Land & Water 
May 2, 1918 
Flying Sailors : By Herman Whitaker 
"•tMWMMH 
Seaplane leaving the Water 
w 
' HAT in the world are those fellows ? " 
On the transport that brought three thou- 
sand of us across from America, this ques- 
tion was asked whenever two young men 
appeared on deck in khaki suits that bore 
the blue >and gold shoulder straps of an American naval 
lieutenant ; and the explanation that they belonged to the 
U.S. Naval Aviation Service invariably produced the same 
exclamation : "I did not know that we had one. " 
I confess to sharing this general ignorance, and if a ship- 
load of Americans knew nothing about the naval aviation 
stations which Uncle Sam has scattered with a free hand 
along the seaboards of England, Ireland, Italy, France, it 
is reasonable to suppose that the British public is equally 
unaware of their existence. 
When an opportunity opened for me to visit certain of 
our American aviation stations in France, I jumped at the 
chance to remedy my ignorance and took the first train 
to a little south-coast town, where I found the station 
surrounded by peaked stone houses, grey with age, and 
menaced by fat-bellied windmills that waved wooden arms 
in the distance, hke plethoric millers warming their hands 
on a frosty morning. 
A convoy had been reported as approaching the sector 
just before my arrival, and when the commander asked if 
I would Uke to go out with the air patrol, I jumped at 
the chance. A flight with a sea patrol guarding a convoy 
against the attacks of U-boats does not drop in every day. 
Five minutes after he made the offer, I emerged from his 
office in a quilted flying suit and woollen boots, every inch 
an aviator — on the outside. 
The planes were already launched, and sitting there on 
the water, their golden fish bodies under widespread white 
wings spotted wth the red and blue flying circles, they looked 
like gay aquatic birds. The sailor lad who filled the dual 
role of observer and wireless operator, was crouched in his 
cubby hole in the great bird's thick beak. Lest the wireless 
fail, however, we took with us a pair of carrier pigeons. 
For though the planes had been subjected to a microscopic 
examination and the motor tested and groomed to racing 
fitness, accidents will happen. The tiniest nut falling on 
to a propeller revolving at two thousand revolutions per 
minute Twill pierce the blade like a high-power bullet, and 
the ensuing vibration will wreck the motor. 
Just forward of the pilot's seat, where he could release 
them with a touch, two large bombs hung in tlieir bracket. 
Dropped from an altitude of ten thousand feet at a speed 
of seventy miles an hour, they will strike twelve hundred 
feet beyond the point above which they were let go. At tlie 
lower altitudes maintained by sea patrols, two hundred feet 
is a sufficient allowance, but even then a good deal of practice, 
skill, and judgment are required to secure a liit. 
Another plane, our consort, was already spinning around 
the channel warming up her motor, and while we followed 
suit my oificer-pilot delivered a short lecture on the clocks 
that indicate altitude, levels, air pressure on the engine, 
propeller revolutions and so forth, and had me peep into the 
cubby hole where the wireless operator was "tuning" his 
receiver. When we rose he would let down his aerial, where- 
after we should be in constant communication with our base, 
A deafening roar, a dash of smarting spray, a sudden blow 
in the face from a bitter wind, marked the get-away. The 
day was cold in any case, and that fierce wind chilled my 
face to the bone. Soon it settled into a more comfortable 
numbness, then as my eyes grew accustomed to the goggles, 
I saw, far beneath, a line of white surf along seamed black 
rocks, a toy lighthouse, a golden beach ; beyond all, a 
dull green plain scored with yellow roads that led on to toy 
hamlets. All this quickly vanished, and there remained only 
the sea, grey-green through a golden haze, chased and fretted 
with tiny wavelets ; across which we raced our own shadow 
toward the indefinite horizon. I had always thought of 
gulls as flj^ng swift and high ; but down there, almost 
stationary by comparison with our flight, a flock floated 
hke bits of feather fluff. 
Rising out of his cubby hole, the observer now began to 
sweep the waters with a powerful glass. From a plane the 
dark mass of a submarine can be detected sixty feet under 
water ; and though so small, mere black pin-heads in the 
sea's translucent green, mines are sometimes seen. Up there 
with the roar of the motor in one's ears conversation was 
impossible. Though I shouted, for experiment, I could not 
hear my own voice. Sign language obtained and following 
the pilot's pointing finger I saw, first a red-sailed 
fleet of fishing boats, then a large ship. From stem to stem 
she lay flat on the sea just as though etched on the water ; 
the only sign of life, sp shirt and pair of trousers that fluttered 
in the breeze. 
It seemed to me that we had scarcely passed her before 
the island where we were to pick up our convoy hove in 
sight. To passing ships it must have appeared as a rock- 
ribbed shore smothered in surf. To us it presented the 
customary rehef map on which a toy Hghthouse posed with 
a toy hamlet, toy churches, toy windmills, all within the 
sea's edging of green and white lace. The ships, however, 
were not in sight, and on the chance that they had gone 
up the other side, we swept around a twenty-mile circle 
and came roaring down the opposite shore. A golden haze 
spread its thin veil over the ocean, and from its midst 
suddenly sailed out twenty vessels in three columns with 
a destroyer in the lead and a converted yacht behind. We 
were too high to distinguish people, but a white flash from 
the destroyer, followed by a quick electric blinking, spelled 
out the hearty greeting: "Glad to see youl" 
We answered in kind, then flew on down the long Unes 
of ships that rode the shining sea, each with a white-feathered 
wake behind, a plume of dark smoke above. First the 
destroyer, slender as a lance ; next the broad white decks 
of a tramp ; on over ship after ship till the graceful shape 
of the converted yacht passed below. Up there the sun 
shone with an effulgence unknown on earth. As it were in 
great silence — for that was the effect of the tremendous 
noise — we shot back and forth circhng and recirchng the 
fleet. When we swung out on its flanks, it would appear 
to break up into small detachments — to resolve once more 
into lines as we swung ahead or astern. 
It was a beautiful as well as a wonderful sight, but when 
I tried to photograph it — well, imagine yourself leaning down 
from a plane with an eighty-mile wind tearing at the camera 
while you strive to see in the finder an object a thousand 
feet below. It is not easy to do. Even when our consort 
flew alongside for me to take her picture, it was difficult 
to find her in the lens. 
At intervals the wireless observer had dived down into 
