Page:Air Service Boys over the Rhine.djvu/134

124 But good fortune in this respect was with him, and he got in a position where he could point his machine (and the gun at the same time, for this is how the guns are aimed in the single aircraft) at the Hun flier. And then Tom sent forth a rain of bullets.

For a moment they seemed to have no effect, and yet Tom knew he had shot straight. Then, even while he felt a sharp pain in one hand, showing that he had been hit, he saw the other machine start down in a spinning nose dive. That meant he was going downward head first, and at the same time spinning around like a top.

This spinning nose dive may be intentional or accidental—that is, with the machine in control, or out of control. The spinning nose dive was discovered by accident, but is now part of the regular flying features, and is often used by aviators to escape from an enemy.

It is almost impossible to hit a plane doing a spinning nose dive, and if an aviator is over his own lines he may be able to come out of it before he reaches the ground, and so be safe. Many German planes have escaped in this way, and often a French airman has thought he has sent his enemy down disabled, when, as a matter of fact, the other has merely adopted this ruse to get away.

"Well, I don't know whether I got him, or