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Show German Battle Planes. Fight With Each Other Mistaken Signal and Misread Markings Brings TWo Squadrons Together in Death Struggle Over British Lines. WITH THJ; BRITISH ARMY IN FRANCE, June 11. (By the Associated Press.) This is the story of a battle royal, waged in the air between two flights of German planes. It was an unintentional, but. disastrous, fight between brother aviators, during which British pilots joyfully and impartially rendered assistance, as-sistance, first to the one side, then to the other, until so many of the emperor's fliers had been destroyed or damaged that the 'conflict could not continue. It was on June 5 that this extraordinary extraor-dinary engagement occurred, and it began thus: Two British officers In a fighting machine were leading a patrol along the lines when they sighted a German Ger-man Halberstadt two-seater, which, upon their appearance, fired a green signal light. The British leaders expected ex-pected a trap, and waited to see what this unusual performance meant. In a short time six German scouts came wheeling out of the blue and joined the Halberstadt. Almost at once six other enemy scouts dived, out of the sun onto their comrades, whom they apparently mistook for a British patrol about to attack the Halberstadt. What had happened was this: The Halberstadt had been acting as a decoy, de-coy, and the green light had been meant as a signaTfor assistance. But there had been no expectation that two flights of German planes would respond at the same time. TWO SQUADRONS ENGAGE IN FIGHT. Not being able to distinguish the markings of their friends and this has happened not infrequently before the jewcomers immediately began a furious attack upon them. The British leaders then guided their patrol pa-trol into this mad melee and took a hand. The Halberstadt was the first victim vic-tim arfd this was shot down by the British commanding machine. Another An-other British fighter in the meantime mean-time had accounted for two more enemy scouts, which were sent swirling swirl-ing to destruction below. All this time the German aircrfat were continuing .their bitter battle among themselves, and several of them were seen to go down out of control before the engagement finally ended. The British leaders, by their good judgment, had led the Huns Into their own trap. This undoubtedly was a unique occurrence, oc-currence, but there are always plenty of thriHing incidents happening in the air these days. Take, for instance, the case of a British patrol of about eight battleplanes which fought and vanquished van-quished some forty enemy craft a few days liso. This British patrol, under command of a captain, was escorting a bombing squadron when two score enemy machines were encountered. j The British fighters and the enemy j immediately raced in for the attack, at-tack, j FIERCE FIGHT STARTED IN AIR. Within a few seconds a fierce fight j was in progress and the great fleet of nearly half a hundred airships were swirling and diving madly against one another, while their machine guns joined in the vicious chorus that swept down to the troops on the ground like the noise from scores of I steam trip hammers. The British outmaneuvered and outfought the enemy, and maiiy of the Germans were sent spinning away. Whether they were merely frightened, or were out of control. It was impossible to say, but at the conclusion of the fight four German machines lay in crumpled masses on the earth, and another had gone down In flames. Almost daily one hears of experiences experi-ences in which airmen have fought a magnificent battle against heartbreaking heart-breaking odds. Such was the case of a pilot and observer, who, while flying in a battle plane, were cut off from their patrol and were attacked by four enemy machines. The British pilot fired 200 rounds into one of the hostile planes which was "seen to crash. His observer also got In a good burst of fire at another German at close range with a similar result. That left two of the enemy and they were joined by a third scouting machine, ma-chine, which began firing at the British Brit-ish plane from above. The observer was shot and killed. The pilot spun his machine down to a height of 2000 feet, with the scout still on his tail. At that height the British aviator turned and attacked at-tacked the German so fiercely that the latter was driven off. The British Brit-ish pilot then succeeded in getting his machine to his own lines, with his dead comrade strapped in the seat. HUN AIRMAN IS BROUGHT DOWN. The other night a British flyer brought down an enemy bombing machine, ma-chine, by the aid of searchlights operating op-erating from the ground. Night lighting is a supremely dangerous thing, which is seldom practiced, and the correspondent can recall no other case ot an enemy plane being shot down along the front .under similar conditions since the war began, although al-though the defenders of London have accomplished this. The British aviator in question was a member of a patrol and saw a Hun ' plane which had been picked up by a searchlight. The Briton climbed t toward the enemy, the operators of (Continued on Page Four GE1I AVIATORS ATTACK EACH OTHER (Continued from Page One.) the searchlight meanwhile keeping the German carefully covered while the British machine was left in darkness. The German was blinded by the brilliant bril-liant glare, and the attacking plane got within twenty-five yards before it opened fire. At this distance he poured a stream of bullets into the enemy craft, which rocked about in distress a moment mo-ment and then dropped. As it fell, flames broke out and it shot across the night sky like a great meteor. Collisions in the air have passed the stage of novelty, but they still are rare enough to excite comment even among the fliers. A few days . ago a British apd a German machine crashed into each other during a fight, and the German was entirely destroyed. The British pilot had dived down onto a formation of enemy en-emy scouts, and, after shooting one out of control, turned to attack another, an-other, which was on his tail. He maneuvered until he succeeded, in-turn, in-turn, in getting on the enemy's tail, and firing at it at close range. The enemv turned to the left and then sharply to the right, causing the British machine to collide with it. TOP OF PLANE IS RIPPED AWAY. then paddled across with the observer obser-ver watching to see that he came to no harm. Bv now they were almost perishing with cold, in their half-naked condition condi-tion and so made off as fast as possible, pos-sible, continually stumbling over a wire. A sentry, who apparently was French, challenged them, but as they were not sure whether he was French or German, the observer, answered: "Pardon," and they ran for their lives. By following a light from an aviation avia-tion lighthouse, they finally arrived at a village where they found French soldiers, who conducted them to the French commander. They arrived at the end of their journey at 4 o'clock in the morning, two days after then-start then-start from their broken machine, in a greatly exhausted condition. place and proceeded toward the allied lines. They reached a river which thev followed for some time, having to get through numerous barbed wire entanglements which cut them wickedly. wick-edly. Thev then made for the woods, but here thc.y were challenged and fired at, but - they could not tell whether the sentries were German or B'rench. After this they kept In the open, hiding every now and then in the long grass, when troops were observed. During the whole of this time they were fired at occasionally by rifles and machine guns. The next obstacle was another river. The pilot was a poor swimmer, and so the observer swam the river to see if there were any wire entanglements en-tanglements in it. He found it clear and returned for his companion, who The top of the German plane was ripped away and the British machine was turned upside down by the impact. im-pact. The unlucky Boche went down like a stone, but the British pilot was able to right his plane and get home safely. A remarkable 'narrative of the escape es-cape of two British aviators from German territory, after their machine had crashed, has just reached the correspondent. The incident began on the night of May 27, when a pilot and observer started out on a bombing bomb-ing expedition. Their experience ended at a village in French territory. It was about 10 o'clock at night when tho two Britons embarked on their bombing expedition. They were flying over enemy territory when their machine was hit by an antiaircraft antiair-craft shell which caused their engine to cut out. The pilot, realizing that the dropping of a flare would attract the attention of the enemy, essayed a landing in the dark. This difficult task he accomplished, although so severe se-vere was the blow when they struck the ground the observer was rendered unconscious for a few moments. When he recovered, the two men started off toward the southwest. Reaches Battery. After about a half hour's walk they reached a Germany battery of heavy-guns. heavy-guns. They managed to pass through these, crossing over one of the gun emplacements, an continued running and walking alternately toward the southwest, with the enemy on every side. Soon they came to a communication trench, where they could hear the Germans taJking. For a considerable time thev had to lie down, until quiet was restored in the trench. They then pushed forward toward the front line. They negotiated trenches successfully suc-cessfully and came to the barbed wire entanglements. Here their big aviator suits, in which they were bundled bun-dled up like polar explorers, became too heavy and they had to take them off and leave them on the wire. By this time dawn was breaking; so they crawled through a hedge in No Man's Land and remained hidden there. They had only one stick of chocolate between them for food and no water, and before the day was out they were suffering bitterly from hunger ana thirst. From their hid- i ing place they could see German shells burs ring several kilometers away in the direction of the French lines and they knew that 'here these shells were landing must - be friendly terri- , tory. |