The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps

The individual characteristics of the boys themselves began to show. Three of them were of a real mechanical bent. Jimmy Hill, Joe Little and Louis Deschamps were in a class by themselves when it came to the details of aeroplane engines. Joe Little led them all. One night he gave the boys an explanation of the relation of weight to horsepower in the internal-combustion engine. It was above the heads of some of his listeners. Fat Benson admitted as much in so many words.

"Where did you get all that, anyway?" asked Fat in open dismay.

"It's beyond me," admitted Dicky Mann.

"Who has been talking to you about internal combustion, anyway?" queried Bob Haines, whose technical knowledge was of no high order, but who hated to confess he was fogged.

"Well," said Joe quietly, "I got hold of that man Mullens that works for Swain's, the motor people. He worked in an aeroplane factory in France once, he says, for nearly a year. He does not know much about the actual planes themselves, but he knows a lot