Foreign countries realise such possibilities; already, tentative experiments are being made. When reckoned singly, aeroplanes have an insignificant value as engines of destruction; but, when bomb-dropping machines are employed in large, well-organised squadrons, a different situation arises. It is in regular fleets that attacking machines of the future will, almost certainly, be employed. It was in 1909, after his cross-Channel flight, that M. Louis Blériot declared: "Before long, military and naval aeroplanes will be able to carry explosives of the deadliest nature." This shrewd man saw what lay in the future. At the time he spoke, a flight of an hour’s duration, by a machine carrying only one man, was an achievement; but, nowadays, a heavily-laden machine can remain aloft for a number of hours. Bomb-dropping mechanism, to facilitate the discharge of a missile from an aeroplane, has been devised. The bombs are contained in a chamber beneath the aeroplane, and pass thence into a tube, which is pointed towards the ground. By pressing a button, conveniently close to his driving-seat, the airman is able to release a series of bombs over a given point. Missiles in the form of carefully-weighted arrows have also been employed—the explosive forming the head of the arrow, and the projectile being released from a special form of sighting mechanism. With this apparatus, fairly good practice has been made, from heights in the neighbourhood of 500 feet. The experiments so far made, in connection with dropping bombs, show that considerable practice is necessary before accurate aim is possible. In actual attacks in warfare, however, absolute precision would not always be an essential. A detachment of machines would probably pass, one after another, over a given position, raining down missiles as they swept by. The aim would be made as accurate as possible, of course; but the telling nature of the attack would be, not in the chance of individual bombs reaching any precise mark, but in the fact that a large percentage of the missiles would be calculated to do damage over a given area. Among experts in France and Germany, who are now paying keen attention to this question of a destructive war aeroplane, it is considered that an incendiary bomb would work great havoc in wartime. The possibility of employing some such bomb as this was suggested by Lord Charles Beresford, after he had witnessed the demonstration organised by the Parliamentary Aerial Defence Committee in May, 1911. He foresaw that aeroplanes might be able to drop cylinders of some highly-inflammable spirit, ignited by a sensitive fuse, and calculated to cause an instant and violent conflagration.