It may now be said that the allied airmen have established decided
supremacy in the new battlefield. The Germans had a week ago, in
this as in other respects, the advantage of their preparations and
initiative, and they used it boldly, flying low in numbers, and
machine-gunning our retreating ranks.
The balance could not be instantly redressed. The airplane seems to be
the very type of mobility, but it devours petrol, demands repairs, and,
in brief, must carry its camp with it.
Every day of this critical week has seen a larger concentration between
the Oise and the Marne, and an increasing number of combats and
expeditions. The first essential was to have constant information of
the enemy's movements; and this scouting work, though less sensational
than some other parts of the air program, remains perhaps the most
important of all.
Then followed with growing vigor the development of the aggressive
functions of the air service in which it became a sort of extension of
artillery and cavalry and even of infantry. A single group in one day
brought down six boche planes and three sausages, dropped seventeen
tons of bombs in the region of Rheims, and tons on marching columns of
the enemy in the neighborhood of Ville-en-Tardenois.
"Our pilots," said a group commander, "had orders not to come back with
a single cartridge or bomb, and you may take it from me that they do
not waste their munitions on clouds."
On Thursday another group commander, receiving news that an enemy
column was stretched over three miles of a certain road, sent about
fifty machines to deal with it. They charged as a squadron of cavalry
would do, coming down to within twenty and even ten yards of the earth,
and with bombs and machine guns effectually dispersing and demoralizing
the graycoats.
Many enemy planes and sausage balloons have been brought down, but that
is in the circumstances a secondary effort. Lines of communication and
rear camps and centres of the enemy also have been harried. On Friday
no less than seventy tons and on Saturday sixty-two tons of explosives
were dropped by airmen on German bivouac troops.