The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-09-12

Will meet the difficulty. The silencer not only makes noiseless shooting, but quells all flame at the gun muzzle. The gun tests of the Germans have been made in great secrecy, and the results have been confined only to the officers of their army and navy.
 The military dirigible Is designed to travel at height of about a mile above the earth, so as to be beyond the eff fective range of small arms. By going with the wind, which averages more than "A miles an hour at this elevation, the sky-fghter in action will attain a spesd of a mile minute. To attack the airship with terrestrial artillery will be almost futile, although special heavy guns have been invented for upward shooting. Ex- pertinent has shown that it takes to 20 minutes for artillery to get the range of low-lying captive balloons at battle dis tances. With a mie-a- minute craft, cap- able of lodging and twisting like a rab- bit, 1t will be practically impossible to get the range. The great size of the tar get will be obviated by it's speed and er- ratic movements. A shot intended to hit 1t will have to be aimed an indefinite dis tance above and beyond the bow, as in shooting at string of flying ducks It VIII be long chance to score a hit, and then the puncture of one or two gas com- partments will not infict a serious injury
 On the other hand" say the authors. nothing alive on the ground can escape the fire of an airship. It will be armed with rapid-fire guns, carrying shells, but its chief reliance in fighting infantry or cavalry will be upon the machine rifle.
 With this weapon it can turn a stream of 4OO bullets minute on any troops within two miles, exactly as a man turns the stream or a garden hose against tree.
 It's gunners can see any object on the ground with perfect cearness, impos- sible of retaliation by any one who has not flown in balloon. They can thus
 mark the striking of bullets perfectly
 And the range of their guns is nearly doubled on account of their position The gun fire of an airship will annihilate in
 fantry and cavalry beneath 1t as surely as the hand of God. Some idea of the
 wholesale murder of troops possible with
 machine rifles can be had from the battle
 of Omdurman, in Upper Egypt. on Sep
 tember ?, 1898, when the English forces
 killed more than 11,000 and wounded 16OO0
 Of the Mahid's troops, most of them in the course of three short charges.
 Tn destroying troops on the ground the airship will take no serious risk It's po- sition makes 1t practically omniscient, so far as the movements of its enemy on the l ground are concerned. Only prepared ar tillery can possibly hit 1t; therefore it | will attack only when artillery is not | ready. It will work to windward at a low | level, then rise into the high winds of | the zone of safety and swoop over un- | protected bodies of infantry and cavalry | with the speed of an express train. Or at night 1t will swing searchlights steadied l by wind vanes and electrically focused. hundreds of feet below its car, and fire | from the dark above on well-illuminated
 mark. It is at this point that the aero | yvfl y,Io ffC ion
 The speed of these craft will be some 20 miles an hour greater than that of the | larger ships; they will be by their small | size and rapid and eccentric motion, ab- | solute1y immune from gun fire, and, when 1 fully developed, they can be counted on to carry at least two men and machine rife. Scouting aerop1anes will get in touch with the enemy while the airshfp is hid- ing below the windward horizon.''
 The airships now being built by the German government at Friedrichshafen will have double the displacement, it is be- lieved. of Zeppelin II, being about 51o feet long and 51 feet wide. Each of them will be able to carry a dozen men and | five tons of arms and ammunition over a
 radius of 500 miles and back. With five
 machine rifles and one machine gun the equipment could include two and half
 tons of dynamite torpedoes The tor ] pedoes must not be merely dropped on
 an enemy, but aimed and fired through
 a compressed air gun, so as to insure
 accuracy fleet of such vessels with l out opposition from other airships, could
 conquer Western Europe. The moment
 it is launched the standing armies of Flu | rope become an anachronism."
 Since the lifting power of airships in-
 creases according to the cube of their l dimensions. while the resistance on their
 surfaces increases only as the square of
 their dimensions, and the weight of the
 structure remains always at about the
 same proportion to the lifting power, fl
 is likely that airships more than 1000
 feet long will be constructed say
 Messrs. Dienstbach and MacMechen.