Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/298

280 was to kneel on the seat with his eyes above the cowl, where he could see all the enemy planes and direct the pilot in which direction to proceed. I was in the front cockpit with one gun and four hundred rounds of ammunition. In the stern cockpit the engineer and wireless ratings were to handle three guns.

We at once took battle formation and went forward to meet the enemy, but here we were considerably surprised to find that when we were nearly within range they had turned and were running away from us. At once we gave chase, but soon found that they were much too fast for us. Our machine had broken out of the formation and, with nose down, had crept slightly ahead of Capt. Leckie, and we being the nearest machine to the enemy, I had the satisfaction of trying out my gun for a number of rounds. It was quite impossible to tell whether I had registered any hits or not.

Our purpose in chasing these planes was to keep them away from the machine on the water which, if we had not been there, would have been shot to pieces. Finding that it was useless to follow them, as they could easily keep out of our range, we turned back and very shortly we were again circling around our machine on the water.

It was not long before the enemy again came very close, so we gave chase the second time. This time, instead of five machines as before, there were only four, and one small scout could be seen flying in the direction of Borkum.

It was the fourth time that we went off in pursuit of the enemy that we suddenly discovered that a large number of hostile planes were proceeding towards us, not in the air with the other four planes but very close to the water. There were ten planes in this first group, but they were joined a few minutes later by five more.

We swung into battle formation and steered for the middle of the group. When we were nearly within range four planes on the port side and five planes on the starboard side rose to our level of fifteen hundred feet. Two planes passed directly beneath us firing upward. Firing was incessant from the beginning and the air seemed blue with tracer smoke. I gave most of my time to the four planes on our port side, because they were exactly on the same level with us and seemed to be within good range, that is about two hundred yards. When we had passed each other