Part 28

As I was making my “Kiste” ready for flight again in the afternoon, with the help of several drivers of the General Staff auto—that is to say, refilling the benzine tank and carefully patching with linen the places where shots had pierced—I counted four of them, one in the body and three in the wings—a Bavarian officer of the General Staff informed me that he would be glad to observe the retreat of the English along the great military road toward M——. I prepared the machine at once, and ascended at about four o’clock in the afternoon with Major G——, the aforementioned General Staff officer.

Following the road, it was at once obvious that the retreat of the English was a disorderly one, absolutely without plan, that it had apparently occurred to the troops to reach the fortified positions at Paris as soon as possible, and there to make their stand.

At Paris! My flying companion shouted something into my face. Although the noise of the motor drowned it out, I believed that I nevertheless understood what he meant. I glanced at the benzine indicator. I had sufficient fuel. Then I held a direct course to the south, and after a period of about half an hour we saw ahead of us in the gray distance, far, far below, the gray, immeasurable sea of stone that was the chief city of France. At a speed of a hundred kilometers an hour we rushed toward it. It became clearer and plainer. The chain of forts, St. Denis, Montmartre, stood out; from the haze there raised itself the filigree framework of the Eiffel tower. And now—now we hover over the mellow panorama of Paris.

THE “CONQUEROR” AT PARIS

There lay the white church of Sacré Cœur, there the Gare du Nord, from which the French thought to leave for across the Rhine; there Notre Dame, there the old “Boul Mich,” the Boulevard St. Michel, in the Latin Quarter, where I Bohemianized so long as an art student, and over which I now flew as a conqueror. Unprotected beneath me lay the heart of the enemy, the proud glittering Babel of the Seine. The thought of everything hateful, always attached to the great city, was swallowed up; an emotion of possession, of power, alone remained. And doubly joyful we felt ourselves. Doubly conquerors! In a great circle I swept over the sea of houses. In the streets raised itself a murmuring of the people, whom the bold “German bird” astonished, who cannot understand how the Germans are turning the French discovery to their own service more cleverly and advantageously than the French themselves.

THE RETURN FROM PARIS

For nearly an hour we had been flying in swoops and had been shot at vainly from here and there below us, when there approached in extremely rapid flight from the direction of Juvisy a French monoplane. Since it was much faster than my biplane, I must turn and seek to escape, while the major made ready my rifle and reached for his revolver. The monoplane came steadily closer and closer; I sought to reach an altitude of 2,000 meters, in order to reach the protecting clouds, but my pursuer, on whom we constantly kept an eye, climbed more rapidly than we. And came always closer and closer. And suddenly I saw at a distance of only about 500 meters still a second biplane, attempting to block my way.

Now it was time to act. In an instant my companion had grasped the situation. I darted at the flyer before us; then a turn—the major raised the rifle to his cheek. Once, twice, thrice, he fired. Then the hostile machine, now beside us, and hardly a hundred meters away, quivered and then fell like a stone. Our other pursuer had in the meantime reached a position almost over us, and was shooting at us with revolvers. One bullet struck in the body close beside the fuel controller. Then, however, impenetrable mist enfolded us protectingly; and the clouds separated us from the enemy, the sound of whose motor grew ever more distant.

When we came out again from the sea of clouds, it was toward seven o’clock. In order to get our position, we descended, but suddenly there began to burst before us and behind us and beside us roaring shrapnel shells. I found myself still always over hostile positions and exposed to French artillery. “The devil to pay again!” Ever madder grew the fire! I noticed that the machine received blow after blow, but held cold-bloodedly to my course; at the time, it did not come into my mind at all that these little pointed pieces of steel meant death and destruction. Something in mankind remains untouched by knowledge and logic!

There—suddenly before me, a yellow-white burst of flame! The machine bounds upward; at the same time the major shrinks together, blood runs from his shoulder, the wiring of one of the wings is shattered. To be sure, the motor still booms and thunders as before, but the propeller fails. An exploding grenade had knocked it to pieces, torn one of the wings to shreds, and smashed the major’s shoulder. Steeply my machine sinks to the ground. By calling up all my power, I succeed in getting the machine into a gliding flight, and I throw the biplane down into the tops of the forest trees. I crash through the branches and tree crowns. I strike heavily, and know no more what goes on around me.

When I wake again from my unconsciousness, I find Major G. lying beside me on the ground, in the midst of a group of Landwehr men. German outposts had recognized me as a friend, and had forced their way into the woods, although only in small numbers, to protect me. Major G. had suffered a severe injury to his shoulder, which made it necessary to transfer him to the nearest field hospital. I, however, had only sustained a bruise on my leg, and after the application of an emergency bandage remained with the outpost, later to find my way, by all possible—and some impossible—means of transportation, back to my troop.

WARNEFORD’S TRIUMPH

The Brilliant Exploit That Marked the First “Down” of a “Zepp” by Airplane

The air raids on the coast towns of England were regarded as the most brutally wanton of the cowardly “frightfulness” tactics of the Germans employed against England. The killing of non-combatants, chiefly women and children, and the destruction of private property were the only material results of those raids, but the moral indignation of the world was aroused. After a period of suspension of this sort of warfare the Germans once more, in June, 1915, began raiding the East and Northeast Coast, the most serious of any that had happened being the raid of June 6.

The raiders sailed over a town on the East Coast during the night and bombed it at their leisure. One large drapery house was struck and was completely wrecked, the entire building—a somewhat old one—collapsing. Adjoining these premises, with only a narrow roadway between, there was one of the most beautiful Norman churches in England. The church was wholly uninjured save a few of the panes in the glass windows. A rumor was spread over the country, and was generally believed, that a large number of girls and women “lived in” on the draper’s premises, and were killed when the house was struck. This rumor was false. The drapery firm had ceased to house its attendants on the premises for a couple of years before the raid. Some working-class streets were very badly damaged, a number of houses destroyed, and many people injured. It was one of the peculiarities of this raid that, unlike results from most of the others, all the people injured were struck while indoors. The total casualties here were twenty-four killed, about sixty seriously injured, and a larger number slightly injured.

The outrage was quickly avenged by a young British naval airman, Flight Sub-Lieutenant R. A. J. Warneford, in one of the most brilliant aerial exploits of the war—the first Zeppelin brought down by an aeroplane.

Mr. Warneford, who was only 22 years of age, was the son of an Anglo-Indian railway engineer, and before the war was in the mercantile marine. He went home to “do something” for his country, enlisted in the 2nd Sportsman’s Battalion, was transferred to the Royal Naval Air Service, passed the tests for a pilot’s certificate within a few days, and was given a commission. He was noted at the flying school as one of the most brilliant pupils the instructors had ever known. A month after obtaining his commission he went to France, where his reckless daring soon made him conspicuous in a service where venturesomeness is the general rule. On the morning of June 7, 1915, at 3 a.m., he encountered a Zeppelin returning from the coast of Flanders to Ghent, and chased it, mounting above it and sailing over it at a height of 6,000 feet. Zeppelin and aeroplane exchanged shots, and when the Zeppelin was between one and two hundred feet immediately below him he dropped six bombs on it. One bomb hit the Zeppelin fairly, causing a terrific explosion, and setting the airship on fire from end to end.

Warneford’s aeroplane was caught by the force of the explosion and turned upside down, but he succeeded in righting it before it touched the ground. He was forced to alight within the German lines. Nevertheless he restarted his engine, though not without great difficulty, and in due course returned to his station without damage. Only the framework of the Zeppelin was left, the crew being all burned or mangled, and the body of the machine being completely destroyed. The flaming framework dropped on the Convent School of St. Amandsberg, killing one nun and burning two Sisters who had rushed into the street with children in their arms. The machine on which Warneford made this attack was a Morane “Parasol,” a little monoplane with a pair of wings raised well above the pilot’s head. This construction gives the aviator full view on either side below, thus enabling him to take good aim for bomb dropping. The Morane of that type was also noted as a quick-climbing machine, a very decided advantage in attacking Zeppelins.

The story of Warneford’s triumph sent a thrill through England. The King promptly sent a personal telegram of congratulation to him, and conferred upon him the Victoria Cross. The telegram ran as follows:

“I most heartily congratulate you upon your splendid achievement of yesterday, in which you single-handed destroyed an enemy Zeppelin.

“I have much pleasure in conferring upon you the Victoria Cross for this gallant act.

“GEORGE R.I.”

Next day the French War Minister, on the recommendation of General Joffre, awarded Warneford the Cross of the Legion of Honor. It was known that he was returning on a visit to England. A splendid public welcome was prepared for him. He went first, however, to Paris, and there in company with Henry Needham, an American journalist, he set out on a new Henry Farman biplane, which he proposed to take by air to Dunkirk. Warneford and his passenger had risen to 700 feet when the machine wobbled violently for a few seconds, and then overturned, throwing them both out. They were both killed instantly. The return to England was different from that which had been anticipated. In the late evening of June 21, a fortnight after the deed which won him fame, the train carrying Warneford’s body came into Victoria Station. Thousands of people had assembled there to pay their final tributes to the hero, and the little procession of the coffin covered by the Union Jack, mounted on a gun-carriage, and guarded by seamen of the Royal Naval Division, moved out amid the bared heads of the silent crowd. Warneford was buried in Brompton Cemetery.

The strictly American aviation operations started in the middle of March, 1918, with the patrolling of the front from Villeneuve-les-Vertus by an American pursuit squadron using planes of the French-built Nieuport-28 type. These operations were in the nature of a tryout of the American trained aviators, and their complete success was followed by an immediate increase of the aerial forces at the front, with enlargement of their duties and field of action. By the middle of May, 1918, squadrons of all types—pursuit, observation, and bombing—as well as balloon companies were in operation over a wide front. These squadrons were equipped with the best available types of British and French-built service planes.

ONE MINUTE PLUS

Three Attacking Hun Machines Downed by “Ricky” in About Seventy Ticks

No one has succeeded better than Boyd Cable, in the _Red Cross Magazine_, in conveying an impression of what “Quick Work” means in the war combats between aeroplanes when the fighting machines are in expert hands. But after all it is doubtful if one can realize in reading how quick the action was, inasmuch as the fight took less time than you will require to read one of these columns aloud. As Mr. Cable says:

“It is difficult, if not indeed impossible, to convey in words what is perhaps the most breath-catching wonder of air fighting work, the furious speed, the whirling rush, the sheer rapidity of movement of the fighting machines, and the incredible quickness of a pilot’s brain, hand, and eye to handle and maneuver a machine, and aim and shoot a gun under these speed conditions. I can only ask you to try to remember that a modern fast scout is capable of flying at well over a hundred miles an hour on the level, and at double that (one may not be too exact) in certain circumstances, and that in such a fight as I am going to try to describe here the machines were moving at anything between these speeds. If you can bear this in mind, or even realize it—I am speaking to the non-flying reader—you will begin to understand what airmen-o’-war work is, to believe what a pilot once said of air fighting: ‘You don’t get time to think. If you stop to think, you’re dead.’

“When the flight of half a dozen scout machines was getting ready to start on the usual ‘offensive patrol’ over Hunland, one of the pilots, ‘Ricky-Ticky’ by popular name, had some slight trouble with his engine. It was nothing much, a mere reluctance to start up easily, and since he did get her going before the flight was ready to take off, he naturally went up with it. He had a little more trouble in the upward climb to gain a height sufficient for the patrol when it crossed the line to stand the usual respectable chance of successfully dodging the usual ‘Archie’ shells.

“Ricky, however, managed to nurse her up well enough to keep his place in the formation, and was still in place when they started across the lines. Before they were far over Hunland he knew that his engine was missing again occasionally, and was not pulling as she ought to, and from a glance at his indicators and a figuring of speed, height, and engine revolutions was fairly certain that he was going almost full out to keep up with the other machines, which were flying easily and well within their speed.”

FOLLOWING THE CHANCE

“This was where he would perhaps have been wise to have thrown up and returned to his ’drome. He hung on in the hope that the engine would pick up again—as engines have an unaccountable way of doing—and even when he found himself dropping back out of place in the formation he still stuck to it and followed on. He knew the risk of this; knew that the straggler, the lame duck, the unsupported machine is just exactly what the Hun flyer is always on the lookout for; knew, too, that his Flight-Commander before they had started had warned him (seeing the trouble he was having to start up) that if he had any bother in the air or could not keep place in the formation to pull out and return. Altogether, then, the trouble that swooped down on him was his own fault, and you can blame him for it if you like. But if you do you’ll have to blame a good many other pilots who carry on, and in spite of the risk, do their best to put through the job they are on. He finally decided—he looked at the clock fixed in front of him to set a time and found it showed just over one minute to twelve—in one minute, at noon exactly, if his engine had not steadied down to work, he would turn back for home.

“At that precise moment—and this was the first warning he had that there were Huns about—he heard a ferocious rattle of machine gun fire, and got a glimpse of streaking flame and smoke from the tracer bullets whipping past him. The Huns, three of them and all fast fighting scouts, had seen him coming, had probably watched him drop back out of place in the flight, had kept carefully between him and the sun so that his glances round and back had failed to spot them in the glare, and had then dived headlong on him, firing as they came.

“They were coming down on him from astern and on his right side, or, as the Navals would put it, on his starboard quarter, and they were perhaps a hundred to a hundred and fifty yards off when Ricky first looked round and saw them. His first and most natural impulse was to get clear of the bullets that were spitting round and over him, and in two swift motions he had opened his engine full out, thrust his nose a little down, and was off full pelt. Promptly the three astern swung a little, opened out as they wheeled, dropped their noses, and came after Ricky, still a little above him, and so fairly astern that only the center one could keep a sustained accurate fire on him. (A scout’s gun being fixed and shooting between the blades of the propeller—gun and engine being synchronized so as to allow the bullet to pass out as the blade is clear of the muzzle—means that the machine itself must be aimed at the target for the bullets to hit, and two outer machines of the three could only so aim their machines by pointing their noses to converge on the center one—a risky maneuver with machines traveling at somewhere about a hundred miles an hour.)

“But the fire of that center one was too horribly close for endurance, and Ricky knew that although his being end-on made him the smaller target, it also made his machine the more vulnerable to a raking shot which, piercing him fore and aft, could not well fail to hit petrol tank, or engine, or some other vital spot. He could do nothing in the way of shooting back, because, being a single-seater scout himself, his two guns were trained one to shoot straight forward through the propeller, the other, mounted on the top plane on a curved mount allowing the gun to be grasped by the handle above him and pulled back and down, to shoot from direct ahead to straight up? Neither could shoot backward.

“Ricky, the first shock of his surprise over, had gauged the situation, and, it must be admitted, it was

“DANGEROUS IF NOT DESPERATE

“He had dropped back and back from the flight, until now they were something like a mile ahead of him. A mile, it is true, does not take a modern machine long to cover, but then, on the other hand, neither does an air battle take long to fight, especially with odds of three to one. With those bullets sheeting past him and already beginning to rip and crack through his wings, any second might see the end of Ricky. It was no use thinking longer of running away, and even a straight-down nose-dive offered no chance of escape, both because the Huns could nose-dive after him and continue to keep him under fire, and because he was well over Hunland, and the nearer he went to the ground the better target he would make for the anti-aircraft gunners below. He must act, and act quickly.

“A thousand feet down and a quarter of a mile away was a little patch of cloud. Ricky swerved, dipped, and drove ‘all out’ for it. He was into it—400 yards remember—in about the time it takes you to draw three level quiet breaths, and had flashed through it—five or six hundred feet across it might have been—in a couple of quick heart-beats. The Huns followed close, and in that half-dozen seconds Ricky had something between fifty and a hundred bullets whizzing and ripping past and through his wings. As he leaped clear of the streaming wisps of the cloud’s edge he threw one look behind him and pulled the joy-stick hard in to his stomach. Instantly his machine reared and swooped up in the loop he had decided on, up and over and round. At the first upward zoom Ricky had pulled down the handle of his top gun and brought it into instant action. The result was that as he shot up and over in a perfect loop the center machine, which had been astern of him, flashed under and straight through the stream of his bullets.

“Ricky whirled down in the curve of his loop with his gun still shooting, but now that he had finished his loop and flattened out, shooting up into the empty air while his enemy hurtled straight on and slightly downward ahead of him. Instantly Ricky threw his top gun out of action, and having now reversed positions, and having his enemy ahead, steadied his machine to bring his bow gun sights to bear on her. But before he could fire he saw the hostile’s left upper plane twist upward, saw the machine spin side on, the top plane rip and flare fiercely back and upward, the lower plane buckle and break, and the machine turning over and over plunge down and out of his sight. One of his bullets evidently had cut some bracing wires or stays, and the wing had given to the strain upon it. So much Ricky just had time to think, but immediately found himself in a fresh danger.

CLEVER WORK

“The two remaining hostiles had flashed past him at the same time as the center one, while he threw his loop over it, but realizing apparently on the instant what his maneuver was, they both swung out and round while he passed in his loop over the center machine. It was smart work on the part of the two flanking hostiles. They must have instantly divined Ricky’s dodge to get astern of them all, and their immediate circle out and round counteracted it, and as he came out of his loop brought them circling in again on him. In an instant Ricky was suddenly roused to the fresh danger by two following short bursts of fire which flashed and flamed athwart him, and caught a glimpse of the other two closing in and again astern of him and ‘sitting on his tail.’

“Both were firing as they came, and again Ricky felt the sharp rip and crack of explosive bullets striking somewhere on his machine, and an instant later knew that the two were following him and hailing lead upon him. He cursed savagely. He had downed one enemy, but here apparently he was little if any better off with two intact enemies in the worst possible position for him, ‘on his tail,’ and both shooting their hardest. A quick glance ahead showed him the white glint of light on the wheeling wings of his flight, attracted by the rattle of machine guns, circling and racing to join the fight.

“But fast as they came, the fight was likely to be over before they could arrive, and with the crack and snap of bullets about him and his own two guns powerless to bear on the enemy, it looked uncomfortably like odds on the fight ending against him. Another loop they would expect and follow over—and the bullets were crippling him every instant. Savagely he threw his controls over, and his machine slashed out and down to the right in a slicing two-hundred-foot side-slip.