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5
in air combat was a tricky operation, because the gunner and his target were both moving at high speed. You aimed directly at your target only when it was moving in the same direction as your own plane and on a parallel course. An observer, firing at a chasse plane diving on him from above and behind, had to aim slightly in front of the target much as one does when shooting at a clay pigeon or a quail in flight. In all other situations you had to lead your target still more, depending on the angle between its line of flight and your own. 
We also learned the theory of air photography, though practice on that also was deferred until later. The cameras we had then each carried a magazine of 12 plates. Working a lever by hand would removed a plate already exposed and take the next picture in the series. Those pictures taken over the enemy lines were used to spot enemy installations and to revise battle maps. It was a dangerous business. The pilot was required to keep the plane flying in a straight line at uniform altitude while the 12 exposures were being made. He could not, during that the, change direction of altitude to throw off the aim of anti-aircraft guns that would inevitably be shooting at him. The observer had to work the camera lever at such intervals that the pictures would overlap. He did that with a stop watch, and it key him so busy that he could not, while so occupied, keep any lookout for enemy chasse. It was urgent to provide protection for an observer on a photographic mission. Our own chasse might have been expected to provide an escort,  but somehow that rarely worked out. On the day of my last flight we were scheduled to have an escort, but it failed to appear. So we usually sent a formation of five observation planes, the leader doing the photography and the others protecting him. Such a formation had quite a lot of fire power, and German chasse would usually keep at a distance from it.