Aircraft and Submarines / The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day Uses of War's Newest Weapons

by Willis J. Abbot

Launching a Hydroaëroplane.

The all important and even vital necessity for speed also detracted much from the value of aircraft in offensive operations. It was found early that you could not mount on a flying machine guns of sufficient calibre to be of material use in attacking fortified positions. If it was necessary for the planes to proceed any material distance before reaching their objective, the weight of the necessary fuel would preclude the carriage of heavy artillery. In the case of seaplanes which might be carried on the deck of a battleship to a point reasonably contiguous to the object to be attacked, this difficulty was not so serious. This was demonstrated to some extent by the British raids on the German naval bases of Cuxhaven and Wilhelmshaven, but even in these instances it was bombs dropped by aviators, not gunfire that injured the enemy's works. But for the airplane proper this added weight was so positive a handicap as to practically destroy its usefulness as an assailant of fortified positions.

The heavier weapons of offence which could be carried by the airplane even of the highest development were the bombs. These once landed might cause the greatest destruction, but the difficulty of depositing them directly upon a desired target was not to be overcome. The dirigible balloon enjoyed a great advantage over the airplane in this respect, for it was able to hover over the spot which it desired to hit and to discharge its bombs in a direct perpendicular line with enough initial velocity from a spring gun to overcome largely any tendency to deviate from the perpendicular. But an airplane cannot stop. When it stops it must descend. If it is moving at the moderate speed of sixty miles an hour when it drops its missile, the bomb itself will move forward at the rate of sixty miles an hour until gravity has overcome the initial forward force. Years before the war broke out, tests were held in Germany and France of the ability of aviators to drop a missile upon a target marked out upon the ground. One such test in France required the dropping of bombs from a height of 2400 feet upon a target 170 feet long by 40 broad—or about the dimensions of a small and rather stubby ship. The results were uniformly disappointing. The most creditable record was made by an American aviator, Lieutenant Scott, formerly of the United States Army. His first three shots missed altogether, but thereafter he landed eight within the limits. In Germany the same year the test was to drop bombs upon two targets, one resembling a captive Zeppelin, the other a military camp 330 feet square. The altitude limit was set at 660 feet. This, though a comparatively easy test, was virtually a failure. Only two competitors succeeded in dropping a bomb into the square at all, while the balloon was hit but once.

The character and size of the bombs employed by aircraft naturally differed very widely, particularly as to size, between those carried by dirigibles and those used by airplanes. The Zeppelin shell varied in weight between two hundred and two hundred and fifty pounds. It was about forty-seven inches long by eight and a half inches in diameter. Its charge varied according to the use to which it was to be put. If it was hoped that it would drop in a crowded spot and inflict the greatest amount of damage to human life and limb it would carry a bursting charge, shrapnel, and bits of iron, all of which on the impact of the missile upon the earth would be hurled in every direction to a radius exceeding forty yards. If damage to buildings, on the other hand, was desired, some high explosive such as picric acid would be used which would totally wreck any moderate-sized building upon which the shell might fall. In many instances, particularly in raids upon cities such as London, incendiary shells were used charged with some form of liquid fire, which rapidly spread the conflagration, and which itself was practically inextinguishable.

Shells or bombs of these varying types were dropped from airplanes as well as from the larger and steadier Zeppelins. The difference was entirely in the size. It was said that a Zeppelin might drop a bomb of a ton's weight. But so far as attainable records are concerned it is impossible to cite any instance of this being done. The effect on the great gas bag of the sudden release of a load so great would certainly cause a sudden upward flight which might be so quick and so powerful as to affect the very structure of the ship. So far as known 250 pounds was the topmost limit of Zeppelin bombs, while most of them were of much smaller dimensions. The airplane bombs were seldom more than sixty pounds in weight, although in the larger British machines a record of ninety-five pounds has been attained. The most common form of bomb used in the heavier-than-air machines was pear-shaped, with a whirling tail to keep the missile upright as it falls. Steel balls within, a little larger than ordinary shrapnel, are held in place by a device which releases them during the fall. On striking the ground they fall on the explosive charge within and the shell bursts, scattering the two or three hundred steel bullets which it carries over a wide radius. Bombs of this character weigh in the neighbourhood of six pounds and an ordinary airplane can carry a very considerable number. Their exploding device is very delicate so that it will operate upon impact with water, very soft earth, or even the covering of an airship. Other bombs commonly used in airplanes were shaped like darts, winged like an arrow so that they would fall perpendicularly and explode by a pusher at the point which was driven into the body of the bomb upon its impact with any hard substance.

It seems curious to read of the devices sometimes quite complicated and at all times the result of the greatest care and thought, used for dropping these bombs. In the trenches men pitched explosive missiles about with little more care than if they had been so many baseballs, but only seldom was a bomb from aloft actually delivered by hand. In the case of the heavier bombs used by the dirigibles this is understandable. They could not be handled by a single man without the aid of mechanical devices. Some are dropped from a cradle which is tilted into a vertical position after the shell has been inserted. Others are fired from a tube not unlike the torpedo tube of a submarine, but which imparts only slight initial velocity to the missile. Its chief force is derived from gravity, and to be assured of its explosion the aviator must discharge it from a height proportionate to its size.

In the airplane the aviator's methods are more simple. Sometimes the bombs are carried in a rack beneath the body of the machine, and released by means of a lever at the side. A more primitive method often in use is merely to attach the bomb to a string and lower it to a point at which the aviator is certain that in falling it will not touch any part of the craft, and then cut the string. Half a dozen devices by which the aviator can hold the bomb at arm's length and drop it with the certainty of a perpendicular fall are in use in the different air navies. It will be evident to the most casual consideration that with any one of these devices employed by an aviator in a machine going at a speed of sixty miles an hour or more the matter of hitting the target is one in which luck has a very great share.

There is good reason for the pains taken by the aviators to see that their bombs fall swift and true, and clear of all the outlying parts of their machines. The grenadier in the trenches has a clear field for his explosive missile and he may toss it about with what appears to be desperate carelessness—though instances have been known in which a bomb thrower, throwing back his arm preparatory to launching his canned volcano, has struck the back of his own trench with disastrous results. But the aviator must be even more careful. His bombs must not hit any of the wires below his machine in falling—else there will be a dire fall for him. And above all they must not get entangled in stays or braces. In such case landing will bring a most unpleasant surprise.

A striking case was that of a bomber who had been out over the German trenches. He had a two-man machine, had made a successful flight and had dropped, effectively as he supposed, all his bombs. Returning in serene consciousness of a day's duty well done, he was about to spiral down to the landing place when his passenger looked over the side of the car to see if everything was in good order. Emphatically it was not. To his horror he discovered that two of the bombs had not fallen, but had caught in the running gear of his machine. To attempt a landing with the bombs in this position would have been suicidal. The bombs would have instantly exploded, and annihilated both machine and aviators. But to get out of the car, climb down on the wires, and try to unhook the bombs seemed more desperate still. Stabilizers, and other devices, now in common use, had not then been invented and to go out on the wing of a biplane, or to disturb its delicate balance, was unheard of. Nevertheless it was a moment for desperate remedies. The pilot clung to his controls, and sought to meet the shifting strains, while the passenger climbed out on the wing and then upon the running gear. To trust yourself two thousand feet in mid-air with your feet on one piano wire, and one hand clutching another, while with the other hand you grope blindly for a bomb charged with high explosive, is an experience for which few men would yearn. But in this case it was successful. The bombs fell—nobody cared where—and the two imperilled aviators came to ground safely.

A form of offensive weapon which for some reason seems peculiarly horrible to the human mind is the fléchette. These are steel darts a little larger than a heavy lead pencil and with the upper two thirds of the stem deeply grooved so that the greater weight of the lower part will cause them to fall perpendicularly. These are used in attacks upon dense bodies of troops. Particularly have they proved effective in assailing cavalry, for the nature of the wounds they produce invariably maddens the horses who suffer from them and causes confusion that will often bring grave disaster to a transport or artillery train. Though very light, these arrows when dropped from any considerable height inflict most extraordinary wounds. They have been known to penetrate a soldier's steel helmet, to pass through his body and that of the horse he bestrode, and bury themselves in the earth. In the airplane they are carried in boxes of one hundred each, placed over an orifice in the floor. A touch of the aviator's foot and all are discharged. The speed of the machine causes them to fall at first in a somewhat confused fashion, with the result that before all have finally assumed their perpendicular position they have been scattered over a very considerable extent of air. Once fairly pointed downward they fall with unerring directness points downward to their mark.