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The consequence is that a variety of machines figure in the British aerial navy. Private initiative is excellently seconded by the Government manufacturing aeroplane factory, while the training of pilots is likewise being carried out upon a comprehensive scale. British manufacture may be divided into two broad classes the production of aeroplanes and of waterplanes respectively.
The practice of deputing certain vessels to art as "parent ships" to a covey of waterplanes has proved as successful in practice, as in theory. Again, the arrangements for conveying these machines by such means to a rendezvous, and there putting them into the water to complete a certain duty, have been triumphantly vindicated.
In comparison with the foregoing large aerial navies, that of Great Britain appeared to be puny. At the moment Great Britain possesses about 500 machines, of which about 200 are waterplanes. In addition, according to the Secretary of the Admiralty, 15 dirigibles should be in service. Private enterprise is supported by the Government, which maintains a factory for the manufacture of these craft.
Hard upon the appearance of this came the Dass-Tata engine the invention of two among the brilliant galaxy of Bengali inventors the modernisation of Indian thought was producing at this time which was used chiefly for automobiles, aeroplanes, waterplanes, and such-like, mobile purposes.
When a fog prevails the sea is generally as smooth as the pro verbial mirror, enabling the waterplanes to be brought up under cover to a suitable point from which they may be dispatched.
This alone is likely to determine the aeroplane routes along the line of the world's coastlines and lake groups and waterways. The airmen will go to and fro over water as the midges do. Wherever there is a square mile of water the waterplanes will come and go like hornets at the mouth of their nest. But there are much stronger reasons than this convenience for keeping over water.
The development of these waterplanes is an important step towards the huge and swarming popularisation of flying which is now certainly imminent. We ancient survivors of those who believed in and wrote about flying before there was any flying used to make a great fuss about the dangers and difficulties of landing and getting up.
To the Power that has most nearly guessed the answer to that riddle belongs the future Empire of the Seas. It is interesting to guess for oneself and to speculate upon the possibility of a kind of armoured mother-ship for waterplanes and submarines and torpedo craft, but necessarily that would be a mere journalistic and amateurish guessing. I am not guessing, but asking urgent questions.
The waterplanes have established their supremacy over the naval dirigible in a striking manner. British endeavour fostered the waterplane movement and has carried it to a high degree of perfection. The waterplane is not primarily designed to perform long flights, although such may be carried out if the exigencies demand.
Unless he is a lunatic, he will prove to be much stronger in reality than he is on paper in the matter of submarines, torpedo-boats, waterplanes and aeroplanes. These are things cheap to make and easy to conceal. He will be richly stocked with ingenious devices for getting explosives up to these two million pound triumphs of our naval engineering.
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