Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/543

 The Motorcycle Machine-Gun

���WILL the motorcycle supplant the cavalr>' horse in modern warfare? Our army officers are not ready to give an answer one way or the other at present, but since March 30, 1916, up to which time the motorcycle had been used only for messenger serv'ice in the United States Army, Brigadier-General George Bell, Jr., had been testing the armored machine-gun car to determine whether it may not eventually supplant the cavalry horse.

After exhaustive tests over every conceivable sort of road, including no road at all, the sidecar attachments were adopted. Single machines carr>'ing two men were found to be useless in deep sand or mud. With sidecars carrying three men in all, all manner of roads were used. At the present time a motor- cycle company is patroling the one hundred and thirty miles of Mexican border between Laska, Texas, and Noria, New Mexico.

��Fort Bliss of a miles down the hours later the

��Compared with cav- alry troop movements the motorcycle has done things which seem al- most incredible. On Memorial Day a report was received at bandit raid fifty-four border. Exacily two motor cycle company, with each machine carrying three sol- diers, was on the spot where the raid was reported to have occurred.

A few weeks later a raid was reported at Canutillo, eighteen miles from Fort Bliss. The motor cycle company reached this place, ready for action, thirty min- utes after the order was received. The first trip would have taken a troop of cavalry- two days, and the second four hours to make.

It is said that a machine-gun car and two men are equal to fully one thousand riflemen. Because of its speed army officers are looking upon it with favor.

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