Aircraft and Submarines

It is a curious fact that not long after these arrows first made their appearance in the French machines, they were imitated by the Germans, but the German darts had stamped upon them the words: "Made in Germany, but invented by the French."

One of the duties of the fighting airmen is to destroy the observation balloons which float in great numbers over both the lines tugging lazily at the ropes by which they are held captive while the observers perched in their baskets communicate the results of their observations by telephone to staff officers at a considerable distance. These balloons are usually anchored far enough back of their own lines to be safe from the ordinary artillery fire of their enemies. They were therefore fair game for the mosquitoes of the air. But they were not readily destroyed by such artillery as could be mounted on an ordinary airplane. Bullets from the machine-guns were too small to make any rents in the envelope that would affect its stability. Even if incendiary they could not carry a sufficiently heavy charge to affect so large a body. The skin of the "sausages," as the balloons were commonly called from their shape, was too soft to offer sufficient resistance to explode a shell of any size. The war was pretty well under way before the precise weapon needed for their destruction was discovered. This proved to be a large rocket of which eight were carried on an airplane, four on each side. They were discharged by powerful springs and a mechanism started which ignited them as soon as they had left the airplane behind. The head of each rocket was of pointed steel, very sharp and heavy enough to pierce the balloon skin. Winslow was fortunate enough to be present when the first test of this weapon was made. In his book, With the French Flying Corps, he thus tells the story:

Swinging lazily above the field was a captive balloon. At one end of Le Bourget was a line of waiting airplanes. "This is the second; they have already brought down one balloon," remarked the man at my elbow. The hum of a motor caused me to look up. A wide-winged double motor, Caudron, had left the ground and was mounting gracefully above us. Up and up it went, describing a great circle, until it faced the balloon. Everyone caught his breath. The Caudron was rushing straight at the balloon, diving for the attack.

"Now!" cried the crowd. There was a loud crack, a flash, and eight long rockets darted forth leaving behind a fiery trail. The aviator's aim however was wide, and to the disappointment of everyone the darts fell harmlessly to the ground.

Another motor roared far down the field, and a tiny appareil de chasse shot upward like a swallow. "A Nieuport," shouted the crowd as one voice. Eager to atone for his copain's failure, and impatient at his delay in getting out of the way, the tiny biplane tossed and tumbled about in the air like a clown in the circus ring.

"Look! he's looping! he falls! he slips! no, he rights again!" cried a hundred voices as the skilful pilot kept our nerves on edge.

Suddenly he darted into position and for a second hovered uncertain. Then with a dive like that of a dragon-fly, he rushed down to the attack. Again a sheet of flame and a shower of sparks. This time the balloon sagged. The flames crept slowly around its silken envelope. "Touchez!" cried the multitude. Then the balloon burst and fell to the ground a mass of flames. High above the little Nieuport saucily continued its pranks, as though contemptuous of such easy prey.

It may be properly noted at this point that the captive balloons or kite balloons have proved of the greatest value for observations in this war. Lacking of course the mobility of the swiftly moving airplanes, they have the advantage over the latter of being at all times in direct communication by telephone with the ground and being able to carry quite heavy scientific instruments for the more accurate mapping out of such territory as comes within their sphere of observation. They are not easy to destroy by artillery fire, for the continual swaying of the balloon before the wind perplexes gunners in their aim. At a height of six hundred feet, a normal observation post, the horizon is nearly thirty miles from the observer. In flat countries like Flanders, or at sea where the balloon may be sent up from the deck of a ship, this gives an outlook of the greatest advantage to the army or fleet relying upon the balloon for its observations of the enemy's dispositions.

Most of the British and French observation balloons have been of the old-fashioned spherical form which officers in those services find sufficiently effective. The Germans, however, claimed that a balloon might be devised which would not be so very unstable in gusty weather. Out of this belief grew the Parseval-Siegfeld balloon which from its form took the name of the Sausage. In fact its appearance far from being terrifying suggests not only that particular edible, but a large dill pickle floating awkwardly in the air. In order to keep the balloon always pointed into the teeth of the wind there is attached to one end of it a large surrounding bag hanging from the lower half of the main envelope. One end of this, the end facing forward, is left open and into this the wind blows, steadying the whole structure after the fashion of the tail of a kite. The effect is somewhat grotesque as anyone who has studied the numerous pictures of balloons of this type employed during the war must have observed. It looks not unlike some form of tumor growing from a healthy structure.

Captive or kite balloons are especially effective as coast guards. Posted fifty miles apart along a threatened coast they can keep a steady watch over the sea for more than twenty-five miles toward the horizon. With their telephonic connections they can notify airplanes in waiting, or for that matter swift destroyers, of any suspicious sight in the distance, and secure an immediate investigation which will perhaps result in the defeat of some attempted raid. Requiring little power for raising and lowering them and few men for their operation, they form a method of standing sentry guard at a nation's front door which can probably be equalled by no other device. The United States at the moment of the preparation of this book is virtually without any balloons of this type – the first one of any pretensions having been tested in the summer of 1917.

As late as the third year of the war it could not be said that the possibilities of aërial offense had been thoroughly developed by any nation. The Germans indeed had done more than any of the belligerents in this direction with their raids on the British coast and on London. But, as already pointed out, these raids as serious attacks on strategic positions were mere failures. Advocates of the increased employment of aircraft in this fashion insist that the military value to Germany of the raids lay not so much in the possibility of doing damage of military importance but rather in the fact that the possibility of repeated and more effective raids compelled Great Britain to keep at home a force of thirty thousand to fifty thousand men constantly on guard, who but for this menace would have been employed on the battlefields of France. In this argument there is a measure of plausibility. Indeed between January, 1915, and June 13, 1917, the Germans made twenty-three disastrous raids upon England, killing more than seven hundred persons and injuring nearly twice as many. The amount of damage to property has never been reported nor is it possible to estimate the extent of injury inflicted upon works of a military character. The extreme secrecy with which Great Britain, in common with the other belligerents, has enveloped operations of this character makes it impossible at this early day to estimate the military value of these exploits. Merely to inflict anguish and death upon a great number of civilians, and those largely women and children, is obviously of no military service. But if such suffering is inflicted in the course of an attack which promises the destruction or even the crippling of works of military character like arsenals, munition plants, or naval stores, it must be accepted as an incident of legitimate warfare. The limited information obtainable in wartime seems to indicate that the German raids had no legitimate objective in view but were undertaken for the mere purpose of frightfulness.

The methods of defence employed in Great Britain, where all attacks must come from the sea, were mainly naval. What might be called the outer, or flying, defences consisted of fast armed fighting seaplanes and dirigibles. Stationed on the coast and ready on the receipt of a wireless warning from scouts, either aërial or naval, that an enemy air flotilla was approaching the coast, they could at once fly forth and give it battle. A thorough defence of the British territory demanded that the enemy should be driven back before reaching the land. Once over British territory the projectiles discharged whether by friend or foe did equal harm to the people on the ground below. Accordingly every endeavour was made to meet and beat the raiders before they had passed the barrier of sea. Beside the flying defences there were the floating defences. Anti-aircraft guns were mounted on different types of ships stationed far out from the shore and ever on the watch. But these latter were of comparatively little avail, for flying over the Channel or the North Sea the invaders naturally flew at a great height. They had no targets there to seek, steered by their compasses, and were entirely indifferent to the prospect beneath them. Moreover anti-aircraft guns, hard to train effectively from an immovable mount, were particularly untrustworthy when fired from the deck of a rolling and tossing ship in the turbulent Channel.

Third in the list of defences of the British coast, or of any other coast which may at any time be threatened with an aërial raid, are defensive stations equipped not only with anti-aircraft guns and searchlights but with batteries of strange new scientific instruments like the "listening towers," equipped with huge microphones to magnify the sound of the motors of approaching aircraft so that they would be heard long before they could be seen, range finders, and other devices for the purpose of gauging the distance and fixing the direction of an approaching enemy.

Some brief attention may here be given to the various types of anti-aircraft guns. These differ very materially in type and weight in the different belligerent armies and navies. They have but one quality in common, namely that they are most disappointing in the results attained. Mr. F. W. Lancaster, the foremost British authority on aircraft, says on this subject:

"Anti-aircraft firing is very inaccurate, hence numbers of guns are employed to compensate."

That is to say that one or two guns can be little relied upon to put a flyer hors du combat. The method adopted is to have large batteries which fairly fill that portion of the air through which the adventurous airman is making his way with shells fired rather at the section than at the swiftly moving target.

"Archibald," the British airmen call, for some mysterious reason, the anti-aircraft guns employed by their enemies, sometimes referring to a big howitzer which made its appearance late in the war as "Cuthbert." The names sound a little effeminate, redolent somehow of high teas and the dancing floor, rather than the field of battle. Perhaps this was why the British soldiers adopted them as an expression of contempt for the enemy's batteries. But contempt was hardly justifiable in face of the difficulty of the problem. A gun firing a twenty-pound shrapnel shell is not pointed on an object with the celerity with which a practised revolver shot can throw his weapon into position. The gunner on the ground seeing an airplane flying five thousand feet above him – almost a mile up in the air – hurries to get his piece into position for a shot. But while he is aiming the flyer, if a high-speed machine, will be changing its position at a rate of perhaps 120 miles an hour. Nor does it fly straight ahead. The gunner cannot point his weapon some distance in advance as he would were he a sportsman intent on cutting off a flight of wild geese. The aviator makes quick turns – zigzags – employs every artifice to defeat the aim of his enemy below. Small wonder that in the majority of cases they have been successful. The attitude of the airmen toward the "Archies" is one of calm contempt.

The German mind being distinctly scientific invented early in the war a method of fixing the range and position of an enemy airplane which would be most effective if the target were not continually in erratic motion. The method was to arrange anti-aircraft guns in a triangle, all in telephonic connection with a central observer. When a flyer enters the territory which these guns are guarding, the gunner at one of the apexes of the triangle fires a shell which gives out a red cloud of smoke. Perhaps it falls short. The central observer notes the result and orders a second gun to fire. Instantly a gunner at another apex fires again, this time a shell giving forth black smoke. This shell discharged with the warning given by the earlier one is likely to come nearer the target, but at any rate marks another point at which it has been missed. Between the two a third gunner instantly corrects his aim by the results of the first two shots. His shell gives out a yellow smoke. The observer then figures from the positions of the three guns the lines of a triangular cone at the apex of which the target should be. Sometimes science wins, often enough for the Germans to cling to the system. But more often the shrewd aviator defeats science by his swift and eccentric changes of his line of flight.

At the beginning of the war Germany was very much better equipped with anti-aircraft guns than any of her enemies. This was due to the remarkable foresight of the great munition makers, Krupp and Ehrhardt, who began experimenting with anti-aircraft guns before the aircraft themselves were much more than experiments. The problem was no easy one. The gun had to be light, mobile, and often mounted on an automobile so as to be swiftly transferred from place to place in pursuit of raiders. It was vital that it should be so mounted as to be speedily trained to any position vertical or horizontal. As a result the type determined upon was mounted on a pedestal fixed to the chassis of an automobile or to the deck of a ship in case it was to be used in naval warfare. The heaviest gun manufactured in Germany was of 4-¼-inch calibre, throwing a shell of forty pounds weight. This could be mounted directly over the rear axle of a heavy motor truck. To protect the structure of the car from the shock of the recoil these guns are of course equipped with hydraulic or other appliances for taking it up. They are manufactured also in the 3-inch size. Germany, France, and England vied with each other in devising armored motor cars equipped with guns of this type – the British using the makes of Vickers and Hotchkiss, and the French their favourite Creusot. The trucks are always armoured, the guns mounted in turrets so that the effect is not unlike that of a small battleship dashing madly down a country road and firing repeatedly at some object directly overhead. But the record has not shown that the success of these picturesque and ponderous engines of war has been great. They cannot manœuvre with enough swiftness to keep up with the gyrations of an airplane. They offer as good a target for a bomb from above as the aircraft does to their shots from below. Indeed they so thoroughly demonstrated their inefficiency that before the war had passed its third year they were either abandoned or their guns employed only when the car was stationary. Shots fired at full speed were seldom effective.

The real measure of the effectiveness of anti-aircraft guns may be judged by the comparative immunity that attended the aviators engaged on the two early British raids on Friedrichshaven, the seat of the great Zeppelin works on Lake Constance, and on the German naval base at Cuxhaven. The first was undertaken by three machines. From Belfort in France, the aviators turned into Germany and flew for 120 miles across hostile territory. The flight was made by day though indeed the adventurous aviators were favoured by a slight mist. Small single seated "avro" machines were used, loaded heavily with bombs as well as with the large amount of fuel necessary for a flight which before its completion would extend over 250 miles. Not only at the frontier, but at many fortified positions over which they passed, they must have exposed themselves to the fire of artillery, but until they actually reached the neighbourhood of the Zeppelin works they encountered no fire whatsoever. There the attack on them was savage and well maintained. On the roofs of the gigantic factory, on neighbouring hillocks and points of vantage there were anti-aircraft guns busily discharging shrapnel at the invaders. It is claimed by the British that fearing this attack the Germans had called from the front in Flanders their best marksmen, for at that time the comparative worthlessness of the Zeppelin had not been demonstrated and the protection of the works was regarded as a prime duty of the army.

The invading machines flew low above the factory roofs. The adventurers had come far on an errand which they knew would awaken the utmost enthusiasm among their fellows at home and they were determined to so perform their task that no charge of having left anything undone could possibly lie. Commander Briggs, the first of the aviators to reach the scene, flew as low as one hundred feet above the roofs, dropping his bombs with deadly accuracy. But he paid for his temerity with the loss of his machine and his liberty. A bullet pierced his petrol tank and there was nothing for him to do save to glide to earth and surrender. The two aviators who accompanied him although their machines were repeatedly hit were nevertheless able to drop all their bombs and to fly safely back to Belfort whence they had taken their departure some hours before. The measure of actual damage done in the raid has never been precisely known. Germany always denied that it was serious, while the British ascribe to it the greatest importance – a clash of opinion common in the war and which will for some years greatly perplex the student of its history.

The second raid, that upon Cuxhaven, was made by seaplanes so far as the air fighting was concerned, but in it not only destroyers but submarines also took part. It presented the unique phenomenon of a battle fought at once above, upon, and below the surface of the sea. It is with the aërial feature of the battle alone that we have to do.

Christmas morning, 1915, seven seaplanes were quietly lowered to the surface of the water of the North Sea from their mother ships a little before daybreak. The spot was within a few miles of Cuxhaven and the mouth of the River Elbe. As the aircraft rose from the surface of the water and out of the light mist that lay upon it, they could see in the harbour which they threatened, a small group of German warships. Almost at the same moment their presence was detected. The alarms of the bugles rang out from the hitherto quiet craft and in a moment with the smoke pouring from their funnels destroyers and torpedo boats moved out to meet the attack. Two Zeppelins rose high in the air surrounded by a number of the smaller airplanes, eager for the conflict. The latter proceeded at once to the attack upon the raiding air fleet, while the destroyers, the heavier Zeppelins, and a number of submarines sped out to sea to attack the British ships. The mist, which grew thicker, turned the combat from a battle into a mere disorderly raid, but out of it the seaplanes emerged unhurt. All made their way safely back to the fleet, after having dropped their bombs with a degree of damage never precisely known. The weakness of the seaplane is that on returning to its parent ship it cannot usually alight upon her deck, even though a landing platform has been provided. It must, as a rule, drop to the surface of the ocean, and if this be at all rough the machine very speedily goes to pieces. This was the case with four of the seven seaplanes which took part in the raid on Cuxhaven. All however delivered their pilots safely to the awaiting fleet and none fell a victim to the German anti-aircraft guns.

In May of 1917, the British Royal Naval Air Service undertook the mapping of the coast of Belgium north from Nieuport, the most northerly seaport held by the British, to the southern boundary of Holland. This section of coast was held by the Germans and in it were included the two submarine bases of Zeebrugge and Ostend. At the latter point the long line of German trenches extending to the boundary of Switzerland rested its right flank on the sea. The whole coast north of that was lined with German batteries, snugly concealed in the rolling sand dunes and masked by the waving grasses of a barren coast. From British ships thirty miles out at sea, for the waters there are shallow and large vessels can only at great peril approach the shore, the seaplanes were launched. Just south of Nieuport a land base was established as a rendezvous for both air-and seaplanes when their day's work was done. From fleet and station the aërial observers took their way daily to the enemy's coast. Every mile of it was photographed. The hidden batteries were detected and the inexorable record of their presence imprinted on the films. The work in progress at Ostend and Zeebrugge, the active construction of basins, locks, and quays, the progress of the great mole building at the latter port, the activities of submarines and destroyers within the harbour, the locations of guns and the positions of barracks were all indelibly set down. These films developed at leisure were made into coherent wholes, placed in projecting machines, and displayed like moving pictures in the ward rooms of the ships hovering off shore, so that the naval forces preparing for the assault had a very accurate idea of the nature of the defences they were about to encounter.

This was not done of course without considerable savage fighting in mid-air. The Germans had no idea of allowing their defences and the works of their submarine bases to be pictured for the guidance of their foes. Their anti-aircraft guns barked from dawn to dark whenever a British plane was seen within range. Their own aërial fighters were continually busy, and along that desolate wave-washed coast many a lost lad in leather clothing and goggles, crumpled up in the ruins of his machine after a fall of thousands of feet, lay as a memorial to the prowess of the defenders of the coast and the audacity of those who sought to invade it. But during the long weeks of this extended reconnaissance hardly a spadeful of dirt could be moved, a square yard of concrete placed in position, or a submarine or torpedo boat manœuvred without its record being entered upon the detailed charts the British were so painstakingly preparing against the day of assault. When peace shall finally permit the publication of the records of the war, now held secret for military reasons, such maps as those prepared by the British air service on the Belgian coast will prove most convincing evidence of the military value of the aërial scouts.

What the lads engaged in making these records had to brave in the way of physical danger is strikingly shown by the description of a combat included in one of the coldly matter-of-fact official reports. The battle was fought at about twelve thousand feet above mother earth. We quote the official description accompanied by some explanatory comments added by one who was an eye-witness and who conversed with the triumphant young airman on his return to the safety of the soil.

"While exposing six plates," says the official report of this youthful recording angel, "I observed five H. A.'s cruising."

"H. A." stands for "hostile aeroplane."

"Not having seen the escort since returning inland, the pilot prepared to return. The enemy separated, one taking up a position above the tail and one ahead. The other three glided toward us on the port side, firing as they came. The two diving machines fired over 100 rounds, hitting the pilot in the shoulder."

As a matter of fact, the bullet entered his shoulder from above, behind, breaking his left collarbone, and emerged just above his heart, tearing a jagged rent down his breast. Both his feet, furthermore, were pierced by bullets; but the observer is not concerned with petty detail.