WAR'S GREATEST SPORT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16026, 18 September 1915, Page 2 (Supplement)

WAR'S GREATEST SPORT.

SHOOTING AT AIRMEN.

"ARCHIBALD" AT WORK. British Headquarters, France, July 25.— A crack and a'. "whisjFi through the air - No sound is more familiar at the front, where the artillery is never silentthe sound of a shell • breaking from a gun breaking from a gun muzzle and its shrill flight toward the enemy's line to pay the Germans back for some shell they have sent.

Only this whish did not pass otit over the landscape in a long parabola or toward the German lines. It went right up into the heavens at about the angle of a skyrocket it was Archibald who was on the job.

Six or, seven thousand - feet over the British trenches there was something as big as your hand against the light blue of the summer sky. This was the target — German aeroplane. By the cut of its wings Vou knew it was a Taube, just as you know a meadow lark from a swallow.

If the planes might fly as low as they pleased, they might know all that was going on over the lines. They must keep up so high that through the aviator's glasses a mail on the road is the size of a pin-head. To descend low is as certain death as to put your head over a parapet of a trench when the enemy's trench is only a hundred yards away. ■ There are dead lines in the air no less than on the earth.

Sets the Dead Line. Archibald, the anti-aircraft gun, sets the dead line. He watches over it as a cat watches a mouse. The trick of sneaking up under cover of a noon day cloud, and all the other man-bird tricks he knows.

A tcouple of seconds after that crack a tiny puff of smoke breaks about'.a hundred yards behind the Taube. A soft thistle blow against the blue it seems at t-hatr altitude but it wouldn't if it were about your ears. Then it would sound like a bit of dynamite on an anvil struck by a hammer, and you would hear the whizz of scores of bullets and fragments about your ears.

The smoking brass shell-case is out of Archibald's steel throat, and another shell case with its charge slipped in its place and started on its way before the first puff breaks. The aviator knows what is coming. He knows that one means many once he is in range.

Archibald rushes the fighting; it js the business of the Taube to side step. The aviator cannot hit back " except through his allies, the German batteries, on the earth. They would take care of Archibald if they knew where he was. But all- that the aviator can see is mottled landscape. From his side Archibald flies no goal flags. He is one of ten thousand tiny objects under the aviator's eye.

: Archibald is the vagabond of the army lines. Locate him— he is gone. His home is where night finds him and the day's duties take him. He ig the only gun which keeps regular hours like a Christian gentleman.

~^ T hy he was named Archibald nobody knows, but if there were ten . thousand anti-aircraft guns in the British Army, every one would be known as an Archibald. - Easy for the Airman.

It was pie in those days for the Taubes. It was easy to keep out of the range of both rifles and guns and observe well. If the Germanis did not know the progress of the British retreat from on high it was their own fault. Now .the business of firing at Taubes is left entirely to Archibald. When you see 'how hard it is for Archibald, after all his practice, to get a Taube, you understand how foolish it was for the field guns to try to get one.

Archibald, who is quite the swellest thing in the army, has his own private car, built especially for him. While the cavalry ■ horses back of the lines grow sleek from inaction, the aeroplanes have taken their place.

Is the sport of war dead Not for Archibald. Here you see your target, which is so rare these days when British infantrymen have stormed and taken trenches without ever seeing a German — and the target is a bird, a man-bird. Puffs of smoke, with bursting hearts of death, are clustered around the Taube. They hang where 'they broke in the still air. One follows another in quick succession,,' for more than one Archibald is —before your entranced eye.

You are staring like the crowd of a country fair at a parachute act. For the next puff may get him.' Who knows this better than the aviator? He is likely an old hand at the game; or, if he isn't, he has all the experience of other veterans to go by. His sense is the same as that of the escaped prisoner who runs from the fire of a guard in a 'zig-zag course, and more than that. If a puff comes near on the right he turns to the left; if one comes near on the left he turns to the right; if one comes under he rises; over, he dips. This means that the next shell fired at the same point will be wide of the target.

Hard to Hit & . 'Plane. Looking through the sight it seems easy to hit a 'plane. But here's the difficulty. It takes two seconds, say, for the shell to travel to the range of the 'plane. The gunner must wait for its burst before he can spot his shot. Ninety miles an hour is a mile and a-half a minute. Divide that by 40 and you have about a hundred yards the 'plane has travelled from the time the shell left the gun muzzle till it burst. It becomes a matter of discounting the aviator's speed and guessing from experience which way he will turn next. That ought to have got him —the burst was right under him. No! He rises. Surely that one got him, any way. The puff is right in front of the Taube, partly hiding it from view. You see the 'plane tremble as if struck by a violent gust of wind.

"Close!" Within thirty or forty yards, the telescope says. But at that range the naked eye is easily deceived about distances Probably some of the bullets have cut his 'plane. But you must hit the man or his machine in a vital spot in order to bring down your bird. A British aviator the other day had a piece of shrapnel jacket hit his coat, its force spent, afid roll into his lap. The explosions must be very close to count. It is amazing how much shell fire an aeroplane can stand. Aviators are accustomed to the whizz of shell fragments and bullets, and to have their 'planes punctured and ripped. Though their engines are put out of commission, and frequently they are wounded, hey are able to volplane back to the cover of their own lines.

The other day, in the communicating trench between the frontal and support trenches, British shells were screaming overhead into the German trenches, and German shells were screaming overhead into the British trenches. It was a pretty lively half-hour. Four or five thousand feet up were two British 'planes, with a swarm of puffs from Geriman shells around them. Two or three thousand feet higher was a German 'plane. They maintained their relative altitudes and kept on with their work, each spotting the bursts of the shell fired by its side and correcting the gunner's aim by wireless.