CHANNEL AIR SCOUTS
GUARDING OUR SHIPS
HOW U-BOATS ARE SUNK
For the first time, writes the Paris Correspondent of the Exchange Telegraph Co, a journalist has flown over seas contiguous to France and England successively in a dirigible patrol balloon and a scout hydroplane. This privilege was mine, and I owe it to the French Minister of Marine, M Chaumet, whom I went to interview. He said: “The Germans realise now that their talk of starving England and France is nonsense, that it cannot be done. In fact, if you like to go and see how the convoying of our supply ships is managed, you may make a voyage in our dirigibles and waterplanes. What you will thus experience will be far better than any interview that I can give you.”
I went, and I am convinced. What few persons probably know is that the sea, especially the Channel, has been divided into sections, like the sectors of the fighting front on land. Each section is constantly patrolled by dirigible balloons, hydroplanes and numerous armed water craft. From a dirigible today, a busy Channel port resembles a well-regulated railway station. Convoys of ships, going up or down the coast bound for England or elsewhere, are seen to leave at regular hours, and armed vessels escort them before and behind. Over this procession we were cruising at an altitude from 60 yards to 300 yards, our machines varying their position from one side to the other. Sometimes the dirigible remains as much as eight or even 12 hours in the air convoying a ship or ships until an aircraft comes to relieve it. The hydroplanes may be styled the cavalry of the air, making short reconnaissances, and being always ready to go to any point where a sub-merino or mine has been discovered.
MECHANIC’S PERILOUS FEAT
My dirigible was one of the big 5,300 cubic metre airships of the Zodiac type, with mitrailleuses and wireless apparatus. We were soon more than 600ft up. The outer harbour struck us as most peaceful. The enormous wire nets, which are marked by long lines of buoys, and which reach to the bottom of the sea, were pointed out to me. Openings in them here and there permit the passage of friendly ships. We were over the outer harbour at the exact time when the convoy of ships which we were to escort was passing through a gateway in the nets. The wireless apparatus was in constant operation, signalling all we saw that could be of any military significance.
Suddenly one of the motors began to misfire. It was necessary to change one of the sparkers. We were then about 50 miles from land, and our elevation was some 600ft. The captain simply stopped the ailing motor, slowed the other down, and then, to my amazement, the mechanician, holding himself I could not tell how, but maintaining a perfect balance upon a slender rod, quickly approached the motor, and, with as much nonchalance as a chauffeur on the road, changed the sparker, and then proceeding in the same perilous manner to a point near the propeller, gave it the initial revolution which set the motor going again.
“You have a very good mechanician,” I said to the officer. “He is one of our best,” he replied. “Before the war he was a motorbus chauffeur in Paris.” Suddenly, at an altitude of 1,000ft, while we were some 50 miles from land, the observation officer indicated an object in the sea. We saw under the muddy water the wake of something moving very slowly. A bomb was dropped, which evidently missed, but it enabled the aim to be corrected. We got exactly over the suspected object, and two other bombs were dropped. They were engines of a new kind, which are as effective as torpedoes. Was it the top of a submarine or a piece of flotsam from a wreck? The water was not clear. But one thing is certain: We saw a big pool of oil on the surface immediately after the dropping of the second and third bombs, and it was about 100 yards in diameter. It should be remembered, however, that the U-boats when attacked eject oil so as to suggest that they have been destroyed.
We proceeded after reporting the incident by wireless. Immediately three small warships appeared, showing the efficiency of the inter-communication of the air and sea service. Another thing is certain. Next day our pilot was informed that a patrol-boat which had rushed to the spot in consequence of our signals, had fired five shells there, indicating that she also had noted the presence of something suspicious. In mid-channel we picked up the signalling announcement that German aeroplanes were near us. We were about 4,000ft up, and fortuitously a cloud enveloped us. We did not emerge from it for an hour and a half. Nine hours after the time of our starting we landed on a shore that I am not at liberty to name. We had travelled at the rate of 80 kilometres (50 miles) an hour.
We then mounted a 2,700 cubic metre scout dirigible “vedette”. It carried three men only. Its mission was to look for mines. After three hours, going at a sensibly greater speed, we landed on the French coast. Thence I flew back to Havre in a naval hydroplane at 135 kilometres (84 miles) an hour. We alighted at one point on the surface of the sea, within 100 yards of a supposed mine, which proved to be something else. Had it been a mine, our armament would have been brought to bear upon it to destroy it. – Exchange Telegraph Company.