human
on bombing Hun factories, and the objective that night was the Badische Works situated on the river Rhine; so Jock held to his compass course and flew for over four hours without once seeing the ground. When a sufficient time had elapsed to bring him over his target, if his previous reckoning, of course, of ground speed and drift was correct, and if the wind had not varied in velocity or strength, Jock
gpt
down through the clouds and, finding the ground beneath him nothing but dense blackness, glided lower and lower until eventually a large town directly beneath him became visible and then the river Rhine, passing between Ludwigshafen on the west and Mannheim on the east, was lit up by the rays of the moon coming through a sudden rift in the clouds. Jock by now was only eight hundred feet above Mannheim; he opened up his throttle and circled around the city while his navigation officer on his large-scale chart compared the landmarks momentarily made visible by the rift in the clouds. At last, thoroughly satisfied as to their position, fourteen one-hundred-and-twelve-pound bombs were dropped as near the factory as possible. If some of these bombs dropped in the town itself, it was not due to intention on the part of the aviators, who, blinded by searchlights, could not be sure of sending all the bombs with accuracy. With over one hundred and sixty miles to travel in a plane riddled with shrapnel from the bursting shells, the prominent thought in the minds of the aviators was, that their work being accomplished, their next move was to