Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of WarTalbot, Frederick Arthur Ambrose
History
Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War
Talbot, Frederick Arthur Ambrose
Aeronautics, Military; Airplanes, Military -- History; Airships -- History; World War, 1914-1918 -- Aerial operations
In the later vessels of this type the wireless installation is housed
in a well insulated compartment. This insulation has been carried, to
an extreme degree, which indicates that at last the authorities have
recognised the serious menace that wireless offers to the safety of the
craft, with the result that every protective device to avoid disaster
from this cause has been freely adopted.
The fact that it is not possible to maintain communication over a
distance exceeding some 20 miles is a severe handicap to the progressive
development of wireless telegraphy in this field. It is a totally
inadequate radius when the operations of the present war are borne in
mind. A round journey of 200, or even more miles is considered a
mere jaunt; it is the long distance flight which counts, and which
contributes to the value of an airman's observations. The general
impression is that the fighting line or zone comprises merely two or
three successive stretches of trenches and other defences, representing
a belt five miles or so in width, but this is a fallacy. The fighting
zone is at least 20 miles in width; that is to say, the occupied
territory in which vital movements take place represents a distance of
20 miles from the foremost line of trenches to the extreme rear, and
then comes the secondary zone, which may be a further 10 miles or
more in depth. Consequently the airman must fly at least 30 miles in
a bee-line to cover the transverse belt of the enemy's field of
operations. Upon the German and Russian sides this zone is of far
greater depth, ranging up to 50 miles or so in width. In these
circumstances the difficulties of ethereal communication 'twixt air and
earth may be realised under the present limitations of radius from which
it is possible to transmit.
But there are reasons still more cogent to explain why wireless
telegraphy has not been used upon a more extensive scale during the
present campaign. Wireless communication is not secretive. In other
words, its messages may be picked up by friend and foe alike with
equal facility. True, the messages are sent in code, which may be
unintelligible to the enemy. In this event the opponent endeavours to
render the communications undecipherable to one and all by what is known
as "jambing." That is to say, he sends out an aimless string of
signals for the purpose of confusing senders and receivers, and this
is continued without cessation and at a rapid rate. The result is that
messages become blurred and undecipherable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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