IN THE AIR.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 April 1916, Page 5

IN THE AIR.

A RASH PROPHECY. FROM MR. BILLING, M.P. London, April 16. Mr. Billing, M.P., in a lecture, prophesied that within a few years the royal navy would take second place to the British air fleet. He anticipated that the war would be decided in the air within twenty months. The development of aeronautics, he said, was the forerunner of universal peace. Britain, or another nation, would possess within ten or twenty years 3 hundred thousand airships divided into a hundred squadrons capable of devastating the principal cities of the enemy country in a single night. RAID ON CONSTANTINOPLE. Amsterdam, April 16. A Turkish communique says: Two aeroplanes, ascending at the Dardanelles on Friday night, flew over Constantinople at a considerable height and dropped incendiary bombs on t™o villages harmlessly. Our guns drove them off. PARTICULARS OF THE FEAT. A SAFE RETURN. Reecived April 17, 5.5 p.m. London, April 10. The Press Bureau reports that three naval aeroplanes on Friday evening raided Constantinople, and dropped bombs on the Zeitonlik powder factory and on the aeroplane hangars. Another bombed the railway station at Adrianople. Ssuadron-Commander Smyth-Piggott. and Flight-Lieutenants Satory, Dickinson, and Barnato participated, and all returned safely. The flight to Constantinople and back was over three hundred miles. There was fine weather at the start, but adverse conditions supervened, with rain, wind, and thunderstorms.