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going on under me, within a couple of thousand feet, when I could see out own ships attacking and could not see the enemy's ship at all. 

With our aviation, we contantly strove to increase its efficiency in every way possible. We had gotten our formations and methods of attack as well worked out as we considered was possible. With our men, who were fresh - not tired out from three years' of war - we could demand many store hours of them, and probably more initiative, than the older contestants, tired from the long struggle.

In considering this matter, we decided to attempt to fly with all our aviation at night and in the darkness, as a matter of principle, wherever we could gain any advantage by doing so.  In furthering this idea, a very interesting method of operating against enemy balloons was devised in the First Pursuit Group by Lieutenant Luke.  The burning of balloons always has a great effect on the troops whose balloons are destroyed.  The Germans, well knowing this, had trained specialists, expert in this art.  These were launched without mercy against our balloons.  Our low-flying system of pursuit patrols, in combination with the anti-aircraft artillery, in nearly all instances after the system began to work, shot these Germans down, but often after they had burned our balloons.

However, as their end approached, the Germans kept launching their specialists against our balloons without mercy to themselves, all their attacks being made with extreme gallantry.  To guard against our daylight attacks against their balloons, their system of ground observation stations, anti-aircraft artillery, and machine guns, protecting their balloons, and the rapidity with which they pulled them down made it almost as difficult for us to attack them in the daytime as it was for them to attack us.  The night, therefore, offered the best cover for an attack on balloons.  Lieutenant Luke, acting on this idea, made the first attempt.  He would locate the balloons in the daytime, wait for the dusk to fall, and with a single companion to keep watch above him, would shoot his incendiary bullets into the balloon on the ground and destroy it.  Within a week this gallant officer had seventeen victories, five of which occurred in one day.  Unfortunately, he was lost in the Argonne, having been shot down on the ground, and, as he continued to fight on the ground with his pistol, was killed by the enemy before he gave up.

The practice of attacking balloons in this manner became general in the First Pursuit Group, and resulted in the Germans moving their observation balloons back as far as ten miles from the Front, and forced them to put up many dummy balloons to fool our pilots.

Many ne3w methods of a similar nature, not quite so spectacular, were worked out as the operations progressed, - a notable instance being the work done by our infantry liaison planes, or those airplanes of the Corps Observation Groups whose duty it is to re-

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