We have said that the process of training a flyer is remarkably expeditious. So far as the fundamentals of his profession are concerned it is. But his education in fact never ends. In the mere matter of reconnaissance, for example, experience is everything. One might imagine that ten thousand men marching on a road would look alike in numbers whatever the nationality. Not so. To the untrained eye five thousand or six thousand French troops will look as numerous as ten thousand British or Germans. Why? Because the French march in much more extended order. Into their democratic military methods the precision and mechanical exactitude of German drill do not enter. With the same number of troops they will extend further along the road by at least a third than would a detachment of either of the other armies.
[Illustration: What an Aviator must Watch.
1 Watch 2 Altimeter-registering height 3 Compass 4 Pressure gauges for two gasoline tanks 5 Dial registering engine revolutions 6 Inclinometer, registering level fore and aft 7 Oil pulsator 8 Control stick, with thumb switch 9 Switches, two magnetos 10 Air speed indicator 11 Gasolene supply pipe]
And again. Great skill has been developed in the course of the war in the art of concealing positions and particularly in disguising cannon. The art has given a new word to the world-- camouflage. Correspondents have repeatedly told of their amazement in suddenly coming across a battery of 75's, or a great siege gun so cunningly hidden in the edge of a thicket they would be almost upon it before detecting it. From an airplane 2500 feet or more in the air it requires sharp eyes to penetrate artillery disguises. A French poilu in a little book of reminiscences tells with glee how a German observation aviator deceived his batteries. A considerable body of French troops being halted in an open field, out of sight of the enemy batteries, found the glare of the sun oppressive, and having some time to wait threw down their equipment and betook themselves to the cool shadows of a neighbouring wood. Along came an enemy aviator. From his lofty height the haversacks, blanket-rolls, and other pieces of dark equipment lying upon the grass looked like a body of troops resting. After sailing over and around the field twice as though to make assurance doubly sure he sailed swiftly away. In a very few minutes shells from a concealed battery began dropping into that field at the rate of several a minute. Every foot of it was torn up, and the French soldiers from their retreat in the woods saw their equipment being blown to pieces in every direction. The spectacle was harrowing, but the reflection that the aviator undoubtedly thought that he had turned his guns on a field full of men was cheering to them in their safety.
An art which the fighting aviator must master early in his career is that of high diving. Many of us have seen a hawk, soaring high in air, suddenly fold his pinions and drop like a plummet full on the back of some luckless pigeon flapping along ungainly scores of feet below, or a fishhawk drop like a meteor from the sky with a resounding splash upon the bosom of some placid stream and rise again carrying a flapping fish to his eyrie in the distant pines. The hunting methods of the hawk are the fighting methods of the airman. But his dives exceed in height and daring anything known to the feathered warriors of the air.
Boelke, most famous of all the German airmen--or for that matter of all a๋rial fighters of his day--who in 1917 held the record for the number of enemy flyers brought down, was famed for his savage dives. He would fly at a great height, fifteen thousand or more feet, thus assuring himself that there was no enemy above him. When he sighted his prey he would make an absolutely vertical nose dive, dropping at the rate of 150 miles an hour or more and spattering shots from his machine gun as he fell. Six hundred shots a minute and the sight of this charging demon were enough to test the nerve of any threatened aviator. In some fashion Boelke was enabled to give a slight spiral form to his dive so that his victim was enveloped in a ring of bullets that blocked his retreat whichever way he might turn for safety.
