When the enemy advanced and the airplane attack was on at Cairo, the inhabitants had been moved to Louisville and Cincinnati and there was no attempt to try to save the city. The plan was to let the enemy hydroplanes and battleships move up the river and destroy them by the powerful electric charge in the water. When they had completed great destruction in Cairo, the hydroplanes and light battle cruisers which followed up the advance, taking charge of cities, moved up to the mouth of the Ohio to land and take charge of Cairo. Colonel Walter Kennelworth had been sent to Cairo with a new plane which had been completed by the Major Electric Co. This plane was equipped with an electric machine which could take the electric current from the air, charge into the water, and destroy battleships for miles in every direction. He was circling the sky at a high altitude and watching for an opportunity. Finally, seeing the airplanes receding from Cairo when they thought they had completed the destruction, he pressed a button and turned loose the powerful electric ray. In less than a minute every cruiser and hydroplane was blown to pieces or burnt up by the electric current. The enemy lost every man on board their ships. While Cairo had been almost completely destroyed, this was the first real victory for the United States since Colonel Gordon destroyed the "Tokyo J-1." The news was flashed all over the United States and people on the Eastern Coast, from Boston to Miami, who feared destruction at any minute, breathed a sigh of relief and hoped that this would turn the tide. The old-timers talked about the Yankee ingenuity and said that the brains of the United States were the greatest in the world and would find a way to overcome any obstacle and defeat the enemies no matter how powerful they were. After this disaster to the hydroplanes which had been marching up the Mississippi, the enemy air fleet ceased its attacks for awhile, but about the end of June, an air fleet swarmed over Cairo, landed without much resistance, and officers were put in charge of the town. The United States had already asked France to come to their rescue and implored Canada to forbid England or any other foreign countries to cross their borders to attack the Northern and Eastern borders of the United States. France had quickly responded and informed the United States Government that they stood ready to order their air fleet to the United States or to attack England and Germany at home. This was another piece of good news which cheered the country and put courage into the hearts of the soldiers who had been fighting for more than a year against such great odds and had been meeting with such disastrous defeats. The newspapers were optimistic, but the Government officials knew that the odds were still greatly against us and that we were out-classed and outnumbered in the air, where the decisive battles would be fought. CHAPTER XXVIII