Now, a single one of our super-Zeppelins, which ordinarily have accommodation for five hundred passengers, can transport ten of those good collaborators. You will remember, moreover, that it can rise to such a height as to be almost invisible, that it can remain in the air for three or four days without landing, and that no incendiary shell, if, by chance, any artillery piece reaches it, can reckon with it, since the gas that it carries is no longer hydrogen, but a fireproof fluid.
That example shows the excellence of the effects that we were able to expect by studying the most rapid methods of charging the cargoes of airships. The same reasons applied to the five thousand metallic postal aircraft that we possess, each of which transports fifty people, which have no more fear of bullets than a tank, and no more fear of shells than a swallow.
THE LINNETS
It is perfectly evident that one of the major causes of the formidable success that we have just obtained resides in the very character of our adversary, now disemboweled. The insouciance of the French can perhaps only be compared to that of a little gray bird, the linnet, of whose fable I shall remind you:
“One day, hidden behind the branch of a bush, a linnet saw a hunter in the plain shoot at a company of partridges. He was a young and inexperienced poacher who was making poor use of his rifle, and was fearful of gamekeepers every time he used it—with the result that the partridges suffered no more damage from his shot than the loss of a few small feathers.
“The linnet uttered a joyful cry and flew away to tell her sisters that poachers were not much more dangerous than the scarecrows that farmers stick up in their fields to frighten sparrows. ‘Hunters often make a lot of noise,’ she added, clicking her beak, ‘but they always go home with an empty game-bag.’ She demonstrated to her sisters that the danger was non-existent, and easily persuaded them, because they all wanted desperately to believe that it did not exist.
“Then, all day long, the little gray birds gathered in groups on the thickest branch of the bush, in the middle of the plain. They thought about nothing but singing, and congratulating one another on singing so well.
“One afternoon, knowing that the gamekeepers were drinking in a distant tavern, the young poacher went out into the plain, set himself at a convenient distance, calmly and unhurriedly took aim, and killed all the linnets with a single shot. He went home with a bulging game-bag, and his wife made a pâté so big that all the friends in the village were able to share it.”
The French have always resembled linnets. Because the bombs of 1918 lacked precision in targeting, they concluded that aeronautics, even in 1920 and 1924, would always remain maladroit. When their Press identified “the Great Peril of the Air,” they wrote to the editors of the newspapers that they would cancel their subscriptions if they continued to make them anxious. The suppressors of effort, who pullulate in that poor people, succeeded in persuading it that what was being raised up before them was a scarecrow, not a reality—just as they had demonstrated in 1913 that war was impossible, proved mathematically that it could not last longer than six weeks, that the German heavy artillery constituted a dementia, and that hostilities would always take the form of large-scale movements.
You know the facts: war broke out in 1914; it was a war of heavy artillery; and, dug into the soil to a depth of ten meters, the adversaries remained in confrontation, immobile, for four years.
Let our enemies’ mortal error illuminate German consciousness forever! Let our hearts thank the Almighty for heaving attached our supreme triumph to a weapon of such simple manipulation.
How many errors our enemies heaped up! First of all, they had said to one another, during the war of 1914-18, that the airplane is much less redoubtable than the popular imagination thinks, given that, by night, the fire of the barrage is generally sufficient to stop it, and if, by chance, it gets through the fire of the barrage, the fall of its bombs is awkward, without the launcher being able to attain his intended target with any precision.
That was chloroform reasoning, good for putting the French to sleep. The truth, the truth of facts, is exactly contrary to those allegations. The truth is that the airplane is even more redoubtable, and much more so, than the popular imagination thinks. No brain can conceive all the possibilities, of every kind, that a nation possesses which has mastery over the element necessary to every human creature: the air.
The simple fire of the barrage around Paris, by night, in 1918, was sufficient to cut off the route of our squadrons? That is true. It was the case because our valiant pilots have an impressionable nervous system, like that of every human being, and it is necessary to put oneself in their place, imaginatively, in those redoubtable conditions, to understand their attitude.
In war, lacking precise reference points in the darkness, above a city whose lights are masked or deceptive, turning his head continually in order to avoid the sudden attacks of the terrible little hunter aircraft that could, in that era, send him plunging into the abyss with a single burst of machine-gun fire, always imagining that the shells of the barrage are bursting around him, the pilot, having arrived from Germany after three or four hours of anxious flight, feels his temples beating furiously before the circle of fire; he hesitates to pass through the inferno, and almost always turns away. If he has had the supreme audacity to enter the demonic circle, he gets rid of his bombs quickly, and flees...
In moments of sincerity, not one pilot seeks to deny that such contingencies overcome no matter what courage, that any human animal trembles before them. In reality, the cannons of the barrage are not firing at the aircraft, but at the nervous system of the aviator.
Those formidable contingencies are, in any case, not superior to German valor, and, when we proceed by selection, we will always find thousands of Supermen who, for the service of the Fatherland, no matter what the cost, will have no fear of entering the demonic circle with a smile!
(The Emperor utters a vigorous “Hoch!” to which a hundred enthusiastic Hochs! respond.)
But why talk about barrages here, since our conception of the destruction of Paris did not perceive any on the horizon? We were to pounce upon Paris at the moment when it least expected it, when, in consequence, its ring of fire would be extinct. Our bold pilots would have, for the realization of their grandiose task, the indisputable element of success: quietude. Surging forth unexpectedly, they would operate in complete tranquility. And we would see, in order to reply to the argument of the inefficacy of the aiming of aircraft, what kind of targeting a pilot is capable when he is untroubled in his preparation.
IT IS FRIGHTFULLY SIMPLE AND SIMPLY FRIGHTFUL
In reality, Your Majesty, and illustrious companions of our Emperor, there is no targeting that is simpler to make precise than that of flying machines. There is no fire that is more efficacious. For in sum, the dirigible that departs from Hamburg in order to go and drop its bombs on Creusot is essentially a cannon with a range of 2,500 kilometers. A miraculous cannon! It is a cannon that can “see” with perfect clarity that target that has been assigned to it! And it is a cannon that launches shells of a singularly higher rendition than those of its gross terrestrial comrade, since the aerial projectile does not have to resist the formidable pressure of launch, has no need of extremely thick steel walls, and is simply enveloped in a light skin of sheet metal. It is all explosive and no shrapnel!
The facility of aerial fire? But who has demonstrated that to us better than the French? Ought not a little irony season the flavorsome dish of our vengeance? Who, more than them, has perfected the methods of firing from aircraft? The relevant documentation is all of French provenance.
The amazing trials of the Aéro-Cible in 1912 and 1913 revealed the extraordinary precision that aerial targeting possesses, on the sole condition that the bombardier can operate in total tranquility. A far-sighted intelligence could already have savored one of the most beautiful military roles of the aviator: to enjoy surprise, to lull an adversary to sleep by appearances, to glide over him, with
a razor up the sleeve, and with a slick thrust, cut his throat. Such is the schematic plan that, for my part, I glimpsed as one of the principal operations in the air.
Since that epoch, the progress of aerial targeting has been supported by methods that have given it a singular precision and a frightful amplitude.
During the war of 1914-18, again at the inspiration of the Michelins, an enormous school of aerial targeting was set up near Clermont-Ferrand, known as the Camp d’Aulnat. Its objective was to determine with exactitude the principles of aeronautical bombardment and, in consequence, to train excellent marksmen.
There is no need for me to enter into abstruse technical details here; it would be out of place in a lecture in which joy and incense are solely in play. I believe that I am deferring to His Majesty’s desire in only tracing a sketch of the methods in question here.
After a little exploratory probing, it was recognized that the pilot of an aircraft, fully occupied with maneuvering the controls of the apparatus and the surveillance of the numerous dials, manometers and indicators that he has before his eyes, cannot be charged with the service of bombs. It is even important that he be placed under the total dependence of the bombardier installed behind him. One of the best combinations for the liaison of the two men in the din of the motor and the rush of the air seemed to consist of attaching them by means of reins, as children do when “playing horse.” The bombardier directs the pilot. He is the master of the vessel. By the simultaneous means of a helmet-collimator that permits him to regulate his fire at the target, even by night, and a trigger-mechanism whose lever he has in his hand, which releases the bombs lodged under the wings one by one, he is the master of the possibilities of the marvelous machine.
The crew thus formed, it is necessary, in order to hit the target—a target placed below him—that he obtain a clear consciousness of the vertical line or, in other words, the one that extends directly above a point. The novice often makes an enormous error in imagining that he is directly over a target when he is actually some distance from it; it is necessary to find a means of showing him that error and making him acquire, by repeated trials, an intuition of rigorous verticality.
To that effect, a large circle is traced on flat ground: the target over which the aviator ought pass in the exercise is the center of that circle. At that point, a large portable camera obscura is installed, with its objective lens directed at the sky. One of the sides of the box is formed by a black curtain, which permits an observer to lodge his head and arms inside the box. The portion of the sky embraced by the objective is vertically projected on to a board partly covered with a white sheet of paper; a circle whose dimensions are proportional to those of the area marked out on the plain has been traced in advance on that sheet.
Thus, as soon as the aircraft begin to fly over the circle on the plain, its image appears in the circle on the paper, and the observer, by means of a pencil, traces the path it follows exactly. Imagining that he has crossed the circle exactly by its diameter, thus flying very precisely over the target, the novice, once on the ground, perceives his errors and takes a lesson therefrom. The progress he makes is extremely rapid.
But passing directly over the target is not sufficient; the projectile might fall behind or in front of the target, thus missing it. It is therefore important also to realize progress in the range—which is to say, in hitting the target itself. Numerous factors intervene here, such as the distance from the ground, the speeds of the airplane, the weight of the bomb, the strength of the wind, etc., which demand solutions to the problem that it is only appropriate to analyze in a lecture on ballistics. In any case, only the results obtained are of interest, and they are extremely interesting; as early as 1917 it was determined that the distance from the ground most favorable for aerial targeting in two thousand meters, a particularly fortunate distance since it is sufficient for the airplane to have no fear of the counterblast of the bomb exploding on the ground. At four thousand meters shots often hit the target dead on. It was determined that at five thousand meters, when the airplane is almost invisible, the bombardier, who can see the ground with marvelous clarity, can place his shot nine times out of ten on a target the size of the Gare Saint-Lazare.
Furthermore, all the conditions seem to be combined by the hand of God to make aerial fire the supreme element of destruction. The years that followed 1917 demonstrated, in fact, that such precision in direction and range is only a theoretical expression. In confrontation with an adversary, the only precision that matters is his death. What does it matter whether one kills him by striking him in the heart, as one is trying to do, or by provoking around him a shock that breaks his back? The true precision is to have the body of your enemy at your feet.
Two kinds of progress rapidly took place in destruction by aeronautical projectile. The war of 1914-18 proved that the most terrible power of a breaking shell is that of its indirect effects. The impact and the projection of the shards of a shell from the famous 75mm cannon, for example, scythed down far fewer of our glorious children than the atmospheric depression determined by its explosion, which immediately permitted the gases contained in their blood to obstruct their capillaries with bubbles, and suddenly, as if in a macabre instantaneity, strike an entire section stone dead in attitudes of life.
To whom do we owe the most extraordinary improvements in projectiles? To the French. Their bombs have become ours. We have only had to ameliorate and diversity them. One alone can destroy ten houses, kill everything that breathes for five hundred meters around, pulverize all the windows, stave in all the doors and blow off all the roofs for three kilometers around, preparing the way for the efficacy of the bombs that follow! There are some that distribute an incendiary material that water only excites; there are some that spread gases so light that one neither sees not scents them; one inhalation causes death as abruptly as a lightning bolt; there are some that disperse over an entire city a fog of bacteria of paroxysmal virulence: have not typhus and plague, anthrax and glanders long pages to write in our war? There are some that, by night, suddenly illuminate the agonizing enemy with their solar glare, and descend slowly toward him, swaying!
When the French were warned in 1920 and 1921 by a few damnable prophets about the Peril of the Air, the pontiffs of the Rue Saint-Dominique advised them not to turn over on their pillow but to plunge themselves into it and pull corners back over their faces. “If the Boches bombard Paris, affirmed those terrible moustaches, they will suffer a frightful riposte! For we hold the heads of the bridges over the Rhine.”
The heads of the bridges and cream tarts! A week before our attack on Paris an epidemic of encephalitis broke out among the allied troops of occupation so ferocious that the officers could not find enough moribunds to bury the dead! On the day of the attack, we had no more to do than bombard at our ease the vain “Rhine barriers.” Our explosive, the commandant of the 147th squadron reported to me, fell into a kind of gigantic cemetery, around which panic stricken horses were running in all directions...
The second important progress that popularized, in a manner of speaking, the methods of aeronautical destruction was that of multiple fire, which was put into practice for the first time in France, at the Camp d’Aulnat, in 1917. I shall indicate the essential principles here,
In brief, it consists of the methodical rationalization of fire, in its discipline. It is carried out by a squadron whose commander takes the lead, and which, having arrived sat its target, releases all of its cargo on command. It is massive annihilation, irremediable pulverization by virtue of the enormity of the strike, no matter from what height it is released.
Another procedure, known as trailing, consists of operating individually, airplane by airplane, but not dropping the bombs at the hazard of caprice or aiming them; they are released automatically, in accordance with a rhythm whose cadence depends on the speed of the aircraft; it is calculated in such a way that the craters of destruction touch one another at the edges. It is applied primarily
to the rupture of railways, canals, pipelines and aqueducts. It is the carpenter’s saw, each thrust of which is a bomb, attacking the plank in order to cut it in two.
Finally in 1921, a supreme demonstration of the puerile facility of aerial fire was put before the very eyes of the stupid Welches; the flying apparatus for which people had been searching for thirty years, which is able to hover over the enemy, the helicopter, was found.51 The bombardier, henceforth could remain fixed in the sky, and from a height at which he could not be perceived, rectifying his fire at his ease, could place all his strikes in the heart of the target.
The aerial cannon thus possesses an efficacy such that even precision is no longer necessary to it. Nevertheless, it puts a kind of ferocious coquetry into possessing more precision than any other cannon. That is the truth.
HOME DELIVERIES
The miraculous weapon was not yet in our hands, however. How, under the suspicious eyes of the Allies, could I ever train our postal aviation pilots to aim? Without a patient apprenticeship and frequent repetitions, how could I transform, in one day, in a few hours, the apparatus and the men and make my skillful postmen into expert bombardiers?
The impossibility of the solution appeared to Heinrich Mannheim and myself to be so evident that I almost abandoned myself to despair, when our newspapers informed us one day of the death in the United States of a man named Locklear,52 who had the crazy specialty of jumping from one airplane to another in mid-air. They added that the unfortunate acrobat had been prompted by research of a practical order into a method of transferring merchandise from one aircraft to another without landing. Aeronautics is, in truth, endowed in such a marvelous fashion that even the demonstrations of its fantasy that seem to common judgment to be the most demented—looping the loop, the tailspin, etc.—constitute an evident progress; they create a school of adaptation that put the aviator at his ease: “at home.”
The Engineer Von Satanas Page 29