AN AIR COLLISION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 13967, 28 September 1918, Page 2 (Supplement)

AN AIR COLLISION.

FATE OF TWO ENEMY PLANES. Have you lain in a cabin when the sea is smooth and listened to the steady pulse of the engines and felt their vibration running right through you'! If so, you know pretty well what flying is like in calm weather. (In rough weather the sea and the air cannot be compared, being totally different. -But this is beside the mark.) Just the shiver of the racing giant as we surge across the still sky, deafened by his ceaseless drone. The air pressed home against our faces. The chill of a glacier creeping relentlessly into every joint and muscle, and the sinking sun playing on shiny fabric and varnished woodwork. Glancing out along the plane, I watch the wing-tip whipping like a whalebone. The conditions, with the exception of the temperature, do not change as we climb. I The exception grows colder and colder. J Ico forms on my mouth and my fingers lose their feeling. My knees become linden ana 1 hurt when I touch them if osly with the cuff of my gauntlets. 'Tlow nasty to fall now," I think, and turn away and search the distance with

my «yes. "We sight three Boche biplanes five < minutes later approaching the lines from ' the east about a thousand feet beneath'} our level, and, having the sun dead be- j ' hind us, turn and fly downhill towards { them. ' Tho enemy are close together, evi- ' dently on the prowl for stray machines. "I I have a few seconds to spare and conse- * crate them to mv machine-gun. Every- . thing seems all right. I turn round and i nod to 0.0. "B." Flight, who smiles 1 ' back at me through his goggles as he: ' pushes our nose still further down. I ! Our quarry is now less than 250 yards j away. I don't think they have seen us yet, and squint along the sights at the j nearest machine. Not much allowance ( necessary, I say to myself. . . . Half a second. . . . One hundred yards at, the most. I , I sit tight with my knees pressed to-1 gether and my feet apart. Elbows on : the side of the nacelle, and I squeeze the , trigger. Twenty-five rounds. A spurt of { soot-covered smoke from my target tells its tale, and the machine slips away on , one wing. I j I seek the other two, but cannot find ( them. I struggle to my knees and strain < over the side. For a moment all I see is ] a patchwork of green and yellow fields.; ( Suddenly, right below, I see a sight that! < sickens. Five hundred feet or more be- j neath us, rapidly falling, are two white I ( aeroplanes locked together. Squares of j i white fabric flap over and over in their' { wake. i Like a leaf-laden twig from a tree, the < two biplanes spin round. At the sound 1 of our machine-gun the two pilots had 1 swerved and collided. i I We turn round into the ran and I to. i load. 1