256 



Popular Science Monthly 



I Underwood and Underwood, N. Y. 



Eight heavy shells suspended in a French bi- 

 plane in which is no sighting instrument 



How French Air Fighters Handle Bombs 

 and Machine Guns 



BEFORE the great war, no mi 

 tary officer really knew what 

 was to be expected of bombs 

 dropped from aircraft. There 

 were radicals who not only 

 denied that a dropping 

 bomb could be aimed, 

 but also declared that 

 air bombs would be 

 harmless because their 

 destructiveness would 

 be limited to a small 

 radius. When the war 

 came, the practical 

 French settled the 

 question by dropping 

 their regulation artil- 

 lery shells from large, 

 weight-carrying aero- 

 planes. They removed 

 only the copper ring which 

 in ordinary use guides the 

 missile through the rifle 

 barrel, adding instead a guid 

 ing windvane in the rear, to photo 

 make sure that the contact ^"'^^' 

 fuse strikes the ground first. 

 The accompanying photo- 



graph, siiowing eight heavy shells suspended 

 in a French biplane, is particularly inter- 

 esting, because of the utter absence of any 

 sighting instrument. Evidently the bombs 

 are aimed by a trained instinct. The 

 manner in which they are suspended sug- 

 gests that they are first unhooked, that the 

 contact-fuse is then "sensitized," and that 

 the bombs are dropped over the side of the 

 fuselage, all by hand. 



A still more interesting feature of the 

 picture is an aerial "gun turret" for the 

 machine gun. From such a rotatable 

 machine-gun carriage more is demanded 

 than from a battleship's turret. The arc 

 of fire is the whole horizon, and the gun 

 must be ready to fire at angles of over 

 forty-five degrees, up or down. That is 

 why this mount is so very simple. It is 

 really but a circular track around which 

 the gun is shifted, and on any point of 

 this track the gun may again be inde- 

 pendently turned through a wide arc, right 

 or left and up or down. 



The problem of obtaining unobstructed 

 fire in nearly all directions has been solved 

 in an ingenious way — the marksman simply 

 stands in the center of the circular track. 



The slightest con- 

 tact will cause the 

 bomb to explode 



Fishing for Enemy Aircraft with an 

 Aerial Death Hook 

 AN aerial bomb has been invented 

 x\ by Joseph A. Steinmetz, of 

 Philadelphia, which simulates 

 the old-time torpedo in that 

 it is suspended from an 

 aeroplane or dirigible by a 

 long cable. There are 

 three projecting arms or 

 hooks on the bomb, any 

 one of which coming in 

 contact with an object 

 causes the bomb to 

 explode. A contact 

 fuse would serve the 

 same purpose, how- 

 ever. 



When an airman 

 sets out to "hook" an 

 enemy craft he soars 

 high into the sky, lets 

 out his bomb to any de- 

 sired - length, and then 

 looks below him for victims. 

 If he spies enemy aeroplanes 

 he descends quickly, letting 

 down the bomb until the pro- 

 jecting arms come in contact 

 with the enemy craft. 



