Page:Aircraft in Warfare (1916).djvu/145



§ 69. ''Naval Aircraft. Special Conditions.'' The position of aircraft in connection with naval warfare requires to be studied almost as an independent problem, since many of the circumstances and conditions are utterly different from those which obtain on land. Apart from differences in the constructional features which, particularly in the case of the aeroplane, are considerable, the questions which arise in the matter of attack and defence are so entirely modified, at least as affecting the primary function of the arm, as to influence fundamentally the question of armament. Thus gun-fire, except as against hostile aircraft, ceases to have any appreciable value; no gun capable of being mounted in any aeroplane or dirigible at present built, or contemplated, would be of the slightest service directed against even the smallest unit of the enemy's navy. Again, when we consider the duties of reconnaisance, we are faced with totally altered conditions. In the case of the aeroplane, so long as we are confined to bases situated on or near the coast, the area which can be reconnoitred is limited to a distance of some 300 or 400 miles (possibly 500 miles) from the coast-line, this being at present an altogether outside estimate. Since we commonly have to regard our frontier as defined by the limit of the enemy's territorial waters, it is clear that any such restriction is