Jack wondered how successful he would be when the time came for him to try this necessary evolution, which some day when in action and wishing to escape from an enemy might be the means of saving his life.
Tom was next put to work on other even more dangerous tactics, all of which have to be learned at the French aviation schools. Finally, when the pilot is deemed properly qualified, he may be sent to the fighting front, there to take his place with the veterans in the art, who have perhaps won their right to be called “ace,” because they have already brought down at least five enemy machines, and can prove each and every encounter.
“Corkscrew looping” was not so very difficult for Tom, although generally considered so by most aspirants for honors.
Only the very best pupils are considered fit subjects for the most advanced course, known as the “vrille,” but so ambitious a student as Tom Raymond would not be satisfied without attempting it.
This manoeuvre consists in a series of spiral movements constituting a rapid descent. The plane is tipped at an acute angle, and set to spinning on one wing. An accomplished aviator will take as many as eight of these speedy spirals, one after the other, and thus fall a distance of some five thousand feet, when he can suddenly recover, and fly away in safety from the flock of enemy machines by which he had been suddenly beset high in the air.
It is a manoeuvre full of danger to the novice, and a number of ambitious aviators have lost their lives in trying to accomplish it. Tom was one of those who mastered the feat, just as his far-seeing instructor believed he would be. Before he left the school at Pau he was able to do the “vrille” wonderfully well, and thus became an object of admiration and envy to the American colony of intending fliers.
One day there unexpectedly turned up there an old friend from the other side of the Atlantic—no other than Dawes, whom they had left working steadily away at the Government aviation school in Virginia. The boys were delighted to see him again, and during the remainder of their stay at Pau the trio were much in one another’s company.
Jack continued to make steady progress, although it was evident that he would never be in the same class as his more brilliant chum. Finally their eagerness to get nearer the front was rewarded, for they received permission to go to another aviation field.
This was also in southern France, at Casso, on the shores of a long lake less than an hour from Bordeaux. Here the Flying Corps has a range of its own, with a number of captive balloons and a series of moving targets out on the lake.
The pupil is taken up in a double-seated plane, and operates the quick-firing gun or, as the French call it, a “mitrailleuse.” At first it is exceedingly difficult to shoot down from a rapidly moving plane, but after considerable practice the eye becomes educated to the changing perspective, when the airman finds it as easy to register hits as though he were upon the solid earth.