Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1918-12-11
Young American Aviator Tells of
Drive Over the Ger
man Lines.
Shells BURST ALL AROUND
Squadron Proceeds Methodically With
Its Work Under Constant Fire Of
Anti-Aircraft Guns-AII Re.
turn to Base.

LonQ0n.-Amerlcan D0mDlng SQUAD
rons are now bombing the Rhine val
ley along with the British. The Yank
pilotS and observers, like their breth-
ren Of the royal air force, enter into
this sport" with the same spirit that
has made them famous on the baseball
Ediamond or football gridiron of their
own American colleges.
A young American aviator has just
told of trip over the German lines
land back behind into German territory.
The formation in which the American
airmen flew consisted of II big bomb
ing machines, each Of which carried
1900 pounds Of high explosives. three
imachine guns and three men. This
was the boys story:
"After I had tried the guns on my
machine, checked the bombs, made
sure everything was ship-shape, and
put q couple Of little bombs into a
small bag beside me, I started my en-
gine. The big motors growled away,
waiting for the starting flash. Soon
the signal came and we were of.
High Altitude Reached.
stFor twenty minutes we climbed, un-
I'll the earth was just black blot. An
other twenty-five minutes and we were
over the trenches, with the searchers
igroping 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 were manning
the searchlight, and 1t Welt out.
"Far below US we could see the
lights of q locomotive. Finally we
reached our objective. According to
plan, we throttled our motors and
glided toward the earth to get nearer
our target. It seemed curiously quiet.
Then suddenly the earth seemed to
open below US. Seventeen searchlights
were turned on US by the Germans,
and their shafts Of light swept all
about US. The anti-aircraft guns
madesa wall ahead of us. The high
explosive shells !il~ | every side
of US, and tha -. ii balls Swayed
and spiraled = t us on
fire. The American machines vent
straight on, with never waver or Il
turn. There were so many crashes
that thought more than once that we
were hit. We kept straight on.
Amid Binding Rays.
Suddenly one of the German
searchlights got us and the rest of the
seventeen threw around us with sud-
denness that made their concentra-
ton feel like q blow. We fired our
machine guns until the tips Of the
weapons got red and the glow be-
gan 70 creep up the barrels. The
whole seventeen beams were on us, al
though we plunged and side-slipped
about in 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
again, though not in a vital spot. Why
we were not literally blown out Of
the air I do not know. After we were
we'll over the mark and had dropped
all our bombs we discovered one 25O-
pound bomb which had 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 ana
scored a direct hit far below.
"We went home at 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 q splendid bit Of
bombing, and such damage as our ma
chine had suffered was by no means
difficult to repair"