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One machine has left for home, with part of a control wire dangling helplessly beneath it, and a chunk of tail-plane left as a tribute to Archie. We complete the course and go over it again, with nothing more exciting than further anti-aircraft fire, a few Huns too low for another dive, and a sick observer. Not yet. Coming south towards Bapaume is a beautiful flock of black-crossed birds.
The other three Germans, classed by my pilot as Halberstadts, had a great deal more speed than ours. They did not attack at close quarters immediately, but flew 200 to 300 yards behind, ready to pounce at their own moment. Two of them got between my gun and our tail-plane, so that they were safe from my fire.
The trip was made on a Wright biplane, and was the third Channel crossing by air, Bleriot having made the first, and Jacques de Lesseps the second. Rolls was first to make the return journey in one trip. He was eventually killed through the breaking of the tail-plane of his machine in descending at a flying meeting at Bournemouth.
Each bus in turn was encircled by black bursts, and each bus in turn lost height, swerved, or changed its course to defeat the gunner's aim. A piece of H.E. hit our tail-plane, and stayed there until I cut it out for a souvenir when we had returned.
The first competition of the day was that for the landing prize; Grahame White, Audemars, and Captain Dickson had landed with varying luck, and Rolls, following on a Wright machine with a tail-plane which ought never to have been fitted and was not part of the Wright design, came down wind after a left-hand turn and turned left again over the top of the stands in order to land up wind.
But to take one instance, when C. S. Rolls was killed at Bournemouth by reason of a faulty tail-plane, the fact was shouted to the whole world with almost as much vehemence as characterised the announcement of the Titanic sinking in mid-Atlantic.
The machine was a Wright biplane, but the design of the tail-plane which, by the way, was an addition to the machine, and was not even sanctioned by the Wrights appears to have been carelessly executed, and the plane itself was faulty in construction. The breakage caused the machine to overturn, killing Rolls, who was piloting it.
A backward glance told me that the fire was nearing the tail-plane at the one end and my box of ammunition at the other, and was too serious for treatment by the extinguisher unless I could get it at once. Desperately I tried to force myself through the bracing-struts and cross-wires behind my seat.
He picks motors to pieces, and puts them together, he learns the principles of airplane construction, and can discourse on such topics as the angle of attack of the cellule, the incidence of the wings, and the carrying power of the tail-plane.
I looked along the inside of it and found that a burning shell fragment was lodged on a longeron, half-way between my cockpit and the tail-plane. A little flame zigzagged over the fabric, all but died away, but, being fanned by the wind as we lost height, recovered and licked its way toward the tail.
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