Because of the small size of the scout machine—with only a 26-foot wing spread—and its speed of more than a hundred miles an hour—compared to the Zeppelin speed of 60 or 70 miles—the aeroplane was invaluable for scouting over short distances, for duels in the air, for directing artillery-fire, for contact patrol; and the larger aeroplanes were useful for bombing in huge fleets. In all other purposes of war the Zeppelin is far superior to the aeroplane. Even the contention that the aeroplanes stopped the Zeppelin raids on England is absurd. It is true that two Zeppelins were brought down over England by aeroplane, but it was September 3, 1916, two years after the breaking out of the war, when young Leefe Robinson brought down the first Hun dirigible over London. It was June 3, 1915, when a Canadian sublieutenant, R. A. J. Warneford, flying a Morane monoplane for the Royal Naval Air Service, got above a dirigible returning to its aerodrome in Belgium from a raid on England and dropped a bomb upon the gigantic gas-bag, blowing it up and killing the crew; but before that came to pass thirteen Zeppelin raids had already been visited upon England, 408 bombs had been dropped, twenty-one persons had been killed and a thousand injured. In both this case and in the case of Lieutenant Robinson, more than a year later, the aeroplanes happened to be in the air above the Zeppelins before they came along, and the aeroplanes in both instances were blown completely upside down by the force of the explosion. Needless to say, a moment later Lieutenant Robinson looped the loop for joy when he saw what destruction he had wrought. In other words, because the Zeppelins could put out their lights, shut off their motors, and drift through clouds unheard in the night at two thousand feet altitude, and because the dropping of the bombs, like the throwing out of ballast, allowed the dirigibles to jump suddenly up to much higher altitudes, they were as a rule far too elusive for the aeroplanes to get near enough even to shoot incendiary bullets into them. In point of flying comforts and safety, time that can be spent in the air, flying distances and useful load carried, the Zeppelin is far in advance of any kind of heavier-than-air machine ever built.