She was a fine machine,
too, as machines went in those days. To-day it is no exaggeration
to say that ten thousand feet above the earth is low to a flier.
Everyone goes to twenty thousand continually, and many of the biggest
fights take place from seventeen thousand to twenty thousand feet up.
"The character of the work we have to do has changed as much as
the machines have changed. First, anti-aircraft guns---'Archies,'
we call them---have improved enormously. In the first of the show
the airman merely had to keep five thousand feet up and no Archie
could touch him. A French friend of mine told me the other day that
one of their anti-aircraft guns hit a flier at a height of fifteen
thousand feet. The gun was firing from an even greater distance
than that across country, too. The very fact that flying at
considerable height protected aircraft when scouting produced
scientific methods into the collection of information.
"The camera work that has been evolved in this war is little short
of wonderful.
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