Alex Imrie, "German Naval Air Service (Vintage Aviation fotofax)" (repost)
Alex Imrie, "German Naval Air Service (Vintage Aviation fotofax)"
Arms and Armour | 1989 | ISBN: 0853689202 | English | EPUB | 48 pages | 71 MB
Arms and Armour | 1989 | ISBN: 0853689202 | English | EPUB | 48 pages | 71 MB
The German Naval Air Service entered the war completely unprepared: only six seaplanes were available to the North Sea area while three machines were allocated to the Baltic. The number of trained personnel stood at 20 officer pilots, there were no trained air observers at all, and while some pilots also flew as observer, often mechanics were taken aloft for this purpose. Only one airship (L3) was on charge, which due to the short range of the seaplanes and their lack of wireless was seen as the more reliable reconnaissance vehicle, and steps were afoot to bring more airships rapidly into commission. Pre-war thinking decreed that the British Fleet would impose a close blockade on the German coast and the German Fleet would consequently be forced to fight a decisive action close to its bases. Because of this, the naval air strength was deployed entirely for the protection of the German Bight and the observation of the entrance to the Baltic Sea. It is not possible in a book of this nature to tell the whole fascinating story of how this nucleus grew into the efficient naval air arm that existed in November 1918, but the material used here has been selected to show important aspects of the application of the airship and the aeroplane in naval service, and to give an insight into the rapid development that took place in the few years of the force's existence. It should be remembered that although attention tends to be focused on the excitement of aerial fighting, bombing attacks and other encounters with enemy forces, the major part of the operational work comprised many thousands of monotonous flying hours on reconnaissance duties, where the whole sea areas within the radius of action of the aircraft were kept under constant surveillance and charted to a very high degree of accuracy - thus truly fulfilling the role envisaged for Germany's Marineflieger from the beginning.