Types of Air-Craft Weapons.
[Fig. 1].—An aeroplane bomb containing 12 lbs. of tetranitranilin, with a screw stem up which the vanes travel in flight and thus “arm” the fuse. [Fig. 2].—Steel dart and boxes of darts used by Taube aeroplanes over Paris, showing how they are inverted and released. [Fig. 3].—A French “arrow bullet”; very light, but able to kill a man from a height of 1,800 feet. [Fig. 4].—A French aerial torpedo used by aeroplanes against Zeppelins, exploding when it has pierced an air-ship’s envelope and is suddenly arrested by the wooden cross.
KINDS OF BOMBS
Various kinds of bombs are used for dropping from aeroplanes. A simple pattern shown in [Fig. 1] consists of a thin spherical shell of steel, containing twelve pounds of tetranitranilin, which is an explosive more powerful than melinite. The stem of the bomb, by which it is handled, has an external screw-thread, and carries a pair of vanes. While in the position shown, the bomb is harmless, but as it drops, the vanes screw themselves up to the top of the stem till they press against the stop. This, by means of a rod passing down the center of the stem, “arms” or prepares the fuse seen at the bottom of the bomb, so that it acts at the slightest touch, even on the wing of another aeroplane. The fuse effects the explosion of the burster by means of a primer of azide of lead, which causes the tetranitranilin to detonate with great violence. The whole bomb weighs twenty-two pounds, and an aeroplane usually carries six of them.
The Italians, in their campaign in Tripoli, used similar bombs, but without the special device for rendering the fuse sensitive. These were not a success, as many of them failed to explode in the desert sand, and the Arabs used to collect them and throw them into the Italian trenches at night.
STEEL DARTS
The Taube aeroplanes, when they flew over Paris, used sometimes to drop steel darts pointed at one end and flattened and feathered at the other, as shown in [Fig. 2]. These were put up in boxes of a hundred, so that when the box was released from its hook, it turned over and released the darts.