m*- w - Clpdigital.org

670 ILLUSTRATED WORLD
GRADUATED
This squad of Americans has finished six weeks of training at the hands of brilliant airmen, and is ready now to take its
place in the Esquadrille Americaine.
D & UNDERWQOI
K. Yates Rockwell, One of
the Most Successful of the
American Air Pilots
began to put up, and behind the French
lines there appeared machines coming to
Thaw's assistance. Meanwhile the third
German had climbed above Thaw and
now darting down, his machine gun
blazing as he came, he opened a murderous
downward angle fire on the
American. The wings of Thaw's machine
were riddled like a sieve. Bullets
struck his petrol tank and the liquid
spurted forth. In a few moments all his
supply would have leaked and his engine
would go dead. It was a ticklish situation.
Whether to volplane down to earth
now while he still had fuel enough to
manoeuvre into a good position for the
descent, or to take a chance. Thaw took
the chance. As the German dived
abreast him and tried to flatten out, to
keep at the same elevation so as to get
in a raking flank fire. Thaw made his
decision.
Cutting a perilously sharp circle, he
rushed the German head on, his machine
gun firing directly ahead through his
propeller blades—a risky thing at best,
for if the synchronation of the machine
gun is not perfect with the spin of the
propeller, you destroy your own blades.
But it was in that American to take a
chance that a more erudite aviator would