THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 1909. WHEN AIRSHIPS MAKE WAR.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3140, 18 March 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 1909. WHEN AIRSHIPS MAKE WAR.

Recent cable news in connection with the continued success in aeronautic science is significant of the growing hopes and apprehensions with which the Great Powers regard the matter. Recently we were informed that the German Reichstag had granted more money for experiments with airships, and that an airship constructed by Count Zeppelin for .he German Government had flown 120 miles at the rate of 48 miles an hour, under the control of a military crew. England ia busy in the same direction. The Secretary for War has invited Mr Wilbur Wright, the successful American inventor of an aeroplane, to visit England, where the War Office already has sne of his machines in its possession. And King Edward is going to Pau, in France, to watch the flight of aeroplanes there. Previous [news told of the trial, in Great Britain, of a howitzer designed specially to combat airships with satisfactory results. Germany has already built several types of armoured motor cars for the same purpose. We know that Russia has been in communication with Mr Wright also, and that the Russian Aero Club, with the assent and encouragement ofy'the Czar, has started a movement for the creation of a powerful aerial fleet, the plan being to buy machines and found a school of aeronautics, where officers will be trained the while the War Department perseveres with its experiments for the production of a machine of its own. And above all, there is the knowledge of the rapid strides France has made in aerial navigation, and its greater promises for the future. In that country the making of airships has been reduced to a business proposition by the Voisin Brothers, the builders of the Farman and Delagrange aeroplanes; Bleriot has made convincing flignts with an aeroplane of his own; and hundreds of clever men are still devoting their thoughts and energies to the many aspects of the aviation problem. When such is the case no War Department which pretends to be up-to-date can shut its eyes to the intrusion of this new factor in war. Proved only as far as it has baen, the airship must become a valuable aid to an army in the field. But its possibilities are appalling. Count Zeppelin's newest airship is probably a slightly improved counterpart of the self-propelled horizontal balloon with which he made his remarkable aerial journeys in October of last year. That in turn was but an improved model of his first airship. The October machine was no less than 44(ift in length, and had a diameter of 38.371't. It was driven by 80 hors3-power motors. On a trip lasting three hours it carried a load of ten people, in addition to 2,2001b of gasoline, 6001b of lubricating oil, and 2,2001b ,of water ballast; but later on it made a voyage of s ; x hours. The death-dealing potentialities of a vessel of that capacityjn crowded Europe cannot be estimated. But, although the honors of aerial navigation, merely

as such rest as yet with the German self-propelled dirigible balloon, it is obvious that the several war authorities apprehend most danger from the aeroplane. It is probably in j that field that the Reichstag wishes j further prospecting to be done. The ! balloon ascends and remains in the air because it is filled with a highly inflammable gas. Brought into contact with a fireball, there would be a whiff—and fragments. Wonderfully effective in peace, it is probably too fragile an instrument for the rough usages of war. The aeroplane, on the contrary, depends only upon the resistance its surfaces offer to the atmosphere for is suspension. Not so easy a target for the artillerist, or the martial pyrotechnist, because of its smaller size, it should al3o be much more difficult to dis™ able. A punctured plane might not matter a great deal, whereas, a must soon collapse. So far, however, it is rather in its promise than in its performance that the aeroplane bulks big in war considerations.