My First Air Battle

‘Zeumer and I would have loved to have had a dogfight. Of course we flew our large fighter aircraft. The name of the barge alone gave us such courage that we thought it impossible that an opponent could escape us. We flew five to six hours a day without ever seeing an Englishman. One morning, already discouraged, we went hunting again. All of a sudden I spotted a Farman who was unabashedly flying his reconnaissance. My heart was pounding as Zeumer flew towards him. I was curious to see what was actually going to happen. I had never seen a dogfight and only had very dim ideas, just like you, my dear reader. Before I knew it, the Englishman and I had flown past each other. I had fired no more than four shots, while the Englishman suddenly sat behind us and shot up the whole place. I have to say that I didn't feel in any danger because I couldn't imagine what the end result of such a fight would look like. We turned round each other a few more times, until finally, to our great astonishment, the Englishman [62]turned round quite happily and flew on. I was very disappointed, and so was my guide. When we arrived home, we were both in a very bad mood. He reproached me for having shot badly, I reproached him for not getting me to shoot properly - in short, our aeroplane marriage, which was otherwise so flawless, had suddenly cracked. We looked at our box and realised that we actually had quite a decent number of hits in it. That same day we went on a second hunting flight, but it was just as unsuccessful. I was very sad, because I had imagined things to be very different in a fighter squadron. I always believed that if I ever got a shot, my brother would have to fall too. But I soon had to convince myself that an aeroplane like that can take an awful lot. Eventually I became convinced that I could shoot as much as I wanted and still never get one down. We had not lacked courage. Zeumer could fly like few others, and I was a pretty good shot. So we were faced with a conundrum. It wasn't just me, but many others still feel the same way today. History really needs to be understood.’