The First Great Air War

by Richard Townsend Bickers

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  If observers are in a neglected aircrew category, there is another which has received even less attention. In those two-seater squadrons that did not need observers trained in reconnaissance or photography, the man who accompanied the pilot had to be a trained machine gunner. He wore an observer’s badge and was usually called an observer, but the term “aerial gunner” was also used.

  One such was Arch Whitehouse, born in England on 11th December 1885. His parents took him to the USA ten years later but he remained a British subject. At the age of fourteen he left school for a poorly paid job. When Britain declared war he managed, in the face of many difficulties, to return home via Canada and join the Northamptonshire Imperial Yeomanry.

  Because he proved a good shot he was sent on a machinegun course. Late in 1915 he landed in France. The regiment handed its chargers over to the 4th Punjab Horse and he found himself helping to look after a hundred mules. He escaped from this by going on another machinegun course, on his return from which he was set to guarding prisoners of war. Shortly after, he was grooming horses and “living like a pig” in mud and manure. An enemy aircraft flew over one day, chased by a British scout which shot it down in flames. Here, young Whitehouse told himself, was a way out of this miserable life: he would fly. The Somme Offensive had begun, volunteer aerial gunners were wanted. Ten days later he passed the medical exam and expected to be sent home for training. Instead, he was told to report to No. 22 Squadron, which flew FE2Bs.

  He claimed that, rejoicing, he threw his rifle, bayonet, steel helmet (which had just been introduced) and spurs into the River Somme. This defies credulity. A soldier’s equipment was on his charge and his rifle was the most precious item with which he was entrusted. To lose any article was a serious offence. To lose a rifle meant a court martial and a severe sentence. To throw it away would have earned six months in a military prison, at least. On being posted, Whitehouse must have had to return his rifle and the rest to Stores.

  His reception by his new comrades gave him small cause for glee. As he entered the aerodrome a sergeant asked what he was doing there.

  Whitehouse replied that he had been up the line as a machine gunner and was now reporting as a volunteer to fly.

  The sergeant told him that aerial gunners were barmy and sent him to the Orderly Room. There, the sergeant major’s comment was that anybody who would crawl out of the trenches to become an aerial gunner must be a bloody fool. He issued Whitehouse with a flying helmet, leather coat, goggles, flying boots and gloves: the coat stained with the blood of its previous wearer, a commissioned observer who had been killed. Then Whitehouse drew his new uniform and hurried off to don it.

  He was told that when he had flown fifty hours over the lines and passed his ground tests he would be given his observer’s badge. Then he would be eligible for pilot training in England and a commission. Meanwhile his four shillings a day flying pay would begin at once. As a Second Class Air Mechanic this would make his weekly pay one pound eighteen shillings and sixpence: far more than he had earned as a trooper or in his wretched civilian job. He was delighted.

  Hearing an aero engine ticking over near his barrack hut, he went to the door. A pilot climbed down from a Fee. “You Whitehouse, the new gunner?”

  “Yes, sir, but …”

  “Good! Get your gear on. I’m going on an engine test.”

  “I’ve never been up, sir.”

  “Fine. Nothing to unlearn.”

  The pilot, Captain Clement, a Canadian, told him he could sit on the floor until they reached the balloon line. Then he could get up and perch on the spare parts locker or the edge of the nacelle.

  Whitehouse confesses that he was cold and scared, and quaked with fear when Clement crossed the enemy lines at 8000 feet. They came under anti-aircraft fire and Clement threw the Fee about in evasion. The stink of smoke from the shell bursts was sickening.

  They returned to their own side of the lines and Clement shouted to him to prepare to fire at a ground target, a white wing panel. The aircraft dived and Whitehouse tumbled about in his cockpit. Eventually he managed to fire his front gun and hit the target. Clement’s praise seems to have been extravagant: “Holy Smoke! They certainly train gunners in that Yeomanry outfit. Keep this up, young fellow, and you can fly with me any day.” These were the first kind words addressed to Whitehouse since he put on khaki, and banished his fear of flying.

  He went to his hut to make his bed, but was summoned at once to go on patrol with the rest of C Flight. This time his pilot was a Lieutenant Brooks. They made 8000 feet over the field and formated. Cowering down in his cockpit, he saw that the other gunners were nonchalantly sitting on the rims of theirs. Reluctantly, he followed suit. They were soon under anti-aircraft fire. A few minutes later tracer bullets came darting at them and he saw enemy aircraft. The other gunners and he opened fire. The enemy drew off. The Fees wheeled about.

  More hostiles appeared. He straddled the cockpit and stood up to use the gun at his rear on its telescopic mount. He fired several short bursts. A burning aeroplane swept past, enveloping him in smoke and throwing debris against the Fee. He, who had been doubting that he could survive fifty operational sorties, had shot down an enemy machine on his first one. He had joined the squadron less than five hours ago.

  The next morning C Flight took off early. He flew again with Clement, who informed him that they were going on an ordinary offensive patrol. They would cross at a point opposite Cambrai and “work the Jerry line” all the way down to St Quentin. On the way back they would do their regular Sunday show: balloons.

  They saw Nieuports and Sopwiths returning from dawn patrol, RE8s and BE2Cs beginning their artillery-spotting chores. Flak opened up. In the distance the minute shapes of enemy aircraft flitted about, waiting for the RFC’s offensive patrols. Clement rocked his wings to attract Whitehouse’s attention and pointed down at three German machines. The Fees began to circle above them, firing bursts. One enemy aeroplane rolled on its back, a wing fell off, smoke and flames belched from it. Clement yelled: “Your first burst hacked out a wing root.”

  C Flight pressed on further behind the German trenches. Shells burst around them, spreading acrid black smoke. Whitehouse heard a tremendous explosion and saw an FE2B fall to pieces. One of the crew tumbled out, arms and legs thrashing and kicking. The wreckage fell onto another FE2b, which began to break up as the tangled mess spun earthwards, burning. Its gunner tried to heave himself onto a wing but was engulfed in flames.

  Clement hammered on the fuselage between them and Whitehouse saw another enemy aeroplane ahead. It darted from side to side as he shot at it. A wing cracked and folded back, then the other wing snapped off and it followed the two Fees down, in flames.

  There were still four of C Flight intact. They held diamond formation and continued the patrol.

  Whitehouse allegedly completed his fifty operational flights in three weeks; but with aerial battles over the Somme voraciously consuming aeroplanes and lives there was no question of his being spared to go home and take a pilot’s course. He was, however, promoted to AM1, Air Mechanic First Class, and his pay went up to five shillings and sixpence a day.

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  The Allies gave their ground forces intensive support by contact patrols and low-level strafing. For the pilots it became, in the final months of the war, the most hated and feared form of aerial aggression. Low-level attack instilled a feeling of defencelessness into infantry in their trenches. The words of a German officer convey very well what it was like to have to endure this type of assault. “The infantry had no training in defence against very low-flying aircraft. Moreover, they had no confidence in their ability to shoot these machines down if they were determined to press home their attacks. As a result, they were seized with a fear amounting almost to panic; a fear that was fostered by the incessant activity and hostility of enemy aeroplanes.”

  The diary of a German prisoner of war confirms this. “During the day one hardly dares to b
e seen in the trench owing to the English aeroplanes. They fly so low that it is a wonder they do not pull one out of the trench. Nothing is to be seen of our heroic German airmen. One can hardly calculate how much additional loss of life and strain on the nerves this costs us.”

  And an unfinished letter found on the body of its writer: “We are in reserve but cannot remain long on account of hostile aircraft. About our own aeroplanes one must be almost too ashamed to write. It is simply scandalous. They fly as far as this village but no further, whereas the English are always flying over our lines, directing artillery shoots, thereby getting all their shells right into our trenches. This moral defeat has a bad effect on us all.”

  The superior performance of the Allied fighters at that time enabled their pilots to use their qualities of courage and skill to the full and win the dominance in the air that is essential for such activities.

  The exploits of a pilot on No. 60 Squadron, Second Lieutenant C. A. Ridley, offer a measure of light relief amid the grimness of the Somme. His mission on 3rd August was to drop a French spy behind the German lines. Engine trouble forced them down; prematurely, but on enemy territory. For more than three weeks they managed to hide and to make their way towards Belgium, where they parted. Ridley spoke neither French nor German. Having obtained civilian clothes, he was in danger of being shot as a spy if caught. With brilliant imaginativeness, he bandaged his head, painted his face with iodine and pretended to be a deaf mute. After various misadventures a suspicious military policeman arrested him on a train. Waiting until it had slowed to some 15 m.p.h., he knocked out his captor and jumped out. After further distressing experiences he found a friendly Belgian who helped him to put a ladder against the electrified fence at the Dutch frontier and climb over. It was then 8th October. One week later he reported back to his squadron bearing a vast amount of invaluable intelligence about German aerodromes, ammunition dumps, troop concentrations and movements.

  All any man can do is to try to adjust himself within the limits of constantly changing circumstances. Ridley did better than most.

  CHAPTER 12 - 1916. Beyond the Somme

  Baron Elard von Loewenstern, who had embraced the airman’s life with such glee and been despatched to the Eastern Front when he completed his training as an observer, had a lot to say about the Western Front, where he arrived in the summer of 1916. There, he said, at the beginning, before the war became static, the opposing air forces massed twenty kilometres deep behind both sides of the front line. From the forward trenches to twenty kilometres beyond, the sky was full of airmen. Note, not “aeroplanes”, but “Flieger … flyers”. He obviously personalised it to emphasise his pride and pleasure in being one of this company. Here it was normal to greet one another “almost jovially”, according to him. “The German flying units had to go about their duties in a sky crammed with enemy aircraft.”

  He was not there and this is hyperbolical. Neither side had enough aeroplanes to be able to fill the sky with them. Enemies waved to each other in resignation that they could do nothing aggressive, rather than in genial greeting. And, from the outset, the German fighter pilots preferred to stay behind their own lines, while it was the British and French fighters that went far over enemy ground.

  This was true throughout the war. It was always the German fighter pilots’ policy to stay on their own side of the lines and let the Allies come to them. “Let the customers come to the shop,” Richthofen used to say. The Germans knew they could do this because the French and British would be ashamed to hang back. Later, Barès and Trenchard made sure that they did spend all their airborne time on the German side, whatever the cost. Dowding would not have been so callous. He knew what it was like to fly in the battle zone. He didn’t prate to the squadrons on his wing that he wouldn’t ask them to do anything he wouldn’t do: he went up and did it. As a wing commander he used to fly over the Somme. On one occasion a machinegun bullet nearly took his hand off at the wrist when it pierced his joystick; which he kept as a memento. The prevailing wind from the west favoured the Germans’ tactic. The Allied aircraft had to fly home in the teeth of it. Their enemies, with the wind behind them, were able to catch them up. Enemy anti-aircraft batteries’ aim was made easier because the targets were moving slowly.

  It was obvious, said Loewenstern, that the squadrons facing the Germans on the Western Front were much more efficient than the Russians: who confined themselves mostly to defence. So did his own countrymen in the West, but he does not seem to have been aware of it.

  The Russian fighter pilots were not highly dangerous, in his opinion. They were not aggressive. The Germans had an easy time in the air. Most reconnaissances could be flown at heights from which the ground was easily scanned with the naked eye. They were within range of the ground defences, but the Russian batteries remained stationary, so one was able to dodge them. Reconnaissances flown at the greater altitudes which were necessary on the Western Front were much more difficult. One had to be alert “not to enter the land of fantasy” and “see” fortifications, troop concentrations, tanks and so forth. (The British had used tanks for the first time towards the end of the Somme Offensive.) A reliable visual search could be made from 2000 metres. This confirms what the RFC had found. “The doubled tension of doing one’s job while under anti-aircraft fire quickly wore out one’s nerves.”

  “Hatte man in Osten gelaubt, grosse Leistungen vollbracht zu haben, so musst man — nach dem Westen versetzt — sehr bald erkennen, dass das Fliegen im Osten dagegen heinahe ein Kinderspiel gewesen war.” “If anyone believed he had accomplished great performances in the East, he must — after being transferred to the West — very soon realise that in comparison flying in the East had been close to child’s play.” He continues: “I was terrified, in the truest sense of the word, when on my first introduction in 1916 I saw a fighter appear suddenly out of the clear bright heaven and the glittering tracks of tracer fire all around.”

  He could have found it an even greater strain on the nerves if he had been flying for the Allies; although the French anti-aircraft gunners, in the tradition of the artillery, which was their Army’s pride, were as formidable as the Germans’. From the start of hostilities, the Luftstreitkräfte had dreaded them, and pilots who had faced it warned their comrades of “the hell that awaited them when they crossed the French lines”.

  The British anti-aircraft defence, however, was poorly equipped and scanty. Initially, the Royal Artillery had no guns specifically designed for the purpose. They had to rely on pompoms firing one-pound shells; which had no demoralising effect, because they did not burst in the air. Thirteen-pounder field guns were adapted. Mounted on motor vehicles, they fired either high explosive or shrapnel, but only to a modest height. By January 1915 each Division was being provided with two of these: a miserly provision. That summer, firing had to be limited to shrapnel because high-explosive shells were sometimes bursting prematurely in the gun barrels. Shrapnel was the more effective against unarmoured aircraft, but only with a direct hit. It did not burst with the loud noise of high explosive, which in itself was frightening and demoralising. Also, HE shells did not have to score a direct hit: their splinters were enough to destroy any aeroplane.

  By the end of July 1915 there had been 28 Divisions in France, but only 13 pairs of A-A guns. In 1916, 18-pound field guns were bored out to 3 inches calibre to replace the 13-pounders. They were also mobile but had a ceiling of only 19,000 feet. German guns were effective well above this height. In 1916 Haig told the War Office that of the 112 guns he needed, he had only 67. By the start of the Somme he had 113, of which 70 were the old 13-pounders, plus 12 2-pound pompoms. Loewenstern, when he flew over the British sector, was luckier than he realised, however much of a pounding his nervous system was taking.

  Elard von Loewenstern’s equable temperament was matched by the placid, sanguine character of Haupt-Heydemarck, whose first airborne experience had been the hair-raising flight in a balloon which ended in a crash that left him wi
th one leg shorter than the other, but his morale and sense of humour unimpaired. In the spring of 1916 he had been posted as an observer to Flieger Abteilung 17, a long-range reconnaissance unit, at Attigny.

  He was crewed with a pilot named Engmann, nicknamed Take, and his description of their first operation together could have been recounted by almost any of his British or French counterparts. In its staccato way it contains all the elements of bleary-eyed, reluctant waking, delays, frustration, fear, exhilaration and tenacity which were familiar to all operational airmen.

  When his batman woke him on the morning of his first flight against the enemy, his immediate question was about the weather, which was starlit but cloudy. A quarter of an hour later he joined “Take” Engmann at breakfast: “Boiling hot coffee, with bread and marmalade and a lightly boiled egg. This was rare, a privilege for the crew that had the morning’s first sortie.”

  They studied the map together, tracing the track that they must make good in order to photograph railway tracks at Chalons-West, supply dumps south of Buffy-le-Château, and aerodromes at Courtifols, Tilloy-Bellay and Auve. A westerly wind was forecast. Out of doors, they saw that the clouds were drifting north-east, which meant a south-westerly wind. Engmann predicted that there would soon be a lot more cloud “with a lot of muck behind it”.