The First Great Air War

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  McCudden recorded that at six o’clock on the morning of the 26th officers and men breakfasted together around the field kitchen; and, on another day, Lieutenant Conran, one of the pilots, milked a cow in a roadside field when the squadron’s convoy halted for a midday meal. He also mentioned working all night as a matter of course, servicing the aeroplanes: as ground crews have done ever since.

  Joubert de la Ferté had something else to write about the turmoil of those ten days that was also repeated in May and June 1940. “What we saw during the advance confirmed our impressions from the air as to the unspeakableness of the Hun in his methods of dealing with the civilian population. I saw half a dozen villages on fire during the first day of the battle, twenty miles west of Mons, where by no possible means could there have been any armed resistance to the passage of the Huns. It was simply frightfulness on the part of the Uhlans, and what we saw later was a clear indication of wilful and unnecessary destruction of private property.”

  German airmen meanwhile bombed dwellings and refugees. Such evidence should be remembered when reading tributes to the chivalry of German pilots, who are often credited with good sportsmanship and an admirable sense of decency. They belonged to the nation that deliberately provoked war with France in 1870, determinedly set about stirring up the war that it declared in 1914, and spent years plotting the war it brought about in 1939.

  The airmen who perpetrated these enormities were the same who used to drop wreaths on Allied aerodromes in maudlin tribute to the airmen they had killed, and messages reporting those who had been taken prisoner. Mawkish sentimentality is never edifying. Transports of bogus contrition are an insult to the intelligence.

  On the 25th, Harvey-Kelly, of Two Squadron, scored the first victory in aerial combat, without firing a shot. Having intercepted a Taube, he was presently joined by two more BE2s. He positioned himself a few feet astern, followed it through all the desperate weaving and switch-backing with which its pilot tried to evade him, and forced it down near a wood: into which the German pilot and observer bolted. Harvey-Kelly and Lieutenant W. H. C. Mansfield landed near the enemy aircraft. They searched unsuccessfully for the fugitives, then burned it.

  In the course of the almost daily stumbling south-westward under the enemy’s onslaught, the RFC found itself on 31st August at Juilly. Baring started this day by buying “a beautiful resounding brass bell” at Senlis, for the mess. In the afternoon he set off by car with “Colonel” Burke, as he calls him, who was actually a major at the time, and “Captain” Crosbie, who was in fact then a lieutenant. He put up yet another of his inane performances. “I was given a map and told to direct the proceedings. I didn’t know how to read a map.” After taking the wrong direction at a crossroads, followed by hours of quartering the countryside and asking the way, the three officers eventually found their destination. On the morrow they enjoyed “a peaceful day at Juilly and a nice bathe in a great pond …” but the picnic atmosphere was spoiled at nine-thirty that evening, when panic broke out. Headquarters, two miles away, thought they had been cut off by the Germans, which meant hasty packing and departure.

  Henderson’s unruffled deportment brought an admiring tribute from Seeley. “One evening, returning from Smith-Dorrien’s front with a despatch to Headquarters, at the worst moment of the retreat, when the German advance guard was within thirty-five miles of Paris, and passing the temporary aerodrome which was the Headquarters of the Flying Corps, for the moment, I saw David Henderson standing on the bank, looking down on the road surveying the rapidly moving motor-cars, lorries and troops and said to him ‘When are you moving on?’

  “He had the same unperturbed demeanour, the same kindly and whimsical smile, which we all knew so well, and he replied, ‘Well, we have a few more aeroplanes to come in and we shall fly away at dawn.’

  “I said, ‘But suppose the advance guard gets here before dawn?’

  “He replied, ‘Then we shall get away in the dark as Graham-White did when he was flying from London to Manchester!’ [In 1910 the Daily Mail offered a prize of £10,000 for the first flight from London to Manchester. Claude Graham-White attempted it in a Farman but had to forced-land near Lichfield, with engine trouble; where high wind in the night damaged his machine.]

  “He was not in the slightest degree perturbed or flustered. I have never seen a man at a desperate moment so completely master of himself. His cool courage always communicated itself to all who were with him.”

  Five days later the Battle of the Marne began. French ordered a significant repositioning of the RFC that would soon become standard. Reconnaissance having been recognised as vital, aeroplanes were to operate directly with First and Second Corps. The CO of No. 5 Squadron was detached, with three aircraft, to Sir Douglas Haig, No. 3 Squadron’s OC and three aircraft went to Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien. A wireless-equipped aircraft from No. 4 Squadron went to keep RFC HQ supplied with information. Decentralisation of the RFC had begun.

  The Imperial German Military Aviation Service had been thus organised from the outset, with an aeroplane section at First Army HQ for long-range strategic reconnaissance, and sections for tactical reconnaissance attached to the various corps.

  The pell-mell retreat and the nearness of the enemy to Paris did not cast any great gloom on the British airmen, who were in high spirits, full of energy and horseplay. Some of the squadrons were billeted in a girls’ school, where Baring slept on the first night of the Battle of the Marne. He described a pillow fight in which the pilots dressed themselves up in the girls’ nightgowns. One of the dormitories was invaded and fell only after a vigorous defence. That sounds like a display of the ebullient spirit which has animated countless officers’ mess parties down the decades.

  On that day Henderson wrote to his wife: “My people are so good that I get a lump in my throat when I think of all they have done. We have lost pretty heavily. These Germans are certainly determined fellows. The soldiers are nothing out of the way, only there are a desperate lot of them, but their generals are most resolute fellows with any amount of push and moral courage. But they take heavy risks and I hope that one of these days we shall catch them on the hop.”

  The day was only seventy-two hours off. By evening on the 9th September the enemy was in retreat all along the line and the battle had been won.

  On the 10th Henderson wrote home again: “I have just had a note from HQ giving me a message from General Joffre, the French Commander-in-Chief, to our Field Marshal, thanking him for the wonderful information supplied by the English Flying Corps. It is to be published in Orders tonight, I believe. I understand that nobody at home knows anything about our work, but it will all come out soon enough. Maurice [Baring] is a treasure. He goes poking about among the French people …” Modern idiom makes the mind reel at this libidinous implication. But one is quickly reassured. The General imputes no Priapic antics among the French ladies to “Maurice”. “… to find a café where I can have a good dinner and is always smiling and cheerful.

  “The casualty lists must be pretty bad reading. We shall lose a lot more before this war is over, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” Such platitudes from a well-read man who is a published author are unexpected. There is a surprising hint of callousness too: perhaps no more than a symptom of the resignation that all generals, admirals and air marshals must acquire to the necessity of sending men to their death; and acceptance that the patriotic end justifies the means.

  Heavy loss of life did not affect his appetite. “I have had to draw £15 to keep me going. I try to feed well so as to stay healthy, but I fear that if the advance continues we won’t get much to eat except our rations.”

  His son had recently gone from Eton to the Royal Military College. “I do hope the little man will do well at Sandhurst. I wish I could go and see him there. I have always looked forward to inspecting my cadet son.” Sentiment comes uncomfortably close to sentimentality in his first sentence.

  Joffre’s Order read: “Plea
se express most particularly to Marshal French my thanks for the service rendered to us every day by the English Flying Corps …” Henderson might have winced at that; along with the other Scots, Welsh and Irish in the RFC. “… The precision, exactitude and regularity of the news brought by them are evidence of their perfect organisation and also of the training of pilots and observers.”

  French, in his first despatch, wrote: “I wish particularly to bring to your Lordships’ attention the admirable work done by the Royal Flying Corps under Sir David Henderson. Their skill, energy, and perseverance have been beyond all praise. They have furnished me with the most complete and accurate information, which has been of incalculable value in the conduct of operations. Fired at constantly both by friend and foe, and not hesitating to fly in every kind of weather, they have remained undaunted throughout. Further, by actually fighting in the air, they have succeeded in destroying five of the enemy’s machines.”

  The Allies pressed forward across the Aisne and heavy fighting continued daily. Artillery observation became of equal importance to reconnaissance. The RFC reported where enemy batteries were, then controlled the counter-fire of their own gunners. Two officers of Three Squadron were outstandingly effective at this work. A wireless telegraphy unit commanded by Major H. Musgrave had been formed. Lieutenants D. S. Lewis and B. T. James flew alone in BE2s with a wireless set to report and correct the fall of shells, usually under heavy fire themselves.

  On 22nd September, Mapplebeck, bombing an anti-aircraft battery, met rifle fire from an Albatros. Wounded in the leg, he became the first British airman to be hit from an enemy aircraft.

  On 27th September Smith-Dorrien, in a signal to French, expressed “… my great admiration for the splendid work the Royal Flying Corps is doing for my Corps from day to day. Nothing prevents them from obtaining the required information, and they frequently return with rifle or shrapnel bullets through their aeroplane or even their clothing, without considering such, to them, ordinary incidents as worth mentioning. Today I watched for a long time an aeroplane observing for the six-inch howitzers for the Third Division. It was, at times, smothered with hostile anti-aircraft guns, but nothing daunted, it continued for hours through a wireless installation to observe the fire and indeed to control the Battery with most satisfactory results. I am not mentioning names, as to do so, where all are daily showing such heroic and efficient work, would be invidious.”

  It had needed a mere six weeks at the Front for the RFC to overcome the prejudice which, only a couple of years earlier, had dismissed it as useless; and alarming to horses.

  Anti-aircraft guns were proliferating and had already earned a facetious nickname, “Archie”, from a popular song in which the phrase “Archibald, certainly not!” repeatedly occurred. It originated when Lieutenants A. E. “Biffy” Borton and F. G. Small, his observer, of No. 5 Squadron, came under heavy fire. Borton made a succession of 45-degree turns to dodge the shell bursts, and they derisively shouted the catch phrase each time.

  Photographic reconnaissance began on 15th September, when Lieutenant G. F. Pretyman of No. 3 Squadron took five pictures of the enemy line. These were the first of the thousands that would eventually form a map of the whole Front.

  “This September was a beautiful still golden month,” wrote Baring, “and I used to spend a great deal of time with the squadrons.”

  Later: “I remember the heat of the stubble on the Saponay aerodrome: pilots lying about on the straw; some just back from a reconnaissance, some just starting, some asleep, some talking of what they would do after the war.”[6]

  Less idyllically: “A tragic incident occurred … One of the pilots was practising signalling and dropping lights [firing Vérey lights]. He was flying quite low over our trenches backwards and forwards.” The machine, as so often occurred later during the war, was thought to be behaving in a “suspicious manner” and was fired at by our troops, and before they could be stopped it was brought down amid their cheers. “When the machine crashed they saw that the pilot was an Englishman and that he was dead.”

  A phase of the war was over. Constant movement and fluidity had given place to static warfare. The adversaries were digging in. They faced each other across no-man’s-land in trenches, separated by distances from a hundred yards to a mile, which would, by the end of the year, stretch from the Belgian coast to the Franco-Swiss frontier. The French and Germans were already using kite balloons to supplement their aeroplanes for observation of enemy movement and for artillery control. The scope of aerial activity by both sides was broadening.

  *

  During these weeks, when British or French aircraft passed a German machine, the occupants waved at each other. Sometimes a pilot would show off with a vertical bank, a steep dive and zoom (which the RFC called a “hoick”), by rocking his wings, or some other display of skill and the aircraft’s manoeuvrability. “Stunts”, such as looping, were attempted only by a few specialists who performed at air shows. Nobody yet knew how to recover from a spin. Rolls were shunned. The enemy would respond with some mild act of aerial flamboyance before both continued about their business with no ill feeling. Even if they exchanged shots with revolver, pistol, rifle or shotgun, it was more as a gesture than in any expectation of inflicting damage to aeroplane or occupants.

  These encounters became less genial after the 5th October when an Aviation Militaire mechanic, Louis Quénault, behind a Hotchkiss machinegun aboard a Voisin flown by Sergeant Joseph Frantz, shot down an Aviatik: another feat that was the first of its kind, and the most important so far.

  Henderson, whose quick mind had recognised the importance of the aeroplane as a military weapon four years before the war, telegraphed to the War Office a month before Frantz’s and Quenault’s revolutionary success: “There are no aeroplanes with the RFC really suitable for carrying machineguns; grenades and bombs are therefore at present most suitable. If suitable aeroplanes are available, machineguns are better undoubtedly. Request you to endeavour to supply efficient fighting machines as soon as possible.”

  After the Aviatik was shot down, he told Seeley: “This is the beginning of a fight which will ultimately end in great battles in the air, in which hundreds, and possibly thousands, of men may be engaged at heights varying from 10,000 to 20,000 feet.”

  The campaign in Flanders wore on towards the First Battle of Ypres. Bombing developed faster than combat between aircraft. The most efficient of the Royal Naval Air Service squadrons was sent to Dunkirk with three BE2s, two Sopwiths, two Blériots, a Farman, a Bristol and a Short seaplane whose floats had been replaced by wheels. On 22nd September the squadron bombed airship sheds as far away as Cologne and Dusseldorf. Some aircraft were detached to Antwerp. From there, on 8th October, strategic bombing was initiated when the same target at Dusseldorf was attacked again and completely destroyed, the flames rising to five hundred feet; and Cologne was also attacked for the second time, but mist hid the airship sheds, so bombs were dropped on the railway station.

  German bombing was less effective. On 1st September a Taube had dropped bombs on Montmartre and killed four civilians. On 11th October, two bombs hit Notre Dame, and on the 12th, the Gare du Nord.

  *

  The Germans held the Allied counterattack against their assault at the First Battle of Ypres. RFC HQ and the squadrons were at St Omer. Bad weather with low cloud hindered reconnaissance. Inexperienced replacement pilots and observers sometimes misinterpreted what they saw. There was still no official category of “Observer”. The man in the second cockpit was sometimes a pilot, sometimes a member of the ground crew, of whom, in No. 3 Squadron, McCudden was often one. No. 6 Squadron had been sent hastily to France. One day one of its crews mistook the darkness of long stretches of tar on a macadamised road for an enemy column. On another, when someone saw orderly ranks of shadows in what looked like a field, he thought he had found an enemy force in bivouac. But they were gravestones in a cemetery, not tents, that were set in rows.

  Casualti
es on the ground were heavy, and Henderson was not too preoccupied by his concern for his squadrons to be affected by them. At luncheon one day he recounted how three Germans with a machine-gun, in a small house, had fought off repeated attacks all morning and killed a great number of British infantry. Two of them were killed and the third went on fighting, terribly wounded, until at last he killed himself.

  Someone commented, “He deserved to live.”

  “He deserved to die,” Henderson corrected him.

  During the battle, French asked the War Office for more squadrons. These were promised as soon as possible and a proposal was made to reorganise the RFC into wings, commanded by lieutenant colonels, comprising three or four squadrons. A wing would be attached to each Corps. This would relieve the Commander of the RFC of much of his responsibility, as he would no longer be concerned with the field work of his squadrons. Instead of a distinct Flying HQ commanding, directing and maintaining the RFC, there would merely be a senior RFC officer on the Commander-in-Chief’s staff, responsible only for maintenance of the Service: in fact the status of the RFC would be considerably reduced.

  Henderson’s reply agreed with decentralisation into wings, but wholly opposed abolition of the Flying Corps Headquarters. “In dealing with this highly specialised branch of the Service it is very desirable that the part of the Commander of the RFC in the field should be retained, and that this Commander should be in very close touch with General Headquarters. Without interfering in any way with the power of the Army Commanders to deal with the wings attached to them in such a manner as they think best, it is necessary that there should be uniformity of method and of operation throughout the Corps. The Commander therefore should have the power to issue instructions on all technical matters, including the technical handling of aeroplanes either for reconnaissance or fighting purposes, and he should also have full authority to change, move or replace officers and men of the squadrons as may be found necessary for the efficiency of the Corps.”