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Updated: May 24, 2025
His petrol tank bursts into flames, and the machine dives steeply, a streamer of flame running away behind it. The fire spreads to the fuselage and planes. After rushing earthwards for two or three thousand feet, the whole aeroplane crumbles up and you see the main portion falling like a stone.
In the moonlight they could distinctly see a huge reptile, either a python or a boa-constrictor, coiled up in the angle formed by the juncture of the airplane body and the broad base of the left wing. The creature was so long that its tail passed up over the rounded fuselage and out upon the other wing.
"Hello, Tam anything exciting?" Tam waved his hand he never saluted. "Will ye gang an' tak' a look at me eenstruments?" he asked mysteriously. "Why, Tam?" "Will ye, sir-r?" Captain Blackie walked over to the machine and climbed up into the fuselage. What he saw made him gasp, and he came back to where Tam was standing, smug and self-conscious.
Mounted on the hood was the competent-looking Vickers machine gun, with a long belt of cartridges in place, and on the side of the fuselage were painted the insignia of an escadrille. The pilot was recognized as soon as he removed his helmet and goggles. He had been a moniteur at the school in former days, and was well known to some of the older Americans.
The great volume of gusty sound, hurled aloft by these thousands of sky-pointing mouths, created an air-pocket in which the bombing plane tilted dangerously. For a moment, Bleak, who was watching the plane, thought it was going to careen into a tail-spin and crash down fatally. Then he saw Quimbleton, still recognizable by an adhering shred of whisker, lean over the side of the fuselage.
Then, from a valley of mist half a mile away, a tiny machine shot up, shining like burnished silver in the rays of the afternoon sun, for Tam had driven up in a drizzle of rain, and wings and fuselage were soaking wet. The watcher above rushed to the attack. He was perhaps a thousand yards above his enemy and had certain advantages a fact which Tam realized.
The production of a machine specially adapted for this purpose, armoured underneath, perhaps, and carrying guns that fire downward through the fuselage, is worth the careful attention of aeroplane designers.
"Hurry!" exclaimed Bruce, as a gaunt form with patches of brown, and double nose, telling of mixed blood, sprang forward, eager to drag the fresh meat from the fuselage. Instead of firing, the Major beat the beast over the head, and with a snarl he resumed his place in the ever-narrowing circle.
Then came the Boche front line, ragged and unkempt. I fired along an open trench. Although far from fearless as a rule, I was not in the least afraid during the eventful glide. My state of intense "wind up" while the fuselage was burning had apparently exhausted my stock of nervousness.
Reference has been previously made to the FUSELAGE, SKIDS, AILERONS, WARPING CONTROLS, ELEVATING PLANES, and RUDDER of the various forms of air-craft. We have also spoken of the GLIDING ANGLE of a machine. Frequently a pilot makes his machine dive at a much steeper gradient than is given by its natural gliding angle.
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