We are confident that our American friends will develop to the extreme limit their aviation of bombardment, and will train a great number of their aviators for long-distance flights by night or day. Very many of the most important military establishments in western Germany are within reach of our blows. Up to now the insufficiency of our material has been the sole reason of the failure of our aviation to attempt the destruction of her plants at Essen, Cologne, Manheim, Metz, etc. Certain expeditions have proved that all these places are within the reach of fairly good machines piloted by well-trained aviators.
What would become of the Essen works the day that 1200 or 1500 airplanes attacked them in groups of 30 or 40, following each other at ten-minute intervals; some bombarding the works with high-power torpedoes, others with incendiary bombs, others with suffocating projectiles, utterly demoralizing the workmen and spreading terror in their midst?
Certainly there would be losses, for the Germans have surrounded their works with numerous anti-aircraft guns, but would the more or less complete destruction of the Essen works be too dearly bought by the loss of a number of machines? Moreover we do not believe that a raid on their big plants, if well prepared and well carried out, would be very costly.
The use of aviation to destroy the enemy’s munition plants will, in our opinion, greatly hasten the end of the war, and spare a large number of lives.
If the war lasts, the long-distance aviation will have to be employed very extensively during the summer to set fire indiscriminately to the harvest in the enemy’s country, and even in the territory which they occupy as invaders, since there is no reason to spare the invaded sections as long as the natives are not allowed to have their share of the crops. Furthermore, devices will have to be invented to facilitate this work of destruction.
It is materially impossible to give the bombing-machines a speed equal to that of the battle-planes. Great importance however must be attached to the choice of motors and to obtaining the greatest speed possible.
All these machines have two propellers and some are provided with three motors.
The first bombing expeditions were undertaken during the first months of the war. From the very beginning, the Germans realized that airplanes could go far and strike dangerous blows. Paris was bombarded as early as September, 1914. In time, and as the machines were improved, the bombardments became more disastrous. In the course of the first half of 1915, British aviators dropped bombs on Friedrichshaven, the Zeppelin station on the Lake of Constance; French aviators attacked Stuttgart and Carlsruhe; and since the beginning of 1917, the Germans have multiplied their raids on London and the coasts of England.
We believe that bombing aviation, for purely military purposes, will assume an ever-increasing importance in the war.
Observation or Scout-Planes. On the French Front the old types of reconnoitring machines are being replaced as quickly as possible. They were too slow and not easy to control in case of an attack.