"Green Balls" : The Adventures of a Night-Bomber

by Paul Bewsher

Forward goes the wheel, and the fingers of the height indicator creep up to fifty-five. I find I can easily steer the machine, and it is no more difficult than the little Curtiss's of old days at Luxeuil.

"Shove on the engines now,—slowly!" orders the pilot.

I catch hold of the aluminium throttle and push it slowly forward. The engine wakes to energetic life. I am conscious of the new forward impulse given to the machine, and the rudder begins to vibrate frantically beneath my feet. The country in front of my eyes begins to sway to the right. I am slipping. I try to remember which to turn to the right in order to convert it—the wheel or the rudder. I move the wrong one, and the country sways to the right still more and more. I get excited and push the nose down and turn the wheel over, and at last, amidst the curses of the pilot, regain a more or less even balance.

I then try to make a turn. I push the rudder to the right, and it goes hard over. As a result the machine slips violently, and the little bubble in the "slip tube" rushes from the centre and tries to creep out of one end. I fling over the wheel to reduce the slip, and the machine banks terrifically, but a little more accurately, for the reluctant bubble returns towards the middle of the tube. The pilot curses more and more luridly, but I have learnt the lesson that the rudder has to be allowed to go over a little way, instead of being pushed over, as it has a natural tendency to go hard forward on one side or the other. For a while I fly the machine fairly decently, to my great joy, and then I change places with the pilot, who, to instruct me, does some steep banks, but so accurately that not only does the bubble remain motionless in the middle of its tube, but a little wooden rabbit-mascot, which I stand on a shelf inside the machine, does not fall over, though we are at an angle of some sixty-five or seventy degrees to the ground.

We glide gloriously down through the sunlight and land on the aerodrome, avoiding carefully the three deep craters.

There is an interesting interlude before lunch which gives a momentary agony to many of us. An American flies over to the aerodrome and begins to carry out the wildest acrobatics with his fast "Spad" machine. He dives downwards till he is moving at a hundred and fifty miles an hour, flies at that speed a few feet over the ground between two lines of hangars, and shoots vertically upwards and rolls the machine over and over in every possible way. For five minutes or more he does this, growing ever and ever more reckless and daring. Then he climbs up, up, and up, and over the middle of the aerodrome stops still and dives downwards in a steep spiral. Faster and faster drops the machine till it is spinning like a leaf. Lower and lower it drops in a terrible mad whirl ... and vanishes behind the hangar without changing its direction or coming under apparent control. There is a groan from those who have seen the tragedy. Every face grows white—every heart grows heavy. We have been behind the hangars and luckily have not seen the end.

"I'm not going to see. It's no good. It will only turn me up!" I say, and walk to the edge of the hangars. There in the middle of the aerodrome is a scarcely discernible pile of broken wreckage—just a crumpled heap a few feet higher than the ground. Towards it from all points of the compass are streaming crowds of mechanics. I stand watching. I will not go over. I can do no good, and the sight will unnerve me for days. It is a fatal mistake for those who fly to see those who have died while flying.

Then I see standing by the machine a little figure. I wonder who it can be so quickly on the scene. The little figure seems to take something of its head, and to unwind a muffler from its neck. I begin to run over toward the wreckage, a wild hope surging through me. It is—it is the airman. He is alive and seemingly not hurt. His face is yellow with bruises and is red with blood. It is a terrible sight, but he is laughing gaily, perhaps a little hysterically.

"Oh! I am all right! I'm all right! I got into a spin and couldn't get out in time!"

An ambulance comes up, and he gets into the back and drives off, waving his hand cheerfully. Amazing fellow! It appears that just before he struck the ground he pulled the machine out of the spin into a steep bank and struck the ground with one wing when he must have been flying at nearly two hundred miles an hour.