Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/379

 Destroyers of the Air

By Eustace L. Adams

An all steel battle aeroplane, manufactured near Boston. These machines may revolutionize the aeronautical industry, since, with proper machinery, they may be stamped out in almost unlimited number. They will doubtless be models for pleasure craft

THE navy with the greatest number of super-dreadnoughts wins in a modern naval engagement. Since the launching of the Dreadnought, which gave the type its name, the nations of the world have been feverishly engaged, attempting to outdo one another in the building of great sea fighters.

The race for supremacy in dreadnoughts and super-dreadnoughts of the air is as keen at this moment as the race for supremacy on the water. Armies are finding that if they have no giant aeroplanes to drive away the armored battle-planes of the enemy they are fighting under an almost impossible handicap.

France, England, Russia and Germany have all developed their aerial dreadnoughts during the last year of fighting, and the development of the aeronautical industry has progressed the equivalent of many years during the last twelve months, measured by past progress. Those who have seen aviators "loop the loop" and break records at aviation meets and country fairs, can form but a slight conception of the huge machines now hovering over the battlefields of Europe, Giant aeroplanes, heavily armored, and carrying a crew of several men, ward off attacks with two or three guns, shooting high explosive shells in an aerial contest. They are capable of remaining in the air for several hours. Were they devoted to peaceful pursuits, they could carry mail and passengers almost with the certainty and regularity of an express train.

Although Americans have never seen these machines, this country is playing no small part in developing the battle-plane of today and the aerial express of tomorrow. Two builders of aircraft in the United States are reported to be constructing aeroplanes which will be among the largest that the world has ever seen. The average exhibition aeroplane with which most of us are familiar measures about thirty feet from tip to tip. A company with factories in Washington is said to be manufacturing some aeroplanes which have a wing span of one hundred and eighty feet. Heavily armored with steel, and carrying a two-inch gun in each of its two fusilages, each great machine will be driven through the air by two motors developing sixteen hundred horsepower together.

Immediately before the outbreak of the war, the eyes of the world were upon a flying boat named the America, built for the first trans-Atlantic flight, but destined to cross the ocean in the hold of a steamship, to play an important part in British operations against enemy submarines. The America was one of the pioneers of the present battle-planes. Equipped with two motors, and with a comfortable cabin for the operators, this 351