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Updated: May 2, 2025
Great fires started here and there, visible to the Americans long after they had started for home, which they did as soon as their loads of bombs were loosed on the factories and munition plants beneath. Enemy planes had begun to climb up to engage the daring raiders, but the triplanes were well away before the German fliers reached anything like their altitude.
They were planes of the larger type, biplanes or triplanes carrying two men, usually equipped with two motors and heavily laden with high explosive bombs. As they made their way toward the land they were accompanied by a fleet of light draft monitors especially built for this service, each mounting two heavy guns and able to manoeuvre in shallow water.
They had been hidden by fleecy, spotty clouds for a few moments, and were already too near to the two triplanes below. Parker waved his wing tips, which was his signal to his three companions in the hunting machines that the fight was on, and headed toward the oncoming fleet of seven. Joe Little was the first of the other three to see their adversaries, and was not far behind Parker.
It was a scheme to drop a load of bombs on the great Krupp works at Essen. This had been done by one or two individual fliers from Allied units, but the boys planned that with six of the new type triplanes, if they could be procured, a really effective raid on the great German productive center could be carried out.
The major reported that they had satisfactorily performed their part of the work and escaped with but little damage. The Boche ammunition dump they were to assail had been blown into a thousand fragments, the detonation of the explosion having been heard for miles. Meanwhile, Bob Haines and Dicky Mann in the other triplanes were having an exciting fight with another Albatros.
Then he saw that the enemy barrage was falling further back, just about where the recovering infantry was resuming its advance, after the short shock occasioned by the two raiding triplanes that had suddenly gone aloft. "Were the Allies in their turn assaulting the Boches? What could it mean? In another brief interval Blaine found out, when sudden demoralization set in at once.
Almost immediately a number of fast triplanes forged on ahead of the rest at a speed which a year before would have been deemed impossible. Joining the two weary airmen who had been up all night, yet were still full of the battle hunger, they swept low down and straight at the bombing planes, now beginning to drop their deadly explosives along the lines of advancing infantry.
Every nut and bolt on the propeller he tried. When in the machine and safely buckled to their seats, Joe ran his engine a bit, to satisfy himself that she was producing just the right music. The other five triplanes had been waiting. When Joe had satisfied himself that his machine was in perfect condition the word was given for the start.
Meantime two of the German fighting machines had kept on for the big triplanes. They were heading for fast, powerful machines, well armed, but they dashed at them as though they had no fear of result. The first German machine to score a hit was a fast Albatros. It dived straight at Richardson's machine. Richardson side-slipped and dropped like a stone till close to the ground.
True, the heralded approach of the gigantic German battle triplanes did not take place in the second year of the Great War, although it is an incontrovertible fact that such machines have been built and are being used for some purpose. But none of them took part in the fighting on the western front, nor has one of them been seen on the Russian battle lines.
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