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Updated: June 30, 2025
Furthermore, flying was attended with much greater danger, with a corresponding increase in fatalities, on account of the improvements in the antiaircraft guns and ranging apparatus and the skill of the gunners. Withal, all official reports agree in stating that the proportion of casualties was smaller in the air service than in other branches of the service.
That was effected by our improvements in defence, notably in our antiaircraft bullets and "aprons" suspended from balloons; and after Whitsunday, 1918, the Germans concentrated on the French, although they had shown fewer qualms about reprisals. Nor did our supremacy in the air produce the effects which many anticipated on the field of battle.
Disregarding all antiaircraft measures, machines would sweep down and throw battalions into panic or upset the military traffic along a road, demoralising a battery or a transport train and causing as much damage through congestion of traffic as with their actual machine-gun fire.
At least three aeroplanes dropped bombs over the city, and were attacked in turn by the machine and antiaircraft guns of the garrison, and French aviators proceeded to the attack, beating off the Germans, who returned again later in the day discharging another shower of shells over the fortress.
He turned, as he let the machine dive, back toward the French lines. Then, as the German antiaircraft gunners saw their target flashing clear in flames and they strewed their shrapnel closer before it, the biplane fluttered and fell, no longer diving under guidance, but out of control. Chester jerked about to Hal; over the forms strapped between them, he saw Hal's face in the light of the flame.
These were distributed as follows: German machines, 366; British, 147; French and Belgian, 201. Of the 366 German aeroplanes brought down 269 fell to the British, ninety-five to the French, and two to the Belgians. British airmen accounted for 263 German aeroplanes and antiaircraft gunners for six.
Numerous bombs were dropped, but these caused only slight damage, and none of military importance. One man was slightly wounded. Austrian aeroplanes and antiaircraft batteries obtained hits on the Italian torpedo boats. At the same time an Italian air squadron appeared over Parenzo, dropping twenty bombs in a field. No damage was done.
What happened during the next two hours is still a matter of doubt. Only two of the machines returned from the invasion, torn and riddled with bullets and shrapnel, reporting the most terrific shell fire from batteries of antiaircraft guns. The aviators declared, however, that they "successfully bombarded the airship sheds."
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