Aces High

by Alan Clark

  At 18.00 hours on the evening of 23 September 1917, the day of the autumnal equinox, cloud-base was at an altitude of 9,000 feet. Werner Voss’s Jasta had flown its last patrol of the day under his leadership and he was up in his own Triplane, eyes focused on the red glow of the sunset that would silhouette any stragglers who might be making for the safety of the British lines.

  A few minutes after reaching operational altitude, Voss spotted his prey and dived after it, but above him and invisible against the darkening sky of the east was a flight from 56 Squadron of six of its most experienced pilots – R.T.C. Hoidge, A.P.F. Rhys-Davids, R.A. Mayberry, V.P. Cronyn, and K.K. Muspratt, led by James McCudden, V.C. Although fast in a climb the Triplane was no match for the SE 5A in a dive, and the six Englishmen rapidly gained on Voss before he could get within shooting distance of his selected victim. Rhys-Davids and McCudden split to put themselves either side of Voss’s Triplane so that one or the other would catch him if he tried to bank out of trouble. Muspratt and Hoidge parted vertically so that either a climb or dive by Voss would offer a target, while the other two SE 5As hung back as guards. Yet before the leaders could open fire, some sixth sense had warned Voss, and he straightened out of his dive, performing at the same time an incredibly rapid flick-turn that brought him face-to-face with his four converging enemies. For split seconds the adversaries confronted each other at a closing speed of 180 m.p.h. Startled, the English all opened fire, but none of the bullets struck their target and even as the SE 5As passed above and below him and to his right and left, Voss was giving the Triplane right rudder which brought him round on Hoidge’s tail. For a few seconds the English strained eyes against the failing light, then the orange stab of flame from the Triplane’s twin Spandaus showed Voss’s position as he filled Hoidge’s fuselage with bullets.

  The SE 5As, perfectly disciplined, and with the advantage of speed built up in their dive, climbed and banked again to position themselves in the lethal ‘box’ from which this time there would be no escape. Yet again the Triplane turned before the British could open fire and, raising his nose, Voss slipped through the descending formation, this time riddling McCudden’s aircraft and turning immediately, put himself on the tail of Muspratt, the last man in the flight. Three times the sequence repeated itself until the British discarded their advantage in numbers and formation and challenged Voss individually and in pairs.

  By now most of the SE 5As had emptied their Lewis guns and few of the pilots had found the time to re-load, continuing to rely on the single belt-fed Vickers that fired through the airscrew. The light was failing and an easterly breeze which had risen in the evening carried the fight back over the lines. There was still time for one more pass at this indomitable foe.

  Rhys-Davids, tense with the effort of anticipating the Triplane’s next evasion, found in one magic instant that it remained in his sights. Hardly believing his luck, Rhys-Davids closed the range while Voss’s figure in the cockpit enlarged to fill the ring-sight. Still the Triplane flew straight and level. Somewhere, at some point, Voss had been badly wounded and had either fainted or was incapable of working the controls. Rhys-Davids fired a long burst on deflection raking the whole length of the Triplane’s fuselage. For a second the German aircraft wobbled and then the nose fell, engine full on, screaming vertical and then over-vertical, until against the velvet of the darkened landscape below a dark red flash exploded, brighter than any shell-burst as Voss’s Triplane smashed into a thousand fragments.

  Chapter Eight

  Braves

  Elijah was reputed to be the patron saint of aviators, but as he went to Heaven in a chariot of fire, this was something we weren’t too keen about.

  Kiffin Rockwell

  Of all the units that took part in the dog fights over the Western Front none had such individual character as the Escadrille Americaine of the French Air Force. It was the creation and the club of a number of widely different, yet in their varying ways typical, Americans, having in common only bravery, a taste for adventure and a United States passport. Playboys, soldiers-of-fortune and professional aviators came and went in its ranks. They flew Nieuports and then Spad single-seaters that displayed an Indian brave’s head as unit insignia.

  The squadron had originated in the minds of a number of adventurous Americans, but the driving idea was that of a New Englander, Norman Prince, one of the few American citizens to earn a pilot’s licence before the outbreak of war. Prince had travelled to France in the winter of 1914 with the intention of forming a unit for American volunteer flyers. In Paris he had teamed up with Edmund Gros, a rich doctor who had built up the American Ambulance Field Service. The two men set about combing all the various units to which American volunteers had been drawn in those romantic opening months of the war (and where in most cases they were by now thoroughly disillusioned and miserable).

  At first the French authorities were obstructive. But with the deadlock on the ground and the increasing propaganda value of the personal side of aerial warfare, their opposition changed to support. Seven Americans were enlisted and given the acting rank of NCO in a squadron commanded by two French officers. The Escadrille was officially formed on 16 April 1916. In addition to Prince there was William Thaw, who had owned a hydroplane while still at Yale; Kiffin Rockwell, a medical student from North Carolina; and Victor Chapman, a Harvard graduate who had been at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris and had joined the Foreign Legion as a private when war broke out. (Both these two had grandfathers who had been officers in the Confederate Army.) In addition there were two from the Ambulance Service, James McConnell and Elliot Cowdin, and a tough Texan, Bert Hall, who had made his name as a pre-war stunt flyer and had already acquitted himself valiantly in the French Air Force, having captured a Halberstadt two-seater by forcing it to land behind the French lines. Of these original seven, only three survived. Altogether thirty-eight American flyers passed through the ranks of the Escadrille of whom nine were killed and two invalided out with wounds.

  The first posting for the squadron was at Luxeuil in the Vosges. The French authorities could not decide on the balance between tactical deployment and propaganda. The American flyers were given every luxury. In spite of their status as ‘other ranks’ and minuscule pay scale, money flowed freely, both in grants and from their private incomes. They were quartered in a sumptuous villa next to the Roman Baths and messed with their officers at the best hotel in the town. For many weeks the Escadrille was carefully nursed and committed to action only when the dice were heavily loaded in its favour. All the time the French propaganda machine dwelt on their achievements. The pilots’ spirits found vent in extravagant and destructive sackings of the local inns and in repeated ‘blow-outs’ in Paris.

  One of the earliest members of the unit, James McConnell (who was later to die in battle) wrote with foreboding: ‘I thought of the luxury we were enjoying; our comfortable beds, baths, and motorcars, and I recalled the ancient custom of giving the man selected for the sacrifice a royal time of it before the appointed day.’

  And indeed that day was not far away. The fall of Fort Vaux at Verdun in June 1916 caused tremors that threatened to bring down the whole of the Verdun system. In this dreadful battle of attrition the long-range artillery piece was king, and whosoever could give it eyes and lengthen its range would win the day. The Escadrille was a Nieuport squadron and only the Nieuport could cope with the Fokker which, in turn, was protecting the German artillery spotting balloons. Its commitment became inevitable.

  It was here, over the blackened earth of the Verdun trench system with its permanent haze of sulphur and cordite fumes that the élite of the German air strength, led by Oswald Boelcke and Max Immelmann, was engaged. On the evening of 24 May, the machine of one of the pioneers of the Escadrille, William Thaw, who had started the war with the Foreign Legion, was shot to pieces in a duel with three Fokkers and he crash-landed with his pectoral artery cut open, to survive in hospital. On 25th, another original member, Bert Hall was b
adly wounded. On 17 June Victor Chapman narrowly survived a duel with Boelcke, being wounded in the head. On 18 June Thaw’s replacement, Clyde Balsley, was struck in the thigh by an incendiary bullet and taken to a field hospital where he contracted gangrene. The same week, Chapman – still flying, though with his head in bandages – was caught in failing light by five Fokkers and shot down, the first American airman to be killed in the war. Now only Kiffin Rockwell, Elliot Cowdin and the founder, Norman Prince, remained. Within a month the carefree mood had gone sour. The pilots were forcing themselves beyond their capabilities and new arrivals were swept up mercilessly into a back-breaking routine of four or five patrols a day, stopping only in the ten o’clock twilight and starting again at dawn. After Chapman’s death, Rockwell wrote to his brother: ‘Prince and I are going to fly ten hours tomorrow and we’ll do our best to kill one or two Germans for Victor.’

  The following day, Rockwell, blinded by fatigue, was shot down by a German who dived on him from the noon sun. Less than a week later Prince stayed out too long and crashed into a high tension cable in the evening light as he followed the ground contours back to base.

  Thus ended the first phase in the history of the Lafayette Escadrille1 (as it had come to be known), and those who decry the importance of the American contribution to the air war and point to the low scores of their ‘aces’ and the manner in which their first regular squadrons were so carefully husbanded and kept out of combat, should not forget the reckless heroism and devotion of those first pilots in the Lafayette. Two years were to pass before any other American airmen came even close to matching the deeds of this first gallant unit – and even then the US’s latter-day aces, Frank Luke, Edward Ricken-backer, Joseph Wehner and the like, had to be trained in tactical matters by the French, who had learned from the Lafayette’s examples, and were equipped from the same source.

  Before the advent of the Albatros and the Circuses and the prophetic duel between Richthofen and Lanoe Hawker, before the onset of ‘Bloody April’ and the decimation of the RFC squadrons, this small band of gallant volunteers had allowed themselves to be dashed to pieces against an enemy far better trained, and many times their number.

  The attitude of the French Command then underwent a complete reversal. From husbanding the Americans in case the death of one of them should cause a reaction, they seem to have decided that a proflgate expenditure of American lives was a surer guarantee of a deeper commitment. Before the war when Sir Henry Wilson (later Chief of the Imperial General Staff) had asked General Joffre how many English soldiers he desired in the expeditionary force, the reply came back: ‘Only one, but I will make sure that he is killed.’ This philosophy seems for a time to have pervaded the French attitude to American flyers.

  The Escadrille was expanded. Some hardened flyers like Raoul Lufbery and James Hall and Charles Nordhoff, joined their compatriots along with many others who had to learn from scratch.

  French training schools were no bed of roses. We were up every morning before dawn, with only a cup of lukewarm chicory, masquerading as coffee, to sustain us till the first meal at eleven o’clock. Daylight found us shivering at our various fields, awaiting our turns on that fearful and wonderful contraption known as the Blériot monoplane.

  Its construction was a source of never-ceasing wonder. With only a slight exaggeration, it seemed as if they were merely gathered-up odds and ends of wood, discarded matchsticks and the like, which were wired together, catch-as-catch-can fashion, with bailing wire to form the fuselage. Then old handkerchiefs were sewed together, to cover the wings and that part of the fuselage around the pilot’s seat. The remainder of the fuselage was left naked, which gave the ship a sort of half-finished appearance. We were undoubtedly wrong in thinking it was left naked because, with true French thrift, they wanted to save on fabric. More likely it was to facilitate replacement of brace wires, which had an uncomfortable habit of snapping when any particular strain was put on them.

  The landing gear was fairly solid, with junior bicycle wheels at the end of each axle, wrapped with a couple of turns of light rubber cord.

  Of the 209 American nationals who volunteered for service in the French Air Force the majority went through the training school at Buc, learning on the clipped-wing Blériots (the Pingouins) and graduating to twin-engined Caudron R IVs whose whole wing warped in a tight turn. But of these 209, only thirty-one actually found their way into the exclusive Lafayette squadron and the remainder served, until America joined the war, with other French front line units.

  After its brutal mauling at Verdun, the Escadrille was taken out of the line for resting and re-equipped with the new Spad VII single-seater with a V8 Hispano-Suiza engine. At first there was a wide gulf between those who had been through the deadly Fokker battles of the summer and the brash young arrivistes. In the words of the official historian ‘there was considerable disharmony at various times’. More, perhaps, than any other front line unit, the Lafayette seems to have been racked by fads and superstitions. There was a great craze for collecting golden medals and bracelets – but with the proviso that they had to be presented by one of the girls in Paris; then there was a wave of addiction to black, velvet cats – which had to emanate from the same source – without whose company in the cockpit it was dangerous even to take off. Every pilot carried a girl’s silk stocking under his flying helmet: ‘… if anything happened to you it was a sure sign the girl didn’t love you.’2

  For nearly a year after the United States’ entry into the war the Lafayette Escadrille continued to fly under French colours. In the latter months of 1917 the policy of conservation seems to have returned, although the publicity did not diminish.

  In February of 1918 the Escadrille was formally absorbed into the United States Air Service and was redesignated the 103rd Aero Squadron. Although Thaw, who had survived his earlier wounding, remained commander, most of the first alumni were dispersed to stiffen other units. The squadron’s mascot, a lion cub called Whisky, was sent to the zoo, the French uniforms were thrown away and orders were given that the slackness and indiscipline ‘for which the unit was notorious’ should be rectified.

  Three months later the last link with the old days of the Escadrille were severed when Raoul Lufbery’s Nieuport caught fire during combat in full view of his new command, the 94th US Squadron, at Maron, who were watching from the ground. Lufbery, who had always sworn that he would never burn, shut off the motor and coolly tried to extinguish the flames by sideslipping first to the left and then to the right. In a Spad it might have been possible, but with the short-nacelled rotaries like the Nieuport and the Camel, flames from the engine compartment would make the cockpit intolerable within a few seconds. Horrified, the onlookers saw Lufbery climb out and continue to try and operate the joystick while sitting on the head-fairing; then he crawled back along the fuselage towards the tail and let go, falling three thousand feet to his death.

  All those characteristics of the First World War aircrew who flew and fought without parachutes, who knew that death from wounds would occur four times out of five, who saw their comrades come and go and measured their own existence by the hour, all these were personified in the members of the Lafayette Escadrille.

  In addition, they were expatriates; they fought without a country, surrounded by people who spoke a different language and whose attachments and values were alien. Like the Polish squadrons in the Battle of Britain twenty-three years later, this seems to have heightened their ardour, but brought with it too a certain melancholy that is exemplified in their favourite mess song:

  We meet ’neath the sounding rafters,

  The walls all around us are bare;

  They echo the peals of laughter;

  It seems that the dead are there.

  So stand by your glasses steady,

  This world is a world of lies.

  Here’s a toast to the dead already;

  Hurrah for the next man who dies.

  Cut off from the land that b
ore us,

  Betrayed by the land that we find,

  The good men have gone before us,

  And only the dull left behind.

  So stand by your glasses steady,

  The world is a web of lies.

  Then here’s to the dead already,

  And hurrah for the next man who dies.

  Chapter Nine

  Storks

  … will remain the purest symbol of the qualities of his race. Indomitable tenacity, ferocious energy, sublime courage : animated by the most resolute faith in victory, he bequeaths to the French soldier an imperishable memory which will exalt the spirit of sacrifice.

  Guynemer memorial

  The inscription is taken from the marble plaque on the Guynemer memorial at the Panthéon in Paris. The sentiments expressed, while wholely suitable to Georges Guynemer’s own tortured and mystic heroism, were less appropriate to the majority of his colleagues among whom a kind of cynical despair gradually took root – flowering with tragic consequence in 1940.

  The French had been the first to realize the immense propaganda value of the air war and the manner in which, by presenting it in personal terms as a series of individual contests, public attention could be distracted from the futile carnage of the trenches. ‘The Knights of the air’, wrote one commentator, ‘sally forth to do battle before the eyes of the assembled hosts as did the chevalier of olden time.’

  The French were the first to institute the ‘ace’ system (which was of course never officially recognized in Britain, though in Germany it was still further refined with several gradations and the coveted Pour le Mérite or ‘Blue Max’ at the summit). The rules of scoring were strict but if a pilot had five confirmed victories (in May of 1917 this limit was raised to ten) he qualified for the title of ‘As’ and was mentioned by name in official communiqués.