Page:Aircraft in Warfare (1916).djvu/72

§ 17 effect that low-altitude flying —i.e. under 2,000 ft.—as affecting the service use of the aeroplane, lies mainly with the future; the design of the machine for this class of work will require the most careful study on the lines already indicated, the essential point being immunity to attack by small-arm fire. In obtaining such immunity sacrifice of some kind will have to be made. Whether it be in the armour-plating of vitals, or in the provision of redundant members or material, a great deal of otherwise unnecessary weight must needs be carried which ultimately reduces the carrying power in other directions. This means eventually either a reduction in the speed or a positive all-round increase in the size and weight of the machine. Granted that all initial difficulties be overcome, the advent of the armed and armoured low-altitude machine will initiate a new phase of aeroplane tactics, and one that cannot fail to have a far-reaching effect on the other Arms of the Service. The difficulties of cavalry operations will be increased incalculably; a body of cavalry, unless protected by a covering force of aeroplanes, will find itself continually open to attack, both by short-range machine-gun fire and by bombs and hand-grenades: in addition to this the demoralising effect of numbers of high-powered aeroplanes flying overhead, perhaps within 200 ft, or so, will be by no means a negligible factor. Up to the present the cavalry have been the Arm of greatest mobility, and nearly all cavalry operations on a large scale are fundamentally based upon, and rendered possible by, that fact. Once the aeroplane has taken its place in the actual fighting arena, this condition is definitely a thing of the past, and, so long as daylight lasts at least, any cavalry-force not itself accompanied, or supported, by its own aeroplane auxiliary will find its every movement dogged by the hostile aeroplane, and its every operation baulked by counter-attack from above.