"WE ARE SUPREME."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 12, 14 June 1913, Page 9

"WE ARE SUPREME."

GERMAN BELIEF IX AIRSHIPS. , Berlin, April 8. J "Great Britain may be sure> of one thing—she Will never be allowed to impose a ratio of 16,t0 10 on Germany in the air as she has done on th£ sea." Such was' the striking- statemeftfc--'itta(de by Captain von Pustau, the well-known naval aeronautical expert of the Taegliche Rundischau, on the true meaning of German's plans to spend a capital sum of £7,000,000 on the immediate development of her military and naval air fleets. The Taegliche Runschau, which is not only the Berlin organ of the PanGerman Party, but also is the favorite newspaper of the military and naval class, is the journal: which has taken the lead in urging the Government to press home without delay the- advantages Germany possesses over the rest of the world in serviceable airships of the most powerful type. : • Captain von Pustau, who went into the question of air-craft development in Britain on the occasion of the recent Olympia Exhibition, said: "We here in Germany have not the slightest objection to Colonel Seely and Mr. Churchill continuing to speak of airships in terms of contempt. Our faith in them is not based either on sentiment or on blind idolatory of inventions which happen to have been made by Germans. We have tested their efficacy to our own satisfaction. What people around us think of them does not concern us. "And any of our airships now in commission could sail to Ireland to-morrow without a stop, crossing Portsmouth and Plymouth en route, and return by way of the Orkneys and Edinburgh. Of it might be possible that your aeroplanes would attack them, but first you will have to have aeroplanes! Even then it would be a matter of grave doubt if the aeroplanes could clear for action in time effectively to ward off, let us say, an attack by a fleet of airships which had arrived under.cover of night and might not even have been sighted until after it had accomplished the task set it. " NOT PAIR-WEATHER CRAFT." "There is an inclination abroad to concentrate attention exclusively on our airships of the Zeppelin type. The Schutte-Lanz wooden rigid airships are in every respect equal in efiiieency to the Zeppelins and in some ways even suggest greater possibilities. It is the Schutte-Lanz airship which has especially demonstrated that our rigid vessels are not purely fair-weather craft. They ' won that reputation only because the Zeppelins are not ye.t able to make use of revolving sheds.' During January and February the Schutte-Lanz vessel now in Government ownership made (lights on every single dav from its revolving shed at Berlin, being taken out and 'reberthed' in all sorts of weather. "Even England has occasional 'fairweather' days, and if the German air, licet ever does contemplate visiting the British shores on a hostile mission it is to be presumed that it will not cnoose a dav when a gale is raging in the Channel. '•'Germany finally decided to launch a comprehensive aerial programme because our experiments have now been of the extent and variety which we think justifies our going ahead. Tn the airship realm we are eertainlv supreme. Tt would manifestly be a false elementary principle of strategy if we allowed a foreign nation to overtake, not to say outstrip, us in the advance we have made. In the race for supremacy at sea we entered too late. We do not intend to be caught napping i n the race for the mastery of the air. ' That is the psychology of our aerial programme in a nutshell. Although we shall build a great many airships we have not turned our hack on aeroplanes. They will lie provided to whatever extent our own particular needs suggest." Count Reventlow. the naval and military critic, said: "One is justified in thinking that the airship lias approached the limit of its capabilities, but the aeroplane and particularly the waterplane are undoubtedly only on the threshold. ] think nothing is'eventually impossible for the flying machine."