e in
the different air navies. It will be evident to the most casual
consideration that with any one of these devices employed by an
aviator in a machine going at a speed of sixty miles an hour or more
the matter of hitting the target is one in which luck has a very
great share.

There is good reason for the pains taken by the aviators to see that
their bombs fall swift and true, and clear of all the outlying parts
of their machines. The grenadier in the trenches has a clear field
for his explosive missile and he may toss it about with what appears
to be desperate carelessness--though instances have been known in
which a bomb thrower, throwing back his arm preparatory to launching
his canned volcano, has struck the back of his own trench with
disastrous results. But the aviator must be even more careful. His
bombs must not hit any of the wires below his machine in
falling--else there will be a dire fall for him. And above all they
must not get entangled in stays or braces. In such case landing will
bring a most unpleasant surprise.

A striking case was that of a bomber who had been out over the
German trenches. He had a two-man machine, had made a successful
flight and had dropped, effectively as he supposed, all his bombs.
Returning in serene consciousness of a day's duty well done, he was
about to spiral down to the landing place when his passenger looked
over the side of the car to see if everything was in good order.
Emphatically it was not. To his horror he discovered that two of the
bombs had not fallen, but had caught in the running gear of his
machine. To attempt a landing with the bombs in this position would
have been suicidal. The bombs would have instantly exploded, and
annihilated both machine and aviators. But to get out of the car,
climb down on the wires, and try to unhook the bombs seemed more
desperate still. Stabilizers, and other devices, now in common use,
had not then been invented and to go out on the wing of a biplane,
or to disturb its delicate balance, was unheard of. Nevertheless it
was a moment for desperate remedies. The pilot clung to his
controls, and sought to meet the shifting strains, while the
passenger climbed out on the wing and then upon the running gear. To
trust yourself two thousand feet in mid-air with your feet on one
piano wire, and one hand clutching another, while with the other
hand you grope blindly for a bomb charged with high explosive, is an
experience for which few