The Way of the Air: A Description of Modern Aviation

by Edgar Charles Middleton

There are three types of airship: the “non-rigid,” in which the two portions, the car and the envelope, are entirely separate portions, being held together by means of rigging; “semi-rigged,” in which the car is partly attached to the envelope, a type greatly favored by French and Italians; and the “rigid” airship, of which both car and envelope are in the same framework. The Zeppelin is of the latter class.

Like other great airships the Zeppelin does not rely on one single balloon for “lift.” Instead, the envelope forms merely the outer covering for eighteen balloonettes, which can be regulated in the matter of expansion and contraction from the control-car of one of the three gondolas below.

We have by no means yet seen these wonderful craft at their deadliest; the German pilots are extremely brave men, yet lack that initiative and dash peculiar to the British Air Service. Were the position reversed, one dreads to think what might happen to this country.

The future is all with the airship, in the rôle of commerce-bearing aircraft. The aeroplane and all heavier-than-air craft are of little value save as units of war, and even then their uses are infinitesimal when compared with those of the Zeppelin. And the secret of the success of the Zeppelin is that she has the “lift,” double and treble the lift of the aeroplane, and is developing beyond belief, whereas, in proportion, the aeroplane develops little year by year.

Taking everything into consideration we must have Zeppelins! It is imperative for the future safety of our nation. The longer we submit thus meekly to these aerial invasions, the longer will the war go on. The German people in the past have been intoxicated with Zeppelins. Weak, hungry and dispirited, their flagging spirits have again and again been whipped up into martial ardor by the fantastic and bragging reports issued by the General Staff in Berlin. One Zeppelin raid was of more value to the moral of the German nation than two great victories on the land. The giant craft to them is more than a mere engine of warfare and destruction, it is a fetish, almost a religion; thus after every raid the bells are rung. The streets are beflagged and decorated, and the inhabitants become mad with joy. And we must not consider the moral effects alone. From a military point of view, at the time of writing the enemy air-raids necessitate the authorities retaining numbers of valuable aircraft and many trained and expert pilots, not to mention anti-aircraft guns and their crews, which would all be of great value on the other side. Further, Germany defeated on land, and deprived of her fleet at sea, but still in possession of her Zeppelins, is a military power, and a very strong military power of the future. We, in Great Britain, have lost for ever the natural advantage we once possessed of being an island. Thanks to the vigilance and strength of our Navy, we have held the narrow seas with a firm hold, that so far no other nation has been able to overcome. Now we are always open to invasion from the air; and the sea, which formerly afforded us protection, is a serious disadvantage, in that invading aircraft can creep over those broad lonely spaces, and come down upon us before we are even aware of their proximity.

How can airships’ raids be encountered? There are three methods. The first is, by anti-aircraft artillery; secondly, by airship; and lastly, by aeroplane. The first method—that of gun-fire—is extremely unreliable. This is not the fault of the men so much, nor of the guns with which they fire, but rather of the conditions under which they work. Practice with anti-aircraft guns is rare and insufficient; and the best part of the firing takes place at night at a rapidly moving object, many thousands of feet up in the air. Aeroplanes are greatly handicapped by want of “lift”—a quality which goes far to render aircraft either useful or useless. To obtain “lift” the latter craft relies solely on the high power of its engine, whereas, with the Zeppelin, “lift” is obtained by two means: one by the envelope, which contains gas several times lighter than air; and the other, as with the aeroplane, by engine power. Thus we have double the lifting power with a dirigible than with an aeroplane, and hence double, and in actual fact treble, the war lift; and treble the amount of bombs, ammunition, and machine-guns can be carried.

The effect the enemy hopes to gain by his constant Zeppelin raids, is partly moral, partly military. To achieve the latter it is necessary that the enemy airman destroy some position or place of military importance, as a powder-factory, an arsenal, a large camp, an important railway junction, a munitions factory, a naval dockyard, an ordnance factory, or a similar area. But in very few instances have the raiding Zeppelins touched either of these places. Thus they have achieved but little military result. The moral result attempted has been to frighten and harass the inhabitants of this country until—Germany had a mental vision—they would be groveling on their knees in the dust, begging the Government to sue for peace. We have already dealt with the moral effect these raids have on their own people. By aid of lying and bombastic reports the enemy do not fail to impress—and greatly impress—neutral countries. Some readers will perhaps remember it was after a big Zeppelin raid on this country that Bulgaria joined the Central Powers. The Germans know only too well that we do not possess large airships of our own. Suppose we did; what would be the panic and consternation caused in Berlin by the appearance over that city of a squadron of British bomb-dropping Zeppelins, and how far would it go to shorten the war?

During the last few months we have seen the Zeppelin in a more useful and more dangerous aspect, namely in the capacity of Naval Scout. Let us consider what are the main duties of a light-cruiser fleet at sea; they are of a very similar nature to those of the cavalry, namely to form a protective screen to the main body, and to advance as nearly as possible to the enemy to discover the exact disposition of his forces. In one word, their main duty is scouting. In this respect the enemy went one better than ourselves. He built Zeppelins, and succeeded in accomplishing with a single Zeppelin that which in former days had required a fleet of light cruisers. Without necessarily running any risk, the giant airship at a height of 10,000 feet has a view extending on a clear day to as much as thirty miles, and some three-hundred square miles of sea surface. What cruiser look-out can claim a perspective equal to that? At thirty miles, or twenty-five or even twenty, the Zeppelin pilot is well out of range of the enemy shells, and with his wireless instrument, which has another range of thirty miles, can signal to the admiral of the fleet when the enemy is yet sixty miles off. This view explains the fact why the two fleets have so seldom been at grips in the two years of war. The enemy, by means of his aerial scouts, must oft and again have been warned of the proximity of the British Fleet. The official account of the Jutland battle stated that the weather was dull and misty; hence the Zeppelins would have been unable successfully to perform their usual duties.

The extreme radius of Zeppelin activity is usually considered to be 600 miles out, 600 miles home, and judged from the three principal Zeppelin centers—Heligoland, Brussels and Friedrichshaven—embraces, with the possible exception of a small and unimportant portion of the west coast of Ireland and north coast of Scotland, every city, military camp, munition factory, dockyard and industrial center in Great Britain.