The new Maurice Farman speed plane is a biplane of small wing area, the upper plane overhanging the lower. It is equipped with a new type of Renault-Mercedes eight-cylinder motor, giving 240 horsepower at the highest crank shaft speed. The Morane-Saulnier and the Spad are both monoplanes, but of different shape and construction from the original Morane; it is of the so-called monocoque type, made familiar to Americans by the Duperdessin monocoques which took part in the Gordon Bennett Cup race in Chicago in 1912. It is equipped with a device which was first used in Germany and which permits the firing of the gun through the propeller. It is an electric synchronizing device which fires the gun at the exact moment when the bullet will pass between the propeller blades. Following the destructive raids of the German naval Zeppelins over the eastern counties of England during the last days of January, 1916, there came a period of retaliation flights by Allied aviators over German cities, attacks on railway stations and munition depots, culminating in the great attack of the coast of Schleswig-Holstein by a fleet of British aeroplanes. On a certain section of this coast the Germans have erected a series of Zeppelin hangars behind one of the most elaborate systems of defenses known at present. According to information which had reached the British admiralty, the German coast north of the Kiel Canal is protected at intervals by the most powerful antiaircraft artillery, including 4.1-inch guns, capable of firing thirty-five pound shells to a height of 26,000 feet at the rate of ten every minute. The risk which the British sea planes underwent was great, but there seems to have been no hesitation on the part of the aviators to fly to the attack.