ack and white
at bow and stern, by long, horizontal lines of black and blue, and by
patches of various hues. One funnel is gray, another blue and white,
another all blue. There can be no question that the sum total of effect
offends the eye and dazes the senses. Submarines have been known to make
errors of eight degrees in delivering torpedoes at dazzle boats even at
close range.

In addition to camouflage experiments on one of our great inland lakes,
the Navy Department also investigated other ideas relating to the
self-protection of craft at sea. Among these was a device by which a
vessel zigzags automatically as she proceeds on her ocean course. The
advantage of such an invention when the war zone is filled with
submarines waiting for a chance for pot shots at craft is obvious.

The Navy Department, in short, has neglected nothing that would tend to
enhance the safety of our ships on the sea, and many valuable schemes
have been applied. But when all is said and done these defensive
elements are and, it seems, must remain subsidiary to the protection as
applied from without, the protection of swift destroyers with their
depth-bombs, their great speed, and their ability quickly to manoeuvre.

CHAPTER XII

The Naval Flying Corps--What The Navy Department Has Accomplished And Is
Accomplishing in the Way of Air-Fighting--Experience of a Naval Ensign
Adrift in the English Channel--Seaplanes and Flying Boats--Schools of
Instruction--Instances of Heroism

In writing of aviation in the navy an incident which befell one of our
naval airmen in the English Channel seems to demand primary
consideration, not alone because of the dramatic nature of the event,
but because it sets forth clearly the nature of the work upon which our
flying men of the navy entered as soon as the United States took hostile
action against Germany. Our navy aviators, in fact, were the first force
of American fighters to land upon European soil after war was declared.
Here is the story as told by Ensign E. A. Stone, United States Naval
Reserve, after he was rescued from the Channel, where with a companion
he had clung for eighty hours without food and drink to the under-side
of a capsized seaplane pontoon. "I left our station in a British
seaplane as pilot, with Sublieutenant Moore of the Royal Naval Air
Service as observer, at 9 o'clock in the morning. Our duty was to convoy
patrols. When two hours out, having met our ships coming from the
w