Abstract
AN article of considerable interest, under the title of “La Technique Allemande de l'Armement Aerien,” appears in La Nature for October 6 by Jean-Abel Lefranc. The author traces out the development of German aerial warfare, with particular reference to the armament of military aircraft. Victory in the air, he says, depends on two sets of factors-tactical and technical. Under the former head he places favourable time of attack, good position, powerful formation; under the latter, armament, speed, flexibility of control, and altitude. To secure a good tactical position a machine must possess good technical factors; for instance, good armament is useless unless a machine is fast enough to be able to challenge the enemy to battle. Nevertheless, the pilot counts for a great deal, and the “Farmans” of 1915 beat the “Aviatiks,” although the latter were faster, better armed, and more flexible. M. Lefranc remarks that the relative importance of the technical elements depends on the purpose of the machine; for a battleplane, he places them in the order speed, flexibility, armament, and altitude. The last attribute might be omitted, since a fast machine is always a good climber unless the landing speed is abnormally high. For slow and heavy machines designed for bombing, a powerful defensive armament is most essential. For night raiders radius of action, bomb capacity, and facility of landing are more important than armament. The speed of both French and German fighters varies from 100 to 120 miles per hour. These speeds could be higher but for the necessity of a reasonable landing speed and a good climbing rate. The heavy bombing machines fly at speeds from eighty to ninety-five miles per hour. Flexibility nas now dtveloped almost without limit.
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Military Aircraft and their Armament. Nature 100, 194–195 (1917). https://doi.org/10.1038/100194b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/100194b0