Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 245, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1918 — AIR GUNNERS EXCEL [ARTICLE]

AIR GUNNERS EXCEL

.Allies’ Flyers Outdo Foe With Machine Guns. •kill In Use of Weapons Gives Victory In Combats With ’ Huns. Somewhere in France. Accurate machine-gun fire Is the chief requirement of the successful combat aviator, allied aviation experts agree. Fortunately for the allies, that Is one department in which their aviators excel. ’ . . /’ It is interesting to note the progress .made in the weapons used by aviators. At the opening of hostilities airplanes were used mainly for observation work. Their pilots were armed generally with carbines, and sometimes only with a revolver. Then came the fightilng airplanes and the single and double machine gun. , > But these newer and more deadly

weapons are useless unless properly aimed, and this is no small task, as the pilot must aim not his gun, but his whole machine. He must use his airplane as a gun mount. It is easy to conjure some of the pilot’s difficulties when the gun mount Is maneuvering and traveling twice as fast as any express train, while its target is in similar action. Nor is that all the difference between aerial and ground gunnery. On the ground ammunition is practically unlimited. In an airplane every ounce of weight counts, and ammunition is therefore strictly limited. The greater, consequently, Is the need for accuracy in shooting. It is Important that no ammunition shall be carried which Is not absolutely reliable, and all Is selected and tested. Guns are rigorously inspected, for a jam at a critical moment might, prove fatal. In training, on the other hand, ammunition is carefully- selected for its badness, the object being, by

means of frequent gun jams to- make the clearing of a stoppage automatically simple to the pilot. The successful air fighter must be a good pilot, but even the most bril liant trick flyer, the “stunter” whc can throw his machine about in the air and make it a supremely difficult target for his adversary, is nevertheless incompletely equipped as a fighter unless he can combine brilliant flying with brilliant gunnery. . Foch’s pule that “offense is the best defense* applies even more in the air than on land, and it is by following that rule that the allied fighters have won their ascendancy over the Germans.