The aeroplane idea is so old that we find it in Greek mythology, and it is consequently of unknown antiquity. Hundreds of years before Christ there were hoary old legends of Dædalus and Icarus, who made wings for themselves and flew. Icarus flew too high, the sun melted his wings, with the result that there happened to him what happens about once a week to aviators to-day, he fell and died. Contemporary with these legends, are legends of floating rocks which spurted out fire—stories which sounded inestimably silly till steamships came along. We may imagine prophets able to look ahead39 and to invest their day with visions of the future. Equally we can discard prophets and imagine a civilisation long since dead which knew all about flying and steamers, and survives in legends only.

The latter alternative is really the more reasonable of the two. While imagination can do a very great deal and exaggerate to any extent, it must have a base to work on. It is easier to believe in some long gone and extinct civilisation which destroyed itself in the air, than to believe that pure imagination accounts for the flying stories of long ago. Africa is full of traces of vast cities older than any history, telling of past civilisations of which nothing is or ever will be known. Also there is practically no known age in which anything but the motive power stood between aeroplane theories and their realisation.

In support of the theory that men flew before to-day there is the following:—Somewhere about the year 1100, that is to say, back in the reign of King Stephen, a French historian relates the appearance of “as it were, a ship, in the air over London.” It anchored, and the citizens of London got hold of the anchor. The airship sent a man down to free it, and the citizens of London caught him and drowned him in the river. The rest of the aviators then cut the rope and sailed away.

This incident is mentioned so baldly and casually and so much mixed up with ordinary petty chat of the era (chat which proves to have been quite true), that it takes far more faith to accept it as “pure lies” than to accept it as fact more or less.

These legends cannot be disregarded lightly. They one and all give priority to the aeroplane—the “heavier than air” vehicle. Once in a way the “lighter than air” idea got a casual look in; but it was not till the end of the eighteenth century that it got into the regions of practical politics with the French Montgolfiers. But there were people who invented elementary aeroplanes long before Montgolfier.

From the end of the eighteenth century until to-day the Montgolfier idea of “lighter than air” has got little further. The shape has altered; instead of hot air, hydrogen gas is now employed; and by means of motors the balloon no longer drifts before the wind. But progress is terribly slow. That it is so, is a very important thing to recognise, as slow development is by no means a reason for ignoring an invention. Sometimes it is quite the opposite.

It will probably be a good many years before it is definitely settled whether the “heavier than air” or “lighter than air” principle is the better for Naval purposes, though there are not wanting enthusiasts who decry the “lighter than air” machines altogether.

This is probably a grave mistake, brought about by the fact that practical balloons existed long before practical aeroplanes, and dirigibles made flights before ever aeroplanes rose off the earth. Yet the dirigible is in a far more elementary stage than the aeroplane is. Not only is the aeroplane a much older idea in the theoretical direction, but, being very much smaller, it on that account has very possibly developed more quickly.

The world has been building ships for thousands of years, yet it has only recently developed Tigers and Olympics, and both are still developing and likely to do so for some time to come. Row-boats, however, arrived at perfection a good thousand years ago. That is to say, there has been no alteration or improvement in them at all commensurate with the alterations that have taken place in big ships during the same period.

Something of the same sort is quite possible with aeroplanes. It is already comparatively easy to forecast their eventual form without much danger of being proved a false prophet later on. We may safely say that they will become capable of much higher speeds than at present; also (which is perhaps more important) slower speeds; and that all existing troubles with stability will eventually be overcome. But experiments made with birds indicate that the run which an aeroplane has to take before it can rise occurs in much the same proportion with birds; and so there are few, if any, practical men who now expect to see future aeroplanes capable of rising vertically from the ground, or hovering in the air except under such conditions as any bird can hover without inconvenience.

The possibilities of the dirigible, on the other hand, no man can foresee. The gasbag that can be brought to the ground by a single bullet hole in it, is a very different thing from the possibility of airships of the future, which may be a mile or two long, divided into innumerable compartments, filled with non-explosive gas such as is sure to be discovered sooner or later. Two miles seems an extraordinary length to-day, but a ship ten miles long would only be something like the ratio of the early dirigible to the future ones compared to the ratio Dreadnoughts bear to the first ships built by men.

On the water, bulk is limited by the depth and size of harbours, but in the vast regions of the air there are practically no limitations whatever, and there is virtually nothing to limit size, save the building of land docks on open plains into which airships could descend for purposes of repair and so forth. Consequently those who hastily assume from a few accidents that the “lighter than air” craft has no future are probably making a mistake; at any rate, so far as naval work is concerned. Certain definite uses are apparent even now to those who think and ignore commercial rivalries.

It has been wisely laid down that aeroplanes for naval purposes must be capable of rising from and descending on the water. The Curtiss was the first successful hydro-aeroplane, but since then floats have been fitted to various other types with equal success. It is doubtful whether naval aeroplanes will ever be carried on shipboard like boats, although this is by no means impossible. It will, however, be more convenient for a variety of reasons to use them like submarines with their own special depot ships.

The main naval use of aeroplanes at the outbreak of war was for scouting purposes. How near they would be able to approach a hostile fleet was a question not likely to be solved until the day of battle. The question of their being hit is secondary to the question of their being upset, owing to tremendous concussions of heavy gun fire. The idea of aeroplanes dropping bombs down the funnels of warships can be dismissed as the entirely fanciful dreams of people who know nothing whatever about aeroplanes or the mathematical problems involved. Judging by recent events, dropping bombs anywhere upon a moving ship is nearly or entirely impossible, except at ranges where the aviator would at once be brought down by rifle fire.

A far more likely and useful service would be the destruction of enemy aeroplanes. For this purpose a special gun, firing a species of chain shot, has already been suggested, and the naval aeroplane of the future was always certain to carry a gun of some kind. The off-chance of doing a certain amount of damage to a hostile ship by dropping a bomb upon it, is nothing compared to the importance of destroying the enemy’s aeroplanes. This last seems likely to be all-important as time goes on.

The duties of naval airships will be of a different nature. Already a point kept in view in their design is ability to “keep the air” for a considerable period, and with what are in these days “large airships” of the Zeppelin type (to which the ill-fated Naval Airship No. 1 Mayfly belonged) there seems no reason why an airship should not be kept in the air for three or four days already.

The fuel problem is not very difficult, because a great deal can already be done without the use of the engines, or with only partial use of them. It is also more than probable that with a view to further economy some kind of sails, combined with sea-anchors, will be evolved, whereby the ship might become able to sail in the air nearly as well as the old three-deckers, or, at any rate, as well as the masted ironclads, sailed in the water. The difficulty of “keeping the air” is the inevitable leakage of gas, but as leakage nowadays is infinitesimally less than it once was, the assumption is that as the years go on it will eventually be reduced to almost a minus quantity. Gales will be met by “bulk” and efficient anchors, on the principle that the gale which swamps a fishing-boat or blows over a haystack has no effect on a Dreadnought or a cathedral.

Ability to keep the air will enable all Fleets to be accompanied by airships, which would detect mines and perhaps submarines, and with their ability to adapt their speeds at will, the presumption is that they would be able to destroy submarines by bombs.

A further and very important duty would be the detection of torpedo attacks at night. Experiments carried out in Austria some few years ago with a captive balloon proved conclusively that except in cases of thick fog any vessels in motion are easily detected at a distance of ten or twelve miles. It is not merely the tell-tale flames in the funnels which betray attacking vessels; their wakes are always clearly visible, and as a general rule the vessels themselves, no matter how dark the night.

Bomb-dropping from an airship must be a more serious matter than from aeroplanes, as so much more in the way of explosives could be carried. The chance of being hit, however, would probably be so much greater that it was (when war broke out) unlikely that any airships would be risked for such purposes. Nor is it very probable that naval airships will for some time to come attack each other, if they can possibly avoid it, the reason being that for a good many years they will be comparatively few in number, and the attack would have, in most cases, to be delivered in the presence of a fleet, which would make the attack, to say the least of it, very hazardous.

Eventually, of course, aerial Dreadnoughts fighting each other are probable enough; but “the Trafalgar of the air” is unlikely to be witnessed within the lifetime of most or any of us now living. Nor is it likely that aerial Dreadnoughts will replace Dreadnoughts of the water, although as years go on they may cause profound modifications in design in order to allow of mounting guns for vertical fire.

We are in the presence of the introduction of a “new arm.” But between what a “new arm” can actually accomplish, and what enthusiastic inventors say it will do, there is always an enormous gap. Inventors, when they come to prophesying, are usually one of two things—asses, or prodigious asses! France—once the second Naval Power in Europe—became of little or no account because it took the submarine at the enthusiastic inventor’s face value, and neglected the present and immediate future.

The present stage of aerial progress in the British Navy is briefly to be summarised as follows:—

1. A big Zeppelin type naval airship was built in 1909–1911. It proved a total failure.

2. In 1911 four naval officers were appointed to learn aeroplane work. Subsequently a few others were appointed. Others, again, qualified privately. In 1912, the Royal Flying Corps was established—both naval and military aviators becoming “wings” of the same body—an excellent principle, but one necessarily experimental so far as practical work was concerned.

3. In practice it proved a failure; so the Naval Air Service was formed into a branch by itself. Four small army airships were handed over to it—craft too small to be of any value except for instructional purposes.

At the outbreak of war there were two effective dirigibles—one of French type of Astra-Torres design, the other a Parseval purchased in Germany. Neither of these ships is in any way comparable to the German Zeppelins in dimensions or endurance. A number of other dirigibles of varying sizes were on order, but it is inadvisable to publish any particulars on this subject. The designs for these were foreign, but the construction was British.

In the matter of aeroplanes a number of special naval stations were established and supplied with seaplanes and landplanes of various types, while strenuous efforts were made towards the training of a large number of efficient pilots. The building of an aeroplane is a matter of only a few weeks, whereas the training of a really efficient pilot is a matter of a year or thereabouts.