Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/191

 Popular Science Monthly

��Vol. 88 No. 2

��239 Fourth Ave., New York

February, 1916

��$1.50 Annually

��Mining the Air Against Zeppelins

By Carl Dienstbach

��THE failure of the English high- angle anti-aircraft artillery to de- stroy Zeppelins attacking London has been repeatedly demonstrated, and it has stimulated many a scientific mind to invent some more efficient means of defense. At night the English aero- planes are at a serious disadvantage, since the glare of the ground search- lights renders it almost impossible to drop bombs on the enemy with any degree of accuracy. Instead, they fall into London, causing explosion and con- flagration. The same danger exists in firing upward against the almost invis- ible and swiftly moving Zeppelins.

Joseph Steinmetz, an American in- ventor, proposes to mine the air with bomb-carrying balloons. Small hydrogen balloons, connected in pairs or groups by piano wire (weighing about ten pounds to the mile) are to be set adrift when the Zeppelins are over London. Accord- ing to the inventor, they would rise rapidly and enmesh the enemy's aircraft. Attached to the balloon units are small hook-trigger bombs of high explosive contact and incendiary torches, which are to be drawn into the Zeppelin's gas bag with destructive results. The method is to be further elaborated by carrying nets of very wide mesh, an idea successfully applied in submarine war- fare. In the opinion of Mr. Steinmetz, even though the chance of a Zeppelin's fouling the balloon-connecting wires is only one in a thousand, that one chance is well worth the attempt and expense.

At first blush this scheme of mining the air as a defense against Zeppelins is attractively plausible. Undoubtedly, if the atmosphere above London were

��full of floating air-mines, it would not be so easy to bombard the town from aloft. \\ hen it comes to making this arrangement practical, however, serious difficulties are immediately encountered. Flotation in air is not like flotation in water. A balloon left to itself invariably goes up or comes down. It is generally considered a wonderful accomplishment if a balloonist knows the aerial ocean well enough to keep his craft in regions where sun, winds and vapors do not con- tinually force it from its level, thus causing him to use up gas and ballast and shortening the trip. Over a great city, this procedure would be extremely hazardous. After the air has been thoroughly sown with mine-balloons, it may snow. Imagine the result! With a wind blowing the balloons about dur- ing a snow storm, and their bombs strik- ing roofs right and left, the inhabitants of London might prefer the attacks of the Zeppelins. Think of the conflaga- tion these clusters of balloons might cause!

The whole plan harks back to the ex- periment made in Austrian campaign against \^enice in 1849. Nothing was done by halves at that time. No less than two hundred small hydrogen bal- loons, each carrying a twenty-five or thirty pound bomb, were liberated, but they refused to stay at the right level. They continued to rise until an upper current of opposite direction found them and returned them to the senders.

Even if the mine-balloons remained over London in their allotted places, there are other factors to be considered which could very likely result in a catas- trophe. To carry the smallest bombs,

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