Mechanical Monsters at the Fall of Gondolin?

[Findegil]

Aiwendil you (and anyone else beside you) had as jet not commented on this passage:

§ 121 Now they journeyed down that river but were again in fear from Morgoth, and fought affrays with his Orc-bands and were in peril from the wolfriders, but his firedrakes sought not at them, both for the great exhaustion of their fires in the taking of Gondolin, and the increasing power of Ulmo as the river grew.

I repeat here my comment from abvoe:

The "exhaustion of their fires" makes this firedrakes clearly a reference to type 3 dragons. But the word it self was in most previous cases interpreted as type 4. For clarity a change is desirable here but for no other reason, and since it is still understandable we can let it stand.

After some more time, I must retake that last line in my coment. I think that we should change this "firedrakes" to "drakes of fire". The reason for that is that we can only argue that "firedrakes", "fire-drakes", "firedragons" and "fire-dragons" refer to type 4 when it is never used explicit for any other type. But here we would define it as typ 3. We are not explicit if any type 4 dragon was in the battle. I at least find that as a weckness in our text that is created by the restrictions we have put to our editing. But if we now allow the word "firedrakes" to be used for type 3 we would, in a review of the text, elliminat the faint implicit hints we have given for type 4 dragons in the battle.

Seeing that even Aiwendil has found it incredible that no type 4 dragons were in the battle, we should at least give a clear implicit possibility for them, if we can not do more.

Respectfully
Findegil