Besides the three German ‘planes destroyed, others were sent down more or less damaged, but the full extent of the enemy casualties could not be ascertained. A broken aeroplane does not drop like a stone. It takes three or four minutes to reach the earth, and there is not time during an engagement for the men who are fighting to follow the progress of every crippled machine in its aimless descent. The British casualties for the day’s work were two bombing machines and two escorting machines missing, one observer killed and two pilots wounded. Of the latter, one managed to alight inside the British lines; the other came down in ‘No Man’s Land.’ The special correspondent of the _Times_ describing the same battle writes: ‘It is a long time since the German initiated anything new in the air. Now, in his recrudescence of activity he is doing his best to learn from us. He copies exactly our methods, formations, and air tactics. In the recent moonlight nights especially his airmen have been penetrating behind our lines, trying to bomb rail-heads and transport, and so forth; and individual Germans are even getting so bold as to do what we have done for the last four months, namely, fly low enough to use their machine-guns on troops in trenches or on columns on the road. So far, they are making little by it; and they are having a most exciting time. One of the chief evidences of the new activity has been the great aerial battle, wherein some seventy aeroplanes were engaged, which the official communiqué has already mentioned. It took place between nine and ten o’clock on the morning of November 9, well over the German lines in the direction of Vaulx-Vraucourt, whither certain of our aeroplanes were bound on a bombing expedition. With them were fighting machines and scouts, making in all a fleet of thirty sail. Near the villa of Mory, just before reaching Vaulx-Vraucourt, they sighted an enemy squadron somewhat outnumbering themselves, the actual strength being something from thirty-six to forty aeroplanes. ‘They attacked at once. Some of our machines were flying at a higher level than the enemy, and they plunged headlong to join in the general engagement, which was fought at an average height of not much above 5,000 feet. Of the mêlée which followed, it is impossible to get any coherent account, for no man in it had time or thought for anything except the enemy machines with which he was successively engaged; but for twenty minutes there raged among the clouds such a battle as the world has never seen before: an inextricable tangle of single combats, of darting, swirling machines, the air filled with the roar of seventy propellers and the chatter of guns.