The First Great Air War

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  In dress, as could be expected, Frenchmen showed both flair and style in their multiformity of fine — even flamboyant — plumage. La Guerre Aérienne, a weekly magazine, had this to say of the contemporary pilot: “Black pea-jacket, khaki tunic or light blue dolman, red breeches with sky-blue stripes, black with scarlet stripes, complete uniforms of iron grey, ‘horizon’ or mustard, hard or soft caps, red tarbooshes [worn by some colonial regiments], berets, silk ties.”

  The same publication gives a description of a typical pilot which could just as well have been applied to the RFC and Luftsträkrafte. “Flying seems to have a sort of fascination, and specially when it is combined with the attraction of combat. Perhaps this is because the game is new, but more probably on the whole because people know so little about flying.

  “Thus, the air arm exercises an irresistible attraction for fighting men, because it is new and a little mysterious. Every soldier who wishes to avoid routine is therefore interested in this arm. One can, besides, see in this a desire to get away from the anonymity of the infantryman. The aviator finds a certain dignity in war: he sees it as a means of distinguishing himself from the mass of other fighting men.” It quotes a military pilot: “For us all, flying constitutes a resurrection of our personality, disappeared during the months in the trenches.” Another pilot’s comment is: “Suppleness of muscles, power of the lungs, stamina of the heart, professional ability are nothing without the sincere, ardent desire by which one recognises the real pilot.”

  Displaying the innate national cynicism, or at least a realistic recognition of human nature, with reference to the above: “In consequence, the majority of pilots come from other arms. One is therefore led to question the deep motives of these volunteers. Two golden wings stylishly embroidered on the tunic collar confer in the eyes of the public an enviable distinction on those who wear them. Flying bestows, on some, glory of the purest kind, but to all its elect it assures a small worldly success about which the least that can be said is that it agreeably tickles the fibres of human vanity.

  “One is thus led to distinguish between several types of volunteers: he who joins from love of flying and whose will to serve never fails; he who seeks greater public attention, admiration that flatters his vanity. In short, who thinks, right or wrong, that on a squadron he will find more shelter from danger. Indeed, after a mission, hours of liberty follow during which one forgets the dangers one has run and prepares for the morrow’s work in tranquillity and safe from danger. This situation, relatively privileged, can easily be contrasted with that of the infantryman, who stays two weeks at a time in the trenches among mud and lice.” Many of those who volunteered to fly, in all the combatant nations, did so simply to get away from the danger and discomfort of the trenches.

  But the commentator abandons his stricture against those who seek vainglory and an avoidance of discomfort and danger by joining an air force, when admitting: “Certainly the majority of pilots are good chaps, who enjoy danger, dream of nothing but mischief and fighting, hurl themselves headlong into adventures …” Yet he reverts to the Frenchman’s ingrained scepticism, adding: “But others demand of flying substantial guarantees and the certainty of glory.”

  *

  Among the German aircrew who wrote with relish of their experiences, Baron Elard von Loewenstern shows up as a man who would not have been out of place in the British or French air Services. “The first necessity,” he says, “is to acquire a feeling for flying. Here there opens to one the possibility of a new way of life. Flying! — to take part in laying the foundations of a new arm; also the wish to leave the monotony of military service.”

  There was no humbug about him. He gave quite frankly one other good reason for transferring from the ground arms. “I will be honest and say a word about the financial improvement one obtained from flying pay and a handsome daily subsistence allowance from the moment one began to fly. Entry into aviation thus offered material advantages.” And he a nobleman!

  The Baron was not a cynic. There was a confession of the romantic about his transfer to the Aviation Service in his acknowledgment of an attraction to flying and to being in at the birth of a new Corps. And when he reported to the flying station at Lawica/Posen, he at once responded to the unique atmosphere of an airfield. “Lined up in front of the big hangars stood the aeroplanes. A smell of oil, petrol, fabric dope and paint lay in the air. Engines thundered. All this completely gripped me at once.

  “Shortly after I reported to the Station Commander, Hauptmann von Poser, an NCO looked me up and down appraisingly, and asked if I would like to take a short flight with him. He had to see how long it took a newly delivered Mars to climb to 800 metres. The invitation came rather suddenly. I walked over to the aeroplane and looked it over carefully. I had heard that the mechanics referred to it as ‘Old Mrs Mars’ and that there were many adverse stories about it. Could this crate really climb to 800 metres in 40 minutes? But curiosity triumphed. I put on a crash helmet and thick scarf and went aboard.

  “Men were crawling about in front of, under and around the aircraft. Suddenly the propeller began to howl. It began to turn faster and faster. Everything — I with it — shook and vibrated. But the Mars itself did not move forward. The chocks were under the wheels, which I had not noticed. ‘It doesn’t want to go,’ I thought. However, as the propeller began to scorch around, the chocks were quickly pulled away. The machine began to roll slowly over the ground. We had covered three-quarters of the field and still the good Mars was on the ground. ‘Out,’ I thought to myself, ‘the beast doesn’t want to take off.’ Then, before I was aware of it, we were airborne. The wind whistled, I felt the blast.”

  Soon he is rhapsodising about his training as an observer. “Then began a splendid life for us. Because I was light, I was able to make many flights when various others could not, on account of their weight. Slowly we learned to behave like professionals. We learned that there were two types of weather, namely ‘flyer’s weather’ and ‘flying weather’. Flyer’s weather justified idling about, when there was fog or rain. Flying weather meant we could fly. We learned expert expressions. An aeroplane was a ‘crate’, the propeller a ‘lath’, a pilot an ‘Emil’ and an observer a ‘Franz’.”

  Why Franz? Because a pilot, one day, couldn’t recall his observer’s name and called him by this one; which is like shouting “Bill” anywhere in England or “Jock” in Scotland, whereupon several men will appear in response. By unusual extension, however, “to observe” soon became “franzen”, “to Franz”. The observers, in retaliation, referred to their drivers as “Emil”; although there was never a fabricated verb “emilen”, “to pilot”.

  When he completed his training, von Loewenstern went to the Eastern Front and it was not until 1916 that he was posted to France.

  The intention to form an Italian air Service was formally declared by a Royal Decree of 25th October 1914. It is interesting to recall two paragraphs in the document, which sanction the conceptions of the period.

  “Reconnaissance is entrusted in the most part to the cavalry, to cyclists and to aviation. Aviation can contribute effectively, whether by long-range reconnaissance or short-range. But methods are still being developed, hence are as yet few. However, indications are that their employment will have only a general use.

  “Dirigibles and aeroplanes serve essentially for strategic reconnaissance and in exceptional cases for tactical reconnaissance. Air reconnaissance, besides being vast, quick and comprehensive, is able, in favourable conditions, to give information about the general situation rapidly to the Commander of the ground forces.”

  At a distance, then, of a few months from the outbreak of war, it was not seen that a unique feature of aerial observation lay in its potential for tactical use. It was, on the contrary, precisely this function that it fulfilled, on a growing scale and with increasing reliability, throughout the four years of the war.

  Like the Germans, the Italians decided that the task of observation was
so important that it must be restricted to officers, and entrusted piloting, regarded as secondary, to NCOs and the rank and file.

  The Italian Military Air Corps — Il Corpo Aeronautico Militare — was constituted by a decree dated 7th January 1915. The records pay this tribute to its progenitor and first Director General: “It is to the foresighted initiative, the clear vision, the vigorous firmness, the generous activity of Colonel Moris that is owed his success, against everything and everyone, in giving life to an organisation that the tragic reality of war would develop.”

  It was organised in two Commands: one comprising balloons and airships; the other, aeroplanes. In March 1915 a Group of artillery squadrons was formed; and, two months later, a Group of civilian flying schools for volunteer pilots.

  In the first months of 1915, of all the raw materials necessary for the construction and repair of aeroplanes, Italy had only a modest quantity. The sole engine manufacturer was the Gnome Company, with twenty employees and a production of one engine a month. The firms building aeroplanes were Società Italiana Transaerea, Savoia, Nieuport-Macchi, Oneto and Caproni, each of ten to twenty workmen and all producing six to ten aircraft a year.

  When Italy declared war against Austria on 24th May 1915, the Corps was mobilised and put under the orders of General Headquarters. It had 20 officer observers, 91 pilots on the squadrons, 5 flying schools, and, at the end of May, 200 pupil pilots.

  Aircraft strength of the combatant countries was: France 1150; Britain 166; Italy 58; Germany 764; Austria—Hungary 96.

  *

  Francesco Baracca, a twenty-three-year-old lieutenant of cavalry, who was to become famous as Italy’s most successful fighter pilot, had been sent to the Reims flying school in 1912. His instructor praised him to the Commanding Officer as particularly gifted. “He has sensibility, sharp sight, control over his nerves. I have tried several times to take him by surprise by unexpectedly cutting the engine, sudden nosedives and banking steeply. He has never been perturbed. He is undoubtedly a first-class pupil, the best of the Italian party.”

  Baracca was a regular, with the conventional attitudes of his breed. In contrast, Fulco Ruffo di Calabria, seventh Duke of Guardia Lombarda, who was five years his elder and ended the war as Italy’s fifth-highest-scoring fighter pilot, was a wartime volunteer; and a markedly more volatile character. At the time when Baracca was learning to fly, the Duke, who was a senior executive in an Italo—Belgian company operating steamers, and trading, in Senegal, rushed home to fight a duel. He noted in his diary: “Two days in Naples to buy clothes, two in Rome to sabre my opponent, a return ticket to Brussels and Aja to embrace family and friends, then immediate return to the colony.”

  Two days before Italy entered the war, Baracca was one of six officers who were sent to France again, this time for instruction on the Nieuport-Macchi, with which the squadrons were equipped. On 7th June, he wrote home from Paris to say: “We have to start almost from the beginning, because the old type of Nieuport that I have been flying has completely different controls from those of any other aeroplane. The Nieuport that we will have to fly, which has a speed of 145 to 150 kilometres an hour, is difficult, and has to be handled with care because it needs a big aerodrome for take-off and landing.” On 19th July he returned to Italy and No 1 Fighter Squadron.

  Fulco Ruffo di Calabria, meanwhile, had come back to Italy in 1914 to raise funds there and in Belgium with which to set up his own trading company. When his country went to war, he remained and rejoined the cavalry, in which he had done his compulsory military service. Realising how little use would be made of the cavalry, he decided that fighting aboard an aeroplane would be congenial to his temperament and volunteered for the Air Corps.

  He was sent to the flying schools at Turin and Pisa and had no sooner passed his wings test on 15th August 1915 than he immediately wanted to venture the most complicated aerobatics: spins, sideslips, the falling leaf, loops (at that time called “hoops of death”). But he was not yet experienced enough to execute these correctly and had several crashes. One day he landed with the wings of a Blériot warped by the stress he had imposed on them in a prolonged spin.

  The flying schools did not instruct aerobatics in dual-control aircraft. The instructors’ function was to transform with the maximum care a pupil who, nine times out of ten, had never seen an aeroplane close up, into a pilot capable of flying within narrow limits, namely, without damaging himself or his aircraft.

  On 28th September, Ruffo di Calabria was made operational and on 1st October he joined the Fourth Artillery Squadron. The main task of the artillery squadrons was to direct battery fire and carry out visual and photographic reconnaissance. For this they flew the Caudron 63. The crew comprised a pilot and observer. It barely attained a speed of 100 kilometres an hour and was unarmed because its engine’s lack of power imposed a choice between the weight of a wireless set and of a machinegun.

  As the official monograph on his career puts it: “From the first day of the war Ruffo di Calabria brought to light those qualities which, more than any, enabled him to add his name to the roll of the greatest pilots of the first world conflagration: flying skill, fervid aggressive dash and total disregard of risk. He quickly began to distinguish himself. On 12th November 1915 he earned a eulogy for a reconnaissance mission carried out at an altitude of a few hundred metres under sustained enemy fire on the Lower Isonzo.”

  What he really wanted to fly was a fighter, but he would have to wait until the next summer before this wish was granted.

  Baracca had been in combat three times already. On the first occasion he fired two or three bursts, then the gun jammed. “My machinegun,” he wrote in his diary, “is a new weapon. We don’t know it well and the fault is to some extent ours. It is badly placed in the aeroplane and to shoot is a very acrobatic business, and I lost faith in being able to do anything.” On his second and third encounters with the enemy he suffered the same frustration. It was not until 1916 that he scored his first victory.

  *

  Gabriele d’Annunzio made his first operational sortie on 7th August 1915, in a Naval Air Service seaplane. Admiral Cutinelli signalled Naval HQ as follows. “1350 hrs executed offensive demonstrative action Trieste by two Italian seaplanes two French. The machine flown by Miraglia observer d’Annunzio dropped a tricolour flag on the city announced the Poet about to drop an explosive bomb on the ammunition store Maria Teresa near Sanità. On account of damage to chute no more bombs dropped. Bologna dropped four bombs, of which three seen to explode with good results same wharf. One French machine dropped four on gasometer without assessment result. Intense machinegun, rifle and cannon fire from ground, enemy aircraft took off to intercept. Despite all this all returned Venice unharmed. Machine Miraglia d’Annunzio hit machinegun bullet possibly explosive starboard stern fuselage shattered.”

  Following on this the Austrian Government put a price of 20,000 crowns on d’Annunzio’s head.

  The poet’s (or Poet’s, as the official record styles him) own account of the failure to release all the bombs is less drab and telegraphic. “We had carried eight bombs, to drop them on warships and fortifications around the enslaved city. The first seven fell on their intended targets. When it came to the turn of the eighth, the release mechanism mal-functioned. The bomb did not drop: it remained half-outside the aircraft, refusing to fall, despite every effort. The situation was tragic. The Austrian aeroplanes chased us, forcing us to turn for Venice.

  “At every jolt of our machine the bomb could have exploded. We felt ourselves lost; but there were graver dangers! The bomb might explode over Venice. The idea oppressed me and tortured me. Never in my life had I suffered such anxiety. Anyway, while I continued to pump petrol with my left hand, with my right, outside, I hung on to the bomb with tenfold effort.

  “At last we passed over the Lido and the buildings of Venice. Thanks to the incomparable skill of the pilot we landed gently in the basin, sheltered from the wind. All was saved!”

>   Not a bad bit of self-advertisement, one might say.

  After this and other flights made by d’Annunzio in seaplanes based at Venice, Lieutenant Pilot Miraglia, as squadron commander, sent his Headquarters a report which helped to obtain for d’Annunzio an aeroplane observer’s brevet.

  *

  Although the campaign on the Italo-Austrian Front is regarded as a minor one in comparison with the battles at the Western Front, it was important enough for the British, French and Germans all to send ground and air reinforcements there at various stages of the war. The physical setting and its effect on aerial operations is described in sonorous periods by Generale A. Felice Porro in his official history, La Guerra Nell’ Aria. “The high, deep Alpine arch, with the lofty peaks of its rocky masses, constituted a monstrous obstacle to the flight of the small aeroplanes along the whole front from Adamello to Monte Nero.

  “The formidable Alpine barrier seemed to wish, at the beginning of aerial hostilities, to make a solemn affirmation of its power, demonstrating that, though man had conquered the third dimension, the earth of ages towered into it with its pinnacles of rock and ice, still capable of resisting audacious human attempts to overfly them.”

  The aeroplanes, endowed with engines of low power, attained modest heights with exasperating slowness; their flight was precarious because of the unreliability of these engines, therefore particularly dangerous in mountainous regions where places suitable for a forced landing were few.

  *

  Edward Mannock, who was the most successful British fighter pilot of that war, and second among the Allies, with only two fewer kills than the Frenchman, Fonck, who topped the list, had not even joined the RFC in 1915, although he was in his twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth years.

  His antecedents for becoming a pilot, let alone one of such eminence, or an officer, were unpromising.