Aircraft in the Great War

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill DUELS IN THE AIR Until a fighting machine has been produced which will equal an unarmed aeroplane in speed, in climbing power, and in handiness, there can be little doubt that a resolute enemy, with a reasonable air force at his disposal, will be able to get such information as aerial reconnaissance...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill DUELS IN THE AIR Until a fighting machine has been produced which will equal an unarmed aeroplane in speed, in climbing power, and in handiness, there can be little doubt that a resolute enemy, with a reasonable air force at his disposal, will be able to get such information as aerial reconnaissance can acquire. Major-general Sir David Henderson. If against flying craft the land-guns are largely impotent?and in this war they have been?there is still the attack from the air; and here, as we have indicated, there is scope for daring work. But, when arming a machine for a duel in the air, there is one adverse factor to be reckoned with. Even a motor of 200 h.p. ?and this is almost the limit to-day?gives none too much power for a large and heavy craft; and for this reason, if a machine has a gun and ammunition, and carries in addition the weight of a pilot and a combatant, its pace may be so reduced that, when it seeks combat with some high-speed hostile scout, it will fly so slowly that the enemy?having no such burden to check his pace?can fly out of range and so escape. The high-powered aeroplane destroyer is a machine of the future. With existing craft, and with motors available, if a machine is heavily armed it will fly too slowly. In this war, therefore, at any rate in its early stage, the combatants who were successful were single pilots, each in a high-speed craft; and they pursued the enemy's scouts and darted at them boldly, seeking to wing them with a rifle or a revolver. In such desultory fighting no conclusive results are to be obtained. Machines have been put out of action; dramatic duels have been fought; but there has been no means of gaining a command of the air. To this extent aerial fighting has failed in its purpose; and this purpose ha...