FLYING TO THE FRONT

Evening Star, Issue 16197, 19 August 1916, Page 2

FLYING TO THE FRONT

ADVENTUROUS VOYAGE,

a: CLE LINE FROM THE AIR.

'; V\ v. ;vo enabled to reproduce the foliW':i! article by Mr Gordon Brace, which .!.-'.' ..jX'-xed in the New York ' Tribune'i:—

Travelling from the heart-of England to the battle lines in Franc© dn one of His Majesty's fighting biplanes; returning in >a speedy scout monoplane—on these two voyages, when I passed first over peaceful rural England, ttren out above the blue of tlie Channel, where far below me a fleet of British battleships in cruising formation showed like moving grey shadows on the gleaming water, two great -facts came home to me. First, the realisation of what the. aeroplane means in modern warfare; and, second, the remarkable efficiency wliiph has been .attained by the Royal Flying Corps,.'proclaiming the progress made by Britain :n her struggle for the mastery of the sides. It was well before noon •vyhen I reached the great English Army aerodrome. A long row of new biplanes stood before the hangars in the huge level field. The sun was still engaged in.its daily battle with the morning mist. Occasionally the mist gaye way for a few seconds, and the golden rays flashed down the line of glistening white wings. "You. may choose whichever machine you like," the commandant said. "That makes it easy," I replied. "I'll go with the first pilot who is ready." it was, it happened, Lieutenant Mead. I had made a good choice. Lieutenant Mead is tall, young, with keen grey eyes—the type the R.F.C. invariably select for this important work. He inspired confidence ; and tins is a fijrave matter, for the more one travels by arr as a passenger, the more particular he becomes about his pilot. Our aeroplane, a new product of the Royal Aircraft Factory, stood ready, grey, compact, powerful. Her struts and cables were massive. Her two seats, arranged tandem older in the fusilagc, were roomy and comfortable. Her motor, when started, gave forth a pleasant, throaty roar.

We got into our caps ■ and pneumatic jackets, made fast our goggles, and climbed aboard. It is hard to describe the thrill which swept over me as we took the air. Looking down at the brown, cultivated spaces and the soft green of the meadows, it was hard to associate the. scene with war. Then, rudely, there would, appear grim barracks, blocked an against the beauty of it all. Somehow they did not compose with those peaceful iields, nor did the long procession of motor lorries and columns of marching troops crawling along the ribbons known as roads.

Then we camo into-the cooler air of the coast. Below us the sun and mist were dividing it evenly between them. This did not make for smooth sailing. Where there was sunlight the piano would sink abruptly into the tlunner air, then regain her lift as the icy breath of a cloudbank struck our faces. So we toro along through cloud and sunshine. Suddenly thero rose up far ahead an endless blue wall. Steel blue it was. Jt lay evenly across our patch, symmetrical, dark, sombre, with wide scallops of silver along the great upper border of it. These were white clouds with the sunlight on them. It was wonderful, as if a barricade had been stretched up and down the world—as if God had mercifully drawn a curtain over the terrible things that were going on behind that mystic drapery. I looked down. Thousands of fc-et below lay the coast defences. I may not write of them, but I know now what it would mean for the enemy to invade this little island. Then I turned my eyes ahead once more. There was no gradual entering into the strange element before us. Abruptly, as we swept over the line of white cliffs, we- were swallowed up in blackness. What liad seemed impassable was giving way before us. On and on we flew. There was nothing in front f of us, nothing behind us, nothing on either side. —Over the Channel.— I turned to Jook at Mead. Ho nodded, and nosed the machine down through the blue vapo';, until I looked over and saw, as if it were at the bottom of a deep well of light, the grey water cf the Channel. This grey surface was mottled here and there with patches of sunshine. Toy

boats ploughed along, leaving short white wakes. An occasional black smudge told of the presence, of cruiser or destroyer. Then the gloom engulfed us once more. These brief glimpses of the Channel occurred now and then until fully ha'f the distance had lvjcn traversed.

Once, when the darkness slowly yielded to t'hf light. I had a start. Almost directly under our craft appeared a. spot quite foreign to anything I had seen before. Gradually it assumed slender, cigarlike lines. As it became distinct the light plavcd on' the silver -envelope of one of Britain's dirigibles. She was 2,000 ft below, probably patrolling. And .she looked for all the world like a. great, sluggish fish nosing her way through the tea. of mist. As suddenly as we entered the darkness we emerged into the light of day. Below iu> the water ended in the pleasant sweep of the French coast, about eight miles distant. The rugged cliffs and the reaches of white sand seemed to hold a welcome. Came then an unkind shock. Without warning the revolutions of the engine dropped several hundred to the minute. Dropped far below riving speed; and slowly but surely we began to descend. Which was disconcerting, considering that we were flying in a land machine, with nothing to keep her afloat. Instantly Mead steered for the nearest po-'nt on the coast. Ho was quite cool and selfpossessed, even if the cliffs suddenly lost their beauty, and jutted, ugly and forbidding. For my part, I wasn't sure that I would net prefer to take my chances in the Channel. It seemed a bit hopeless either way. —A Hazardous Landing.—

Tho pilot calculated rapidly, then headed her toward the largest open space on the shore. It probably was the worst lauding spot in France, but he had no choice. It one last dive we tore over the coastline and down into a gullied cow pasture en a steep hillside. The plane missed a fence by less than a foot, and struck' the crest of the hill at a speed which Mead afterwards declared must have been 100 miles an hour. As the wheels came into contact with the earth we bounced high in the air and plunged on down tho iu.ll. Three times this occurred, and each time wc braced ourselves for the smash that seemed inevitable. But the wonderful construction of the machine us. With a final crazy lurch we left the last huniirjock, and alighted neatly in the mathematical centre of a slimy frog pond, while frightened cattle fled in every direction.

" Bit of luck," commented Mead, as ive climbed out and waded ashore. " Takes a good bus to stand that." I agreed, and also thought: "Takes a. good man to make such a landing without piling up." His first thought was to report to headquarters. Despite the isolation of the spot, two gendarmes were there within 10 minutes, and before half an hour had passed an armed guard from the French garrison of a near-by town was pacing up and down. A British -orderly appeared. He came from, an Australian hospital a mile away, and said : " 'Die colonel's compliments. Ho says lie can arrange communication for you, and will you join him at luncheon ?" It was amazing to find such an abundance of aid in so bkak a place. The attitude of the French showed how fully the military of the two nations are co-operating. Fh-3 commanding officer of the French garrison was most courteous, and plied us with offers of guards and assistance. Lorries were soon on the way from aviation, .quarters and also from a supply depot a few miles away, which indicated how effective is the system installed at the- front by the R.F.G.

Long before the tenders arrived Mead had discovered the source of the trouble. It was of a minor nature, and likely to occur in the very best of aeroplanes and automobiles. A'nut holding a. connection in the o>"- \re feed device had worked

loose, thereby reducing the flow qf petrol. Two minutes were sufficient to correct it. T.he machine was run out of the water under, her own power; and the only damage she sustainedj was \ the parting, of a cable, caused by,the shock of contact with the ground. Both the builder arid, the pilot had done their part to save the plane 1 *

-—A Clever Restart.— \Vhotr it came to getting • away agaiii Mead did what seemed impossible. lam fairly well aware of the requirements in the matter of making a start. And there wasn't a level spot in that whole pasture, let Mead selected a course where he had to dodge hummocks, and which gave him only about one-third of the proper space, took her jolting over the "rough ground, and plunged 0 g the cliff over the water. When we started lurching along on that get-away I think I came nearer to being scared than ever before. It did not seem a f if the machine could stand it, and if she did there was a question of whether enough speed could be attained to keep bci in the air. But we came through. The construction again proved its worth. The motor held to its task, and we were off to the main aviation base of the British Army in France. "

I had been gazing off to the right for some time, trying to make out a distant object which puzzled me. I gave it up and turned, quite abruptly, to the left. I looked down. I stared. "As far. as the eye could see over that vast expanse were what might be taken for small volcano-33.' Here, there, everywhere, the surface oi the earth opened, belched fortli n black substance, while an ominous cloud of smoke drifted lazily away, to be dissipated in the higher altitudes. My mind was slow to grasp the meaning of it—that this was the work of artillery. It resembled a series of subterranean explosions. Sometimes a score of them would occur in a comparatively small section, and the whole face of the earth seemed to quivei and heave. I could hear nothing, noi coud I, of course, see the shells. Only those mysterious upheavals and the accompanying bursts of dirt and smoke. —"Two Jagged Wounds."— Now and then, from a patch of woodland, the smoke would filter out. Thre« times in passing oyer villages I "saw buildings vanish as if by magic. Only the smoke remained.

And then—then came those two jagged wounds—those two ugly wounds from which the life-blood of nations is pouring. They ran side by side, now very close together, now diverging a bit, to become parallel further along. 'Sinister and ghastly, they stretched away into the distance. -And as if they were not raw enough, from time to time the shells tormented them, tearing vicious holes, and doubtless hurling human bodies into the air with the mud and smoke. ' I was glad I could not see that. And over the lines the steady patrol of the airmen. From what I saw of the artillery work I am sure that the British were sending over two shells to_ the Germans' one, and that they were doing enormous da'mage, especially those which were directed against the German trenches.

And so we camo at last to the headquarters of the R.F.C. It was pleasant, to glide down and land gently on that smooth green. To get away from the grim evidence of what was happening so few miles away. Now, less" than two months ago I visited that same aerodrome, and inspected the equipment. And there is no comparison between what I found there at the time of my first visit and what is there now. The improvement is amazing. The average machine in those hangars is better than the average German aeroplane. The results on that front prove this to be true. Nobody could look at that imposing array of battleplanes and scouts and bring a serious charge against the organisation and efficiency of the K.F.C. iri France. And they arc bringing down the enemy. They are getting in from 600 to 900 hours of actual flving each day, and they are not afraid. "When a man can get aboard an armed plane and scurry to an altitude of 5,000 ft in live minutesit is a token of accomplishment. And it is done there every day. The enthusiasm is tremendous. Every flyer is working constantly to improve hi's fighting powers. One aviator proudly exhibited a new gun-sight which he had invented. Another dwelt upon a theory whereby he hoped to get more revolution's from his engine, and so on. In a shed stood one of the "deadly" Fokkers, captured from the Germans. As I remarked in a previous article, thers was not a new idea in it. Just a lightlv-b-uiJt Morane copy. The British aviators were flying it about the aerodrome, just for a lark. They do not consider it safa enough for use in action. "The undeserved publicity which the Fokker received -was very disturbing to us," an important officer told me. "The virtues of the craft jvere terribly exaggerated. And it is a bad thing {or a man to go into the air iirmly convinced that the enemy has a machine far superior ta his, especially when our planes have been able to overcome the Fokkers right along." My return to England was made in a fast monoplane with Lieutenant Passant. It wa-s swift and absurdly easv.