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Title (Dublin Core)
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German "Gothas" plane
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Article Title and/or Image Caption (Dublin Core)
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Title: The armored flying "tank"
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Caption: The big German Gothas carry 1200 pounds of bombs. Suppose the bombs were left just behind and just enough fuel carried for a two hours' flight. A lot of weight could be put in armor. We have indicated the armored portions by making them blacker. The wings are a lacework of ribs, so that a shot may pass through them without causing a complete collapse of the framing
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extracted text (Extract Text)
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OVER the American sector, north
of Toul, a German biplane appears
—a giant with three cars. In the
central car sit a pilot and two observers;
in the side cars are the powerful engines.
Such huge, cumbersome machines are
usually employed for bombing—rarely for
combat. What an easy mark! Immedi-
ately two Americans start up, followed by
two others. At twelve thousand feet they
recognize the German for what he is—a
huge Friedrichshafen or Gotha. They
rush for him and pour in bullets. Nothing
happens. The bullets rattle off. The
German proceeds stolidly on his way.
Then Lufberry, the American “ace,”
leaps into the air. In his fast avion de
chasse he overtops the German. He
plunges down and fires as he dives.
Again and again he turns, climbs and
rains in bullets. The machine guns
manned by the two fighters in the German
machine vomit flame and lead. Suddenly
Lufberry is seen to lurch. Smoke shoots
up from his machine. He plunges. There
can be but one terrible end—death by
fire or death by a sickening fall. Lufberry
unbelts himself, rises, and leaps from his
machine. A bruised, almost unrecogniz-
able mass is picked up in a flower garden.
Thus the most famous American “ace”
meets a Homeric end fighting the first
steel-clad battle-airplane.
‘Why the Gothas Were Built
Now the idea of armoring an airplane
is not new. European powers had de-
cided that the weight required was pro-
hibitive. Why then did the Germans
succeed in solving the problem? Because
the Zeppelins failed. Zeppelins had been
successfully set on fire over London. A
substitute had to be found if bombing
was to be continued. And so the Germans
invented the Gotha biplanes—mammoth
machines driven by engines of unprec-
edented power, provided with fuel
tanks of enormous capacity for long
journeys, freighted with bombs weighing
hundreds of pounds. Their arc of fire was
not impeded in any direction. They could
even shoot at a lower enemy through a
tunnel. The British considered them
almost equal in speed to all but the most
recent small pursuit planes. True, they
were unwieldy; they could not perform
the gyrations of the smaller machines,
but they could fight off faster machines
armed only with fixed machine-guns
firing through the propeller.
The Gothas and the similar Friedrichs-
hafens and A.E.G.’s are intended to carry
much fuel for long raids and a great
weight of bombs. Suppose the bombs
were abandoned altogether? Suppose
that the radius of action, too, were re-
duced to that of a light, single-seated
fighter, so that only a little fuel—enough
for a two hour flight— need be carried?
And then suppose that the weight repre-
sented by bombs and excess fuel were
distributed in armor where it can do the
most good? That seems to be the under
lying idea of the new German battleplane.
Fully twelve hundred pounds of armor
can be hung on the machine’s vitals if the
principle is carried out. The essential
point is that in order to be immune to the
small fighting plane’s bullets the giant
Gotha requires but little more armor
for adequate protection than a moderately
sized machine.
‘The Merrimac of the Air
It is said that after Lufberry’s death
the German steel-clad flying tank was
brought down. Whether it was or not, its
appearance marks a new epoch in the
development of the military airplane,
comparable with. the revolution brought
about by the introduction of the
Merrimac in the Civil War. We must
cust about for a Monitor of tise alr. |
Size is in it-
self a kind of
protection; for
the larger the
machine, the
less are its
beams, ribs and
struts likely to
suffer from bul-
lets. Only a
small part of
the craft need
be encased in
steel. Since at
least every tenth bullet is explosive and
many more are burning torches, all
wooden and woven parts must be
chemically fire-proofed.
The latticed masts of American battle-
ships are so constructed that shots can
pass through them without necessarily
bringing them down. A similar principle
may be adopted in building wing frames.
Even now machine-gun bullets may rip
through the lace work of beams and ribs
of a wing without necessarily en-
dangering it. The whole tendency
in airplane construction is towards
such multiplication of ribs and
beams. Therefore armor need be
applied only to the fuel tanks (a
leaking or burning tank means a horrible
death by flames); to the controls (cables
leading to the rudders and ailerons must
not be cut); to the crew (a pilot killed
leaves the machine brainless);
to the guns (a sting-
less bee is no
more
help-
cartridges is the equivalent of an ex-
plosion in a powder magazine).
How are the fuel tanks to be de-
signed? The least possible amount
of material must be utilized and
yet the maximum volume OD-
tained by a shape approaching
a sphere’s. The larger the tanks
the better; for there is no pro-
portionate increase of weight
with increase of volume. An
empty 500-gallon tank does not
weigh a hundred times more
than a 5-gallon tank. Let the
steel be thick enough, and it
becomes bullet-proof without
other armoring.
The piping through which oil
and gasoline is conducted must
obviously pass through tubes of great
thickness; control cables must be en-
cased in armored tubes. Before the con-
trol wires emerge they are attached to
bullet-proof chains. The exposed part
of them must be shortened. The braces to
which they are fastened must also be
armored and joined to the rudder framing
at many
points. No
single hit
must disable
a control.
Like
the fuel
tanks,
the engines may be greatly increased in
volume and therefore in power without
proportionately increasing their
weight. Power depends on cubic
capacity of cylinders. Hence a big
engine may be armored, and yet its
weight will be proportionately no greater
than that of a smaller one. If the casing
is to be bullet proof its weight need not
be increased by more than three times.
Mail-Clad Knights of the Machine Gun
What of the crew? The pilot's is the
guiding brain. The gunners are the fight-
ers. Why not follow battleship practice?
Armor the cockpits—that is the first
thought that leaps to the mind. But
must we copy battleships? How different
are the conditions in the sky! The
single-seated one-hundred-and-fifty-mile-
an-hour fighter darts hither and thither
like a wasp at such close range that his
antagonist lives in the constant fear of
seeing him vanish only to bob up in some
new unexpected quarter. If the cockpits
are to be armored protection must be
provided on all sides. Do that and you
convert them into completely enclosed
turrets. But how can a man in a turret,
peering out of sighting slots, keep his eye
on an elusive wasp? And how can
guns be mounted in such a,
cramped quarters to
fire in all direc-
tions?
For the present, at least, turrets are out of
the question. ‘What then? A startling
plan suggests itsell: Armor the men in
the cockpit. The press reports of Luf-
berry’s encounter with the flying tank
state that the German crew were actually
clad in mail. The reason becomes more
and more obvious, The men have no
time to revolve a sighting slot, which, in
itself, limits their field of vision; they
have too many other things to do.
The suit of armor worn by each man
(a suit of far tougher steel than any
15th century armorer could have pro-
duced) must be a full suit. Remember
that the bullets may pour in
from any side. Body armor
~ is lighter by far than turret
= armor. Modern science will
make it far more flexible
than the medieval knight's
coat of mail. There is no
p- need for much muscular
| action in firing a machine
gun—scarcely as much as
was needed for poising a
lance. The mailed knight of
the Middle Ages was about
as awkward on foot as a penguin on a
beach. On a horse he was much like a
pilot in an airplane. He had only to
guide his horse and charge; the pilot has
only to steer his machine toward his
enemy. Armor the men in the machine,
and the task of aiming and firing a ma-
chine gun is not impeded. And so God-
irey of Bouillon, the Chevalier Bayard,
the crusaders whom we thought we
had buried for good when gunpowder was
invented are restored to us again—
knights of the machine gun skimming
over the clouds of a twentieth century
battlefield.
What next? We must evolve a
Monitor of the clouds to fight this sud-
denly created Merrimac. The armored fly-
ing machine must be met with the shell fire
of a small gun, something like the French
thirty-seven millimeter weapon. Such a
piece can be carried only on a machine as
big as the Gotha. Gone are the old wasp-
like tactics. Instead we see a more
stately maneuvering for favor-
able positions. The ranges in-
crease, Against shell fire ma-
chines cannot be armored heav-
ily enough, Once the nose-
spins, the-side-slipping, the tail-
dives, the dodging, the looping,
the “dead-leal” gyrations that
now characterize air fighting are
abandoned, victory must belong
to the more powerful gun, the
gun that can shoot accurately for
a considerable distance. Guns
have always won battles since
gunpowder was invented. It is
50 on land; it is 50 on the sea;
and it is 50 in the air. But ad-
mit this and once more the Zep-
pelin looms up as an efficient
possibility for long-range combat
against the sluggish, mammoth
cannon planes that are to play
the parts of aeriel Monitors. Be-
cause of their enormous lifting
capacity, because of their im-
mense size, Zeppelins can carry
a far more powerful battery
than any mammoth _steel-clad
flying machine, But if the Zep-
pelin_ reappears, why should not
its old enemy, the wasplike
single seated fighter also re-
appear? Why should it not be
sent against the Zeppelin as it was
sent against it so successfully over
London?
1t is a curious circle in which
we find ourselves revolving diz-
ally. The single seated wasp-like
fighter gives way to the armored
plane, the Merrimac of the air;
the armored plane gives way to
the cannon plane, the Monitor
capable of repulsing the aeriel
Merrimac; the cannon plane
gives way to the rigid, gas-in-
flated Zeppelin; the Zeppelin in
turn gives way to the small, elu-
sive, quick-maneuvering single-seated
plane. Surely the air navy of the future
must be a strange mixture of various types
of aircraft.
‘Who knows but it may become a hetero-
geneous collection of a few Zeppelins hid-
ing behind a vast army of flying machines,
differing in size as well as in construction
and armament!
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Contributor (Dublin Core)
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Waldemar Kaempffert, Carl Dienstbach (writers)
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Language (Dublin Core)
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eng
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Date Issued (Dublin Core)
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1918-07
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pages (Bibliographic Ontology)
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37-40
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Rights (Dublin Core)
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Public domain
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Archived by (Dublin Core)
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Filippo Valle
Popular Science Monthly, v. 93, n. 1, 1918
