Journal Entry: January 23, 1916
St. Pol-sur-Mer

Today was an interesting day, we had our first official Balloon busting sortie. I've often wondered why we haven't been assigned more of these since the gasbags play such an integral part in the ground operations of the enemy. No matter, Roderic and I have done this before so we were accustomed to what was involved. After a quick spot of hot tea and toast, we made our way out to our buses. What greeted us there was quite a shock, the riggers were affixing these newfangled rocket contraptions to our outer struts. Needless to say, this vexed us greatly and we voiced our concerns to the Old man. He told us this was the new French weapon for destroying balloons developed by a French officer by the name of Le Prieur. We expressed our doubts about the efficacy of such a weapon; He blustered on about our need to be accepting of change and what not. Nothing to be done about it really, so off we flew. We arrived at our the targeted gasbag without incident and began our attack. As we both surmised, the rockets did nothing but make a lot of smoke and noise. We both managed to destroy the balloon but only after filling it with many of our bullets. Instead of these ridiculous rockets, we need some kind of incendiary bullet that would burn after being fired.





Member and provider of banjo music for the Illustrious BOC