Speed (miles per hour): At 6,500 feet 90. At 10,000 feet 83.7. At 15,000 feet 69.8. Climb: To 6,000 feet, time 8 minutes 30 seconds. To 10,000 feet, time 17 minutes 40 seconds. To 14,000 feet, time 43 minutes 20 seconds. The Thomas-Morse MB-3 pursuit plane, a tractor biplane equipped with an Hispano-Suiza 300-horsepower engine, weighing, including its crew but without military load, 1,880 pounds, in unofficial tests at Wilbur Wright Field, performed as follows: Speed, at ground level (miles per hour) 163.68. Climb, to 10,000 feet 4 minutes 52 seconds. [Illustration: THE THOMAS-MORSE PURSUIT PLANE.] [Illustration: S. E. 5. EQUIPPED WITH 180-HORSEPOWER HISPANO-SUIZA ENGINE.] The Thomas-Morse pursuit plane is armed with two Browning machine guns synchronized with the propeller and carries 1,500 rounds of ammunition. Uncertain as we were originally as to types of pursuit and observation planes to produce in this country, we were still more uncertain as to designs of night-bombing machines. These relatively slow weight-carrying planes were big and required the motive power of two or three engines, with the complications attendant upon double or triple power plants. They really presented the most difficult manufacturing problem which we encountered. Until the summer of 1918 there were only two machines of this type which we could adopt, the Handley-Page and the Caproni. We put the Handley-Page into production, not because it was necessarily as perfect as the Caproni, but because we could get the drawings for this machine and could not get the drawings for the Caproni, owing to complications in the negotiations for the right to construct the Italian airplane. We were not entirely satisfied with the decision to build Handley-Pages, because the ceiling, or maximum working altitude which could be attained by this machine, was low; and, 12 months later, when we were in production, we might find the Handley-Pages of doubtful value because of the ever-increasing ranges of antiaircraft guns.