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Aviation History
1916
1916 - 0780.PDF
enemy aeroplane on Thursday and his fourteenth on Friday. He is just 20, and was unknown as an aviator before the war. He soon, however, so to speak, won his spurs, was promoted Sergt., then Second Lieutenant, and won successively the Military Medal, the Legion of Honour, and the Military Cross. He was once slightly wounded, bat that incapacitated him only for a few weeks. The honours list of French aviators whose names have so far been revealed by General Headquarters are Second Lieuts. Guynemer, 14 enemy aeroplanes; Navarre, 12 ; Nungesser, 10 and 2 ' sausages '; Chainat, 8 and 1 ' sausage ' ; Chaput, 8 ; Lenoir, 7 ; Haurtaux, 5 ; and Sergt. de Rothefort, 5. " Second Lieut. Haurtaux has just been named for the first time. He belongs to the flight squadron called the ' Storks,' which Capt. B. commands, and which boasts a total bag of 40 enemy aeroplanes, viz., Capt. B., 4 ; Lieut. D. and Sergt.- Major G., 4 each; Lieut, de L., 3 ; Second Lieut. Chainat, 8 ; and Haurtaux, 5, the remainder of a total bag of 40 secured by men in* the squadron who have since lost their ives." Mr. W. Beach Thomas, writing to the Daily Mail on August 20th, states i— " Another incident that put the men in high fettle was the fall of a German aeroplane. Appaiently the pilot, who circled round courageously enough, wished to pick up the signals sent by our advancing troops in the wood, and, perhaps, attempted to send false signals to our guns. But he flew just too low. As he crossed the line one half round of shots from a Lewis gun finished his course. A little flash of fire was seen on the plane. It shook, appeared to make a back somersault, then tilted as violently forward, crumpled up and crashed on to the German line in High Wood. It is a curious coincidence that the troops in this attack have seen three similar instances, one each time they have gone over the parapet." The Times correspondent at Salonica on August 20th writes :— " British seaplanes yesterday bombarded with success a column of the enemy marching east of Kavala." The Russian correspondent of the Petit Parisien, after a visit to the fighting line, says ;— " That the Germans are evidently uneasy is proved by the activity of their aircraft, which are dropping bombs on the railroad every day. " A Russian flying captain on a Nieuport pursuing machine has in three days brought down three enemy aircraft behind the lines of Baranovitch." Mr. Philip Gibbs, the Daily Telegraph correspondent with the British Armies in the Field, writing on August 23rd, says:— " Acting in combination with our aviators, who are always observing from high places, our gunners are punishing the enemy in a very frightful way, and the ground above Thiepval and Courcelette, into which I looked for the first time at close range from the switch trench, and Martinpuich, and the barren ground to the right of it, is swept by our shell fire . . . " From another man, in the 3rd Battalion of the 124th Regiment, there is a letter which pays a doleful tribute to our flying men :— " ' I am on sentry duty, and it is a very hard job, for I dare not move. Overhead are the English airmen and in front of us the English observers with telescopes, and as soon .is they perceive anything 24 " cigars " arrive at once, and larger than one cares to see—you understand what I mean. The country round me looks frightful.' " Mr. Beach Thomas, in a message to the Daily Mail on the same date, writes :— "In watching the British attack up the hill towards Thiepval, and among trenches as tangled as the pattern of a quick hedge in winter, I saw, but nearly missed, a spectacular detail full both of beauty and meaning. Lifting my eyes a moment from the battle among the ditches, I caught sight of one of our aeroplanes. It served as a pointer to another and then another until the sky seemed full of them, all quite inaudible through the noise of the guns. Some were high, some comparatively low. No German gun could shoot with out drawing their eagle eye to it, and no German plane come near to return the compliment, to spy upon our fire. I believe our artillery hit over a score of enemy emplacements this day; but I know that not from the information of my eyes. SEPTEMBER 7, 1916. " What happened in the air above me was this. These circling eagles of ours saw one German plane, greatly daring, though skied inconceivably high, making towards our line. In a moment their dilettante circling ceased, and the flock steered a straight course for the enemy. ' Up and at 'em ' is at least as true of the British airman as of the British soldier. ' Down and away ' was the only possible answer of the German ; and he took his only alternative with admirable celerity. " Our airmen always thus gather to a battle. They have strange experiences. Again and again as when the storm breaks they see the thunderbolt. Our great howitzer shells at the top of their flight are perfectly visible, and even give the impression of not travelling at any inordinate speed. As the war goes on many airmen find that they see a score of things previously invisible. They know what to look for ; and perhaps they become attuned to what they work in, gaining a technical as well as a spacious vision. How much their universal presence, their eyes as well as their missiles, have affected the enemy's emotions we know from many letters and other evidence. " So even in a close and local attack on trenches the airmen play their part and make beneficent journeys over the infantry, but one hardly heeds them." The Times correspondent with the Serbian Army, writing from Salonica on August 21st, notes :— " An enemy aeroplane was brought down by a Serbian pilot on the Moglena front, the machine falling behind the enemy's lines." The Times correspondent at the British Headquarters, writing on August 21st, said :— " Up to the very limits the weather makes possible, our airmen continue their gallant and successful work. Most eloquent on this subject is an extract from a letter written by and captured on a prisoner :— " ' . . Each of us crouches in a little hole that he has dug out for himself as a protection against possible splinters, and stares at nothing but the sky and the black wall of the trench, . . . and the airmen circle over us and try to do some damage, but only enemy ones, for a German airman will not dare to come here—far too much afraid—only behind the front a great crowd, and here not one makes an appear ance.' " Another prisoner, a well-educated man, discussed our air supremacy freely, maintaining that it was not owing to any inferiority in the German machines or men, but only to the great extent of front which they had to cover, both in the East and West, while machines had also to be sent to the Balkans and to assist the Turks. " Eloquent, again, is one of our own reports upon the subject: ' Fifteen indecisive combats took place, but the hostile machines for the most part descended as soon as engaged.' And this experience occurs again and again. The German tactics, indeed, are very different from the days in which they used to sail in the upper air, to wait for our men and attack them from above as they came over. Now the enemy, still keeping well on his side of the lines, tries to do what observation he does from low altitudes from which he can quickly get down to the ground. " As for the fruits of the bravery of our men, they are simply incalculable. There is never a day of good visibility, when, helped by aeroplane observation, our guns do not make a greater or smaller number of direct hits on enemy- batteries and destroy and blow up ammunition pits. Again and again, also, the air observation has guided them to break up counter-attacks which might otherwise have been serious and to find and scatter columns of men or transport on the road. " In addition to all this is the immense damage which the airmen themselves do with their bombs to points behind the line far into enemy territory. Railway lines, railheads and stations, aerodromes, depots, factories engaged in war manu factures, and all similar points which have a direct military use, are our chief objectives. The testimony of many prisoners agrees as to the enormous demoralisation caused by these attacks and the great hindrance to the enemy's troop movements and concentrations of material behind his lines. When this war is over historians will have no mote interesting theme than the share which our aviators bore in the winning of it. 776
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