OCR Text |
Show Dirigible as Air Weapon May Play Important Role Almost Forgotten Air Arm Gets Serious Study; Federal and State Agencies Team in Unique Farm Experiment. By BAUKHAGE km Pi'ational Farm and Home Hour Commentator. Capt Charles Rosendahl has always al-ways believed in the dirigible. He was navigator of the first American-built airship, the Shenandoah, was the only senior officer who survived sur-vived when that obsolete ship cracked up in a storm in 1925. Two more American airships, the Akron Ak-ron and the Macon smashed, and then the German Hindenburg burned. This record discouraged almost al-most everyone except Rosendahl. Today he believes that the airship would make an ideal patrol and aircraft air-craft carrier to supplement the other oth-er craft in modern warfare. The airship, Captain Rosendahl says, can carry planes as easily as a surface aircraft carrier. They can return and anchor to her bosom. The great ship can spot submarines subma-rines and mine fields below the surface, sur-face, she can hover, even fly backwards, back-wards, can drop depth charges. Britain's latest step in "arming" merchant ships with planes may bring Rosendahl's dream to realization. reali-zation. Before the war is over we may see these great ships patrolling the sky-lanes once more, with the precious fighters tucked under their breasts, helping to solve the problem prob-lem of establishing air superiority over the Atlantic. An Experiment In Co-operation There is always some starvation in the midst of plenty. With a record rec-ord farm income ahead and prices on agricultural products going up there are still some folks who cannot make a go of it on the land because WNU Service, 1343 H Street, N-W, Washington, D. C. While Washington debated the question of arming American merchantmen, mer-chantmen, the British were trying out a new and hazardous means of protecting their precious life-line of supply from attack from the air. Fighter planes were being placed on the crowded decks of freighters to be catapulted off when enemy bombers bomb-ers approached. When news of this move reached Washington it woke a slumbering plan for an almost forgotten for-gotten defense of the skies. The heroic British measure is an expensive undertaking, for there is no way to return a fighter plane to the ship once it is launched. Unless the vessel is within an hour's flight of land the plane must land at sea and sink. Unless the planes can land near the ship in quiet waters, the pilots have very little chance to escape a similar fate. "Arming" their ships by means of this suicide measure is an example ex-ample of the risks the members of the Royal Air force are willing to take as their heavy share of battle and is evidence, too, of the extent to which the other arms of the British Brit-ish service have come to depend on these reckless knights of the air. Englishman Tells Why William Courtenay, member of the Royal Flying corps, in the last war, flight commander of the R.A.F. in the present war, explained to a little group of American officers and members of congress in Washington recently why this step was taken. , "Just as command of the air won of circumstances which they cannot control. How federal and state assistance as-sistance pulled some of these folks through in two North Carolina counties coun-ties makes an interesting story. Up in the Blue Ridge mountains in Allegheny and Ashe counties, farming among the boulders has always al-ways been tough going. It is a question ques-tion for these farmers of getting part-time, outside work or going hungry. The trees used to solve the problem, the cutting of timber and selling it or working for the lumber companies. But the trees have gone. The farms are not big enough to rate loans from the Farm Security administration, but properly run they could provide garden truck and grain for food and feed for their owners and pigs and chickens. So the WPA stepped in, offered to give these mountain farmers from three to five months work a year provided the FSA would co-operate. An agreement with the North Carolina Caro-lina welfare department was worked out. Road building, a county office building, a hospital, needed conservation conser-vation work, gave a small cash income in-come to 500 certified families. The farmers and their families did their part They budgeted the money earned on the projects, improved im-proved their homes, water supply, sanitation, raised more food for their own consumption, canned an average aver-age of 300 quarts of vegetables and fruit for the winter. The experiment was successful enough to interest the Farm Security Se-curity administration to plan further, fur-ther, similar projects in the southern south-ern Allegheny region, which covers cov-ers 55,000,000 acres. There is plenty plen-ty of conservation work that needs to be done in that county and the forest service is expected to cooperate. co-operate. The net result of this program is work for men who need it, better food, better farms. This type of federal and state co-operation may grow into a great post-war conservation conser-vation program. C The Office of the Chief of Chaplains Chap-lains has sent out the following order or-der issued in 1776 by George Washington Wash-ington to the chaplains in the camps to support them in their admonitions against profanity: "The General is sorry to be informed in-formed that the foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing, a vice heretofore little known in an American Army, is growing into fashion; he hopes the officers will, by example as well as by influence, endeavor to check it, and that both they and the men will reflect that we can have little hopes of the blessing of heaven on our arms if we insult it by our impiety and folly; added to this it is a vice so mean and low, without any temptation, tempta-tion, that every man of sense and character, detests and despises it." the battle of Britain," said Courtenay, Courte-nay, "so command of the air is necessary nec-essary to win the battle of the Atlantic." Atlan-tic." Fire-power, he explained, is the essential in this war as it was in the last. Machine guns drove the armies ar-mies of the last war underground and produced a stalemate which gave the British time to get their navy (and the United States navy) into action, break the German submarine sub-marine blockade of the British Isles and blockade Germany. To avoid such a stalemate again the Germans invented the panzer columns high fire-power from very mobile units which ran the enemy down. Thus Hitler won the battle of France, forced the British from the continent. Then Goering began the battle of Britain. In Poland and in the low countries he had destroyed much of his opponents' air forces on the ground. He did this by surprise attack at-tack and because airfields were concentrated con-centrated and the airplanes on them were close together. With the major part of the enemy fighters destroyed in Poland and in the low countries his bombers did their work without having to fight in the air for control of the air. Luftwaffe Over Britain The Luftwaffe lost the battle of Britain because the British dispersed their own forces on the ground separated the airfields, spread out the planes along the edges. That saved their fighting planes and fighting fight-ing planes gave Britain superior firepower fire-power in the air. Because the bomber bomb-er is built to carry a heavy load of bombs and gasoline to give it a longer cruising radius it cannot contend with the more mobile, more heavily armed and armored fighter. The fighter's weakness, of course, is the fact that its cruising radius is short. It cannot remain long in the air and therefore, "the crying need," as Courtenay put it, "is a long-range fighter." If Germany had had long range fighters the battle of Britain might have turned out differently. One way of giving the fighter range is to place it on a ship, but few ships are equipped so that planes can land on their decks. The aircraft carrier is an attempt to solve this problem but the aircraft carrier is the most vulnerable of ships. Rigid Dirigible Considered And so the attention of a little group in Washington has turned to an air arm which has been almost forgotten, the great rigid dirigible airship. True, 48 small airships have been authorized by congress for shore patrol duty and one has been completed, but the United States has no great dirigibles. |