Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 150, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1918 — BAGGING AN ENEMY AIRPLANE [ARTICLE]

BAGGING AN ENEMY AIRPLANE

Garmans Have Devised System of Dotermlnlng Filer’s Altitude Bafore Firing Big Shells. The Germans have arranged their guns in batteries; and when an enemy plane came within range the first gun would throw three shells jnto the air in rapid succession, writes Lieut. G. T. Cummings in the American Boy. These; were so devised that they would ex-i plode at different elevations, liberating', different colors in a smoke cloud. Usually one of these would be somewhere! near the plane. Thus the Germans had three fixed altitudes in the air, and from their smoke test they could in-l stantly determine the altitude of the! plane. A second gun of the battery fired a big, high explosive shell, aimed as; close to the airplane as possible. It isl explodes close enough it will wreck! the machine, but the Germans do nod really expect to get one even with the! second shell. The effect of this explosion is to "dud” the air. It creates air conditions which for a time make It impossible to move in that vicinity. It is the third gun which gets Mm. Having ascertained the range with the first, and killed the air with the second, a big shrapnel shell is directed from the third gun. If the machine has been fairly caught by the high explosive shell, the 600 shrapnel balls released by the next generally finish ItJ