BRITAIN'S NEW TRIPLANES.

Hokitika Guardian, 26 July 1917, Page 2

BRITAIN'S NEW TRIPLANES.

HUNS PAINTING MACHINES ALL COLOURS. Mr Beach Thomas, the war correspondent of the Loudon 1 Daily Mail,” recently wrote from the west front: — v I went up to-day to an aerodrome to watch our new fighting aeroplanes shoot out to'battle and return home again after their duels. The waiting hours were spent in seeing all the apparatus of fighting in the air and in hearing tales of this man’s triumphs and that man’s fate.

We have never before hit the German so hard or so harassed him by day and night. A night or two ago our men broke up three trains near Douai, one after the other, with bombs dropped from a couple of hundred feet, and so terrified were the soldiers with the rattle ot machine guns that the attackers escaped with scarcely an attempt at resistance. A day later two of our fighting aeroplanes which had sought the Germans in vain for several previous days, suddenly came upon a fleet of fourteen. Our pair hesitated as little as the destroyers Broke and Swift though they were struck with amazement at the spectacle, for the Germans had painted their machines every sort of colour. Apparently to add terror to the spectacle, some were scarlet and some picked out in fanf tastic patterns. Our pair charged, this motley group, broke up ihe formation and sent two crashing to the ground. It is only men who/ct urn victorious who can tell the tale of their fights. What of the men who do not return ? I can at least say that: that though our machines are all day busy in the air above the enemy’s country, they seek many more opponents than will face them, and the enemy’s losses in purely fighting machines are enormously greater than ours. His plan when he attacks is to mass his plane against a single observer, knowing that most observing planes are no match for a fighter. It iS inevitable that such attacks should be the battles chiefly seen by infantry in our trenches. They do not see the sixty tons of bombs dropped at night miles over the enemy’s lines ; they seldom see our fighting men’s pursuit of the German fighters or watch our trip.lanes towering and stooping and chasing. “ As soon as I saw,one of these after me I thought it best to come down,” said a very dashing German pilot who dodged our air patrols and got through miles behind our line, and down he came. • We hold again the mastery of the air. Whether we keep it depends, first and foremost, on the activity of the factories at home.