The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps

got his chance at the end of a week. He was sent up one morning in a late-type bombing machine, a huge three-seated biplane with great spreading win

ent it carried, its three passengers and its arrangem

in front of the two planes. There, well in front of the pilot, the observer sat in a turret with a machine-gun.

biplane, and his observer had told Bob of a new French dreadnought machine carrying t

h, being controlled by the motor, or engine, shot automatically and at the same time through the propeller in front of the pilot, with the highest speed of any aeroplane then evolved on the fighting front, wi

t us," said Dicky Mann, "we hav

olved straight flying for the most part, and was done more with the idea of familiarizing the newcomers with the newer types of planes, and deciding for which branch of the work they were best suited, than for anything else. In the work that gave the finishing touch to his command, their squadr

those three boys," said their commander to

miles each, two long voyages of one hundred and thirty-five miles each and an hour's flight at a minimum altitude of sixty-five hundred feet. The post-graduate course i

spinning nose dive?" aske

or and crosses his controls. This causes the machine first to scoop upward and then fall

teresting," sai

defeat. I have an idea that we have come nearer to the limit of human possibility as regards speed in the air than many people think. Two hundred miles an hour

ally, the better the service will be. A nimble flyer, a real star man, is almost sure to score off a less expert antagonist, even

out, weeding, weeding all the time. You like those particular three boys you referred to? Well, watch them. Give them chances. But don't be disappointed if t

t through a course of study on land that made them thoroughly familiar with machine-guns of more than

gun placed in the usual position in front, and fired through the propeller. Next I ran across a movable gun on a rotating base fixed at the rear of the supporting planes. Of course all of those big triple planes have the fuselage m

language when you get going that you fog me. I can make a plane do what it is supposed to do,

u specially?" asked

of anything he did not understand from the ground up. Once he had mastered the why and wherefor

the fixed gun in front, sticking out like a finger in such fashion that you have to point the plane at a Boche to point the gun at him, is a thing they can't well get away from. That Hartford type of hunter just over from home is rigged up that way, and

nt a good time listening to what that Fre

ned a bit of mechanism that automatically stops the gun from firing when the propeller blade is passing directly in front of the gun-barrel. He placed the gun-barrel directly behind the propeller. He then made a cam device so regulated as to fire the gun with a delay not exceeding one five-hundredth of a second. As soon as the blade of the propeller passes the barrel the system liberates the firing mechanism of the gun until another blade passes,

but it seems very wonderful, all the same. Most things out

tle was the star, with Harry Corwin a very close second and Jimmy Hill a good third. Their education, as the days went p

own wing as an axis, and fall for thousands of feet as it whirled, only to catch himself and right the sp

e when upside down, and shoot away at a tangent, head down, the machine absolutely inverted--then continue th

hief one morning: "That turn will save that kid's life on

ad leaf." With the plane bottom side up, the pilot lets it fall, now whirling downward, now seeming to hang for a mom

mmet, nose directly downward, seemingly bent on destruction. When still at a safe distance up, he would gradually ease his rush through the air by "tea

over the enemy's lines. The Brighton boys were ready and eager to give a goo