Night Bombing with the BedouinsReece, Robert Henry
History
Night Bombing with the Bedouins
Reece, Robert Henry
World War, 1914-1918 -- Aerial operations; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
Small blue crosses represent the position of enemy balloon barrages and
their height. The position of these barrages must be known accurately,
for to run into them is fatal and at night they are very apt to trap the
unwary. Roughly, they are a series of balloons supporting a huge wire
net or cable streamers. The balloons, anchored to the ground and
carrying the nets with them, are sent up to a considerable altitude
about large cities and important industrial centres. They are to the
night aviators what the spider's web is to the fly.
Another conventional sign of this map which is always puzzling to the
uninitiated is a series of small pins with streamers attached. These
streamers are marked with green dots. One streamer will have one green
dot, another two green dots, another three, etc., while others will have
different spaces between the dots. These pins mark the position of what
is called the "Hun green-ball batteries," and these green balls, fired
up to a height of about six thousand feet, direct the Hun aviators to
their respective aerodromes when returning from a night raid.
A better system than this for directing aviators at night has never been
devised, for low clouds or mist cannot obliterate the signal and they
are visible to the aviator for over fifty miles. In fact, this type of
signal was so very excellent that our knowledge of the exact positions
of the various batteries was of great assistance to us in our raids
over Germany.
On our side of the lines this map was marked with conventional signs
similar to those which marked the position of enemy anti-aircraft
batteries, aerodromes, and balloon barrages; but on our side of the
lines there were large areas marked in red to indicate what was called
"prohibited areas"; i.e., areas over which no aeroplane, Allied or
enemy, could fly without being subjected to the fire of our
anti-aircraft batteries.
There were also white drawing-pins, each bearing a letter, placed at
irregular intervals. These located accurately the position of small
lighthouses which are usually about fifteen miles apart and from three
to ten miles back of the front-line trenches; the letter marked on each
drawing-pin designates the letter flashed in Morse code by that
particular lighthouse. This system of signals, used by the British to
direct their night aviators to their aerodromes when returning from a
raid, had but two great faults. In the first place, the signal was
obliterated by low clouds and mist. In the second place, the flash of
the light only carried a few miles even under the best conditions. On
the other hand, the letters which the lighthouses flashed could be
readily changed and consequently were of very little assistance to Hun
aviators.
On the third wall of the map-room are aerial photographs of enemy
aerodromes, railway stations, sidings, etc., and large-scale plans of
German towns and factories.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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