The Nome daily nugget., 1917-04-12
LORD N0RTHCUFFE WRITES 0F
 THE AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN FRANCE

a flying man, a bomber aa artillery
 man, sniper or a dispatch rider to help destroy Prussian Depo.ism. In
 the United States you probably hear
 more of the spectacular part of the
 American work-that which en-
 thrals the whole world-the new art of
 fighting in the skies. 1 confess indeed
 that altho I have spent many weeks Il; the war, the spectacle of winged fighters high in the sun light is one
 that holds my attention. as nothing in
 the world ever has. In peace times l when one was younger one had been thrilled by a close baseball or foot ! haps in a trench, one sees two specks approaching each other and with a pair of strong glasses gradually under I stands that one is an American who has given up everything pros-
 per1ty and probably life--to throw himself into foreign army, and that
 the other is a brave German doing
 what he concelves to be his duty one
 realizes that here are two combatants
 worth watching.
 Very rarely do the Germans venture
 over our lines, and one has to be very
 far forward nowadays to get a good view of a fight between the Allies and
 the enemy in the air I have had that
 good fortune several times. Air fight ing in 1914 bears as much resemblance ! automobile to d SIX cylinder of today.
 There is perpetual match in speeding 1 up between the enemy and the Allies 1 Four or five miles an hour extra pace mean everything It is not the in- crease of engine power to oyer 200 h-p 1 that has brought about the change so much as the wonderful progress of the ! art of flying itself and it is just here that the Anglo Saxon and the French man beat the slower hinder German. | It is just this reason why the German l soldiers letters are now so full of com paint about the over-cautious German 1 aviator.
 When Pegoud invented looping the loop people asked Why What is the use of ht 2' p.ese,,d very co=r- siderable inventor as well as flyer, is the answer Looping the loop is a very I1On al |, succeeded by that most extraordinary development the nose dive, in which the airmaa seems to fall like a stone for thousands of feet, til the specta- tors hair raises from his head in hor- TOT. Suddenly the machine fiattens 1 out, scoots away and you find out that ,, it is only trick after all. l talked | with one of our wounded boys-he was just 19-who had fallen 5000 feet owing to his rudder wire connection being , shot thru. By a miracle his machine strengthened itself out automatically within a hundred yards of the ground, and the boy is alive and will fly again.
 l asked him his sensations, he is prob- | ably the only man in the world alive who has fallen 8,000- more than ten
 times the height of the Woolworth l Building in New York City (750 feet I high). He said that for long time-- ! what seemed like hours-- he knew l that he was falling and falling at a tremendous speed, and then he lost consciousness, as in a dream, and l found himself being picked up out of 1 who thought that he was dead.
 At the beggining of air fight there
 is manoevering for positions, and feinting as in boxing. There are as a
 rule two men in each machine pilot
 and an observer except in the smaller types in which the wings are clipped
 down to nothing to get greater speed
 and climbing power. Knowledge of
 engine and plane power quickness of
 decision. and accuracy of shooting,
 with the Lewis gun are essentia, to the
 pilot. His observer is provided with some form of pistol and often with
 bombs.
 The riyel planes like great hawks,
 hover around. above or below each
 other till one more expert or more dar-
 ing than the other manoeuvers his op-
 ponent into position from which he 1 has either gnt tn fight or fIao rrho