Evening capital news. (Boise, Idaho) 1901-1927, 1917-11-11
Importance of Air Enter
prises in Shaking the Con
fidence of the German
People Pointed Out.
aeprisals Engaged in Only
When Germans B o m b
Towns and Care Used to
Attack Only Places of
Military Importance.


de Kerillis. of the French air service.
hero of innumerable air raids, in an
interview with the. United Press today,
pointed out the great Importance of
these enterprises and predicted that the
cooperation. of America In these I'M
dertakings would shake the morals OF
the German people and hasten the end
of the war"
AIR bombardments," said the cap
tain, ARE becoming one of the most
scientific forms of warfare. Every day
they are becoming more complicated.
First of all. one must bear in mind that
the aviation de chasse' and the avia-
ton de bombardment' are two very diff
serent things.
"The business of the former is to at
tack, that of the latter to maneaver. BY
maneuxer. | mean that the function of
air bombardments, is, either to pre-
vent concentration of enemy air craft,
or to force it to give battle.
REPRISAL RAIDS.
''Then of course there are reprisal
raids, such as those we have just late
ly carried out. About the effectiveness
of these reprisal raids, when they are
successful, there is no doubt, and will
give you an example.
ION June 81 of last year. we under
took a raid on Carlsruhe as a reprisal
for a recent raid on Barbecue. The
effect of the French raid was so salu-
tary, that for long time all German
raids on French towns ceased. On
German aviators, whom we captured,
we found strict orders to cease bonn
harding French towns.
with the German military authori-
ties, 1t ia entirely a question of cal
culating the gain and loss of an enter
prise. When they decide that the pen
atty for a certain enterprise is too great
they abandon it, at least temporarily.
In the case of the German air raids,
which ceased for a while, such a calcu
'ation had certainly been made.
RESUMED TERROR TACTICS.
FINALLY however, the Germans evil
IDENTIFY decided that It was worth while
beginning their terrorizing system
again, so they started their air raids
once more. though mostly on England.
zone of tho principal objects of these
raids, it must he remembered, is 10
keep large, portions of the British air
fleet in England to oppose the invaders,
The same problem is involved in big
strategic battles. where the principal
aim of bombarding squadrons is to keep
the air forces of the enemy busy and
to dispense them as much as possible.
THE results obtained in aerial war
fare have developed entirely new tao
tics which must be learnt on the spot.
To train bombarding sGuadrons takes
time and very careful preparation.
"One of the most important things
is to acquire cohesion. or what you
might call team work When an air
raid is undertaken the enemys first OBJ
iect is to break up the formation of the
attacking squadrons by adroit maneuv-
ers. Then, if this succeeds and the
squadron is scattered, its isolated mem
hers are attacked and the result is gen
orally disastrous for the attacking
party.
WILL HASTEN THE END.
Our raids into Germany are from
every point of view more formidable
enterprises than the German raids in
France or England. For, in the first
place, we have to cover very long dis
tances to attain our objective, and,
secondly we are obliged to descend
very low when actually launching our
bombs, as we have strict orders to
lombard only such points in tho
enemy's territory which are actually OF
military Importance. such as barracks
stations, etc.
What we need above all are bonn
harding sauadrons. organized on a large
scale. which can continually and sys-
tematically carry out raids into Ger
man territory.