Air battle

“ The tactics of an air battle on a larger scale are much more complicated than those for single combats. A pilot must be prepared at every instant to change from the [Pg 247] offensive to the defensive and back again, to take lightning decisions, and to extricate himself from one part of the fight and sweep away to another, if by so doing he can save a friend or destroy an enemy. ”

“ As the struggle became more and more intense, so did the scene of it move higher and higher, prodded by an ever-growing capacity for climb and the ever-growing menace of the anti-aircraft guns. The average air battle of to-day begins at an altitude between 12,000 and 20,000 feet. ”

“ Such a battle in the clouds is on a plane that almost beggars description. Nothing resembling it has ever been known before in all the annals of history until the present world war broke out, and the airplane was perfected as it stands to-day.
This attack was even more tumultuous than the first had been. The planes tried dodging, and several tricks were brought to bear on either side; for it seems that every pilot has his pet theories as to how best to catch an opponent napping. Everything is fair, once the battle royal has started and German wit is matched against American, or French. ”

“ Imagine that a battle impends, and that the Commander-in-Chief of one army seeks news as to the movements of some division of his enemy; so he orders the air-scouts to ascend. But the wind may be blowing hard; and if it is, and the aeroplanes are only fair-weather machines, they will have to remain on the ground till the wind drops, and perhaps miss their greatest chance during a whole campaign. ”

“ Finally, the airman, not content with his own perpetual and deadly fighting in the air, fighting in which the combatants of all nations developed a daring beyond the dreams of any earlier world, began to take part in the actual land-battle itself, swooping on reserves, firing into troops on the march, or bringing up ammunition. ”

“ We are the sons of the Americans who fought through the First and Second and Third Air Wars, who reared this nation out of the blood of a thousand air battles until now its hundred air-cities hold in their power a third of all the world. And now that the rest of that world comes against us, the Last Air War begins. My word to you is this: Fight only as those men before you fought, and before tomorrow the European Federation fleet shall have been beaten back—or the last of our cruisers and our air-forts and ourselves will have perished! ”

“ Here high over the city, though, the shells of all the heat-guns that now were booming toward us could not reach us, and through battling ships and whirling beams and gloom of night we rushed westward over the giant air-city until in a moment more we were pausing over the western arsenals, and the western plaza where rested other massed cruisers of the great European battle-fleet. ”

“ In aerial war the stronger side, even supposing it destroyed the main battle fleet of the weaker, had then either to patrol and watch or destroy every possible point at which he might produce another and perhaps a novel and more deadly form of flyer. It meant darkening his air with airships. It meant building them by the thousand and making aeronauts by the hundred thousand. A small uninitated airship could be hidden in a railway shed, in a village street, in a wood; a flying machine is even less conspicuous. ”

“ Already several planes were in the air, bent on various missions. Here one had ventured over the enemy lines, and was circling high up, daring a Boche pilot to ascend and give battle. Another was striving to get above several sausage observation balloons that were rising back of the German lines, hoping to be able to drop a bomb with telling effect on one of the group.
These things always bring about fierce fighting in the air, and hardly a day passes without a number of machines on either side being shot down, the fate of their human occupants sometimes never wholly known. ”

“ It is always interesting to find out how a fight in the air looks to the people down below. I was told that the English machines had thrown bombs and that the aeroplane that had come down was still carrying its bombs. ”

“ Every great battle is now preceded and accompanied by a battle in the air, because if chasing or bombarding squadrons did not police the air before an attack, no photographs of the enemy's lines could be taken; and if they did not afford protection for the observers while the troops are engaged, the batteries would shoot and the infantry progress blindly. ”

“ In the dark our troops would creep forward, rush that trench, and dawn would find them dozing in their newly won quarters. The war had become a battle of entrenchments.
CHAPTER III. The Flying Men.
For ages man walked the earth.
To-day he is the only living creature that can travel in the air by other than its own substance.
'Till the Great War the aeroplane was a scientific curiosity. The Battle of the Nations blooded it; and its wonderful utility in speeding the end of the war has proved its right to be recognised as a distinct factor in human movement. ”

“ Liu said.
“There is no knowing how useful the aeroplane may be,” Ned said.
Then the machine was rolled back as far up the plateau as possible, the boys took their seats, and then they were lost in the dense clouds of smoke in the sky.
ILLUSTRATION No. 4 179CHAPTER XIV.—THE BATTLE IN THE AIR.
The smoke was driving fiercely through the green trees on the slope, and the line of fire was not far in the rear. Every moment the wind gained force, every minute the flames leaped higher and faster. ”

“ Blood of the mangled trainman, blood that the Carpenter shed!
"For your sake! For the world's sake, this!" he cried, and hurled another thanatos. "If ever war of liberation was holy, this is that war!"
Suddenly, through all the turmoil of shattering explosions, tossing air-currents and drifting, acrid smoke, he became conscious of a sudden, swift-flying pursuer.
By the light of the burning Plant, down there somewhere in the vapors of the thunderous Falls, he saw a hawk-like 'plane that swooped toward him with incredible velocity, savage and lean and black. ”

“ This aerial fighting, which will wax and wane, dying down only to be renewed with a greater fierceness, must precede the battles of land or sea; and so, while the aerial armies are struggling for supremacy, those moving upon the land, or the fleets steaming upon the water, will be manœuvring for position and creeping stealthily nearer. A conquest in the air, if it be decisive, may spell also a victory upon land and sea. A nation which has its air-fleet destroyed or crippled will lie helpless before the attacks of hostile craft, and will lose also the aid of its aerial scouts and spies. ”

“ In peace the airman sees this solid earth of ours as no one else sees it; and in war he makes acquaintance by day and night with all its new and strange aspects, amid every circumstance of danger and excitement, with death always at hand, his life staked, not only against the enemy and all his devices on land and above it, but against wind and cloud, against the treacheries of the very air itself. ”

“ It must have been an impressive sight for friend or foe to witness the departure of each aerial vessel on its venturesome mission. The bold plunge into space above the roofs of the imprisoned city; the rapid climb into the sky and, later, the pearl drop high in air floating away to its uncertain and hazardous haven, running the gauntlet of the enemy's fire by day or braving what at first appeared to be equal danger, attending the darkness of night. ”

“ Then the creatures of the high air answered to the battle, foretelling the destruction that would be done that day; and the sea chattered of the losses, and the waves gave heavy shouts keening them, and the water-beasts roared to one another, and the rough hills creaked with the danger of the battle, and the woods trembled mourning the heroes, and the grey stones cried out at their deeds, and the wind sobbed telling them, and the earth shook, foretelling the slaughter; and the cries of the grey armies put a blue cloak over the sun, and the clouds were dark; ”

“ The view, from the air, of a heavy bombardment, or of an infantry attack under cover of barrage fires, is a truly terrible spectacle, and in the air one has a feeling of detachment which is not easily overcome.
Yet it must be overcome, as I have said, and cannot say too many times for the benefit [188] of any young airman who may read this journal. During an offensive the air swarms with planes. They are at all altitudes, from the lowest artillery réglage machines at a few hundreds of metres, to the highest avions de chasse at six thousand meters and above. ”

“ Sometimes the winds would die away and the thick clouds lift, and we would go joyously to work on a morning of crisp, bright winter weather. Then we had moments of glorious revenge upon the crows. They would watch us from afar, holding noisy indignation meetings in a row of weather-beaten trees at the far side of the field. And when some inexperienced pilot lost control of his machine and came crashing to earth, they would take the air in a body, circling over the wreckage, cawing and [54] jeering with the most evident delight. ”

“ At first the idea of a machine for fighting only, was ridiculed. Even the Germans, who, in a military sense, were awake and plotting when other nations were dozing in the sunshine of peace, did not think ahead and imagine the aerial duel between groups of aeroplanes armed with machine-guns. But soon the mastery of the air became of paramount importance, and so the fighter was evolved. Nobly, too, did the men of all nations rise to these heroic and dangerous opportunities. ”

“ Our aviator swings free in a great circle, banks, and at top speed makes back to his air-line patrol, while the German Archies open up on him with redoubled violence, as, serenely confident, he hums along his way.
It is truly wonderful what a fire an aeroplane can pass through quite unscathed as far as actual hinderance to flight is concerned. Many a time you can count nearly two hundred wreathing balls of smoke in the track of [43] the machine, and yet it sails placidly onward as though the air were the native element of its pilot and the attentions of Archie nonexistent. ”

“ Then against our aerostat, and with the wind driving them clean overhead of us, come the antagonistic flying-machines. I incline to imagine there will be a steel prow with a cutting edge at either end of the sort of aerostat I foresee, and conceivably this aerial ram will be the most important weapon of the affair. When operating against balloons, such a fighting-machine will rush up the air as swiftly as possible, and then, with a rapid contraction of its bladders, fling itself like a knife at the sinking war-balloon of the foe. ”

“ A few days before I had been watching without emotion the bombardment of a German plane. I had seen it twisting and turning through the éclatements, and had heard the shells popping faintly, with a sound like the bursting of seed-pods in the sun.
My feeling was not that of fear, exactly. It was more like despair. Every airman must [136] have known it at one time or another, a sudden overwhelming realization of the pitilessness of the forces which men let loose in war. In that moment one doesn't remember that men have loosed them. He is alone, and he sees the face of an utterly evil thing. ”

“ Then, out of the icy void of the upper air-space, now roaring with their engines' clamour, the British plane shot earthward, down, down, rushing to destruction like a shooting-star, and crashed in the forest of Les Errues. ”

“ In seafaring men there is a temper of the sea, admired by all who have ever made acquaintance with it. Those who were privileged to watch the performance of our flying men in the war know that there is developed in them a temper not less remarkable and not less worthy of cultivation—the temper of the air. War in the air demands a quickness of thought and nerve greater than is exacted by any other kind of war. It is a deadly and gallant tournament. The airman goes out to seek his enemy: he must be full of initiative. ”

“ The weather has been bad for flying men. Impossible, one would say, looking up at the low-lying storm-clouds. Yet on the day of battle our airmen went out and, baulked of artillery work, flew over the enemy's country and spread terror there. It was a flying terror which, when told in the barest words of these boys, is stranger than old mythical stories of flying horses and dragons on the wing. Imagine one of these winged engines swooping low over one as one walks along a road far from the lines, and above the roar of its engine the sharp crack of a revolver with a bullet meant for you. ”

“ And at that moment, even as the European ships strove to mass together to escape from that great death trap of the air, the First Air Chief's ship was slanting up toward them, and now we needed no orders to follow as we raced up after him. Up until our great fleet rushing upward in a single mass was pouring up before us a third terrific fire of heat-shells which, added to that of the air-forts on either side, sent blinding death-flares dancing and leaping over all the mass of ships above us. ”

“ A whirr that sounded loud and insistent above the dull roar of the heavy guns, a sudden movement that quickly increased in velocity until the plane was bounding like a rabbit over the open ground, then an upward slant, a beautiful curve that left the ground behind, and another air pilot was off for the post of duty. ”