SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME...

Radio Record, 1 April 1938, Page 10

SHAPE OF THINGS

TO COME...

BY

WILL

GRAVE

THR ABROPLANE DBOPS ITS TORPEDO

2 OR the Admiral of the Fleet, spinning his tactical web in his charthouse, plotting positions of enemy ships and his own, radio will be the ears and eyes of the Navy. Aceurate radio reports will give him a complete picture of the chess-board of battle. But, at the same time, there will be a fiercer battle of the air-the outcome of which no man yet knows.

HE sea was perfectly calm as the three ships of the navy-the Leander, the Leith and the Wellington -lay at anchor by Wellington’s Clyde Quay.

There was sulshine on the oily water of the harbour, and the yachts. bare of sail, moved lightly in the yacht harbour. Across to the fur hills stretched a faint blue haze. It was all very peaceful. PRHE warships were as much ut peace as the scenery. It seemed fantastic that at any moment in an unsettled world those ships might be stealing out of port on their hazardous business of defence. And when they set sail radio weuld play a big part in this business. To-day radio is the ears and the eyes of the navy. T first when the fleet to-day sets sail to meet the euemy, radio is dumb. No radio messages are transmitted. At this moment it is very much the Nilent Service. Radio brings messages back from the aeroplane scouts, but nothing comes over the ether from the ships themselves. They are keeping themselves hidden. If their radio sets spoke, the direction-finders of enemy ships would pick up the waves, plot the fleet’s position. Radio Starts to Speak LU manoeuvring of the fleet until the enemy is sighted is done by sight signals. But as soon as the advance light forces make contact with the enemy, the radio starts to speak. Once they find out the position of the enemy fleet, it is the job of the scouts and light forces to find out the disposition of the enemy's heavy battleships. is ‘his flagship far back in the line of attack; the Admiral of the Fleet gathers together the data that

radio brings him. From this data he spins the web of his manoeuvring. If the radio reports are accurate and thorough, he will have a com-

plete picture perore him of the enemy forces. Once he knows exactly where they are, he can plan to lead them into his trap. At the same time as he makes his picture. of the enemy fleet, the Admiral has the picture before him of his own fleet. He plans his strategy from the two. PERHAPS there are details still wanting for his picture of the enemy fleet. "Il am not sure," he says, "where the enemy aircraft are. I want their position." Out goes his message by radio to his ships. Back comes the reply and the Admiral fills in the missing detail of his picture. Ile plans his strategy. Battle of the F uture "Tir I attack with aircraft,’ he says. "I ean foree ve) enem, into a certain position. IL can drive them here. where I want them." Out goes the message to his aircraft by radio. No one can yet predict the outcome of the naval battle of the future in which radio, aircraft and: ships will all play their part. It is possible only to imagine it... . HE Admiral has had word from his scouts both in the air and in the sea that the ‘enemy fleet is steaming eastward in the Pacific. He orders his carrier squadrons to engage the enemy as soon as possible after daybreak. How and where is left to the navy’s air arm. ‘After a brief consultation, it’ is decided to send off two squadrons of nine planes each. There will be a squadron of dive-bombers and a squadron of big torpedo-bombers. But contact has been lost with the scouts since the first report, so the carrier air staff decide’ to send three long-range scouting planes to accompany. the dive-bombers and torpedo-bombers.

The bombers, heavily loaded with their projectiles and maximum fue! tankage, quickly climbed up out of the gusty air near the ocean’s surface and droned on through the thick clouds till they came out into the clear air above. ‘That had been about half an_ hour before dawn. The scouting planes climbed until they were flying just under the cloud layer at 2200 feet. There they stayed, the flight spreading out so that the pilots and observers could see as much of the sea as possible. HE scouts were low so they could see the surface, but the main air fleet stayed above so that its presence couid be concealed. Contact between the scouts and the commander was muintained by special ultra-high-frequency short-range directional radio. Their reports during the preceding hours had come in regularly and monotonously. They had seen nothing. Radio Blockade

UT now every man in the air fleet knew that the enemy must be somewhere near by. Positive evidence of this came through the earphones worn on each pilot’s head. They all heard the faint crackling and moaning of a radio blockade. The enemy, to prevent radio communication among the aeroplanes and surface ships of their opponents, had begun sending out meaningless signals over a wide range of frequencies to simulate the worst static contions. — -_---

OW the job was up to the scouts, They must find the enemy, estimate his strength, communicate this information to the commander of the bomber fleet above so that he could determine the order of the attack. Suddenly, looming out of the mist and rain falling between the ocean surface and the lower cloud level, one of the scout pilots spied a destroyer wallowing along. The pilot immediately sent his plane higher until the concealing clouds cut the ocean from his sight. Two minutes later he nosed down carefully, reducing his altitude so that he again could distinguish the ocean surface. To his intense excitement he found that he had just passed over a string of cruisers which he recognised fs those of the invaders. Just beyond he spotted the more ponderous ships of the main line of enemy super-dreadnoughts. While his eyes dilated with execitement at the sight, and while he ventured lower to confirm his find, his ship apparently became visible from the surface, for a burst of anti-air-eraft shells suddenly boomed on all sides of him. T the first deep cough of the shells the scout flyer zoomed again for the protecting clouds. A second later came the report of the scout, faint but intelligible above the enemy-made static, into the phones on the aix commander’s ear contact’, sauadone J i i

ron protecting six battleships. Enemy sighted my plane, so on alert." FLIPPING a switch, the commander changed his transmitting frequency to another ultra-high frequency developed especially for inter-command communications, and ordered the torpedo-bombers to

descend at once for the attack upon the big battleships. His orders were specific. Their torpedoes, exactly like those launched from submarines, must not be wasted on turgets smaller than the battleships. The sub-commander of the torpedsbomber squadron acknowledged these orders with a waggle of his wings ‘and, with his planes behind him, dived into the fleecy cloud floor. This left the nine dive-bombers alone at their height. Through the Mist IN his mind the commander followed the torpedo planes down, down through the swirling mists. Their speeds would gradually increase. he knew. From 140 they would quick!y rise to 800 miles an hour as the noses of the bombers were held in 2 steep power-on descent. It was the purpose of the torpedo ships to stick together until they broke out beneath the cloud. Then trhey would scatter, circling and still descending, to fly down just above the waves. Their altitude would not be more than 100 feet, and their speed, with throttles wide open, would be 220 miles an hour. Each of the torpedo pilots, trained to his job, would then pick out a capital ship, line up in his sights, and roar toward it. At approximately 1000 yards range the pilots would drop one or two torpedoes, as their judgment dictated, then pull away, WHILE the torpedo planes descend. ed, the dive-bomber commander also began, (Continued on page 40).

The Shape of Things to Come

BATTLE OF THE SEA AND THE AIR

(Continued from page 11.)

a gentle reduction in altitude. His fleet. passed into the clouds. Now he watched his flight instruments and his altimeter. Lower, lower, lower, until at 2200 feet he was oceasionally eatching flashes of the ocean floor. Less than a minute later he saw his targets and at the same time heard dull rumbles and higher-pitched poppings above the drone of bis motor. The torpedo bombers were engaging! "PREPARE to dive,’ he told his men through his microphone. With the words he jammed open his throttle, settled himself in his seat so that he was looking through his bomb sights, and with one hand gripped the bomb toggles. With the other he slammed his stick to the left to begin. his dive from a roll. Over went the ship, the nose dropped, and it burst from the cloud, already doing 240 miles an hour. The course was straight down wind toward the enemy’s largest battleship, and at an angle of dive well beyond 45 degrees, Everything else was forgotten. Eyes were riveted on the target. The commander was cold, his mind om the alert. He was aware that multiple quick-firing guns and machine guns on the battleship opened fire on him a few seconds after he left the cloud. The air speed indicator read 300. then 350, then 400 miles an hour as the battleship loomed bigger and bigger in the target sights from instant to instant. Then, satisfied that his sights were squarely on the bridge and funnels of the rolling battleship, the commander touched his bomb releases. His entire salvo of 100-pound bombs started on its way. And at the same time he gripped his stick with both hands, pulling it back hard. The machine raised its nose ever so slightly. As it did so the scene faded from before the commander’s eyes. Blood pulled away from his brain, hammered in his neck, his stomach, his legs. It was the "blackout" which always followed recovery from the dive. His machine passed fifty feet over the fighting towers of the battleship, where his bombs already were exploding. Behind it were seven other machines also roaring down wind away from the other ships. On the deck of one battleship was a flaming mass of buckled metal near @ Series of gaping holes in the deck. One of the bombers had failed to come out of its dive. As his sight returned slowly the commander made certain that his motor was functioning, Then he looked to his men. His loss he accepted philosophically. He looked back to see the results of the attack. SEVERAL of the torpedo bombers still were in action. Recklessly their pilots were driving them close to

the battleships to drop one last projectile. All the battleships had batteries in action. But every one of the ships Was damaged in one way or another. Some had decks and superstructures completely wrecked. Several had been struck by the heavy torpedoes. Two were listing heavily at the bow, and & third apparently had a jammed rudder, for it was swinging away from its fellows. THIS is, of course, an entirely fanci- ' ful engagement between a battle fleet and naval air raiders. Such an encounter never has occurred in the history of the world, but the fight deseribed here well may become fact in the next great sea battle. Only warfare can decide whether aeroplanes are to be relegated to the harmless job of scouting or whether they can be utilised as striking weapons of great power. But that the navy itself leans towards the belief that bombers and torpedo planes will be efficient fighting machines is evident from its procurement of squadrong of heavy bombers, (live bombers and large torpedo planes. "THE tactics of these three types of bombers vary greatly. The heavy bombers, machines capable of earrying projectiles weighing up to 1000 pounds each, release their missiles from great heights while flying in a horizontal plane. No fleet has a defence against high bombing. The bombers pick the time and direction of their approach and, furthermore, are so high that anti-air-craft guns would be no deterrent. Modern anti-aircraft rifles will drive shells up to the 20,000-foot level, but the gunners admit that very little accurate shooting can be done above 10,000 feet. IVE bombing is a special navy ; science The bombers begin a vertical or near-vertical dive on their targets from great heights and from behind the sereen of sheltering clouds. Using the speed of the dive ag his only defence, the bomber pilot sights his plane on the target, waits until he is so close he cannot miss, and then releases his bombs. After that the airman straightens out of his dive and speeds away. Dive bombing has been found to be very accurate, Airmen say there is no defence against it either, but this’ has yet to be proved. ORPEDO bombers are an entirely different breed of airplane. The machines carry the great torpedoes fitted with compressed air motor and a screw for self-propulsion. The torpedo bombers are not expected to fly close to enemy vessels. but will loose their explosives from ranges between 500 yards and a mile. . When dropped into the sea the torpedoes would propel themselves at their targets just as do torpedoes launched from submarines, wo me