To sum up my work for the last twenty-four hours, I have had three forced landings, four hours’-odd flying, and one night flight, and a crash--not bad, eh? The three forced landings within that short space of time constitute almost a record. It was with my own machine, and each time some trouble with the engine broke out when I had got up 500 feet. Each time that we thought that we had discovered the trouble and I took her up again, she cut out just the same. By great good luck I managed to get back into the aerodrome. On one occasion I had bombs on too! Now the machine is being practically pulled to pieces and altered by almost raving mechanics. I had, as I wrote you yesterday, a three and a half hours’ non-stop flight, and later was down for night bombing. I was all on my own, and several people said they thought it was too misty. However, the C.O. asked me if I would like to try, and I said I was quite willing, and got ready. I went up all right, though from the time I passed the last flare I saw absolutely nothing. There was a horrible ground mist, worse than it looked from the ground, and with no moon everything was black as ink. I could not tell whether I was flying upside down or anyway, and the machine was an old one and not very stable. I looked round at the flares and found I was flying all on the skew, left wing down, and I put that right; but not being able to see even a white road directly below me, I knew it was hopeless trying to leave the vicinity of the ’drome, and signalled that I was coming down. So down I came. I had been told to land down wind, owing to trees being at the other end of the ’drome. Well, there wasn’t much wind, but what little there was I had pushing me on instead of holding me back. Likewise I lit a flare at the end of my wing, and although that enabled me to see the ground directly below me, I couldn’t tell my height. I expected to touch ground by the first flare, but owing to these things and the fact that I was flying a strange machine the engine of which “ticked over” rather fast, I did not touch ground at the first flare--but at the last. The landing was all right, but I plunged merrily on into the pitch darkness until I came to a nice new road and a ditch which pulled up ye machine with a “crunch”! It at once began to take up peculiar attitudes, similar to those of a stage contortionist, and endeavoured to mix up its tail and rudder with the propeller. At any rate, this is how the machine looked a second afterwards: [Illustration] The flare on the wing tip was still burning, and I had hardly time to get over my surprise at the bombs not bursting, when it occurred to me that there might be a lot of petrol knocking about. “This is no place for me, my boy,” I thought, and undid my safety belt double quick and slid down one of the wings to the ground.