Mr. Baker, our American Secretary of War, was in Paris at the time when this historic raid occurred. He was holding a conference at his hotel with General Tasker H. Bliss, at the time American Chief of Staff, when the French warning siren was sounded throughout the city. The city was covered with a deep fog, that completely shielded from the view of the German machines any possible objective. But they had no intention of choosing targets for their bombs,—they let them fall at random upon Paris. For almost three hours terror reigned among the helpless civilians; then the raiders, having lost four of their number to the anti-aircraft gunners, turned and sped swiftly toward their own lines. “It was a revelation,” said Mr. Baker, “of the methods inaugurated by an enemy who wages the same war against women and children as against soldiers.... We are sending our soldiers to Europe to fight until the world is delivered from these horrors.”
London as well as Paris suffered from enemy bombing planes. Raid followed raid in the Spring of 1918, but the British had so improved their aerial defenses that they were able to meet the attempted ravages of the enemy with the most powerful anti-aircraft guns, which, like a wall of fire, forbade the dread monsters to come within the limits of the metropolis. Many machines in the German squadrons never got close enough to London to bomb it, but those which did let fall their terrible explosives without aim or object, killing and maiming a large number of civilians. The British were finally forced to take the only course which could have effect with the Hun. They flew into the heart of the enemy's country and gave him a taste of his own medicine. True, they chose their objectives carefully, and the targets which they bombed were munition works, railways, factories, and camps, but for all their tempered revenge they made the foe smart beneath the stinging lash that descended, again and again, upon his back.
In answer to the aircraft program of the United States, Germany renewed her energies, and her construction of airplanes during the last year of the War was on a larger scale than ever before. Her small fighting machines, or speed scouts, include the Fokker, the Halberstadt, the Roland, the Albatros, the Aviatik, the Pfalz monoplane, the Rumpler, the L.V.W. and a number of others.
Some of these we have already seen at work. The Roland is one of the latest types of German two-seater scouts. Every effort has been made in it to decrease the “head resistance” by careful streamlining, reduction of the number of interplane struts, etc. Swift flying and a rapid climber, it has won for itself the title of The German Spad. The Pfalz is built either as a monoplane or as a biplane. It is a machine somewhat similar to the Fokker. The monoplane, however, has two machine guns, one on each side of the pilot, and firing through the propeller.
Among airplanes used by the enemy for general service duties over the lines, the A.G.O., the A.E.G. and the Gotha undoubtedly take the lead. All are heavily armed with machine guns and bombs and are driven by powerful motors.
Yet for all the desperate German struggle for supremacy, her machines and her pilots did not prove the equals of the Allies in the air. The airplanes of France, England, Italy and America maintained a ceaseless vigilance over the lines, giving chase to every enemy plane or squadron of planes that made its appearance on the horizon. Our airmen showed the most dauntless courage, and they continually outwitted and outmaneuvered the slower thinking Hun. Our speed scouts challenged his reconnaissance and bombing planes, and prevented them from performing their missions effectively; our own reconnaissance airplanes gave him a hard time of it; and our bombing machines proved themselves the strong right arm of the service—taking the place of the big guns in raining heavy explosives upon enemy troops, bombing his military bases, and making life in general most uncomfortable for the foe.
It is a far cry from those first standardized Taubes to the many makes and patterns of German airplanes of the present day. As the Allies met those first maids-of-all-work with a mixed company of airplanes of many and untried talents, so to-day they are meeting her efforts to imitate their own versatility in aircraft with machines which are carefully standardized in every detail. It should be an object lesson to Germany that the Allies have triumphed in each case.
CHAPTER VIII
Heroes of the Air
Heroes of the air in peace times have been numerous. We already know the stories of many of the pioneers of aircraft, who risked their lives in situations involving the utmost peril. The men who, in the first frail monoplanes and biplanes attempted to fly the British Channel, or to make dangerous cross-country flights under adverse weather conditions were heroes indeed.