“With that sort of thing against us,” said Dicky Mann, “we have certainly got to learn to fly.”

The same thought may have come to their squadron commander that night, for the next day saw the start of real post-graduate work in flying for his command.  The rule at the base airdrome had been to give new units of well-trained flyers good all-round tests on various types of machines.  This involved straight flying for the most part, and was done more with the idea of familiarizing the newcomers with the newer types of planes, and deciding for which branch of the work they were best suited, than for anything else.  In the work that gave the finishing touch to his command, their squadron commander selected three of the six Brighton boys as candidates for high honors in the days to come.  Every one of the half dozen was good.  All were eager.  All flew well.  But Joe Little, Jimmy Hill and Harry Corwin seemed made of exactly the sort of stuff from which flying stars were evolved.

“I think I will try to make hunters out of those three boys,” said their commander to the officer in charge of the base airdrome.

“Our plan here,” said the officer thus addressed, “is to pass youngsters out after they have satisfactorily gone through a final test of two short voyages of twenty-five miles each, two long voyages of one hundred and thirty-five miles each and an hour’s flight at a minimum altitude of sixty-five hundred feet.  The post-graduate course is mostly aerial acrobatics.  Looping the loop comes first.  All of them can do that.  The flier must then do flip-flops, wing slips, vertical twists and spinning nose dives.”

“Just what do you call a spinning nose dive?” asked the squadron commander.

The chief explained:  “Climbing to at least four thousand feet, the pilot cuts off his motor and crosses his controls.  This causes the machine first to scoop upward and then fall sidewise, the nose of the plane, down vertically, spinning around and around as it falls.”

“That sounds interesting,” said the commander.

“More,” continued the chief.  “It is necessary.  Skill in the air nowadays means all the difference between life and death—–­all the difference between success and defeat.  I have an idea that we have come nearer to the limit of human possibility as regards speed in the air than many people think.  Two hundred miles an hour may never be reached.  But whether it is or not, we can get better and better results by paying more and more attention to the development of our aerial athletes.

“I look on flyers as athletes playing a game—–­the greatest game the world has ever seen.  The more expert we can make them individually, the better the service will be.  A nimble flyer, a real star man, is almost sure to score off a less expert antagonist, even if the better man is mounted on an inferior plane.  That has been proven to me beyond all possibility of doubt time and time again.