out a
hundred and fifty; in November 1918 there were more than twenty-two
thousand in use, almost all of them enormously more powerful and
efficient than the best machines of the earlier date. In the course of
the war our air forces accounted for more than eight thousand enemy
machines; dropped more than eight thousand tons of bombs on enemy
objectives; fired more than twelve million rounds of ammunition at
targets on the ground; took more than half a million photographs;
brought down nearly three hundred enemy balloons; and suffered a total
of casualties not far short of eighteen thousand. Not less important in
its influence on the fortunes of the war than any of these achievements,
perhaps more important than all of them, was the work done by aircraft
in detecting movements of the enemy and in directing the fire of our
gunners upon hostile batteries. This work cannot be exactly assessed or
tabulated, but the German gunner knew where to look for the enemy he
most dreaded.

A rapid summary of this kind shows that the history of the war in the
air is inseparable from the history of the development of the art of
flying. Of those who were competent to handle a machine in the air
during the years before the war by far the greater number served with
the colours. With the outbreak of war civilian flying, except for
training purposes, abruptly ceased. The necessities of war compelled and
quickened invention. When a nation is fighting for its life, money and
energy are expended without check, and it may be doubted whether in the
whole history of mankind any art in its infant stage has been so
magnificently supported and advanced by war as the art of flying was
supported and advanced by the greatest war of all.

No history can be expected to furnish a full record of all the acts of
prowess that were performed in the air during the long course of the
war. Many of the best of them can never be known; the Victoria Cross has
surely been earned, over and over again, by pilots and observers who
went east, and lie in unvisited graves. The public dearly loves a hero;
but the men who have been both heroic and lucky must share their
honours, as they are the first to insist, with others whose courage was
not less, though their luck failed them. There is a quaint system, in
use in the air service, of reckoning the activities of the service in
terms of hours flown, taking as the unit for addition every single hour
flown by each individual