The First Great Air War

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  In April, Lieutenant Rhodes-Moorhouse won the RFC’s first Victoria Cross. Ordered to bomb an enemy concentration at Courtrai, he went down to 100 feet to drop his 100-pounder under intense fire. Mortally wounded, he found the strength to return to base and insisted on making a full report before he would allow the Medical Officer to attend to him. He died the next day.

  The bad weather hampered the enemy, who, even when it was fine, crossed the lines less often than the British and French, and there were no stirring single combats between rifle-armed pilots and observers. The principle of including tactical bombing of specified targets as part of a battle plan had, however, been established. But bombing would have to remain a crude and secondary task until the bombs themselves had been made more effective and available in far greater quantity, and an accurate bomb sight devised. The emphasis was still on reconnaissance: but aircrew, and Henderson and Trenchard, in whose hands their fate lay, were eager to have, and aeroplane designers to produce, machines that would out-fight the enemy one-to-one in the ultimate form of air conflict they foresaw and which was now drawing near.

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  The German air force was more concerned with its French counterpart than with the British. L’Aviation Militaire’s numbers exceeded the RFC’s; its Voisin two-seaters were equipped with a Hotchkiss machine-gun. Some had a 37-millimetre cannon. No gun approaching this calibre would be seen again until Hurricane IICs were armed with 40-mm cannon in 1941.

  Lieutenant Colonel Barès’s superior intellect had already perceived that strategic bombing was an essential accompaniment to tactical bombing. The First Bomber Group, consisting of three Voisin escadrilles, formed in late 1914 under the command of Commandant Goys, had been supplemented by the Deuxiéme and Troisiéme Groupes de Bombardement, flying Voisins, Caudrons, Farmans and Bréguets. To ease the pressure on their Russian allies at the Eastern Front, the French air force attacked tactical targets in both the French and British sectors of the Western Front, as well as strategic ones in Germany.

  In April, an explosives factory at Buss, a power station at Rombach, blast furnaces at Thionville, near the German frontier, and armament factories in the Ruhr had been hit. None of these raids met any opposition from flak or defending aircraft. When the Germans fired chlorine gas shells into the French lines for the first time, at Ypres on 22nd April 1915, they invited a fearful reprisal. It was delivered on 26th May: Commandant Goys led his three escadrilles off at 3 a.m. on a five-hour sortie to bomb acid and chlorine works at Ludwigshafen and Oppau. The standard French bombs were 90-millimetre and 155-millimetre shells fitted with fins. The First Bomber Group dropped eighty-three of the former and four of the latter on this operation. Everyone returned unscathed; Goys some weeks later than the rest: after a forced landing with engine trouble, he was taken prisoner but escaped.

  The German civilian population vented their anger and resentment at these unopposed incursions by scrawling a distinctly uncharitable graffito on walls in the afflicted towns: “Gott strafe England and Unsere Flieger: God strike England and our flyers.” Blaming the British was a gratifying unearned tribute to the little RFC.

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  The next major assault had begun soon after the Germans’ use of gas at Ypres. On 9th May the French attacked on a four-mile front between Lens and Arras. The British, attacking Aubers Ridge, which lay beyond Neuve Chapelle, made use for the first time of a kite balloon, lent by the French, which they used for artillery observation.

  Tactical bombing was tried again, but with less happy results than on the first occasion. Planned to damage railway lines, stations and rolling stock, HQ buildings and bridges, it failed because no direct hits were scored.

  Artillery co-operation with both British and French batteries was, however, successful. Many enemy guns were knocked out, thanks to six hours’ flying by Lieutenant C. B. Spence in a 16 Squadron Farman, with Second Lieutenant the Hon. W. F. Rodney as his observer: until a shrapnel shell shot down their aircraft and killed them.

  Ground the Allies had won on the opening day they lost on the following. The battle then gradually waned, until it was resumed on the 15th as the Battle of Festubert. On 16th May, Nos 2 and 3 Squadrons bombed through the morning mist, and again scored no direct hits. This battle faded out by 27th May in the British sector, owing to the abundance of enemy machineguns and a lack of shells for the British artillery. It dragged on until 18th June in the French sector.

  In July, Henderson ordered an analysis of British and French bombing between 1st March and l0th June. This showed that 141 sorties had been flown against railway stations, of which only three had achieved direct hits that did the desired degree of damage. Destruction of lines was quickly made good, and accuracy over junctions was spoiled by increasing flak, and, for low-flying aircraft, machineguns.

  For the time being, Henderson issued an order that, pending the training of special bombing squadrons, a proportion of pilots in all squadrons would be trained in bomb dropping. Bombing under the orders of Army Commanders would be limited to such objectives as Headquarters, telephone exchanges, munition factories and areas covered by close reconnaissance. Lines of communication bombing would be done only under orders of GHQ. He also held a conference between the British and French air Services, at which it was agreed that, for the next Allied offensive, they would together plan the bombing of lines of communication.

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  Henderson did not favour one form of operation at the expense of another. He was as conscious of the part that purely fighting aeroplanes would play in the future as he was of the bombers’ role. Although air-to-air combat was still incidental to all other flying, he and most senior officers in the Allied and enemy air forces knew that the day of great air battles would come. From the first his idea had been to form squadrons exclusively composed of fighting aeroplanes. Meanwhile, the few of these that were available were divided among the squadrons, so that each had one or two. Bares had come early to the same conclusion and at the turn of the year l’Aviation Militaire already had one such escadrille allocated to each Army.

  Single-seater aircraft, armed if possible with a machinegun, had come by the incongruous name of “scouts”, which was more appropriate for those engaged in reconnaissance: scouting and reconnaissance being synonymous. With their love of sport and tradition of fox-hunting, it is strange that the British did not give the name “hunters” to what would later become known as “fighters”. The French had introduced the equivalent term early in the war, with their escadrilles de chasse.

  The whole question of designing an aeroplane for the specific purpose of challenging enemy aeroplanes to fight began from the basic difference between all flying machines of that period: the positioning of the propeller astern, which had given it its name, or in front, when it was properly called an airscrew, although the word “propeller” was always used. In two-seater British aircraft, whether pusher or tractor, the observer sat in front of the pilot and manned the machinegun if there were one. This meant that the tail of a pusher was unprotected. In a tractor type, the arc of fire to the rear was restricted by the bulk of the pilot; and the propeller cut off a large segment of the forward field of fire.

  The pilot of a BE2c was unenviably placed. This aircraft now carried a Lewis gun as standard. A spigot protruded from its underside and there were holes around the rim of the front cockpit in which it could be located. The observer had to heft the bulky, twenty-seven-pound gun from hole to hole, according to whether he wanted to fire to the right or left forward, abeam, or at a stern quarter. That was hard work for him, swaddled in several layers of bulky garments, in danger of rupturing himself as he shifted the weapon without dropping it overboard while the light little BE2c dipped and swayed, bucked and skittered, and panting with effort in air that became noticeably thinner as an aircraft climbed above 5000 feet. For firing astern, a hinged and swinging arm was fixed abaft the front cockpit. And now, although the pilot was spared vigorous exertion, life became acutely disconcerting for him,
with the hot blast and crackle of bullets whizzing past his ears; and worse when tracer ammunition was invented, and flashed, multi-coloured and scintillating, past his eyes as well. It needed only some sudden jolt from turbulent air to misalign the gun and kill him.

  The French crew of a rear-engined Voisin did not suffer from this inconvenience. They sat side-by-side instead of in tandem, with the gun mounted immediately behind their shared cockpit: which allowed almost an all-round field of fire.

  While British and French manufacturers were still designing both rear- and front-engined types, the Germans were producing mostly the latter; and all recognised that it was in these that the future lay, not least because they were the faster. The new generation of German aeroplanes would be armed and have a greatly improved performance. For the time being, as they were tractor types, and the observer occupied the rear cockpit, their armament would consist of a rear-mounted Parabellum machinegun with a field of fire covering the tail and both beams; but unable to shoot dead ahead.

  The shooting down of the French pilot Roland Garros on 18th April 1915 brought a change of fortune. It threw the research and development programmes in all three countries out of balance. It set off an acceleration in the competition to produce an aircraft that would dominate all others.

  Garros combined cerebral with practical excellence. Cultured and sensitive, he was also a leading professional test pilot before the war, working for the Morane-Saulnier company, and an expert at aerobatics.

  When he joined 1’Aviation Militaire and was posted to a Morane single-seater escadrille, his chief concern during the early weeks of war was to devise a means of firing through the propeller disc. Much professional thought had already been given to this in many quarters. As early as 1912 the possibility of firing a gun through the propeller hub itself had been explored. Failing this, for bullets to avoid hitting the propeller blades, the engine revolutions and rate of fire of the machinegun would have to be synchronised. The ideal solution would be to use the engine to fire the gun. Some mechanisms had been patented, but none worked satisfactorily. A Swiss engineer, Franz Schneider, had invented one which he had tried on a French Nieuport and German LVG.

  Monsieur Saulnier, of Morane-Saulnier, had also designed one, but the Hotchkiss ammunition was unreliable and frequently hung fire, so that a round was fractionally delayed, causing the bullet to hit a blade. Unable to overcome the problem of faulty rounds, Saulnier resorted to a cruder method, with which others elsewhere were also experimenting: fitting deflectors on the propeller. Some bullets would pass between the blades. Those that did not would be turned aside without harming the propeller. This device had not actually been tried in the air.

  Towards the end of 1914, Garros obtained leave from his escadrille to return to the factory to perfect the device and to try it out in flight. He changed the shape of the blades, so that a narrower portion came in line with the gun and a smaller deflector could be used. Months of trial and error, during which he frequently shattered a propeller and had to glide to ground, finally produced the definitive article: a wedge-shaped and channelled deflector which guided rounds away to one side and was linked to the propeller shaft with strong braces. Garros also found that bullets either of copper, or lead thickly jacketed with steel, had to be used. Any other type would shatter on impact.

  In March 1915 he rejoined his squadron. He was all the keener to demonstrate the efficacy of the new deflectors because General Headquarters had shown its total indifference to this great innovation by cancelling an order for several Moranes to be modified with it. On 1st April he had his chance, as described in the opening paragraphs of this book.

  He had scored five kills and was on his way to bomb the railway station at Courtrai on 18th April, when he ventured dangerously low and one rifle bullet from a German soldier, Private Schlenstedt, smashed the Morine’s petrol pipe. Garros had to land. He was setting fire to his machine when enemy troops seized him.

  Twenty-four hours later the propeller was at the Fokker factory in Germany. Anthony Fokker was Dutch, and therefore theoretically neutral. He had put his genius at the disposal of Britain, and been rebuffed. He offered his services to the Germans, who instantly accepted. Five weeks later, Fokker presented the German air force with two of his new single-seaters, each fitted with a machinegun and not only deflectors (which he claimed to have invented himself) but also an interruptor gear that co-ordinated the gun’s rate of fire with the speed at which the propeller rotated.

  The single-seater unequipped with either innovation could still be lethal, as Captain Lanoe Hawker, DSO, a flight commander on No. 6 Squadron, demonstrated. Twenty-four years old at the time, a scion of the landed gentry and conspicuous for his ramrod bearing and impeccable turnout, his comrades referred to him as “jolly old Hawker” on account of his serene disposition. An exceptional shot, he is the subject of legends which must, in the absence of Combat Reports to substantiate them, be regarded as apocryphal. It is variously stated that he shot down enemy aircraft with his deer-stalking rifle, a regulation issue infantry Lee Enfield .303 or a Belgian cavalry carbine. It is also claimed that he could unerringly hit an enemy pilot in the head at remarkably long range. It is true that he flew with a rifle propped against his right leg, ready to hand, even when flying a BE2c, although the observer had a Lewis gun. One of his observers complained that he never knew when bullets from his pilot’s rifle would whip unpleasantly close past his head, to supplement his own machinegun fire.

  On 25th July 1915, flying a Bristol Scout with a Lewis gun on a mounting of his own design, which aimed the weapon at an angle of forty-five degrees to his line of flight, he scored two victories and won the RFC’s second Victoria Cross: for, it is often claimed, bringing down three enemy aircraft with rifle fire during one sortie. His Combat Report — No. 93 — differs. He was on patrol at 10,000 feet when he saw two German aeroplanes. “The Bristol attacked two machines behind the lines, one at Passchendale about 6 p.m. and one over Houthulst Forest about 6.20 p.m. Both machines dived and the Bristol loosed a drum at each at about 400 yards before returning.” One made a forced landing behind enemy lines, which was confirmed by No. 20 Anti-Aircraft Section.

  “The Bristol climbed to 11,000 and about 7 p.m. saw a hostile machine being fired at by anti-aircraft guns at about 10,000 over Hooge. The Bristol approached down-sun and opened fire at about 100 yards range. The hostile machine burst into flames, turned upside down, and crashed E. of Zillebeke.” When Hawker saw the enemy machine burst into flames and throw the observer out as it overturned, he was as upset as Garros had been. That other country gentleman and expert shot, Manfred von Richthofen, who had been an avid slayer of birds, deer and boar from boyhood, would not have shared this distress.

  Hawker’s VC was awarded after these two successes in recognition of all the daring patrols he had carried out over a long period.

  CHAPTER 7 - 1915. Gird Up Now, Thy Loins Like a Man

  The air forces of Britain, France and Germany were maturing fast. Aviator types were emerging, recognisable by their dress, comportment and esoteric language. Among the RFC, one didn’t crash, one “committed crashery”. To pupil pilots, the same opprobrious term as used for the enemy was applied: “Huns”. An aircraft that had been shot down was “fanned down”, and the man who did it was probably a “hot stuffer”; if he flew with tremendous dash and a touch of recklessness, he was a “split-arse merchant”, who had probably “bunged off” in a hurry when he left the ground. To feel afraid was to “get the breeze up” and to become excited was “getting into a flat spin”. Non-flying officers were “kiwis”.

  The RFC alone had its own uniform: a high-necked double-breasted tunic with no buttons exposed, known as a “maternity jacket”, worn with breeches, ankle boots and puttees. But this was compulsory only for other ranks. There was a wide variety of dress among the officers, who could wear riding boots, or, off duty, slacks and shoes.

  Officers who entered the RFC direct from civilian life wore
the official rig. Those who had transferred from another arm might do so for walking out or ceremonial occasions, but for flying preferred to wear out their old uniforms, with a pilot’s or observer’s brevet on the left breast and the RFC badge often replacing a regimental one. Thus there was a profusion of turnout to be seen on every squadron, even the kilt and tartan trews. The RFC headgear was a forage cap, the “fore and aft”, worn at a rakish angle. Officers who sported their previous uniforms might keep to a Service Dress cap or a glengarry.

  L’Aviation Militaire was more caustic than the RFC in its jargon. Generals were referred to as “fatras”, “trash”. “Coucou”, “cuckoo”, meant an aeroplane, also called a “zinc”, the word commonly used for small cafes, which had a zinc counter. To crash was to be “dans le décor”, and the mechanics who did their best to avert such a misfortune were “les rampants”. This has an unfortunate connotation that would not be acceptable in a British Service. As an adjective, “rampant” means “servile”. In one sense it is associated with the ground, but in a sneering way. “Lierre rampant” is “ground ivy” and “un style rampant” means “a pedestrian style”: so reference to the latter does at least imply a pun, and one with no malice, but if the allusion was to ground ivy, and the intention was to suggest that the mechanics hugged the ground rather than risk the air, then there is a regrettable taunt implicit. The engine was a “mill”, “moulin”. If it went, you said “il gaze”, “it goes strongly”. If it didn’t, the predicament was a “carafe”, apparently derived from “rester en carafe”, meaning “to be left out of it” or “to stop short”. Then you would return to the pilots’ hut, “la cagna”, while it was repaired.