Air Men o' War

by Boyd Cable

And yet, if those men had known, they would have cheered the man passing over them, cheered him for as plucky a man as ever flew—and that is saying something. If they knew, so often if they knew—but at least I can let them know something of this particular story.

The Flight went out as usual on "o.p." (offensive patrol), which, again as usual, had taken them well over Hunland. For the first half-hour they had a dull time, seeing no Huns about and having no more than the normal amount of Archie fire to dodge. Then the Flight Leader spotted a string of dots to eastward, and on counting them and finding they numbered something round a dozen to fifteen, concluded they were Huns. He ensured the Flight's attention to the matter, and then pointing his machine straight at the enemy, and after glancing round to make sure the Flight were in correct formation, began to climb them steadily up and towards the oncoming hostiles. He kept a close watch on the enemy, because he knew that the Squadron to which he belonged and the type of machine they flew had a name apparently discouraging to the Huns' fighting inclinations, and he was afraid that, even with more than two to one in their favour, they might on recognising the Flight avoid action and clear off. The Flight had already burnt a good hour's petrol and had some miles to go back home, and this did not leave a very great margin for a long pursuit and perhaps a prolonged fight. But this time the Huns showed no sign of shirking the fight, and came driving straight west on a course which must very soon bring them into contact with the Flight. As they swept closer it was seen that the hostile fleet was made up of three two-seater machines and a dozen single-seater fighting scouts, and just before they came close enough for action "Ailie" Arrowman, the Flight Leader, noticed something else that made him decide very quickly to concentrate the Flight's frightfulness on the two-seaters. The three were bombers, and from their slow and heavy flight obviously fully loaded with bombs, and from the direction they were taking were clearly out on a bombing raid over the British lines.

Now these Hun raids and bomb-droppings had been becoming unpleasantly frequent for a little time before this, and all our patrols had special orders to keep a sharp look-out for bombers and make things as hot for them as possible. The Hun was coming to specialise on rapid dashes over our lines, the hurried dropping of their eggs, and a hasty bee-line flight for home. Our infantry and our batteries were a good deal annoyed by these attentions, and naturally and very simply wanted to know why our flying men didn't "stop these blighters coming and going as they liked." This, of course, is a delusion of the men on the ground. The Huns were very far from doing as they liked, but since the air (for flying purposes) is twenty odd thousand feet high, and as long as the line, it takes a lot of policing against tip-and-run raids, especially when you remember that machines can pass within quite a few hundred yards of each other and never know the other is there. The groundlings don't recognise these facts, much less the incidental possibilities of Huns sneaking over under cover of clouds and so on, and it must be confessed the airmen, as a rule, don't take many pains to enlighten them, even when they do get talking together. On the ground, again, they know nothing of the Hun bombers chased back and brought down well behind their own lines, and nothing of the raids which are caught and interrupted, as the one I'm telling of was about to be.

All this is by the way, but it explains why Ailie was specially keen to out the bombing machines first of all, and also why the bombers at the first sign of attack on them dropped their noses and went off at a rush, and the Hun fighters hurriedly dived in to divert the Flight and force a fight with them. We need not at the moment follow the details of the whole fight, but see rather how the one man Ailie fared in it. But, incidentally, it may be mentioned that the rest of the Flight sank one bomber and chased the other down to the ground, fought the escort and sank three of them at a cost of no more than one pilot wounded, a great many bullet holes in the machines, and one badly crippled and just able to reach and land on our side of the lines.

Ailie went down in a hurricane dive on the first bomber, and since he was much faster than the big machine, especially with it carrying a full load, he caught it up rapidly, and bringing his bow gun into action commenced to hail a stream of lead on it. The gunner of the two-seater began to fire back at Ailie, but as his pilot at the same time was swerving and swinging his machine to dodge the streaking bullets, he spoiled the gunner's aim and few of the bullets came dangerously close to Ailie. But two of the enemy scouts had seen Ailie's charge, had promptly swung and dived after him, and, following hard astern, opened fire in their turn. Ailie caught up the two-seater, swooped down under her, throttled back to keep her pace, pulled down the gun fixed on his top plane, and started to pelt bullets up into the underbody hurtling along above him. The two Hun scouts dropped to his level and followed, shooting close and hard, and Ailie, finding their bullets snapping and smacking on his planes, was forced to swerve and duck and at last to turn sharp on them. Either he was the better pilot or his was the handier machine, because in a few seconds he had out-manœuvred them and driven them diving down ahead of him. He ripped a short burst into one, wheeled, looked round for sight of his two-seater and, sighting it tearing off at top speed, swung and, opening his engine full out, went racing after it. The two-seater flung himself into a spin and went twisting and spiralling wildly down, Ailie following close and shooting whenever he could bring his sights to bear. But again the renewed rattle of close machine-gun fire began, and he glanced round to find the scouts hot in pursuit again. This time they were not to be pursuers only, for another of the Flight leaped suddenly into the fight, rattled off a quick burst of fire, and in an instant had one of the enemy scouts plunging down helplessly out of control, whirled round and without a second's hesitation attacked the second. The Hun bomber, down to about 1,000 feet, flattened out and drove off east with Ailie still hard after him. He was getting angry now. Burst after burst of fire he had poured, as far as he could see, straight into the big machine, and yet it kept on apparently unharmed. But suddenly its tail flicked up, a wing buckled and tore loose, and it went down rolling and pitching, to crash on the ground.

Ailie swept over, leaning out and peering down on the heaped wreckage; but whatever triumph he might have felt was short-lived, for at that moment tat-tat-tat-tat went a gun close behind him and then the quicker closer rattle of double or triple guns. Ailie hoicked hard up in a swift climbing turn, whirled round, and just catching one of the enemy scouts in his sights, gripped the trigger of the firing mechanism. His gun fired—once—and stopped, although he still held the trigger hard gripped and it should have continued to fire. The target swept clear, and Ailie, after gripping and releasing quickly several times, knew his gun had jammed. The two hostiles reopened fire on him, and he swerved, straightened out and went off in a bee-line at top speed. He was not unduly alarmed, although his position, a bare 1,000 feet off the ground and therefore well within ground shooting range of rifles and machine-guns, with a jammed gun, and with two scouts hard after him, was uncomfortably risky. He was on a fast machine, so fast that he did not believe the Hun flew that could catch him; and he reckoned that in a straightaway flight he could drop the two sufficiently to be out of urgent danger from them. As he flew he leaned forward, wrenched back the cover over the breech of his gun and jerked the loading lever rapidly to and fro. But the jammed cartridge stayed jammed and Ailie felt a first qualm of fear, as he heard the guns behind him reopen fire and recognised that he was not gaining on his enemies. Another gun broke into the chorus, and Ailie glanced round to see another of his Flight diving in and engaging one of the enemy. The second one, a bright scarlet painted scout, kept on after him, caught him up and dived firing on him.

Then began a game that Ailie might remember in his nightmares for long enough. His machine was not doing her best, and the hostile fairly had the wings of him. Time after time the Hun swooped up over him and dived down, firing as he came. Ailie could only duck and swerve and dodge, some of his dives bringing him perilously close to the ground; and as he flew he wrenched and jerked at his gun's firing mechanism, snatched the Verey pistol from its rack, and with the butt tapped and hammered at the gun, hoping the jar might loosen the cartridge. He escaped touching the ground and crashing over and over again by bare feet; more than once he had to zoom sharply and just cleared low trees or even bushes that appeared suddenly before him; once his wheels brushed and ripped across the top of a hedge, and once again in a banking turn his heart stood still for a second that seemed an eternity, as he banked steeply and the machine side-slipped until his wing-tip, as it appeared to him, was touching the grass. And all the time, in dive after dive, his enemy came whirling down on him, the fire of his machine-gun clattering off burst after burst, and the bullets hissing past in flame and smoke or smacking venomously on the wings and body of Ailie's machine.

And through it all, flinging his machine about, twirling and twisting like a champion skater cutting fancy and fantastic figures, doing star-performance low flying that might have kept every nerve and sense of any stunt-artist flier occupied to the full, Ailie still made shift to spare a hand and enough eye and mind for the job of fiddling and hammering and working to clear his jammed gun—a gun that was not even in a convenient position to handle because, set above the left upper edge of his cockpit, it was very little below the level of his face and awkwardly high for his hand to reach. He gave up trying to clear it at last and turned all his attention to out-manœuvring his opponent. The Hun was above him, and every time he tried to lift his machine the Hun dived, firing on him, and drove him down again. He was too low to pick up or follow landmarks, so kept the westering sun in his eyes, knowing this was edging him west towards our lines. The Hun after each dive did a climbing turn to a position to dive anew, and each time he climbed Ailie made another dash towards the west. The Hun saw the move, and, to beat it, dropped his climbing-turn tactics and instead dived and zoomed straight up, dived and zoomed again and again. Ailie saw his chance and took it. He throttled hard back next time the Hun dived, and as the Hun overshot him and zoomed straight up, Ailie in two swift motions pulled the stick in, lifting sharp up after and under him, pulled down the top gun and fired point blank into him. The Hun whirled over, dived vertically, and in an instant crashed heavily nose first into the ground. And Ailie's top gun had jammed after about its tenth shot.

He flew on west, hardly for the moment daring to believe he had escaped, opening the throttle and starting to lift from his dangerous proximity to the ground mechanically, and with his mind hardly yet working properly. If he had not caught the Hun with that last handful of shots before his second gun jammed....

And then, almost before he had collected his wits enough to realise properly how close his escape had been, that same horrible clatter of machine-gun fire from the air above and behind him broke out, the same hiss and snap of bullets came streaming about him. For a moment he had a wild idea that his Hun had not actually crashed, but a glance round showed that it was no longer the brilliant red machine, but another, and again a fighting scout.