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There are slow, stable two-seaters that observe around the lines; fighting two-seaters that operate over an area extending some thirty miles beyond the lines; faster fighting two-seaters that spy upon enemy country still farther afield; the bombing craft, single-seaters or two-seaters used as single-seaters; photography machines; and single-seater scouts, quick-climbing and quick-manoeuvring, that protect and escort the observation buses and pounce on enemy aeroplanes at sight.
But the stable observation machines, while excellent for reconnaissance and artillery spotting, allowed their crews only a small arc of fire, and not until the German single-seater scouts and our Bristol scout, then a comparatively fast machine, appeared on the western front in the spring of 1915 did the destruction of aeroplanes become an everyday occurrence.
This machine is of particular importance because it was the prototype and forerunner of the successive designs of single-seater scout fighting machines which were used so extensively from 1914 to 1918. It was also probably the first machine to be capable of reaching a height of 1,000 feet within one minute.
An idea of the state of development arrived at about this time may be gained from the fact that the Commandant of the Military Wing of the Royal Flying Corps in a lecture before the Royal Aeronautical Society read in February, 1913, asked for single-seater scout aeroplanes with a speed of 90 miles an hour and a landing speed of 45 miles an hour a performance which even two years later would have been considered modest in the extreme.
In the month of January 1917 the flying men accounted for eleven aeroplanes, five of these falling victims to one pilot. The last of these victories I myself witnessed. In a single-seater the pilot engaged two two-seater aeroplanes of a late type, driving down one machine within our line, the pilot killed by eleven bullets and the observer wounded.
By the Summer of 1916, however, we had adapted the "synchronizing gear" to our machine guns, enabling them to be fired through the propeller; while aircraft engines developed much greater power and full allowance was made for all equipment carried. From that time the development of our single-seater fighters was steadily progressive.
J. B. was always talking of the time when he would command not only a machine, but also a "gang of men." However, being Americans, and recruited for a particular combat corps which flies only single-seater avions de chasse, we eventually followed the usual course of training for such pilots.
During this time the strictly fighting plane, usually a single-seater, increased in speed, "ceiling," and agility till it could dart, twist, and dive about, three to five miles above the trenches, protecting friendly bombing and observation planes below from enemy attack or swooping down to send enemy planes in flames to the ground.
A single-seater, armed with three machine-guns which, being controlled by the motor, or engine, shot automatically and at the same time through the propeller in front of the pilot, with the highest speed of any aeroplane then evolved on the fighting front, with a reputation of being able to climb to an altitude of fifteen thousand feet in less than fifteen minutes -some said in so short a time as ten minutes -the crack German machine had attracted much attention.
Drew's first official victory came as the result of a one-sided battle with an Albatross single-seater, whose pilot evidently did not know there was an enemy within miles of him. No more did J. B. for that matter. "It was pure accident," he told me afterward. He had gone from Rheims to the Argonne forest without meeting a single German. "And I didn't want to meet one; for it was Thanksgiving Day.
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