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Updated: June 3, 2025
The one-seated Nieuport, rapid, easily managed, with high ascensional speed, and capable, by its solid construction and air-piercing power, of diving from a height upon an enemy and falling upon him like a bird of prey, was then the chasing airplane par excellence, and remained so until the appearance of the terrible Spad, which made its début in the course of the Somme campaign, Guynemer and Corporal Sauvage piloting the first two of these machines in early September, 1916.
Finally, I did have one clear thought, "Am I on fire?" This cut right through the fog, brought me up broad awake. I was falling almost vertically, in a sort of half vrille. No machine but a Spad could have stood the strain. The Huns were following me and were not far away, judging by the sound of their guns. I fully expected to feel another bullet or two boring its way through.
He headed his new ship, a swift Spad, in the direction of Vauquois Hill, intending to cross the line there and hoping that the crest of the hill might loom up out of the fog. Vain hope. It was impossible to see a thing. Any minute he might go plowing into some hillside or foul his landing gear in the tops of trees.
But the Spad partly caught up with him and the aërial circling began anew, while two other Spads appeared a pack after a deer. The German cleverly took advantage now of the sun, now of the evening vapors, but he was within range, and the tack-tack of a machine-gun was heard. Guynemer and the other two were coming nearer, when the Spad dropped beneath its adversary and fired upwards.
Well, turn 'em loose. I'm something of a big game hunter myself. What sort of a flyer is this instructor?" "Dunno. We'll see in a minute, maybe. He's crawling in that Spad. Yep, they're turnin' her around. Don't go now. You can learn a lot here."
What he told them on such occasions he had probably whispered to himself many times before when, on rainy days, he would sit in his airplane under the hangar, and think and talk to himself, while strangers wondered if he was not crazy. However, he had made friends with well-known engineers, especially Major Garnier of Puteaux and M. Béchereau of the Spad works.
We were cautioned always to carry them where they could be quickly got at in case of a forced landing in enemy country. An airman must destroy his machine in such an event. But my Spad did not mean to end its career so ingloriously. The motor ran beautifully, hitting on every cylinder.
Then without a word Roland drops the white hand of the girl, springs to arms, and is gone. So Guynemer would have praised his Nieuport or his Spad as Gilbert praised his steed, and belle Aude herself could not have kept him away from the fight. One day his father felt doubts about the capacity of such a young man to resist the intoxication of so much flattery from men and women.
On the other hand, one condition of his own victory is to surprise the enemy, especially if he attacks a two-seated machine whose range of fire is much broader, or if he does not hesitate to choose his victim from among a group. The Spad pilot makes use of the sun, of fog, of clouds.
The French were unrivaled for technical improvements, and the training of their pilots. Their new machine, the Spad, was a first-rate instrument, superior in strength, speed, and ease of control to the best Albatros, and the Germans knew that this inferiority must be obviated. All modern battles are thus preceded by technical rivalry.
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