THE FUTURE OF THE AIRPLANE 



By Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary, U. S. Navy 



UTILIZATION of the atmosphere 

 for commerce and transportation 

 presents possibilities far beyond 

 anything that we can now imagine. 



Sea power — military and commercial — 

 has been for centuries an absolute essen- 

 tial to every great nation, insuring its 

 continued existence and opportunities for 

 legitimate growth and expansion. 



We are now entering upon an era of 

 air power — a stupendous era — which in 

 the near future will be as far superior to 

 the greatest sea power of the present as 

 the unlimited ocean of atmosphere now 

 sweeping unbroken around the globe is 

 greater than the land-bordered Atlantic 

 or Pacific. 



The beginning of this era, the opening 

 up of a mighty and entirely new world 

 for exploitation, presents to the United 

 States, with its unique geographical posi- 

 tion, its boundless resources, mechanical 

 and inventive ability, and its splendid 

 reservoir of ideal American manhood, 

 the opportunity to be the first air power 

 in the zvorld. This should be the second 

 article in our national creed, the first arti- 

 cle in that creed being the Monroe Doc- 

 trine. 



In the midst of our great plans for 

 carrying the war home to Germany 

 through the air we must not forget to 

 protect our own valuable and vulnerable 

 coasts and coastwise shipping with air- 

 planes. 



The eagle is our national emblem. 

 Give us 10,000 fighting sea-eagles — far- 

 seeing, swift-flying, steel-taloned — to ren- 

 der our coasts immune from the bloody 

 "killers" of the sea. 



Give us thousands of swift sea-going 

 hydro-airplanes, with capacity for carry- 

 ing powerful guns and bombs ; perfect a 

 device — bomb, torpedo, or gun — that will 

 enable a plane three times out of five to 

 destroy a submarine on or just below the 

 surface ; then drill, and drill, and drill 

 with this device until our airmen have the 

 deadly precision of the dead shot with his 

 gun, the whaleman with his harpoon, and 

 the cowboy with his lasso or revolver. 



Any one who has seen a fish-hawk or a 

 sea-eagle sweep over the surface of the 

 waves, then pause, hover for a moment, 

 dive like an arrow, and proceed with a 

 fish in its claws will understand the state- 

 ment that when we have ten powerfully 

 armed airplanes to assign to every lurk- 

 ing, murderous submarine, the finish of 

 the undersea craft will be as inevitable 

 as that of the fish. 



This method of defense can be made 

 so effective by American skill and energy 

 as to constitute a complete protection for 

 our coasts, leaving our swift battle cruis- 

 ers and destroyers free for a far-flung 

 offensive in any one of the seven seas. 



Not only must America depend upon 

 her air fleets to protect her from the at- 

 tack of hostile sea fleets, but from air 

 raids upon her cities, for the rapid ad- 

 vancement in the science of aviation 

 makes it only a question of time before 

 we shall be vulnerable to attack from 

 above, even though the enemy be sepa- 

 rated from us by thousands of miles of 

 ocean. 



AIR ADMIRALS OF THE FUTURE 



The military evolution of the airplane 

 has advanced from the single machines, 

 scouting and fighting hand to hand, to the 

 squadron of twelve planes ; then to bomb- 

 ing companies of thirty to forty ma- 

 chines ; then to the formation, as in the 

 battle of Messines Ridge, last June, where 

 three strata of Allied aircraft were en- 

 gaged — the fighters in the upper, the ob- 

 servers and bombers in the middle, and 

 the machine-gun planes in the lower, 

 close to the ground. This work of the 

 air service really won the battle. 



We are now very near the stage that I 

 ventured to suggest two years ago, in 

 which the aerial unit will be 500 to 1,000 

 machines, and we shall have air divisions 

 made up of brigades, each composed of 

 several such units. 



The air admiral of the near future will 

 need to know more than the possibilities 

 of an aero squadron. He must know 

 from long practice, drills, evolutions, and 



107 



