Airman Braved Rifles.

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 14, 1912:
Flew Over Adrianople, Dropping Summonses to Surrender.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    VIENNA, Nov. 13.— The correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse had a talk at Sofia with a Russian aviator who was engaged by Bulgaria to fly to Adrianople. His name was Efimoff. He was instructed to throw from his machine handbills in the Turkish language, in which the Bulgarians called on the population of Adrianople to surrender. He gave the following account of his flight:
    "It took me about forty minutes to fly from Mustapha Pasha to Adrianople, a distance of 22 miles. My apparatus was a very old one, with which I had great difficulty in rising very high, and that is why I took so long. From a height of 4,000 feet I threw bills into the town. At Fort Kamgach I saw a considerable number of infantrymen shooting toward the sky with rifles. I did not hear the shots, but when I noticed that four bullets had struck my apparatus, I knew for whom the shots were meant. I did not lose my presence of mind, but flew on.
    "When the guns in the forts fired shrapnel at me, and when my apparatus was struck several times by fragments of projectiles, the situation became critical. Every moment I feared I should have to descend, if I did, I intended at the moment of falling to shoot myself in order to not fall into the hands of the Turks.
    "Fortunately, however, only the wings were hit, and not the motor, and so I could keep on, and in twenty minutes I was once more in the flying field at Mustapha Pasha. My apparatus was repaired and used again."