The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps

he service until each one of the six of them that were still at the home airdrome was

ugh in the stores department that he was now being used as an inspector, traveling over half a dozen states, visiting all sorts of fact

were said, last parting tears were shed, the cheers and Academy yells at the station died into the distance as the train pulled

an voyage. The group of transports, of which their ship was one, steamed warily eastward, convoyed by a flotilla of grim destroyers, swift, busines

ed, but the incoming American contingents were arriving with such regularity that the strangeness had worn away. America was in the war to do her utm

ght it had reached one of the huge airdromes, the vastness of which unfolded itself to the astonished gaze of the boys at daybreak of the morning after. They had not dreamed t

he six Brighton boys took a stroll in company, eager to ins

tronger than any we ha

paused before a new-

oing at over sixty miles an hour. She is so strongly built that she was not hurt much and the pilot escaped without a scratch. This is what we call a 'hunter.' She h

to fly?" aske

drops straight down from that elevation, as the 'hunter' fellows have to do sometimes, puts a mighty big strain on his bus. Little by little this sort of thing dislocates important parts. Of course the pursuing game makes a pilot put his machine into all s

ejaculat

o fast either in the study of aeroplane construction or the art of flying itself. Accidents tell us lots of things. Between studying accidents a

German planes?"

go over our lines. Their business apparently is to remain over their own territory. That is their plan. They are brave enough. But the Germans look to their hunters chiefly to prevent our observers from doing their work. They wait for our

nd therefore cannot learn their latest construction dodges from it. It's a different plan of action. We go right out over the German lines with our hunters and tackle their observers, who do their reconnaissances from a bit back of their lines. Only in the very first part of the wa

t be more efficient

going forward from now on, and the Teutons are going back, and don't you forget it. We have to know their lines well, and lots of other things, such as their routes o

mment. Yes, it was a big game, in very truth.

ed fleet-looking machine with a single pair of wings. It was a single-seater. They walked up to it and round it, gazing a

"Want to try her? You have to be an A

rom the States. Came last night. This is our first look-around, and we want to learn all we can. We did not know monoplane

d. It is a Morane, and they call it a 'Monocoque.' Someone told me that the latest type German Fokker was modeled on this machine. It is a corker, but the trickiest thing

Ace?" querie

n five adversaries, in fair air-fight. The bringing-down business, at least so far as the exact number is concerned, is not always applied,

emed to have a grim flavor. The Brighton boys were

planes, which he described as the latest type of French fighting aeroplane. "This sort has less wing surface than any machine we have had here," said the airman. "It is mighty fas

you trying to impress a bunch of newcomers?" He walked toward t

re the Brighton Academy bunch. W

a fellow ca

rwin," s

u, and told me that if I was still here when you arrived I was to look you up.

s as a flyer. Thompson promised to dine at their mess that evening. He did so, and after dinner sat and chatted about flying in gener

nd as I had a cousin who was in the motor manufacturing business in England, I had been put fairly into touch with aeroplane engines. I don't know how much is known at home about what the French and British flying corps have done out here, but to get a fair idea of what they

dred serviceable flying machines of all types. What proved to be the most useful plane used by the British for the first year of the war was only a blueprint when the fighting started

uch use in that direction in actual warfare. I have heard it said that the Germans directed their artillery by signals dropped from aircraft at the very beginning. They did so before they had fought many weeks, anyway. Boche fliers, English gunners have told me, used to hover over battery positions and drop long colored streamers and odd showers of colored

. I did not get transferred into the flying part of the business until the end of that year. There is no question but that the quality of the British flying men was what put them ahead of the Germans long before they were equal mechanically. The French, too, are really great fliers. The Boches try hard, and

h they were a long time getting to the point where they could do it. I believe that most all the best motor factories in England have learned to turn out good flying engines by now. It means a lot of difference to produce a machine that can do sixty miles an hour and one that can do two miles a minute. Yet at the start might

some crack airman, who had worked for hours to do it, but the best machine we had at the 'drome where I learned flying would only do six thousand, and no one could get her up there under forty minutes. She was a fine machine, too, as machines went

had to keep five thousand feet up and no Archie could touch him. A French friend of mine told me the other day that one of their anti-aircraft guns hit a flier at a height of fifteen thousand feet. The gun was

f reach of the Archies of those days, fighting one aeroplane with another came next. Fights in the air, instead of being rare, became the daily routine. I doubt if any

reconnaissances, which the scouts had to make daily. Next, the artillery observers, whose work it was to direct our gun-fire. Next

est machine has the great advantage in the air. The latest development is along the line of team-work in attack. So it goes on changing. I think the smaller, speedier aeroplane

gun, and some have two and even three. The position of the rapid-fire gun on an aeroplane has a lot to

the machines when fighting. There lies the greatest progress of all. Construction has