London, May 26.
Reuter's Special Correspondent with the advanced Air Arm of the French Army heard thrilling stories from tired pilots who in the past fortnight worked sixteen hours a day, attacking German hordes, as he visited them at a skilfully concealed airfield, This particular unit, he says, in the last twelve days accounted for 45 German planes, while another group had destroyed 100 machines. The army to which they belonged had a grand total of 600 German aircraft destroyed during the past fortnight.
One captain described how, with five planes, he attacked 40 Messerschmitts, brought down one, damaged others and finally landed, with three shell holes and 371 machine-gun bullets through his machine.
'The general commanding this* aiv group said the Allies had now adapted themselves to German mass alr attacks with 25 to 40 planes; it was like a mass infantry attack' in the last war, he declared. "Dive-bombing at first' had a psychological effect. French chaser planes are now also carrying out dive-bombing with considerable success. German pilots are courageous, but they lack the Allied quality of moral ascendancy. If six French planes approach 40 Germans the latter almost always retire."
Some German pilots had only 52 hours of flying experience, he added, whereas most of the French had five years of training, and the Germans were not sparing men, while the French had many pilots in reserve—Reuter,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.