A striking case was that of a bomber who had been out over the German trenches. He had a two-man machine, had made a successful flight and had dropped, effectively as he supposed, all his bombs. Returning in serene consciousness of a day's duty well done, he was about to spiral down to the landing place when his passenger looked over the side of the car to see if everything was in good order. Emphatically it was not. To his horror he discovered that two of the bombs had not fallen, but had caught in the running gear of his machine. To attempt a landing with the bombs in this position would have been suicidal. The bombs would have instantly exploded, and annihilated both machine and aviators. But to get out of the car, climb down on the wires, and try to unhook the bombs seemed more desperate still. Stabilizers, and other devices, now in common use, had not then been invented and to go out on the wing of a biplane, or to disturb its delicate balance, was unheard of. Nevertheless it was a moment for desperate remedies. The pilot clung to his controls, and sought to meet the shifting strains, while the passenger climbed out on the wing and then upon the running gear. To trust yourself two thousand feet in mid-air with your feet on one piano wire, and one hand clutching another, while with the other hand you grope blindly for a bomb charged with high explosive, is an experience for which few men would yearn. But in this case it was successful. The bombs fell--nobody cared where--and the two imperilled aviators came to ground safely.
A form of offensive weapon which for some reason seems peculiarly horrible to the human mind is the fléchette. These are steel darts a little larger than a heavy lead pencil and with the upper two thirds of the stem deeply grooved so that the greater weight of the lower part will cause them to fall perpendicularly. These are used in attacks upon dense bodies of troops. Particularly have they proved effective in assailing cavalry, for the nature of the wounds they produce invariably maddens the horses who suffer from them and causes confusion that will often bring grave disaster to a transport or artillery train. Though very light, these arrows when dropped from any considerable height inflict most extraordinary wounds. They have been known to penetrate a soldier's steel helmet, to pass through his body and that of the horse he bestrode, and bury themselves in the earth. In the airplane they are carried in boxes of one hundred each, placed over an orifice in the floor. A touch of the aviator's foot and all are discharged. The speed of the machine causes them to fall at first in a somewhat confused fashion, with the result that before all have finally assumed their perpendicular position they have been scattered over a very considerable extent of air. Once fairly pointed downward they fall with unerring directness points downward to their mark.
[Illustration: At a United States Training Camp. © U. & U.]
It is a curious fact that not long after these arrows first made their appearance in the French machines, they were imitated by the Germans, but the German darts had stamped upon them the words: "Made in Germany, but invented by the French."
[Illustration: A "Blimp" with Gun Mounted on Top. © U. & U.]
One of the duties of the fighting airmen is to destroy the observation balloons which float in great numbers over both the lines tugging lazily at the ropes by which they are held captive while the observers perched in their baskets communicate the results of their observations by telephone to staff officers at a considerable distance. These balloons are usually anchored far enough back of their own lines to be safe from the ordinary artillery fire of their enemies. They were therefore fair game for the mosquitoes of the air. But they were not readily destroyed by such artillery as could be mounted on an ordinary airplane. Bullets from the machine-guns were too small to make any rents in the envelope that would affect its stability. Even if incendiary they could not carry a sufficiently heavy charge to affect so large a body. The skin of the "sausages," as the balloons were commonly called from their shape, was too soft to offer sufficient resistance to explode a shell of any size. The war was pretty well under way before the precise weapon needed for their destruction was discovered. This proved to be a large rocket of which eight were carried on an airplane, four on each side. They were discharged by powerful springs and a mechanism started which ignited them as soon as they had left the airplane behind. The head of each rocket was of pointed steel, very sharp and heavy enough to pierce the balloon skin. Winslow was fortunate enough to be present when the first test of this weapon was made. In his book, With the French Flying Corps, he thus tells the story:
