| OCR Text |
Show Miscellany Cannonball Airplanes. The swift German Fokker, less Irian a year ago lir. of the air on the western from, is nnw obsolete. This was the news broueht to New York by Flight Lieutenant Lloyd Faulkner Faulk-ner of the British army, rccontly injured in-jured in an airplane when shot don n near Ypres. In th-? desperate competition to buill the most e't i-'int hawk of the air. the liorma ns t hem selves have undoubtedly improver! over ilie Fokker type, but a new allied airplane has just arrived on the front which exceeds by far anything the world has ever seen, according to t he lieutenant's sforv. '"The new machine the name of wbi-'h may not be mentioned, makes t';S miles - .,.1. -.'is a u-,,a. su-' "T!.o ;nn.r or:-; : :' ! t'oT'ne is its 1 i -1 : !" !'. It ;. :i as' pt r; u;.: ". i' ii i 'anions. ;'!!- lus re;i.-!,a 1'' " Oet :r, .xit mM a half minntrs. . ' tk it u:e !il ma.-Uiie fT .:;.-iin '":, a. it .an o-r :e;-i:l n :' Klv :... ,a:, in ma i-inla. inn- m-'.v nH. inna is l' a iirml-s; n- n:i' nine in ilia unrM an,i v.iil unar-'.:ia unar-'.:ia liait wo maintain t.ie s' i ni'a nlary in laa:;:an.nr Ka n) k nor rt-' -a i . r-i l:is pro- ' ::n :.:arv la i:.;: as an aviator in i;.a "r:l it s. at I'avton, .th: H saal 'ho ma. liin.a- us,-. I in I'ae I nitoi Sta'aa vh; way icli.nrl liir.se possase.i by tin.' n- r.-n t na i ,ns. "far i 'rt ' : '. ' ia n. s v.'pii:h. two nnd a l.tlf Inns." la' sai.i, "an'! are nnv.-'ii hy lua f;":ls-Itn' t. nioiurs ol" .Tai iiors-.-pow oaali. J'lir-'.- iiaya twin tiroTe!iers and ran miiki' liaire tiian 1 an miles an hour, other Iiil: 'lianes have ;-;"i'-hursepou tr Manors Hrr.ini; tnie i.roj ie! ler. '"i iio- smaller maelnnes. whioh earrv only a nil,,:, are nmrli taster. The S.. with 'pn;,' makes l:t miles an liutir: the Nienporl bullet' K;:, miles; the S'eat Ha miles; but all these are surpassed by Lite new wonrler. "At the licnt our work is divided itito four classes. The first is the reconnaissance, recon-naissance, curing which we sometimes fly trom Inn ir, 5,1 miles back of the Herman trenches. This work is done by1 regularly organized s,ita, lions, in which i the most important machine is the one I'.'irryiiipr the camera. The reconnais- j sanee unit is composed of five battle- j planes and ten or twelve Nieuport scouts ! or Sopwiih 'pups,' little last machines, carryiutr only one pilot and machine pun. ! These little machines are the destroyers I or guards for the his; battleplanes. The bis- machines each carry at least two men j and two guns. "When in flyinsr and work formation, j the reconnaissance squadron is arranged i in this way; The camera battleplane flies j at about 5.-.0O feet, with a fighting battleplane battle-plane on either side, flvins; tit about 6'ii'nl I feet. To :he rear, directly behind each of the fishtinir battleplanes, are two more battleplanes, tlyins at 7u"0 feet. These five machines fly IO11 to He miles an hour. The little destroyers, with their faster speed, fly all about them, always ready to attack an enemy squadron. "If the little fellows happen to he off on a bit of their own and the battleplane squadron sees enemy machines, the pilots fire their rlr.rni pistols and call the destroyers, de-stroyers, which drive off the enemv, unless un-less he is in much superior force, and then there is a fiirht. "Flyinsr at six or seven thousand feet, the observation machines are alwavs being; be-ing; archied,' which means thev are being shot at by every sort of fun. even those tiring five-pound shells. Hits hy antiaircraft anti-aircraft guns are one of the natural risks and we used to bank back and fortrf or zig-zag through the air so as to throw the gunners off. That does not always work, as 1 found out when a shell carried away one of my ailerons and I landed in a smash that sent me to the hospital. "While doing this reconnaissance work it is aiw-ivs necessary to look out for Kokkers. You'll see five or six blacK spots up "fl.OCO to 25.000 feet and when thev get over you they'll suddenly nose-dive and drop. These Fokkers drive by at a tremendous speed, firing as they go, and then they scuttle for safety. "The second important' use for airplanes air-planes is artillery observation work. First Lieutenant Vernon Castle was doing this when I last saw him in the late fall, and had been mentioned in dispatches for his excellent work. Before going up, the pilot arranges his signals with his battery. bat-tery. He uses wireless. "Observation pilots also watch every movement behind the enemy's lines. It has been arranged that if tnev see a large or important movement, 'such rs the march of an army division or a large section of transport, they can give a certain cer-tain signal which will call for help from every gun in that section. "A third use to which we put our machines ma-chines is night flying, which is mostly bomb work. The Germans, for some reason rea-son or other, do not fly at night. Our bombers travel In squadrons of fiftv to one hundred. They start out in the dead ot night and fly very low. not more than 300 feet up. It is1 practically impossible to hit them and there are few casualties among our men. This night bombing was forced on us by the fact that the Germans Ger-mans move their troops and stores at night. "The last important work clone at the front is the patrolling. This is done bv two machines acting together and flving at five to six thousand feet. High above them, soaring and watching, at about 20 -000 feet, are some of the little, fast fighting fight-ing machines. These we know as 'straf-ers,' 'straf-ers,' and it is their object to drop onto any German machine that tries to cross over our lines. This patrol work like all the other regular flying, is done without with-out regard to weather. Pilots have gone up in a seventy-mile wind, in snow sleet and ram. "Phosphorous bomb raids are very popular pop-ular methods with us for getting rid of the 'sausage' balloons the Germans use for observation. We used to wa'' for dark days for this work. "hen we'd swoop down on the 'sausages.' which were usually tied at between 5000 and 6000 feet. As we'd drive over them rrt'd pull the lever and let a shower of bombs drop If it was hit the 'sausage' would burst into flame and then vou'd see a 'ot of Germans drop out of its observation car in their parachutes." International News Service. |
