Evening star., 1921-07-24

excellence IN cOnStructloh, sure per.
|'formance or adaptability to quantity
production"
Fleet Must Control Air.
Glenn Martin. producer OF the Mar.
tin bomber: "The large percentage OF
used in these tests show that no
fleet afioat today is safe IL it once
loses control of the air. Control Of
/ the sea does not mean everything as
formerly. Control of the air IL the
determinant factor. Watching the
offensive equipment could destroy the
monarch Of the seas with its great
bulk and its personnel of from 1000
to 5000 men for wartime service. I
believe the future bombing air feet
will be made up much as the present
Atlantic fleet is.
THE backbone will be enormous
bombers carrying one and two ton
bombs. and possibly even ten-ton
bomb that will blot out the battle
ship at one blow. Then. surround
ing and protecting these bombers.
| that can travel 200 miles per hour
and reconnaissance planes that can
| observe and direct all maneuvers.
Where we have thought of 1900
pounds as a big bombing load. ! may
| next year have a bomber that will
| Soiiy f,OUO pOuHOS OI pOIHDS ana
5000 pounds of gasoline. so it can
travel 1000 miles to sea and back
again at an average of 100 miles per
| hour. We are just beginning to dis
| cover what we can do"
Dream Tests Realized.
August Post. secretary Of the Aero
club of America: las the Boston
| aviation meet in 1903 we marked out
| the outline Of a battlsship on the
~ - l.
| OF hour on 1t in stimulation Of bombs.
These tests are the realities: our old
dreams now come true. l feel free
| TO make the prediction also that the
| future will see even greater and
| more rapid advances than the past.
Newer types will travel twice as far
and carry twice as large a useful
load. Aircraft will be a greater mill
tary power than ever. since its affec-
tiveness will be so great against sub
| marines. destroyers. transports and
supply ships that the great battle.
handicapped even II they should avoid
destruction. Navy men will find lit
tie consolation in arguing that the
| Ostfriesland could not have been hit
when under full speed. The time
will come when. bith better sights for
bombing. fast-moving target will be
easier to hit than a stationary target.
This because the bomber does not pass
over his target SO rapidly, and there
fore has more time to sight and hit"
| Col. John w. Joyce. ordnance: Il
suppose I was about the first Army
oficer. to experiment with bomb
dropping. 1t was at San Diego in 1913
that Glenn Martin and 1 rugged up q
little old plane and used explosive
bombs that weighed only fifteen and
twenty-five pounds. We dropped
about 200 Of them. all told. and pre-
pared then an elaborote report de-
scribing what we had accomplished
the theory Of air bombing in warfare.
Report Was PiEeonhoIed.
1T aroused lot Of smiling and kid
ding. and shortly after went into a
pigeonhole and never again saw the
light Of day. These big 2.000-pound
bombs and Glenn's big Libertied
planes are a heap different from that
bombing plane Of 1913. And I sup
pose the next eight years will result
IN just as much progress over what
we have today"
Maj. Borden. ordnance bomb ex-
pert: Our Army bombs. originally
designed for land target use, had
small penetrative value, since they
were supposed only to crash through
plode. We had some hard work per-
| Iectlng this new type for deep-sea
use. We used a very short deIay
Iuse' G.2 seconds only on the nose
Iuse and o5 second on the tail fuse).
so that the bomb would explode on or
near near the hrst deck 1t struck. Other
wise the lightweight case we use
would be crushed and the charge
| broken up before it could be exploded
by detonation. INT will not ignite
or explode from a crash. 1t must be
aetonated 'o by Its fuse. This type fuse
would also gave US explosion from
| twenty to thirty feet under water.
where the heavy tamping effect OF
| this depth would throw the greatest
! !orce OF the charge against the ship's
hull. This is the reason that NAVY
| ofhcers noted no penetration of pro-
tective decks
We also prepared an armor-pierc-
| ing bomb, converted from a twelve
men shell, which would have pierced
| three inches of armor when dropped
from $4,000 feet altitude. But for
some reason this was not used in the
! tests. SO ''ie
Bombing in Its Infancy.
| The science Of bombing is in it's
infancy only. If we could have more
| INT to make bombs with, instead of
having to dilute them with amatol, we
could ma make better showings We
would like to experiment with analite.
which has a surprising blast effect,
, but 1t is difficult to handle, and our
resources are limited. The allies in
the war chiefly used twenty-fiye-
pound bombs for fragmentation work,
IN destroying personnel; and 100
pound bombs for demolition Of am :
munitlon dumps. depots. towns and
! railroads. They had very few of the
| large type bombs. but had made little
progress with them, and had no air.
planes to handle them properly. Our
bombs are all designed in Washing
ton, built in Frankford arsenal, load
ed at Picatinny arsenal and tested at
Aberdeen. Md. We look forward to
much larger bombs soon''
Maj. Miles, ordnance officer in
charge of Picatinny arsenal: I've
had had much trouble getting this
new type of water-contact bomb per.
fected. In fact, the Navy had the
laugh on US three months ago, But
this contest developed. enough of the
competitive spirit, and extra punch
and allowances, to solve all our trou-
bles. 1t was chiefly a matter of re.
adjusting the fuse control. But we
sweat blood for days and nights in ex-
perimentation before we got it. be-
lieve the rivalry Of these tests did
more to solve our bomb problems than
any amount of professional zeal would
have done'
4 New Menace to Fleets.
Maj. Gen. C. c. Williams, chief OF
ordnance: '"These bombing tests were
epoch-making. Aircraft is undoubt.