LAND fe? WATER 
October 17, 1918 
Flying Sailors: By Herman Whitaker 
MOST folks, soldiers or civilians, wax a bit 
nervous toward the end of the passage "from 
America to England or France ; a general 
feeling that was well expressed by a young 
Scotswoman on our boat when reproached by 
a fellow countryman, the bath steward,, for her cowardice in 
refusing the morning tub : "Ye can think what ye will — 
I simply refuse to be torpedoed in iny bath ! " 
It goes without saying, then, that two things are etched 
with acid sharpness on the memories of all transatlantic 
travellers. First the grim snake forms of the destroyer 
convoy zigzagging through sea mists ahead ; next the sea- 
planes booming like giant wasps out from the land to guard 
the last dangerous lap of the journey. But of the million and 
a half of souls who watched the latter during the past year, 
how many knew, and of the few who knew how many realised 
the enormous travail in mental and physical labour that lies 
behind the easy grace of those flights ? 
1 had seen them myself, poised like golden insects in the 
tawnv African sunshine between the smiling seas and deep blue 
skies of the Mediterranean. Bui though I had even flown 
with them repeatedly on convoy patrols, not till I stood the 
other day "on the concrete" of our largest English station,- 
did I realise in full the size ancj efflciency of the organisation 
behind the American Naval Aviation Service. 
Take a look with me at one of a score of stations that 
Uncle Sam has scattered with a free hand up and dovra the 
coasts of Ireland, Italy, England and France. This .single 
station has a personnel of over a thousand men representing 
every skilled craft ; all at work in a veritable hive of industry. 
Its camouflaged hangars, each hundreds of feet deep and wide, 
run continuously along the concrete which, in turn, lays its 
hundreds of feet of width between them and the water. All 
were crammed with seaplanes and Liberty flying boats. 
The latter are really enormous, yet the perfect adaptation of 
their parts give easy gracefid hnes that take from their size. 
One by one they slid down the runways, floated oi^ their 
trucks, shot out on the wide estuary, then, as the motors 
warmed to the work, lifted in low flight. 
After they disappeared I headed into the pilots' room 
where history is to be learned in the making'. One had only 
to listen to find out just why " Bill crumpled his left wing 
yesterday ; " or how " Tom came to take his famous nose 
dive into the estuary mud." I egged the boy who happened 
to be sitting next to me to talk about the- others. 
" Zeppehns ?" he repeated my question. " Yes, we run into 
them now and then — but not if they see us first, They are 
scared to death of a seaplane, run screaming for help the 
moment they spot us. Though you cannot blame them." 
He made the charitable addition : " It is really no fun being 
burned to death between the sea and the sun. Usually a 
Hun destroyer answers their screams. But if they happen 
to be well out from their base, we give them a run for their 
money." 
Equally dramatic, though more one sided are the brushes 
with U-boats. In this the seaplane excels, for an expanse 
double that of a destroyer look out opens to the aviator's 
vision Also, he can see the U-boat below water — if not 
down too deep. Time is also a vital factor ; time to 
overtake the U-bbat after it is sighted ; and swift as is 
the destroyer, the swiftest thing afloat, it moves like a tortoise 
compared with the swoop of a plane. But to continue the 
boy's story. 
" We see more U-boats than Zeps. A good many were 
reported off this sector last month, some of which we engaged 
with two probable sinkings. The last one happened to be 
mine, so I can give it to you straight; We were on convoy 
duty that morning. The weather was lovely. Flecks of 
mist draped the water in successive curtains like the flies of 
a giant theatre seen from above. But up where we flew 
golden sunshine flooded the world between sun and sea. 
Perhaps Fritz had come up to get a smell of that beautiful 
morning. Anyway, we saw him down between two mist 
curtains, slowly steaming along the surface. At the sight of 
us he dived, but his periscope was still showing when we 
swooped down and dropped a bomb from five hundred feet. 
Though it was not a direct hit, the explosion wrecked him 
internally so that he had to come up — unfortunate^ for him — 
under the bows of a destroyer that waltzed right over hmi." 
Life at this station also carries a liberal seasoning of those 
misadventures which are easier to read about than to endure. 
Rescues are usually effected by surface craft, but have been 
Copyright in United States. 
effected on one or two occasions by other flying boats. When 
a small battle plane of ours crashed off the coast of France 
the seaplane consort it was guardiTig nose-dived four thou'^and 
feet and picked the pilot out of the water. On another 
occasion four men stood for nine hours on the tail of a slowly 
sinking plane and were up to their necks in water when found 
by two flying boats. By spUtting the crew, they succeeding 
in rising and, albeit like gorged fish hawks, still flew back 
to their base. 
Carrier pigeons are carried, of course, to bring back word 
of disaster. But they must not be fed for twenty-four hours 
before the trip. Otherwise they will not fly home — as one 
aviator found to his cost— when sent out with a pair of birds 
that had full crops. On" was killed by the fall. When 
released, the other merely circled andahghtedon a wing cip be- 
yond his reach. Language had no effect on the recalcitrant and 
when, the aviator threw something at it his aim was too good. 
He knocked the poor bird off into the water. Though he 
picked it up, it was too badly hurt to fly, and he and it floated 
four days^and nights before they were picked up. 
Another instance surpasses the wildest melodrama After 
crashing, the plane took fire and burned down untU 
only a wing tip was left floating on the water. It would 
only hold up two persons, so the third man had to swim around 
while his fellows rested. By the time they were rescued 
six hours later — a hungry pigeon having done its duty — each 
of the three had put in two good hours' swimming practice. 
A still more interesting story comes from a more southerly 
station where American Naval aviators are training and 
fighting side- by side with veteran English pilots. 
" We had been ordered to carry out a reconnaissance and 
hostile aircraft patrol. It was a perfect morning for the work, 
visibility good, wind light, clouds floating ten thousand feet 
high. Our three machines started at ncjon and were joined 
later by two others ; whereafter we flew over to the enemy 
coast, so close in that we could see squat houses and fat bellied 
windmills shaking their long grev arms behind a line of 
breakers that rofled up a golden beach. After we had flown 
for about a quarter of an hour, the squadron leader had to 
plane down to the water to repair a broken petrol pipe, and 
while we circled above him, five Gerrrian planes came flying 
out from the land on a course that would soon bring them 
upon us. 
" We could not, of course, leave our comrade down on the 
water. Returning, we circled above him till the enemy 
plucked up courage for a second attack, but ran away again. 
After a third unsuccessful attempt, we saw a small scout 
plane fly off at top speed — undoubtedly to bring reinforce- 
ments — for as we gave chase to his comrades for the fourth 
time, we saw the .scout returning with ten more German 
planes. It was now fifteen to four of us, and feeling secure 
in their numbers, they now met us .squarely. Four rose to 
our level, about fifteen hundred feet, on the port side. Five 
swung to starboard. The others passed beneath shooting 
up at us from below. 
" In a very few seconds the air was blue with tracer smoke. 
I concentrated on the four to port. There wasn't much time 
to look around, but as my, glance moved with the passing 
planes, I saw out of the tail of my eye Lieutenant C in 
a stooping posture as though he were reaching for something, 
his head resting on the second pilot's seat. As I had seen 
him do it before, I thought nothing of it until, looking again, 
I saw that his head was lying in a pool of blood. 
" From that moment I have no clear idea of our man- 
oeuvring ; only know that we made a running fight of it 
surrounded by seven Hun planes that had cut us off from our 
friends. Seven to one ? And they were not trying to keep 
awa\ from us either ; would sail right in and turn loose a 
burst of fire at a hundred yards. Yet, somehow or other, we 
carried on for ten miles and finally drove them off — not a 
bit too soon, for our port engine wtis popping badly. 
While the petrol pipe was being repaired, I attended to 
Lieutenant G— . His heart was stUl beating feebly, but 
though we flew swiftly home at once, the case was hopeless. 
He died that night." 
Hope! ess > Surgically, but not spiritually. The man had 
fought his fight bravely and passed out leaving behind him 
an inspiring example. As one English aviator put it in a letter 
to his mother the night before he was killed : " Of what value, 
after all, is forty years of hfe more or less in this disordered 
scheme of things ? The longest life is but as the flitting of 
a bat across the firehght ; a flash in the pan of Eternity. 
Here we live splendidly — while it lasts." 
