Development and Change of Airship Utilization in Naval Warfare. By Dr. Helmut Beelitz, Korvettenkapitan a.D. (In German.) Dusselldorf: G. H. Nolte. 1936. RM. 3.80.
Reviewed by Commander C. E. Rosendahl, U. S. Navy
This former naval officer’s brief history and clear analysis of the uses of naval lighter-than-air craft merits careful consideration by all students of naval affairs. As a regular naval officer, Dr. Beelitz served on the German Naval Airship Staff early in the war and later experience as an airship captain further qualifies him to discuss this subject. His essay was not written in the fiery enthusiasm of a crusader but as the dispassionate weighing of facts many years after the war, with his active airship associations long behind him. As a matter of fact, Dr. Beelitz prepared it in 1935 as the final thesis for his Doctor’s degree, summa cum laude, from Heidelberg.
Far from stiff statistical style, this work nevertheless contains many supporting and perhaps surprising figures. For example, he shows that while the British kept half a million men at home for defense against air raids, 17,000 alone being required solely to man anti-aircraft guns, the maximum personnel strength of the German Naval Airship Service was only 6,000. In the 53 months of the war, 78 airships were delivered to the German Navy alone, a rate of one every three weeks. This is impressive in the light of the important item of replacement of material losses in warfare. German naval airships executed 1,148 scouting missions and 200 attacks upon England, Russia, and Italy; yet contrary to general belief, the personnel losses involved only 40 officers and 396 other naval ratings. This was in addition to 232 attacks on the enemy made by German army airships. German naval airships had 50 engagements with hostile submarines and even though they were not organized as an anti-submarine arm, accounted for the destruction of at least five Allied submarines.
Dr. Beelitz shows the great effectiveness of the airship as an anti-mine agent. During the last year of the war the British planted 10,000 mines per month. Of 18 capital ships lost by the belligerents as a result of mine casualities, only 4 of them were German and but 3 of these attributable to Allied mines. Not only did airships with their ability to fly “low and slow” sight and even destroy mines themselves, but they also screened anti-mine operations against attack. On one occasion, the L-5 alone counted and reported the position of 368 mines. Indeed the success of the airship against hostile mines raises a question as to the efficacy of such extensive mine operations, for known mine locations of such profusion may serve unintentionally as a protective barrier for the enemy against whom they were planted.
The author also shows clearly the effectiveness of airships against submarines. The British alone employed 162 small airships against submarines and mines; and both the French and the Italians indulged in similar widespread airship activity. Airships forced German submarines to give up the sinking of merchant ships by bombs and to resort to the more costly use of torpedoes and guns. As a matter of fact, no merchantman or troop vessel convoyed by an airship was ever sunk by a German submarine. In view of such a successful World War history against mines and submarines, it seems difficult to understand today’s apparent indifference to this important type which still retains its basic usefulness in spite of marvelous improvements in heavier-than-air.
Dr. Beelitz reviews not only German airship activities before, during, and after the World War but also describes the airship activities of other countries during the same periods. He lists the most important undertakings of German naval airships during the war. His tracing of the development of the naval airship and its uses is clear and his analysis of each of the basic characteristics of airships is sound and convincing. The author makes no effort to place the airship in a superexalted position but shows that it does have a place in the naval element of a nation such as the United States.
The author effectively dispels the onesided reports of German airship activities propagandized during the World War. Even in Germany the airship suffered because of its publicity. For example, following the loss in the summer of 1918 of Captain Strasser, the guiding genius of the Naval Airship Service, the employment of airships on raids lost its driving force. Since the German newspapers published only the airship raids, even in Germany it was then imagined that airship use had ceased whereas actually its strictly naval uses for scouting, anti-mine, and anti-submarine work continued unabated.
By far not the least important contribution of Dr. Beelitz’s book is his explanation of the insidious and far-reaching effects of the Versailles Treaty on the airship situation of the world even today. With the wounds of war still smarting and with their own successes in small airships still fresh in mind, the Allies hastened to seize every possible large German airship in a mad haste to acquire its secrets. Dr. Beelitz attributes such stunts as the transatlantic flight of the R-34 and the 119-hour endurance record of the Dixmude by the French to the Allied desires to capitalize on big airships. But in their frenzied efforts to reap the benefits of the highly developed German airship art simply through the royal road of seizing German airships, they seem quite to forget the extensive German background and certainly appear to have been unwilling to acquire operating and construction knowledge by the historical and basic method of the sweat of the brow and usual pioneering grief. As von Tirpitz said, the German people did not understand the sea, so the author has shown that the Allies did not understand the airship. It was upon repeated Allied failures to find a royal road to airship success that the airship began to undergo a period of belittlement and condemnation
that has continued even to today. It is quite probable that those who echo this condemnation the loudest today little realize, if at all, the insidious sources of their feelings.
As the author so aptly puts it, very often in the case of the death of an airship the assassinated and not the assassin has been declared guilty.”
Let us hope the English translation of Dr. Beelitz’s splendid essay finds its way into publication. It is a work that should be available for reference in naval and aeronautical libraries as well as for the perennial airship hearings and investigations in this country.
Your Wings. By Assen Jordanoff, author of Flying and How To Do It. Bulgarian World-War aviator. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company. 290 pp. 1937. $2.50.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander P. V. H. Weems, U. S. Navy (Retired)
This book, one of the most popular scientific books on aviation today, puts into illustrated tabloid form the historical and technical facts connected with aviation. Facts which appear in usual technical books as dry and uninteresting data are as easy to read in Your Wings as a Buck Rogers cartoon, for the author has the knack of stating in few words and putting m illustrated form the many technical details of aviation. There are more than 425 Pen and ink drawings by Frank Carlson (which are humorous where humor may be introduced for ease of study), which are easy to understand and scientifically correct. The style of Your Wings is similar to that of Mathematics Made Easy and other recent books published by the University of Chicago Press; the idea being to present scientific facts by simple, homely descriptions and humorous illustrations.
This book will find a wide field with the layman who wishes to learn in a general way the up-to-the-minute facts on aviation in the quickest, easiest way. It appeals to youngsters no less than to the technically minded and to the average layman, presenting such a strong case for flying that several large corporations interested in aviation are making a wide distribution of the book.
Lawrence Kearny, Sailor Diplomat. By Professor Carroll Storrs Alden, Head of Department of English and History, U. S. Naval Academy. Princeton University Press. 1936. $2.00. Reviewed by Lieutenant Colby Rucker, U. S. Navy History, unfortunately, deals but briefly with trends, groundwork, and routine service, preferring for brevity to throw the searchlight of recognition upon outstanding accomplishments and upon those few men who for the moment seem to personify the aims and aspirations of the nation. History so written presents large blanks covering peaceful periods during which the ground is being prepared for the momentous issues and struggles to follow.
The period between 1815 and 1861 in our naval history is such a blank. The naval student plunges from the American side show of the Napoleonic wars into the first great mechanized war of history 50 years later, with but a sentence or two to cover the period between. A very real service is rendered the careful student when these voids are filled and Professor Alden has helped to fill the gap between 1815-61 with this excellent, compact, and interesting life of Lawrence Kearny, who entered the U. S. Navy in 1807 at 17 and served on active duty for 55 years.
The first dramatic period of Kearny’s life began in 1817 when, while assisting General Andrew Jackson in the capture of Pensacola, he took a privateer and a slaver. This began six years of pirate chasing duty in Caribbean and Mediterranean waters. His first brush was with the glamorous Jean Lafitte, pirate, smuggler, gentleman, hero of the Battle of New Orleans, one-time leader of 100 ships and 2,000 buccaneers. Kearny drove Lafitte from Galveston to Yucatan and into obscurity. Kearny next cleaned out the pirate nest of the notorious Charles Gibbs, who by his own confession had murdered more than 400 persons and had scuttled 15 ships.
The most important work of Kearny’s life was the opening of China for the United States after the Anglo-Chinese Opium War of 1839. Aside from the lasting benefits of our trade with China, Kearny’s diplomacy paved the way for the more spectacular success of his junior, and onetime shipmate, Matthew C. Perry in Japan.
Kearny laid the foundation, others reaped the reward. His pirate chasing went unrecognized for years. His work in China helped Perry; his diplomacy in Mexican California aided his relative General Stephen Kearny; his firm stand in Hawaii, when the headstrong Lord Paulet seized the islands for England, preserved the dominant position of our countrymen there, thus saving Hawaii for the United States.
The story of Lawrence Kearny, sailor, pirate chaser, diplomat, and the tale of the so-called blank years of our naval history are simply yet fascinatingly told in this latest book by Professor Carroll S. Alden.
Weyers Taschenbuch Der Kriegsflotten, 1937 (Handbook of Naval Vessels). By Alexander Bredt, Leutnant z.S.a.D. (Ret). Munich: J. F. Lehmanns, Verlag. 1937.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander Walter C. Ansel, U. S. Navy Anyone who has been intrigued by the bedsteads and the crossed knives and forks which head the columns of a European travel guide will find himself thoroughly at home in this handy little guide to the 44 navies of the world. A more complete, yet readily accessible, fund of graphic and printed information would be hard to find. There are seven main sections:
- A Tabular Mlister Roll of all naval vessels, in which is given the name, date, armor, displacement, speed, armament, endurance, power, machinery, dimensions, complement, and builder. Here especially we find a free use of ingenious space-saving symbols that are far more informative than words; a small picture of a seaplane and the numeral 2, for instance, denotes that the ship carries two seaplanes; a gear wheel, that main propulsion is geared turbines.
Silhouette sketches and photographs form a second part of section I. To make them stand out the armored portions of the ships are colored blue.
- Naval Air Strength of the principal powers. Ships are listed first with their complements of aircraft, followed by a list of shore air bases. A summary of the Naval Air Organization cross-indexes the whole, and a naval aircraft performance table (in metric units) completes the section.
- Fleet Organizations.—For the student of sea power and its employment this collection of the 11 major fleet organizations is truly indispensable.
- Naval Ordnance, listed in tabular form for 17 navies. The caliber, weight, projectile, muzzle velocity, and employment for each gun is given. - (V) This section is devoted to Naval Policy and contains an outline of the London treaty (1936), a short survey of the naval situation in each of 15 countries, a tabular comparison of naval budgets and personnel strengths, and a graphic comparison of ship-type strengths by age.
- A Shipping and Shipbuilding survey, followed by a comparison of merchant fleets, their growth, and their largest individual units.
- Miscellaneous.—It includes rank sleeve markings of officers, personal flags, and national flags in colors. The rank of Lieutenant (junior grade) does not appear in the United States table.
The whole is a fine piece of work, of which the founder, Korvettenkapitan Weyer a.D. would be proud. It is to be regretted that he died a short time ago but his work is being carried on most ably by the present editor, Leutnant z.S. Alexander Bredt a.D.