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Updated: June 3, 2025
What's left of this gang will then be put to ferrying. Did any of you ever see a Spad or Nieuport before?" Yancey, standing well over six feet, looked down on him pityingly. "Did you say your name was Smoot, or Snoot? Smoot, eh. Well, transportation to the rear is waitin' for you at headquarters.
The attacking Spad was obviously trying to get its opponent within firing range, but the German was a first-rate pilot and dodged without losing height, banking, looping, taking advantage of the Frenchman's dead angles, and striving to get him under his machine-gun. Round and round the two airplanes circled, when suddenly the German bolted in the direction of the Aisne cliffs.
The sun might be ready to play some fantastic trick. I had to steer by it, although I was uneasy until I came within sight of our observation balloons. I identified them as French by sailing close to one of them so that I could see the tricolor pennant floating out from a cord on the bag. Then, being safe, I put my old Spad through every antic we two had ever done together.
Certain it is that men have greater confidence in themselves when they learn to fly alone from the beginning; and the Blériot, which requires the most delicate and sensitive handling, offers excellent preliminary schooling for the Nieuport and Spad, the fast and high-powered biplanes which are the avions de chasse above the French lines.
The latter attacks the airmen would observe in progress and report to the commanders of infantry or batteries who could take steps to meet the attack, or even frustrate it. Tom was assigned to a speedy Spad machine, one of great power and lightness into which he climbed.
At the summit of the hill, my wheels touched ground for the first time, and I bounded on, going through a three-strand wire fence and taking off a post without any appreciable decrease in speed. Passing between two large apple trees, I took limbs from each of them, losing my wings in doing so. My landing chassis was intact and my Spad went on down the reverse slope
Both of these spad pilots, though pale and looking rather the worse for wear, showed such evidence of comfort and bodily ease that one felt sure things must have happened to both. On the lapel of each coat was military decoration, evidently very recently bestowed.
The little herons and I watched them come first a single white egret, which spiralled down, just as I had many times seen the first returning Spad eddy downward to a cluster of great hump-backed hangars; then a trio of tricolored herons, and six little blues, and after that I lost count. It seemed as if these tiny islands were magnets drawing all the herons in the world.
Here he went into technicalities about his new machine-gun, but further on reverted to the Spad: "She loops wonderfully. Her spin is a bit lazy and irregular, but deliciously soft." The letter concludes with many suggestions for minor improvements. His correspondence with M. Béchereau was entirely devoted to a study of airplanes: he never wandered from the subject.
They thought they might have a chance soon to go over the German lines in this, their favorite craft, so they decided to put in their spare time seeing that it was in perfect shape, and that the two machine guns were ready for action when needed. "'Would you rather do this than fly, Jack?" asked Tom, as they went over, in detail, each part of the powerful Spad. "I should say not!
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