Aces High

by Alan Clark

  Chapter Three

  Tactics

  If by some delightful chance,

  When you’re flying out in France,

  Some old Boche machine you meet,

  Very slow and obsolete,

  Don’t turn round to watch your tail,

  Tricks like that are getting stale;

  Just put down your bally nose,

  And murmur, ‘Chaps, here goes!’

  (To the tune of ‘Tonight’s the Night’)

  Even the most experienced pilot could be surprised, particularly if his attention had been absorbed by a target on the ground or stalking another enemy at a lower altitude. In that first instant when the hammer blows of a Spandau burst rocked his fuselage, only immediate rudder, joystick and throttle forward in a steep diving turn could save his life. It had to be a reflex action. The inexperienced would ‘freeze’ in terror or waste precious fifths of a second looking round left and right to see where the enemy was coming from.

  The pilots of the single-seaters could thus save themselves even after being surprised and come back to fight again (though with the disadvantage of a lower altitude). But for the two-seater it was different. Heavier, more stable and slower, their response was less agile and usually their pilots were less experienced in combat, being trained for ground observation and navigation. For their protection they depended upon the observer and his ring-mounted machine-gun (Lewis or Parabellum). But the observer, too, had duties to perform -duties which were at their most pressing when the aircraft was over the target area, that is, when the danger of interception was also at its most critical.

  For a high altitude interception the most favoured tactic was to approach the two-seaters from below and to the rear where the ‘blind-spot’, particularly when the plane was in straight and level flight, would effectively mask the assailant. When the scouts attacked in pairs the technique was for one to distract the observer’s attention, usually by a broadside attack, opening fire at very long range, while the killer approached from below closing the distance to the optimum figure of thirty metres.

  Where a single-seater was attacking by itself, it would normally do so in a dive out of the sun, although accurate positioning of this kind took considerable flying experience and a high degree of concentration. Towards the end of the war the habit spread among rear gunners of mounting a sheet of mirror to swing in parallel with the gun ring and if this could be focused accurately even for a split second, it would completely dazzle the attacking pilot.

  The extra speed and agility of the single-seaters should have made it easy for a skilled pilot to pick off his very cumbersome adversary more or less at will. Furthermore, the majority of two-seater crews were relatively inexperienced, and had received only a brief theoretical background to the finer points of air-to-air combat. Yet the fact remains that a team of skilful pilots and gunners with steady nerves could be very formidable. Many of the highest-scoring aces – Guynemer, Richthofen, Lufbery – fell victim to a resolute rear gunner.

  Tactical skill was a composite of many things. Awareness of clouds and wind; private deceptions and bluff; cool nerves and speed of reaction; above all, flying skill, sensitivity to the aircraft’s response, which involved complete knowledge of acceleration, rate of roll, climb and turn and height-holding ability, and keen vision. This last was as much a matter of experience and intuition as of pure physical efficiency. There was a certain way of looking at the ground or sky, a manner of focusing, which allowed experienced pilots to notice the minute and menacing specks of hostile aircraft; and until this had been mastered, all novices were at risk.

  Spring and early summer of 1917 – that period when the RFC suffered most grievously under the flail of the Albatros Circuses – were marked by much cloud.

  To the early airmen cloudland was a new world. To the imaginative few, it became an enchanted land, the fairyland of childhood dreams come true.

  To the fighting airmen clouds were significant above all else. They meant the chance to stalk and trap, but carried also from within their soft and towering cliffs, the threat of being taken by surprise. Skilled pilots learned how to fly just within the cloudfringe. Invisible from below and yet able themselves to scan the sky beneath them. It was important to know in evasion how soon a cloud would give cover for a sudden change of course. Pilots learned to estimate the strength of clouds, their size and direction, whether they were growing or diminishing.

  On three days out of five the west wind prevailed, and fights that started at altitude would, as the contestants lost height, gradually work their way over the fighting zone and deep into German-held territory. Speeds even at maximum, were low and the differentials correspondingly small. In level flight, few aircraft had a margin of more than ten or fifteen m.p.h. over their enemy. Anyone who has driven a car fast over an empty, undulating road and tried to catch and overtake another of similar performance some little distance ahead, will have an idea of the closing pace in aerial combat in the First World War. Judgment and experience were vital in determining the angle of dive in a pursuit; if too steep, the attacker might pass below his intended victim and lose precious time in climbing again; if too shallow, he might alert his prey before closing within range and it too would have time in which to start diving.

  A number of the German Jasta pilots (Lothar von Richthofen, Werner Voss and many others) had started their careers as observers and knew the kind of tricks that would upset a two-seater crew. If he thought his enemy might escape, Richthofen would open fire early, in short bursts, and the nervous two-seater pilot would start premature avoiding action, thus fatally slowing his own plane and allowing the enemy to close to a proper striking distance.

  By the time Bloody April of 1917 came round, the very high casualties which the two-seaters were suffering had left few crews with proper combat experience. The army’s insistence on continuous ‘offensive’ patrols and the total obsolescence of their equipment were causing squadron casualties of approximately thirty per cent per week. For example, Manfred von Richthofen’s log for 13 April 1917 shows a certified claim for an FE 2B at 8.58 a.m., 12.45 p.m. and 7.35 p.m. on that day – i.e. on each of his three patrols. Yet in his total score, Richthofen only included three SE 5A single-seaters, not claiming the first one until 30 November 1917, more than six months after they became operational.

  The Germans could not understand the way in which the British aeroplanes daily came over the lines to be shot down. ‘It is better if the customers come to the shop’, was Richthofen’s dry comment. ‘Certainly they are brave, but it is bravery that has a touch of foolishness about it.’ Combat against the French he dismissed lightly: ‘In a Frenchman, bravery is quite exceptional and if you do meet it, it is like a glass of lemonade and very soon goes flat.’

  With every adversary against whom a pilot actually duelled (as distinct from surprising out of the blue and killing at one stroke) he established a kind of personal relationship – the shape of his head, his grimaces under stress (many of the best pilots would not wear goggles for these restricted at the corners the eye’s natural field of vision), how strong was his nerve, how merciful or deserving mercy – and there is little doubt that this contributed to the neuroses of remorse or vindictiveness that gradually unbalanced the aces.

  Norman MacMillan has given a vivid account of his first meeting with Werner Voss, just after the latter had been issued with one of the new Fokker triplanes: I saw the triplane curve in behind his tail [McMaking, another pilot in MacMillan’s Sopwith Camel Squadron] and dived instantly at it. Before my sights were centred I fired a brief burst because I knew most Huns reacted to the warning sound of bullets flying near them. This fellow, however, was of a different breed. He looked round at me and I saw his black leather helmeted and begoggled face above his left shoulder as he swerved slightly to one side then looked ahead again and followed the Camel’s tail.

  I think McMaking must have been wounded by the triplane’s first fire, because he did not use his Camel t
o manœuvre as he might have done. He went down straight in a steepish dive, with no attempt at evasion.

  I increased speed and pulled closer to the triplane. I was now below the main Hun formation and I heard the splatter of Hun bullets rattling round my ears. Glancing back and upward I saw two Albatros coming down upon me, but above them, Moody, in another little Camel, was treating them just the same and driving them off.

  Now I was almost dead upon the buff-coloured triplane’s tail. Its pilot looked round again. Possibly the sound of the bullets his comrades aimed at me had alerted him. I was close enough to see (and almost read the expression in) his keen blue-grey eyes behind his goggle glasses and as much of his face as was left uncovered; nose, mouth, chin and shape of cheek. Had I been able to meet them I could have picked him out from among his fellow pilots.

  He saw I was dead on his tail and instantly banked and curved to the right while he looked at me just as my bullets spewed forth. My tracers passed close over his central left wing, just outside his cockpit and in line with his head, missing it by inches because of his outward swerve. When my brief burst ceased he looked ahead again. He was a clever pilot.

  I saw McMaking’s Camel still below him, falling steeply in a gentle curve. If he were already badly wounded (as I believe) why did his opponent not leave him to his fate and turn to duel with me? We were at an advantageous height for the Fokker Triplane for both climb and manœuvre. Did he think the Camel ahead of him might escape across the lines? Or was it his policy to butcher him right to the ground in order to claim his scalp? I was alone now, our odds were even, and we were on his side of the lines, an advantage to him. Surely he ought to have rounded to engage me? I have never understood his tactics, why he did not take me on …

  In the last resort flying skill at the limit of feasibility was critical. For it was this above all else on which the pilot’s life depended. Tactics worked out in theory, demonstrated on a blackboard, practised in the still and friendly air of Salisbury Plain, broke down in the stress and turmoil of combat. Then the pilot’s reflexes, the sixth sense that led him to respond to his aircraft’s whims and protests, were everything. When the wing surfaces or the fuselage were damaged or the engine was misfiring, the joystick sluggish – above all when the dreaded orange flame from perforated fuel lines began to lick round the engine cowling – when the pilot had only a few minutes, perhaps only a few seconds, to put his aircraft on the ground, then all depended on his individual skill.

  Anti-aircraft fire (flak in the Second World War) was known as ‘Archie’, from a famous pre-war music hall song, regardless of whether the shell-bursts were Allied or hostile. Without radio-communication or ground control, searching pilots used the clusters of AA shell-bursts as a location for homing on to hostile aircraft. The Allied shells (British 3 in., or French 75 mm.) had a white smoke. The German was black cordite and gave off an unpleasant, toxic smell that lingered even at altitude in still air long after the fighting had passed over, so that returning pilots would sometimes traverse a belt of this vapour and look uneasily round the sky, banking their wings to one side and another in a conditioned reflex.

  At dawn, when the first patrols were flown and the sky was a pale hemisphere of cinnamon or grey, it was impossible to detect aircraft below you against the black carpet of the land.

  But this safety at low altitudes was ephemeral, for with every minute that passed the air lightened and with it grew the risk that the patrolling scouts would be spotted before they could reach their combat altitude. And so the first minutes of the dawn were spent in climbing, climbing; only the pin-point clusters of orange fire that showed Archie bursting around some early spotter plane, could make it worth the hazard of a diversion.

  This is the worst moment of the day. You don’t usually sleep very well if you are down for a Dawn Patrol. The batman calls at 4.30 a.m. with cocoa and biscuits. I am always wide awake then. When it actually comes to the point – warming up, take-off, getting into formation and so on – you find yourself doing these things automatically. But then, when you see Archie below! It looks much worse in the dark, you can see the flames and this reminds you …

  Chapter Four

  Death

  There were few flyers with any experience of air fighting who were not obsessed to some degree, though usually secretly, with the thought of being shot down in flames.1

  Arthur Gould Lee

  This was the paramount horror, the recurring nightmare, the insistent spectre that penetrated sleep and caused men to lie awake for hours before the dawn. No one who had flown in combat could have failed to see that terrible sight, an aircraft spiralling downwards in the black smoke of a gasoline fire. And it was only a matter of time before they saw one close enough to notice the last frenzies of the crew. Some would try to beat out the flames with their hands, others stood up and screamed curses, others would jump and fall, arms outstretched, clothing alight, from seven thousand feet. Still others (Bert Hall and James McCudden among them) carried a pistol, nominally for self-defence ‘in case of forced landing in enemy territory’. It had only six rounds and only one purpose. Just a very few had the cool nerves and the flying skill to retain control of the aeroplane, to try to handle it down, or deliberately go into a stall to extinguish the flames with the back draught, although many perished in turning to this last resort. Richthofen’s own combat log shows that out of eighty victories, fifty-four were gebrannt (burned).

  On either side the pilots’ allegorical names for gasoline – Infernal Liquid, The Hell-brew, Orange Death, Witches Water – underlined and perpetuated this phobia. Even after the ignition had been switched off the peril remained. The airscrew would continue to rotate with its own inertia and the force of the wind: it was locked in direct drive to the magneto which continued to emit sparks and these would ignite any fuel or vapour from broken feed pipes.

  Sometimes, where serious engine damage had resulted in total seizure, the magneto stopped. Or for some other miraculous reason there would be no outbreak. But even in these cases pilots could have their nerve shattered, and perhaps lose their reason altogether during the long ordeal of bringing a damaged aircraft into land with their clothing soaked in gasoline. On nearly every aircraft the fuel tank was mounted in the nose as close to the engine as possible so as to simplify the feed and pump. This meant that the draught from the airscrew or, even if the airscrew had stopped, from forward flight, blew flames back into the pilot’s face.

  In the gunnery observation balloons where the crew hung with their headphones and binoculars, tethered by a wire rope, parachutes were issued. And many gunnery officers had made three or four jumps in escaping certain death by burning. The question of issuing parachutes to the pilots of the RFC was raised at staff level several times during 1916 and 1917, but the general view was that ‘… possession of a parachute might impair a pilot’s nerve when in difficulties so that he would make improper use of his parachute.’

  The Superintendent at Farnborough had made a number of experiments with parachutes and dummies, but when Major-General Sir David Henderson, GOC of the RFC, was minuted as to whether he wished the experiments to continue, he scrawled on the text in his own hand, ‘No, certainly not!’ General R. M. Groves committed himself to the view ‘… that smashed aircraft generally fall with such velocity that there would hardly be time to think about the parachute.’

  Death lingered in the sky even as it does on land. There is no such thing as ‘instantly’. One hundred and sixty pounds of flesh and blood, a complete nervous system, brain, heart, lungs, kidneys : heart pumping seventy-two times a minute (or more likely 125 in the stress and terror of combat), all these things do not surrender life however grievously stricken without a struggle. Only very occasionally when the first cluster of bullets smashed the pilot’s skull did he pass into the Beyond without an ageless and agonized period of resistance. Sometimes, more than half the time, it was against the flames. At others, terrible pain and numbness, recurrent nausea and fainting i
n a cockpit where the blood sluiced audibly as the aircraft rolled from side to side. Some men went to their deaths unharmed in a stricken aeroplane that could no longer answer to the controls but dived or yawed, or spun, or slipped and fell with long deliberation like an autumn leaf before finally breaking against the solidity of earth and stone.

  For most pilots with minimal imagination their first sight of a death in combat was traumatic. Repeated in close succession it led to nightmares, depression, withdrawal – symptoms that were ignored by a medical service that had no psychiatric branch. Still deeper was the impression made by the first direct ‘kill’. One pilot wrote the whole account to his fiancée on the same evening :

  I got my first Hun today! At last! …

  Coming back, the formation split up and we made our separate ways. It was a lovely evening, very clear, with a pale blue sky, and I thought it was too nice to go straight back, I’d have another look at that incredible morass east of Ypres. I was half sliding down, northwards, just this side of the Hun balloon lines when I saw an RE 8 approaching on my left front, about 500 feet below. And tracers were spitting out from the observer’s gun.

  It was then that I realized that he was being followed and attacked by an Albatros V-Strutter from 150 yards’ range, also firing short bursts. Before I could react, the Hun ceased firing, and turned east. I assumed he’d broken off because he’d spotted me. The RE whizzed past below, the observer waved, and the Albatros continued on a level course eastwards.

  I dropped into a wide sweeping curve that brought me dead behind the Hun, and 200 feet above him. He was still flying level, due east, but not going flat out. It seemed incredible that he hadn’t seen me when he turned aside from, the RE. It looked so easy I suspected a trap, and searched carefully around, but there was no other machine in sight.