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