The First Great Air War

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  The RFC was still disgruntled by the reluctance of the Fokker pilots to accept challenges. The press had been writing about Immelmann and it was known that he was in the British sector. Early in November Squadron’s CO obtained permission to invite Immelmann to meet one of his pilots in single combat. Playfair was chosen. Insall volunteered to be his observer-gunner, as they usually flew together. The rendezvous was to be a point over the trenches between 10 and 11 a.m. on any day from 15th to 30th November. The message was never dropped, but, astonishingly, when an RFC aircraft was shot down during that time, the crew were asked the name of the officer who had been selected to fight Immelmann. German Intelligence must have been excellent.

  Soon after Christmas, Immelmann forced down Lieutenant Darley of II Squadron behind the German lines. Darley’s thumb was almost severed. Immelmann landed beside him, took out a knife, briskly completed the amputation, bandaged Darley’s hand and saw him off to hospital and prison camp.

  In contrast with the French bomber groups, the RFC’s bombing was still, in many ways, rough and ready. Insall recalled forced-landing with Playfair at an aerodrome where a “Horace” Farman, a combination of the Henry and Maurice Farmans, was being prepared for a raid. Mechanics were tying bombs made of howitzer shells, fitted with vanes, to the undercarriage; with binder twine. Over the target, the observer would have to climb out of the nacelle and cut the string.

  Insall also gave an instance of the extreme discomfort of flying in cramped, unheated aircraft. After a three-hour flight at 7500 feet, one December day, he and the pilot were unable to move for three full minutes. When they did climb out, they fell, unable to straighten their legs, and mechanics had to help them to their feet and support them to the rest hut.

  *

  Immelmann went on leave only once, in order not to miss any chance of action. On 28th November he took part in a flying display at Leipzig to raise funds for Christmas presents for all members of the Air Service. At a formal lunch, the mayor presented him with a silver cup and praised him as a most important member of the young air arm.

  Of the many clues to his character that his habits betrayed, one that might indicate either extreme patriotism or capricious eccentricity was manifested at Christmas, when he sent his mother 100 marks and his sister 50, to buy themselves presents, as he did not want to spend the money in France.

  *

  Trenchard, with the lives of every member of the RFC at the Front in his hands, believed that air supremacy must be gained and retained at any cost; and that if he reduced his effort, the enemy would concentrate strong formations on various parts of the British area.

  There was good co-operation between the British and French air Services. L’Aviation Militaire had suffered badly against the Fokkers during Joffre’s attack in Champagne. Commandant de Peuty, Colonel Bares’s senior representative in the field, willingly gave Trenchard the benefit of his experience and advice. They decided that the Corps squadrons, which operated in co-operation with the Army, must be protected by a strategic offensive that would seek to destroy the enemy’s aircraft deep behind his lines. Unlike Trenchard, however, de Peuty preferred to wait until his Service was adequately equipped with Nieuport IIS.

  The RFC lost fifty pilots and observers in the concluding two months of 1915.

  CHAPTER 9 - 1916. The Very Dead of Winter

  The old year went out in blistering style with a fight typifying all the constituents of aerial warfare at that time, in which three fighter pilots destined for great fame took part. In three-dimensional combat, pilots have to make the best tactical use of space while their faculties are constantly disoriented by changes of attitude and direction. Simultaneously, they have to make life-or-death decisions in fractions or a second and act on them.

  On 29th December 1915, Sholto Douglas, flying a BE2C with Lieutenant Child as observer, escorted by Lieutenant Glen, also in a BE2C, set out on reconnaissance. Behind the enemy lines at 6500 feet they saw two Fokkers; then, soon after, four more. The Fokkers dived into an attack. With no means of communication between the aeroplanes, except for manual signals and the firing of Vérey lights, these attacks could not be co-ordinated. The slow BE2Cs were able to turn inside the fast single-seaters. The British observers had a chance to fire telling bursts, even though they had to change drums after every forty-seven rounds, and more than ten in one burst could damage the barrel of an air-cooled Lewis gun. First one Fokker went down, and then another.

  Glen’s machine followed them. The four surviving Fokkers kept up their attacks on Douglas and Child for forty-five minutes. It was Boelcke who was the most pressing. He thought he had fatally wounded Child and ought now to despatch Douglas (whose identity, of course, he did not know) easily. He forced him down to 3000 feet. But he had been in two earlier fights on this sortie and his ammunition was exhausted. Douglas had his troubles, too. His petrol tank was almost empty and oil was running from a bullet hole in the sump.

  Boelcke stayed, determined to prevent the BE2C from crossing back over the Allied line. The two pilots kept turning tightly; but fruitlessly. Douglas was on the inside, but Child was not shooting. Boelcke thought he had killed him. But it was not a mortal wound that forced him to cease fire: his pilot’s violent evasive action had made him airsick. He had vomited over Douglas and was left limp, dazed, incapable. Boelcke could not turn inside his opponent, and, even if he had, his gun was useless.

  At this point Immelmann came haring in, shooting, to polish off his opponent. With two Germans now after his life, Immelmann’s bullets cracking past him, and with no means of knowing that Boelcke had emptied his ammunition belt, Douglas went into a steep corkscrew dive. At 300 feet Immelmann’s gun jammed and the Germans broke off. Douglas held his downward spiral until he was ten feet off the ground. He crossed the lines in the French sector and put his aircraft down with a dry fuel tank and sump.

  Boelcke, writing to his parents, described Douglas as “a tough chap who defended himself vigorously”.

  The new year made a stormy entrance. High wind and heavy rain kept aircraft grounded on most days. But on the British Front the Army was insistent on its need for long reconnaissance. Every time there was a break in the weather, the Flying Corps tried to provide it. The Fokkers were waiting. Few of the aircraft that took off returned. Nor were they merely forced down and the crews captured: the Fokkers shot them down and killed their occupants.

  Unfulfilled requests for long reconnaissance, prevented by the weather, accumulated. Drastic action had to be taken. On 14th January 1916, RFC HQ issued an order which, in its clumsy ungrammatical way, was to the point. “Until the Royal Flying Corps are in possession of a machine as good as or better than the German Fokker it seems that a change in the tactics employed becomes necessary. It is hoped very shortly to obtain a machine which will be able to successfully engage the Fokkers at present in use by the Germans. In the meantime, it must be laid down as a hard and fast rule that a machine proceeding on reconnaissance must be escorted by at least three other fighting machines. These machines must fly in close formation and a reconnaissance should not be continued if any of the machines become detached. This should apply to both short and long reconnaissance. Aeroplanes proceeding on photographic duty any considerable distance east of the line should be similarly escorted. From recent experience it seems that the Germans are now employing their aeroplanes in groups of three or four, and these numbers are frequently encountered by our aeroplanes. Flying in close formation must be practised by all pilots.” One asks oneself why, when “must” is used four times, this unequivocally emphatic and imperative word is weakened by “should” in two places: thus making it possible legitimately to disobey the order.

  These instructions meant that, while the tasks demanded of the RFC remained as abundant as before, the number of visual and photographic reconnaissances that could be carried out was much reduced, because more aircraft had to be allocated to each. For example, when GHQ ordered a reconnaissance of Belgian railways on
7th February, the BE2C of No. 12 Squadron detailed to do it was escorted by three BE2cs, two FE2bs and a Bristol Scout, also from No. 12, plus two FE2bs and four BE8s from two other squadrons.

  The casualties that the Fokker had wrought and was continuing to inflict resulted in histrionics verging on hysteria among some politicians. None of these had the sense to see that what he said in Parliament, and how he said it, would be reported in the press and could have an adverse effect on the RFC’s morale. “The Fokker Scourge” was one submissive term born at Westminster, and another, applied to British airmen and thus even more demoralising, was “Fokker fodder”.

  On the German side, Boelcke had returned to Douai before the end of the old year and was one of the very few who habitually ventured over the Allied lines. To be fair, this was discouraged: because the Fokker’s engine was unreliable and if it was not forced down, it might have to land involuntarily. The enemy would then be able to learn all about its synchronising gear. The EIII was by now in service, different from the EII only in having a couple of feet more wingspan, which slightly increased its speed.

  On 12th January Boelcke scored his eighth victory. Immelmann equalled this the next day. Both were awarded the Pour le Mérite, a decoration that had never before been awarded for flying. They both received immense publicity and adulation. Immelmann, because he was the younger and looked innocent and immature, an impression emphasised rather than negated by his thin straggly moustache, attracted the greater attention. Girls sent him rosaries, crucifixes and holy medals. The letters he received reached fifty a day and he had to tell his batman to acknowledge them. The batman soon complained of a sore finger.

  *

  A momentous new factor, which would have perhaps the most far-reaching effects of any tactical decision taken by the Germans during the war, loomed over the Western Front. Field Marshal von Falkenhayn, Chief of the German General Staff, making an appreciation of the state of the war at the end of 1915, stated that England (meaning, as usual, “Britain”) was the more important member of the Franco-British alliance. “The history of the English wars against the Netherlands, Spain, France and Napoleon is being repeated. Germany can expect no mercy from this enemy, so long as he still retains the slightest hope of achieving his object.” The imputation to Great Britain of intent to annihilate Germany was as insolent as it was false. Germany was the aggressor and Britain had stepped in merely as a defender.

  The British sector of the Front was not easily penetrable by a sustained and ferocious offensive. “In view of our feelings for our arch-enemy in the war that is certainly distressing.” After some more fulmination Falkenhayn continued: “France has almost arrived at the end of her military effort. If her people can be made to understand clearly that in a military sense they have nothing more to hope for, breaking point would be reached …”

  He concluded that a massive penetration of the French front was not essential. Germany should subject France to such relentless attrition that it would, to quote Liddell Hart, “bleed to death”. To achieve this was simply a matter of choosing the place on which to focus the onslaught: somewhere “for the retention of which the French command,” explained Falkenhayn, “would be compelled to throw in every man they have”. The choice lay between Belfort and Verdun. Verdun was chosen because it threatened German communications, because it could be isolated in a narrow salient, which would cramp its defence; and because it was the gateway through which Attila had led his Huns to attempt the conquest of Gaul in the fifth century.

  Germany started preparing for the many battles and long siege of Verdun, which would transform air operations in several ways.

  At Verdun experience in the use of fighters accelerated. It was here that the French and German air forces learned lessons which caused them to revise the organisation and tactical use of fighters, thus setting a pattern that the Germans adopted from the French and the British adapted.

  The Germans opened the Battle of Verdun on 21st February 1916 with an artillery bombardment on a fifteen-mile front. They used almost their entire air force on the barrage patrols that they had initiated in October. The initial purpose of maintaining these standing patrols over the front line was to drive the French aircraft away. Its basic flaw was in being purely defensive. Only offensive action can dominate any air space. This is true today and was just as true then. For the time being this tactic had considerable effect, because so many escadrilles were still flying slow, poorly armed Moranes, Voisins and Caudrons. It could not bar the way to them all, though.

  Barrage patrols constituted another mistake as well. By concentrating so many aircraft on them, the Germans had none to spare for what should have continued to be routine jobs: artillery spotting and reconnaissance. The only other task for which they did use a few was in close support of the ground forces.

  The long-drawn-out Battle of Verdun was really a siege punctuated by furious bombardments and infantry assaults. In a siege, it is long-range cannon that are the most valuable weapons to both attacker and defender. With nobody flying artillery observation for the Germans, their big guns were being given target indications only by their captive balloons five miles behind their trench lines, whose view was much more restricted than from an aeroplane. It was counter-battery fire that was most needed and the most difficult to direct without aeroplanes. The French were getting some artillery co-operation machines across the enemy lines, but expensively. They needed to shoot down the balloons. These were defended by Fokkers, supplementing specially positioned flak and heavy machineguns. Their own batteries were handicapped by paucity of artillery observation sorties that managed to penetrate the German barrage patrols. They, too, used balloons, but these were vulnerable to attack by the enemy, despite anti-aircraft protection.

  General Pétain, in command of the French forces at Verdun, saw that it was essential to take air superiority away from the enemy. Lieutenant Colonel Bares went to Verdun to organise the necessary arrangements. He increased the establishment in that sector from four escadrilles to sixteen of which six, instead of one, were to be fighters. He put Commandant Tricornot de Rose, at present Chef d’Aviation of the Second Army, in command of the latter. De Rose had the robust personality and appearance of a traditional heavy cavalryman, not least of which was his walrus moustache. He had transferred from the dragoons as far back as 1910 and obtained the first military pilot’s certificate in the French Army. He now formulated the basic doctrine for offensive formation flying when he ordained that fighters must always go out in threes or sixes. Enough Nieuport IIs were available to increase the escadrilles’ establishment, which was raised to twelve aircraft; an equally important measure.

  Before the Nieuport Bébé entered service, some of the Morane escadrilles had made names for themselves and their commanders because the best single-seater pilots had been posted to them. The first of these was MS3, under Capitaine Félix Brocard, a fierce-looking man of medium height with a big moustache and a body shaped like a barrel, whose habitual straddle-legged stance and straight look were the quintessence of fighter pilot aggression. The others were MS 12, commanded by Capitaine Tricornot de Rose, and MS 23, Capitaine de Vergette.

  Brocard’s escadrille had by now acquired Nieuports and had accordingly become N3. Having already achieved distinction in their Morane days, the pilots had a flying stork silhouetted on each side of their aircraft, to let everyone, friend and enemy, know who they were, and were therefore called “Les Cigognes”. They had been serving with the French Sixth Army and were now transferred to Verdun. The Storks, under Brocard, expanded into a group comprising also N26, N23, N73, N103 and N167.

  The Fokker EIII was not without its troubles. All three marks suffered from occasional defects in the synchronising mechanism, which led to many pilots, among them both Boelcke and Immelmann, and Fokker himself, shattering their own propellers more than once. But it was still a deadly machine to fight. Even more formidable was the EIV, which was powered by a 160 h.p. Oberursel motor that gave it 110
m.p.h. It had twin Spandau machineguns. Only a few EIVs had been manufactured as yet, but Boelcke and Immelmann each had one. It was now that the frequency of their kills began to mount rapidly. Immelmann even experimented with three guns, but found the extra weight made the EIV too sluggish.

  The Fokker was not the only formidable opponent that the French had to face. Germany, after having trailed behind France in aeroplane design and development for so long, suddenly confronted her with two new single-seaters. The Halberstadt DI had a 100 h.p. Mercedes engine and a speed of 85 m.p.h., the Pfalz had the same performance as the Fokker EIII. There were two new two-seaters, the Roland CIII, with its top speed of 103 m.p.h. and the Rumpler CI, which could attain 105.

  De Rose had not yet worked out any tactics for fighting in formation, or issued instructions that this should be attempted; so the French pilots broke formation on meeting the enemy and fought individually. Given the nature of fighter pilots at any time and in those early days in particular, and taking into account the French temperament and the strong individualists that Navarre, Nungesser, Guynemer and others were, nothing else could be expected.

  Boelcke and Immelmann continued to patrol singly, while the rest in the German flying units set off and fought in twos and threes. Boelcke, indeed, who found escorting reconnaissance sorties stultifying, was allowed to remove himself from Douai to a forward airstrip seven miles behind the Front, with another pilot and sixteen ground crew. It was a time, he said, of “Alles ganz auf eigene Faust … Everyone on his own fist.” Trenchard would have approved of the sentiment, which expressed the epitome of the offensive spirit.

  The first Frenchman to gain distinction at Verdun was Jean Navarre. He was just nineteen when war broke out and he joined the Air Service. His twin brother, Pierre, went into the infantry. The first time Jean Navarre met an enemy aeroplane, he showed the stuff of which his character was made. The German flew alongside and waved. It was a foolish thing to do to a youngster like Navarre: who waved back, then put a rifle to his shoulder and shot at him. Navarre had to take both hands off the controls to do so and his Farman almost stalled, while the German dived away. Deciding that the Farman was a useless platform from which to fire any weapon, he transferred to MS 12 and by April 1915 had made two kills; and was often to be seen stunting over the trenches.