Tex leveled out of the bank, dove on her with engine half on. She dove instantly and he saw that she was going down after the wingdrooping plane below. That plane, he saw now, was a Nieuport! And a Sixteenth Squadron Nieuport!
The Fokker gained rapidly on the crippled American plane. Tex dove with engine power adding speed. The Fokker swept down behind and slightly below the Nieuport then zoomed, leaving a tracer stream in the sky, slanting back of the wing-drooping ship. Again her pilot had missed by a narrow margin.
But this time the German pilot pulled his ship up and over, and at the peak of the zoom, as she was on her back, he did a nice Immelman. In a flash the Fokker had righted herself. Less than fifty yards of air separated her from Tex’s Nieuport now, Both guns spat streams of lead at the same second.
The German pilot’s lead was low. It passed beneath the under-gear of the Nieuport. Tex zoomed as the enemy shape flashed close. Flames were shooting up from the engine of the German ship. But she zoomed, too. The Nieuport jerked sickeningly. The controls were loose in Tex’s grip! The Fokker pilot, knowing he was finished, had rammed the Nieuport from below, striking the tail assembly with a wing-tip!
Tex Langdon felt the Nieuport go into a side slip. He tried to get her out of it, failed. She was slipping off on her right wing, toward the brown-grey line of the earth, almost a thousand feet below!
He jerked his head. The second Fokker was going down in a straight nose dive, flames shooting back from her. And toward the ground fog to the westward winged the crippled Nieuport that he had saved from the two enemy planes.
Wind tore at Tex Langdon’s helmet. He moved the stick to the right, expecting to feel no pressure, believing that the tail assembly had been carried away in the crash. But there was pressure. He kicked right rudder. The slip ceased but the Nieuport was now diving at terrific speed, less than five hundred feet from the earth!
Slowly he pulled back on the stick. He cut the throttle speed down, held his breath. And slowly the nose of the Nieuport came up. The tail assembly was still sticking in place, although the ship answered sluggishly.
He advanced the throttle to three-quarter speed. The plane was headed toward the Squadron. She was flying less than three hundred feet above the earth, and there could be no maneuvering now. The Nieuport would have to be flown level, carefully. The slightest piece of overcontrolling might rip the damaged tail assembly from the fuselage.