Missouri Valley times. [volume] (Missouri Valley, Iowa) 1874-1931, 1917-09-06

l
out and hold the rest, so that my shout
der will not be moving as squeeze
| the trigger.
! II am sighting right for the pilots
chest. fire. He vcers off like
wounded bird His plane wabbles 1t
locks as il 1t was going to fall, but he
gets it Strengthened OFT and flies away.
Both of us begin to fire at the other
/ machine. 1t rises. The pilot does not
dare to fly straight into the rifle fire.
From aloft he contents himself with
dropping more bombs, but he must be
within range of our rifles. for presently
he flies away and does not bother us
| any more.
IF lie had been Il German air man
the end of the story might have been
different"
Sea slugs Are FIGHTERS.
The crews which officer and man
| the submarine chasc.s are not aimed
| navy men. They don't know ovell4l,lch
of the kings regulations, and the
discipline they maintain is most GER
tailly not that to which one Is accus-
toned OH board ship.
But-and l want to emphasize this
strongly-they are scrappers. They
tight in their own way. They may
not know how to do it according to
the book, but they are among the gam
est men alloat. Many of them are
wealthy and formerly owned and op-
Grated their own boats. They are
hard fighting, hard riding crew, and
the devil himself can't scare them.
Before they are assigned to boats
the men are given about ten day
course in navigation, for they must
sometimes cruise out of sight of land
and at night. Many amusing and some
times almost tragic incidents arise
from their ineYperience.
/, l was out once In an NJ. T.. command
ed by subaltern named 9. All he
knew about navigation had been tdlight
him in ten days. He got lost, was
ashamed to say SO and adfnio tt1dt ha
| didn't know how to get hts location,
lie figured For two days trying to find
out where he was. He'd get hfs SUN
observations, and by the time he had
| the readings calculated he'd be so far
away that he had to do it all over
again.
He figured for two days, and all the
time he was getting shorter in provi-
sions and fuel. For the last half day
he followed destroyer, thinking she
was running into port. He wouldn't
signal her and ask for Instructions or
for his location, so he just trailed along
after her as though he knew where he
| was going. He was too proud to ask
the road hcme.
! The sun was under clouds, but 1t
came out just before sunset, and he
discovered that he had been running
right away from England. We got
back Off Portsmouth at night But our
signal box had been lost oversize, and
we couldn't reply to the signal at the
entrance to the harbor, which came
within inches of costing lis our lives,
as our own batteries fired Il couple of
ATS at us, and we had to run out and
cruise around the rest Of the night to
save our skins. However, we hung
in sight of the harbor so as not to
get lost again.
This same chap, though he was short
| on the science OF navigation, was long
on fight. When cruising at night the
nj. LIS, of course, show no lights, and
it is very hard to maintain an absolute
ly even speed and keep just the prop
err distance from the other craft
Steam engines can be controlled right
down to the inch, but the gas engines
which drive The NJ. LIS are not so read
lily regulated. A single notch increase
or decrease on the throttle may make
u difference OF whole knot in speed.
Well c. lost track of the other chas-
crs in his squadron one night, and he
didn't dare signal to them. They were
out searching for submarines, and to
show lights would only give the whole
thing away. He couldn't take a chance
on sending up rocket or footing his
whistle, for secrecy is everything So
he just laid course the way he
thought he ought to steer and kept 1t
up hell bent all night
Just after daylight he discovered that
he was off the Belgian coast, having
SIoSSctt lHe cHallnel. as Tue carly
morning mist lifted he sighted big
vessel astern flying the German flag.
She didn't look like Il regular war
shipA-morc like converted yacht-but
) she mounted one gun forward, and C.
could see others aft.
He had regulation three inch piece
i himself.
well. boys" he said to his crew,
we may be rotten navigators, but W.
don't need 70 know navigation to give
t'ii,t tub fight. What do you say?"
There was only about one chance in
u hundred that any Of them would
come out of the scrap alive. and G.
didn't like to order his men into It,
The NJ. l.. was so fast she could have
run, but the crew was game, SO G..
put about and began to loop around
/ in order to cross her bows, thinking to
, cut loose few raking shots into the
], craft.
!, The gun was loaded and ready to