LAND AND SKATER. 
March 6, 1915. 
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TR/ENDL Y 
DIAGBAM TO ILLUSTRATE A 8UGGESTED MBTHOD Of 
AJiSUL ATTACK. 
obt&in an aerial suprcrnacj which would enable U9, almost 
immediatelj, to carry tha war right into the heart of the 
enemy'a territory, a special offensive air fleet must be created 
at oiice. 
SUGGESTED METHOD OF AERIAL ATTACK. 
In the diagram FFF represents the boundary line 
between a friendly territory and the enemy's country. This 
boundary line may be defended by trenches, fortification, 
or natural obstacles. TTT represents a portion of the enemy'a 
territory which it may be necessary to attack aerially. Such 
an attack must be made on a comprehensive and sustained 
scale. For this purpose it is suggested that the requisite 
number of aeroplanes should be collected at a certain number 
o; bases, Bl, B2, B3, and B4, and CI, C2, C3, and C4, and 
that, at first, the machines should start only from the baaci 
Bl, B2, B3, and B4, at such times as to fly, almost eimul- 
taueously, over the ground to be aerially bombarded. The 
squadron starting from Bl would fly over the outskirts of 
the territory to be attacked and gradually drop its bombs 
over the outer circle it would describe. The squadron from 
B2 would fly over the circumference of a circle inside ths 
one described by the preceding squadron, and fly in the same 
clockwise direction. Similarly the squadrons from B3 and 
B4 would describe other inner circles as indicated in th« 
diagram. 
This comprehensive aerial attack could bo sustained by 
four other aerial squadrons which would start from base* 
CI, C2, C3, and C4, immediately the four squadrons from 
Bl, B2, B3, and B4 have returned to the friendly territory, 
and would fly over the ground to be bombarded in a direo- 
tion contrariwise to the one adopted by the squadron3 from 
Bl, B2, B3, and B4. 
lu concluding this article, the writer wishes to repeal 
his note of warning that wo should not be tempted to mak« 
it a practice to carry out two entirely different kinds of 
operstionj — reconnaissance and attack— with the same ai< 
fleet. 
SHIPS V. FORTS IN THE DARDANELLES 
By COLONEL F. N. MAUDE, C.B. 
FOR something more than thirty years the whole 
political question of the Near East has turned 
upon the matter which is now being put to the 
test in the Dardanelles by the Allied squadrons 
of France and England. 
It has been partly a naval question, partly one of land 
defences, and opinions have varied in proportion as the 
•ailors understood the engiueers and the engineers under- 
stood the sailors. 
It has alwajrs been an axiom of the German school, trained 
exclusively on land, that guns in forts could beat guns on a 
moving platform at sea; but our sailors have as consistently 
maintained the directly opposite view, while our own 
engineers, almost equally at home on land or sea, have refused 
a complete assent to either extreme, pointing out that no 
hard and fast rule could be drawn, but that each case must 
b« judged by the advantages which a selected site afforded its 
defenders and the skill with which the engineer and artillerist 
had applied the means at hand to the attainment of the object 
la view. ' 
Now it happens that this particular site of the Dardanelles 
• '^«° J°?<J« *!»• subject of countless controversies ever 
^^l ^^« B^t^h Fleet steamed past the Turkish batteries in 
1878. We have always known every sounding in the straits 
and all about the conditions of current and anchorac-e which 
governed the application of submarine mines to supplement 
the gun defence of the forts. 
I suppose this particular case is the one instance in 
history in which both R.E. and R.N. expert opinion has been 
in entire apeement— i.e., we both accepted the Dardanol!o3 
»8 an indefensible site, as against such ships as the British 
Navy could always bring to reduce its defence, if the occasion 
made It worth while to incur a certain amount of ri.sk 
I beheve, in fact, that the German engineers held mucli 
^L7T ""r-, ^^^^^' .'^"'■''^^ ^"■■t^ ""^ th* Dardanelles 
•fforded such splendid positions for Messrs. Krupp to dump 
their monster exhibition cannon, as these passed out of date, 
that other than intellectual arguments prevailed at Constan- 
Jhe whole question really turns upon the freedom of ships 
to move in fairly deep water and the ease of okservation of 
fire effect from their fighting tops. 
In low-lying country, behind sand dunes, for example, i* 
used to be nearly impossible to see where one's shells wer« 
falling, even after the site of the battery was located; but 
in the Dardanelles this facility for escaping observation does 
not exist, and even if it did the modern aeroplane completelj 
overcomes these difficulties. 
Eliminating this one advantage of invisibility possessed 
by the land battery, the ship now has things all her own 
way, for she represents a power of concentration of fire under 
a single control far in excess of anything that has ever been 
proposed in coast batteries since the days of the old ston« 
batteries of the Crimea. 
Of course the number of fighting ships must bear som* 
reasonable proportion to the number of batteries thoy will 
engage ; but even against a fair superiority of land batterie* 
the modern battleship possesses advantages in practice which 
the layman seems never to be able to take into account. 
It is, of course, the object of the batteries to wing th» 
ships, just as it is that of each ship to hit the batteries f but 
whereas the battery, or group of batteries, can only predic* 
where a ship will bo, say, a minute in advance, and that only 
on condition that she is clearly visible, the ship alwavs know» 
half an hour in advance, if need be, what her range to tb« 
battery will be, because her speed and helm-angle are entirely 
under her captain's control, and he can vary either, or both, 
as he pleases. 
Further, thanks to Q.F. guus and the extraordinarr 
power of modern artillery, a ship can from time to time sa 
shroud the fort in a cloud of dust, smoke, and dirt, thrown 
up by bursting shells, that for some minutes all observation 
ol the ship's course from the fort, or from anywhere near it 
becomes imposaible, and while the dust so raised is settliaa 
she can change her course and reappear at an entirely 
unknown range for her enemy. 
It is clear that there are ways of overcoming this diffl- 
cuUy if It has been thought out and installed in advance • bu» 
It IS quite certain from the "progress reports" hithert* 
received that this is a development weU beyond any which 
tha Turks hav« as yet worked out. " 
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