The First Great Air War

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  At the beginning of the Verdun siege he joined N 67. On 26th February he took off at dawn, found three unescorted two-seater enemy aircraft and promptly attacked. Two of the Germans fled at once. In the rearmost one, the observer stood and raised his hands in surrender. Navarre escorted it to a French aerodrome. Later the same morning he ran into nine German aeroplanes, picked out one, had a fight with it and shot it down.

  As flamboyant as Nungesser, he had a skull and crossbones and red stripes painted on his Nieuport. Nungesser went further. His was decorated with a skull and crossbones, a coffin, two lighted candles and a black heart. After a British pilot fired at him, he lost confidence in the official markings and had an additional V in red, white and blue painted on his upper wing.

  Navarre’s favourite tactic was to approach his victim from astern and slightly below, then stand up to aim his Lewis gun. This was extremely foolhardy. The unstable Nieuport could easily have tipped him out. Navarre continued his aerobatics over the French lines and the infantry knew him as “la sentinelle de Verdun”.

  Another characteristic that Navarre shared with Nungesser — and many other French, British and German fighter pilots throughout the war — was that they both held their fire until they were very close to the target. This is habitually described as “point-blank range”. It is nothing of the sort. The simplest definition of point blank is the point at which a bullet or shell begins to drop below a straight line between it and the target. Taking into account the speeds and relative positions of pursuer and target, lateral displacement and difference of altitude, plus the effect on a bullet of the wind generated by the aircraft from which it was fired, distance to point blank from the pursuer’s gun could be as much as 600 yards. Nobody fired from such long range. What those who carelessly use the term “point blank” mean is a range of 25 to 50 yards. Point blank could fall somewhere within those limits for a revolver or pistol, but by no means for a machinegun or rifle.

  Navarre’s score soon reached seven, when Nungesser had six. On 4th April he shot down three German machines in the course of four patrols, but two of these fell behind enemy lines and could not be confirmed, so he was credited with only one. On 17th June he was leading a patrol of three Nieuports which intercepted three two-seater reconnaissance Rolands and shot them all down. After that, when at 12,000 feet, the Frenchmen spotted another enemy two-seater at 9000 feet and went for it. To draw the enemy’s fire, so that his companions could shoot it down, Navarre swung to one side. The German observer put a bullet through his arm, breaking the bone, and then wounded him in the side. He fainted and before being able to make a crash landing he bled so profusely that he was delirious in hospital for several days and was found to have suffered brain damage from loss of blood. One glass of wine was now enough to intoxicate him. He was withdrawn from operational flying, with a total of twelve confirmed victories.

  When his beloved twin, who had transferred from the infantry to the Air Service, was killed, he broke down completely. He did not return to active service until September 1918, and never flew again on operations. After the war he became chief pilot at Morane-Saulnier and had recovered his nerve enough to declare that he would fly through the Arc de Triomphe on the day of the victory parade on Bastille Day, 1919. He did not live to do it. He was practising aerobatics four days before his attempt when his engine cut at low level and his machine dived into the ground.

  Nungesser, at the same time as Navarre, was also proving highly destructive to the enemy and incurring severe injuries himself. Lady Caroline Lamb’s diary entry on meeting Byron was equally appropriate to him: “Mad, bad and dangerous to know.” Nungesser habitually endangered his own life as carelessly as he did his enemies’. He was totally regardless of pain. His reckless style was exemplified in a cheerful understatement: “Before firing my gun, I shut my eyes. When I reopen them, sometimes the Boche is going down, sometimes I am in hospital.” After having had a bad crash in 1915, he spent four months of intensive fighting at Verdun in 1916. In January 1916 he crashed on an air test. He broke both legs; and the control column smashed into his mouth, penetrated his palate and dislocated his jaw. That cost him two months in hospital. When he returned to the Front he had to use crutches, but despite this he got himself into the cockpit and went out looking for a fight. At intervals he had to return to hospital for treatment, and at the same time was acquiring more wounds and injuries. A bullet split his lip open. Crash-landing in no-man’s-land, he dislocated a knee. In another crash landing with his aircraft shot up, it overturned and broke his jaw. By the end of the war he had been injured seventeen times.

  At Verdun, the four fighter pilots who excelled all others were Boelcke, Immelmann, Navarre and Nungesser. They were all caught in the same current of passion for their work and swept along by it. In the two Frenchmen, delight in killing the invader predominated. In the two Germans it was absorption in the exquisiteness of their craftsmanship. All possessed an incandescent spirit compounded of dauntless mettle, superabundant aggressiveness and determination to excel.

  *

  France assembled her best pilots in virtually segregated units. The British did not approve of this system. In the RFC a squadron’s successes would earn it the admiring adjective “crack”. Such distinction was sought by teamwork and was won by the outstanding quality that its pilots evinced in the course of acquiring this admiration. In l’Aviation Militaire, crack escadrilles were created by posting already outstanding performers to them. The Stork escadrilles had been formed in this way, with a nucleus of leading pre-war pilots. Another that bore the same lustre was N77, “Les Sportifs”, comprising brilliant sportsmen and rich playboys; some of whom were both. One of its members captained France at rugby football, others were international racing drivers, fencers, horsemen.

  Among Les Cigognes were the rich, the poor and the middling. Some counted on the money that various commercial firms put up as bonuses. Michelin, who manufactured tyres for aeroplanes as well as Service motor vehicles, paid a bonus for every victory. Guynemer totted up 15,000 francs, which, although his means were modest, he gave to a fund for wounded airmen.

  Les Sportifs lived high, wide and handsome. Oozing wealth, they moved their cars, valets, mess waiters and cooks, their expensive cutlery, crockery and linen from one aerodrome to another like a maharaja’s caravan. Their wives and mistresses accompanied them and were installed in the best local hotels.

  Both Cigognes and Sportifs were the pets of high society. Invitations to every kind of lavish entertainment was showered on them. Cars would be sent to fetch them as far as Paris for dinners, theatres and dances when the day’s flying was done.

  A third colourful agglomeration was formed by the Americans who had joined l’Aviation Militaire. We have already heard of Bert Hall flying for Bulgaria against Turkey; and of Raoul Lufbery who had entered the Service as Pourpe’s mechanic. They were both among this unorthodox galaxy of pilots of varied talent, united by lust for adventure and love of freedom.

  Norman Prince, an American private pilot, had gone to France soon after the war began, to form a volunteer American squadron. He met another American, Edmund Gros, a doctor who had formed the American Field Ambulance Service. They set up a committee and appointed a Monsieur de Sillac as President. Dr Gros and five other Americans, one of whom was the millionaire William K. Vanderbilt, who provided the finance, served on it. Prince was not a member: his purpose was to join the unit and fly. They sought recruits among all the Americans who had already joined the French Army.

  Initially, the French opposed the plan. As the static warfare sank into a morass of dreary winter inaction the notion of volunteer fighters from abroad, especially from a country so vast and rich as the USA, began to look appealing. It would be wonderful propaganda. The prospect looked all the glossier because the air forces had already acquired a romantic, individualistic image. From dissuasion, the French turned to encouragement.

  The conditions the committee offered the American volunte
ers were generous, to compensate for their basic pay, which would be that of l’Aviation Militaire and low in comparison with American standards. William Thaw was made a lieutenant and the others would be sergeants when qualified but were joining as mere corporals. They would be given a new uniform every three months; 125 francs per head per month would be paid into the mess fund; for each confirmed victory there would be a bonus of 1000 francs. A month after the squadron came into being other perquisites were added: 1500 francs for a Légion d’Honneur, 1000 francs for a Médaille Militaire, 500 francs for a Croix de Guerre and 200 francs for each citation (a palm) added to it.

  The unit was formed on 16th April 1916, under a French Commanding Officer, Capitaine Georges Thénault, and second-in-command, Lieutenant de Laage de Meux. The seven American pilots were widely assorted: one or two were comfortably off, another was a medical student, there was a Harvard graduate; there were footloose adventurers. The squadron was based at Luxeuil. Its symbol, painted large on each side of the fuselage, was the head of a Red Indian in a chief’s eagle-feathered war bonnet, his mouth open as he yelled a war cry. Gros, as a doctor and head of an ambulance unit, remained a non-combatant. Prince was joined by James McConnell, Bert Hall, Elliot Cowdin, Victor Chapman, William Thaw and Kiffin Rockwell. Hall was already in l’Aviation Militaire and had forced down a two-seater Halberstadt. They all had to go through a flying course. Their aircraft were Nieuport IIs and the unit’s number was N124. It was publicised as l’Escadrille Americaine, to which the Germans soon objected through diplomatic channels, because America was neutral. Displaying subtlety and style, the French then suggested the name Escadrille Lafayette: in memory of the Marquis de Lafayette, who had taken a group of Frenchmen to America in 1777 to fight with the colonials for independence from British rule.

  The Lafayette pilots lived much like the Sportifs. Officer and NCO pilots messed together in the Grand Hotel. Their sleeping quarters were in a large private house. They did not make an auspicious start, wrecking several machines in bad landings and collisions with ground obstacles. The reporters who flocked to Luxeuil drew no veils over their bad flying or off-duty antics. Some public resentment began to grow against these pampered and apparently useless foreigners. Dr Gros had been busy finding more members for the escadrille, Lufbery among them. Necessity now demanded their presence at Verdun.

  Their aerodrome on the Verdun Front was at Bar-le-Duc, where l’Escadrille Lafayette suffered the casualties that are the lot of any raw squadron. On 24th May, Thaw was the first to be wounded: in a fight with three Fokkers, when a bullet severed his pectoral artery and he almost bled to death. Bullets hit Rockwell’s windscreen and its fragments lacerated his face, nearly blinding him. The next day, his head in bandages, he was on patrol again. Four Fokkers jumped on Chapman out of cloud and a bullet creased his scalp and grazed his skull. Bleeding copiously, he barely managed to return to base. On 18th June, Thénault, Rockwell, Prince and Clyde Balsley, a newcomer on his first operational flight, were attacked by fourteen Fokkers. The enemy circled them, turning inwards to fire in turns. Thenault took his men homewards in a steep dive, but Balsley could not extricate himself. An explosive bullet hit him in the stomach and wounded him severely. Surgeons removed more than twenty fragments and he lived. Chapman and Prince, flying to visit him, were bounced by six Fokkers. Chapman was shot down in flames and became the first American airman to be killed in action.

  When, soon after, the Lafayettes were taken out of the line and returned to Luxeuil, Thaw had been given the Legion d’Honneur, Chapman, Rockwell and Hall the Médaille Militaire and Croix de Guerre with one palm. They found two Royal Naval Air Service squadrons, among whom were several Canadian pilots, on the airfield. Immediate mutual liking and good fellowship were struck between the nationalities: British, Commonwealth and American. This was a feature of all relationships between the British and both American and French Air Services. When the American Air Corps arrived in France in 1918, however, its association with l’Aviation Militaire was not always cordial.

  *

  The concentration of enemy fighters on Verdun did not noticeably afford any relief to the RFC. During the first six months of 1916 it lost an average of two aircrew a day. The loss of fifty in November and December 1915 had been severe enough. Most squadrons were still a mixed bag of two, three, or even four types of aircraft. Bewildered though pilots may have been by the daily variation of their duties between visual and photographic reconnaissance, escorting others who were thus engaged, or offensive patrols, morale remained high on most squadrons.

  Trenchard wasted many lives because he equated aggression with the distance his aircraft penetrated behind enemy lines. As justice has not only to be done but to be seen to be done, so the RFC’s aggressive spirit had to be made obvious. In Trenchard’s scale of values, a patrol that went ten miles into Hunland was ten times as aggressive as one that went one mile, regardless of the quality of the work that was done when the patrol reached its limit. The man who went one mile deep might have a better chance of shooting down enemy aeroplanes than the man who went ten, but that did not seem to matter. This attitude was not only unintelligent but also cruel. British aircraft were inferior to the enemy’s and even an exceptional pilot in a BE2C, Martinsyde, Bristol Scout, FE2, Sopwith, RE7 or Morane, all of which figured on British squadrons, was at a disadvantage against the Fokker, Pfalz, Halberstadt or some of the two-seaters, in the hands of a pilot who might be no better than average.

  Trenchard used to visit all his squadrons frequently in his Rolls-Royce staff car. He told the aircrews that he did not ask them to do anything that he would not do himself. But he did not actually do it. This assertion was commonplace in all the Services, but its credibility varied greatly. A platoon, company or battalion commander, a flight or squadron commander, the captain of a naval vessel and an admiral at sea with his fleet, spoke nothing but the truth when he said it.

  The RFC was on the threshold of better days, with new fighters soon to appear at the Western Front. Louis Strange had recently been sent back to England for a rest, and his friend Lanoe Hawker’s turn had come when, on 28th September 1915, he was put in command of the newly formed No. 24 Squadron, at Hounslow. He had not had to face the Fokkers at the height of their supremacy, but he had fought for almost a year and his VC and DSO were evidence of the severe stress he must have suffered. He showed physical signs of extreme fatigue.

  In January 1916 the squadron was delighted to be told that it was about to receive the new de Havilland DH2 single-seater, which had been specifically designed as a fighter. It is often said that No. 24 was the RFC’s first fighter squadron and the first to be equipped with only one aircraft type. That distinction belongs to No. II Twenty-four, however, was the first homogeneous single-seater fighter squadron. And there is no accuracy in any claim that only a single-seater can properly be described as a fighter. The two-seater Bristol Fighter, when it came along in 1917, was a true fighter of outstanding accomplishments.

  The DH2 was a pusher with a Lewis gun mounted in the nose. It did not look as modern as a Fokker or a Nieuport: the pilot sat in an enclosed nacelle, but behind him was an open framework of long spars, braced by struts, attaching it and the wings to the tail unit; and it had the unreliable Gnome single-valve 100-h.p. rotary engine. At sea level its top speed was 93 m.p.h., but at the heights at which it would do its work this fell to around 77. Its ceiling was 14,000 feet and to reach 10,000 feet required 25 minutes. Speeds, rates of climb and ceilings for aeroplanes were still imprecise. Much depended on how they were rigged and the condition of individual engines. Two of the same kind could have a disparity of five to ten per cent in speed and rate of climb.

  Another new fighter squadron, however, beat Hawker’s in the race to get to the Front. No. 20, commanded by Major G. J. Malcolm and equipped with the FE2B (familiarly the “Fee”) two-seater, arrived there on 23rd January. Like the DH2, the FE2 had been designed by Geoffrey de Havilland and was a pusher with an enclose
d nacelle and a latticework fuselage of beams, spars and bracing wires ending in the empennage. Following the standard British practice, the observer sat in the front cockpit, provided with a forward-firing Lewis gun. Most Fees also had a second Lewis on a telescopic mounting behind his seat, which fired upwards over the wing. The FE2 was heavier than the Fokker, so its 120-h.p. Beardmore engine did not give it quite the latter’s speed, but it was equally manoeuvrable. Every pusher posed the same danger to its pilot in the event of a crash: the heavy engine was hurled forward and crushed him. On the other hand, it was an effective shield against bullets fired from astern. Of course, if the bullets stopped the engine, a resulting crash landing would flatten the pilot anyway.

  Of the twelve pilots — all officers — who joined Hawker on 24 Squadron, only the three flight commanders and two others had flown on operations. Because of engine unreliability, familiarisation flying was restricted to two hours so that there would be reasonable certainty of the whole squadron arriving at its destination in France without any forced landings. Hawker was ordered to cross the Channel by steamer on 2nd February 1916 and the rest flew over on the 7th to St Omer. They were immediately put on daily patrols at 14,000 feet from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. Two aircraft were kept back at three minutes’ notice to scramble in protection of GHQ if the enemy put in a bombing raid.