Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights Part 20

The coming of this fantastic order of things in the air was first heralded by a squadron of scarlet German planes. It then was noticed that some of the enemy machines were striped about the body like yellowjackets.

GAUDY TASTES OF AIRMEN.

Nothing appeared too gaudy to meet the tastes of the enemy airmen, who seemed to have been given carte blanche with the paint brush. There were green planes with yellow noses, silver planes with gold noses, khaki-colored planes with greenish-gray wings, planes with red bodies, green wings and yellow stripes, planes with red bodies and wings of green on top of blue, planes with light blue bodies and red wings.

Virtually all the gaudiest machines were in red body effects, with every possible combination of colors for their wings. Some had one green wing and one white; some had green wings tipped with various colors.

One of the most fantastic met had a scarlet body, brown tail and reddish-brown wings, with white maltese crosses against a bright green background. One machine looked like a pear flying through the air. It had a pear-shaped tail and was painted a ruddy brown, just like a large ripe fruit. One of the piebald squadrons encountered was made up of white, red and green machines. There still were others palpably painted for what became known as "camouflage" purposes, as guns, wagons and tents often are painted to blend with the landscape and thus avoid detection.

This lavish use of paint, however, did not reduce the heavy daily loss inflicted on the Germans by the British flyers. But it must not be imagined that the Germans did not put up a stalwart fight. Just as their resistance was strengthened on land, so it was increased in the air.

Just as the Germans threw in new divisions of infantry and new batteries of artillery to check the Allies' offensive, so they sent aloft hundreds of new machines to contest for the mastery of the air, an important phase of modern war.

The manner in which the British flying corps dominated the air during the battle of Messines Ridge in June, 1917, and completely smothered the German aviation service for the time being is one of the most thrilling and remarkable stories of the entire war.

Hundreds of British planes were well behind the German lines when the battle broke into its fury at dawn. They had stolen over during the darker intervals of the brief night when the moon was hidden by storm clouds. Other hundreds went aloft with the first faint streaks of coming day and, guided by the flashes of the guns, flew into the thick of the fighting.

COMBED BY MACHINE GUNS.

During the night British machines combed enemy railway stations, trains, ammunition dumps and troops coming up on the march. Others hovered above German airdromes and circled low among airplane sheds and fired hundreds of rounds from machine guns into them and prevented the enemy machines from coming out. Later in the day, while the fighting was most intense, British airmen dropped about three tons of bombs on the German flying grounds as a further deterrent, which proved highly effective.

In addition to shutting the German airmen out of any early partic.i.p.ation in the battle, the British airplanes were in a large degree responsible for the fact that the Germans could not launch a counter-attack of appreciable strength until forty hours after the battle for the ridge began and every bit of ground desired by the British in this particular operation had been taken and secured.

Far back of the German lines the British planes searched out troops in every hamlet, town and village. In several places they saw them gathering or marching in the main streets, whereupon they flew down low at times and opened a fire which scattered the gray-clad soldiers in all directions. All pilots report that their accurate fire had a most demoralizing effect upon the hostile troops. Convoys and ammunition and supply columns were attacked while on the march and the disorganized men left their teams and automobiles on the roads while they sought shelter in nearby ditches.

AIRPLANES ATTACK TROOPS.

Airplanes attacked troops in the support trenches and sent them scurrying to the cover of their dugouts. One pilot made so many of these attacks that he finally ran out of ammunition, but he delivered his last stroke by letting go his signal rockets at a platoon of soldiers who, evidently mistaking this for some particularly horrible new style of war frightfulness, fled in all directions.

German troops were fired upon in the more distant back areas as they were entraining for the front. Many of the enemy retreating from the British attack and hiding in sh.e.l.l holes were seen by the low-flying airmen and pelted with bullets.

One British pilot patrolled a road for half an hour before he saw anything to shoot at. Then a German military automobile with three officers sitting in the back seat came along. The Britisher dived at them from a height of three hundred feet, firing at them as they came.

He flew so low eventually that the wheels of his under carriage barely missed the automobile, which swerved into a ditch while going at about forty miles an hour and crashed into a tree.

This same pilot later came across an active field gun battery and charged it, scattering the gun crew and hitting a number of them. Still further along he attacked a column of Germans marching in fours. The column broke when he opened fire, scattering to both sides of the road.

At no time during his stay inside the German lines was this pilot more than 500 feet from the ground.

ON CONTACT PATROL WORK.

Large numbers of British machines were on contact patrol work, flying low over the advancing lines of infantry, constantly watching their movements, their progress, any temporary reverse, any attempt to form counter-attacks and all the while sending detailed reports back to corps and army headquarters.

Of the fourteen planes lost during the day of the battle, a majority were those contact machines. They had to fly through a frightful storm of their own as well as the enemy's artillery fire, and they succ.u.mbed to chance blows from these exploding missiles.

Late on the day of the battle, when the enemy machines had finally arrived from more distant airdromes, there was some good fighting in the air, some of it at close quarters with collisions barely avoided. Twenty enemy machines were accounted for in the fighting, some flopping about until they broke up in the air and others being driven down on their noses in yellow b.u.t.tercup fields so far back of the fighting line that no sh.e.l.l had ever marred the symmetry of the landscape.

Some of the most marvelous work was done by artillery airs.h.i.+ps. One squadron of these alone, acting with several batteries of British heavies, succeeded in silencing seventy-two German batteries before six o'clock on the morning of the attack which began at 3.10 o'clock in the morning. These planes also directed the firing on the enemy's guns en route to the front, some of the big weapons being drawn by caterpillar tractors. Wherever a thousand or more troops were observed forming for possible counter-attacks the artillery planes directed "shoots" upon them.

So complete was the British domination of the air along the front of attack that not a single one of the British artillery observing aeroplanes was lost during the week that the intense bombardment was going on. During the battle British aeroplanes also attacked and silenced a number of enemy machine-gun positions.

The growth of the aeroplane industry has developed as many makes of machines as there are makes of automobiles, but in a general way aeroplanes are divided into four cla.s.ses--monoplanes, biplanes, triplanes and hydroplanes. About 90 per cent of all designs are monoplanes and biplanes, and the types are distinguished by their single set of wings or planes or the double planes or wings. Both types have their advantages in use, the biplane being regarded as more stable for certain scouting purposes than the monoplane. It can carry heavier weights--has greater lifting power--but is not capable of as great speed or as easily maneuvered.

MACHINE ON PRACTICAL BASIS.

The War has placed the machine on an intensely practical basis. The manufacturers have learned that machines constructed along certain lines will travel at such and such a speed and have a certain lifting capacity, will rise under a particular speed and may be expected to do certain things under certain circ.u.mstances, but with all the advance which has been made in the construction of the air machines, the designers do not yet understand all the "factors" that enter into the "why" of the case.

The makers have, however, succeeded in standardizing their machines to a degree. The story of how the aeroplane flies is a highly technical and scientific one, but the basic principle is the reaction of air and an inclined surface in motion. It might be likened to a stone skipping across the surface of a pond, if the imagination can conceive of the water as being air. It is simplicity itself to drive an inclined plane against the air with such force that the impact will produce a lifting power. In raising an ordinary kite, for instance, the boy runs into the teeth of the wind. His kite is so attached to a string as to stand at an angle, and as he runs the pressure against the air drives the kite upward. In the aeroplane the propellers drive the machine into the air with such force that the planes, standing at an angle, guide the machine upward.

There are innumerable problems to be solved--those of buoyancy, delicacy of balance and many others--but the designers themselves have not been able to determine upon a precise formula for their solution. It is sufficient that the aeroplane has reached a degree of practicability in construction and use which insures its permanent existence, and has given the military and the naval forces one of the greatest agencies in the world for protecting themselves and watching their enemies.

CHAPTER X.

WAR'S STRANGE DEVICES.

CHEMISTRY A DEMON OF DESTRUCTION--POISON GAS BOMBS--GAS MASKS--HAND GRENADES--MORTARS--"TANKS"--FEUDAL "BATTERING RAMS"--STEEL HELMETS--STRANGE BULLETS--MOTOR PLOWS--REAL DOGS OF WAR.

Things new and pa.s.sing strange--thousands of them--have been brought into being by the great world war. Human minds have developed things undreamed of by science or fiction--things that a few years ago would have been considered too strange and fantastic for even the professional romancer to weave into the tissues of his stories.

Every known science has been called upon to produce its quota of new things which might be used for the destruction or the protection of men at war. The wonders of chemistry have always lent descriptive inspiration to the pen of writers, but mankind to get a vivid conception of the horrors of chemistry has had to wait for the great world war.

The conflict which has involved the entire world might almost be termed a warfare of chemists. Without their diabolical products, ranging all the way from high explosives to poison gases, it would have few of the characteristics of ultra-frightfulness that render it unique in the history of international struggles.

But of all the instruments of destruction used in this war, there is none more horrifying than the so-called "incendiary bomb," which sets instant fire to whatever it touches and which spreads flame in a manner so terrific that three or four such gravity-projectiles dropped from an aeroplane burned up the whole of a peaceful Dutch village in a few minutes.

Now, what is the fearsome stuff with which such bombs are loaded? A new chemical compound? Not at all. What they contain is simply the mixture of two of the most harmless things in the world--oxide of iron (which is simply iron rust) and powdered aluminum.

When these two innocent substances are mixed together the result is a compound truly infernal in its potentialities for mischief. It is not an explosive but if set on fire it burns with an intensity that is positively appalling. Nothing will put it out; no quant.i.ty of water has any effect upon the raging flames it engenders.

This is the material used for loading incendiary bombs. It is ignited in such projectiles by a mercury-fulminate cap that sets off a fuse containing powdered magnesium--the stuff photographers employ for flashlights.

THIN Sh.e.l.lS OF STEEL.

These bombs are thin sh.e.l.ls of steel or iron--mere containers for the mixture before described. They are so contrived that the fuse is instantly ignited when they strike.

Whereupon the sh.e.l.l is melted by the heat generated within it and a flood of fiercely burning metal is scattered in all directions. All of this seems rather extraordinary, and it is worth explaining.

Oxygen has an affinity for iron, readily combining with the latter--which is the reason why iron is liable to rust. This rust is a chemical compound of iron and oxygen; in other words, oxide of iron. But oxygen has a much greater affinity for aluminum. And so, when the two metals are powdered and mixed together and heat is applied the oxygen flies out of the iron rust and combines with the aluminum.

The process is started in the bomb by the burning magnesium. And then the oxygen pa.s.ses out of the iron and into the aluminum so rapidly that an enormously high temperature is developed. It runs up to 3500 or 4000 degrees Fahrenheit--which means, of course, a tremendous combustion. The mixture of aluminum and iron burns like so much tinder--though such a way of putting it is absurdly feeble.

The present war has been conspicuously marked by reversions to ancient methods of fighting. In this line the incendiary bomb offers an excellent ill.u.s.tration. It is in effect merely an adaptation of an idea utilized by the Saracens--we should call them Turks nowadays--in their warfare with the Crusaders of the Middle Ages.