The Exploits of Chapman, Prince, Rockwell, Guynemer, Marchal, Immelman, Boelke, Richthofen and Others

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Captain Boelke, in October, 1916, when Boelke's bag was
forty machines.  The Germans reported on April 31 that
the Allies in two days had lost thirty-four machines and
three balloons. According to Paris and London, thirty-one
German machines were driven down.
	Fighting had taken on an entirely new interest in the
spring of 1917 because of a German fashion of painting
machines in grotesque patterns. British pilots brought home
from over the lines reports of many such fantastic creations
which they had encountered in the clouds. Feathered song-
sters that were coming north with the spring could not have
rivaled the variegated hues of Harlequin birds that rose
daily from German airdromes. First among these creatures
was a squadron of scarlet planes.  Then came machines
striped about the body like yellow-jackets. Nothing was too
gaudy to meet the taste of German airmen.  There were
green planes with gold noses, khaki-colored planes with green-
ish-gray wings, planes with red body and wings of green on
top of blue, planes with light blue body and red wings. The
gaudiest machines went in for red body-effects with every
possible combination of color on their wings, some having
one green wing and one white, and some green wings tipped
with various colors. One of the most fantastic had a scarlet
body, brown tail, and reddish-brown wings, with white Mal-
tese crosses against a bright green background.  Another
looked like a pear flying through the air, with its pear-
shaped tail painted a ruddy brown, like big ripe fruit.
	Captain Albert Ball, a famous British aviator, was re-
ported in June as killed.  Captain Ball had w6n inter-
national reputation as an accomplished airman.  Captain
Ball, like Guynemer, was only twenty-one years of age.
Once, after flying across the Channel, he passed over the
British lines and attacked German airmen, bringing down
two in a fight at 15,000 feet. In his last fight he was set
upon by six of the enemy's best fighting machines.  He
brought down one and damaged two others seriously, but
more than these appeared on the scene, when he was cut off
from his comrades of the squadron and ultimately forced
down.
	There came to London on June 14 the nearest vision of
modern warfare that it had yet known.  A squadron of
German airplanes, variously estimated at from three to fif-
teen, bombed the East End and business districts of the City
in daylight, killing 97 persons and injuring 437. Many of
the victims were women and children, 120 of the latter being
either killed or injured. The Zeppelin raids had come in the
darkness and' mystery of night. This raid was different since
it came in the loveliness of a perfect summer's day, when the
sky was blue and clear.  The airplanes journeyed through
the clouds like little silver birds, and their passage was
watched by thousands of men and women.  Then suddenly
came, in swift succession, several tremendous crashes. From
every shop, office, warehouse, and tea-room, men and women
stood still, gazing up into the air.  It was not easy to be-
lieve that those little silver specks far up in the heavens had
the power to bring death and destruction and unendurable
suffering to men and women and little children living at
peace.  Few people saw the entire fleet of Taubes at one
and the same time. It seemed as if they were playing hide-
and-seek in the clouds, for like little gleaming bits of quick-
silver you could see one suddenly appear, only to vanish as
quickly behind a filmy cloud-mist, while another emerged to
lose itself as swiftly in the shadows.  One could see the
sharp white flames of bursting shrapnel, while bombs were
falling and guns making great noises. It all happened in a
quarter of an hour.
	The most daring air raid yet carried out against the great
Krupp munition works at Essen occurred in the first week
of July, when Sergeant Maxime Gallois defied all the German
anti-aircraft defenses and bombarded the heart of the Ger-
man armament producing factories with high explosives,
crossed the German front line twice, flew ever many Rhenish
cities, and reached home unscathed. The whole flight lasted
seven hours, during which Gallois was guided by, the moon
and stars and a compass.  The voyage was made in the
darkest hours of night.  He flew at an altitude of 1,200
meters, and passed over Metz and Thionville, following the
course of the Moselle. Batteries fired at him when crossing
the Rhine, and as he passed over Metz searchlights played
about the sky.  He saw the reflection of the moon on the
Rhine and could identify Bonn. From there to Dusseldorf
was a regular sea of electricity, which increased as he got
further north.  Cologne was a blaze of luminosity, and at
Dusseldorf there were all kinds of lights, blue, red, and
white. All the time the anti-aircraft guns fired as he passed.
Around Cologne gunners were very accurate in their range.
	Arriving over Essen he rose to about 2,000 meters, circled
around, searching for a place where the lights from the
workshops appeared densest. Then he threw the first bomb.
After counting ten he dropt the second, and then the re-
mainder of the ten at similar intervals.  It was impossible
to distinguish tbeir effect, owing to the flaming furnace
chimneys. He came back exactly the same way as he went,
and was fired at many times.  He managed to land just at
dawn at the same place from which he had started. Gallois
said he drank "alcoholized coffee" and ate some sandwiches
and chocolate during his flight.  He landed almost blind
from the pressure of the wind on his eyes, having lost his
goggles early in the flight.
	On July 7 twenty machines bombed London at 9.30
o'clock in the morning, killing 37 persons and injuring 141.
Three German airplanes were brought down at sea on their
return trip.  British airmen at Dunkirk prepared to inter-
cept others, but they took a more northerly route. Dunkirk
flyers, however, in the course of their patrol, brought down
seven of another German squadron. For a period of perhaps
a quarter of an hour, the airplanes hovered over the metro-
politan area, dropping cargoes of bombs in full view of
millions of spectators.  Never in the world's history, prob-
ably, had any battle on land or in air been waged in sight
of so many people.  Several hours before some weighty
French airplanes made raids into Germany in reprisal for
German attacks on open French towns.  Sixty-seven thou-
sand pounds of bombs were dropt at many points of military
importance. Only two machines failed to return. The prin-
cipal centers visited were Treves, Essen and Coblenz. Eleven
raided Treves, dropping over 5,000 pounds of bombs. Seven
fires broke out, one of which was in the Central Station.
Six other machines attacked Ludwigshafen, destroying among
other things the Badische aniline factory.  Other places
bombarded were Hirson, Trionville, Dun-sur-Meuse, Banthe-
ville, Machault, and Cauroy.
	Nearly one hundred persons were killed and more than
four hundred injured in a bomb-dropping raid on London's
East End, where live the poorer classes of the population.
Ten of those killed and fifty of the wounded were children
in a school. A large number of the killed or injured were
women and children. The Germans were flying at a height
estimated at two miles. No damage of a military or naval
nature was done.  For fiendishness of purpose and in the
ghastly toll of innocent women, children, and old men, Ger-
many's raid was the most murderous of all the aerial attacks.
which England had seen.  Most of those injured suffered
terribly from acid-fluids contained in many of the bombs.
Tiny children and women writhed in hospital-beds from
great burns caused by these murderous missiles.  Out of its
indignation and horror the British public found time to
smile over reports printed in Berlin newspapers, that the
British Government was preparing to move from London on
account of the frequency of various air-raids. All Govern-
ment buildings for many months had been amply protected
against air-bombs.
	Hindenburg's answer to the British victory east of Arras
at Messines Ridge in June, 1917, had been to send fifteen air-
planes over the tenement district of London and, to kill and
wound more than 500 non-combatants. As it was then neces-
sary to win a counter-victory to restore the credit of Hinden-
burg's word, what was called "the great battle of the tene-
ment district schoolhouse" was ordered and fought.  Since
the beginning of hostilities, 366 persons had been killed and
1,092 injured by air-raids in the London metropolitan area.
During the same period, 2,412 persons had been killed and
7,863 injured in ordinary street accidents in the same terri-
tory.
	Two raids on London by aircraft within a few hours
occurred on the night of August 21, on the northeast and
southeast seaboard.  The first was by Zeppelins, a number
of which approached the Yorkshire coast, altho only one, or
at the most two, ventured overland. Twelve high explosives
and thirteen incendiary bombs were dropt on three small

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Graves of British Aviators in France. Several of these graves were marked with damaged propellers.