OUR NEW TRIPLANES.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 July 1917, Page 2

OUR NEW TRIPLANES.

.'HUNS -RMNTJNG MACHINES ALL ' COLORS. ' (By W. Beach Thomas, la the Daily. Mall). 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 trhyhiph and'that man's fab. / Wc 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 soldiers and officers, with the rattle of machine guns that the attackers escaped with scarcely an attempt at resistance. . A day later two of our. fighting planes which had sought the Germans in vain for several, previous days suddenly came upon a fleet of 14. Our pair hesitated as. little as the destroyers fßrtfce and (Swiflb, though they were struck with amazement at the spectaible, for' the Germans had painted their machines every sort of color. Apparently to add terror to the spectacle, some ver,e scarlet and Some picked out -in fantastic patterns. Our pair charged this motley group, broke up the formation, and sent two crashing to the ground. It is only men who return victorious who can tell the tale of their fights. What of the men who do not return? I can at least say this: That though our machines are all day busy in the air aibove the enemy's country they seek many more opponents than mill face them, and the enemy's losses in purely fighting machines are enormously greater than ours. His plan when he attacks is to mass hia planes against a single observer, knowing that most observing planes are no match for the fighter. 'it is inevitable that such attacks should be the battles chiefly seen by Infantry in our trenches. They do not see the CO 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 orir fcriplanes towering and stooping and chasing. "As soon as I saw one of these after mo 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 ho 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.

As I was listening at the aerodrome to a stirring tale of a duel that lasted for half an hour, a speck -was aeon in the air, and the first home-comer of a patrol of threo was recognised. He landed and "taxied" (ran along the ground) up to «s. The clouds had 'heen too low for good flying. He had had no adventures, he said, and was home first because tlio engine was giving a little trouble. Then he looked over the machine, and*Baw what we had already Becn--a huge rent and a broken wire in the body of the plane. Clearly a great lump of shrapnel had struck a yard or two behind his back. We had the explanation presently when another two returned. The neighbor pilot, had seen an extra double-sized shrapnel shell from an anti-aircraft gun burst just between the two of thejn—an alarming fact, of which the younger pilot had been wholly unaware. Evidence accumulates of the depression caused among the enemy's infantry by the activity of our airmen. A German document describes the moral effect on infantry of balloons "hanging like grapes in clusters" and watching every movement below. And there arc other depressing agents. Here is a quotation from a 'Prussian officer's diary written on April I:—"The strain which the troops undergo is so great that their morale Wffers severely,..with inevitable and regrettable consequences. There';,is an' increase in cases of absence without leave and Tefusal to obey orders both trivial and serious."