Between March 21 and March 31, the French and British pilots shot down more than 100 German planes, losing about one-third of that number in the air battles. After the first few clays there were practically no German machines in the air over the fighting front, as was the case on the Somme in 1916, but at the end of March the Hun planes began to reappear in mass formation patrols, sometimes consisting of as many as fifty planes in a group of patrols. Then followed a period of intense air fighting, of which a single day's record of the French may be cited as an example. On April 12, the Allied aviation report shows that French fighting scouts made 250 flights, fought 120 combats in the sky, shot down eight Germans and damaged 23 others, burned five enemy balloons, damaged five more, and bombarded German troops with 45 tons of explosives.
GERMANS FAIL IN THEIR OBJECT
The last part of the month of April was marked by a succession of minor attacks by the Germans along the entire front of the halted offensive, and by the development of counter-attacks by the Allies at various points where it was deemed necessary or advisable to strengthen their defensive positions, but up to May 1 the Germans were as far as ever from their main objectives in the west. Judged from the standpoint of their confident expectations, and the promises of success held out as an encouragement to their troops, the long-heralded and long-prepared spring offensive of 1918 was a failure. Their much-vaunted strength of numbers and of organization failed as completely to gain a decisive result as their initial drive on Paris in 1914. Though they threw into the fighting in March and April about 125 divisions, they failed to separate the French and British armies, which was a prime object of their strategy, and they sustained losses which, while not irreparable, must have greatly affected the morale of their men. "Remember Verdun!" said a famous French commander, commenting on the drive. "The Boche is making this tremendous effort and sustaining these losses to effect a complete rupture of our front, and if he does not do that he has failed."
BRITISH LOSSES MADE GOOD
On April 25 the British minister of munitions announced in the House of Commons that the losses of guns and ammunition sustained by Field Marshal Haig's forces in France and Flanders during the big German drive had been more than replaced. The losses were placed by Mr. Winston Spencer Churchill at nearly 1,000 guns, between 4,000 and 5,000 machine guns, and a quantity of ammunition "requiring from one to three weeks to manufacture." More than twice the number of guns lost or destroyed had been placed at the disposal of the British air and ground services, said the minister.
GERMANS START ANOTHER ATTACK
Another determined attack in the Somme region was begun by the Germans on April 24, after three weeks' further preparation. The enemy evidently had not abandoned hope of capturing Amiens, and, he again began hammering at the gateway to that city. The first onslaught was repulsed by the British, but on the following day, April 25, the enemy succeeded in gaining about a mile of ground. The combined British and French armies were covering the roads to Amiens, with reserves close at hand, and part of General Pershing's American forces were co-operating with the French. The utmost confidence prevailed that the united forces under General Foch, who was called by Marshal Joffre "the greatest strategist in Europe," would not only meet and defeat this renewed drive by the enemy, but that before long the tide of battle would turn strongly in favor of the Allies, whose reserve armies were held in leash by their supreme commander, awaiting the strategic hour to strike.
BOTTLING UP U-BOAT BASES
One of the most thrilling exploits of the war occurred on the night of April 22, 1918, when British naval forces performed an almost incredible feat, by entering the harbors of Ostend and Zeebrugge, German submarine bases, and practically bottling them up. French destroyers co-operated with the British in the daring undertaking.
At midnight, under cover of a remarkably developed smoke screen, furnished by the raiders themselves, five old British cruisers were run aground in the harbor channels, blown up, and abandoned by their crews. The ships were loaded with concrete. An old submarine, loaded with explosives, was also run under a bridge connecting the mole, or breakwater, at Zeebrugge with the shore, and there blown up, so as to prevent interruption of the raiders while they were doing their work alongside the mole.