My dear reader, I hear you laughing at my story. But we do not know yet whether our children will laugh at it. Everyone would have laughed fifty years ago if somebody had spoken about flying above Berlin. I remember the sensation which was caused, when, in 1910, Zeppelin came for the first time to Berlin. Now no Berlin street man looks up into the air when an airship is coming along.
Besides giant planes and little chaser-planes, there are innumerable other types of flying machines and they are of all sizes. Inventiveness has not yet come to an end. Who can tell what machine we shall employ a year hence in order to perforate the atmosphere?
[40] Probably the fighting to the east of Amiens in March and April, 1918, has demonstrated to the German Army at large that quite a great deal is achieved by this "crawling along the ground." The use of aeroplanes against infantry and cavalry has been developed very greatly since von Richthofen wrote his notes in 1917.
[41] Curiously enough there is a very similar legend concerning an aged school machine at one of the British flying schools.
[42] On two or three occasions pilots have gallantly stuck to their controls and have managed to land safely in blazing machines from fully 1,000 feet. There is a general opinion that it is possible to fit a parachute so that in the event of an aeroplane catching fire the pilot and passenger can quit it at once and descend safely.
[43] This may be the propagandist editor at work, or it may be a deliberate attempt to mislead, because, as a matter of fact, a man cannot survive long as a fighting pilot unless he is a perfect master of his machine.
[44] There is some curious error here, for Captain Ball was not flying a triplane at the time of his death. It seems probable that someone else shot Captain Ball on the same day, and that, as the younger von Richthofen was disabled, and so could not go and identify the wreckage of Captain Ball's machine, the credit was given to von Richthofen in default of anyone else making a claim.
[45] This was evidently written some time after von Richthofen's previous disparaging note on Infantry Contact fliers.
[46] This is really a high testimony to the effective work of the R. F. C.