because of, fog,' \f as suddenly i pounced upon by an invading flying craft. 1 The place where Mr. Grahame-White had - put together his Firman yipjiuie; WlnclT] ) overnight arrived, by 'train from ! .Cornwall, favored the idea of an aerol plane coming from the unknown. The • abbey .field, the use of which had been • givten him, sloped down to the circular promenade around the bay near to Torquay station, But a couple of hundred yards back the field dips'into a little hollow, And in this dip, entirely screened from the promenatie t #nd the tea. level, the Admiral of the, Air had. bis eases unpacked find his sky destroyer put together, i' . * _ .It. happened that just as his machine wa9 readv and his engine was working properly the portion of the fleet which, Under the command of AdnSira}; Poe, was to represent the Blue' Force in the fogpostponed tactical -exercises svas just under way and moving towards the entrance to the ( bay. Out of the hollow in the hill came the airman, jnaking a start up hill. The moment he was over, the crest of the dip he had sufficient pace to mount. He rose in the aii like a horse at a fence, and was away up over the Royal 'yacht in a flash. Circling and ! rising, he was soon at an altitude of SOID COAST DEFENCE AIRCRAFT. He swept over the Dreadnoughts, down the lines on the eastward'side of the bay. Then, circling over westward to the Brixham side of the may, encompassed the entire range of the fleet, passing over the other lines on his return to the head of the bay. When passingover the Dreadonughts Mr. Grahame-White suddenlv descended from a height bf 1500 ft to less than l'OOOft, and then, swooping shorewards, made a descending flight to the abbey field, where, judging his distance perfectly, he came to the ground in the dip from which ,he had started, absolutely out of the sight of the fleet which he had just encircled. The whole flight only lasted a quarter of an. hour. The evening flight still more suggestive to the imagination. In the afternoon the King had boarded the Dreadnought and had proceeded to sea. The fog returning, the D'readnought came back into the bay at five o'clock, The moment she dropped" anchor Mr. Grahame-White, regarding her and her attendant cruiser, the Dido, as a foreign invasion and his biplane as a coast defence aircraft, sprang out .of his hiding place in the fold of the ground, and, making a little ascending sweep, was in a flash directly over the Royal Standard which,- hoisted on the Dreadnought's main-mast, signified the King's presence aboard. He circled around and around the flagship, and then, making for the Royal yacht, went around that before turning towards the abbey field., He made another beautiful descent. THE KING'S ADMIRATION.

The difficulty of carrying out a programme in naval operations Was manifest when in the evening, after the Dreadnought had brought the King'hack into the bay and Mr. Grahame-White had finished his flight and was packing his biplane for conveyance to Blackpool, the fog once more descended thickly-. The bull- of the fleet was still outside'in the Channel, and the Dreadnought, after the King had returned to the Royal yacht, went with the Dido to look for them. The fog was so heavy that the wireless was inoperative, and the Dreadnought had to call through the darkness with her siren code. She sent the Dido back and then returned herself, other vessels of the fleet finding their way hack in sections as the shifting fog offered opportunity. The King expressed great admiration of Mr. Grahame-White's aerial exploits. •