Bob Haines had been on a photographing trip, and had earned great commendation from the observation officer whom he carried. Bob had taken keenly to the scientific work of trench photography, and spent his spare hours in the photographic workshop, which was a storehouse of wonders to him. He was fast getting sound ideas on subjects in connection with air-pictures, which made him all the more valuable as a pilot of a machine that carried some officer of the photographic department.
He had witnessed a very pretty fight between an American and a Boche not far distant, but he could not take part. His observer was a good hand with a Lewis gun, too. They had on board at that time, however, a set of negatives that were of considerable value, which they had been sent specially to obtain, so their duty was to leave the hunter to fare as best he could, while they scurried home in safety with their negatives.
Thus Will Corwin found that the Brighton boys were fast becoming broken in to practical flying work. Archie Fox had been as busy as any of the rest, tuning up a new machine that had a hidden kink in its anatomy somewhere that defied detection.
Dicky Mann had been selected by the flight commander to work up a special set of maps—-office work that required great care. He had been absorbed day and night, and had cut down his sleeping hours to five or six hours instead of the eight or nine he used to indulge in at Brighton.
It was not so exciting as flying, the commander had told him when
he was selected for the job, "but of equal, if not greater, importance."
At all events, Dicky was at it, heart and soul, and the evening that
Will Corwin made his appearance was the first for some days that
Dicky had joined his messmates for a chat after dinner.
"How do you think we Yanks are making out against the Teutons in the air, Will?" asked Harry. "Do you think they are beginning to recognize that we have 'em beaten?"
Will Corwin grinned. "'Beginning to' is good, but that's along way from the finished realization, and I don't guess that will come for some little time yet. It's up to America and the Allies to keep on turning out planes and fliers at top speed."
"What about the wonderful speed of the German machines, Will?" asked
Joe Little.
"An awful lot of rot is talked about speed, as you boys must know. We captured a very decent German flier once, who got lost in a fog and ran out of petrol. When he had to come down he found he was right near our airdrome, so he volplaned right down on our field. We were surprised to see him. He was in an Albatros of a late type, too. As you can imagine, we gave him a very hearty greeting. He took it pretty well, considering everything. I had him into my shack for lunch, and we got quite friendly before they took him back to the base. I remember at that time that the usual talk about Boche flying machines on this front would lead you to believe that they were much faster than we were. At home you could hear almost any speed attributed to the German aeroplanes. I think some Americans thought they could do about two miles to the English or French planes' one.
"I was particularly interested in the Fokkers, Walverts and L.V.G. machines, which were the ones we had to fight most. Now, according to that candid young German, who seemed ready enough to talk frankly about things, anyone of those three planes that did one hundred miles an hour at an elevation of ten thousand feet was considered a mighty good plane. If it did one hundred and twenty miles at that elevation it was thought to be a hummer. They were fast climbers for their speed, and usually did most of their fighting, if they had a choice, at thirteen to fourteen thousand feet up. Only the Albatros could be depended upon to beat one hundred and twenty miles an hour regularly. He said he would rather not tell me the speed of the Albatros, I did not press him. The point of all this is that those very machines he was discussing were credited with speeds of anything up to one hundred and thirty-five or one hundred and fifty miles per hour by lots of people who thought they knew all about it. There will never come a day, in our generation, when one hundred and fifty miles an hour at ten thousand feet up will not be mighty good flying."