Watch: Airplane Makes Battleship Disappear With a Smoke Screen

[rent4country]

1923 video digitized and uploaded to YouTube shows how early 20th century technology could make a battleship blind to an oncoming aerial attack. The video shows a biplane soaring over warships of the U.S. Navy and creating an instantaneous wall of smoke large enough to hide a fleet behind.

The video, produced by the U.S. Army Engineering Division, shows an airplane of the Army Air Service dropping a substance that instantly creates a screen hundreds of feet tall. The film is footage from a series of then-controversial military exercises that took place off the East Coast of the United States from 1921 to 1923.


Army Brigadier General William “Billy” Mitchell, an early and outspoken proponent of air power, forced a series of exercises that pitted his fleet of Martin MB-2 biplane bombers against warships of the U.S. Navy. Mitchell believed that air power was superior to naval power and that a handful of airplanes could cripple the largest battleship.

The silent video caption states that the smoke screen was laid “to protect the bombing plane,” presumably from the battleship’s anti-aircraft fire. The plane laying the smoke screen and the plane filming the process also appear to be Martin MB-2s. The big gun warship in the background is either USS New Jersey or USS Virginia, two surplus battleships of the same class provided by the Navy and sunk by Mitchell’s bombers during the exercises.

According to one particularly useful YouTube commenter, the substance is probably titanium tetrachloride. Titanium Tetrachloride, according to the U.S. Air Force, is a colorless liquid that reacts with air moisture to form smoke consisting of hydrated titanium acid and hydrogen chloride. It is also dangerous to work with, an irritant to respiratory systems, and can corrode metal.

Watch an Airplane Make This Battleship ‘Disappear’ in Nearly 100-Year-Old Video

A curtain of smoke could prevent a warship from firing on the airplanes attacking it.

www.popularmechanics.com

 

[Mrc]

Smoke won't hide you from radar and other sensors

 

[khansaheeb]

1923 video digitized and uploaded to YouTube shows how early 20th century technology could make a battleship blind to an oncoming aerial attack. The video shows a biplane soaring over warships of the U.S. Navy and creating an instantaneous wall of smoke large enough to hide a fleet behind.

The video, produced by the U.S. Army Engineering Division, shows an airplane of the Army Air Service dropping a substance that instantly creates a screen hundreds of feet tall. The film is footage from a series of then-controversial military exercises that took place off the East Coast of the United States from 1921 to 1923.


Army Brigadier General William “Billy” Mitchell, an early and outspoken proponent of air power, forced a series of exercises that pitted his fleet of Martin MB-2 biplane bombers against warships of the U.S. Navy. Mitchell believed that air power was superior to naval power and that a handful of airplanes could cripple the largest battleship.

The silent video caption states that the smoke screen was laid “to protect the bombing plane,” presumably from the battleship’s anti-aircraft fire. The plane laying the smoke screen and the plane filming the process also appear to be Martin MB-2s. The big gun warship in the background is either USS New Jersey or USS Virginia, two surplus battleships of the same class provided by the Navy and sunk by Mitchell’s bombers during the exercises.

According to one particularly useful YouTube commenter, the substance is probably titanium tetrachloride. Titanium Tetrachloride, according to the U.S. Air Force, is a colorless liquid that reacts with air moisture to form smoke consisting of hydrated titanium acid and hydrogen chloride. It is also dangerous to work with, an irritant to respiratory systems, and can corrode metal.

Watch an Airplane Make This Battleship ‘Disappear’ in Nearly 100-Year-Old Video

A curtain of smoke could prevent a warship from firing on the airplanes attacking it.

www.popularmechanics.com

Won't work on a windy day, that's why it wasn't forward into battle. Also the radar and torpedoes has made it ineffective.

 

[rambro]

According to surinder modi Smoke cant hide it but clouds can.

 

[Imran Khan]

modi also know this technology of clouds