r
a brief period of 1915. Allied design got ahead of it and finally drove
it out of the air.

German equipment at the outset, which put the Allies at a disadvantage,
included a hand-operated magneto engine-starter and a small independent
screw which, mounted on one of the main planes, drove the dynamo used
for the wireless set. Cameras were fitted on practically every machine;
equipment included accurate compasses and pressure petrol gauges, speed
and height recording instruments, bomb-dropping fittings and sectional
radiators which facilitated repairs and gave maximum engine efficiency
in spite of variations of temperature. As counter to these, the Allied
pilots had resource amounting to impudence. In the early days they
carried rifles and hand grenades and automatic pistols. They loaded
their machines down, often at their own expense, with accessories and
fittings until their aeroplanes earned their title of Christmas trees.
They played with death in a way that shocked the average German pilot
of the War's early stages, declining to fight according to rule and
indulging in the individual duels of the air which the German hated.
As Sir John French put it in one of his reports, they established a
personal ascendancy over the enemy, and in this way compensated for
their inferior material.

French diversity of design fitted in well with the initiative and
resource displayed by the French pilots. The big Caudron type was the
ideal bomber of the early days; Farman machines were excellent for
reconnaissance and artillery spotting; the Bleriots proved excellent
as fighting scouts and for aerial photography; the Nieuports made good
fighters, as did the Spads, both being very fast craft, as were the
Morane-Saulnier monoplanes, while the big Voisin biplanes rivalled the
Caudron machines as bombers.

The day of the Fokker ended when the British B.E.2.C. aeroplane came
to France in good quantities, and the F.E. type, together with the De
Havilland machines, rendered British aerial superiority a certainty.
Germany's best reply--this was about 1916--was the Albatross biplane,
which was used by Captain Baron von Richthofen for his famous travelling
circus, manned by German star pilots and sent to various parts of the
line to hearten up German troops and aviators after any specially bad
strafe. Then there were the Aviatik biplane and the Halberstadt fighting
scout, a cleanly built and very fast machine with a powerful engine with