Fighting in the Air 



The new machines that have been evolved and 

 the way they fight four miles above the ground 



By Waldemar Kaempffert 



(The following article is based upon facts which have been kindly supplied by Major W. L. B. 

 Rees of the British Commission. Major Rees was sent to this country as a member of the 

 British Commission to give to our army officers the benefit of the British experiences on the 

 battlefield with flying machines. He is an officer of the Royal Flying Corps who has seen 

 active service in the air and who, single-handed, brought down ten German flyers. — Editor) 



THE General Staff of every European 

 army knew five years ago that the 

 airplane would prove a potent factor 

 in war. Germans, English, French, Ital- 

 ians, all had tried to evolve a system of air- 

 scouting in their annual maneuvers. The 

 Italian campaign against the Turks in 

 Tripoli and the Balkan wars had proved 

 clearly enough that a man in the air could 

 see more than could a man on horseback. 



And yet all the European generals 

 entered this war without even a dim realiza- 

 tion of the terrible demands that would be 

 made of aircraft; of their utter dependence 

 on a handful of dauntless men ready to 

 vault into the air and brave not only the 

 unseen whirlpools and maelstroms of a 

 turbulent atmosphere, but bursting shells 

 hurled from the ground and the machine- 

 gun fire of an adroit enemy air-fighter; of 

 the inadequacy of the airplane as it was 

 built before that fateful month of August, 

 1914, when all Europe was plunged into 

 carnage; and of the frightful wastage of 

 machines and lives. Even the Germans 

 were unprepared. 



New Types Had to Be Evolved for the 

 Exigencies of Battle 



Every army had machines — the French 

 and Germans hundreds of them. But no 

 one knew that airplanes would have to 

 be built for very special military purposes; 

 that the same machine could not be effect- 

 ively used for scouting and fighting; that 

 the acrobatic performances of Pegoud and 

 his imitators in "looping-the-loop" and 

 diving tail-first would be elevated to the 

 dignity of military tactics with which every 

 fighting airman would have to be familiar. 

 In two years the whole art of airplane con- 

 struction has been almost miraculously 

 improved, and the art of flying, too. Be- 

 fore the war, some effort was made to 

 adapt the machine to the man; now the 

 man must adapt himself to the machine. 

 Where are the elaborate, automatic stabiliz- 

 ing devices with which all governments 



experimented before the war? Where are 

 the machines advocated for their inherent 

 stability? The machine of 1917 is only out- 

 wardly identical with the machine of 19 13. 

 About six types of machines have been 

 developed as the result of war experience: 



1. There is the fighter — a 150-mile-an- 

 hour, single seater, which is armed with a 

 machine gun; which has limited fuel- 

 carrying capacity, and which serves to find, 

 fight and destroy the enemy. 



2. There is the two-seated fighter. It car- 

 ries a fixed machine-gun at the front and a 

 machine gun on an "all-around" mounting 

 for the observer in the rear It is not so 

 fast as the single-seated fighter. It also 

 finds and fights the enemy; but it also 

 escorts patrols into the enemy country and 

 protects machines engaged in fire-control. 

 It has more fuel-carrying capacity than the 

 single-seat fighter, because it must stay up 

 longer. 



3. The reconnaissance machine is armed 

 like the two-seated fighter; but it is not so 

 fast and does not climb so rapidly. For 

 short distances over the line it is amply able 

 to protect itself. If it goes far, however, 

 it must be protected by two-seated and 

 even single-seated fighters. It is equipped 

 with a built-in stereoscopic camera. The 

 pictures taken are studied by staff officers 

 to note changes in enemy positions and to 

 discover concealments. 



4. The fire-control machine directs the 

 batteries by means of wireless. A recon- 

 naissance machine when fitted with wireless 

 apparatus may be used for fire-control. 



5. The bomb-dropper resembles the two- 

 seated fighter, although bombs can be 

 carried by various machines. Bomb- 

 carriers, being weight-carriers, are large. 



6. Night-flyers resemble either the recon- 

 naissance machines or two-seated fighters. 



All Europe Was Aeronautically Unprepared 

 — Even the Germans 



It was a very heterogenous collection of 

 machines that took the air at the outbreak 



7(5 



