kly and over wide areas and reporting to
Headquarters, and second, that experiment had proved the difficulty of
loading aeroplanes with offensive weapons, such as bombs or machine
guns, without impairing speed and climb.

The following statement, which I drafted and which was issued by the
General Staff before the Army Man[oe]uvres of 1912, summarizes the
position:--

"As regards strategical reconnaissance," it says, "a General is
probably now justified in requiring a well-trained flyer, flying a
modern aeroplane, to reconnoitre some 70 miles out and return 70
miles. This would be done at a speed of, say, 60 miles an hour in
ordinary weather over ordinary country. Thus within four hours,
allowing a wide margin, a report as to the approximate strength,
formation and direction of movement of the enemy, if he is within a
70-mile radius, should be in the hands of the Commander."

To those imbued with a knowledge of military history this new method of
ascertaining the enemy's movements might well seem revolutionary.

Let us take two instances illustrating what aircraft, with a radius of
little over 100 miles, might have done in previous campaigns. For the
operations which terminated in the capitulation of Ulm in 1805 Napoleon
concentrated two army corps at Wuerzburg and five along the left bank of
the Rhine between Mannheim and Strasburg, his main body of cavalry under
Murat being at the latter place. The Austrian Army under Mack was behind
the Iller between Ulm and Memmingen, and expected the French to advance
through the defiles of the Black Forest, where Napoleon did actually
make a feint with his cavalry. Napoleon, however, crossing the Rhine on
September 26th, 1805, moved east, and it was not until October 2nd, when
the French Army had reached the line Ansbach, Langenburg, Hall and
Ludwigsburg, and his envelopment was far advanced, that Mack realized
that the main French advance was coming from the north. Aeroplanes of
the type we possessed in 1914 could have reconnoitred the whole of
Napoleon's preliminary position, could have detected his line of
advance, especially as it was concentrated on a very narrow front, and
could have brought back the information to the Austrian Headquarters
within a few hours.

Aircraft would have been of even greater value on August 16th, 1870, at
the Battle of Rezonville, where neither the French nor the Germans were
aware of the other's movements. On t