aviation service.

In March, 1917, Sergeant J. R. McConnell, also a member of the
Escadrille, had been killed in action. On May 24, 1917, it was
announced that the commander of the Escadrille, Captain de Laage of
the French army, had been killed while flying near Ham on the Somme
front.

Another death of interest to this country and caused by aerial
operations was that of H. E. M. Suckley of Rhinebeck, N. Y., who was
in charge of a unit of the American Ambulance Field Service. He was
wounded while on duty near Saloniki by an aeroplane bomb and died the
following day. He was thirty years old and had been with the Ambulance
Service almost from the beginning of the war, first in the Vosges,
then at Pont-a-Mousson, and finally with General Sarrail's army.

Regarding the losses suffered by the various aerial forces, authentic
information available is very scant and incomplete. Up to February 1,
1917, the Germans claimed to have destroyed 1,002 Allied aeroplanes
and to have put out of commission a total of 1,700, valued at
$12,500,000. During April, 1917, according to the London "Times," a
total of 714 machines was brought down on the western front. These
were distributed as follows: German machines, 366; British, 147;
French and Belgian, 201. Of the 366 German aeroplanes brought down 269
fell to the British, ninety-five to the French, and two to the
Belgians. British airmen accounted for 263 German aeroplanes and
antiaircraft gunners for six. On the other hand the Germans admitted
the loss of only seventy-four machines, but claimed to have brought
down 362 Allied aeroplanes and twenty-nine captive balloons.

During May, 1917, according to London newspapers, 713 aeroplanes were
brought down on the western front. Of these 442 were said to have been
German and 271 French and British.

CHAPTER CII

AIR RAIDS

The second phase of aerial warfare was represented by the raids
carried out by the various belligerents over enemy territory at a
considerable distance from the actual theaters of war. In these
operations the Germans, as in the past, were the most active and
England was the greatest sufferer. But unlike their previous custom,
the Germans, during the period from February to August, 1917, used
aeroplanes more frequently than Zeppelins.

On February 25, 1917, British naval aeroplanes raided iron-works near
Saarbruecken in Rhenish Prussia, about fifty miles beyond the border.

On March 1, 1917, one German pl