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Driscoll, James R. [pseud.]

"The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps"

At the
airdrome where I learned to fly we used to practice dropping
bombs---imaginary ones, of course---but we were so inaccurate at it
that none of us imagined we would be of much use in that direction
in actual warfare. I have heard it said that the Germans directed
their artillery by signals dropped from aircraft at the very
beginning. They did so before they had fought many weeks, anyway.
Boche fliers, English gunners have told me, used to hover over
battery positions and drop long colored streamers and odd showers
of colored lights. It was some time before the Allied airman
contributed much to the value of the Allied gunfire. When they got
at it, they beat the Huns at their own game, for the war had not
been on many months before British planes were flying over Boche
batteries and sending back wireless messages from wireless
telegraph installations on the machines themselves.
"The Boches had lots more machines than the Allies, and their army
command had apparently worked out plans about using them which were
new to our side.


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