AIRMAN AND EAGLE

Taranaki Daily News, 10 January 1920, Page 10

AIRMAN AND EAGLE

The following (from the Daily Mail) gives fuller particulars of an 'incident briefly reported i n the cabled news a few weeks back:—

A thousand feet above the blue crags and chasms of the Pyrenees a British airman has discovered a sport, beside which, he says, the thrills and dangers of tiger shooting are but a commonplace.

Flying recently from Paris to Madrid, the airman, piloting a single-seated scout machine, found himself over tho Pyrenees in the half-light of early dawn- He was flying probably at 100 miles an hour when a big eagle, roused from its haunt by the distant drumming of the engine soared to meet him. '

It was as if the eagle had thrown me a challenge," says the airman, "but the laughter died on my lips when I thought that perchance a lucky dive by the bird, or, may be, a collision in midair, would send me crashing to the rocks beneath.

The eagle lumbered at me at about 90 miles an horn-, and I throttled down to the same pace while we took stock of each other. The air by then was crystal clear, and I could see every feather on him as we circled round, for all the world like two antagonists above the western front.

'Whether he wanted to get above me or a dive, or whether he took me for a bird of his own fighting instincts, and was afraid of my getting above him and dropping on him, I know not, but it was in his eye to climb—and climb he did.

"Up and up we wont, the bird a few yards from my wing tip, climbing yard by yard with mo. And then, unable to resist it any longer, I opened the throttle, put my nose down, and looped rip-lit over hhn. He made one great effort to caich up, and with it his strength failed. His wings gave a feeble beat, and, with every appearance of a shot plane, he nose-dived to earth. I followed him down a good twelve hundred feet, and saw him flatten out and land near a village in the foothills, comsjletely ashas>»t**"