There were three Huns sat on his tail,Hurrah, hurrah!But he looped over one and gave him "HailColum-bi-a!"He shot up the Hun so full of leadThat before he knew he was hit he was dead,And our Archie look-out reporting said:One!—CR-R-R-ASH!
There were three Huns sat on his tail,Hurrah, hurrah!But he looped over one and gave him "HailColum-bi-a!"He shot up the Hun so full of leadThat before he knew he was hit he was dead,And our Archie look-out reporting said:One!—CR-R-R-ASH!
But all this was later, and is going a little ahead of the story. As the last Hun went reeling down, Ricky, in the official language of the combat reports, "rejoined formation and continued the patrol." He pulled the stick towards him and rose buoyantly, knowing that he was holed over and over again, that bullets, and explosive bullets at that, had ripped and rent and torn the fabrics of his machine, possibly had cut away some strut or stay or part of the frame. But his engine appeared to be all right again, had never misbehaved a moment during the fight, was running now full power and blast; his planes swept smooth and steady along the wind levels, his controls answered exactly to his tender questioning touch. He had won out. He was safe, barring accident, to land back in his own 'drome; and there were two if not three Huns down on his brazen own within the last—how long?
At the moment of his upward zoom on the conclusion of the fight he glanced at his clock, could hardly believe what it told him, was onlyconvinced when he recalled that promise to himself to turn back at the end of that minute, and had his belief confirmed by the Flight's count of the time between their first turning back and their covering the distance to join him. His clock marked exactly noon. The whole fight, from the firing of the first shot to the falling away of the last Hun, had taken bare seconds over the one minute.
That pilot was right; in air fighting "you don't get time to think."
Quick is the word and quick is the deedIf you would live in the air-fight game;Speed, give 'em speed, and a-top of it—speed!(Man or machine exactly the same).Think and stunt, move, shoot, quickly; or die,Fight quick or die quick; when all is said,There are two kinds of fighters who fly,Only two kinds—the quick, and the dead.
Quick is the word and quick is the deedIf you would live in the air-fight game;Speed, give 'em speed, and a-top of it—speed!(Man or machine exactly the same).Think and stunt, move, shoot, quickly; or die,Fight quick or die quick; when all is said,There are two kinds of fighters who fly,Only two kinds—the quick, and the dead.
It is hardly known to the general public—which seems a pity—that the Navy has, working on the Western Front, some Air Squadrons who fly only over the land and have not so much as seen the sea, except by chance or from a long distance, from year's end to year's end. They have carried into their shore-going lives a number of Navy ways, like the curt "Thank God" grace at the end of a meal, or the mustering of all hands for "Divisions" (Navalese for "Parade") in the morning, marking off the time by so many "bells," hoisting and lowering at sunrise and sunset the white ensign flown on a flagstaff on the 'drome; they stick to their Navy ratings of petty officers and sub-lieutenants and so on, and interlard their speech more or less with Navy lingo—a very useful and expressive one, by the way, in describing air manœuvres—but otherwise carry out their patrols and air work with, and on about the same lines as, the R.F.C.
Naval Number Something is a "fighting scout" Squadron, which means that its soleoccupation in life is to hunt for trouble, to find and fight, "sink, burn or destroy" Huns. At first thought it may seem to the Army which fights "on the floor" that this job of a fighting machine is one which need interest no one outside the Air Service, that it is airman fighting against airman, and that, except from a point of mere sporting interest, the results of these fights don't concern or affect the rest of the Army, that the war would roll on just the same for them whichever side had the upper hand in the air fighting. Those who think so are very far wrong, because it is on the fighters pure and simple that the air mastery depends. Air work is a business, a highly complicated, completely organised and efficient business, and one bit of it has to dovetail into another just as the Army's does. The machines which spot for our guns, and direct the shooting of our batteries to destroy enemy batteries which would otherwise destroy our trenches and our men in them; the reconnaissance machines which fly up and down Hunland all day and bring back reports of the movements of troops and trains and the concentration or removal of forces, and generally do work of which full and true value is known only to those Heads running the war; the photographing machines which bring back thousands of pictures of all sorts—the line knows a few, a very few, of these, and their officers study very attentively the trench photos before they go over the top in a raid or an attack, and so learn exactly how, why,and where they are to go; the bombing machines which blow up dumps of ammunition destined for the destruction of trenches and men, derail trains bringing up reinforcements or ammunition to the Hun firing line, knock about the 'dromes and the machines which otherwise would be gun-spotting, reconnoitring, and bombing over our lines—and perhaps some day one may tell just how many Gotha raids have been upset, and cancelled by our bomb-raids on a Hun 'drome—all these various working machines depend entirely for their existence and freedom to do their work on the success of the fighting machines. The working machines carry guns, and fight when they have to, but the single-seater fighting machines are out for fight all the time, out to destroy enemy fighters, or to put out of action any enemy working machine they can come across.
The struggle for the air mastery never ceases, and although it may never be absolute and complete, because the air is a big place to sweep quite clear and clean, the fact that scores of our machines spend all their flying hours anywhere over Hunland from the front lines to fifty miles and more behind them for every one Hun who flies over ours and, after a cruise of some minutes, races back again, is fairly good evidence of who holds the whip hand in the air.
All this introduction is necessary to explain properly the importance of the fighting squadrons' job, and why the winning of their fights is of such concern to every man in the Army,and to every man, woman, and child interested in any man in the Army. It also serves to explain why it was that three machines of Naval Number Something "leapt into the air" in a most tremendous hurry-skurry, the pilots finishing the buckling of their coats (one going without a coat indeed) and putting on goggles after they had risen, when the look-out at the Squadron telescope reported that there were four Hun two-seater machines circling round at about 10,000 or 12,000 feet and just far enough over our front lines to look suspiciously like being on a gun-spotting or "Art.-Ob." bit of business.
That such a performance should be taking place almost within sight of their own 'drome doorstep naturally annoyed the Navals, and led to the immediate and hurried steps which took the three machines and pilots who were first ready into the air in "two shakes of the jib-sheet." The three men were all veteran fighters, and their machines three of the Squadron's best, and if the four Huns had known their reputations and calibre it is doubtful if they would have dared to hang about and carry on with their work as they did. There was "Mel" Byrne, a big man with a D.S.C. and a Croix de Guerre ribbon on his breast, and a score of crashed Huns notched to his credit, flying his "Kangaroo"; "Rip" Winkle, who had once met and attacked, single-handed, seven Huns, shot down and crashed three hand-running and chased the others headlong as far over Hunland as his petrol would take him: he was in his "Minnenwerfer"; and the "nextastern" was the "'Un-settler" flown by "Ten-franc" or "Frankie" Jones, a youngster of—well, officially, twenty, so called, not because he was in his baptism named Frank, but because of a bet he had made with another Naval Squadron as to which Squadron would "crash" the most Huns by a stated date. He was desperately keen to win his often-referred-to wager—so much so in fact that the other pilots chaffed him constantly on it and swore he would risk more to win his bet than he would to win a V.C.
The three wasted no time in the usual circling climb over the 'drome, but drove up full tilt and straight for the four dots in the sky. They climbed as they went, and since the Trichord type is rather famous for its climbing powers they made pretty good height as they went. "Mel," in the lead, was in a desperate hurry to interrupt the enemy's artillery-spotting work, so gave away the advantage of height and sacrificed the greater climb they could attain with a lesser speed to the urgent haste and need of getting in touch with the enemy. They were still a good couple of thousand feet below when they came to within half a mile of the Huns, and the "Kangaroo," with the others following close, tilted steeply up and began to show what a Trichord really could do if it were asked of her. They were gaining height so rapidly that the Huns evidently did not like it, and two of them turned out and drove over to a position above the Trichords. The three paid no attention tothem, but climbed steeply, swinging in towards the other two machines which, since they still continued their circling, were probably continuing their "shoot" and signalling back to their guns. But the Trichords were too threatening to be left longer alone. The two turned and flew east, with the Trichords in hot pursuit, slanted round, and presently were joined by their friends. Then the four plunged on the three in an almost vertical dive. Because the fighting scout only shoots straight forward out of a fixed gun, its bows must be pointing straight at a target before it can fire, and the Huns' straight-down dive was meant to catch the Trichords at a disadvantage, since it was hardly to be expected they could stand on their tails to shoot straight up in the air. But this is almost what they did. All three, going "full out," turned their noses abruptly up and opened fire. The Huns turned their dive off into an upward "zoom" and a circling bank which allowed their observers to point their guns over and down at the Trichords, and fire a number of rounds.
But because it was now perfectly obvious that the Trichords had attained their first and most urgent object, the breaking-off of the Huns' "shoot" and spotting for their guns, they could now proceed to the next desirable part of the programme—the destruction of the four Huns by methods which would level up the fighting chances a little. The "Kangaroo" shot out eastward and began to climb steeply, Mel expecting that the other two would follow his tactics, get between the enemy and their lines, and climb to or above their height. But the "'Un-settler" was in trouble of some sort, and after firing a coloured light as a signal to the leader meaning "Out of action; am returning home," slid off west in a long glide with her engine shut off. Rip Winkle, on the "Minnenwerfer," followed the "Kangaroo" east a few hundred yards and began to climb. The four Huns at first tried to keep above the level of the two, but it was quickly evident that the Trichords were outclimbing them hand over fist, were going up in a most amazing lift, in "a spiral about as steep as a Tube stair." The Huns didn't like the look of things and suddenly turned for their lines, dropped their noses, and went off at full speed. The two Trichords cut slanting across to connect with them, and in half a minute were close enough to open fire. Two against four, they fought a fierce running fight for a minute or two. Then the "Kangaroo" swept in astern of a Hun, dived and zoomed up under him and poured in a point-blank burst of fire. Mel saw his bullets hailing into and splintering the woodwork of the underbody, was just in time to throttle down and check the "Kangaroo" as the Hun's tail flicked up and he went sweeping down in a spinning nose dive. But a hard-pressed pilot will sometimes adopt that manœuvre deliberately to throw a pursuer out of position, and, knowing this, Mel followed him down to make sure hewas finished, followed him watching the spin grow wilder and wilder, and finish in a splintering crash on the ground. Mel lifted the "Kangaroo" and drove off full pelt after the others. Two of the Huns had dived and were skimming the ground—they were well over Hunland by now—and the other one and the "Minnenwerfer" were wheeling and circling and darting in and out about each other exactly like two boxers sparring for an opening, their machine-guns rattling rapidly as either pilot or gunner got his sights on the target. Then when he was almost close enough to join in, Mel saw a spurt of flame and a gust of smoke lick out from the fuselage of the Hun. The machine lurched, recovered, and dipped over to dive down; the "Minnenwerfer" leaped in to give her the death-blow, and under the fresh hail of bullets the Hun plunged steeply, with smoke and flame pouring up from the machine's body. The wind drove the flames aft, and in two seconds she was enveloped in them, became a roaring bonfire, a live torch hurtling to the ground. The Trichords saw her observer scramble from his cockpit, balance an instant on the flaming body, throw his hands up and leap out into the empty air, and go twisting and whirling down to earth.
A Hun Archie shell screamed up past the hovering Trichords and burst over their heads, and others followed in quick succession as the two turned and began to climb in twisting and erratic curves designed to upset the gunners'aim. They worked east as they rose and were almost over the lines when Mel, in one of his circlings, caught sight of a big formation flying towards them from the west. He steadied his machine and took another long look, and in a moment saw they were Huns, counted them and found fourteen, most of them scouts, some of them two-seaters of a type that Mel knew as one commonly used by the Huns on the infrequent occasions they get a chance to do artillery-observing work on our lines. Both Mel and Rip worked out the situation on much the same lines, that the Huns had some important "shoot" on, were specially keen to do some observing for their guns, had sent the four two-seaters first and were following them up with other two-seater observing-machines protected by a strong escort of fighters. Mel looked round for any sight of a formation of ours that might be ready to interrupt the game, saw none, and selecting the correct coloured light, fired a signal to Rip saying, "I am going to attack." Rip, as a matter of fact, was so certain he would do so that he had already commenced to climb his machine to gain a favourable position. The fourteen were at some 17,000 feet, several thousand above the Trichords, but here the great climbing power of the Trichords stood to them, and they went up and up, in swift turn on turn that brought them almost to a level with the enemy before the Huns were within shooting distance. They came on with the scouts flying in a wedge-shapedformation, and the observing-machines protected and covered inside the wedge.
The odds were so hugely in their favour that it was clear they never dreamed the two would attack their fourteen, and they drove straight forward to cross above the lines. But the Trichords wakened them quickly and rudely. Each wheeled out wide and clear of the formation, closed in astern of it to either side, lifted sharply to pick up an extra bit of useful height, dived, and came hurtling, engines going full out and guns shooting their hardest, arrow-straight at the two-seaters in the centre of the formation below them. Owing to the direction of their attack, only the observers' guns on the two-seaters had any chance to bring an effective fire to bear. It is true that the few scouts in the rear of the wedge did fire a few scattering shots. But scouts, you will remember, having only fixed guns shooting forward, can only fire dead ahead in the direction the machine is travelling, must aim the machine to hit with the gun. This means that the target presented to them of the Trichords flashing down across their bows made it almost impossible for them to keep a Trichord in their sights for more than an instant, if indeed they were quick enough to get an aim at all. Their fire went wide and harmless. The two-seaters did better, and both Trichords had jets of flaming and smoking tracer bullets spitting past them as they came, had several hits through their wings. But they, because they held their machines steadyand plunged down straight as bullets themselves on to their marks, were able to keep longer, steadier and better aim. Mel, as he drove down close to his target, saw the gaping rents his bullets were slashing in the fuselage near the observer, saw in the flashing instant as he turned and hoicked up and away, the observer collapse and fall forward with his hands hanging over the edge of his cockpit. Rip saw no visible signs of his bullets, but saw the visible result a moment after he also had swirled up, made a long fast climbing turn, and steadied his machine for another dive. His Hun dropped out of the formation and down in long twisting curves, apparently out of control. He had no time to watch her down, because half a dozen of the Hun scouts, deciding evidently that this couple of enemies deserved serious consideration, swung out and began to climb after the Trichords. Mel promptly dived down past them, under the two-seaters and up again under one. The instant he had her in the gun-sights he let drive and saw his bullets breaking and tearing into her. She side-slipped wildly, rolled over, and Mel watched for no more, but turned his attention and his gun to another target.
By now the half-dozen Hun scouts had obtained height enough to allow them to copy the Trichords' dive-and-shoot tactics, and down they came to the long clattering fire of their machine-guns. Both Trichords had a score of rents in wings and fuselage and tail planes,but by a mercy no shot touched a vital part. But they could hardly afford to risk such chances often, so went back to their plan of outclimbing and diving on their enemies. Over and over again they did this, and because of their far superior climb were able to keep on doing it despite every effort of the Huns. Machine after machine they sent driving down, some being uncertain "crashes" or "out-of-controls," but most of them being at least definitely "driven down" since they did not rejoin the fight, and were forced to drop to such landing-places as they could find. There were some definite "crashes," one which fell wrapped in roaring flame from stem to stern; another on which Rip saw his bullets slashing in long tears across the starboard wing, the splinters fly from a couple of the wing struts as the bullets sheared them through in splitting ragged fragments. In an instant the whole upper wing flared upward and back and tore off, the lower folded back to the body, flapped and wrenched fiercely as the machine rolled over and fell, gave and ripped loose; the port wings followed, breaking short off and away, leaving the machine to drop like a plummet to the ground. The third certain crash was in the later stages of the fight. The constant dive-and-zoom of the Trichords had the desired effect of driving the Huns lower and lower each time in their endeavour to gain speed and avoid the fierce rushes from above. Strive as they would, they could not gain an upper position. Someof them tried to fly wide and climb while the Trichords were busy with the remainder; but one or other of the two leaped out after them, hoicked up above them, drove them lower, or shot them down, in repeated dives.
The fight that had started a good 17,000 feet up and close over the trenches, finished at about 1,000 feet and six to seven miles behind the German lines. At that height, the pilot of one Hun driven into a side-slip was not able to recover in time and smashed at full speed into the ground; another was forced so low that he tried to land, hit a hedge and turned over; a third landed twisting sideways and at least tore a wing away.
Then the two Trichords, splintered and rent and gaping with explosive-bullet wounds, with their ammunition completely expended, their oil and petrol tanks running dry, turned for home, leaving their fourteen enemies scattered wide and low in the air, or piled in splintered smoking wreckage along the ground below the line of their flight. The fight with the fourteen had run without a break for three-quarters of an hour.
They never knew exactly how many victims they had "sunk, burned or destroyed." As they stated apologetically in the official "Combat Report" that night: "Owing to the close presence of other activeE.A.[4]driven-down machines could not be watched to the ground."
"Frankie" was almost more annoyed overthis than he was over having had to pull out of the action with a dud machine. "If we could have confirmed all your crashes," he remarked regretfully, "it would have been such a jolly boost-up to the Squadron's tally—to say nothing of my wager."
FOOTNOTES:[4]E.A.=enemy aircraft.
[4]E.A.=enemy aircraft.
[4]E.A.=enemy aircraft.
The infantry who watched from their trenches one afternoon a Flight of our machines droning over high above their heads had no inkling of the effect that Flight was going to have on their, the infantry's, well-being. If they had known that the work of this Flight, the successful carrying out of its mission, was going to make all the difference of life and death to them they might have been more interested in it. But they did not know then, and do not know now, and what is perhaps more surprising, the Flight itself never fully learned the result of their patrol, because air work, so divided up and apparently disconnected, is really a systematic whole, and only those whose work it is to collect the threads and twist them together know properly how much one means to the other.
This Flight was out on a photographic patrol. They had been ordered to proceed to a certain spot over Hunland and take a series of pictures there, and they did so and returned in duecourse with nothing more unusual about the performance than rather a high average of attentions paid to them by the Hun Archies. The photos were developed and printed as usual within a few minutes of the machines touching the ground, and were rushed off to their normal destinations. The photographers went to their afternoon tea and forgot the matter.
But in a Nissen hut some miles from the photographers' 'drome afternoon tea was held up, while several people pored over the photos with magnifying glasses, consulted the many maps which hung round the walls and covered the tables, spoke earnestly into telephones, and dictated urgent notes. One result of all this activity was that Captain Washburn, or "Washie," and his Observer Lieutenant "Pip" Smith, to their no slight annoyance, were dragged from their tea and pushed off on an urgent reconnaissance, and two Flights of two fighting scout Squadrons received orders to make their patrol half an hour before the time ordered. Washie and his Observer were both rather specialists in reconnaissance work, and they received sufficient of a hint from their Squadron Commander of the urgency of their job to wipe out their regrets of a lost tea and set them bustling aboard their 'bus "Pan" and up into the air.
It may be mentioned briefly here that three other machines went out on the same reconnaissance. One was shot down before she waswell over the lines; another struggled home with serious engine trouble; the third was so harried and harassed by enemy scouts that she was lucky to be able to fight them off and get home, with many bullet holes—and no information. Washie and Pip did better, although they too had a lively trip. To make sure of their information they had to fly rather low, and as soon as they began to near the ground which they wanted to examine the Hun Archies became most unpleasantly active. A shell fragment came up through the fuselage with an uglyrip, and another smacked bursting through both right planes. Later, in a swift dive down to about a thousand feet, "Pan" collected another assortment of souvenirs from machine-guns and rifles, but Washie climbed her steeply out of range, while Pip busied himself jotting down some notes of the exceedingly useful information the low dive had brought them.
Then six Hun fighting scouts arrived at speed, and set about the "Pan" in an earnest endeavour to crash her and her information together. Pilot and Observer had a moment's doubt whether to fight or run. They had already seen enough to make it urgent that they should get their information back, and yet they were both sure there was more to see and that they ought to see it. Their doubts were settled by the Huns diving on them one after another, with machine-guns going their hardest. The first went down past them spattering a few bullets through "Pan's" tail planes as he passed. The second Pip caught fairly with a short burst as he came past, and the Hun continued his dive, fell off in a spin, and ended in a violent crash below. The third and fourth dived on "Pan" from the right side and the fifth and sixth on her left. Pip managed to wing one on the right, and sent him fluttering down out of the fight more or less under control, and Washie stalled the "Pan" violently, wrenched her round in an Immelman turn, and plunged straight at another Hun, pumping a stream of bullets into him from his bow gun. The Hun went down with a torrent of black smoke gushing from his fuselage. Washie brought "Pan" hard round on her heel again, opened his engine full out and ran for it, with the scattered Huns circling and following in hard pursuit. Now "Pan" could travel to some tune when she was really asked—and Washie was asking her now. She was a good machine with a good engine; her pilot knew every stitch and stay, every rod, bolt, and bearing in her (and his rigger and fitter knew that he knew and treated him and her accordingly), every little whim in her that it paid him to humour, every little trick that would get an extra inch of speed out of her. A first-class pilot on a first-class scout ought to overhaul a first-class pilot and two-seater; but either the "Pan" or her pilot was a shade more first-class than the pursuers, and Washie managed to keep far enough ahead to be outof accurate shooting range and allow Pip to scrutinise the ground carefully as they flew. For Washie was running it is true, but was running east and further out over Hunland and the area he wanted to reconnoitre, and Pip was still picking up the very information they had been sent to find.
When they swung north the three pursuing scouts by cutting the corner came up on them again, and Pip left his notes to stand by his gun. There was some brisk shooting in the next minute, but "Pan" broke clear with another series of holes spattered through her planes and fuselage, and Pip with the calf of his leg badly holed by an explosive bullet, but with his gun still rapping out short bursts over the tail. They were heading for home now, and Washie signalled Pip to speak to him. The "Pan" is one of those comfortably designed machines with pilot's and observer's cockpits so close together that the two men can shout in each other's ear. Pip leaned over and Washie yelled at him. "Seen enough? Got all you want?" "Yes." Pip nodded and tapped his note-block. "All I want," he yelled, "and then some——" and he wiped his hand across his wound, showed Washie the red blood, and shouted "Leg hit."
That settled it. Washie lifted the "Pan" and drove her, all out, for home, taking the risk of some bullet-holed portion of her frame failing to stand the strain of excessive speedrather than the risk of going easy and letting the pursuers close for another fight with a wounded observer to protect his tail.
"They've dropped off," shouted Pip a few minutes later. Washie swung and began to lift the "Pan" in climbing turn on turn. "Look out," he shouted back, "look out," and stabbed a finger out to point a group of Huns ahead of them and cutting them off from the lines. Next minute Pip in his turn pointed to another group coming up from the south well above them and heading to cut them off. Washie swept round, dipped his nose slightly, and drove at the first group. The next few minutes were unpleasantly hot. The Huns strove to turn them, to hold them from breaking through or past, or drive them lower and lower, while Washie twisted and dived and zoomed and tried to dodge through or under them, with his gun spitting short bursts every time he caught a target in his sights; and Pip, weakening and faint from pain and loss of blood, seconded him as best he could with rather erratic shooting.
Affairs were looking bad for them, even when "Pan" ran out and west with no enemy ahead but with four of them clinging to her flanks and tail and pumping quick bursts at her; but just here came in those two Flights of our fighting scout Squadrons—quite accidentally so far as they knew, actually of set design and as part of the ordered scheme. Six streaking shapes came flashing down into the fight withtheir machine-guns pouring long bursts of fire ahead of them, and the four close-pursuing Huns left the "Pan" and turned to join up with their scattered companions. Washie left them to fight it out, and turned directly, and very thankfully, for his 'drome.
This ends the tale of "Pan," but not by any means of the result of her work. That work, in the shape of jerky but significant reports, was being dissected in the map-hung Nissen hut even before Pip had reached the Casualty Clearing Station; and "Pan's" work (confirming those suspicious photographs) again bred other work, more urgent telephone talks, and Immediate orders. The stir spread, circle by circle, during the night, and before daybreak the orders had borne their fruit, and Flights—Artillery-Observing, reconnoitring and fighting-scout—were lined up on their grounds waiting the moment to go; the Night Bombers were circling in from their second and third trips of destruction on lines of communication, railways and roads, junctions and bridges, enemy troops and transport in rest or on the march, ammunition dumps and stores; in the front lines the infantry were "standing to" with everything ready and prepared to meet an attack; the support lines were filling with reinforcements, which again were being strengthened by battalions tramping up the roads from the rear; in the gun lines the lean hungry muzzles of the long-range guns were poking and peering up and out from pit and emplacement, and the squat howitzers were lifting or lowering to carefully worked out angles.
Before daybreak was more than a mere doubtful smudge of lighter colour in the east, the waiting Flights were up and away to their appointed beats, and the first guns began to drop their shells, shooting "by the map" (maps made or corrected from air photographs), or on previously "registered" lines.
The infantry up in front heard the machines hum and drone overhead, heard the rush and howl of the passing shells, the thud of the guns' reports, the thump of the high-explosive's burst. That, for a time, was all. For a good half-hour there was nothing more, no sign of the heavy attack they had been warned was coming. Then the gunfire began to grow heavier, and as the light strengthened, little dots could be seen circling and wheeling against the sky and now and again a faint and far-offtat-tat-tat-tatcame from the upper air. For if it was quiet and inactive on the ground, it was very much the other way in the air. Our reconnoitring and gun-spotting machines were quartering the ground in search of targets, the scout machines sweeping to and fro above them ready to drop on any hostiles which tried to interrupt them in their work. The hostiles tried quickly enough. They were out in strength, and they did their best to drive off or sink our machines, prevent them spying out the land, or directing our guns on the massing battalions. But they were given little chance to interrupt.Let any of their formations dive on our gun-spotters, and before they had well come into action down plunged our scouts after them, engaged them fiercely, drove them off, or drew them away in desperate defensive fighting. Gradually the light grew until the reconnoitring machines could see and mark the points of concentration, the masses moving into position, the filled and filling trenches; until the gun-spotters could mark down the same targets and the observers place their positions on the map. Then their wireless began to whisper back their messages from the air to the little huts and shanties back at Headquarters and the battery positions; and then....
It was the turn of the guns to speak. Up in the trenches the infantry heard the separate thuds and thumps quicken and close and run into one long tremendous roar, heard the shells whistle and shriek and howl and moan over their heads, saw the ground far out in front of them veil in twisting smoke wreaths, spout and leap in volcanoes of smoke, earth, and fire. Battery by battery, gun by gun, the artillery picked up and swelled the chorus. The enemy machines did little gun-spotting over our positions. If one or two sneaked over high above the line, it needed no more than the first few puffs about them from our watching Archies to bring some of our scouts plunging on them, turning them and driving after them in headlong pursuit. On the ground men knew little or nothing of all this, of the moves and counter-moves, the dodging and fighting high over their heads. Their attention was taken up by the ferocious fire of our artillery, and in waiting, waiting, for the attack which never came.
Small wonder it never came. The guns caught it fairly, as it was developing and shaping and settling into position for the assault. The attack was a little late, as we heard after from prisoners—perhaps the Night Bombers, and their upsetting of road and rail transport timetables with high-explosive bombs and showering machine-guns, had some word in that lateness—and our fire caught it in the act of deploying. And when such a weight of guns as was massed on that front catches solid battalions on the roads, or troops close-packed in trenches, the Lord ha' mercy on the men they catch. The shells rained, deluged down on every trench, every road and communication way within range, searched every thicket and patch of cover, blasted the dead woods to splintered wreckage, smashed in dug-out and emplacement, broke down the trenches to tumbled smoking gutters, gashed and seamed and pitted the bare earth into a honeycombed belt of death and destruction. The high-explosive broke in, tore open, wrenched apart and destroyed the covering trenches and dug-outs; the shrapnel raked and rent the tattered fragments of battalions that scattered and sought shelter in the shell-holes and craters. The masses that were moving up to push home the intended attack escaped if they were checked and stayedin time; those that had arrived and passed into the furnace were simply and utterly destroyed.
For a good three hours the roaring whirlwind of gunfire never ceased, or even slacked; for three hours the ground for a full mile back from the Hun front line rolled billowing clouds of smoke, quivered and shook to the crash of the explosions, spurted and boiled and eddied under the shells "like a bubbling porridge pot," as one gun-spotter put it, was scorched with fire, flayed with lead and steel, drenched and drowned with gas from the poison shells.
For three hours the circling planes above watched for sign of movement below, and seeing any such sign talked back by wireless to the guns, waited and watched the wrath descend and blot out the movement in fresh whirlwinds of concentrated fire; while further back a full five to ten miles other spotters quartered to and fro working steadily, sending back call after call to our Heavies, and silencing, one by one, battery after battery which was pounding our trenches with long-range fire. And for three hours the infantry crouched half deafened in their trenches, listening to the bellowing uproar, watching the writhing smoke-fog which veiled but could not conceal the tearing destruction that raged up and down, to and fro, across and across the swept ground.
Three hours, three long hours—and one can only guess how long they were to the maimed and wounded, cowering and squeezing flat toearth in the reeking shell-holes, gasping for choked breath through their gas-masks, quivering under the fear of further wounds or sudden and violent death; how bitterly long they were to the German commanders and generals watching their plans destroyed, their attack wiped out, their regiments and battalions burnt away in our consuming fire.
Our despatches, after their common use and wont, put the matter coldly, dispassionately, and with under-rather than over-statement of facts—"The attack was broken by our artillery fire."
Broken! Smashed rather; attack and attackers blotted out, annihilated, utterly and entirely.
"By our artillery fire." The truth no doubt, but hardly the complete truth, since it said no word of the part the Air Service had played. So few knew what had been brought about by the work of a photographic patrol, the following reconnaissance, the resulting air work.
The infantry never knew how it was that the attack never reached them, why they did not have to beat it off with bullet and bayonet—or be beaten in by it—except that the guns perhaps had stopped it. The public did not know because the press did not say—perhaps because the press itself didn't know. And what the Air Service knew, as usual it didn't tell.
But Somebody evidently knew, because Washie and Pip found themselves shortlyafterwards in Orders for a Decoration; and apparently the Squadron knew, because next morning when he went out to his 'bus Washie found that "Pan" had a neat little splash of paint on what you might call her left breast, an oblong little patch showing the colours of the ribbon of the Military Cross.
All that we are and all we own,All that we have and hold or take,All that we tackle or do or tryIs not for our, or the Corps' own sake.Through our open eyes the Armies see,We look and we learn that they may know.Collect from the clouds the news they need,And carry it back to them below.We harry the guns that do us no harm,We picture the paths we shall never take;There's naught to help or to hinder usOn the road we bomb or the bridge we break.Only to work where our footmen wish,Only to guard them from prying eyes,To find and to fetch the word they want,We war unceasing and hold the skies.All that we are and all we own,All that we have or hope or know,Our work and our wits, our deaths, our lives,We stake above, that they win below.
All that we are and all we own,All that we have and hold or take,All that we tackle or do or tryIs not for our, or the Corps' own sake.
Through our open eyes the Armies see,We look and we learn that they may know.Collect from the clouds the news they need,And carry it back to them below.We harry the guns that do us no harm,We picture the paths we shall never take;There's naught to help or to hinder usOn the road we bomb or the bridge we break.Only to work where our footmen wish,Only to guard them from prying eyes,To find and to fetch the word they want,We war unceasing and hold the skies.
All that we are and all we own,All that we have or hope or know,Our work and our wits, our deaths, our lives,We stake above, that they win below.
A group of infantry in our front line trench watching the boiling eddying smoke and spurting fires of our artillery barrage on the enemy lines saw a couple of planes whirl suddenly up into sight above and beyond the barrage smoke. They were diving and twisting about each other like a couple of tumbler pigeons in flight, or rather, since one was obviously pursuing the other closely, like a pigeon hard pressed by a hawk. The excitement of the infantry turned to disgust as they caught plain sight of the markings on the machines, saw that the pursued was a British machine, the pursuer a black-crossed German. And when the British machine came rocketting and whirling through the barrage smother in plain flight from the German, who dared not follow through the wall of falling and bursting shells, the disgust of the men on the ground was openly and angrily expressed.
"Mastery o' the air," shouted one. "Fat lot he'll master." And from the others came similar jeers—"Hurry up, son, or he'll catchyou yet—Why couldn't he have put up a fight?—Do they ever court-martial them blokes for runnin' away?—Fritz fliers top dog again."
And yet, if those men had known, they would have cheered the man passing over them, cheered him for as plucky a man as ever flew—and that is saying something. If they knew, so often if they knew—but at least I can let them know something of this particular story.
The Flight went out as usual on "o.p." (offensive patrol), which, again as usual, had taken them well over Hunland. For the first half-hour they had a dull time, seeing no Huns about and having no more than the normal amount of Archie fire to dodge. Then the Flight Leader spotted a string of dots to eastward, and on counting them and finding they numbered something round a dozen to fifteen, concluded they were Huns. He ensured the Flight's attention to the matter, and then pointing his machine straight at the enemy, and after glancing round to make sure the Flight were in correct formation, began to climb them steadily up and towards the oncoming hostiles. He kept a close watch on the enemy, because he knew that the Squadron to which he belonged and the type of machine they flew had a name apparently discouraging to the Huns' fighting inclinations, and he was afraid that, even with more than two to one in their favour, they might on recognising the Flight avoid action and clear off. The Flight had already burnt a good hour's petrol and had some milesto go back home, and this did not leave a very great margin for a long pursuit and perhaps a prolonged fight. But this time the Huns showed no sign of shirking the fight, and came driving straight west on a course which must very soon bring them into contact with the Flight. As they swept closer it was seen that the hostile fleet was made up of three two-seater machines and a dozen single-seater fighting scouts, and just before they came close enough for action "Ailie" Arrowman, the Flight Leader, noticed something else that made him decide very quickly to concentrate the Flight's frightfulness on the two-seaters. The three were bombers, and from their slow and heavy flight obviously fully loaded with bombs, and from the direction they were taking were clearly out on a bombing raid over the British lines.
Now these Hun raids and bomb-droppings had been becoming unpleasantly frequent for a little time before this, and all our patrols had special orders to keep a sharp look-out for bombers and make things as hot for them as possible. The Hun was coming to specialise on rapid dashes over our lines, the hurried dropping of their eggs, and a hasty bee-line flight for home. Our infantry and our batteries were a good deal annoyed by these attentions, and naturally and very simply wanted to know why our flying men didn't "stop these blighters coming and going as they liked." This, of course, is a delusion of the men on the ground.The Huns were very far from doing as they liked, but since the air (for flying purposes) is twenty odd thousand feet high, and as long as the line, it takes a lot of policing against tip-and-run raids, especially when you remember that machines can pass within quite a few hundred yards of each other and never know the other is there. The groundlings don't recognise these facts, much less the incidental possibilities of Huns sneaking over under cover of clouds and so on, and it must be confessed the airmen, as a rule, don't take many pains to enlighten them, even when they do get talking together. On the ground, again, they know nothing of the Hun bombers chased back and brought down well behind their own lines, and nothing of the raids which are caught and interrupted, as the one I'm telling of was about to be.
All this is by the way, but it explains why Ailie was specially keen to out the bombing machines first of all, and also why the bombers at the first sign of attack on them dropped their noses and went off at a rush, and the Hun fighters hurriedly dived in to divert the Flight and force a fight with them. We need not at the moment follow the details of the whole fight, but see rather how the one man Ailie fared in it. But, incidentally, it may be mentioned that the rest of the Flight sank one bomber and chased the other down to the ground, fought the escort and sank three of them at a cost of no more than one pilot wounded,a great many bullet holes in the machines, and one badly crippled and just able to reach and land on our side of the lines.
Ailie went down in a hurricane dive on the first bomber, and since he was much faster than the big machine, especially with it carrying a full load, he caught it up rapidly, and bringing his bow gun into action commenced to hail a stream of lead on it. The gunner of the two-seater began to fire back at Ailie, but as his pilot at the same time was swerving and swinging his machine to dodge the streaking bullets, he spoiled the gunner's aim and few of the bullets came dangerously close to Ailie. But two of the enemy scouts had seen Ailie's charge, had promptly swung and dived after him, and, following hard astern, opened fire in their turn. Ailie caught up the two-seater, swooped down under her, throttled back to keep her pace, pulled down the gun fixed on his top plane, and started to pelt bullets up into the underbody hurtling along above him. The two Hun scouts dropped to his level and followed, shooting close and hard, and Ailie, finding their bullets snapping and smacking on his planes, was forced to swerve and duck and at last to turn sharp on them. Either he was the better pilot or his was the handier machine, because in a few seconds he had out-manœuvred them and driven them diving down ahead of him. He ripped a short burst into one, wheeled, looked round for sight of his two-seater and, sighting it tearing off at top speed, swung and,opening his engine full out, went racing after it. The two-seater flung himself into a spin and went twisting and spiralling wildly down, Ailie following close and shooting whenever he could bring his sights to bear. But again the renewed rattle of close machine-gun fire began, and he glanced round to find the scouts hot in pursuit again. This time they were not to be pursuers only, for another of the Flight leaped suddenly into the fight, rattled off a quick burst of fire, and in an instant had one of the enemy scouts plunging down helplessly out of control, whirled round and without a second's hesitation attacked the second. The Hun bomber, down to about 1,000 feet, flattened out and drove off east with Ailie still hard after him. He was getting angry now. Burst after burst of fire he had poured, as far as he could see, straight into the big machine, and yet it kept on apparently unharmed. But suddenly its tail flicked up, a wing buckled and tore loose, and it went down rolling and pitching, to crash on the ground.
Ailie swept over, leaning out and peering down on the heaped wreckage; but whatever triumph he might have felt was short-lived, for at that momenttat-tat-tat-tatwent a gun close behind him and then the quicker closer rattle of double or triple guns. Ailie hoicked hard up in a swift climbing turn, whirled round, and just catching one of the enemy scouts in his sights, gripped the trigger of the firing mechanism. His gun fired—once—andstopped, although he still held the trigger hard gripped and it should have continued to fire. The target swept clear, and Ailie, after gripping and releasing quickly several times, knew his gun had jammed. The two hostiles reopened fire on him, and he swerved, straightened out and went off in a bee-line at top speed. He was not unduly alarmed, although his position, a bare 1,000 feet off the ground and therefore well within ground shooting range of rifles and machine-guns, with a jammed gun, and with two scouts hard after him, was uncomfortably risky. He was on a fast machine, so fast that he did not believe the Hun flew that could catch him; and he reckoned that in a straightaway flight he could drop the two sufficiently to be out of urgent danger from them. As he flew he leaned forward, wrenched back the cover over the breech of his gun and jerked the loading lever rapidly to and fro. But the jammed cartridge stayed jammed and Ailie felt a first qualm of fear, as he heard the guns behind him reopen fire and recognised that he was not gaining on his enemies. Another gun broke into the chorus, and Ailie glanced round to see another of his Flight diving in and engaging one of the enemy. The second one, a bright scarlet painted scout, kept on after him, caught him up and dived firing on him.
Then began a game that Ailie might remember in his nightmares for long enough. His machine was not doing her best, and the hostile fairlyhad the wings of him. Time after time the Hun swooped up over him and dived down, firing as he came. Ailie could only duck and swerve and dodge, some of his dives bringing him perilously close to the ground; and as he flew he wrenched and jerked at his gun's firing mechanism, snatched the Verey pistol from its rack, and with the butt tapped and hammered at the gun, hoping the jar might loosen the cartridge. He escaped touching the ground and crashing over and over again by bare feet; more than once he had to zoom sharply and just cleared low trees or even bushes that appeared suddenly before him; once his wheels brushed and ripped across the top of a hedge, and once again in a banking turn his heart stood still for a second that seemed an eternity, as he banked steeply and the machine side-slipped until his wing-tip, as it appeared to him, was touching the grass. And all the time, in dive after dive, his enemy came whirling down on him, the fire of his machine-gun clattering off burst after burst, and the bullets hissing past in flame and smoke or smacking venomously on the wings and body of Ailie's machine.
And through it all, flinging his machine about, twirling and twisting like a champion skater cutting fancy and fantastic figures, doing star-performance low flying that might have kept every nerve and sense of any stunt-artist flier occupied to the full, Ailie still made shift to spare a hand and enough eye and mind for thejob of fiddling and hammering and working to clear his jammed gun—a gun that was not even in a convenient position to handle because, set above the left upper edge of his cockpit, it was very little below the level of his face and awkwardly high for his hand to reach. He gave up trying to clear it at last and turned all his attention to out-manœuvring his opponent. The Hun was above him, and every time he tried to lift his machine the Hun dived, firing on him, and drove him down again. He was too low to pick up or follow landmarks, so kept the westering sun in his eyes, knowing this was edging him west towards our lines. The Hun after each dive did a climbing turn to a position to dive anew, and each time he climbed Ailie made another dash towards the west. The Hun saw the move, and, to beat it, dropped his climbing-turn tactics and instead dived and zoomed straight up, dived and zoomed again and again. Ailie saw his chance and took it. He throttled hard back next time the Hun dived, and as the Hun overshot him and zoomed straight up, Ailie in two swift motions pulled the stick in, lifting sharp up after and under him, pulled down the top gun and fired point blank into him. The Hun whirled over, dived vertically, and in an instant crashed heavily nose first into the ground. And Ailie's top gun had jammed after about its tenth shot.
He flew on west, hardly for the moment daring to believe he had escaped, opening the throttleand starting to lift from his dangerous proximity to the ground mechanically, and with his mind hardly yet working properly. If he had not caught the Hun with that last handful of shots before his second gun jammed....
And then, almost before he had collected his wits enough to realise properly how close his escape had been, that same horrible clatter of machine-gun fire from the air above and behind him broke out, the same hiss and snap of bullets came streaming about him. For a moment he had a wild idea that his Hun had not actually crashed, but a glance round showed that it was no longer the brilliant red machine, but another, and again a fighting scout.
Exactly the old performance started all over again, but this time without even that slender chance he had used so well before of catching his enemy with the fire of his top gun. Again he went through the twisting and dodging and turning to avoid his relentless enemy and the fire that crackled about him. Again he dived into fields, skimmed the ground, hurdled over low bushes and hedges, used every flying trick and artifice he knew, but had never before dared try at less than thousands of feet height, to shake off his pursuer; and again as he flew he wriggled and worked at the jammed gun in front of him. For breathless minutes he worked, casting quick glances from the ground rushing under him to the gun mechanism, jockeying his machine with steady pressures or sharp kicks on the rudder-bar and one handon the joy-stick, while the other fumbled and worked at the gun, and the bullets sang and cracked about him. By all the laws of chance, by all the rules of hazard, he should have been killed, shot down or driven down into a crash, a dozen times over in those few minutes; just as by all the limits of possibility he could never hope to clear a jammed gun while doing fancy flying at such a height. But against all chance and hazard and possibility—as pilots do oftener than most people outside themselves know—he flew on untouched, and ... cleared his jamb. By now he was worked up to such a pitch of fear, frenzy, desperation, anger—it may have been any of them, it may have been something of all—that he took no further thought of manœuvring or tactics, whirled blindly and drove straight at his enemy, firing as he went, feeling a savage joy in the jar and bang of his spurting gun. To avoid that desperate rush and the streaming bullets, the Hun swerved wide and swooped out in a banking turn, a turn so hurriedly and blindly taken that, before he could properly see, he found himself whirling into the edge of a forest the chase had unwittingly skirted. Ailie saw him distinctly try to wrench round to clear the trees—but he was too near; to hoick up and over them—but he was too low. He crashed sideways on a tree-trunk, down headlong into the ground.
Again Ailie swung and flew straight towards the sun, switching on to the emergency tank, because by now his main petrol tank was almostempty. He continued to fly low and no more than 100 or 200 feet off the ground. At his speed it would take a good shot to hit him from the ground; higher up he would run more risk of Archie fire and of meeting Huns, and—this perhaps was the main determining factor, because by now he was almost exhausted with the fatigue of severe and prolonged strain—flying low would bring him quicker to the lines and safety.
One might have supposed that by now the grim gods of War had had sport enough of him. But he was not yet free of them. Within a mile he was attacked again, and this time by three hostile scout fighters. He made no attempt to dodge or out-manœuvre them. His cartridges were almost finished, his machine was badly shot about, his petrol was running out. He opened his engine out to its fullest and drove hard and headlong for the lines and the drifting smoke and winking fires that told of an artillery barrage. Close to the barrage he had to swerve and dodge a moment, because one of the Huns was fairly on top of him and hailing lead on him, but next instant he plunged at, into and through the barrage, his machine rocking and pitching and rolling in the turmoil of shell-torn air, his eyes blinded by the drifting smoke, his ears stunned by the rending crashes and cracks of the drum-fare explosions. He won through safely and alone, for his three enemies balked at facing that puffing, spurting, fire-winking inferno, turned back and left him.
Ailie, hardly daring to believe that he was actually clear and safe and free, steered for home. He skimmed his bullet-torn machine over the trenches, a machine holed and ripped and torn and cut with armour-piercing and explosive bullets, his guns jammed, his ammunition expended, his petrol at its last pints, he himself at almost the last point of exhaustion, dizzy from excitement, weak and faint from sheer strain.
Yet this was the man and the moment that those infantry in the trenches jeered, looking up as he passed over, his ripped fabric fluttering, his shot-through wires whipping and trailing, blessing the wildest luck that had left him alive, heart-thankful for the sight of khaki in the trenches below him.
It seems a pity those disgusted infantry could not have known the truth, of all he had come through, of those long danger-packed minutes, of those three crashed Huns scattered along his track—and of those bombs which wouldnotdrop on our lines, batteries, or billets that day.
I am naturally anxious to avoid angering the Censor by naming any particular type or make of machine, but fear it is inevitable that anyone who knows anything of aeroplanes must recognise in reading this story the type concerned, although that may hardly matter, since the Hun knows the type well (and to his sorrow), and the tale more fully in the exact detail of his casualties than we do. And because this type, which we may call the "Fo-Fum 2," has for a full year previous to the date of this story's happenings been openly scoffed at and condemned in speech and print by the "experts" as slow, clumsy, obsolete, and generally useless, I also fear I may be accused of "leg-pulling" and impossibly romancing in crediting the Fo-Fums with such a startling fight performance. I may warn such critics in advance, however, that I can produce official records to prove a dozen shows almost or quite equally good to the credit of the Fo-Fums.
A Flight of six Fo-Fums went up and over Hunland one morning when a westerly wind anda strong hint of dirty weather in the air made it an abnormally risky patrol for anything but the best of pilots and the most reliable of machines and engines. But the Fo-Fums, whatever their other faults, have at least the admitted merit of reliability, and the quality of the pilots on this patrol is fairly shown by this story.
They were well over the lines and about 10,000 feet up when a circus of about twenty Huns hove in sight well above them. The Flight Leader saw them and, climbing a little as they went, he led the formation towards the hostiles, or, as he put it, "beetled off to have a look at 'em." The Huns evidently saw the Fo-Fums at the same time, and with natural willingness to indulge in a scrap with odds of more than three to one in their favour swooped up, "coming like stink," to quote the Flight Leader again, to the attack.
The Fo-Fums knew how the ball would almost certainly open under the circumstances—twenty Hun scouts with the advantage of superior speed, height and weather gauge, against six Fo-Fums—and quietly slid into a formation they had more than once proved useful in similar conditions.
The Huns, seeing no other enemies near enough to interfere, circled above, collected their formation into shape, and made their leisurely dispositions for the attack, while the Fo-Fums no less leisurely straightened out their wedge-shaped formation, swung the head of the line in a circle,which brought the leader round until he was following the last machine of the Flight, and so commenced a steady circling or—one can hardly refrain from quoting that expressive Flight Leader—"chasing each other's tails in a blessed ring-o'-roses giddy-go-round." The Huns drove up into a position which brought them between the Fo-Fums and the sun, thereby, of course, gaining the additional advantage of being able to aim and shoot with the sun in their backs while the Fo-Fums had the light in their eyes.
The Fo-Fum men were not greatly disturbed by this, for several reasons, because they were used to conceding the advantage in beginning a fight, because knowing the Huns had the wings of them it was no use trying to avoid it, and because they were contentedly sure that there were so many beastly Huns there they couldn't all keep "in the sun" and that each man would easily find a target sufficiently out of it. They continued their "giddy-go-round," and a dozen of the Huns at top speed, with engines full out and machine-guns rattling and ripping out a storm of tracer bullets in streaking pencil-lines of flame and blue smoke, came hurtling down like live thunderbolts. The sight alone might well have been a terrifying one to the Fo-Fum men, and the sharp, whip-like smacks and cracks about them of the explosive bullets which began to find their mark on fabric or frame would also have been upsetting to any but the steadiest nerves.
But the Fo-Fums showed not the slightest sign of panicky nerves. They held their fireuntil the diving Huns were within reasonable shoot-to-hit range, and met them with a sharp burst of fire from observers' or pilots' guns as the position of each machine in the circle gave a field of fire ahead or anywhere in a full half-circle round to port, stern, or starboard.
It may help matters to explain here—and again it tells nothing to the Hun that he doesn't already know well and to his sorrow—that the fighting Fo-Fum mounts three machine-guns—one, which the pilot handles, shooting ahead; another which the observer, sitting in front of the pilot and to the side of the pilot's gun, shoots anywhere outward in a half-circle round the bow and in any forward direction down or up; and a third placed on the top plane, which the observer also shoots by jumping up from his bow gun, standing almost man-high clear of the "gun'l" of the machine's body, and aiming up or level outward to either side and astern.
In meeting the attacking dive the observers stood up to their top guns, and if their position in the Flight's circle allowed them to bring their gun to bear on an enemy, they opened fire. If the machine was full bow on to the rush the pilot fired; or if she was in such a position that he could not see a target sufficiently ahead, or the observer see sufficiently to the side, he dodged the machine in or out of the circle enough to bring one of the guns to bear, and then wheeled her back into position.
These tactics may sound complicated, but really are—so the Fo-Fums say—beautifullysimple when you know them and are used to them. What they amount to is merely the fact that all six machines were able to open fire within a second or two of one another, and that in some cases the pilot was able to get in a second burst from his bow gun by dipping his nose down after a hostile as she plunged past.
That they were effective tactics was promptly demonstrated to the Huns by one of their machines bursting into flames, another rolling over sideways and "dead-leafing" down in a series of side-to-side slips which ended in a crash on the ground below, and by another continuing his dive well down, changing it into a long glide to the eastward and out of the fight, evidently with machine or pilot out of action. Several of the Fo-Fums had bullet-holes in their machines, but nothing vital was touched, and they had just time to connect up nicely into their compact circle when the remainder of the Huns came tearing down on them in similar terrifying fashion.
But the Fo-Fums met them in their similar fashion, and when the Huns, instead of diving past and down as the first lot had done, curved up in an abrupt zoom, the observers swung their gun-muzzles up after them and pelted them out of range. One Hun lost control just on the point of his upward zoom, flung headlong out until he stalled and fell out of the fight for good. From the fact that his gun continued to fire at nothing until he was lost to notice it was evident either that his gear was damaged or the pilothit and unconsciously gripping or hanging to the trigger or firing mechanism. A fourth Hun at the top of his zoom up lurched suddenly, fell away in a spinning nose dive, and also vanished from the proceedings—whether "crashed" or merely "out of control" was never known.
In a fight against this sort of odds, which our pilots so often have, the need of keeping an eye on active enemies rather than on the subsequent interesting fashion of an out-of-control's finish certainly reduces our air men's score a good deal, since it is the rule only to claim and record officially as a "crash" a machine which is actually seen (and confirmed) to have smashed on the ground, to have broken in air, or otherwise have made a sure and positive finish. Five Huns down and definitely out of action was a good beginning to the fight, especially as no Fo-Fum was damaged, and the odds were now reduced to fifteen against six—quite, according to the Fo-Fums, usual and reasonably sporting odds.
But the odds were to lengthen to such an extent that even the seasoned and daring fighters of No. Umpty Squadron began to look grave and feel concerned. Two Flights came looming up rapidly from eastward, and, occupied as the Fo-Fums were with the first brush, the new enemies were upon them almost the instant the second rush on them finished—before, in fact, the first Huns shot down and hit the ground. The newcomers converged on the fight and dashed straight at the Fo-Fum circle without apause. There were twelve of them in one lot and eight in the other, and that, added to the twenty the Fo-Fums had counted at the beginning of the fight, made a total of forty machines against their six.
After this the tale of the fight can no longer be told as a whole. It developed into a series of rushes and dives on the part of the enemy in large or small numbers, swift leaps and turns and twists, and plunges and checks, repeated hot attacks and attempts by the Huns to break the Fo-Fums' steady circle, determined and fairly successful efforts of the Fo-Fums to foil the attempts. For long minute after minute the fight swayed and scattered, flung apart, out and down and up, climbed and fell and closed in again to point-blank quarters. It ran raging on and on in a constant fierce rattle and roll of machine-gun fire, a falling out, one fashion or another, of Hun after Hun, in occasional desperate fights of single Fo-Fums forced out of the circle and battling to return to it.
Some of these single-handed combats against odds are worthy subjects for an air saga, each to its individual self. There was, for instance, the Fo-Fum which was forced out of the circle, cut off, and fought a lone-hand battle against eleven enemies. The observer stood and shot over his top plane at one Hun who tried to cover himself behind the tail of the Fo-Fum. The pilot at the same instant was lifting the nose a little to bring his gun to bear on another Hun diving on him from ahead, and this sinking of theFo-Fum's stern gave the observer a chance. He filled it with a quick burst from his machine-gun, and filled the Hun so effectively full of bullets that his nose dropped and he swooped under the Fo-Fum. The observer jumped down to his bow gun, swung the muzzle down, and caught the Hun passing under with a burst which finished him and sent him whirling down out of control.
The pilot's shooting at the same time was equally effective. The Hun who had dived on his right front was met by a quick turn which brought the bow gun to bear and a short burst of fire. The Hun continued to dive past and under, and both pilot and observer caught a flashing but clear-imprinted picture of the Hun pilot collapsed in a heap on his seat before he also fell helplessly rolling and spinning down out of the fight.
The observer, dropping his forward gun as he saw his shooting effective, scrambled quickly up to his top gun and was just in time to open on another Hun not more than twenty feet away and with his gun going "nineteen to the dozen, and rapping bullets all over the old bus till she's as full of holes as a Gruyère cheese," as the observer said. He only fired about a dozen rounds—the fight by now had been running long enough and hot enough to make economy of ammunition a consideration—but some of the dozen got home and sent another Hun plunging down and out.
The observer just lifted his eyes from watching the "late lamented" and trying to decidewhether he was "outed" or "playing dead," in time to catch a glimpse of a black cross streaking past astern of him. He glued his eyes to the sights, jerked his muzzle round after the fresh enemy, and just as he swung in a steep bank "slapped a hatful of lead into him" and saw a strip of the hostile's cowling rip and lift and beat flailing back against the struts until the enemy shut off engine and glided out.