Aircraft and Submarines
The Story of the Invention, Development,
and Present-Day Uses of War's
Newest Weapons
By
Willis J. Abbot
Author of "The Story of Our Army," "The Story of Our Navy,"
"The Nations at War"
With Eight Color Plates and
100 Other Illustrations
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1918
Copyright, 1918
By
WILLIS J. ABBOT
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
PREFACE
Not since gunpowder was first employed in warfare has so revolutionary a contribution to the science of slaughtering men been made as by the perfection of aircraft and submarines. The former have had their first employment in this world-wide war of the nations. The latter, though in the experimental stage as far back as the American Revolution, have in this bitter contest been for the first time brought to so practical a stage of development as to exert a really appreciable influence on the outcome of the struggle.
Comparatively few people appreciate how the thought of navigating the air's dizziest heights and the sea's gloomiest depths has obsessed the minds of inventors. From the earliest days of history men have grappled with the problem, yet it is only within two hundred years for aircraft and one hundred for submarines that any really intelligent start has been made upon its solution. The men who really gave practical effect to the vague theories which others set up—in aircraft the Wrights, Santos-Dumont, and Count Zeppelin; in submarines Lake and Holland—are either still living, or have died so recently that their memory is still fresh in the minds of all.
In this book the author has sketched swiftly the slow stages by which in each of these fields of activity success has been attained. He has collated from the immense mass of records of the activities of both submarines and aircraft enough interesting data to show the degree of perfection and practicability to which both have been brought. And he has outlined so far as possible from existing conditions the possibilities of future usefulness in fields other than those of war of these new devices.
The most serious difficulty encountered in dealing with the present state and future development of aircraft is the rapidity with which that development proceeds. Before a Congressional Committee last January an official testified that grave delay in the manufacture of airplanes for the army had been caused by the fact that types adopted a scant three months before had become obsolete, because of experience on the European battlefields, and later inventions before the first machines could be completed. There may be exaggeration in the statement but it is largely true. Neither the machines nor the tactics employed at the beginning of the war were in use in its fourth year. The course of this evolution, with its reasons, are described in this volume.
Opportunities for the peaceful use of airplanes are beginning to suggest themselves daily. After the main body of this book was in type the Postmaster-General of the United States called for bids for an aërial mail service between New York and Washington—an act urged upon the Government in this volume. That service contemplates a swift carriage of first-class mail at an enhanced price—the tentative schedule being three hours, and a postage fee of twenty-five cents an ounce. There can be no doubt of the success of the service, its value to the public, and its possibilities of revenue to the post-office. Once its usefulness is established it will be extended to routes of similar length, such as New York and Boston, New York and Buffalo, or New York and Pittsburgh. The mind suggests no limit to the extension of aërial service, both postal and passenger, in the years of industrial activity that shall follow the war.
In the preparation of this book the author has made use of many records of personal experiences of those who have dared the air's high altitudes and the sea's stilly depths. For permission to use certain of these he wishes to express his thanks to the Century Co., for extracts from My Airships by Santos-Dumont; to Doubleday, Page & Co., for extracts from Flying for France, by James R. McConnell; to Charles Scribner's Sons, for material drawn from With the French Flying Corps, by Carroll Dana Winslow; to Collier's Weekly, for certain extracts from interviews with Wilbur Wright; to McClure's Magazine, for the account of Mr. Ray Stannard Baker's trip in a Lake submarine; to Hearst's International Library, and to the Scientific American, for the use of several illustrations.
W. J. A.
New York, 1918.
CONTENTS
- page
- Preface iii
- chapter
- —Introductory 3
- —The Earliest Flying Men 14
- —The Services of Santos-Dumont 39
- —The Count von Zeppelin 59
- —The Development of the Airplane 82
- —The Training of the Aviator 103
- —Some Methods of the War in the Air 123
- —Incidents of the War in the Air 159
- —The United States at War 182
- —Some Features of Aërial Warfare
- Index 383
ILLUSTRATIONS
- page
- Fighting by Sea and Sky Frontispiece
Painting by John E. Whiting - Dropping a Depth Bomb 4
Painting by Lieut. Farré - A Battle in Mid-air 8
Painting by Lieut. Farré - Victory in the Clouds 12
Painting by John E. Whiting - The Fall of the Boche 16
Painting by Lieut. Farré - Lana's Vacuum Balloon 18
- Montgolfier's Experimental Balloon 21
- A Rescue at Sea 24
Painting by Lieut. Farré - Montgolfier's Passenger Balloon 27
- Charles's Balloon 31
- A French Observation Balloon on Fire 32
- Roberts Brothers' Dirigible 34
- Giffard's Dirigible 37
- A British Kite Balloon 40
- British "Blimp" 40
Photographed from Above. - A Kite Balloon Rising from the Hold of a Ship 48
- The Giant and the Pigmies 60
Painting by John E. Whiting - A French "Sausage" 64
Photo by Press Illustrating Co. - A British "Blimp" 64
- The Death of a Zeppelin 72
Photo by Paul Thompson - A German Dirigible, Hansa Type 76
- A Wrecked Zeppelin at Salonika
Photo by Press Illustrating Co.
Photo by Press Illustrating Co.
International Film Service
The Lafayette Escadrille
Painting by Wm. J. Wilson
Photo by Press Illustrating Co.
Photo by Kadel & Herbert
Photo by Press Illustrating Co.
Painting by John E. Whiting
Painting by John E. Whiting
Painting by John E. Whiting
Painting by John E. Whiting
THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
It was at Mons in the third week of the Great War. The grey-green German hordes had overwhelmed the greater part of Belgium and were sweeping down into France whose people and military establishment were all unprepared for attack from that quarter. For days the little British army of perhaps 100,000 men, that forlorn hope which the Germans scornfully called "contemptible," but which man for man probably numbered more veteran fighters than any similar unit on either side, had been stoutly holding back the enemy's right wing and fighting for the delay that alone could save Paris. At Mons they had halted, hoping that here was the spot to administer to von Kluck, beating upon their front, the final check. The hope was futile. Looking back upon the day with knowledge of what General French's army faced—a knowledge largely denied to him—it seems that the British escape from annihilation was miraculous. And indeed it was due to a modern miracle—the conquest of the air by man in the development of the airplane.
General French was outnumbered and in danger of being flanked on his left flank. His right he thought safe, for it was in contact with the French line which extended eastward along the bank of the Somme to where the dark fortress of Namur frowned on the steeps formed by the junction of that river with the Meuse. At that point the French line bent to the south following the course of the latter river.
Namur was expected to hold out for weeks. Its defence lasted but three days! As a matter of fact it did not delay the oncoming Germans a day, for they invested it and drove past in their fierce assault upon Joffre's lines. Enormously outnumbered, the French were broken and forced to retreat. They left General French's right flank in the air, exposed to envelopment by von Kluck who was already reaching around the left flank. The German troops were ample in number to surround the British, cut them off from all support, and crush or capture them all. This indeed they were preparing to do while General French, owing to some mischance never yet explained, was holding his ground utterly without knowledge that his allies had already retired leaving his flank without protection.
Photo by Peter A. Juley.
Dropping a Depth Bomb.
From the Painting by Lieutenant Farré.
When that fatal information arrived belatedly at the British headquarters it seemed like a death warrant. The right of the line had already been exposed for
It was a beaten army that plodded back to the line of the Marne. Its retreat at times narrowly approached a rout. But the army was not crushed, annihilated. It remained a coherent, serviceable part of the allied line in the successful action speedily fought along the Marne. But had it not been for the presence of the airmen the British expeditionary force would have been wiped out then and there.
The battle of Mons gave the soldiers a legend which still persists—that of the ghostly English bowmen of the time of Edward the Black Prince who came back from their graves to save that field for England and for France. Thousands of simple souls believe that legend to-day. But it is no whit more unbelievable than the story of an army saved by a handful of men flying thousands of feet above the field would have been had it been told of a battle in our Civil War. The world has believed in ghosts for centuries and the Archers of Mons are the legitimate successors of the Great Twin Brethren at the Battle of Lake Regillus. But Cæsar, Napoleon, perhaps the elder von Moltke himself would have scoffed at the idea that men could turn themselves into birds to spy out the enemy's dispositions and save a sorely menaced army.
When this war has passed into history it will be recognized that its greatest contributions to military science have been the development and the use of aircraft and submarines. There have, of course, been other features in the method of waging war which have been novel either in themselves, or in the gigantic scale upon which they have been employed. There is, for example, nothing new about trench warfare. The American who desires to satisfy himself about that need only to visit the Military Park at Vicksburg, or the country about Petersburg or Richmond, to recognize that even fifty years ago our soldiers understood the art of sheltering themselves from bullet and shrapnel in the bosom of Mother Earth. The trench warfare in Flanders, the Argonne, and around Verdun has been novel only in the degree to which it has been developed and perfected. Concrete-lined trenches, with spacious and well-furnished bomb-proofs, with phonographs, printing presses, and occasional dramatic performances for lightening the soldiers' lot present an impressive elaboration of the muddy ditches of Virginia and Mississippi. Yet after all the boys of Grant and Lee had the essentials of trench warfare well in mind half a century before Germany, France, and England came to grips on the long line from the North Sea to the Vosges.
Asphyxiating gas, whether liberated from a shell, or released along a trench front to roll slowly down before a wind upon its defenders, was a novelty of this war. But in some degree it was merely a development of the "stinkpot" which the Chinese have employed for years. So too the tear-bomb, or lachrymatory bomb, which painfully irritated the eyes of all in its neighbourhood when it burst, filling them with tears and making the soldiers practically helpless in the presence of a swift attack. These two weapons of offence, and particularly the first, because of the frightful and long-continuing agony it inflicts upon its victims, fascinated the observer, and awakened the bitter protests of those who held that an issue at war might be determined by civilized nations without recourse to engines of death and anguish more barbaric than any known to the red Indians, or the most savage tribes of Asia. Neither of these devices, nor for that matter the cognate one of fire spurted like a liquid from a hose upon a shrinking enemy, can be shown to have had any appreciable effect upon the fortunes of any great battle. Each, as soon as employed by any one belligerent, was quickly seized by the adversary, and the respiratory mask followed fast upon the appearance of the chlorine gas. Whatever the outcome of the gigantic conflict may be, no one will claim that any of these devices had contributed greatly to the result.
But the airplane revolutionized warfare on land. The submarine has made an almost equal revolution in naval warfare.
Had the airplane been known in the days of our Civil War some of its most picturesque figures would have never risen to eminence or at least would have had to win their places in history by efforts of an entirely different sort. There is no place left in modern military tactics for the dashing cavalry scout of the type of Sheridan, Custer, Fitz Lee, or Forrest. The airplane, soaring high above the lines of the enemy, brings back to headquarters in a few hours information that in the old times took a detachment of cavalry days to gather. The "screen of cavalry" that in bygone campaigns commanders used to mask their movements no longer screens nor masks. A general moves with perfect knowledge that his enemy's aircraft will report to their headquarters his roads, his strength, and his probable destination as soon as his vanguard is off. During the Federal advance upon Richmond, Stonewall Jackson, most brilliant of the generals of that war, repeatedly slipped away from the Federal front, away from the spot where the Federal commanders confidently supposed him to be, and was found days later in the Valley of the Shenandoah, threatening Washington or menacing the Union rear and its communications. The war was definitely prolonged by this Confederate dash and elusiveness—none of which would have been possible had the Union forces possessed an aviation corps.