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Updated: June 3, 2025
Show Your Papers!" The Spad, like the Nieuport, is a one-man apparatus, the machine-gun mounted on its upper plane being fired by the pilot with one hand, while with the other hand and his feet he operates his controls. On the "tractors," as the airplanes having the propellers in front are called, the machine-guns are synchronized so as to fire between the whirling blades.
In September, 1916, Guynemer had tried at the front one of the first two Spads. On the 8th he wrote to M. Béchereau: "Well, the Spad has had her baptême du feu. The others were six: an Aviatik at 2800, an L.V.G. at 2900, and four Rumplers jostling one another with barely 25 meters in between at 3000 meters. My gun never jammed once."
For him, thirty seconds had separated the Capitol from the Tarpeian Rock. After his triple victory came his incredible fall, unheard of, fantastic, from a height of 3000 meters, the Spad falling at the highest speed down to earth, and rebounding and planting itself in the ground like a picket. Enfin, all right!" And this postscript followed: "Sixth time I have been brought down: record!"
The canvas hangars billowed and flapped, and the wooden supports creaked with the quiet sound made by ships at sea. And there was almost the peace of the sea there, intensified, if anything, by the distant rumble of heavy cannonading. Our Spad biplanes were drawn up in two long rows, outside the hangars. They were in exact alignment, wing to wing.
"Do you do you you don't mean that you two are going up again?" queried Andra, and for an instant Blaine detected something about her that betokened a more than casual interest. "It's my it's our duty to go, Miss Walsen," said he, meeting her eyes sympathetically. "Erwin is one of our best men. He's a true spad pilot. Besides that, he and I are great cronies. Buck feels the same way."
I joined the long line, and taxied over to the starting-point, where the captain was superintending the send-off, and turned into the wind in my turn. As though conscious of his critical eye, my old veteran Spad lifted its tail and gathered flying speed with all the vigor of its youth, and we were soon high above the hangars, climbing to the rendezvous.
"I mean drop a package containing some smokes, some chocolate and a letter telling him we haven't forgotten him and that we're going to try to rescue him, and for him to be on the lookout. That could be done." "How?" "By us flying over the place in our speedy Spad. We needn't make a very big package, though the more of something to eat we can give him the better, for those Boches starve our men.
Their Spad machine was one that could be controlled from either seat, so that if one rider was disabled the other could take charge. There were two guns, one fixed and the other movable, and a good supply of ammunition. "Well, I guess there'll be some fighting to-day," observed Tom, as Jack shut off the motor for a moment, to see if it would respond readily when the throttle was opened again.
Oliver sprang forward as the dog crouched at his feet; caught him up in his arms and started for the rats, who dodged behind the tree-trunks, calling "Spad, spad," as they ran. Then came the voice of the same constable. "Hi, yer can't bring that dog in here."
In the very center of it, however, there was one post, a small worm-eaten thing, of the color of the dead grass around it. He hit it, just as he was setting his Spad on the ground, the only post in a field acres wide, and it tore a piece of fabric from one of his lower wings. No doubt the crack battery has been given credit for disabling an enemy plane.
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