Air Stories, April 1936 — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AIR STORIES it we had to pass over that long-estab- lished hornets’ nest at Valmy-le-Bois ; hence the ‘‘in force.’’ Five machines took part ; the Skipper himself, Moldred, ‘“‘Woggy,’’ the Hon. Charles Edward and myself. In case of trouble, five machines of ‘‘A’’ Flight were to ride the sky a couple of miles to our rear. It was the queerest formation-flight I have ever taken part in. To begin with, Moldred and Charles Edward started scrapping—as far as a subaltern and an N.C.O. can scrap—as to which of them should fly rear man. Langrish had allotted the position to Westringham, but when the Hon. C. E. came taxying up to take his place, Moldred was already in possession. There followed, above the drone of the five engines ticking over, a shouting match that did nothing to add to any- body’s dignity, and the confusion was made worse by the racket of ‘‘A”’ Flight’s five machines getting into posi- tion across the way. In the end poor old Langrish countermanded his own order and made Charles Edward yield place. We had expected a great deal of rough stuff to come our way on this flight, but, to our surprise, we took our photo- graphs with only a minimum of objection from the Huns; the two formations of S.E.’s were evidently too big a nut to crack for anything but a young circus. But the show was by no means without excitement. It was over the German aerodrome at Valmy-le-Bois that the extraordinary thing happened. Charles Edward, who had, I noticed, been flying most of the time with his head screwed round over his right shoulder, suddenly left the formation. His position had been on my left, abreast of me, so that when I saw his right wing suddenly tip upward and his machine begin to sideslip away from the formation, I naturally turned my head. In amazement I watched him _ swirl away to the left and then drop his nose and dive. 3 Langrish, who had seen nothing amiss, was blithely leading the formation straight back to the lines, but when I fired a hasty couple of rounds from my gun to attract his attention, he glanced back and followed the direction of my pointing finger. And there was Charles Edward, with no enemy in sight, gone suddenly quite crazy, chasing round after his own tail, as though something special in the way of Fokkers had glued itself on to his tail-skid and were shooting him up with triple-guns. What the devil p At a sign from the bewildered Langrish the formation banked left and we watched the antics of the Hon. Charles Edward with growing astonishment. What on earth did the man think he was doing? Now he was whirling round and round in the tightest circle he could manage, losing height at every second. But now he had apparently succeeded in his extraordinary object, whatever it was, because he suddenly flattened out again and began climbing to regain the formation. It was then that I saw a flutter of white and green at the leading edge of his top plane. Langrish had throttled back to let him catch up, and as he came nearer I saw that it was a rag of some sort caught on his projecting pitot- tube. * I didn’t feel called upon to fire any more alarm-shots over a detail like that, and soon forgot aboutit. Tranquilly, we went roaring our way back to the line. E had been flying so for about three minutes, when a sudden burst of machine-gun fire behind me made me almost leap out of my skin. Instinctively I threw on rudder and bank and whirled round to see how many Huns were on our tails. But there were no Huns in the sky. Instead, there was a further mystery. Charles Edward and Moldred were both gone from the formation. And they had not only taken their leavé of us, but were locked tight in a circle of combat and were dosing each other with * A tube projecting forward from an interplane strut and con- nected with the air-speed indicator. 304 CoOnniclooo SJ (Cl Q)