WAR

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climb all the way to ceiling going toward the sun, turn, and with the sun on their
backs, dive at the balloons. The dive from height, if they were lucky, gave the
pilots the advantage of surprise and they made their attacks before the balloons
could be reeled in. The speed of the dive, again if they were lucky, threw off the
ground gunners, and the Spads could get away by hugging the ground after pullout,
although sometimes, and this happened to Waddington, they had to run
through a curtain of enemy fire at the end of the dive.
He flamed one balloon with a burst of only six rounds. He knew exactly
because the guns jammed after that first burst.
One day during a balloon attack Waddington narrowly escaped disaster. In
company with Jacques Ehrlich, also of Spa 154, he was beginning his firing pass.
Ehrlich, wishing to close up to Waddington, misjudged the distance because Waddington
had inadvertently placed himself in the sun, whose rays dazzled Ehrlich.
The two Spads came together and Ehrlich's propeller tore off half of Waddington's
wing, the propeller itself being splintered in the collision. Ehrlich switched
off instantly and glided toward the lines, landing safely in French territory. Waddington's
Spad plunged down in
a vicious spin from which he managed to recover
at only a few hundred feet from the ground. He too switched off, and with his
aeroplane barely under control, came in for a safe landing in a vineyard near
Rheims. A truck from the aerodrome collected Waddington and his
mechanics replaced the wing on the aeroplane, which he flew
day.
Spad, and the
again the following
One of Waddington's last fights took place on October 2, 1918, following
his transfer to Spa 31. Flying over the plains of Champagne he and Capitaine
Reverchon spotted and attacked a squadron of eight Fokkers. At the start of
the fight Capitaine Reverchon was hit, his aeroplane set on fire, and man and
machine disappeared in a terrific explosion when they hit the ground in the midst
of the shell craters. Waddington got one of the German fighters under his guns
for a split second and the Fokker burst into flames, another blazing torch falling
from the same piece of sky as Capitaine Reverchon.
Waddington was sorely beset, and his aeroplane was being shot to pieces.
He dropped away in a tailspin then in a series of "falling leaves" to throw off
the Germans pursuing him. Almost over the French lines the Fokkers withdrew;
their bullets had been rattling like hail all through his aeroplane. He piled up on
the sandbags barely 60 feet inside the lines,
miraculously unhurt. Not counting the
hits in the motor, there were over 200 holes in the fuselage, wings and tail of
the Spad.
In the closing months of the war, the single-seat fighters were nearly all
equal and all good. Man had taken his biggest step since he had learned to walk
he had stepped into the sky. In the 15 years since Kittyhawk, and really in the
four since the outbreak of the war, aeroplanes had progressed from powered
gliders—unpredictable and almost uncontrollable—to dependable, adaptable, modern
airplanes. Since that time, airplanes have grown bigger and more powerful,
but the difference is merely quantitative, not qualitative. For his business in the
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