One of the most important developments in the sphere of military aviation in recent years and vividly demonstrated in the use of aircraft in the present war is armament. At the beginning of the last war when British flying force: comprised a queer assortment of machines, balloons and man-carrying kites, there was no question of armament, The sole function of the infant air unit was observation, and it was not until well into 1915 that machines took the air carrying pistols and rifles as their only armament. Once the potentialities of armed aircraft was realized, machine guns were equipped and a new technique of aerial conflict was evolved, extending battle from the land and sea into the air. Even then, air combat was an individual and primitive sort of business in comparison with developments noted at the present time. The principal types of machine now used in this form of warfare are nothing less than flying machine-gun sections, some of them having eight machine guns mounted in the wings, and the pilot does not train his guns on the enemy: he simply trains the aeroplane itself and permits his mechanism to spill out thousands of rounds of ammunition at a speed of several hundred rounds a minute. Loading the aeroplane with ammunition nowadays is as extensive and important a task as fueling the petrol tanks. With the large types of machines used for bombing purposes, there are turrets almost like the turrets on warships. In this respect, Britain's development of the power operated gun turret has given the Royal Air Force a long lead in armament over German machines. While Germany has favoured the lightly armed "evader" type of bomber, depending on speed and cloud for protection, the Royal Air Force is now largely equipped with the fighting" type of bomber, combining high speed with a formidable armament, Such bombers can be relied on to reach their objectives, even though they may have to fight their way through opposing fighters. The great speed of modern aircraft makes it difficult to hold a gun against the wind when firing from a window or a manual turret, with the multi-gun. forward-firing fighter, the aircraft itself is aimed at the target, but the bomber designed to fight it out needs mobile guns to cope with its more manceuvrable enemy. The power-operated gun turret is the answer. Within its protection, the British gunner can deploy his battery of guns in any direction, without effort and with steady aim. Modern British bomber aircraft now have power-operated gun turrets fitted as standard equipment.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.