Casper Daily Tribune Newspaper, September 10, 1918, Page 5

HOW ‘GREAT BRITAIN FIGHTS IN THE AIR Told by Brigadier ice Charles Frederick (‘Falling Leaf”) Lee, 30-Year Old Chief of the British Aviation Mission to the U. Brigadier General Charles Fred- erick Lee, Chief of the Britisk Aviation Mission now in the United States, as written the following article. True to the tenets of the Royal Air Force, he says every- thing about the service but not one word about himself. He is already a familiar figure to many Ameri- can “audiences. He and his staff form part of the so-called “flying circus,” which jourmeys through the air from city to “ty &s America, and not only enthrets @uidreds of thousands of spectators with its feats but mokes an equally strong appeal to the public intelligence when the British General himself ascends the platform and tells his hearers in simple, soldierly speech, the secrets and achigeements of the ing men. Gencrsii Lee says that he likes flying bet than writing or speech-making, Sut that he is an adept in all three can be testified to by a great many people in all parts of America. He is a young nan to have attained such eminence in his profession, for he was born in Yorkshire on July end, 1887. His career is exclusively that of the army. He was educated at Eton and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, served in a famous old regiment, the 6oth Rifles, passed the inevitable four years in India, and helped to strafe the Boche in France in 1914 and 1915. He carned his Army soubriquet, “Fall- ing Leaf” Lee, by reason of an ex- traordinary manoeuvre he evolved in air fighting. Be it remembered - that he has twenty-nine German airplanes and the occupants to his credit, and many of the men he has sent crashing to earth must have been experienced pilots, so, in or- derto come unscathed through so many combats, he is evidently an airman of great dgring and inex- haustible resource. One of his tricks was to fall like a fluttering \caf, in @ machine apparently out of control, but really tempting an opponent to close quarters and con- sequent undoing. He is immensely popular, not only with the general public, but with his brother offi- cers i both the British and Amer- to say may be regarded as the out- come of a wide experience guided by proved theories. Lidia a The Allies have been fighting the Hun for! over four years, and the British Empire has sustained 2,500,600 casual- ties, yet, contrary to general opinion, greatest life-saver in the present War is the acroplane. Without the aeroplane casualties increase by leaps and bopnds. With the aeroplane and’ with supremacy in the air ‘the casualties on our side of the line decrease and the morale increases, whereas the casualties on the Hun side of the line increase and marked the morale decreases with rapidity. There is no doubt whatever that on the Western Front we have a definite, ost an overwhelming, superiority in ir. It is this superiority in the air which enables us to bomb Germany and bring the War home to her, and makes t possible for an offensive to succeed. No offensive can hope for success with-, out co-operation between all arms and the most implicit trust in the Aviation Service by leaders and men alike. oi Am Servicg Is SPECIALIZED Machines have developed alofg defi- nite lines for definite purposes. In the iden days any machine was used for any duty. In those days it was only necessary for a pilot to fly a machine and have an elementary knowledge of other thatters. Nowadays anyone cap Le taught to fly—that is the casiest part of the training. The difficult part comes with specialization. A pilot has to be taught towfly and fight in small single- seater scouts. He has to be taught, on highly specialized lines, the art of bomb- ing,.and last, he has to be taught co- eperation with other arms. This last uty is one of the most difficult to teach and perhaps the most important of all. The Commanders of the Infantry and Artillery, cither in an attack or a retreat, are often unaware of the move- ments (in 'their-own commard, owing to the cutting of the telephoné wires and the ever-changing sifuation. Runners may be killed, telephones may be put out ef action, and the muich-needed news does not get back. Infantry Com- manders may not know exactly where the men are, and Artillery Commanders may not know exactly where to place the shells, In a word, the true position can be told only from the air. Let us take co-operation with Artil- lery, A machine equipped with wireless ican Armies, and every word he goes out with a pilot and observer. Be- fore\ going, up, these officers are aware of all known hostile batteries. They have a definite programme to carry out. They have shoots on definite targets to undertake. The results of the shooting by the battery are communicated to the Battery Commander by’ wireless, and the Battery Commander makes the ne- cessary corrections to the laying of his guns until they are ranged on the target. Those duties are performed at any height from 3,000 to 6,000 fect. Need- less to. say, the machine is of quite a different type from machines for other duties. It is neither so fast nor so handy as a fighter or a scout. Hence it has to be protected by scouts flying above. Some Tunes Ain Men Do- May I give you an example of three shoots undertaken by pilots and obsery- ers on the Front? A. “4 O.K.’s; two gun pits destroyed, SCENES OF BRITISH 6-in. Howitzer rounds fired in a shoot on wire, which was completely de- stroyed’” (No. 2 Squadron.) C. “50 6-in. Howltzer ‘rounds ob- served in 40 minutes and 31 others in 22 minutes. Fire for effect good. Three explosions in. the target position, and a fire and explosion in a neighboring position.” These records, in a eld and unvar- nished way, give the results of work with artillery... It-does not, however, tell the vast amount of training which has taken place before the pilot and ob- server are, efficient, nor\the evolution of wireless as used in an aeroplane. Co-operation by the Artillery aria the aeroplane in 1914 > was not efficient. Wireless was cotisidered a sort of black art in those days. It was\pot until 1915 that the matter was really developed and evolved. Its strides\ became rapid. Machines and instruments wer¢ im- proved, and Wireless co-operation was thoroughly organized. Wireless is such a sciente in itself tha that it\js useless to go Shae eon in oné. of whtich a large explosion was caused.” (No. 5 Squadron.) B. “Flight. lasting 4}4~hours; 382 z AF. GIANT MACHIN ON GERVIAN "BOMEING EXPELTIO into its technical details. But to-day there are hundreds of machines equip- ped with wireless and co-operating daily with the Artillery, Infantry, Cavalry. Our work with Infantry, Cav- alry, and Tanks is also of the greatest importance. A system of signals is de- vised as between the Infantry and the aeroplane, and the acroplane flics ex- tremely low to get these messages, fly back, and give the Commander accurate information not only as to where the In- fantry is, but also as to what they may be in need of. Perhaps.they may be short of ammunition or grenades. All this has to be communicated quickly if the material is to be brought forward in good time. For ‘Cavalry and Tanks the aeroplane is both an eye and an ear. 5 te Arropranes Save Lirz e As I began by saying, Flying is de- signed to save life. Take, for instance, a machine which flies at a height rang- 7 STMRT. thar: ae af, i, 4 NEWLY CAPTUREP GERMAN MACHINE AF 0 FEMME — “Sy CORRS LEPOT NEAR THE FROV7. ing between 50 feet and 400 feet, and searches for information which is in- valuable to the Commander of the sector in whfth an attack is going to take place. It is up to the pilot of an aeroplane to discover if the batteries are active or if they are only camouflaged make-believe. If he can transmit the facts to the Artillery Commander, in the one case he can have the battery destroyed and prevented from shelling our troops, and in the case of a camouflaged log he can save the Battery Commander the trouble of firing at it. On the same fines. it. is the duty of the pilot to see where the trench mortars are, in order that they may be knocked out before the attack begins, as well as the machine gun em= placements which cause such havoc to. an attack if they have not been previ- ously dealt with. Last, but not least, it is essential ito know if the wire in front of the German trenches has been evr efficiently. If. it has been, all is well. If it has not, it is necessary for the Artillery to again strafe it, in order that an Infantry Regiment may not start an attack only to find itself held up on German barbed wire, The saving of PAGE FIVE fife by an ener) Air Force is abso- lutely colossal. The atroplane must descend from the realm of mystery it has occupied in the public mind, and assume its practical form. Itshould be looked on as a ma- chine designed to carry a man through the air for a definite purpose, and that purpose is to help those on the ground to go forward. Tue Lire or « Fiver We have to rid ourselves of mistaken notions. The life of a pilot is really far more comfortable than is possible for his comrades in the Infantry, Cav- alry, or Artillery. The Infantry when in the trenches are shelled continually and. often heavily. They have to sleep in dugouts, some wet, and some gry. They are at War the whole time, ex- cept, of course, when they are back at rest. But the pilot, though his period of fighting may continue for weeks and months at a time, has a definite job to | in i ‘BRITISH \ OFFICIAL Fuotos, , do each day. He knows, when that job is over, he will return to a clean house, a clean meal, and a clean bed. His morale is excellent. He is flying the best machine the Government can sup- ply. He does not see the dirty side of the War. He does not find in the air the gas and the filth of the ground. It is not to be wondered at that he is proud to be in the Air Division. A cer- tain type of persdn writes on the dan- gers of flying and the way he prevented | himself from being killed, yet one-tenth of the untold stories in the trenches | would make the air-pilot’s story sound very small. Yet the airman is all-im- portant, It would not matter if Amer- ica,sent ten millions of men to France } if there was not an efficient Air Service bacts of them: Fortunately, things are going well | The United States has pilots of the right kind, and the material is now going overseas_in the right way. I have been fortunate enough to sce a good deal of American flying men, of the training which is going on in this country, and of a certain number of American cadets in England. Personally, I have nothing but praise for American fliers, and home have nothing but praise for the cadets there. And how im- portant a thorough training is! How- ever well a pilot may fly, however good his machine may be, unless he can kill his opponent in the air, he is, to all in- tents and purposes, useless. To do that he must have a gun, use a prepon- derance of fire, out-manoeuvre his enemy, and bring him down. There are geveral means and ways of achiev- ing this excellent resuit. Some Ger- mans have been forced to land without been fired on; others have been down by machine-gun fire in , and a few by anti-aircraft fire from the ground. Again, a very small number has been shot down by infantry gun-fire from trenches. The more Ger- mans brought down, the less sacrifices of life we have on our side of the lines. |Say a German airplane has come over our side of the lines; say he has taken photographs of our artillery position; AIR EXPLOITS ON THE WESTERN FRONT [gute eitcnely over te LES A FAMOUS SQUADRON CES OBSERVER tN THE GROUP HAS BROUGHT DOWN AT LEBST THREE MACHINES AE OR TUE tel UUTA REEL OV CM AAS say he has photographed trenches where we are assembling to attack—it is per- fectly easy for him, if not interfered with, to take these back, have them de- veloped, and issued to the artillery. He can also call up cries by wire- \less and have them train their guns on the infantry so asserabled. Hence, it is absolutely necessary that every hostile maching on our side of the lines, every enemy machine in the air at all, shall be brought down whenever and wher- ever possible. Only by this means can we save our own men on the ground, and eventually make the German Gov- ernment realize that they cannot ride rough-shod over every nation in the world, : Ts Genmany “Erricient?” People have talked a lot of German efficiency and intelligence. Yet what can we think of an efficiency which has been training for over thirty years to destroy two nations when Teast pre- pared? And Germany could not even do that! The Huns, chose a time when they were ready and Belgium and France unready, They chose a time when, as they thought, Great Britain | Lewis would be too much occupied own affairs to bother a! of other people. T their | system of systematic terrorism would | + frighten people out of war. They | thought their atroc rr now proven to b frighten other ni ns t keep out of the war and | bully in the shape of where he wanted to. ‘one to two rude shocks latest and greatest was came into this war. (I w harp on this t my story.) bear or Agrta GUNNERY THE With the air . 3 yh ner. In 1914 ar = es pilots and observ ith the pilots, at that time 1 , There were no machine planes. Men undoubtedly fc EVERY FYLOT AND in ews iachises manoeuvering each other and occasi und mally getting in a | shot. Sometimes onc machine or th Max. miles behind t Date. which could t (nee 1914, 1916. 3 ‘ 1917... (Handley-Page, nig 1918... (Day, De Haviland, other was forced to land for lack of min of tly year we gasoline. It was extremely tucky if you} wad 800 pounds 100 mity ee could put in a shot that would ¢« a disable the pilot or knock out the chine. Not until the advent of the Lewis gun did aerial gunnery really be- | gin to make itself Welt. These little weapons were mounted on pins on each side of the machi ctit down to decrease weight. Th however, though the beginning, was never satisfactory, and the stoppages in the machine gun were frequent. In th | middle of 1915, the German Aviatik h a single movable gun in the rear cockpit Is which caused quite a lot of trouble to the Allies. This was followed by the|of bot French Nieuport machine, which had a|in si handy j adj swivel- | St of space fors ered to show to the he vital importance » both offensive and des ss@ge can be summar< very few words. Send over Liberty engines in thousands, over your bright young American rns of thous: nds, and the end War and the will be