Aces High

by Alan Clark

  One of the chief difficulties in designing an interrupter gear was that ordinary machine-gun ammunition did not have a precisely uniform period of ignition; hand-fire rounds would occur unpredictably, and if the pilot was out of luck these would strike his airscrew. As early as 1913, a German, Franz Schneider of the LVG, had designed an interrupter mechanism and taken out a patent. However, for some reason the German military authorities refused to supply him with a machine-gun on which to run field tests. In the meantime Raymond Saulnier had been conducting parallel experiments in France. Saulnier had become impatient with hang-fire failures and had circumvented this by fitting steel deflection plates on the propeller blade where its arc crossed the line of the gun; and this device, though clumsy, was none the less a great advance. But, as in Germany, the military authorities lost interest at the outbreak of war and made Saulnier return his gun.

  Gears to allow a machine-gun to fire through the disc swept machine-gun and by the propeller fall into two categories – the interrupter and the synchronizer. The former works on the following principle: when the trigger is pressed, the machine-gun fires, and when the propeller moves into its line of fire, a series of mechanical linkages operated from the propeller interrupts the action of the gun until the propeller blade is out of the line of fire. In the latter, when the trigger is pressed, nothing occurs until the propeller is safe, and then the engine-driven gear, either mechanically or hydraulically, completes the circuit necessary to make the gun fire.

  After three months of war, the pilots were unanimous in their desire for freedom to fire fixed machine-guns in the direction of flight. For they had soon realized that it was difficult enough to fly the aeroplane at all, and keep out of trouble in combat, without having repeatedly to alter course and execute manœuvres at the bidding of the ‘gunner’ who was trying to get the enemy aeroplanes in his sights. If the pilot by aiming the aircraft could also be aiming the gun, his task would be greatly simplified and his speed of reaction doubled.

  Lieutenant Roland Garros, who had been a famous stunt pilot before the war in Morane-Saulnier monoplanes, visited Raymond Saulnier in December of 1914 and arranged to have his own aeroplane fitted out with the new device for a forward-firing machine-gun. The interrupter gear was not fitted, Garros relying on the deflection plates only to ward off the bullets that would otherwise have struck his airscrew. The work proceeded at a leisurely pace and it was not until the end of March that Garros took to the air. But his success was immediate and electrifying. In just over a fortnight he had shot down five German aeroplanes – an unprecedented score for that period. But on 19 April he was brought down by ground fire while strafing a column of enemy infantry on a road near Courtrai. Garros’ attempts to set fire to his aeroplane were unsuccessful and the Germans immediately set about copying and modifying it.

  On the evening of the day following Garros’ downfall his armoured airscrew was already in Anthony Fokker’s workshop being mated to a brand new Parabellum machine-gun. By 20 May the Fokker team’s adaption of the device into a true interrupter gear had been fitted to two of his new single-seater monoplanes (Fokker M 5K) and these were sent on a demonstration tour of operational units.

  Max Immelmann, at that time an unknown squadron pilot at Douai, wrote:

  We have just got two small one-seater fighters from the Fokker factory. The Crown Prince of Bavaria visited our aerodrome to see these new fighting machines and inspected us and Section 20. Direktor Fokker, the constructor of this fighter, was presented to him. Fokker and a Leutnant Parschau gave demonstration flights for him and fired at ground targets from the air. Fokker amazed us with his ability.

  And by the first week of July eleven of the leading German pilots were flying Fokker E 1 single-seaters, derived from the M 5K, equipped with the forward-firing Parabellum. Their effect was as dramatic as that of Garros’ – only multiplied tenfold.

  In these early days of aerial combat, pilots had been conditioned to believe that they were immune from enemy bullets when their adversary was bearing directly down on them. For too many their last visual memory on earth was of the little orange flickering that appeared above and very slightly to the right of the Fokker’s propeller boss as it opened fire.

  The appearance of the Fokker transformed the balance of power in the air. For some months there was literally no answer save that of swamping the enemy by sheer numbers – the counterpart of ‘stopping bullets with bodies’ on the ground – or, in rare cases, where the pilot could utilize superior flying skill to evade pursuit.

  For example, the log of No. 12 Squadron shows that an escort for one reconnaissance BE 2C was made up of three other BE 2Cs, four FE 2Bs, four RE 8s and one Bristol Scout. This was an extraordinarily cumbersome and wasteful way of operating the air arm as all these aircraft except the FE 2B, which had a Lewis gun for the observer in the front of the nacelle, were virtually incapable of engaging in combat with the Fokker, much less of actually overcoming it. (Moreover, the date of this particular escort, 7 February 1916, is not associated with any particular incident or period of activity on the ground and it is unlikely that the reconnaissance was of more than routine importance.)

  Had the Fokkers been more numerous and had the Germans deployed them in greater concentration it is probable that the RFC would have been faced with annihilation. Fortunately for the British, however, the bulk of the Fokker strength was drawn south to the battlefields of Verdun and the RFC was allowed a breathing space while it awaited the arrival of a new generation of aircraft.

  The Fokker’s real strength lay in its unique ability to fire through the propeller; the aeroplane itself was somewhat frail and underpowered. The torsional strength of a single wing was dangerously inferior to that of a trussed biplane, and the wires and the upright upper and lower pylons on the fuselage with which Anthony Fokker had tried to brace the wing surfaces were vulnerable both to hostile fire and to the exceptional buffeting which might follow a violent manœuvre or pulling out of a dive.

  These characteristics gave the Fokker an awesome reputation among the German pilots. In July 1915 some of the production aircraft were sent to the flying school at Doberitz for use as training aircraft. On 27 July one crashed fatally, and a second Fokker pilot was killed on 31st. After a third Fokker fatality on 29 August the Idflieg disbanded the Doberitz Fokker unit, sent the aircraft back to the Fokker works at Schwerin, and grounded the monoplanes as service aircraft. However, the Fokker’s success at the front was so marked that the Idflieg was compelled to allow the resumption of training, but they stipulated that it was to be done at the Fokker flying school at Schwerin. The first group of trainees were sent there from Doberitz in October 1915.

  Furthermore, the 100 h.p. Oberursel engine could only just drive the Fokker at 80 m.p.h. and the production of the 160 h.p. engine which raised its maximum to 100 m.p.h. was extremely slow. Several Fokkers were fitted with captured 92 h.p. Le Rhône engines which greatly improved their performance (and emphasized the somewhat theoretical quality of the Oberursel’s claimed 100 h.p.).

  In the spring of 1916 the Fokker myth began to disintegrate. The first of the Nieuports (the Nieuport II, or Bébé) had made their appearance in the skies over Verdun and as their numbers rose so did the Fokkers become more and more chary of battle. In the north the British had captured one and found that:

  … it was perfectly orthodox, and there remained only to put it up against a British Scout to judge its performance. The Morane Bullet was chosen, and the two machines were run out on the aerodrome, side by side. All the General Staff assembled to watch the test. Both machines took off together, and it was immediately clear that the Morane was all over the Fokker. It climbed quicker, it was faster on the level, and when the two machines began a mock fight over the aerodrome, the Morane had everything its own way.

  The Sop with 1 Strutter, the first British aeroplane to carry a forward-firing gun with a synchronized device. It was soon outclassed by the arrival of the German Albatros D I fighter
.

  A cheer went up from the ground. The bogey was laid. A description of the machine, its size, power, capabilities, was circulated at once to everyone in the Corps. It did a great deal to raise the morale and prepare the way for the Allied air supremacy later that year.

  The third stage of evolution coincided with the Battle of the Somme, through the long, baking summer of 1916. British output of aircraft had increased in spectacular fashion as also had recruitment into the RFC. Although still hampered by lack of a powerful purpose-built engine, the Royal Aircraft Establishment had managed to purchase a consignment of secondhand French engines which they fitted to their new airframe, the DH 2. The DH 2 was a ‘pusher’ of the old box-kite configuration that had killed so many trainees in ‘Shorthorn’ form and was soon to become obsolete, acquiring an evil and somewhat undeserved reputation among the line squadrons as the ‘spinning incinerator’. But for a few months the DH 2 did attain a kind of ascendancy. Its rear-mounted engine allowed a clear field of fire for the Lewis gun in the nose and, more important, an unrestricted rate of fire. (For all interrupter and synchronizing devices greatly restricted the gun’s rate.) The tactics of the RFC during this summer were, in aerial terms, the counterpart of Sir Douglas Haig’s repetitive frontal assaults on the ground. But thanks to the diversion of the Fokkers southwards, the symbolic victory of an FE 2B gunner named Corporal J.H.Waller over Immelmann on 18 June 1916, the dash and courage of units such as Lanoe Hawker’s No. 24 Squadron, they did succeed in establishing a transient supremacy – although at a high cost in lives.

  Yet the principles of the DH 2 design were obsolete before it was even put into service (and indeed were to remain so until the advent of the jet engine which applies its power in ‘thrust’ from the rear instead of ‘pull’ from the front). The French had already seen the importance of a front-mounted engine from the point of view of speed and manœuvrability; once sufficient power could be developed to lift two machine-guns, the ‘pusher’s’ faster rate of fire would be more than discounted.

  A few lucky RFC pilots, among them such future aces as Albert Ball and James McCudden, managed to get their hands on the latest French scout built to this principle, the Nieuport 17. Almost as fortunate were the flyers in the RNAS who were being issued with the tiny but phenomenally agile Sopwith Pup fighter.

  The first British aeroplane to carry a forward-firing gun with a synchronized device, was another Sopwith, the 1 Strutter. This also had a rearward-firing gun for the observer, as it was a reconnaissance fighter. The 1 Strutter had only a short life as a dominant weapon before the arrival of the first true two-gun fighter, the German Albatros D 1, which completely outclassed it. The Strutter was then relegated to bombing and reconnaissance roles, but the pilot loyalty it inspired was intense: ‘They were delightful aeroplanes to fly and beautiful to look at. On the ground when taxi-ing to take-off, they looked like brown butterflies; in the air they were alive and full of grace, charming companions of the clouds.’

  The 1 Strutter had a single machine-gun fitted with the Ross interrupter gear that restricted its rate of fire to 300 rounds per minute (compared with over 1,000 rounds per minute from the Albatros’ twin Spandaus). In addition, the Ross gear was very prone to jamming. However, the earlier examples left the normal ground trigger on the Vickers so that in a really tight corner the pilot could squeeze this and double his fire power at the risk of shattering his airscrew.

  Perhaps the plane’s gliding and handling ability encouraged this drastic expedient. The messes of 1 Strutter squadrons were plentifully adorned with whole and sheared propeller blades. The beautiful wood, laminated walnut or mahogany, was often carved into ornaments, tobacco jars, mounts for clocks and barometers.

  Charm, sweetness, agility, all these qualities were possessed by the Sopwiths and the Nieuports and made them beloved of their pilots. But in a fighting machine these qualities are not entirely pre-eminent. In Germany a perfect fighting machine the Albatros D – was under development, and from the date of its first appearance it flaunted an absolute superiority, until, nearly a year later, the antidote had been contrived. This Albatros marked the beginning of the fourth stage in the evolution of fighting machines.

  The Albatros D series machine was a beautiful and deadly biplane. Developed from the same builders’ successful series of reconnaissance machines and some special plywood-covered racing planes of the pre-war era, it was fitted with the 160 h.p. water-cooled Mercedes engine which allowed better streamlining (and thus higher speed in dive and climb) at the expense of some slight reduction in manœuvrability. Its twin Spandau machine-guns gave it the highest rate of fire of any aeroplane in service at that time. Furthermore, the impact of the Albatros was magnified by the way in which the Germans deployed it. Instead of distributing them a few at a time all along the front, they were grouped in Jagdstaffeln (abbreviated to Jastas) or ‘hunting squadrons’ whose express purpose was to seek out and destroy enemy aircraft – i.e. without the constraint of escort, reconnaissance, and other missions.

  The double impact of this deadly new aeroplane and the manner in which it had been entrusted to picked groups of élite flyers was to cut a wide swathe through the ranks of the Royal Flying Corps in the months that followed. Many of its bravest pilots, the gifted and imaginative pioneers of its early formation, officers who might have played critical parts in its expansion, were to perish under the guns of the Albatros.

  If the passing of the Fokker’s ascendancy was symbolized by the death of Immelmann, then it is still more true to say that the lethal advent of the Albatros was marked by the long and gruelling final encounter between the man destined to be the ace of aces of the First World War with eighty victories, Manfred von Richthofen, and Lanoe Hawker.

  Of all the early fighting pilots, it was Lanoe Hawker who had the supreme mastery of his machine. He was a superlative shot and in the earliest days had mounted a Westley Richards .300 single-shot deer-stalking rifle on a rigid bracket outrigged to clear the airscrew, and with this antiquated weapon had managed to score several confirmed destructions. So perfect was Hawker’s aim and so beautifully co-ordinated were his touch and judgment at the controls of the aircraft, that he could fire a single deflection shot with the deer-stalker that would wound a vital part of the enemy engine or penetrate the skull of its pilot. His victories against machine-gun-armed planes had to the enemy a mysterious and terrifying quality for their planes seemed just to fall out of the sky for no reason. Used to the deadly clatter of machine-gun fire, they could not hear that single, fatal crack above the roar of their own engines and the sound of adjoining combat. By the time that the second generation of ‘pusher’ aeroplanes arrived that were to sweep the Fokker Monoplane from the sky over the Somme, word had spread through the whole German air service of this remarkable Englishman with the moustache who could make his aeroplane perform such prodigies of manœuvre and evasion.

  But time passed, development advanced, the sleek and speedy Albatros arrived on the scene in ever increasing numbers. The DH 2s had to fight ever harder and their obsolescence became daily more apparent. Only Hawker’s incredible flying skill saved him from death when cornered by groups of German pilots flying new machines. Twice he was shot down and once wounded. With each week that passed the strain increased. The moment from which there could be no escape drew nearer.

  How unbelievable it is that this brave and talented man should have been condemned to fly one patrol after another in machinery that had become totally out-classed – the very counterpart in the air of that extravagant and obstinate butchery that was repeatedly being ordered on the ground, where brave men were being sent to certain death in pointless and repetitive attacks on the same strongpoint. The gradual decimation of Hawker’s valiant No. 24 Squadron and his own ultimate fate are still less excusable when it is recalled that the instruments which might have allowed them to survive, namely the new Sopwith Triplane (or even the agile little Pup itself) were being flown by the RNAS in the northern secto
r of the front where the Germans respectfully gave them a wide berth.

  Hawker’s fame among the enemy was such that all the pilots of the newly forming Jastas were eager to pit their skill against him (though whether they would have been so keen had he been known as the pilot of a Triplane is another question). During the winter months of 1916, several had the opportunity and some did not survive the encounter. But then at last on 16 November, Hawker fell in with Richthofen – a man cunning enough to avoid, even for a split second, the kind of error that would give Hawker the opportunity either to exploit his brilliant aim or to himself escape the clutches of the Albatros. Again and again the two aircraft turned in near vertical bank. Each time Hawker’s skill and delicacy in throttling back at the apex of the turn and allowing the DH 2 to side-slip for brief seconds, caused him to slide out of the German’s sights at the critical moment. Then briefly Hawker could put the nose of the DH 2 down in a dive, and seize a few precious yards of direct flight homeward. But sickeningly soon the superior power of the Albatros allowed it to catch up and the deadly turning process was repeated. For each time that Hawker weaved his way out of Richthofen’s sights, he lost precious altitude, and each time that he lost altitude he used up his reserve of speed and distance for the bolt home.

  After what seemed an age – fifteen, twenty minutes – the duellists were at ground level, the DH 2 could turn no more. Desperately Hawker weaved and soared round tall trees and over farm buildings. Once an air pocket wafted the DH 2 vertically some precious hundred feet and Hawker could dive again. But the last seconds of his life were ebbing away. The Albatros stood off at a distance of about sixty yards, waiting. This time there would be no escape. As the Albatros closed in for the kill Hawker gave full left rudder in a last despairing effort to bring his nose round and meet his enemy head on. But Richthofen opened his throttle and the enormous margin of power in the Mercedes engine drew the Albatros on top of its target, now at maximum exposure and almost motionless in its steep bank. One long burst raked across the engine and on Hawker’s head, shoulder and knees. The DH 2 fell like a stone, bursting into flames as it hit the ground.