BIRDS DIVE-BOMBED PLANE

Mt Benger Mail, 10 September 1941, Page 1

BIRDS DIVE-BOMBED PLANE

DELIBERATE ATTACK BY EAGLES CRASHED MACHINE, Kll.l INC PILOT

-vfter twenty years of intensive development of civil aviation, culminating in the British skies becoming a vast aerial battleground, birds are rather less perturbed by aircraft than tiiey are by the sight of a man with a gun. Indeed some have actiifiliy attacked aircraft and brought mem down, which is more than any bird has ever done to a man

wiui a gun. ■ Ret us look at a few known instances of the growth of this sinneme contempt for aircraft among the aborigines of the skies. in the last war pheasants were the best predictors of an Reaching aircraft. Roosting mwgly in the hr cuvvrls of Kehi ana hast Anglia, they heard the a t>n reaching throb of Zeppelin engines- long before human ears could detect a sound and crowed (heir alarm. Short-Lived Panic

Our anti-aircraft gun stations ■blessed them as gratefully as the Romans blessed the geese. It was even suggested that each battery should keep a pen of pheasants. Wild geese and ducks on the vast coast scattered belter- skelter for miles when an aeroplane roared over. Grouse became wild as hawks Partridges cowered more closely than ever they had done beneath the fleeting shadow of a peregrine. This panic among the birds lasted a short time only. Most species Occam e accustomed to aircraft even more quickly than a great many human beings. •' be tael i., 1 11:1 1 birds regard aeroplanes from Comuiffereuce, curiosity, belligerent ■•mi fear. As for curiosity, 1 Dunk the best examnle is that oven by Major (J. C. Turner, die well-known writer on aviad°u, wh 0 records that when he

was flying slow machines to r ranee in the last war, peewits or green plover often kept pace with him, flying alongside or just ahead and seeming to peer into tlie machine. They wore usually in pairs, and it. happened so often that Major Turner says:

‘it may have been chance, but it seemed intentional.” The late Colonel Miuchin, the famous imperial Airways pilot, r had a more hair-raising experience in lU2(j when he was flying a iinslol Bloodhound from London to Cairo. off the Greek coast an enorm - -gl? dropped from the clouds, flew close alongside the aircraft, only a few yards to starboard,” ana eyed the machine so grimly that iVlr Mayer, of the Bristol Aircraft Comnaiiy, picked up a v erey light pistol to defend himself . Pilot Struck on Head The Air Ministry isued a notice in Ihb4 which warned all aviators in the Near and Middle East to Ay above kites and eagles, as tiicy invariably dived when search or angry. It was about that

i ear that Prince George Bibesco nought a tri-motor all-steel passenger aeroplane, built to carry oixteen pasengers and then about me biggest aircraft of its kind in me world., 1 went for a trip in A with Lord Sempill and Sir -Ban Cobham, and when we were •veil over Reading, 1 said to Cob■am ; "Aolhiiig snort ox uu antiaircraft shell would fetch this mmg out of the skies. ” i nree weeks later a couple of eagies dive-bombed it near Allah- ■ uad 111 India and crashed it, nilniig the pilot and injuring some of the crew. The flrst flew •R a j gut into the middle engine wane the second dived from 10,>/.jU feet and went through the °mci wing like a stone, ripping a great hole. This was undoubteda deliberate attack.

.u tiring the Italian campaign in -ebysnna an eagle dived straight ■ t a fiat fighter near Addis Ababa. The pilot gave it a must irom his machine-gun, but me bird smashed the windscreen, sirueiv him on the head and bioi ght him to earth. in February last year another eagle crashed an aeroplane at moj feet over Dimboola, in Australia. No sooner was the story mu than the Royal Canadian Air roree capped it off by untioiineuig that one of their big flying.nails had been crash-dived into Die water oil Grey Point, Vau-

couver, by a wild duck. It -truck the pilot in the face and ■tunned him. Ip this case it was thought the duck w - as terrified and struck the machine by accident, whereas it seems undoubted that the attacks by eagles ■ m.e been intentional.