The Conquest of America: A Romance of Disaster and Victory, U.S.A., 1921 A.D.Moffett, Cleveland
History
The Conquest of America: A Romance of Disaster and Victory, U.S.A., 1921 A.D.
Moffett, Cleveland
Imaginary wars and battles -- Fiction; Science fiction
Among aviators busy at this work were: Charles F. Willard, J. A. D.
McCurdy, Walter R. Brookins, Frank T. Coffyn, Harry N. Atwood, Oscar
Allen Brindley, Leonard Warren Bonney, Charles C. Witmer, Harold H.
Brown, John D. Cooper, Harold Kantner, Clifford L. Webster, John H.
Worden, Anthony Jannus, Roy Knabenshue, Earl S. Dougherty, J. L. Callan,
T. T. Maroney, R. E. McMillen, Beckwith Havens, DeLloyd Thompson, Sidney
F. Beckwith, George A. Gray, Victor Carlstrom, Chauncey M. Vought, W. C.
Robinson, Charles F. Niles, Frank H. Burnside, Theodore C. Macaulay, Art
Smith, Howard M. Rinehart, Albert Sigmund Heinrich, P. C. Millman, Robert
Fowler.
In the balloon training camps, I noticed some old-time balloonists,
including: J. C. McCoy, A. Leo Stevens, Frank P. Lahm, Thomas S. Baldwin,
A. Holland Forbes, Charles J. Glidden, Charles Walsh, Carl G. Fisher, Wm.
F. Whitehouse, George B. Harrison, Jay B. Benton, J. Walter Flagg, John
Watts, Roy F. Donaldson, Ralph H. Upson, R. A. D. Preston and Warren
Rasor.
Five days before the battle the hundred great carriers began delivering
their deadly loads on the heights of Arlington, south of the Potomac,
each aeroplane making three trips from Niagara Falls every twenty-four
hours, which meant that on the morning of November 5, 1921, when the
German legions came within range of Leonard Wood’s field artillery, there
were 5,000 tons of liquid chlorine ready to be hurled down from the
aerial fleet. And it was estimated that the carriers would continue to
deliver a thousand tons a day from Grand Island as long as the deadly
stuff was needed.
The actual work of dropping these chlorine bombs upon the enemy was
entrusted to another fleet of smaller aeroplanes gathered from all parts
of the country, most of them belonging to members of the Aero Club of
America who not only gave their machines but, in many cases, offered
their services as pilots or gunners for the impending air battle.
“What is the prospect?” I asked Henry Woodhouse, chief organiser of these
aeroplane forces, on the day before the fight.
He was white and worn after days of overwork, but he spoke hopefully.
“We have chlorine enough,” he said, “but we need more attacking
aeroplanes. We’ve only about forty squadrons with twelve aeroplanes to a
squadron and most of our pilots have never worked in big air manoeuvres.
It’s a great pity. Ah, look there! If they were all like Bolling’s
squadron!”
He pointed toward the heights back of Remington where a dozen bird
machines were sweeping through the sky in graceful evolutions.
“What Bolling is that?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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