"That sounds interesting," said the commander.
"More," continued the chief. "It is necessary. Skill in the air nowadays means all the difference between life and death—-all the difference between success and defeat. I have an idea that we have come nearer to the limit of human possibility as regards speed in the air than many people think. Two hundred miles an hour may never be reached. But whether it is or not, we can get better and better results by paying more and more attention to the development of our aerial athletes.
"I look on flyers as athletes playing a game—-the greatest game the world has ever seen. The more expert we can make them individually, the better the service will be. A nimble flyer, a real star man, is almost sure to score off a less expert antagonist, even if the better man is mounted on an inferior plane. That has been proven to me beyond all possibility of doubt time and time again.
"I was once a football coach. My work here, so far as it touches men, is very similar to coaching work. It comes down to picking the good ones, sorting them out, weeding, weeding all the time. You like those particular three boys you referred to? Well, watch them. Give them chances. But don't be disappointed if they are not all world-beaters. And don't be surprised if some of the lot you think will stick at the steadier, plainer work turn out big. You never can tell."
Before the strain of expert acrobatics came careful training in machine-gunnery. The Brighton boys went through a course of study on land that made them thoroughly familiar with machine-guns of more than one type. Machine-guns, they found, were in all sorts of positions on the different sorts of machines.
"I wonder where they will put a rapid-fire gun next?" said Joe Little one day at luncheon. "Let's see. I saw one plane this morning that had a gun mounted on the upper plane, and fired above the propeller. Another next to it had the gun placed in the usual position in front, and fired through the propeller. Next I ran across a movable gun on a rotating base fixed at the rear of the supporting planes. Of course all of those big triple planes have the fuselage mounting, and I was surprised to see still another sort of mounting, a movable gun fixed behind the keel of one of those new English 'pushers,' just as I came in. It keeps a fellow busy to see all the new things here, and no mistake."
"Your talk is so much Greek to me sometimes, Joe," said Bob Haines. "You use so much technical language when you get going that you fog me. I can make a plane do what it is supposed to do, most of the time, but some of these special ideas floor me, and I am not ashamed to admit it."
"What is worrying you specially?" asked Jimmy Hill, smiling.
Bob was one of the soundest fliers of the six of them, but he was forever making hard work out of anything he did not understand from the ground up. Once he had mastered the why and wherefore, he was at peace, but if the reason was hidden from him he was never quite sure on that point.
"It is this," answered Bob. "Most all of the machines they have been putting me up against lately have been those speedy little one-man things—-the hunters. Now I understand all about the necessity for speed and agility in that type, and I can see that the fixed gun in front, sticking out like a finger in such fashion that you have to point the plane at a Boche to point the gun at him, is a thing they can't well get away from. That Hartford type of hunter just over from home is rigged up that way, and I can get the little gun on her pointed anyway I like. But all guns fixed that way fire through the propeller, and just exactly how all those bullets manage to get through those whirring blades without hitting one of them is not quite clear to me yet."