THE FRENCH FLYING CORPS

New Zealand Tablet, 8 July 1915, Page 45

THE FRENCH FLYING CORPS

The French flying corps is more than anything else the ‘ eyes of the army.’ • With the enormous front which the -French have to guard,„ their task (says;, a writer in an exchange) would be almost impossible were it not for the aeroplanes and the aviators. As in everything else in this war, the aeroplane has been something of a surprise. ’

When war was declared you doubtless pictured in your mind a fleet of a thousand aeroplanes charging down air lanes against thousands of hostiles machines. You prabably pictured titanic battles in the air between Zeppelins and. Clement-Bayards, between Parsevals and Bleriots. You expected to be thrilled daily by hairraising stories of the exploits of the aviators. The trouble with all that is that the-aviators are working away in the air just as you work in the office, the store, or on the farm. The aviator has many duties to perform, but the least important of them is to attack the enemy. Map making is perhaps his most important function.

Step inside of the general’s office—this war, you know, is being run from offices, just as a factory is—and you will sec in a minute just how it is all done. On the general’s desk, a regular desk such as a broker uses, you see a pile of photographs. They were made by aviators using special cameras, and are enlarged. You see white lines running across the pictures. Other lines are zig-zaggy. Some start nowhere, while some go squirming completely across the paper. Now look on the wall. There you see the same map on a large scale. Every tree, highway, river, brook, hill, wood, bridge, or railway is clearly shown there, but the zigzaggy lines are not. They have been made since the big map was prepared a year ago. They are the hostile trenches or German works of some sort. If the exact nature of the works cannot be made out the chief of the aviation corps assigns one of his aviators to investigate. He goes out, makes an observation and another picture. Other aviators check him. Next day, and then at regular intervals other pictures are made. They are enlarged and compared. The little line that started apparently nowhere has grown in length. It has turned in the direction of other white lines which the officers know are French trenches. The general in command makes Ins plans accordingly. Tie has exact information now and can order an attack, knowing what to expect.

Pictures Aid Draughtsmen

Aided by the photographs a corps of draughtsmen are kept busy at various corps and army headquarters making ground plans showing every trench built or under construction by the enemy as well as their own. These plans are drawn to exact scale and are kept strictly up to date by the hard-working, plodding aviators. Of course, the aviators do other things, such as dropping bombs on ammunition depots or convoys, or army headquarters and occasionally they engage in a duel among the clouds, but it doesn’t require a military expert to realise how much more important his more prosaic picture taking and map making work really is. _ The pictures many times give information which the enemy is doing his best to keep secret. The photographs* of a number of villages are made, for instance, and in one of them in particular there are signs of considerably more activity than usual. Other photos of the same village are made, really almost moving pictures, with the interval hours instead of seconds, and by these snapshots it is discovered that trains arc arriving or departing : that many convoys are stationed there; that reserve trucks or the like are there—in short, it is learned that the village has become a troop centre.

The picture idea had to be adopted because an areoplane must fly 2500 yards in the air to be comparatively.

safe and at that height the eye cannot take in details. An aviator might fly many times over a village and not catch the secrets the camera divulges with its' microscopic reflecting lenses... « - . - i •