i6 
Land & Water 
August 8, 19 1 8 
the line without sight of the Idng string of hanging "K.B." 
marking the Hne of battle. 
A year ago our air services were changing over from older 
type machines to types which have since proved themselves 
superior to anything the enemy had produced. The S.E, 5 
had, by then, already estabhshed a fine reputation, and were 
piling up record^ of numbers "crashed" by single-seater 
scouts. One squadron — a very crack one certainly, com- 
manding such lighters as Ball, Rhys-Davis, McCuddcn, and a 
string of others since widely famed — in four months to August 
had brought down some 150 enemy aircraft. The Sopwith 
Camels, too, were proving their worth, and in the two-seater 
types the Bristol Fighters and the De Hav. 4 had put up fine 
fighting records. But some of the older types were still 
proving that they were worth counting. The official reports 
of a squadron flying F.E. two-seater "pushers" (known as 
"F"ighting Fees") provide the most amazing reading. On 
one occasion five "Fees" fought two Albatross two-seaters 
and twenty-five Albatross scouts for over an hour. The 
total result of the fight was' that eight out of twenty-seven 
enemies were brought down with a loss of one F.E. out of 
the five engaged. 
Eight of the same Squadron fought over twenty enemy 
fast scouts for one hour and twenty-five minutes up and down 
a height from 6,000 to 13,000 feet. One F.E. shot down and 
crashed three enemies, another got two, and others at least 
one apiece. At the end of the fight they had destroyed 
(crashed on the ground or put down in flames) seven enemy 
machines, and had driven four down out of the fight "out 
of contrpl," and all returned to their drome. This Squadron, 
in three months last summer, officially "crashed" (des- 
troyed and confirmed as being so by observers outside the 
fighters) more enemy machines than the Squadron's casualties 
to men totalled for six months — and this counts every wound, 
from a cut finger upwards, as a "casualty." 
A number of R.N.A.S. Squadrons flying Sopwith triplanes 
were also on the Western Front at this period and did good 
work, some of them putting up long records of "crashed 
Huns." 
for the raids on London, and that certain critics of air affairs; 
were clamouring for every possible machine being turned 
on to "bomb Germany," and openly deriding the possi- 
bility of bombing machines being cCf any use behind the 
lines. In the hght of later events such arguments might 
sound incredible, but they stand in print and on record to 
confound their utterers. 
Up to this fourth year the Germans had things all their 
own way in the policy of bombing towns far back from the 
fighting fronts. The day or night of the "Zepps" had almost 
gone and the debacle of last autumn (when their Zcpp fleet 
failed to do any real damage and was itself practically des- 
troyed piecemeal over England and l'"rance down to the 
Mediterranean), probably gave the finishing blow to extensive 
Zepp-raiding. But the autumn of 1917 saw the real begin- 
ning of systematic raiding with night-flying aeroplanes,, 
after the»damage inflicted in the summer on the day raiders 
had proved them too expensively vulnerable to our defences. 
In September the "harvest moon" raids showed how deter- 
mined the Germans were to carry out systematic raids by 
plane, and six rafds in eight nights thoroughly stirred up the 
British public to a realisation of how unpleasant night rai/Js 
could be. Up to then we had been using such machines 
as were available for the urgent work of bombing behind the 
lines, but before the end of 1917 it was apparently found 
possible to spare some men and machines to begin the bomb- 
ing of distant German towns. Raids were begun by day 
and night whenever the weather made them possible, and were 
carried on throughout the winter. At first, a certain number 
of our machines were lost, including some of the big Handley- 
Page bombers, on night work, and De Hav. two-seaters on 
daylight raids, but we have never yet had such heavy punish- 
ment on our rai dings as the Germans have in theirs on London, 
and as time goes on we lose fewer in proportion to the number 
of raids, while the Germans lose more. And their raids have 
steadily decreased in number, while ours have just as steadily- 
increased. 
Low Altitude Work 
Bombing Work 
The bombing of points behind the lines has been practised 
by both sides for some time, but in the past year has been 
enormously increased. Up to a year ago our air services 
had things all their own way in this branch, comparatively 
speaking, but in 1917 the enemy began seriously to attempt 
to copy our much more extensive plans. But in daylight 
raiding he never really competed. Our bombers were out 
every day on organised raids to points far and near, bomb- 
ing railway stations and junctions, ammunition dumps 
troops in billets, guns, and ever>'thi;ig else of which the 
damage or destruction would hinder the German firing line 
and so help ours. His made no more than a few hurried 
dashes by one or two machines, where we were sending 
whole formations on long or short journeys. Sometimes 
the bombers were accompanied by escorts, sometimes not 
The night bombers of both services, the huge Handlev-Page 
and the smaller but useful night-flying F.E., missed 
no night when the weather was- anything like good for flying 
— aiid few nights when it was anything but utterly impossible 
—making two, three, or four trips a night. It was in the 
autumn of last year that a squadron of F.E. performed a 
fine piece of work. Our line had made one of their advances 
and It was known that a heavy counter-attack would be 
made on it that night or next morning. The F.E. were sent 
out to do what they could to disorganise any such attack. 
They flew over and along the roads which led from the rear 
to the threatened point, and on their first trip had ample 
evidence of the correctness of the expectation of attack 
The roads were packed with, columns of troops, guns, and 
ransport, pushing up to be in position by daybrlak. The 
I-.E., flj^ng down to 200 and 300 feet, dropped flares, bombed 
and machine-gunned up and down the length of the roads 
upsetting wagons and guns, scattering the troops heltS 
skelter off the roads and running for cover. AJl night long 
he bombers kept up their work, returning for fresh loads of 
ITX'J^^ ammunition, fljdng out and sweeping the roads 
bare again. The German attack next morning was weak 
spasmodic, and patchy, and was beaten off with ease Pris- 
oners taken afterwards made it clear that the whole of The 
enemy organisation had been upset by the night-fliers that 
regiments were not able to be in their proper places at 
rion\l/'>f "' '^"^'^ ".°' ^'' '° *h"^ positions,^that „n¥ 
tion had been delayed or held up on the blocked roads 
This ,s merely one sample of the proved value of our nX: 
bombing work. It was at this time too that a great ouSl 
was being raised at home for "reprisals" on GeSTow^ 
Our bombing points in and behind the line was already 
enormously greater than the Germans' in the autumn o"f 
1917, and at the battle of Cambrai this work was brought 
up to a point of still more effective organisation, and became 
part of a new phase of "low-flying," or, as the men call it 
"ground strafing and "trench strafing." 
This low flying had already during the summer been 
experimented with and found effective, but it had been lz<^ 
It appeared then) more or less haphazard and without real 
effect. It was carried out by individual picked pilots and 
by most of the men at the front was looked on rather as a 
good joke than anything else, the chasing of wildly fleeing 
German staff cars and their overturning in the. ditch the 
stanipeding of a few gun-teams, the pelting of a train 'with 
machine-gun bullets until the drivers jumped ignominiously 
lor the ditch, all appealing to the sporting young pilots as a 
most enjoyable jest. But the higher commands had better 
than mere humour at the back of these pranks, heard and 
noted carefully how the work was done, and began to figure 
out possibilities. The fruit of those far-seeing plans came at 
Cambrai, and out of those results again came greater and 
wider plans, to which history may easily tell us one day we^ 
owe, perhaps, the saving of the allied armies in the German 
offensives of 1918. 
One can see now that the low-flying at Cambrai, effective- 
as the work was, was merely a trial trip, an experiment to 
see whether on an organised scale and plan it would be worth 
development. It was another instance of the eagerness 
of the Air Command to work out new methods of air war 
that the official dispatches (which are not prone to exaggera- 
tion or over enthusiasm) stated clearly "the taking of Bourlon 
Wood was reported by General Headquarters as being 
achieved largely by the aid of planes and tanks." And 
to ti^"nl T^l''-^'/f, ^^PP'"^^' °^ed ^°^^ thanks 
rWfS P i ^?lu^^''. ^"" effectiveness, because at one 
cntical period of the advance the tanks were held up by a 
Trwfl ^^"-^0"^^fJed and well-served anti-tank guns. 
WWn. T T^ '^'^ ^""'' ^^^'^ ^"d re-dived on them, 
bombing and machine-gunmng them so effectively that thev 
TxTent thaTtt^'^'r'"' ^"^ P^^ -t of action'^o such an 
their work """'" ^^^' *° ^""^^ °" ^"<^ '=°"^Pl'=te 
The squadrons picked to demonstrate the value of system- 
atic low flying were weU chosen, and the work done by thdr 
men reads like chapters from an up-to-date Sw IS 
The particular Squadrons I speak of were flyfng sing t 
seater scout machines, originally designed for figlfting air 
