BEARDED PILOTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 January 1940, Page 6

BEARDED PILOTS

FRANCE’S “RED DEVIL” FLYERS RECKLESS DARING. AN ENVIABLE REPUTATION. Daring feats by bearded fliers of France's “Red Devils" squadron are winning them an enviable reputation among air units on the Western Front. • They are a good humoured lot who take their work calmly and with a certain quiet cynicism. The "Red Devils,’’ who according to military' sources have accounted for a number of German planes in recent fighting, have grown “Mephistopheles" beards as a distinguishing mark and in good-natured protest against orders forbidding them to paint red devils on their machines. The order was issued so that the enemy' should not know when any given squadron was in action. One of the first French aviators to receive a decoration for bravery in action is serving in this squadron which is regarded as a successor to the 1918 "Cigognes" (Storks) led by France’s first Great War air hero, Georges Guynemeit. and the "Cocotes” (Ducklings) of General Victor Vuillemin, who is now commander-in-chief of the air force. HOT SALVOS. An account of an operation which the bearded fliers participated is given by one of the officers who is keeping a detailed log of their activities. Describing a flight in which a scouting group was suddenly caught by a barrage of German anti-aircraft fire, he wrote: “We were saluted by hot salvos that found us at a high altitude, and we turned back toward our own lines in zig-zag flight. The idea was to get them to fire in a zig while were in the zag. But the salvos tightened up on us and became an inferno in which the Red Devils themselves —despite their saucy beards and gleaming eyes—set their jaws and swallowed in dry' throats.” The informal historian continued on a later page, describing a “dog-fight”: — “Scouting toward Landau I spy four suspicious black specks in the sky. Warned by radio, the tricky 'Devils' accompanying me size up the situation at once. We hide ourselves in the glare of the good old sunlight and continue protecting our pals in the observation planes, who suspect nothing. Then the Fritzes swoop down on an observation two-seater and in turn we plunge down on the Fritzes, forcing them back on the right track. With the first burst of my' guns one of the enemy planes breaks into flames and falls helplessly to extinction.” ASTOUNDING FEATS. Feats of French airmen on the Western Front “surpass all imaginable limits,” Merry Bromberger wrote in the newspaper “I’lntransigeant.” One young pilot, flying high and alone, saw three Messerschmidts preparing to land at the airfield of Saarbruecken. The French flier put his plane into a dive until he was only 150 ft from the ground, machine-gun-ning the first of the landing ships and causing it to crash. “He then turned on his wing, attacked the second plane and shot it down. He still had time to catch the third, which had circled to make its landing.” One reconnaissance plane, it was reported. flew over to take photographs of the Siegfried Line and was attacked as it was returning. One pilot was killed and the observer was seriously wounded. The latter bailed out, however, carrying his equipment and plates, which were landed intact. The second pilot aboard brought his flaming plane down. It turned over as it landed and the flier was hurtled out of the ship. He returned to the burning cockpit to retrieve some photos still there.