AN AIR COLLISION

Taihape Daily Times, 7 October 1918, Page 3

AN AIR COLLISION

FATE OF TWO ENEMY PLANES. Have you lain in a cabin when the sot is smooth and listened to the steady pulse of the engines and felt their vibration running right through you ?

If so, you know pretty well what flying is like in calm weathef. (In rough weather the sea and the air cannot be compared, being totally different. But this is beside the mark.) Just the shiver of the racing giant as we surge across' the still sky, deafened by his ceaseless drone. The air pressed home against our faces. The chill of a glacier creeping relentlessly into every joint and muscle, and the

sinking sun playing on shiny fabric and varnished woodwork. Glancing out along the plane I watch the wing-tip whipping like a whalebone. The conditions with the exception of the temperature, do not change as we climb.

The exception grows colder and colder. Ice forms on my mouth, and my fingers lose their feeling. My knqgfs become leaden and hurt when I touch them, if only with the cuff of my guantlets. "How nasty to fall now,” I think and turn away and search the distance with my eyes. We sight three Boche biplanes five •minutes later approaching the lines from the east about a thousand feet beneath our level, and, having the sun dead behind us, turn and fly downhill towards them.

The enemy are close together evidently on the prowl for stray machines I have a few seconds to spare and consecrate them to my machine gun Everything seems all right. I turn round and nod to OjC. “JB*. Flight, who smiles back at mo through his goggles as .he pushes our nose still further down.

Our quarry in now less than 250 yards away. I don’t think they have seen us yet, and squint along the sights at the nearest machine. Not much allowance necessary, I say to mjydeil'f. . , r (Half a (second- . . One hundred yards at the most. I sit tight with my knees pressed I together and my feet apart. Elbows on the side of the nacelle and I squeeze the trigger. Twenty-five rounds, A spurt of soot covered smoke from my target tells its tale, and the machine slips away on one wing, y* I seek the other two,' but cannot find them. I struggle to my knees and strain over the side. For a moment all I see is a patchwork of green and yellow fields. Suddenly, right below, I see a sight that sickens. Five hundred feet or more beneath us, rapidly fall-, ing, are two white aeroplanes locked together. Squares of white fabric flap over and over in their wake. Like a leaf-laden twig from a tree, the two biplanes spin round. At the sound of our machine-gun the two pilots had swerved and collided. We turn round into the sun and I unload.