The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-03-30
ITEUTONS BETTER SPEED AND STYLE
 OF AERIAL SHIPS
Germans New Machines Make 12O Miles an Hour
 and Reach High
 Attitudes.

T,oY,don March 27-The SupoTAOflty If the English and French aircraft, which was frequently asserted In or ficial statements from the Entente s;de last year. Is less pronounced this .xser. according rc the British core Hosndents at the front. This Is due .he appearance of several new types .4 sserman machines, chiefly modelled, it is said, on French and British de- signs, and known as the Afbatros' Halberstadt, Ago, Roland and the new Fokker.
 The majority of them have fixed cylinder engines, giving about 160 to 200 horsepower. A few retain the rotary engines with which the Ger mans achieved some, success in the two years ago, but these rotary engines are seldom of more than 130 horse power.
 The new German machines have speed of about 12O miles an hour, but their chief feature is their ability for climbing. Ordinarily they frequent the 14,0o0 foot levels. and they have been observed on picket duty as high as 10000 feet. The latest German order for airplane engines is said to have specifications designed to give their machines a radius Of action up to at least 30.o0o feet.
 Meanwhile the British Air service is putting forth strenuous exertions to keep ahead of its rival Only In part is this a question of planes and en- zines. It also involves the problems of more skilful pilots, and in this di- rection of training the British service has expanded extraordinarily.
 After a class of military aviators have passed through their course of training on the slower types of school machines those who show special ap- titude are passed on to the scout sch0ols,'s where they are given spe- cial course in what is commonly call- ed "aerobatics." which involves the use of the highest speed machines and handling them acrobaticaly in the air, as is necessary in air fighting. The instructors carry on sham fights in the air with their pupils, armed with cameras instead of guns.
 Then there are the postgraduate aerial gunnery schools. The most ex- pert pilot in the world is useless as 8 fighting man if he does not thorough " undeistantd his machine gun, for a perfect flyer with a damned gun is of little use against a merely moderate ip1lOL WnO lS A CIACA SuOL anu a. IccIl gun master. A combination of the two is the desideratum as, for ex- ample, in the case of a young pilot re- gently mentioned in despatches, whose engine stopped dead at a height of 15,000 feet when he was being attack ed by two German aeroplanes. Des- pite this loss of motive power, forcing him to descend constantly. he shot down one enemy machine, drove the other away and glided into his own lines undamaged.
 The work of the aviator has be- come highly specialized in the course of the last twelve months. At the British aviation camps along the front in France, there are separate squad rons of machines for reconnaissance, infantry contact, photography. artil- lery-spotting, and bomb dropping and, in almost every instance, squads of these machines may only accomplish their duties successfully when they are, protected from enemy attack by machines of type comparable to the torpedo-boat destroyers of 9 naval fleet Al
 For, these destroyer machines,'' z high speed, sigh climbing ability. and ] high fighting and maneuverfng power are essential. Some of the newer Bri- tish machines of this type are said to show a speed of over 150 miles an hour.