GREAT AIR ACTIVITY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12063, 19 July 1917, Page 5

GREAT AIR ACTIVITY.

foresi ia do wing t portentous EVENTS-!' MACHINES NUMBER THOUSANDS. brittsii superiority. United Service. (Received Julv If). D.20 a.m.') LONDON, July IP. There is iremendous ;iir activity on nil the. fronts. Machines arc now reckoned in thousands where they were in tens nt. the beginning of the war. The .stiMggle is fioreest on the Flemish const, where a colossal British air offensive foreshadows portentous events. Swnrms of British machine? are raining bombs tiny and night, on German militnry works, communication dumps and depots. While the, British are using all types of machines, the Germans apparpntly pin their t'iiith to the large two-engined Gothn bat.tlpplanp.« k of which new squadrons are constantly appearing oil tho west front and in Flandpra. Numerous machines have been withdrawn from the Russian front. The Germans undoubtedly arp making the boldest- hid for air supremacy, but British comm\init|iips reveal the fact that the enemy is unable to hold iiii own against the British pilots. BRITAIN'S NEW TRIPLANES. HUNS PAINTING MACHINES ALL COLOURS. Mr Bench Thomas, the war correspondent of thp London "Daily Mail," recently wrote from the west front: - I went- up to-day 1o an aerodrome to watch our new fighting aeroplanes shoot out to battle and return homo again alter their duels'. The waiting hours were spent in seeing all the apparatus of lightinp; in the air and in hearing tales of this mail's triumphs and that man's fate.

"Wo have never before hit the German tiO hard or so harassed him by day and night. A night or two ago our men broke up thrco trains near Douai, one after the other, with bombs chopped from a couple of hundred feet, and so terrified were tho soldiers with thp rattle of machine guns that tho attackers escaped with scarcely an attempt at resistance. A flay later two of our fighting aeroplanes which had sought thp Germans in vain for several previous days .suddenly came upon a fleet of fourteen Our pair hesitated as littlo as the destroyers Broke and Swift, though they were struck with amazement at the spectacle, for the Germans had painted their machines wery sort of colour. Apparently to add terror to the spectacle, some were scarlet and some picked out in fantastic patterns. Otir pair charged this motley group, broke up the formation and sent, two crashing to the ground. It is onh men who return victorious who ran tell the tale of their fights. What, of the men who do not return? I can at least say that: that though our machines are all day busy in the air abovo the enemy's country, they seek many moro opponents than will face them, and the enemy's purely fighting machines are Enormously greater than ours. His plan when he attacks is to mass his plane against a single observer, knowing that most observing planes are no match for a fighter.

It is inevitable that such attacks should bo the. battlesv-thieflv seen by infantry in our trenches. They d.o not see the sixty tons of bombs dropped at

night miles over the enemy's lines; they seldom see our fighting men's pursuit of tho Germ nil fighters or watch our triplnnes towering and stooping and chafing. "As soon a.s I saw one of these after me I thought it host to come down," said a very dashing German pilot who dodged our air patrols and got through miles behind our line, and down ho came.

"We hold again the mastery of the. Whether wo keen it depends, first and foremost, on the activity of tho factories at home.