The Madison daily leader. [volume] (Madison, S.D.) 1890-current, 1918-11-23
THRILLING RAID
over HUN TOWN
Young American Aviator Tells of
Drive Over the Ger
man Lines.
SHELLS BURST ALL AROUND
Squadron Proceeds MethodicaIIy With
Its Work Under Constant Fire Of
Anti-Aircraft Guns-AIi Re.
turn to Base.


rons are now bombing the Rhine val
ley along with the British. The Yank
pilots and observers, like their breth-
rem of the royal air force, enter into
this sport" with the same spirit that
has made them famous on the baseball
diamond or football gridiron of their
w American colleges.
A young American aviator has just
told of a trip over the German lines
and back behind into German territory.
The formation in which the American
alrmen flew consisted of IL big bomb
ing machines, each of which carried
1900 pounds of high explosives, three
machine guns and three men. This
was the boys story:
After / had tried the guns on my
machine, checked the bombs, made
sure everything was ship-shape, and
put a couple Of little bombs into a
small bag beside me, / started my en-
CINE. The big motors growled away,
waiting for the starting flash. Soon
the signal came and we were off.
High Altitude Reached.
"For twenty minutes we climbed, I'M
TIL the earth was just a black blot. An
other twenty-five minutes and we we're
over the trenches, with the searchers
cropping about in the mists below us.
The big guns crashed away cont.nu-
ously, and we could see the explosions
from where We scared high above
them. No sooner had we crossed the
lines than the Germans started firing
at us with their anti-aircraft guns.
Once a German searchlight got right
on us with its beam of light. We fired
a couple of rounds of machine-gun
fire at the Germans who we're manning
the searchlight, and 1t went out.
Far below us we could see the
lights of a locomotive. Finally we
reached our objective. According to
plan, we throttled our motors and
glided toward the earth to get nearer
u target. 1t seemed curiously quiet.
Then suddenly the earth seemed to
open below US. Seventeen s~earchlights
were turned on us by the Germans,
and their shafts of light swept all
upouL U.s. LII ulLlrdlICIdl kunS
made a wall ahead Of us. The high
explosive shells burst on every side
of US, and the green-fire balls swayed
and spiraled as they tried to set US on
fire. The American machines went
straight on, with never a waver or a
turn. There were so many crashes
that / thought more than once that we
were hit. We kept straight on.
Amid Binding Rays.
Suddenly mi of the German
searchlights got us and the rest of the
seventeen threw around us with a sud
denness that made their concentra-
tion feel like a blow. We fired our
machine guns until the tips of the
weapons got red and the glow be-
gan to creep up the barrels. The
whole seventeen beams were on us, al
though WI plunged and side-slipped
about In a desperate way. We let go
the bombs when we were right over
the mark. The antiaircraft shells
were getting even closer than ever
and the machine was hit time and
ubuihb tiiouSn hoI III a Nllul Spct. why
we We're not literally blown out of
the air / do not know. After we were
well v e the mark and had dropped
all our bombs we discovered one $50
pound bomb which hsd caught fast
In the rack and failed to drop when
released. Consequently we swung
back on a second run and when we
were over the place which we had
bombed we let go the last bomb and
scored a direct hit far below.
1--WE went home at a high speed.
We crossed our own trench lines at
about 5000 feet up, saw some famil-
lar landmarks, headed for our own
airdrome, fired our signal and got
the answer. A few minutes later we
had landed. A glance over the ma
chine saw two big tears in the side
of the fuselage and many holes In
the wings.
But we had done a splendid bit of
bombing, and such damage as our ma
chine had suffered was by no means
difficult to repair"