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Updated: June 4, 2025
Less than a fortnight later Will took part in a gallant fight against three machines that had attacked him far within the German territory. He accounted for one, crippled another, and outsped the third -but when he landed his machine in his home airdrome he settled back quietly in the driving seat as the machine came to rest. When his mechanics reached him he was unconscious!
"Well, sir," began Harry, "we Brighton boys have been wondering how we can get inside the new airdrome. Summer vacation is coming, and we could all -the eight of us, in our crowd -arrange to stay here after the term closes. We want to be allowed inside the grounds, and to have a chance to learn something practical. We would do anything and everything we were told to do, sir."
They had not been far away when Joe had started on his experimental round of the airdrome, and had witnessed the whole episode. "You did not do so badly until you landed," said the colonel pleasantly. "You should have stayed up." The boys had never before heard the colonel essay a joke, and were by no means sure that his first remark was not the preface to serious condemnation of Joe.
"With that sort of thing against us," said Dicky Mann, "we have certainly got to learn to fly." The same thought may have come to their squadron commander that night, for the next day saw the start of real post-graduate work in flying for his command. The rule at the base airdrome had been to give new units of well-trained flyers good all-round tests on various types of machines.
Finally the day came when the "bad bus" -rechristened the "boys' bus " -was wheeled out for its trial flight after the completion of the repairs. Adams was chosen to make the trial trip, which went off without incident. He flew the big biplane six or seven hundred feet above the green carpet of the airdrome, and came down with a graceful volplane that caused the boys to feel like applauding.
No finer fellow on the grounds could be found than the big Scot, Macpherson, who was head engine hand of the first lot of mechanics to arrive at the airdrome. Macpherson talked little unless he was speaking to some prime favorite, when he became most voluble. The sergeant-major and Mac were cronies.
In graceful, pretty circles the Sky-Bird began to spiral her way downward, John's eyes fastened upon the big white T of the familiar airdrome. As they came down, people in the outlying districts rushed madly toward the field, and the streets everywhere were choked with the concourse pouring toward the center of attraction.
With that the publisher of the Clarion accompanied our friends back to the hangar, where he had a good look at the Sky-Bird II, and showed his own airplane, which was in all essentials an exact copy of the other. Following this they left the airdrome and went to their hotels.
One of them, a slight youth named Mason, who hailed from the Pacific Coast, now joined in the conversation. "There has been an instance of an observer taking control of a plane and effecting a good landing after his pilot had been killed," said Mason. "He came down not a long way from an airdrome where I was stationed. A bit of anti-aircraft shrapnel caught the pilot in the back.
With fifteen hours of solo flying the pupil has really become a pilot. He is beginning to show that he can control his machine. From then on it is a question of the polishing of the nice points, making his forced landings perfect, not side-slipping a foot on his vertical banks, and coming out of spin so that he always faces the airdrome all of which distinguish the good pilot from the poor pilot.
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