FRENCH AIR CHAMPION.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 862, 14 November 1916, Page 11

FRENCH AIR CHAMPION.

GUYNEMER'S GREAT EXPLOIT. Three German aeroplanes brought Mown in two minutes and 30 seconds | by a stop-watch is the latest exploit jof Second-Lieutenant Georges Guy- , nemer. Incidentally Lieut. Guynemer, who is known as "King of the 'Aces," fell 10,000 ft, but escaped unj hurt. Guynemer went to the assistance of i a comrade who was hard pressed by five German machines. He brought | down two of them within 30 seconds, and then rising overtook a Liird, | which he shot down two minutes later. He was looking for the re- , maining two German machines when la shell burst beneath him and strip- ■ ped the left wing of his aeroplane of every stitch of its covering. He plunged giddily earthward.

"1 gave myself up for lost," he I said, "but after falling 5000 ft I thought 1 would struggle all the , same. The wind blew me over our lines, and like a flash I had a picture of my funeral and all ray good I friends following the coffin. I continued to fall and the levers wouldn't I budge. In vain I pushed and pulled jto right and left. 1 made a last desIperate effort, all to no purpose, and ' then I saw the field toward which I jwas dashing down. Suddenly some- ] thing happened and my speed diminj ished. Then there was a resounding 'crash and a violent shock. When I recovered my wits I was in the midst I of the fragments of my machine and practically uninjured. How am I j.still alive, I asked myself. I believe it was the straps which held me to jiny seat which saved me."

On September 1(5 Lieutenant Guynemer was officially credited with his sixteenth enemy aeroplane. A week later he was reported to have j brought down his seventeenth and j eighteenth. He was wounded in a j light in the air last March, and in | subsequent flight was forced to descend between thNPrench and Ger- : man trenches, but escaped.