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Active Service and

When the Royal Flying Corps flew to France at the outbreak of war one rather received the impression that they went off in something of the spirit of a forlorn hope. At any rate, despite their all being quite bright and cheerful, most of the pilots adopted rather a morituri te salutant attitude towards life in general, and though none of them showed any overt evidence that he was seriously concerned about what the Irish call "making his soul," many of them distinctly said, "Let us eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die." One or two officers of my acquaintance in one squadron in particular were fully convinced that the whole squadron would be wiped out in the first week of serious work, the luckiest ones being those who escaped death by being merely wounded or moderately smashed.

Now, after seven months of war, during which the pilots must have covered tens of thousands of miles over continuous fire, besides odd flying merely as a means of locomotion, that squadron has, I believe, lost two pilots killed by accident and none by gun or rifle fire, and only one or two wounded or prisoners. Other squadrons which have done an equal amount of work have been no less fortunate, and some, with perhaps less flying to their credit, have been even luckier.

The Royal Naval Air Service has had about equal luck, for though the number of Naval pilots who have flown over gun-fire is less, the miles covered by the R.N.A.S. on coast-patrols, Channel patrols, and in flying over the North Sea generally, must be nearly equal to the R.F.C. mileage, and though machines have come down in the open and have drifted for hours before being picked up, and though many seaplanes have been wrecked in one way or another, the pilots have escaped death in an extraordinary way.

French Ill-Fortune.

An official French note published last week lamented the number of casualties in the French Aéronautique Militaire, which points to the French having lost a much higher percentage than our flying Services have. We have lost several valuable officers, whose deaths deeply affect many of us who have been closely connected with naval and military aviation, but when one looks at the figures one cannot avoid a sense of satisfaction that the proportion of loss is so very small. The Services themselves evidently have the same feeling, for one recalls Dr. Glazebrook's remark about a young friend of his who wrote that he really felt that he ought to go back to his regiment, because it seemed to him unfair that he should be flying in comfort and safety while the other officers of his battalion were having such a strenuous time in the trenches. In one or two cases officers seconded to the R.F.C. are now about the only unwounded officers of their line units.

Just why our aviators should be so fortunate is not very obvious, but it appears primarily to be due to their being better mounted than the French, so that they can keep at a safer height, and can fly quicker and so are harder to hit.

Secondly though perhaps this is really the prime reason-our aeroplanes, like our horses, are better cared for, The R.F.C. mechanics have been splendid.

Some Other Things.

They have toiled night and day to keep their officers' machines in perfect order and to keep the engines in tune. As a result we have had only one known case of a machine actually breaking in the air, and that was of French make, and despite the enormous mileage the cases of engine breakdown have been few and far between.

Thirdly, our machines are undoubtedly better constructed, for when he likes the British workman can do the best work in the world, and however much one may disapprove of the methods of the Royal Aircraft Factory officials in some of their dealings, there is no denying that competition with that establishment has kept the aeroplane manufacturers' noses on the grindstone, with corresponding benefit to the Services. Even as it is, we have some of the best aeroplanes in the world, but if competition of all kinds, both in construction and in actual flying, had been officially encouraged in the past we should by now have been far ahead of any other country, instead of being just à little more than able to hold our own.

Also, the enlightened policy lately pursued by the War Office, and the good work done by the Aeronautical Inspection Department, has resulted in a very distinct improvement in the quality of workmanship all round, and in the production of stronger and safer machines.

Standing Punishment.

Perhaps the most surprising thing we have learned from actual experience of war is the amount of punishment an aeroplane can stand without collapsing. When one looks into the construction of a flying machine it. strikes one that the least thing in the way of gun or rifle fire would knock it to pieces, yet one hears of machines coming home safely with planes consisting apparently of more holes than fabric. Others come in cheerfully minus ailerons, or struts. Shells burst under tails and stand machines on their heads, but the pilots do not seem to worry much. In fact, aviators in general seem to bear charmed lives.

Probably the real reason is that when a man standing in a trench shows himself several dozens of rifles are fired at him, and the bullets all miss him by inches, and there is no record of how near they went, whereas in an aeroplane every bullet within fifteen feet of the body of the machine, and within the area of the wings and tail, leaves its mark. The most astonishing thing is that none of them ever seem to hit a really vital part of the machine itself and smash up a main wiring plate at the base of a strut, or something of that sort. The Age Limit Question.

With so many narrow escapes before their eyes it is not at all surprising that some of the younger pilots become reckless, and that some of the older ones become confirmed fatalists. Of the two attitudes of mind the latter is preferable, for a man who is a fatalist can go on flying, apparently, till he gets killed or dies of old age the odds are in favour of old age-whereas a reckless youngster is liable to lose his nerve entirely after one bad smash.

Which gives one to wonder at times whether the

authorities are entirely wise in selecting very young men for training as pilots at Government expense. It is true that young eyes and hands are probably easier to train, but it is still more true that an old head is certain to have better judgment, and that an older man has more staying power. A boy of 20 or so may be a better aerial acrobat, but a man of 30, who has never had any ambition to loop the loop, will stand the hardships of campaign life better, and he will certainly stand long flights day after day very much better.

Among my personal friends who have been flying on active service I notice that some of the youngest have a strained and tired look about their eyes which should not be there at so tender an age, whereas the hardened old sinners of between 30 and 35 are just as cynically cheerful or as cheerfully depressed as they have been ever since I have known them. It is easier to break a young horse's heart than an old one's, and probably the same is true of human nerves. Certainly a fit man of 30 will stand more hardship than a boy of 20, and though he may not be as quick in his actions, it is more than doubtful whether any wonderful quickness is necessary in handling an aeroplane. Judgment is much more valuable, and here the older man scores almost always.

Steeplechase riding and driving racing-cars on the road both need quicker hands than flying, and probably more judgment as well, and in both sports it seems that the men at the top of the tree are much nearer 30 than 20. Personally I should put the minimum age of a Service aviator at 25 and let the maximum age depend on the physical fitness of the applicant, and I venture to commend this point to the consideration of the authorities.

Archibald and His Ways.

However, what I originally set out to do was to give a few instances of what narrow escapes actually do happen to Service aviators, with the double object of warning youngsters against unnecessary recklessness, and of demonstrating that while flying on active service is not as free from danger as our small number of casualties seems to prove, it is possible to survive incidents which ought to have ended in sudden death.

Several pilots have recently remarked that the shooting of the German "Archibalds" has improved very much of late, which may be due either to real improvement, due to continual practice, or to the increasing number of high-angle guns, or merely because the bad weather compels our pilots to fly lower to see below the clouds. Also, the clouds themselves, as mentioned some time ago, are useful to the gunners, who can get the vertical range exactly by bursting their trial shells just under the clouds, and then waiting for an aeroplane to come through. In the first two months of the war there was hardly ever a cloud to be seen, and the observers could see perfectly from heights of well over 6,000 feet.

The more experienced pilots now know all Archibald's habits, and consequently prefer whenever possible to hare along the German lines down wind, and then clear off over to our own territory for the slow beat up against the wind. One can sympathise heartily with the pilot who took up a brave but aerially uneducated senior officer for such a trip some time ago, and at the end of the appointed journey received an intimation that the observer would like to go back slowly over the same ground. The legend has it that the observer stuck out about ten minutes of the return journey at ten miles an hour or so, the machine presenting almost a stationary mark for a whole bunch of star-turn Archibalds, and then signalled to the pilot to sheer off to a safer position, and that when the pilot got him safely home the observer received quite a heartto-heart lecture from the junior but more experienced officer,

Apropos Archibald, some of the wilier pilots disI covered some months ago that he cannot make good shooting against the sun. Consequently, whenever he becomes unpleasantly attentive they try to get between him and the light. An aeroplane at 6,000 feet or so is a small enough mark anyhow, and when the gunner has to aim into the eye of the sun to find it the machine is fairly safe. Young pilots may find the tip useful when they go into action for the first time.

Lately it seems that the R.N.A.S. raids have drawn most of the star gunners and their guns into Belgium, and consequently the R.F.C. patrols are not quite so much worried, for which fact, no doubt, they are duly grateful.

The War as an Entertainment.

Also apropos Archibald, I was told the other day of a new and very enthusiastic pilot who went out to Flanders for the first time. He started off gaily from the aircraft base, no end cheered by the idea that he was really "going to see the War," as he put it. He flew along for some miles, very much interested in the scenery, but not seeing anything very exciting, till after a while he remarked to himself, "Where's this War they're talking about? I don't see any War." Then suddenly, a mile or two farther on, the sky became white with the smoke of shrapnel bursting all round him. Bullets began to rip through the planes, and the machine bumped about ominously, whereon, according to his account, he exclaimed, "Lord! There is a War after all, and I believe those chaps on the ground think I'm it." So he sheered off to a calmer atmosphere. Apparently he had wandered right over one of the Germans' pet positions where they had a whole family of Archibalds, which held their fire till this sportsman was right overhead. Incidentally they gave away their precise position, which was just what was wanted.

An Overrated Sport.

"Going to see the War" seems to be the pet amusement of aviators and other people who are unfortunately tied by their duties to base camps or Headquarters billets, whenever the said people can contrive some excuse for getting up to the firing line. Certain young aviator friends of mine took such a holiday not very long ago, having borrowed a car with faithful promises that it should on no account be damaged. They went off cheerfully to the firing line and were learning much useful knowledge about the land-going portion of the operations when the German heavy guns began shelling the place they were in. Mindful of their promise about the car, they started back to where they had left it. and as they were walking along a canal a six-inch shell dropped into it not twenty feet from where they were, burst on the bottom. threw up a huge column of water, mud, dead fish. and assorted refuse all over them, and knocked them flat on the road. The leader of the party recovered before the others. and when he was able to sit up and take notice and had made sure that he was not damaged, he saw them beginning to crawl round on their hands and knees, wondering whether they were alive or not-and he said that the first thing that crossed his mind was how angry they would be with him for bringing them out to see the War, and getting them in such a filthy mess. One of them afterwards expressed the opinion that War considered as a sport was over-rated. As a matter of fact, it is just as well that Service aviators should see something of the war on the ground as well as from aloft. for it extends their point of view and is highly educative.

Some "Near Things."

Apropos "near things" in general. it will be remembered that the Admiralty announced last week that one of the aeroplanes at the Dardanelles had been hit in 28