THRILLING AIR FIGHT.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 219, 24 November 1916, Page 2

THRILLING AIR FIGHT.

"WHY NOT FIRE, YOU FOOL?" A thrilling story of a battle in the air, exciting incidents of which were the setting on fire of a British aeroplane by a piece of German shell and the extinction of the fire in mid-air, is told by the London Daily Chronicle, in a letter from an officer to his parents. "In the afternoon four of our machines were sent on a roving commission over a certain area of Boche territory. Taking with us plenty of ammunition and orders to shoot at all the enemy machines in sight we wandered around for more than an hour, sitting over Boche aerodrome, and picking up useful scraps of information, relative to rolling stock, transport, and important town cur leader fired a the lik«. "Suddenly, after we had passed an signal light, and dived. We looked beneath him, and saw three enemy biplanes. We followed him down, and I emptied a drum and a half of ammunition into a German machine during the di"e. All at once our fuselage shivered, end looking down 0:1 it I saw that 'Archie' had left his card in the form of a piece of burning fuselage. I shouted down the speaking tube to my pilot, but the pilot's earpiece had slipped from his cap during the dive, and he heard nothing. I stood up, leaned across, and shook his shoulder. 'Pass the fire extinguisher,' I yelled. 'Hun down on left,' he shouted back, my words having been . lost in the roar of the engine. 'Fire extinguisher.' I called again. 'Why hon't you fire at that Hun, you fool?' •is the reply. Seeing that the flames ere licking their way back to the ta?r abandoned the attempt to get the •xtinguisher, and crawled down the 1 fuselage to the scene of the fire. I ' managed to beat out the flames, whlcn '"•.ad eaten half-way through one of the longerons. "Mean while the pilot had been attacking one of the enemy machines, i and a bullet had gone into our petrol , tank. Confronted with diminishing pressure he decided to make for Allied > territory at once and turned west. Five minutes later, by which time tru"sumber of revolutions had dropped ilarmingly, we found the way barren by two more Boche machines. My urn having jammed, the pilot did tie -]ily thing possible—he went straight it the nearest. German, firing all the 'line. Then the engine petered out altogether, and there was nothing fcr j. it but to do a long glide and try and reach our \jnes. We were up 4000 c t. when we started to glide, and for v long time we did not know if we had (sufficient height to get us across, hut the pilot took advantage of a small salient, and we managed to glide over the trenches at a height of about 400 yards under the fire of machine suns and rifles, besides dear old "Archie."