Page:Air Service Boys Flying for Victory.djvu/146

136 the sound of the bustling motors coming from the south.

This was the first crisis in the raid. The Huns were "out for blood," as Jack termed it, and would do their utmost to break up the formation. Their object would be to confuse the Yankee pilots, and thus weaken the force to the extent of making them abandon their plan.

But like a speeding avalanche the score of American planes sailed on, bent on forcing their way directly through the feeble defensive line by sheer mass play. It was football tactics over again on a huge scale, as learned by most of those young pilots in their schooldays at home.

The machine-guns commenced to spray around them. Such a furious fire was opened that almost immediately one of the Hun machines took a downward dive, rushed earthward, bursting into flames before it had gone one-quarter of the way to the ground.

This quick result evidently took some of the spirit out of the remainder of the enemy pilots, for they sheered off to right and left, still keeping their guns going, but apparently apprehensive as to their own safety.

A second Boche crumpled up under this mass attack. His plane was seen turning over and over, though it did not take fire, and there was not one chance in ten of its pilot's being able to