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have scoffed at and headlong nerve won.
Just when it seemed as if ramming the
German machine would be the last recourse,
Thaw's bullets took effect and
tbe enemy fell shot through the head.
The rest of that fight Thaw saw from
the ground. With his petrol exhausted
by the leak holes that the Germans shot
OOfTHniHT UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD
U. S. LEADS IN AIR WAR 671
almost in one. In Europe, the youth
does not indulge in sports that are so
"violent". To that one might attribute
the fighting superiority of the American
flyers.
This fighting in the air has developed
a technique all its own. At the outbreak
of the war it was poorly developed.
THIS PHOTOGRAPH WAS MADE BY AN AMERICAN AVIATOR FLYING ABOVE THE GERMAN
LINES. IT IS THE COUNTRY NORTHEAST OF RHEIMS
in his tanks, he barely got away with his Aeroplanes were for dropping bombs
life in a steep volplane to earth. Alight­ and for scouting, but as the war went on,
ing there, he looked up to see the French the flyers came to be divided into three
flyers closing with the reinforcements groups—fighters, observers and raiders.
that the Germans had sent up after him. The sole job now of the fighters is to
lie had bagged three planes in a single fight. For the most part they are in one
flight.
man machines, but often a two man ma­
Deeds of this sort have given the chine is used. The observer has a ma­
Americans in France an envied reputachine gun and also an engine control so
tion for courage and fighting skill. They that if his aviator is killed the machine
will take chances that the most techni­ will not of a necessity fall. By using the
cally finished pilot will evade as "sui­ duplicate control, he can run it. Then
cide". It is the headlong thing of their there are the new battle-planes, mount­
school and college days coming out in ing two, even four machine guns, mon­
war—tbe diving tackles of tbe football strous things that the Germans have at­
field, the perilous slides of the baseball tempted to perfect but which have killed
diamond. It is the American thing, an some of their best flyers in the tryouts—
amazing swift co-ordination between Lieutenant Yoll Muller, brother of the
mind and muscle. It is natural that our author of "The Miracle," the great R.
flyers should have this. In most of our Max Rheinhardt pageant, among the
sports our youth must think and act lost. But the Esquadrillc Americaine