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Updated: September 19, 2025
The two Albatrosses came bravely on, scorning the odds against them. Larkin's plane engaged the first one, but the second one got in a lucky burst that sent one of the Nieuports nosing down in a disabled effort to make a safe landing.
At first sight they seemed to outnumber the Nicaraguan army mechanicians, chauffeurs, armourers, motorcyclists, telephonists, wireless operators, Red Cross stretcher bearers, clerks! Afterward I learned they totalled seventy-odd, and that all of them were glad to be connected with the American Escadrille. In their hangars stood our trim little Nieuports.
If they perceived a pair of Nieuports, they immediately tacked about and fled in haste. But if one of our chasers was cruising alone, the whole group attacked him. Heurtaux, attacked in this way, had been compelled to dive and land, and on his return had to submit to the jests of Guynemer, for at that age friendship is roughish. "Go there yourself," advised Heurtaux, "and you will see."
Planes circling, planes climbing, planes slipping down aerial toboggan slides with propellers still, planes going as straight as crows toward the German line to be lost to sight in space while others developed out of space as swift messengers bound for home with news of observations, planes touring a sector of the front, swooping low over a corps headquarters to drop a message and returning to their duty; planes of all types, from the monsters with vast stretch of wing and crews of three or more men, stately as swans, to those gulls, the saucy little Nieuports, shooting up and down and turning with incredible swiftness, their tails in the air; planes and planes in a fantastic aerial minuet, flitting around the great sausage balloons stationary in the still air.
In place of the original Morane France now has three types of speed planes, the Maurice Farman, a 110 mph. biplane, the Morane-Saulnier, 111 mph., and Spad, 107 mph. The older Nieuports, too, are fast machines, being capable of more than 100 miles per hour. The new Maurice Farman speed plane is a biplane of small wing area, the upper plane overhanging the lower.
The big Caudron type was the ideal bomber of the early days; Farman machines were excellent for reconnaissance and artillery spotting; the Bleriots proved excellent as fighting scouts and for aerial photography; the Nieuports made good fighters, as did the Spads, both being very fast craft, as were the Morane-Saulnier monoplanes, while the big Voisin biplanes rivalled the Caudron machines as bombers.
The rest of his command would scatter the others like quails, and the survivors, not well acquainted with the terrain, would have a nice problem in finding their way to La Ferte. Himmel! but it was a pleasing prospect. Major Cowan's squadron had been slightly delayed in starting by two malfunctioning Nieuports.
On days when the clouds form almost a solid flooring, one feels very much at sea, and wonders if one is in the navy instead of aviation. The diminutive Nieuports skirt the white expanse like torpedo boats in an arctic sea, and sometimes, far across the cloud-waves, one sights an enemy escadrille, moving as a fleet.
Above all in myriads would be soaring the swift fighting scouts, the Bleriots, Nieuports, Moranes or perhaps some new American machine to-day unknown. Let the wing of a Boche but show above the smoke and they would be upon him in hordes, beating him to the ground, enveloping him in flames, annihilating him before he had a chance to observe, much less to report.
Not having seen or heard from Henriette Dupay since her return, early in the following week Ruth started out to walk briskly to the Dupay farm one afternoon. Of late the aeroplanes had become very numerous over this sector. They were, for the most part, American machines. But this afternoon she chanced to see one of the French Nieuports at close quarters.
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