New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-08-27
Witb @ Sunless Background of Gray and
W0fers of Mystery 5000 Feet Belosv,
British SeabIane Took an american Girl
Through the SkirmiSh Lines of the SKY

NN CNdlI LOT MY 1919, W4N%i
maps, charts and signalling
revolver on a narrow shelf before me, |
made, in one of his majesty's finest sea-
planes. a flight over the gray waters of
the North Sea and saw, in certain
nameless harbor, a flotilla of Britains
destroyers, gray, splendid, powerful
true and magnificent symbols of war
1t was through the courtesy of the
Admiralty that was permitted to make
this fight, and to see, before my jour
ney, the great sheds and workshops OF
one of England's Royal Naval Air Ser
vice stations. The courtesy of extend
ing these privileges to me l value be-
vond measure. am the first woman who
has been permitted to see the hangers
which house his majesty's great fleet OF
the air: am the first woman to make
a fight in one of Britain's seaplanes,
designed for war, created by war.
The station from which l made my
start lies on a nameless coast, where the
waves of the North Sea wash against
the painted walls of tall hangers and
spread their white spray over narrow
strip of gray sand guarded by Englands
coast defences. Between the great blind
walls of the hangers and the low roofs
of the shops paved concourse follows
the line of the shore. At the foot of this
concourse there is a Slipway-a portable
roadway of boards which slopes evenly
to the water.
1t was from this slipway that | made
my start.
saw them bringing her out of the
shed-the great, gray plane in which L
was to make my flight. She was beau
tiful plane. She was beautiful because
she was designed for service, hard SER
vice; because she carried on her spread
ing wings and her fusilage the marks OF
her journeys, the marks of her labor for
war. The silk and linen cover of her
surfaces was stained. There were scars
on the dark, polished blades Of her pro-
peler, on the curved casing Of her fusl-
laqe. Honorable scars of honorable SER
vice.
She was but one of the Kings little
messengers of war. There were greater
and stronger planes in the hangers; she
vas sister to thousand such, fashioned
IN her own likeness. But she stood
apart. rich with the evidence of her own
good labor.
II was this which made her beautiful.
For her wings were but two surfaces OF
canvas, united by slender struts OF
WOOD her fusilage was but vanished
casing inclosing a pilots seat and a
narrow space in which the observer
might kneel with his maps and his re-
volvers spread on the shelf before him.
Her UNDERSTANDINGS, that network OF
struts and cables from which depend
the two white pontoons which are the
floats of a seaplane, lifted her very high
above the concourse on which she was
being propelled toward me. There is
neither symmetry nor grace in this COM
pick understructure. The suspended
pontoons are like two big white shoes,
ungainly, awkward, unrelated to the fine
graceful spread of her wings and clean,
strong lines of her propeller. But there
was power in every contour OF her.
They rolled her, this new instrument
of war, slowly toward me-three men on
either side of her-and faced her to the
sea. The men seemed very small IN the
shadow of her great planes. They slid
her from the wooden rollers onto her
slipway and set ladder against her. IL
was ladder with great many rungs'
well spaced, but it reached only to the
underline of her fusilage.
The helpers held the ladder steady ana
climbed into the observers seat.
sat in chair, brought for me from the
messroom, a deal chair. On either side
of me the metal bracing pressed against
my arms; there were pistols and ammu-
milton on the bottom of the fusilage by
my feet. In front of me, in his hign
backed seat, my pilot sat.