"At Terschelling we proceeded west in accordance with our orders, but soon had to turn back because of Captain Leckie's machine which had fallen out of formation and come to the water. This machine landed at 3.15 and we continued to circle around it, finding that the trouble was with a broken petrol pipe, until about fifteen minutes later, when we sighted five German planes steering west, a direction which would soon bring them upon us. At this time Captain Barker had the wheel; Lieutenant Galvayne was seated beside him, but if we met the opposing forces he was to kneel on the seat with his eyes above the cowl, where he could see all the enemy planes and direct the pilot in which direction to proceed. I was in the front cockpit with one gun and 400 rounds of ammunition. In the stern cockpit, the engineer and wireless ratings were to handle three guns. We at once took battle formation and went forward to meet the enemy, but here we were considerably surprised to find that, when we were nearly within range, they had turned and were running away from us. At once we gave chase, but soon found that they were much too fast for us. Our machine had broken out of the formation and with nose down had crept slightly ahead of Captain Leckie, and we, being the {279} nearest machine to the enemy, I had the satisfaction of trying out my gun for a number of rounds. It was quite impossible to tell whether I had registered any shots or not. Our purpose in chasing these planes was to keep them away from the machine on the water, which, if we had not been there, would have been shot to pieces. Finding that it was useless to follow them, as they could easily keep out of our range, we turned back and very shortly we were again circling round our machine on the water.