Page:Aircraft in Warfare (1916).djvu/168

§ 83 cranes also can be provided in such form as to be rigged only when needed. Altogether there is nothing in these detail requirements likely to prove of insuperable difficulty. Condition (5) would be adequately met by a powerful broadside armament of 6-in. guns, in addition, perhaps, to guns of heavier calibre mounted in a single turret astern, all arranged below the level of the flying-deck. With a ship of the size contemplated there should be no difficulty in providing a sufficient weight of armament for the purpose specified. The gun-deck would be the main upper structural deck of the vessel, with only the comparatively light flying-deck above it.

§ 84. Advantage of Pontoon-Ship as Aeroplane Base. The pontoon-ship as an aeroplane base possesses certain and obvious disadvantages; an area for alighting such as is presented by the deck of a ship, although it may be, say, 90 ft. beam by 400 ft. or more in length, is none too large under really bad conditions of weather for even a skilled pilot, especially if the vessel be rolling in a heavy seaway. Without doubt, under extreme conditions operations will become frankly impossible; but, under similar conditions, it will be also impossible to employ a machine designed to rise from the water. The conditions in the case of the pontoon-ship, however, are not really so unfavourable as might be thought; the vessel can always be brought head to wind, when the relative velocity of the machine on alighting will be reduced by the velocity of the wind; it may also be still further reduced by maintaining the vessel under power; these two effects in combination, assuming the wind to be 40 miles per hour and the vessel at full speed, will result in a machine, flying through the air at 60 miles per hour, taking the deck without any relative motion whatever — a most favourable state of things, permitting