launch a torpedo-plane attack from it on the German
fleets in Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, while the Germans could not
possibly establish an aeronautical base sufficiently close to the
British fleet.

[Illustration: (C) Press Illustrating Service.

_Downed in the Enemy's Country._]

This gives the Allies the greatest advantage of the offensive. It
would seem possible, provided a distinct effort is made, for the
Allies to send a large number of aeroplane mother ships to a
point, say, fifty miles west of Heligoland, and for a large force
of fighting aeroplanes and torpedo planes to start from this
place about two hours before dawn, reach Kiel Bay and
Wilhelmshaven about dawn, attack the German fleets there and sink
the German ships.

The distance from Heligoland to Kiel is about ninety land miles,
and to Wilhelmshaven about forty-five.

The torpedo planes referred to are an invention of Admiral Fiske's
which, in accordance with what seems to be a fixed and fatal
precedent in the United States, has been ignored by our own
authorities but eagerly adopted by the naval services of practically
all the belligerents. One weakness of the aerial attack upon ships
of war is that the bombs dropped from the air, even if they strike
the target, strike upon the protective deck which in most warships
above the gunboat class is strong enough to resist, or at least to
minimize, the effect of any bomb capable of being carried by an
airplane. The real vulnerable part of a ship of war is the thin skin
of its hull below water and below the armor belt. This is the point
at which the torpedo strikes. Admiral Fiske's device permits an
airplane to carry two torpedoes of the regular Whitehead class and
to launch them with such an impetus and at such an angle that they
will take the water and continue their course thereunder exactly as
though launched from a naval torpedo tube. His idea was adopted both
by Great Britain and Germany. British torpedo planes thus equipped
sank four Turkish ships in the Sea of Marmora, a field of action
which no British ship could have reached after the disastrous
failure to force the Dardanelles. The Germans by employment of the
same device sank at least two Russian ships in the Baltic and one
British vessel in the North Sea. The blindness of the United States
naval authorities to the merits of this invention was a matter
arousing at once curiosity an