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Driscoll, James R. [pseud.]

"The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps"

So it goes on, like clockwork. You
have noticed that on the new planes all the pilot has to do when
he wants to fire his machine-gun is to press a small lever which
is set, on most planes, in the handle of the directing lever. That
small lever acts, by the mechanism I have told you about, on the
trigger of the gun. It is simple enough."
"Yes," admitted Bob, "it does not sound very complicated, but it seems
very wonderful, all the same. Most things out here are wonderful when
you first run into them, though."
Of the group of Brighton boys selected by the squadron commander to
study the finer points of aerial acrobatics, Joe Little was the star,
with Harry Corwin a very close second and Jimmy Hill a good third.
Their education, as the days went past, became a series of experiments
that were nothing short of hair-raising to any onlookers save most
experienced ones.
To see Joe, in a wasp of a plane, swift and agile, start it whirling
like a pinwheel with the tip of its own wing as an axis, and fall for
thousands of feet as it whirled, only to catch himself and right the
speedy plane when lees than a thousand feet from the earth, was indeed
a sight to make one hold one's breath.


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