Up in the Clouds, Armed to the Teeth, Chasing Zeps

German biplane equipped withpontoons to make it available forsea as well as land work

Q Underwood & Underwood

One of the huge Caproni triplanes© "Cndenrood .i- '.¦«- >.-i

A French battleplane manoeuvring for position preparatory to swooping down on its German adversary. This photograph was made by anobserver in another French 'plane© Underwood & Underwood

A German airplane, flying under French colors, brought down nearVerdun. The German Al áltese cross Js covered with a French flagFrench Officia! Phqfo. From Paul Thompson

AIMERICAN aviators as yet little*

appreciate the risks of nightflying. In the presence of Zep¬

pelin and enemy airplanes, one can easilysee how- Allied fliers would welcome a

fight as much at night, as in the daytime.But how about getting back down9

How about a load of bombs on your ma¬chine when your engine suddenly goesdead and you are forced to make a land¬ing anywhere?Of these aspects of nieht flying Phillips

Dwight Rader thus writes in '"The Sun¬set Magazine":"K:ght flying in a way is very fascinating

work. It is without a doubt the most in¬teresting work in the service, as it hasmore thrills per mile than other flying atthe front. It calls for a steady flier, an

abundance of pure grit, and an unfailingsense of direction. To get lost is almostfatal. Day flying is risky enough, but a

night pilot has much more r..;k against him."In the first place, he has to rely too

much on his engine. Most of the time itis b a only salvation. The only places hecan \-¿.v.d are prepared fields with a specialarrar.L-ement of lights. The deceptive dis¬tances and a lagging barograph make mat¬ters hard for him, the ever-present chance

l g tting lost harasses him. and the ac¬

curacy of landing must be absolu';

"Have you ever been on a railroad trainat i it and watched, from a darkenedbert - land cape rushing by? Your

d is, Bay, sixty miles per hour.

anything you have tons of steeland wood to break up before it finallygeta to you; eve then your chances of not

get1 ' hart are good."Nt v picture yourself in an airplane it

night. Your engine stops. The machineis fast and heavy. Your gliding speed is

n hour. Down, down, downni It is impossible for you to see

at all."Any minute now you may expect to

crasl oto the side of a house or some-

On your undercarriage you mayhave four big bombs; on contact they

ode. Still you rush on. To''.'¦. the speed means to stall the machine'

worse than ever- you're boundcond now! Well, may luck

'.- with jrou! Suddenly »ome dark objectsloom up below; a long, black, flat stretch

You dive for it; you judge yourdistance :o the best of your ability, and

oat.' The wheels touch theand the machine

lurch« y a coaple of t m ¦., pivotsand comes to a «top. You climb out.

"¡:. other word;, the average night pilot.he has to Und forcibly Is in exactly the.MB* .'.-. .-. as though he were on a

'* »nd spruce express train loaded withdynamite and running hogwild at Seventy»lie» an hour.

y ways have been devised to over

«ems this danger, end some of them havewerked >ut very well, of coarse, 1 em*f>*akir.z ,,f conditions m they were a year** ». half ajfo, and I suppose by now con

Atttofi* are entirely différent."At that time our machines were

**»P9«d wit* magnefiom wing-tip flare-,(y electricity '.v.. al«e earned two

******* Uten, *hích ,, dropped ¦, .fa*«» »,*U ,te> .¦ for ... ..,...*. MtJVané earthward by means o£ » »mail

silk parachute. We were supposed to spiralaround these flares and pick a landingplace."The wing-tip flares, in my estimation,

were not very successful. True, theyilluminated the country for miles around,but they also blinded the pilot. It wasthe same effect as looking out of a top-story window and trying to see the streetunder an arc light below."Some men. have landed by the aid of

these flares, but I would prefer darknessmyself."The author then tells of one nightwhen notice came that a Zeppelin was

abroad. The flares at his field arelighted, his machine is equipped withbombs and a ready machine gun, and hegoes aloft.not to meet the Zeppelin, asit happens, but to see it, however, in thecourse of a thrilling night flight whichhe thus describes:

"I speed up my engine suddenly andcrash off into the night. I climb as steeplyand as steadily as I can, which is well on

the heavy night air. I glance at my gaugesand test an extra flashlight slung aroundmy neck. The revolution indicator shows1,050 revolutions per minute, the aneroidan altitude of 1,500 feet. I sweep for myclimb in wide, swinging circles, keeping as

nearly as I can within gliding reach of theaerodrome.then, 0,000 feet! I change mycourse due east and hold straight as a die.

"Six thousand feet! The flares havelong since vanished behind me. Around menothing except grayish blackness, perfor¬ated above by the stars and below by occa-

sional pin-pricks of violet light that somecareless housekeeper has left unshaded.Alone there with dark England down be¬neath me, I seem to have entered a silentshroud-world. The reaction to excitementcomes to the long, tedious-wait before myascent. I try to sing. My very voice,audible above the roar of the engine,sounds uncanny, and a cold chiil runs downmy back. I look around me. On thenarrow floor below me, like Easter eggsin a crate, lie the half dozen pretty rod-incendiary bombs. In a rack in front of

me are two parachute flares, to be usedonly in case of a forced landing. By myside on a panel arc the four little leversthat release the four big twenty-poundsteel bombs under my wings.two pounds'pressure in the right place will set themoff. In front, a little above my head, isthe butt of the Lewis gun, pointed up at an

angle of 45 degrees: a drum fully loadedis in firing position. My red and greenside lights cast, their reflections far outon the ghostly wings. The machine purrsonward and upward.

"What if the engine suddenly fail? Withthe load it will mean a long glide to earthat a rate no slower than sixty miles anhour. I peer below me at the mockingdarkness. Something is following! SwiftlyI whirl.it is only the uncanny form ofmy own fuselage."Away off to the right a shaft of light

¡ike a silver pencil cuts up through thesky! Now another! Another! Still more.Some wave back and forth: others holdtheir shafts steady, like colossal marblecolumns joining the sky with the black

The Ago twO'Seater biplane differsfrom the other German machinesin that its wings are tapered con*siderably from root to tip, and asingle strut is used instead of two.This gives the gunner, who canalso fire backward, a freer field offire, as the usual wing bracing canbe dispensed with

.From The LmAon QfwpMr.

There Are Times When a Parachute Is Very Welcome

In an Airplane Plant

..... . -From The London AeroplaneDinner I itne.l his needs no explanation. It is only necessary to draw' attention to the curious olfactorytrajectory oi the dog, and the respect paid to the sell* evident sausage.

PARACHUTES may come to save

many an aviator's life when a

'plane is afire, or when for somereason the machine is descending out ofcontrol, according to an article in "TheLondon Aeroplane."According to this journal, the Germans

have already been thinking in terms ofparachutes for their aviators. Moreover,with aviators going up to twenty thou¬sand feet, there would be ample time tolaunch an attempt, whereas in the olddays, when 'planes flew at four thousandfeet, the chance of successful parachuteflight would have been sum. Indeed, thisjournal thinks, with a properly fittedparachute, the pilot and his passengerwould have a "sporting chance":"Even the chance of ttie parachutes be¬

coming entangled in an uncontrollable de¬scent is preferable to the certainty of beingkilled in the crash which is bound to hap¬pen if one stays in ,the machine. And suchrisk of entanglement can be reduced to a

very long chance if the stowing and launch¬ing of tho parachute be properly designed

"In the case of a man in a single-seaterwho is badly wounded and feels himselfabout to faint from loss of blood, it seems

that it would be better for him to releasehimself in a parachute and trust to its slowdescent at some fifteen feet a second thanto stick to his machine with the practica,certainty of hitting something at about 101feet a second, even if the machine is in

herently stable and lands itself with it!engine .topped."Where fire ,n the air occurs, the para

chut« ix obviously indicated as the only wajto safety. In the old days, if a tire broke ou'

at * height of 1,000 or 2,000 feet, the piloihad nt any rate a long odds chance of getfmir down safely before the machine wa¡

burned to pleco*. Many cases will occut U,','j .,,, ,1 dch luccesaful desccr.l foiInstan.« hat oí the late Mr. CoUyn* Pl*eJ

' at Lark Hill, that of the late Major Ealeigl

at Farnborough. and that of Mr. Dyke-Acland in France early in the war. Lastyear the ¡at--" Sergeant Mottershead won aposthumous V. (.'. by saving his passenger'slife at the expense of his own. in bringinghis machine down on fire. He died of burnsbecause the (ire broke out too high up forhim to get down before he was too badlyburned to survive."Against such case.; any active service

aviator, and many at home, can mentionothers in which fire has broken out high up

and the crew of the machine has beenburned to ('««nth. In many case«-, both our

and the enemy'.«!, the pilot and, or, pas¬senger has thrown himself overboard, pre-

:'¦- the painle s fall and smash at theend of it. to the long agony of a dive in thmiddle of a furnace. Such death, chave been avoided in almost every case ifthe machines had been fitted with para¬chutes. It is better for a man to alight inHunland by parachute than to b«_ burned todeath in the air.

"One of the chief objections advanced¡.gainst parachutes is the difficulty of carry-ig them. In the German machine already

'. oned 'here is a tube running from the¦. passenger's scat at an angle

down to the bottom of the fu -el ige ?ome,!..' away. This presupposes that the user

ill have time to pull the parachute out ofthe tube and launch it above him.

"' ¡magijM that the apparatus was notintend« ! for emergency descents, but for

-. r m :.-.: r other purposes. A* for ex-

ample, such a purpose as was suggested bya gallar.*' young friend of mine, who pro-pesed that when a machine was lo?.t in thelinrk during a night flight and was runningshort of ri««troi the passenger, taking somefirework flares with him, should get outwith a parachut fir.d a suitable landingplace, and thence signal to the pJot whereit was safe to land. He was quite grievedwhen his C. O. refused to sanction his try¬ing the experiment himself."However, it would net need a vast men-

-,:¦! -«rTer*:, or unusual ingenuity, to devise amethod by which an adequate parachutecould be stowed in the streamline fairing ontop cf the fuselage, behind the passenger'shead in a two seater, or behind the pilot ina single seater. In a two seater the para¬chute would nave to be big enough to carrytwo men, which presents no difficulties."A little study and cleverness would make

it possible to launch such a parachute up¬ward in such a way that it would pul! the«rev.- out of the machine, and thus avoid thechance of fouüng the tail or wings if thecrew had to drop overboard, as they dcfrom a balloon basket."Starting with the brave Pégoud, a num¬

ber of parachute drops have been done frorraeroplanes, but, so far as one can learn, irall cases except his the aeroplane has beerin control of a pilot after the passenger ha:\eft. so that there has been no danger of th<machine fouling the parachute. Pégoudhowever, demonstrated that it is safe tidrop also from an uncontrolled machine,fact with which hi. name deserves to bmore honorably associated than even witihis looping feats. He used .;:í old-fashione«vpe of parachute, clumsy and heavy. Thmodern parachute is a much handier a'fair, lighter, and occupying far less sp-ic«In fact, it takes up less space than doesship's life-buoy, whose purpose it is dcsigned to fuifi! ¡u the air."The whole question of life saving partchutes on war aeroplnr.es is commended t

the air force authorities as one deservindeeper consideration than it has hither;received. Not merely has it great possibilties purely as a life saver, but it has corsiderable psychological value. Many bravmen who have no objection to being killcdecently in a fijrh' have a horror of deat'«" ''

¡in of ;) long Ü II ,.n ';:.'.¦ itnlable machine. Hie: «..o their duty ¡nfepilof this fear, a_t4 the.' fl_ souo i__« wonbac-.ua» «__._.«..

earth. The shafts concentrate in one spot.For a few seconds only another silverpencil appears, parallel to the rest of thelights. Little dashes of red light, then,like matches being lit in the distance, ap¬pear.they have spotted a Zeppelin withthe searchlights down below and are shell¬ing it. Shall I fly in that direction .' No.My orders are to proceed on my course,and I hold true. I may by luck run squareupon a second Zep. Far below me nowseveral lurid flashes flare and disappear.I cannot hear the reports, but I know thatbombs have been dropped from the shelledGerman craft and that they have struckdown below. I keep on through the black¬ness. Then suddenly the lights are gone.The firing ceases. The raider disappears.My hour is up. I turn on back.

"I have flown for an hour and forty-fiveminutes now. Anxiously I strain to seethe aerodrome night marks, but beneathand before me is only darkness. I haveflown now another ten minutes. I shouldhave sighted the aerodrome flares five min¬utes since. Where have they gone? Thenight flier's fear of a lost landing placecomes to me as I strain to see the flar¬ing 'L.'

"My heart beat- fast and I see a dirty,milky substance b igin to craw! across theblack earth in spots.the dreaded groundmist is ¡ike drawing a wet blanket overmy eyes. It means crashing into the sideof a house or a hill if the gas flares failto show.-I even think of releasing mybombs. That will increase my chance ofsafety, although it may by the same chancekill a few persons or. the ground. But, no,the risk must be mine alone! /

f'.Ten thousand feet my barograph reads.'A faint orange glow is blanketed on themist; which grows now fainter and nowlighter, as the mist thins for a second,and then disappears again entirely. It is

*

enough, though, to g*ve me my bearingsthe orange comes from the flying field'sflares. At last my journey is coming tosafety. I throttle my engine and glidedown in long - spiral». Just aboveit the milky m : .¦..:á as ground.

"I plunge down into it and am envelopedr. a vapory, soft covering. Suddenly the

flares on the aerodrome glare up brightand clear only five hundred feet belowthe mist is passed and there is real groundwaiting for me. Relieved, the earth seemssuddenly to be my world again."Slowly I man.uvre my machine tow¬

ard land. Xearer and nearer the flaresrush at me. I am over the end one now.I decrease my glide, flattening out to theearth; my machine lightly touches, run»smoothly along and then stops.

"Stiflly I extricate myself from the seat.A few silent handclasps are my bes' grect-¦'.£. my tirn thought the telephone andmy report."'Lieutenant Brandon has brought down

the Z-15 .. t Thames estuary.' comes

LMight'» woik. 1 Uu 2«p« b*v« Oat yaastid¿hit sight/"_r -' .-^