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Aviation History
1918
1918 - 0105.PDF
JANUARY 24, 1918. •-•.'" BRITISH aviators dropped bombs on the town of Demir- Hissar in the vicinity of the military hospital, which was well -in view. Three inhabitants were wounded. No material -damage was done."—Bulgarian communique of January 18th, received January '21st. Possibly this version is quite correct, and is a good example of the "suggestion frightful." Our -pilots would take no chances of hitting the hospital, even if they knew they would be likely to' miss their other military objectives, which the Central Powers, in their kultured •cunning, have such a happy knack of placing in juxta- position to Red Cross and other centres of mercy. 1 LAST week attention was drawn to a report in a Midland paper of an aviator's " adventurous home-coming," which purported to set forth the antics of an over-confident youthful aviator. Tt was apparently a case of " stunting " against which we have in these pages so consistently set our face, and we once more pointed the moral, although, with caution, 'we qualified it as being described in "local scribe's journaleese.' And in this latter deduction we are very glad to say we do not appear to have been very far wrong. In the extract we gave last week is to be found the " journaleese " picture. .The following is the real story which now reaches us, and which .places a totally different complextion upon the little episode, but which would, of course, hardly have appealed to the readers of our Midland contemporary, unaccompanied by the imaginative frillings which embellished the original, exciting as the pilot's adventure actually was. It appears that there was no " stunting " of any sort ; rather the reverse. The pilot, it appears was away up yonder and got mixed up with a raging snowstorm which broke out in the neighbourhood of the aerodrome from which the aviator had ascended. In the words of our correspondent what then happened is as follows :— " He came down to 500 ft., but could not see the ground, although he was seen by the instructor, who was on the look- out for him, to make the attempt half an hour after going up. " He, therefore, rose again to 5,000 ft. and steered N.W. to keep the machine over the level country of the district, until he came out of the storm. Once he came down, but rose again after reaching the 500 ft. level still without being able to see a thing. For an hour and twenty minutes he steered by compass only, and came out of the snowstorm over a distant point. It appears that here the only place he knew at which he could procure petrol on a Sunday was some large aviation works a couple of miles off from his native place. He made for this factory, and first of all landed at , again in a snowstorm, and inquired where he was and the direction to the works. After waiting some time for it to clear, he took off again in the direction pointed out, and this time landed again in a snowstorm) at . Here he took on board ten gallons of petrol and started again in a southerly direction for his aerodrome. " After flying round to test his engine before returning he set off south. Over a certain Midland cemetery his pres- sure failed, and he circled the city pumping the whole way, back again to the aviation works, and when on the way the hand pump failed and he made the first field he could. " The smash was not due to a faulty landing on the pilot's part, but to people running across his course." WE are inclined to agree with the implied suggestion thatthe reporter was indeed an " addle-pated " journaleese pro- fiteer. THAT reticence upon the part of our own military authori- ties upon the deeds of individual members of the Forces is, whether wisely or otherwise, carried to the extreme, few can, under the conditions of this long drawn-out war, gainsay, and there are many who, in spite of musty precedents of peace times, would not be averse to seeing a little more generous latitude in this connection. There is a happy medium, however, between a dignified recital of deeds of heroism and " gush " of the character which is indulged in by the official Huns to energise their flying services and, incidentally, the long- suffering public, if one may accept as a fair sample the broad- cast exploitation of the deeds of daring of Chief Mechanic Heinrich Fey, in charge of the starboard motor of a Zeppelin, CAMBRAI FROM THE AIR.—The town of Cambrai photographed from a German aeroplane at a height of 2,000 feet. lOI
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