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Every fine day the dwellers in the trenches before Bapaume saw machines swerving round each other in determined effort to destroy. This region was the hunting-ground of many dead notabilities of the air, including the Fokker stars Boelcke and Immelmann, besides British pilots as brilliant but less advertised.
"I have had the pleasure and honor to have the great Immelmann drop at me, once, on an Albatros, or a machine that looked like an Albatros. We knew afterward that it was Immelmann, for he worked the same tactics several times, always in the same way.
Nobly, too, did the men of all nations rise to these heroic and dangerous opportunities. The Germans were the first to boast of the exploits of their fighting airmen, and to us in Britain the names of Immelmann and Bolcke were known long before those of any of our own fighters. The former claimed not far short of a hundred victims before he was at last brought low in June, 1916.
The German aviators will not as a class stand up to those of the Allies. They are not nimble in the air. Such champions as they have produced have been men of one trick; one of their great men, Immelmann he was put down by an English boy a month or so ago had a sort of hawk's swoop.
There are names connected with that period of which the glory will not fade, names such as Bishop, Guynemer, Boelcke, Ball, Fonck, Immelmann, and many others that spring to mind as one recalls the 'Aces' of the period. In addition to the pilots, there is the stupendous development of the machines stupendous when the length of the period in which it was achieved is considered.
The tendency in recent months, especially on the western battle front, has been the "attack in squadrons," instead of the individual combats which made international heroes out of Boillot, Immelmann, Boelke, Warneford and Navarre. The squadron attack was first employed by the Germans in the Verdun operations.
A certain inevitable prejudice even at this length of time leads one to discount the valour of pilots in the German Air Service, but the names of Boelcke, von Richthofen, and Immelmann recur as proof of the courage that was not wanting in the enemy ranks, while, however much we may decry the Gotha raids over the English coast and on London, there is no doubt that the men who undertook these raids were not deficient in the form of bravery that is of more value than the unthinking valour of a minute which, observed from the right quarter, wins a military decoration.
Lieutenant Boelke on January 13, 1916, shot down a British aeroplane, as did also Lieutenant Immelmann one northeast of Tourcoing and the other near Bapaume. Both were decorated with the Order of Pour-le-Mérite by the emperor. A third British aeroplane was shot down in an aerial fight near Roubaix, and a fourth was brought down by German defense guns near Ligne, northwest of Lille.
And yet these same drafted men, who had withstood for three and a half years the call of their country, had more control over their machines at the end of their course than the men of the year before. At the end of four, five, or six hours' solo these men could do all the high maneuvers, commonly thought dangerous, such as the barrel roll, the loop, the stall turn, the Immelmann turn.
Before Immelmann swooped on him, Parker had smashed up and sent to ground two of the four Boche machines which had originally attacked him. The Brighton boys soon learned that the most outstanding characteristic of veteran fliers was modesty. A new chivalry had sprung up with the development of the air service.
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