By the time we have come to the stage of adopting a wireless installation upon aeroplanes, France may be busy with some new, and even more important, phase of flying.
As the military expert quoted above remarks, with perfect truth, it is essential that adequate and realistic tests should be carried out, with such an aid as wireless telegraphy, before any really effective use can be made of it.
IV. Photography from a war aeroplane—The use of special automatic cameras.
While dealing, in this section, with such an adjunct to reconnoitring as is afforded by wireless telegraphy, it is permissible, also, to refer to the use of photography in connection with aeroplanes.
Here, once more, it is necessary to turn to France for an illustration of recent work. Ascending from the Chalons military camp, quite recently, Lieutenant Blard, an army airman, succeeded in obtaining some excellent photographs of Rheims when flying at an altitude of 4000 feet. He used a special camera.
In America, also, practical attention has been devoted to this phase of military aeroplaning. An officer, when flying in a biplane, has succeeded in obtaining good photographs from as great an altitude as 6000 feet.
The utility of photography, as increasing the powers of the aeroplane in war-time, will be considerable. In an aerial survey of country, for instance, the camera will play an important part. A series of good photographs, when pieced together, will reveal the characteristics of land from the military point of view; and, in taking photographs of fortifications, the aeroplane with a camera will find another ready use.
It is now held that all scouting aeroplanes should be fitted with a camera, to be used, during reconnoitring, whenever a favourable opportunity arises.
In the first tests made with photography from an aeroplane, an ordinary camera was used, being held, by the passenger in the machine, in the best position possible to secure a photograph of whatever object it was desired to snapshot.
But this method was seen to be somewhat clumsy. In many machines, for example, it was not possible to obtain a picture, when taken in this fashion, of anything directly below. The business of changing plates, also, was found to be an awkward one.