night. The alarm was spread
westward, whence the craft were bound. Five bombs fell upon Ipswich,
but no one was killed. A few dwellings and commercial buildings were
struck, fires starting which the local department soon controlled.
Only a few minutes after the machines shelled Ipswich, they were seen
to approach Bury St. Edmunds, fourteen miles to the northwest of
Ipswich. Three bombs failed to produce casualties, but fires were
started. Little damage resulted.

On the first day of May, 1915, announcement was made in Paris that
experiments conducted at Issy les Molineaux over several months had
brought about successful tests in firing a three-inch gun from an
aeroplane. This had never been accomplished before, and had seemed a
well-nigh impossible task. An entirely new piece was developed, firing
a shell of about the same size as the regular 75-millimeter field gun.
It was made lighter by half, with an effective range of 2,500 meters,
considerably less than the standard gun.

French skill in designing weapons, always a trait of the race, was
evidenced here. The heavy steel breechblock of the seventy-five was
replaced by a wooden block. When fired the explosion of the powder
charge automatically blew the wooden breechblock backward, thus
neutralizing the shock. But owing to the open breech much of the
powder's driving force was lost. Nothing to equal the new arm had
there been up to that time. The wooden breechblock completely did away
with the heavy hydraulic recoil cylinders which were one of the
distinguishing features of the seventy-five. These cylinders were
esteemed by many authorities to be the finest in the world, absorbing
maximum shock with a minimum of effort.

The coming of this new gun marked a big step forward in aerial war and
gave the French machines so equipped a decided advantage. Its effect
was to make the German flyers more wary, avoiding combat except when
impossible to avoid the issue. But its use was confined to the larger
machines as a rule, particularly the Voisin biplane, the machine gun
being favored by many airmen because of its lightness and the ease
with which it could be handled.

The beginning of May, 1915, found aerial warfare in full progress again.
The British defense squadrons showed somewhat better generalship and it
was not until the tenth of the month that Zeppelins obtained any
appreciable advantage in that quarter. But two of the raiders evaded the
patrols on the night of Ma