WITH an adequate air service one of our greatest present day necessities, it may seem inadvisable, as well as ungracious, to emphasize the limitations of aircraft. Unfortunately, however, aircraft enthusiasts have not contended themselves with constructive argument as to the value of this new instrument of warfare, but are preaching the doctrine that old and tried instruments may be dispensed with, particularly if they are expensive, and that the national defense may largely, if not wholly, be entrusted to the new and cheaper arm. A brief catalog of some of the limitations to which aircraft are subject may therefore tend to a saner, if less sensational, view of the probability of their fulfilling all the expectations claimed by their protagonists.
In the destructive side of aircraft propaganda it is noteworthy that the Navy is signalled out for attack. An anchored battleship, with no means of defense, is sunk after a day’s bombing and the word goes out at once that the battleship is obselete. An entire brigade of infantry, represented in dummy form, could, under the same conditions, be wiped out in less time, but this experiment is never tried and no one rushes into print with the proposition that the infantryman is obsolete. There is an utter lack of contention that no more of the taxpayers’ motley should be spent on field guns and tanks, so easily wiped out by a single bomb from the elusive airplane.
One might think that this failure to enthuse over the destructive power of aircraft against land forces was due to the fact that there are too many men alive who have seen it tried under actual service conditions. This cannot be the explanation, however, for the achievements of airplanes on land, little as they tended . to prove aircraft more than a strong auxiliary arm, were overwhelming in comparison to the infinitesimal damage done by airplanes to ships. So far from getting any comfort out of naval experience during the war the aircraft exponents are driven at the outset to throwing overboard all war history and to depending wholly on postwar developments in aviation to form the basis which war experience refuses to supply.
Whatever may be the reason, it is certain that those who conceive it their duty to exalt the air service at the expense of the other branches are busy pulling down the Navy and not the Army. It is with relation to naval warfare that they hope to convince the country that old principles are obsolete, that old arms should be scrapped and that the air service should rise triumphant above the scrap heap. It is with relation to naval warfare, therefore, that some of the limitations of aircraft will be examined.
Sea Power.—Sea power being the force to be conquered and supplanted, let us attempt to visualize sea power by a concrete example. Within a few months from the outbreak of the World War every German raider had been driven from the ocean, a period of time likely to be lessened as the use of wireless on merchantmen becomes universal. For four years the Seven Seas were highways for the Allies and the Allies alone. Ships were bringing rubber from Singapore, nitrates from Chile, wheat from the Argentine, and above all, supplies, munitions and afterwards the decisive troops from America. Germany was getting nothing except what was available by way of her land communications, one closed sea and two perilous trips of a cargo submarine. All this was possible because at Scapa Flow, 500 miles from the nearest German port, lay a fleet of battleships of Such strength that the German Navy dared not force it to decisive action.
Sea power is itself but an auxiliary arm. Its own guns can range but a short distance inland. Its sole function is to assure supplies and communications over the high seas to its possessors and to deny them to the enemy. Nevertheless, so vital are supplies and communications to armies and so necessary to them are the highways of the sea that sea power is usually the decisive factor in great wars.
It will be observed that the control of seas is not in proportion to the strength of the rival navies. Because the fleets are in proportion of sixty to forty does not mean that the superior fleet commands sixty per cent of the waters of the earth and the inferior fleet forty. The portion of the superior fleet is the entire ocean, that of the inferior fleet is zero.
Radius of Action.—Against sea power, thus holding dominion over the Seven Seas, it is now proposed to launch air power. From what point? The trade routes of the earth were bearing assistance to the Allies, but not the most imaginative can envisage improved airplanes leaving Germany to seize and hold the trade routes of the earth. Even the most important route, the ocean lane from Hoboken to Brest or Bordeaux, over which troops and supplies were pouring, is as much beyond the radius of action of any postwar plane based on Germany as it was out of reach during the war. If planes improve it is only necessary to shift terminals and make the land route a little longer. We could have landed at Marseilles if necessary.
If it is proposed to strike directly at the heart of sea power, at the battleship fleet whose existence is paralyzing surface operations, the same weakness is manifest. In holding the seas, the main fleet of heavy ships is not obliged to lie within the striking distance of airplanes based on an enemy port. Blockaders have already been driven back by the threat of torpedo craft, and may be driven back further, but wireless communication more than compensates for the distance. The blockade of the next war will be a further extension of the elastic blockade, based on light craft inshore with heavier ships within supporting distance.
Briefly, then, aircraft are too limited in radius of action to wage successful war on sea power. The theater of operations is too large. A battle fleet radiates lines of power from its position like the queen on a chessboard. It can check from the opposite side of the board. A knight can attack and even capture a queen without danger to itself if it can get near enough and in the right position, but when a knight is proved to be stronger than a queen, then an airplane will be stronger than a battleship.
Aircraft Carriers.—It is to remedy the fatal lack of radius of action that planes are to be put aboard carriers. Now they can be brought to any vital point. The terminology of the argument shifts a little, for now the potency of sea power is admitted, but it is to be exercised by a different type of capital ship. Old , principles are to remain unaltered, except for the contention that a ship armed with bombing and torpedo planes is superior to one armed with 16-inch guns. Before two such ships are placed in tactical contact, however, there are numerous complications to be discussed.
The first limitation on aircraft carriers is artificial, but it is none the less real. They are limited by the Washington Treaty. Against our ultimate 525,000 tons of battleships, supported by 135,000 tons of carrier capacity of our own, the only carriers we have to figure on are 135,000 tons of Great Britain, 81,000 tons of Japan, and 60,000 tons each of France and Italy.
Aircraft carriers are neither cheap nor can they be built overnight—two of the arguments most stressed for aircraft. Differing radically in design from other types of vessels, they cannot be readily extemporized after war is declared, assuming that war would scrap the Washington Treaty. We are therefore driven to figuring whether our fleet of eighteen battleships, with its 192 big guns, supported by our own carrier capacity of 135,000 tons, is rendered obsolete and should be allowed to deteriorate by reason of the aircraft which can be carried upon say three Japanese carriers of 27,000 tons each. Anyone supporting this thesis should do some convincing figuring for the. public.
Carriers as Surface Craft.—In estimating the value of carriers as supplying the essential radius of action, we are not, however, obliged to rely wholly upon the limitations of the Washington Treaty. An aircraft carrier is a surface vessel, and when we have put our aircraft force aboard we have subjected it to all the limitations of surface craft. Imagination, like the planes, must come down from the air, for now we are again on the charted seas of experience.
As a surface vessel the carrier has no more power than a cruiser, and it is against cruisers, not capital ships, that she would have to battle her way to the point where she could strike at the battle fleet. There is no more reason why she should not get there than the destroyer, the submarine or any other type of vessel that for the past thirty years has been trying to put the battleship out of business.
A variation on the idea of putting airplanes on carriers has recently appeared in the assertion that it will soon be possible to refuel airplanes from surface ships. The answer is the same. We have only to remember as far back as the World War to know that there is one sure way to keep the enemy’s surface ships off the ocean and that is to have an adequate navy. If any weight is to be given to this new possibility it merely emphasizes the necessity of a sufficient number of cruisers, for against cruisers, when properly supported by heavier ships, no surface craft can operate.
It may be difficult to show the average landsman just why a fleet of heavy battleships, properly supported by cruisers and other auxiliaries, denies the seas to all lighter surface craft, but this is too familiar ground to need recapitulation here. Experience is the best guide and the experience of the war is too conclusive and too recent to require much elaboration. Once admit that aircraft must be put on carriers to bring them into action, or that they must get their fuel supply from surface ships, and they have been relegated definitely to the spasmodic raiding activities of an inferior fleet.
Limited radius of action does not prevent aircraft from being powerful defensive weapons, but defense does not win wars, nor is it a substitute for sea power. The argument on this whole point may be tersely summarized in the proposition that an airplane cannot sink a battleship because it cannot carry enough fuel. Thus put it will be .found to carry a new idea to the average aircraft advocate. Two questions will immediately arise; first, from what point did the airplane start, and second, how did it get to that starting point unmolested. By the time these are given some consideration it will be found that the average amateur has been thinking solely in terms of tactics, with the two opponents already in actual contact, and that the most elementary considerations of strategy and logistics have been wholly ignored.
Tactical Weakness.—Supplementing this important strategic limitation there is an almost equally important tactical weakness. The best defense against aircraft is aircraft. The defense against air attack will undoubtedly develop along the same lines as the defense against torpedo boat attack—that is, meeting kind with kind.
Battleships have anti-aircraft guns as they have anti-torpedo guns, but their first and most important line of defense will be their own aircraft, just as it is now their own torpedo craft.
Here, however, there is a line of divergence. When the torpedo boat was answered by the destroyer, it, in turn, became a destroyer, and attack and defense developed along parallel lines. There is no inherent reason why a destroyer attacking a battleship should be inferior to one designed for its defense.
With aircraft it is different. The attacking ship is a bombing or torpedo plane. Its enemy is the combat plane, particularly the single-seated pursuit plane. No development in aviation, past or future, can change the fundamental relation between these two types. The pursuit planes carried by a fleet for its protection will always be faster than the bombing and torpedo planes seeking its destruction.
Speed is not everything, but in every other military weapon lack of speed is made up by some compensating advantage. The submarine is slower than the destroyer it must evade, but it has invisibility. The battleship is slower than a cruiser, but besides its enormous destructive power, it is practically invulnerable to cruiser attack. The bombing plane alone is asked to take the air against an enemy which, so far as inherent quality goes, it is not strong enough to fight nor fast enough to evade.
So far as sea-going aircraft are concerned, that is aircraft which accompany the fleet, the bomber may reasonably count on being outnumbered as well as out-maneuvered. On a given carrier displacement it will usually be possible to put at least two pursuit planes as against one bomber. A fleet which elects to defend itself in the air instead of using its airforce for attack can therefore count on a substantial numerical superiority of defensive planes. In addition to those carried on the regular carriers, battleships and cruisers, while not adapted for carrying bombers, may add their quota of combat planes.
Under these circumstances, whatever may be the future developments of aviation, there is no reason to doubt that the defense will have no difficulty in keeping pace with any new form of attack from the air.
Weather.—Next to limited radius of action and inherent weakness of attack against defense, probably the most serious limitation of aircraft is the weather.
It would seem axiomatic that in sustained operations of war no commander can afford to place his main reliance upon any force which is not available at any time and under all circumstances. He may employ auxiliary forces of a special kind, subject to special limitations, such as gas or smoke dependent on the direction and velocity of the wind. To adopt a major force of any such kind for attack is to limit attacking periods to an extent which necessity may not permit. To adopt it for defense is merely to invite the enemy to make his attack when such force is unavailable. Dependability is one of the most fundamental requisites of any military force.
The airplane is not a dependable weapon. Making every allowance for improvements in the past and in the future there remains a considerable percentage of weather during which it cannot fight. Not only severe storms but even ordinary cloud conditions frequently put it out of action.
We are all familiar with frequent postponements of flights and flying maneuvers in times of peace, when no unnecessary risks need be run, but few realize how materially air fighting is slowed up by weather in time of war. Most war narratives are diaries of achievement, with no mention of periods of inactivity, but any serious study of sustained operations shows up this defect in a striking manner. Take these extracts from the work of Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon on the Dover Patrol:
Heavy gales and great , quantities of rain were experienced during fourteen of the thirty-one days in December, 1915, and no flying was possible, while on others the conditions were such that while protective patrols were carried out over the warships off La Panne, it was not considered feasible to undertake offensive work.
A break in the weather called a halt in the continuous bombing attacks on both sides during the first two weeks of February, 1917, and, except for an occasional odd day, no flying operations were possible.
So much for sustained operations. How easily ordinary weather on a summer day can put aircraft out of action may be judged from this random letter from the book of a British aviator:
August 26, 1915.
Dear Dad:
What do you think of forty warships bombarding Zeebrugge? We were all due out there, of course, some spotting and fighters to protect the spotters. As luck would have it the weather was dud—clouds at 1,500 feet—with the result that no one got there, except a solitary fighter, and he was rewarded by a scrap with a German seaplane.
Harold Rosher.
As a prelude to the greatest of sea fights it is now well known that Admiral Scheer made elaborate plans, depending on preliminary observations by Zeppelins, that he was repeatedly disappointed by weather conditions and that the High Seas fleet finally went out without the necessary information at a time when the British fleet was actually at sea.
If we have worked ourselves into the frame of mind where we believe that air control will decide the next war within forty- eight hours we may dismiss these considerations from discussion, but if we anticipate any continuous effort we must realize that any nation depending on aircraft for its primary weapon is under a severe handicap as compared with one which can do its fighting in all weathers.
One Point in Space.—Unlike any other military weapon the bombing airplane depends wholly on the force of gravity for the delivery of its projectile. It follows that, if its target is a single object and not an area, its attack must be made from what, without mathematical exactness, may fairly be described as one point in space! A torpedo plane, considering that it is not practicable to drop a torpedo more than fifteen feet without injury to its delicate mechanism, has not much more latitude.
During the entire time that an attacking plane of either type is within range of anti-aircraft guns it is in itself an impotent target, except for one brief moment at one definite and predictable point. From the moment it is sighted the path that it must traverse to reach its striking point is known. It is only necessary to put in that path a creeping or “ladder” barrage of bursting shells to make the odds against arriving rather heavy.
We hear considerable about the development of aircraft since the War, but not so much about the development of anti-aircraft weapons. As a matter of fact, some very efficient guns have been developed. We have machine guns with tracer ammunition visible up to 10,000 feet. We have a 3-inch semi-automatic, throwing shrapnel to an effective height of 21,000 feet and a 4.7-inch gun which can throw a 45-pound bursting shell higher than any bomber can climb. As we are now considering the limitations of aircraft rather than the strength of defensive measures, it is unnecessary to elaborate on the performance of these guns. The immediate point is that modern practice is not to aim at the airplane, which would be an elusive target, but to fill its predetermined path with bursting shells, which is taking advantage of a very definite weakness.
One Shot in the Locker.—When a bombing plane has battled its way against distance, against the weather, against faster pursuit planes and against anti-aircraft guns to the one point at the one moment at which it can deliver its blow, what has it to deliver? Without much exaggeration it can be said: one shot.
It is true that bombers can carry a number of small bombs, but these are not calculated to sink battleships nor even to penetrate armored decks. Airplanes that are risking their existence to mess up the upper works of a battleship are playing a game not worth the candle. It is likewise true that the heavier types of land bombers can carry several bombs of considerable size. As to these it is doubtful, as already stated, if battleships will be found within their range of flight, or whether a multiplicity of bombs will mean a multiplicity of shots in the sense that any corrections can be made for misses. So far as seagoing aircraft are concerned it is certain that any airplane that can be stowed on a carrier and take off in the length of a flying deck cannot be of a size sufficient to carry more than one torpedo or more than one bomb of a size sufficient seriously to injure a dreadnaught.
Now a military weapon that is out of action after firing one shot, or even one salvo, cannot be classed as an efficient weapon. It is fighting against the most persistent of enemies—the doctrine of mathematical chances.
No other weapon in practical use has this serious limitation. The naval gun, for example, has the most elaborate mathematical devices for finding the range and speed of the enemy and for solving the intricate problem of making curving shell and moving target arrive at the same point at the same instant. Yet with all this no battleship commander would consider it more than a lucky chance to be “on” with his first salvo. Coast defense guns have a stable platform and instruments of much greater precision than those possible afloat. Suppose we compile their target records for ten years to find what percentage of the first or ‘‘trial” shots landed on the target. Yet the airplane has only its trial shot, delivered from the most unstable of platforms at a moment to be determined from the. factors of its exact altitude, its own speed and direction, speed and direction of target and wind velocity. One solution only, no corrections allowed.
Mental Hazard.—Airplanes, of course, have target practice and records of their own, hut there is a notorious difference between practice and war performance. In the old days a duelling expert could break the stem of a wine glass at twenty paces but found it very different when the glass was replaced by a man with a pistol of his own. The present generation is more familiar with the example of a fullback kicking field goals with mathematical precision before the game and his relative performance when two opposing ends are charging down upon him.
A few weapons, like the bayonet and hand grenade, call for closer contact with the enemy, but no one but an aviator is called upon to make his final estimate and calculation under conditions of such hurried strain and such imminent peril to himself and his mission. If there is any sort of defense in the air he will not only be dodging a pursuit plane armed with a machine gun, but will be wondering whether he can get his bomb off before the next anti-aircraft burst will get him. With all the courage in the world and conceding that his anxiety is not for himself but for his success, these conditions are not going to make for accuracy in firing his one uncorrected shot.
Hit or miss, the airplane’s usefulness practically ends when that one shot is fired. For that action at least, there is no reloading. Hasty retreat to a distant base is in order. In proportion to the effective force it can expend in one action, the airplane is probably the most expensive weapon devised.
Experience.—All this may seem hypercritical. The future alone can tell. In judging of the future, however, we may avail ourselves of the customary liberty of looking at the past.
As already indicated, the aircraft enthusiast is apt to dismiss all the experience of the World War with the observation that “aviation was in its infancy.” We may fairly ask a more critical examination of the failure of air power to exercise any appreciable effect on sea power, except as an auxiliary weapon whose effectiveness is not in dispute. Aviation has not changed in kind since the close of the war, only in degree, and if there was any indication of a beginning along the lines now under discussion its budding promise ought at least to be discernible. It is not.
The principal points which are relied on to support the contention that modern airships must not be judged by those of wartime is that the size and radius of action of airplanes have greatly increased and that they carry much heavier bombs. It happens, however, that Germany had, first and last, over fifty Zeppelins, and that no modern airplane has yet approached these in size, radius or weight of bombs. They proved vulnerable to weather, but as long as they lasted they should have shown what aircraft with plenty of radius and lifting power could do.
The first subject to challenge the attention of a military student is the failure of air power to close the line of communication between England and France. This was well within the radius of German aircraft. Zeppelins bombarded London but were utterly unable, in the slightest degree, to stop the flow of men and munitions across the English Channel. This artery was the most important sea lane of the entire war. “The British Navy,” says Admiral Sims, “transported about 20,000,000 souls back and forth between England and France in four years, and in this great movement seaplanes, dirigibles and other forms of aircraft played an important part.”
Here we have a typical instance of sea power, aided by aircraft acting in an auxiliary and defensive capacity, holding open a line so vital that a month’s closing would have meant the loss of the war. Against this line Germany threw her underseas weapon without serious effect. Why was her air power spent on inconclusive raids over the adjacent land areas instead of smashing this neck of the bottle with the conclusive ease with which paper air fleets are destroying paper surface fleets in every popular magazine of today?
Except for radius of action, which this sample is chosen to eliminate, the answer must lie in the limitations here discussed. We may speculate at will as to their relative importance, perhaps the defensive aircraft, perhaps the uncertainties of weather, perhaps the effort needed to launch the meager number of missiles carried.
Certain it is that within practically the same theater of operations the Germans conducted air raids which were (a) intermittent; (b) at night when air defense could not readily gather; (c) in weather of their own choosing and hence merely occasional; (d) directed against large areas as targets. They failed utterly to solve a far more important problem calling for effort (a) continuous, (b) in daytime when defensive aircraft could see them, (c) in all weather in which surface craft could operate, and (d) with individual ships as targets. If this problem is not as inherently insolvable today as it was then, it behooves the airmen to come down from the clouds long enough to tell us wherein the difference lies.
Airship against Battleship.—Even upon the narrower issue of airship against battleship the utter failure of the airship under war conditions needs more explanation than has yet been forthcoming. It must be repeated that Germany’s monopoly of Zeppelins gave her air fleet a backbone of fighting craft which in the matter of radius of action and weight of bombs were superior to present day airplanes. It must also be remembered that even with increased radius of action not all European apprehension need be shared nor all European practice followed by a nation still separated from possible enemies by 3,000 miles of water. The fact now to be pondered, however, is that Zeppelin and airplane alike inflicted no damage on capital ships and very little on other types, even within easy radius.
To one who has seen the chart of the North Sea “sweeps” of the Grand Fleet, such as now hangs in the cabin of the Hood, this fact is very striking. Apparently, no attention whatever was paid to the fact that they were often within easy reach of German air bases. As for cruisers and all lighter craft, the entire North Sea was theirs to the limits of the German mine fields off Heligoland and Horn Reef. With aircraft for observation and bombers galore the enemy allowed the British fleet to cruise with impunity within striking distance of their coast.
An individual instance of the failure of wartime experience to measure up to the roseate promises of today is that of the Konigsberg. When her raiding activities could no longer be maintained this cruiser was marooned in a shallow river in German East Africa. Here she lay, as helpless as a target ship, with the one exception that she had her' anti-aircraft guns. The British brought down two seaplanes to bomb her. In the face of the anti-aircraft fire they proved unequal to the task. After several attempts one of them crashed into the sea and was wrecked. Then the Admiralty sent down two monitors, and with seaplanes spotting for the indirect fire—just the kind of auxiliary service which all admit is invaluable—the Konigsberg was quickly destroyed.
Jutland.—The culmination of naval fighting was Jutland. If ever sea power needed effective air power to aid it, or. if ever air power proposed to demonstrate the beginnings of an ultimate superiority, it was that day. Preliminary plans for Zeppelin observations had gone wrong, owing to unfavorable weather conditions. Admiral Scheer’s “list of warships which took part in the battle of the Skagerrak and the operations connected therewith” includes ten Zeppelins. Five of them took the air when the British fleet was first sighted. Their achievements are briefly chronicled. “They took no part in the battle that so soon was to follow, neither did they see anything of their own main fleet, nor of the enemy, nor hear anything of the battle.”
The first mention of a Zeppelin by the British was at daybreak after the engagement. Jellicoe’s battleships were off Horn Reef, as near the enemy’s base as they dared to go on account of mine fields. A Zeppelin was sighted which reported the position of the British fleet to Scheer. Shortly afterwards, when Napier reported that he was engaging another Zeppelin with his cruisers, the British battle fleet, which the day before had turned away from destroyer attacks, went over and helped. The airship disappeared to the eastward and no molesting force came out to show what “control of the air” could accomplish.
At no time during the war did aircraft in touch with enemy fleets function to any degree such as we should now be led to expect. On August 18, 1916, Jellicoe notes: “Zeppelins were frequently in sight from both the battle and the battle cruiser fleet and were fired at, but they kept at too long a range for our fire to be effective.” The next day the commander of the Harwich force reported that “his force was shadowed by airships during the whole period of daylight on the nineteenth…It was evident that a very large force of airships was out.”
Offensive Operations.—Allied aircraft were by no means confined to defensive operations. The British had bombers and used them in naval operations. During 1917 Jellicoe reports persistent aerial attacks against vessels at German naval bases in Belgium, but the only victory claimed is that German destroyers found it so uncomfortable that they moved. The location of the German battleships in their harbor was perfectly well known and the whole North Sea was available for the launching of seaplanes on any calm day, but damage to capital ships there was none.
Meanwhile submarines were infesting British coastal waters and were hunted by aircraft as well as by every other kind of vessel. Well within range, observable even when submerged, vulnerable to small bombs and utterly helpless against aerial attack, the total bag to the credit of bombs from British aircraft was probably five.
American Experience.—Yankee ingenuity and initiative brought no better results. Admiral Sims has an entire chapter on “Fighting Submarines from the Air,” which is instructive reading. Extremely useful as auxiliaries to naval forces, invaluable for scouting and observation, there is not a suggestion that aircraft could be depended on to go out unaided to find the enemy and sink him with bombs.
Here is Admiral Sims’ description of the work:
At the cessation of hostilities we had a total of 500 planes of various descriptions actually in commission, a large number of which were in actual operation over the North Sea, the Irish Sea, the Bay of Biscay, and the Adriatic; our bombing planes were making frequent flights over enemy submarine bases and 2,500 officers and 22,000 enlisted men were making raids, doing patrols, bombing submarines, bombing enemy bases, taking photographs, making reconnaissance over enemy waters and engaging enemy aircraft.”
With all this activity American aircraft were credited with just one submarine destroyed by direct action and one “probably damaged” when Ensign Ives dropped a dud upon it. As Admiral Sims calls this latter “perhaps the most amazing hit made by any seaplane in the war” we need look no further for more material results.
The whole summary of war experience may be quoted from the same distinguished author:
I have said that the destructive achievement of aircraft figure only moderately in the statistics of the war; this was because the greater part of their most valuable work was done in cooperation with war vessels.”
Which, so far as human prescience goes, will probably be as true tomorrow as it was yesterday.
Conclusion.—Neither in a careful estimate of present day conditions nor in the light of war experience with every allowance for improvements can we discover any warrant for the claim that the airship is likely to put the battleship out of business.
The fundamental reason goes back to the dawn of the history of warfare. The bombing airplane is by nature a raider, designed to deliver its blow and retire. It is, in fact, the most helpless of weapons after it has delivered its shot. By its nature it cannot hold a position once taken, and so is incapable of exercising that steady pressure by which wars are won.
Battleships can take and hold positions. Usually the position is one from which the inferior enemy fleet can be contained, after which cruisers can maintain all lines of communication. If necessary to cut an enemy line of communications a force able to hold its position must be stationed across it.
No raiding operations ever severed a line of sea communications. The French tried it for centuries with their commerce destroyers. The German submarine came near succeeding, largely through the novelty of the problem to be solved, but development of the defense, notably the depth bomb and the adoption of the convoy system, soon swung the balance. With all its relative disadvantages and special limitations of its own there is no reason to believe that the airplane will succeed where the submarine failed.
Wars, whether on land or sea, will be won in the future as they have been in the past by the comparatively slow but irresistible force which is able to move from one strategic position to another, take it, consolidate it, hold it, and move on the next. On land this force is the infantry, on sea it is the battleship. The airplane is not of this type.