ZEPPELIN DESTROYER

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 290, 17 May 1915, Page 6

ZEPPELIN DESTROYER

i". amkk'k/ax invention' i: I'l.r.iri' iH.'ii.niN"(i 'koi: kmu.an'l'. L '•\ <-iv:it cloud of death is gathering \ on tin" Cl.Tjiiiiii coast. Week l.y week ! its potential power is increasing, yet tie! > time to strike has not come. A whiL.' j liahvd, halo old man ol' 7S is wurki :g , quietly until Hie (icnuan War uliiee ! -hall suv, 'Are vou ready, Count Zcppe j lin'C Fm- answer that night the mini- | Hter air-llect will rise high above thet.Vr- ; man coast and float out in the darkness in or (he sea. Wermany will wait am! I prav. It is her trump 'card." Such arc Hie* views'of Mr. Thomas It. Macmcchen, the president ol' the Aeronautical Society of America, in an interview accorded to the New York Sun. Mr. Macmcchen, we are told, refuses to accept the thcorv that the Zeppelin is a failure. It has mad.' good, he says, and will soon prove it, to Kngland by a raid upon Loudon, lie should know wlc'ceof bespeaks, for, to foil such a raid, the company ol which lie is president is now building for the KritHi (lovernnient a small fleet

of dirigibles of a new type -Zeppelindestroyers—especially designed to ward nil' the threatened attack, which, -Mi - . Macmechiai tells us, may be expected alionl, the middic of April. His reasons for refusing to accent the theory-cur-rent anions laymen- that the Zeppelin is a failure arc as follows: "1. The flight and weight-carrying capability of the Zeppelins under all but abnormal weather conditions are : proved, and as certain and deneudab'" as the navigation of a steamship. A hurricane will wreck the hitter as quiek- ! ly as the i'„rmer. "2. The wrecks of Zeppelins arc printed and known. There are less than ! a do/.cn all (old. The actual flights mi- | der all sorts of conditions run into tbousi amis. These are not heard of. , ••::. The attacking Zeppelins will do I their ihstroyiug with armour-piercing

■tuns rather than with bombs. '•■ l, The raid will l>e not by three or four, lint !;v a number, not lis:) than fifty, 'possibly •'>' ll hi"> <iral > ac ' compani'd bv aeroplanes. ",j. Tin-' f!H» has 1)Cl '' 1 proved, even when used under daylight conditions, to be useless sis a defence. Aeroplane dcfenee is useless by night, which U the Zeppelin's best time for op< ratio!!. "(i. Cer.i'.any thus fur. lias made only reconiK.il rin;,' 'trips. She will make her : real raM only when f!iornu;:h'y ready, and that time is not far away." : i:>;;;i.Axn wiuf-'ici).

Ho telis ks thiit at last Kngland Ins been roused to the dangers of n Zeppelin laid, and lias come to realise that the n "i-nt aerial attack- on Yarmouth was but a trv out. Tin; great majority of Englishmen pooh-poohed that raid, he savs, hut he adds: '•Ollieial England is not pooh-poohing ikiv,'. Ollieial' England knows all too well; hut she got over the pooh-poohing stage too late. She is grasping at every straw of promise, yet knowing that there is not time to prepare for war in the air, and knowing too that one successful raid will mean another and still others that bid fair to leave Kngland cowering and helpless. 'Then, with (lermany master of the air and with (lermany master under the sea, how long will England maintain her supremacy atop the sea? The Admiralty will not admit that this means the passin of the Dreadnought, hot they are beginning to fear just that." In explaining why no real raid lias yet been made, be remarks: '•The first great raid, which the (lorinans have, been planning since the war began, and for the success of which they are depending on the aged Count Zeppelin, will probably not come for some weeks. The time" is not yet right. The j tirst raid will be followed by blow upon blow aimed directly at the throne of i.ngland. ■ '-The reason there lias been no great attack on London from the air is he- ' cause aerial tactics and strategy mak, j nuch an attack folly until the.-.' a.-e 'a certain number of these airships, enough to leave a wide trail of ileiW.ic-

"For instance, if Germany had 50 of these new Zeppelins they would strike lMig ; and to the heart. T'.ny r'l'Jl strike Lfiiiueii a boiV-blow to lay and on J 1: > k s.gain I'.-morrow. Col"!. 'A'pjchii will strike when he gets a day, and .'lot when England wants him to." HIS RAID COMING.

lie goes on to say:— "The Intelligence Department of Great Britain knows the preparations that Germany is making. Further confirming details are coming in nearly every day. One report from Lake Constance, where the observer remained I!) weeks, told of a complete Zeppelin being turned out from the factory every two weeks whilehe was there. '■Perhaps Germany is ready to strike now, yet 1 should be surprised if she made the first raid this month. March is not a favourable time on account of the winds. I do not look for the big air invasion until after the middle of April, but I believe ;it -,will come soon after that." The darkening of London, the use of searchlights, and the employment of the high-angle antiaircraft guns are, he says, futile measures, and have been u bandoned. In describing the steps tak en by the English aufho/itics ;to circumvent a raid he recounts:

"First they darkened the city. Then, as if to attract as much attention as possible, they installed powerful searchlights at vantage-points all over the city. Nothing could have better guided a dirigible navigator approaching in the night. London has since seen the fallacy of searchlights, and, they are not used now.

."Still tin- high-angle guns are in portion all over London. The authorities of the air department have also relied on big squudrons of aeropliins to resist a Zeppelin attack on London. "They were to go up over London an 1 attack these Zeppelins diroatly over the city. , , . What would happen? '•London would bombard itself ami shoot its own aviators out of the air. They would drop back on the city, set (ire' to their own buildings, and kill their own private citizens."

SMASHING THE ZEPPELINS The military authorities, he says, have now realised that such measures are hopeless and have agreed with him that the only eli'ective defence is to meet the invading fleet off the coast and bring it to destruction by employing Mr Macmcchen's new "Zeppelin-destroyers,'' which are thus described:— "This new craft is a small, rigid dirigible, a type of aircraft never built before in the history of aeronautics. Being small, it will have u short radius of

action, but it will have a speed of from tit) to 70 miles an hour. ••These ri.'.-.l little dirigibles we are buihvi;; can stay in the air watching for an enemy, say To mi'cs from til-:iv base, for at"least 10 hours. They can tend wireless reports back to their base. "Kadi of the Zeppelin-dcstroyus will be equipped with one torpedo -gun, firing :i torpedo that will explode on contact. th:r Zeppelin-destroyers art; but 23()1t. and only 28ft. in diameter. Th" little defensive dirigibles have two ei\•,'ines one forward of 75-00 hov.sepovn.r, and one aft with 125 horse power.

"Each will carry four men, a navigator, a gunner, and two engineers. Tho torpedo-gun will lire its projectile 1000 ft point-blank, true to mark. "Perhaps tho most radical idea we have followed in building the new aircraft is that to maintain rigidity; we. ■ have enclosed the gas-compartments in hm envelope of wood instead of metal, like the Zeppelins. We use laminated spruce from Canada. Thin strips of it are wound in spiral from one end to the other 01 the cigar-shaped hull, and they are. locked into a mahogany ring at the end. The strips cross and re-cross one another, and arc of copper, riveted together. There are also 1-1 straight girders. This construction is the strongest possible for the weight. "Inside of it are the 14 gas-bags, encb in a separate? compartment. Outside the food structure, the whole is covered with a weather-proof aluminised cloth. It shines like a polished spoon, and will be dillicult to s-.ee in the air on that account.

"There is no hanging car. The car is built right into the main structure. The navigator operates the whole craft by simply pressing a set of buttons on a desk in front of him. He can even take the control of the engines out of the hands of the engineers."