10,000 AEROPLANES TO END THE WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 September 1915, Page 9

10,000 AEROPLANES TO END THE WAR.

' A STUPENDOUS SCHEME.' London, July 14. With the slogan "Win the war from the air," English aeronautical men have launched a movement for the creation of a ministry of aviation and the building of a fleet of 10,000 aeroplanes to deluge German ammunition works and supply routs with bombs. L. Blin Des Belds, lecturer in aeronautics in the military academy at Woolwich, is the real leader of the campaign to create a gigantic fleet. He is supported by C. C. Grey, London aeronatical editor, and a score of experts in aviation. The plan is to organise public sentiment by lectures and news articles behind the idea that England's salvation is in the air. "Batter down the Rhine bridges by daily air raids and trench warfare in France is ended," said a statement issued in support of the new movement. FIVE BOMBS EACH. "Send 1000 aeroplanes, carrying five bombs each, over Krupp munition works and the German armies will be paralysed. "Then destroy the nine bridges over the Meuse over which supplies are transported to the German armies, and the Kaiser will be on liis knees." Collaborating with other experts, Des Belds has prepared a «able showing that an average of one military train every ten minutes crossed each of the flfteeg bridges spanning the Rhine. I'feis means that every twenty-four hours 2160 trains laden with food, ammunition, and reinforcements for the German armies in the west cross the Rhine, the latter passing over the nine bridges that span the Meuse. One thousand aeroplanes within a week's time could destroy every bridge over the Meuse and the Rhine, Des Belds estimated. TO SMASH KRUPP WORKS. Belds summed up his argument for 10,000 aeroplanes with this statement to the newspapers:— "If we can smash the Krupp works by aeroplane raids, we can hamstring Germany. We want aeroplanes going to and coming from Germany like ants about an anthill, but going each with 300 pounds of explosives and coming back empty until the war ends. We want a daily service of destruction in Germany." The Daily Chronicle prints an article which it says in an editorial note contains "inner" knowledge of the change which has come over the German disposition with regard to Zeppelins. It is stated definitely that since the triumph of Lieutenant Warneford, V.C., and the destruction of the air shed near Brussels, Belgium has been cleared of Zeppelins, and the ascendancy of Britain's aerial armada is jointly noted by the suspension of Zeppelin raids on the East Coast." The article says that over a month has passed since the Lz-38 was destroyed in its shed at Evere, and the L?.-37 was brought to the ground by Lieutenant Warneford. The writer adds: ZEPPELIN WORK SHORT. "The aerial offensive of the Zeppelins in short has been broken. I do not pretend that there will be no more raids while the war lasts. To suppose this is a poor understanding of German determination. Yet it does remain a remarkable fact that just as the time of the year when according to experts, weather conditions are most favorable for aerial activity, the enemy has been paralysed by the discovery that he has now to face a new British war organisation only recently established, yet marvellously efficient, as already proved by the inflicting on Germany of the most absolute check she has experienced in ten months. "Information which has reached me from diver sources Belguim, and upon which I have complete reliance, enables me to state that since July 0 not a single Zeppelin has been left in Belgium save one which waj damaged on June 4, and which the Germans are trying to repair as best they can at Naniur. WARNEFORD'S GREAT FEAT. "It would be quite Impossible to exaggerate the panic accompanying the fall of the blazing carcase of the Zeppelin destroyed by Lieutenant Warneford, and the blowing up of the Evere hangar and its contents. What perhaps most affected the morale of the enemy was the fact that Lz-37, Lieut, Warneford's victim, was a brand new Zeppelin, which was undergoing its first trials and had on board several of Count Zeppelin's chief officers." The Lz-37, according to the Chronicle's correspondent, was the most famous of all the Zeppelins. It was the Lz-38 which bombarded Ramsgate and South End and part of the London area. He adds: "It had, therefore, a pretty busy lease of life before it blew up in the shed at Evere on June 7. Then fifty men were burned to death. There is no room for doubt, taking into account the Zeppelins destroyed by British bombs or by accidents of all kinds, on the one hand and on the other those that have been recently built under more or less secrecy, that we arc justified in concluding that the German fleet at this moment can not possess more than fifteen Zeppelins callable of taking the air. This calculation is supplied by expert authority."