Aircraft and Submarines Part 15

But whether undertaken as part of a general programme of frightfulness or as reprisals for cruel and indefensible outrages air raids upon defenceless towns, killing peaceable citizens in their beds, and children in their kindergartens, are not incidents to add glory to aviation. The mind turns with relief from such examples of the cruel misuse of aircraft to the hosts of individual instances in which the airman and his machine remind one of the doughty Sir Knight and his charger in the most gallant days of chivalry. There were hosts of such incidents--men who fought gallantly and who always fought fair, men who hung about the outskirts of an aerial battle waiting for some individual champion of their own choosing to show himself and join in battle to death in the high ranges of the sky. Some of these have been mentioned in this book already. To discuss all who even as early as 1917 had made their names memorable would require a volume in itself. A few may well be mentioned below.

There, for example, was Captain Georges Guynemer, "King of the French Aces." An "ace" is an aviator who has brought down five enemy aircraft. Guynemer had fifty-three to his credit. Still a youth, only twenty-three years of age at the time of his death, and only flying for twenty-one months, he had lived out several life times in the mad excitement of combat in mid-air. Within three weeks after getting his aviator's license he had become an "Ace." Before his first year's service had expired he was decorated and promoted for gallantry in rus.h.i.+ng to the aid of a comrade attacked by five enemy machines. He entered the combat at the height of ten thousand feet, and inside of two minutes had dropped two of the enemy. The others fled. He pursued hotly keeping up a steady fire with his machine gun. One Boche wavered and fell, but just then an enemy sh.e.l.l from an "Archie" far below exploded under Guynemer, tearing away one wing of his machine. Let him tell the rest of that story:

I felt myself dropping [he said later]. It was ten thousand feet to the earth, and, like a flash, I saw my funeral with my saddened comrades marching behind the gun carriage to the cemetery. But I pulled and pushed every lever I had, but nothing would check my terrific descent.

Five thousand feet from the earth, the wrecked machine began to turn somersaults, but I was strapped into the seat. I do not know what it was, but something happened and I felt the speed descent lessen. But suddenly there was a tremendous crash and when I recovered my senses I had been taken from the wreckage and was all right.

Two records Guynemer made which have not yet been surpa.s.sed--the first, the one described above of dropping three Fokkers in two minutes and thirty seconds, and rounding off the adventure by himself dropping ten thousand feet. The second was in shooting down four enemy machines in one day. His methods were of the simplest. He was always alone in his machine, which was the lightest available.

He would rather carry more gasoline and ammunition than take along a gunner. The machine gun was mounted on the plane above his head, pointing dead ahead, and aimed by aiming the whole airplane. Once started the gun continued firing automatically and Guynemer's task was to follow his enemy pitilessly keeping that lead-spitting muzzle steadily bearing upon him. In September, 1917, he went up to attack five enemy machines--no odds however appalling seemed to terrify him--but was caught in a fleet of nearly forty Boches and fell to earth in the enemy's country.

One of the last of the air duels to be fought under the practices which made early air service so vividly recall the age of chivalry, was that in which Captain Immelman, "The Falcon," of the German army, met Captain Ball of the British Royal Flying Corps. Immelman had a record of fifty-one British airplanes downed. Captain Ball was desirous of wiping out this record and the audacious German at the same time, and so flying over the German lines he dropped this letter:

CAPTAIN IMMELMAN:

I challenge you to a man-to-man fight to take place this afternoon at two o'clock. I will meet you over the German lines.

Have your anti-air craft guns withhold their fire, while we decide which is the better man. The British guns will be silent.

BALL.

Presently thereafter this answer was dropped from a German airplane:

CAPTAIN BALL:

Your challenge is accepted. The guns will not interfere. I will meet you promptly at two.

IMMELMAN.

The word spread far and wide along the trenches on both sides.

Tacitly all firing stopped as though the bugles had sung truce. Men left cover and clambered up on the top to watch the duel. Punctually both flyers rose from their lines and made their way down No Man's Land. Let an eye witness tell the story:

From our trenches there were wild cheers for Ball. The Germans yelled just as vigorously for Immelman.

The cheers from the trenches continued; the Germans increased in volume; ours changed into cries of alarm.

Ball, thousands of feet above us and only a speck in the sky, was doing the craziest things imaginable. He was below Immelman and was apparently making no effort to get above him, thus gaining the advantage of position. Rather he was swinging around, this way and that, attempting, it seemed, to postpone the inevitable.

We saw the German's machine dip over preparatory to starting the nose dive.

"He's gone now," sobbed a young soldier, at my side, for he knew Immelman's gun would start its raking fire once it was being driven straight down.

Then in a fraction of a second the tables were turned. Before Immelman's plane could get into firing position, Ball drove his machine into a loop, getting above his adversary and cutting loose with his gun and smas.h.i.+ng Immelman by a hail of bullets as he swept by.

Immelman's airplane burst into flames and dropped. Ball, from above, followed for a few hundred feet and then straightened out and raced for home. He settled down, rose again, hurried back, and released a huge wreath of flowers, almost directly over the spot where Immelman's charred body was being lifted from a tangled ma.s.s of metal.

Four days later Ball too was killed.

But the Germans, too, had their champion airmen, mighty fliers, skillful at control and with the machine gun, in whose triumphs they took the same pride that our boys in France did in those of Chapman, Rockwell or Thaw, the British in Warneford, or the French in Guynemer. Chief of these was Captain Boelke, who came to his death in the latter part of 1917, after putting to his credit over sixty Allied planes brought down. A German account of one of his duels as watched from the trenches, will be of interest:

For quite a long time an Englishman had been making circles before our eyes--calmly and deliberately.... My men on duty clenched their fists in impotent wrath. "The dog--!" Shooting would do no good.

Then suddenly from the rear a harsh, deep singing and buzzing cuts the air. It sounds like a German flyer. But he is not yet visible. Only the buzz of an approaching motor is heard in the clouds in the direction of the Englishman. More than a hundred eyes scanned the horizon. There! Far away and high among the clouds is a small black humming bird--a German battle aeroplane.

Its course is laid directly for the hostile biplane and it flies like an arrow shot with a clear eye and steady hand. My men crawl out of the shelters. I adjust my field gla.s.ses. A lump rises in our throats as if we are awaiting something new and wonderful.

So far the other does not seem to have noticed or recognized the black flyer that already is poised as a hawk above him. All at once there is a mighty swoop through the air like the drop of a bird of prey, and in no time the black flyer is immediately over the Englishman and the air is filled with the furious crackling of a machine gun, followed by the rapid ta-ta-ta of two or three more, all operated at the highest speed just as during a charge.

The Englishman drops a little, makes a circle and tries to escape toward the rear. The other circles and attacks him in front, and again we hear the exciting ta-ta-ta! Now the Englishman tries to slip from under his opponent, but the German makes a circle and the effort fails. Then the enemy describes a great circle and attempts to rise above the German. The latter ascends in sharp half circles and again swoops down upon the biplane, driving it toward the German trenches.

Will the Englishman yield so soon? Scattered shouts of joy are already heard in our ranks. Suddenly he drops a hundred yards and more through the air and makes a skillful loop toward the rear.

Our warrior of the air swoops after him, tackles him once more and again we hear the wild defiant rattle of the machine guns over our heads. Now they are quite close to our trenches. The French infantry and artillery begin firing in a last desperate hope. Neither of them is touched. Sticking close above and behind him the German drives the Englishman along some six hundred yards over our heads and then just above the housetops of St. A. Once more we hear a distant ta-ta-ta a little slower and more scattered and then as they drop both disappear from our view.

Scarcely five minutes pa.s.s before the telephone brings up this news: Lieutenant Boelke has just brought down his seventh flyer.

Methods of air-fighting were succinctly described in a hearing before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, in June, 1917. The officers testifying were young Americans of the Lafayette Escadrille of the French army. To the civilian the testimony is interesting for the clear idea it gives of military aviation. The extracts following are from the official record:

_Adjt. Prince_: Senator, there are about four kinds of machines used abroad on the western front to-day. The machines that Adjt.

Rumsey and myself are looking after are called the battle machines. Then there are the photography machines, machines that go up to enable the taking of photographs of the German batteries, go back of the line and take views of the country behind their lines and find out what their next line of attack will be, or, if they retreat from the present line, then everything in that way. Probably we have, where we are, in my group alone, a hundred and fifty photographers who do nothing all day long except develop pictures, and you can get pictures of any part of the country that you want. When the Germans retreated from the old line where they used to be, by Peronne and Chaulnes, we had absolute pictures of all the Hindenburg line from where they are now right down to St. Quentin, down to the line the French are on. We had photographs of it all.

_Senator Kirby_: When they started on the retreat?

[Ill.u.s.tration: Kadel & Herbert.

_Miss Ruth Law at Close of her Chicago to New York Flight._]

_Adjt. Prince_: Yes, sir. So we knew exactly where their stand would be made. Then, besides that, those photograph machines do a lot of scouting. They have a pilot and a photographer aboard. He has not only a camera, but quite often he has a Lewis gun with him in order to ward off any hostile airmen if they should get through the battle planes that are above him; in other words, should get through us in order to fight him. They do a great deal of the scouting, because they fly at a lower level. The battle planes go up to protect photography machines, or to go man-hunting, as it is called; in other words, to fight the Germans. We fly all day, like to-day, as high as we can go, or as high as the French go as a rule, about 5500 metres, about 17,000 to 18,000 feet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: International Film Service.

_A French Aviator between Flights._]

_Adjt. Rumsey_: I think 5500 metres is about 19,000 feet. Some go up 6000 metres, which makes about 20,000 feet.

_Adjt. Prince_: We go up there, and we have a certain sector of the front to look after. If we are only man-hunting, we go backward and forward like a policeman to prevent the Germans from getting over our own lines. We usually fly by fours, if we can, and the four go out together, so as not to be alone. We are usually fighting inside of the German lines, because the morale of the French and English is better than that of the Germans to-day; and every fight I have had--I have never been lucky enough to have one inside of my own lines--they have all been inside of the German lines.

_Senator Kirby_: What is the equipment of a battle plane such as you use?

_Adjt. Prince_: I use the 180 horse-power machine. It is called a "S. P. A. D.," which has a Spanish motor. But a great many of the motors to-day are being built here in America.

_Senator Kirby_: How many men do you carry?

_Adjt. Prince_: We go up alone in these machines. We did have two guns. We had the Lewis gun on our upper wing and the Vickers down below, that shoots through the propeller as the propeller turns around. Then we gave up the Lewis above. It added more weight, and we did not need it so much. The trouble with the Lewis gun is that it has only ninety-seven cartridges, while the Vickers has five hundred, and you can do just as much damage with the Vickers as you could with them both.

_Senator Sutherland_: You drive and fight at the same time?

_Adjt. Prince_: Yes, sir.

_Adjt. Rumsey_: The machine gun is fixed.

_Adjt. Prince_: It is absolutely fixed on the machine, and if I should want to adjust it to shoot you, I would adjust my machine on you.

The witness then took up the nature and work of some of the heavier machines. He testified: