The Hawks of the Royal Flying Corps 



What contact patrol means in the 

 fierce fighting on the western front 



6omb-nelease 



CONTACT PATROL— "A flight of 

 one or more planes over the lines 

 to give General Headquarters in- 

 formation regarding the position of Allied 

 and German troops and also to take of- 

 fensive action against enem^ troops on 

 the ground." 



The average reader who sees this 

 definition probably concludes 

 that contact patrol is as unin- 

 teresting as it sounds. Defini- 

 tions are never as thrilling as 

 the things they define. Any fine 

 morning on the sector of the 

 western front held by the British 

 you will find back of the lines 

 at the Royal Flying Corps' air- 

 dromes, squadrons of planes 

 preparing for contact patrol 

 work. The airplanes used are 

 generally of the same type (the 

 F.E.2.B. "Pusher"), two seaters 

 •v\4th one hundred and twenty 

 horsepower Beardmore engines. 

 While not particularly fast, these 

 planes are easy to handle. Be- 

 cause their work is done mostly 

 at a low altitude, they are slow climbers. 

 It takes them about twenty-five minutes 

 to climb ten thousand feet, but in straight- 

 away flight they can do about one 

 hundred miles an hour. With the motor 

 throttled a contact patrol machine will 

 glide sixty miles an hour, which is pos- 

 sible because the plane has a nice gliding 

 angle. The armament 

 consists of one down- 

 pointing Vickers ma- 

 chine-gun, fixed along- 

 side the fuselage or 

 body and operated by 

 the pilot, and one 

 Lewis machine-gun 

 operated by the ob- 

 server. This Lewis 

 gun can fire up or 

 down and also 

 straight ahead. The 

 motor is in the rear, 

 so that it cannot in- 

 terfere with the firing 



The turn of a lever 

 releases a bomb. 

 A slight miscalcu- 

 lation means a miss 



This shows the 

 hook to which the 

 bomb is attached 



of the gun. Under the fuselage are sus- 

 pended several bunches of steel arrows; 

 also two 100-pound bombs, or ten 20- 

 pound high-explosive bombs. 



They Carry Bombs, Armor and 

 Machine-Guns 



All these missiles of death are released 

 from the observer's cockpit by a 

 bomb-firing trigger attached to 

 a bomb-sight. This bomb-sight 

 is not used on contact patrol, as 

 the airplane has to spend con- 

 siderable time over an objective 

 before it can be used. At a given 

 height there is only one point 

 of space where the airplane must 

 be, if the bomb is to hit its ob- 

 jective. A miscalculation, no 

 matter how slight, means a miss. 

 When this happens, the aviator 

 must turn his plane around and 

 try once more to make the 

 imaginary path of his machine 

 pass exactly through the proper 

 point. These repeated tricks 

 are made for half an hour. The 

 aviator must maneuver at will, unham- 

 pered by other planes. It is obvious that 

 when the bomb-sight is used over a 

 small area, a plane must 

 fly at a high altitude 



120 Kp Beard mor 

 motor 



Arrow release 



Dowrv-poirvti 

 .qur\ 



Lewis 



bombs 



A "contact airplane" armed for its arduous duties, with 

 teel arrows, and twenty-pound bombs 



machine-guns, 



860 



