FIGHTING IN THE AIR.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 December 1915, Page 2

FIGHTING IN THE AIR.

FRENCH VERSUS GERMAN. A Paris message to the New York Herald says:— A battle between a French aeroplane, loaded with ninety millimetre 'bombs, and a fast double-engined German aeroplane, was one of the incidents of the battle of the Champagne when the Allied offensive was at its height. The French machine had set out to destroy a line of railroad back of the German lines, when the German craft emerged from a cloud. The air battle began immediately. Almost as soon as it commenced the machine-gun 011 the French aeroplane jambed. "Dive! Dive!'' shouted the observer to the pilot. The machine plunged in a swift curve, but the German, no less prompt, dived too, and continued to fly around the Frendi machine, which was hampered by the weight of the bombs it carried. After firing his carbine until his supply of cartridges was exhausted, it occurred to the French observer that an abrupt landing would be fatal to him and to his pilot unless the fuses were removed from the bombs. He coolly set about taking out the fuses, and had just finished the task when a bullet struck hiin in tile back, and a moment later another shattered one wrist. The pilot, wan hit in the eye bv a piece of the propeller, which had been knocked off by a bullet. Again he was wounded in the abdomen, and fainted. Then the observer seized the levers, and guided the machine into the French trencho?. The destruction by Lieutenant , of the Aviation Corps, in the Champagne, of n German captive balloon of the type known as "sausage," which had been mentioned in a French official statement, is declared to have, been a particularly brilliant and difficult feat, for these balloons are guarded carefully. Determined to gel, rid of this particular balloon, bv means of which the Germans had been enabled to obtain valuable information regarding the movements of French troops, Lieutenant, experimented for two months with fire balls. When he was convinced that he had an explosive whHv met all his requirements, he started out for the attack on the balloon. The aeroplanes guarding the balloon, moored fifteen miles behind the German lines, were s» vigilant that the lieutenant had to try four times before lie could rise above it. On the fourth attempt he swooped down in a giddy flight from a height of 10,000 ft, and placed his missiles accurately before the balloon could he hauled down. In dropping his fire bombs the Frenchman came near enough to the earth to be in full : range of the German anti-aircraft guns I but lie managed to rise safely, and escaped in a hurricane of bursting shrap- | nel.