red
phenomenal.

Reconnaissance was actively in progress on all of the battle fronts,
combats in the air were more frequent, bombing expeditions were
conducted across the frontiers, and with a constantly increasing
supply of new and improved machines, and freshly trained aviators, the
work progressed, so that before the end of 1915, on the part of the
Allies at least, there was probably ten times as much flying as at the
beginning of the year. Even when the heavy fogs pervading the battle
fields of western Europe in the early part of 1916 prevented other
operations, reconnaissance was actively carried on, and this, with the
routine work of determining ranges, positions, etc., for the
artillery, in active progress, gave little quiet to the airmen. With
the development of the war there was a constantly increasing demand on
the skill of the aviators.

Many of the places from which it was necessary to begin flights did
not furnish good starting, and often the same condition held as
regards the landing places. Furthermore, flying was attended with much
greater danger, with a corresponding increase in fatalities, on
account of the improvements in the antiaircraft guns and ranging
apparatus and the skill of the gunners. Withal, all official reports
agree in stating that the proportion of casualties was smaller in the
air service than in other branches of the service. There has been an
ever-increasing number of combats in the air. Often when aeroplanes
were observed in reconnaissance the enemy would make an attack upon
them in force and endeavor to destroy the machines. Indeed, this was a
marked tendency of the war, and the record from the first of August
would show not only an increased number of duels between individual
machines, but of skirmishes between air patrols, and contests in which
a number of machines would attack in force opposing aeroplanes.

As the war developed there was an increased tendency toward the
tactical maneuvering of a number of aeroplanes, a greater frequency of
bombing raids, and these attempts naturally led to reprisals as well
as to defensive efforts. Often the aeroplanes designed for dropping
bombs were heavy and powerful machines, not armed primarily for
attack, but depending for protection upon one or more fighting
aeroplanes of greater maneuvering power which accompanied them and
carried machine guns and other weapons. In these bombing raids the
tendency was to use a number of machines. In t