out Warships Tu view of the recent report from Farnborough describing the Helicopter,. designed for use as an aerial "base," the following account of American experiments in the same field is of special interest Huge, high-flying airships, larger than any yet contemplated, which will be used not for fighting or outing, but solely as vast aerial bases, or mobile flying docks for swarms of high-speed fighting planes, are the latest scheme of the aeronautical experts of the United States Government.
It is now learned that actual ex-fenments to this end were to have been made with the ill-fated airship Roma had she not been destroyed, and a special secret device, to ba lowered beneath the airship, was being designed from which planes could be released, and which they would fly and attach themselves in order to re-fuel their tanks. The Roma, it was considered, was large enough to have carried several single-seater fighters suspended in suitable "'harness' below her long keel.
Hep sy a Triccer.
The American experts deputed to examine this important question of flying aircraft carriers have already devised in minute detail an ingenious system of releases and bracing tackle by which, after the pilot of the small fighter has climbed down from the airship's keel into his cockpit, his machine would be lowered and held steady and then, when he had his motor running, would be released in flight.
On the return of the machine to its air base, many thousands of of winged hornets would approach a great height the fleet to be attacked, and would then release her swarm of fighters one by one.
These, outstripping in speed. maneuvring power, and also gun power, the heavier slower flying craft of the enemy, would clear the air of the protecting air screen of the surface fleet, _and leave the latter open to the subsequent attack of great bombing aeroplanes and 100-miles-an-hour torpedo planes.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.