MILITARY AERONAUTICS. Ever since the early days of aeronautics, with the develop ment of the old spherical balloon, the use of aircraft in time of war has been a fruitful theme for discussion. Lighter-than-air craft has fig ured prominently in warfare. The French used a military balloon at the battle of Fleurus on 26 June 1794 and from that date for over a century, until after the South African War, the aerial machines employed for purposes of observation were either captive in the form of balloons attached to winches, or in the guise of man-lifting kites or they perforce drifted at the will of the winds that blew. In the Franco Prussian War, during the siege of Paris alone, as many as 66 balloons left the stricken city, carrying 60 pilots, 102 passengers, 409 carrier pigeons, 9 tons of letters and telegrams and 6 dogs. Gaston Tissandier went over the Ger man lines and dropped 10,000 copies of a procla mation addressed to the soldiers, asking for peace, yet declaring that France would fight to the bitter end. In the American Civil War an aeronaut named La Fontaine went up in a bal loon over an enemy camp, made his observation, rose higher into the air and succeeded in getting into a cross-current, which carried him hack to his place of departure. The first cross-chan nel flight was made •by balloon in 1785, by Blanchard, who had with him an American doctor named Jefferies, together with a large supply of provisions, ballast and oars. With the development of dirigible balloons in the clos ing years of the 19th century and the advent of the areoplane a few years later the spheri cal type of balloon fell into disfavor as an auxiliary in war, although it was used with some success by the French in the colonial cam paigns and also on•the western front during the World War of 1914-18. In the article AERONAUTICS (q.v.) are described the de velopment, construction, advantages and limita tions of the several types of aircraft—the spherical balloon, kite balloon, dirigible, non rigid, semi and rigid types and the aeroplane. In this article it is only intended to point out the development of special military types and their adaptability to the several tasks for which they were designed.
Briefly, there are five main uses for aircraft in war. The first and widest is for reconnaissance. The second is for co-operation with artillery to locate the enemy's batteries and determine accuracy of fire. The third is as instruments of offense in encounters in mid air, either by classes of bombs, quick-firing guns or the use of other arms to destroy the pilots or machines of the enemy and therefore to prevent his achieving any of his aerial pur poses as well as to cause him loss of personnel and equipment. The fourth is bombardment
either of moving military objectives, like trans ports and so forth, or of stationary objects, such as airdromes, camps and the like; or, contrary to international law as defined by The Hague Convention, to drop missiles on unfortified areas and on buildings such as hospitals, cathedrals, churches and the like. The fifth use is for convoying vessels such as troopships, merchant men and even warships, by reason of the much wider range of vision possible from an altitude, whereby the approach of any enemy craft on the surface of the water can be detected at a much greater distance and whereby in normal atmospheric conditions and on certain surfaces it is possible to detect the approach of subma rines and the presence of mines. The types of aircraft adapted to these five main uses are: The Captive the supremacy of the aeroplane in most fields of aerial warfare, the captive balloon in military operations still has it advocates. The great advantage of the captive balloon is that the observer is constantly in direct tele phonic communication with the artillery com manders in his vicinity, constant and thorough inspection of the enemy's positions with the aid of powerful glasses reveals every movement of bodies of troops or anything new that has developed during the previous night and the targets thus presented can be immediately taken under fire. Captive balloons are placed from two to four miles in the rear of the front line and are separated by intervals depending upon the artillery activity in various sectors. The altitude at which they are held depends upon atmospheric conditions and upon the activity and distance of the enemy's artillery. Cap tive balloons are usually sent up at daylight and remain in the air until dark, being drawn down whenever necessary to change observers. Occasionally they are left up at night and it is frequently found that enemy guns that are not visible by daylight may be located at night by their flashes. It is customary to have two officers in the car and they are connected with the ground by telephone. The great disad vantage of the captive balloon is the compara tive ease with which it may be destroyed by a hostile aeroplane. The late war furnished instance after instance in which the observers in captive balloons were obliged to jump with a parachute on the approach of enemy aero planes, so certain had become the destruction of such balloons upon incendiary bullets being hurled into them from an aeroplane. Man carrying kites have advantages and disadvan tages similar to the captive balloon.