Feats of Australian Flying Men

Sun (Christchurch), Volume IV, Issue 1164, 3 November 1917, Page 4 (Supplement)

Feats of Australian Flying Men

== 55 whose work came to the ears 55 °f *h e Australian Forces when == tney arr ' vei ' i n France was a 55 young officer of the Royal Flying = I— Corps in the Ypres salient. It :s: was in the early days of the == Somme offensive, shortly after the British had == made their first successful raid on the German __ sausage balloons, writes C. E. W. Bean, the s=s Australian war correspondent. '~ Before the end of June, 191G, the common 55 thing was to see the sky above the German line 55 dotted with seven or eight balloons; while bcSS hind our lines there were two or perhaps three. 55 In the last week of June the British suddenly raided the German balloons with aeroplanes, zrz firing a new inflammatory bullet. Such a mim--55 Dcr were put down in flames that from this =n day for a considerable time the German sky was 55 " desert info which at rare intervals a very dis--55 tant balloon would creep hesitatingly to be = pulled down every few minutes. Raiding them ssr under these conditions was difficult, but it was 55 done. fllilllllllllililllilflllllillllH

In one of these raids opposite Ypres the airman approached a German balloon which was : being drawn down under such a barrage of • shrapnel that it seemed impossible to get near j it. Bv the time he was over it it was within 300 feet of the ground. In the midst of the : barrage he pretended that one of the shells had j hit him, and came side-slipping down towards ' the earth. The anti-aircraft gunners stopped at ,■ once, as did everyone else, to see him fall. As he came close to the balloon he righted his machine, fired into the balloon and brought it \ down burning, and got clear away before the Germans had time to realise what had been done. The same trick has been played often . enough since—we watched a German do it near ; Bapaume. But that was the first time we heard of it. The man who did it and was decorated , for it was a Victorian. , There was one of whom Australians perhaps 1 have never heard, who came out of the Australian Force into the Royal Flying Corps and left a grand name amongst those who knew him • —Captain Shepherd, D.5.0., M.C. No story of . him was finer than that of his last fight. On i lllfllil!IIIISII!lllllillil!lllll!ll!lllllllllllllllll!lll!!lli!IIS!l!H

Fascination of Attacking German Infantry

returning from leave he heard that his best z^z friend had "gone west," as they say, three days ss before. His friends tried to dissuade him from SB doing anything rash, but the next day when ;^s he was out leading three other 'planes 12 Ger- SB mans appeared and he drove straight into the sr thick of them. It was a wild fight, but they got 7 him, and the Army lost a magnificent airman. sl™ Another Australian soldier whose name ought P" - ' to live in the annals of Hying was Second-Lieut. == Wilfred Graham Salmon, who, as the merest ESS novice, went by himself straight into the heart r== of the 20 odd huge German 'planes which raided sj London last June, and who, when hit, managed SS to guide his machine to within a few hundred yards of his aerodrome before the brave effort SB ended and he crashed. SB But the pace of the life fascinates them— E5 chasing the Germans up their trenches, diving SB on small parties in shell-holes and trying to SS bomb them, finally working low along their rss roads over transport or marching infantry. The S3 fascination of the fast and furious life gets hold SB of some men until they want to spend every day r=: out there scurrying low over the forbidden ~ country. as iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin