OFF FOR THE FRONT
Months passed. The training of the Brighton boys went on steadily
after they entered the service until each one of the six of them
that were still at the home airdrome was a highly efficient flier
and well-grounded in the construction of air-machines as well.
Louis Deschamps had gone, with his mother, to France. Fat Benson
had been passed on to a more important job. His work had been so
thorough in the stores department that he was now being used as
an inspector, traveling over half a dozen states, visiting all sorts
of factories that were being broken-in gradually to turn out the
necessary aeroplane parts in ever-increasing quantities as the war
progressed.
Then came the day when the contingent into which the Brighton boys
had been drafted started, at last, for France. Final good-bys were
said, last parting tears were shed, the cheers and Academy yells
at the station died into the distance as the train pulled out, and
the six young airmen, proud in the security of full knowledge that
they were no novices, were truly "off for the front."
The days of embarkation, the dash across the Atlantic, and the landing
in France came in due sequence. They had expected some excitement
on the ocean voyage. The group of transports, of which their ship
was one, steamed warily eastward, convoyed by a flotilla of grim
destroyers, swift, businesslike, determined. Extra precautions were
taken in the submarine zone; but none of the German sea wolves rose
to give battle with the American ships.
The coming into port, too, was less exciting than they had thought it
would be. The French people who were grouped along the quayside
cheered and waved, but the incoming American contingents were arriving
with such regularity that the strangeness had worn away. America
was in the war to do her utmost. France knew that well by the time
the Brighton boys crossed the ocean. The welcome was no less warm,
but there was no element of novelty about it.
A troop train, consisting mainly of cattle trucks, puffed away from
the coast town next morning, and attached to it were the cars containing
the new air squadron. Late that night it had reached one of the
huge airdromes, the vastness of which unfolded itself to the astonished
gaze of the boys at daybreak of the morning after. They had not
dreamed that such acres and acres of hangars existed along the whole
front. The war in the air assumed new proportions to them. They
were housed in huts, warm and dry, if not palatial.
During the day, given leave to wander about the airdrome, the six
Brighton boys took a stroll in company, eager to inspect at close
quarters the latest types of flying machines.
"These airplanes are stronger than any we have ever seen," remarked
Joe Little, as they paused before a new-type French machine.
"Yes," cheerily commented an aviator---a clean-cut young Englishman---who
was grooming the graceful plane. "This very one crashed into the
ground two weeks ago while going at over sixty miles an hour. She
is so strongly built that she was not hurt much and the pilot escaped
without a scratch. This is what we call a 'hunter.' She has an
unbeaten record for speed---can show a clean pair of heels to anything
in the air. She has tremendous power; and the way she can climb into
the clouds---my word!"
"Is she easy to fly?" asked Dicky Mann.
"Not bad," was the answer. "The high speed makes for a bust-up once
in a while. A pilot who gets going over one hundred and fifteen
miles an hour, and yanks his machine up to six thousand feet in
seven minutes, as he can do on this type of plane, and then drops
straight down from that elevation, as the 'hunter' fellows have
to do sometimes, puts a mighty big strain on his bus. Little by
little this sort of thing dislocates important parts. Of course
the pursuing game makes a pilot put his machine into all sorts of
positions. He has to jump at the other chap, sometimes, at an angle
of ninety degrees. I have known of cases where the air pressure
caused by such a drop has been so great that the planes of one of
these 'hunters' have been broken off with a snap."
"Jiminy!" ejaculated Dicky.
At this the aviator laughed, saying smilingly: "Accidents of some sort
take place here several times a day. If they didn't we would not get
on so fast either in the study of aeroplane construction or the art
of flying itself. Accidents tell us lots of things. Between studying
accidents and watching for Boche ideas, especially when we get hold
of one of their late machines, we are never standing still at this
game, I can tell you."
"Do you get many German planes?" asked Jimmy Hill.
"We _down_ lots of 'em, but we don't get many---which is different,"
and the aviator smiled. "You see the Boche fliers stay their side,
mostly, and when we drop one he goes down among his own lot. Now
the hostile hunters for instance, rarely go over our lines. Their
business apparently is to remain over their own territory. That is
their plan. They are brave enough. But the Germans look to their
hunters chiefly to prevent our observers from doing their work. They
wait for our observation machines where they know the observers must
come. That is their game. Just get some of the fellows who have
been over recently, when you get up front a bit, to tell you how the
new Fokkers hide themselves and pounce on our lot.
"Maybe the Boches look at it this way: if they have their fight at
their base of operations, over their own lines, and win out, they
may make a prisoner; if the machine is not destroyed, that may be
utilized. If their man gets put out of commission we don't get
the beaten machine and therefore cannot learn their latest construction
dodges from it. It's a different plan of action. We go right out
over the German lines with our hunters and tackle their observers,
who do their reconnaissances from a bit back of their lines. Only
in the very first part of the war, when the Germans outnumbered us in
fliers to an enormous extent, did they try to do much from our
top-side. Nowadays we do our observing daily from well over the
enemy's lines; and the Germans do most of theirs from well on their
own side. It's a different way of looking at it."
"Surely our way must be more efficient," said Joe Little.
"We think so," assented the aviator. "We know more of their lines
than they can possibly know of ours. For the rest of this war I
guess we will have to do so. We are going forward from now on, and
the Teutons are going back, and don't you forget it. We have to know
their lines well, and lots of other things, such as their routes of
supply and reinforcement, and their gun positions and munition dumps.
Our guns look to us, too, in a way they did not look to us a year ago,
even. It's a big game."
The Brighton boys walked on slowly, without comment. Yes, it was a
big game, in very truth. The closer they came to it the bigger it
became.
"Hello! There is a monoplane. I thought there were no monoplanes
in use now," said Bob Haines as they passed a round-bodied fleet-looking
machine with a single pair of wings. It was a single-seater. They
walked up to it and round it, gazing admiringly at its neat lines.
"What sort of a plane is this?" asked Bob of a mechanic who was
standing beside the machine.
"An absolute hummer," was the reply. "Want to try her? You have to
be an Ace to get into her driving seat, son."
Bob flushed, and was inclined to answer sharply, but Joe Little stepped
forward and said quietly: "We have just got here from the States.
Came last night. This is our first look-around, and we want to
learn all we can. We did not know monoplanes were being used now.
The only aeroplanes we have flown have been biplanes. Won't you tell
us something about this type?"
"Certainly," said the mechanic. "I was only joking. No one can
fly this sort of machine except the most experienced and best pilots.
It is the fastest machine in the world. It is a Morane, and they
call it a 'Monocoque.' Someone told me that the latest type German
Fokker was modeled on this machine. It is a corker, but the trickiest
thing to fly that was ever made. We have only got one here. I heard
a French flyer say the other day that the Spad biplane was faster
than this machine, but I don't believe it."
"What is an Ace?" queried Jimmy Hill.
"That term started with the French," answered the mechanic. "We
use it here now, sometimes. It means a superior aviator, who has
brought down five adversaries, in fair air-fight. The bringing-down
business, at least so far as the exact number is concerned, is not
always applied, I guess. They just call a man an Ace when he is
a real graduate flyer, and gets the habit of bringing down his Boche
when he goes after him."
Every conversation around that part of the world seemed to have a
grim flavor. The Brighton boys were getting nearer to actual war
every minute, they felt.
The boys found a row of S.P.A.D. machines not far distant. The
"Spads," as the aviators called them, were fleet biplanes. They
found a genial airman to tell them something of the planes, which
he described as the latest type of French fighting aeroplane. "This
sort has less wing surface than any machine we have had here," said
the airman. "It is mighty fast. These four have just come back from
a good pull of work. I think this lot were all that is left of two
dozen that were attached to the B squadron just before the last
big push."
"Cheerful beggar!" spoke up another pilot within earshot. "Are you
trying to impress a bunch of newcomers?" He walked toward the boys.
"Are you not some of the crowd that got in last night?"
"Yes," answered Bob Haines. "We're the Brighton Academy bunch. We
have just come over from home."
"Do you know a fellow called Corwin?"
"I am Corwin," said Harry.
"My name is Thompson. Your brother Will was over here last week
looking for you, and told me that if I was still here when you arrived
I was to look you up. He may not get a chance to run over again for
a bit. He is some distance away."
Harry was delighted. He introduced his companions to Thompson, who
told them Will Corwin was fit and well, and had become quite famous
as a flyer. Thompson promised to dine at their mess that evening.
He did so, and after dinner sat and chatted about flying in general,
telling the Brighton boys many things strange to them about the
development of the flying service since the beginning of the war.
"I was in England in August, 1914, when the war broke out," Thompson
said. "I had been interested for some time in flying; had learned
to fly a machine myself, and had watched most of the big international
flying meets. I knew some of the rudimentary points about aircraft,
and as I had a cousin who was in the motor manufacturing business in
England, I had been put fairly into touch with aeroplane engines.
I don't know how much is known at home about what the French and
British flying corps have done out here, but to get a fair idea
of what they have accomplished one has to know something of the way
both France and England were caught napping. I think it is fair to
say that there was not one firm in all Great Britain at the outbreak
of hostilities which had proven that it could turn out a successful
aeroplane engine.
"The English War Department had what they called the Royal Aircraft
Factory, where some experimental work was done, but the day war was
declared the British Army had less than one hundred serviceable
flying machines of all types. What proved to be the most useful
plane used by the British for the first year of the war was only
a blueprint when the fighting started. France was better off.
She had factories that could make aero engines. But as to actual
planes, three hundred would be an outside figure of the number with
which France went to war.
"The use of the aeroplane in war was a subject which gave much
discussion, but few people, even in the army, thought that the
aeroplane would be of great service except for scouting. At the
airdrome where I learned to fly we used to practice dropping
bombs---imaginary ones, of course---but we were so inaccurate at it
that none of us imagined we would be of much use in that direction
in actual warfare. I have heard it said that the Germans directed
their artillery by signals dropped from aircraft at the very
beginning. They did so before they had fought many weeks, anyway.
Boche fliers, English gunners have told me, used to hover over
battery positions and drop long colored streamers and odd showers
of colored lights. It was some time before the Allied airman
contributed much to the value of the Allied gunfire. When they got
at it, they beat the Huns at their own game, for the war had not
been on many months before British planes were flying over Boche
batteries and sending back wireless messages from wireless
telegraph installations on the machines themselves.
"The Boches had lots more machines than the Allies, and their army
command had apparently worked out plans about using them which were
new to our side. I saw some of the early war-work of the British
fliers, for I got into the Army Service Corps, the transport service,
and came out to the front early in 1915. I did not get transferred
into the flying part of the business until the end of that year.
There is no question but that the quality of the British flying men
was what put them ahead of the Germans long before they were equal
mechanically. The French, too, are really great fliers. The Boches
try hard, and are certainly brave enough, but there is something in
the Boche makeup that makes him bound to be second-best to our lot.
I have heard lots of discussions on the subject, and I think those
who argue that the Boche lacks an element of sportsmanship just about
hit the weak point in his armor as regards flying.
"The flying game has been one long succession of discarding the
machines we thought best at one time. That applies to the Germans
as much as it does to us. One has to go back to the start to realize
how much flying has progressed. First, engine construction is another
thing to-day. They can make engines in England now, though they were
a long time getting to the point where they could do it. I believe
that most all the best motor factories in England have learned to turn
out good flying engines by now. It means a lot of difference to
produce a machine that can do sixty miles an hour and one that can do
two miles a minute. Yet at the start mighty few aeroplanes could beat
sixty miles an hour, and to-day I can show you plenty of planes right
here in this 'drome which can do one hundred and twenty. If a plane
cannot do two miles a minute nowadays it is pretty sure to meet
something in enemy hands that can do so. Why, before long one hundred
and twenty may be too slow.
"Then look at altitudes! When I first thought of flying, five thousand
feet up was big. That was not so very long ago. Before the war some
very specially built machines, no good for general work, had been
coaxed up to about fifteen thousand feet by some crack airman, who
had worked for hours to do it, but the best machine we had at the
'drome where I learned flying would only do six thousand, and no one
could get her up there under forty minutes. She was a fine machine,
too, as machines went in those days. To-day it is no exaggeration
to say that ten thousand feet above the earth is low to a flier.
Everyone goes to twenty thousand continually, and many of the biggest
fights take place from seventeen thousand to twenty thousand feet up.
"The character of the work we have to do has changed as much as
the machines have changed. First, anti-aircraft guns---'Archies,'
we call them---have improved enormously. In the first of the show
the airman merely had to keep five thousand feet up and no Archie
could touch him. A French friend of mine told me the other day that
one of their anti-aircraft guns hit a flier at a height of fifteen
thousand feet. The gun was firing from an even greater distance
than that across country, too. The very fact that flying at
considerable height protected aircraft when scouting produced
scientific methods into the collection of information.
"The camera work that has been evolved in this war is little short
of wonderful. When it was realized that the planes could get photographs
from a height that was out of reach of the Archies of those days,
fighting one aeroplane with another came next. Fights in the air,
instead of being rare, became the daily routine. I doubt if any of
the planes that began the war game in 1914 were armed with rapid-fire
guns. The aviators carried automatic pistols or rifles. Some carried
ordinary service revolvers.
"With the introduction of the actual air fighting as a part of the
scheme of things, three distinct jobs were developed. First, the
reconnaissances, which the scouts had to make daily. Next, the
artillery observers, whose work it was to direct our gun-fire. Next,
the fighters, pure and simple. Another job was bombing, but we have
not had as much of that as of the other branches of the work.
"With the coming of the new element---the fighting planes, which
went out with the sole idea of individual combat---came the necessity
for swifter planes, for the man on the fastest machine has the great
advantage in the air. The latest development is along the line of
team-work in attack. So it goes on changing. I think the smaller,
speedier aeroplanes are becoming harder to manage, but we do things
now we never dreamed of doing a year ago. All of us can fly now as
we never thought before the war it would be possible to fly.
"Instead of rifles and pistols in the hands of the aviators every
plane now has at least one rapid-fire gun, and some have two and
even three. The position of the rapid-fire gun on an aeroplane has
a lot to do with the success or failure of a fight in the air. All
of you want to study that question carefully.
"But most fascinating of all to the new airman at the front is the
actual handling of the machines when fighting. There lies the greatest
progress of all. Construction has made big strides, but fliers have
made bigger ones. Wait till you get up front and see."