The First Great Air War

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  “The proposal to carry considerable bodies of fighting troops in aeroplanes and land them behind the Enemy’s lines, is not a new one, and has at various times been considered in all its aspects. The reasons why such a policy cannot be adopted at present are roughly as follows:— (1) The design of an aeroplane to carry a useful cargo of men presents very great difficulties, principally because, with the system of construction which has hitherto been used, relative weight increases with the size of the aeroplane when that exceeds a certain definite scale. No aeroplane which could be called a satisfactory flying machine has yet been produced to be capable of carrying thirty armed men.

  “(2) The construction of a large number of such machines could not possibly be undertaken in this country, unless the whole of the aeronautical resources were devoted to the task. That would mean that the construction of fighting, reconnaissance, and artillery aeroplanes would have to be given up entirely, which of course is not to be thought of. The possibility of obtaining large aeroplanes from America has been considered, but besides the absence of satisfactory design, it would take a very long time for America to become a real producer of aeroplanes, owing to their lack of all modern experience in the matter. In this case, also, is the added difficulty of sea transport.

  “(3) The provision of 1000 pilots beyond those already required for the work of the Army and the Navy, could not be hoped for before a somewhat advanced period next year.

  “(4) The difficulty of landing a large force of men from aeroplanes in the rear of the Enemy’s lines has not been sufficiently considered. If 1000 aeroplanes were to land on a front of 20 miles, it means 50 aeroplanes to the mile, landing where they can on unprepared landing grounds. Such an operation might be possible in certain portions of the desert, or even in certain limited areas on the Continent, but could not be counted on as a general military operation. No doubt something could be done to make the design of the aeroplane suitable for sustaining a smash without killing the passengers, but very few aeroplanes of any known design would survive a crowded journey of this kind.

  “I have not entered into the possibility of the success of such an operation provided the passage were safely accomplished, but the prospects appear somewhat doubtful.”

  *

  When James McCudden had returned to the Home Establishment in February, he already wore the Croix de Guerre arid Military Medal he had won as a sergeant, and the Military Cross awarded soon after he became an officer. He spent nearly five months, which included the first Fighting Instructors Course at Central Flying School, teaching new pilots combat technique. The standard of instruction had improved so much, thanks to Smith Barry, that when a recently qualified pilot joined his first squadron in France he had a good chance of shooting down the enemy instead of being an easy victim.

  Given a Sopwith Pup, he visited several fighter squadrons to teach them air fighting. In this aircraft he performed his first roll. He had the Synchronised Vickers replaced by a Lewis on the upper wing, which he could tilt up to attack from beneath. One day he went up to intercept an air raid by some twenty Gothas but could not close the range to effective shooting distance. Twenty miles off the Essex coast he was still 500 feet behind, but emptied three drums at the nearest one and smelled incendiary bullets coming past him in return.

  The feelings he expressed about seeing the enemy in British air space were exactly the same as those often voiced by Douglas Bader during and after the Second World War. “How insolent these damned Boches did look absolutely lording it in the sky above England. I was absolutely furious to think that the Huns should come over and bomb London and have it practically all their own way. I simply hated the Hun more than ever.”[13]

  No. 56 Squadron had been sent home to cope with the Gothas. McCudden went to visit Bowman, who was a member, and met several others whom he knew. He said there was a wonderful spirit, which was entirely different from any other squadron’s. On 7th July he went on a three-week refresher course and thence to 66 Squadron in France to obtain up-to-date combat experience before returning to England to continue instructing. Fifty-six had also returned to the Front and invited him to dinner. He was impressed by the orchestra that Major Blomfield had assembled, and amused by his method of recruiting them. Conscription had been introduced, so Blomfield visited several London orchestras and asked the names of musicians who were being called up. He then ensured that they joined the RFC and came to his squadron. He would also load half a dozen men of various trades into a lorry, and drive round other squadrons with them. If he found a musician in one of the trades relating to his lorry-load, he would swop the appropriate non-musician for him on the spot and carry him off. Before leaving his hosts, McCudden asked to join the squadron and Blomfield promised to apply for him. On 15th August he duly became one of that hand-picked elite, as a flight commander.

  The day of the lone hunter, the fighter pilot dodging in and out of cloud, climbing as high as he could, trying to position himself up-sun from where he expected the enemy to appear, was not quite done and never would be. Bishop, McCudden, Mannock all kept up the practice, as did Fonck, Guynemer and Nungesser; but offensive patrols by formations of up to six machines had become standard. Five was considered the ideal number, either two on each side of the leader or four in a diamond with the fifth above the rearmost man to keep a lookout astern.

  These small formations had proliferated. Air fighting had entered the era of what was then called dogfighting, when twenty or more aircraft mixed it in a brawl that spread over a large area of sky and several thousand feet of altitude.[14]

  Hear McCudden on the subject of dogfighting. On the long summer evenings the British had, as a rule, eight fighter formations up in addition to other machines. “The fun used to begin at about 7 p.m.” and usually went on until dusk or even later. The enemy normally sent an equal number of fighter formations up. “The evenings were wonderful, as the fighting was very fierce and well contested.” At least thirty machines would be weaving about in combat. Now and again one would fall, trailing sparks and smoke, flaming like a meteor until it crashed with an eruption of burning debris and a final gout of flame.

  On the 18th McCudden scored his first kill in an SE5: an Albatros. The next day he got another. Two days later he shot down two and on 22nd August, a DFW two-seater. He was well on the way to his next decoration.

  *

  During January 1917, Harold Hartney’s first month as a flight commander, one of the other flight commanders was killed and the third posted: which left Hartney the senior and second-in-command. On 1st February he led a patrol of five FE2Ds which was attacked by three Albatroses. Four Fees were shot down, two pilots and an observer were killed, one pilot and two observers taken prisoner. On 14th February Hartney took off on a photographic reconnaissance escorted by another FE2D flown by Lieutenant Taylor. Hartney’s observer, W. T. Jourdan, an American who had been a clown in Ringling Brothers’ circus, was an excellent gunner and photographer. Seven of Richthofen’s Albatroses attacked them. Hartney dived, zoomed, kicked on right rudder and stall-turned 180 degrees into a steep dive. The Germans, instead of breaking and following him down, held formation.

  By the time they had wheeled about he was far ahead; with Taylor safely tucked in astern. When the enemy did catch up, Jourdan shot two down and Taylor’s observer got a third. Hartney said he knew Richthofen’s scavenging habit of picking up cheap kills by keeping out of a fight while his comrades engaged the British or French, then going in to help himself. He turned up now in his all-red machine. A burst from his guns sheared off one of Hartney’s propeller blades. The Fee began to vibrate violently. Hartney made a crash landing that knocked him out. He regained consciousness on a duckboard carried by two Australians. Taylor had crashed also and, like Jourdan, was crippled. His gunner had been shot dead. Hartney was sent to hospital and then to England.

  He spent some months instructing. He had confirmed his willingness to go to America to instruct, but the American Army found a bette
r use for him. On 21st September 1917 he was ordered to report to Toronto to take command of the 27th American Aero Squadron, with the rank of major in the US Signals Corps. When he arrived in Toronto he found that he had been given American citizenship.

  CHAPTER 16 - 1917. Equal Poise of Hope and Fear

  Airmen’s constant hopes and fears were centred on the quality of the aircraft they would be called on to fly, from half-year to half-year, against the enemy. So far, the advantage had fluctuated in overall favour of neither side. For the time being a balance had been struck, but it was always precarious. Even when times were good, pilots and observers were conscious of the transience of aerial superiority. Georges Guynemer could have spoken for any of them when, asked by an admiring lady “What new decoration is there left for you to earn?” he gave the dry rejoinder: “The wooden cross.” He was all too prophetic. L’Aviation Militaire suffered as badly as the RFC under the Albatros’s twin guns and from its speed and manoeuvrability.

  The demoralisation of the dispirited French land forces, mentally and, physically battered by the defence of Verdun, cast shame on the air Service by association. General Nivelle’s reckless offensive in April 1917 had caused wholesale desertions and worse; mutiny in sixteen corps. Pétain, appointed first to be Chief of the General Staff and then to replace Nivelle, quelled the mutinies within a month. But it cannot have been easy for the air force to maintain its pride and the scale of its flying effort when another arm refused to go into attack.

  By May, Guynemer was the longest-serving member of The Storks and still one of the youngest. On one day, 25th May, he shot down four of the enemy. On 11th June, with his score at forty-five, he was made an officer of the Legion of Honour. By the end of August he had fifty confirmed victories and was the leading ace. Les Cigognes were now flying the Spad 13, whose 220-h.p. Hispano-Suiza engine gave it a maximum speed of 132 m.p.h. at 10,000 feet, to which it climbed in 8 minutes, and a ceiling of 24,000 feet. It was armed with twin Vickers synchronised with the propeller.

  This aircraft, the Sopwith Triplane and the SE5 were the ones that took air superiority away from the Albatros DIII and DV. Guynemer, with fifty-four kills, returned from three days’ leave in September to find his personal Spad unserviceable. Instead of taking over someone else’s, he flew whichever was available. This was invariably one that was awaiting the arrival of a new pilot — who, as in the RFC, would be given the most work-worn — or, even worse, due for overhaul. In one day three of these tatterdemalion ruins let him down with engine trouble or a structural defect. He made three forced landings that would have been the end of a less able pilot. In two fights, his guns jammed.

  On four successive days he flew four two-and-a-half-hour sorties. These absurdly long periods at maximum alertness, added to the constant misbehaviour of his aircraft or weapons, brought about a mental condition that matched his physical appearance in a photograph taken at that time. Sunken-eyed, emaciated, he looks worn out and a little demented. He was tortured by the thought that his aborted flights and lack of combat success would make him suspected of cowardice. Insomnia kept him on his feet at night. Often he would rouse his mechanics to run the engine of his current Spad, to be sure it would be fit for take-off at dawn. He was awaiting the arrival of a brand-new one from the factory.

  On 11th September, under an overcast sky and in the rain, he took off at 8.30 a.m. with Sous Lieutenant Bozon-Verduraz and found a solitary two-seater, which they attacked. It was bait for an ambush by three Albatroses, which dived from the cloud fringe. Guynemer’s No. 2 spotted them, turned to take them on and got away after the skirmish. He did not see what happened to his leader.

  Some days passed before the Germans revealed that Leutnant Kurt Wissemann had shot Guynemer down. Neither his aircraft nor his body has ever been found.

  Nungesser had returned to Les Cigognes in May after a long spell in hospital having sundry bones broken and reset. The enemy instantly noticed his ghoulishly decorated Spad in the sky and on 12th May an Albatros dropped a message challenging him to single combat. That afternoon, when he arrived over Douai, there were six Albatroses treacherously awaiting him. He shot down two and the cowardly remainder retired.

  Nungesser was trying hard to overtake Fonck’s growing total, but before he could do so he crashed his Mors car, killing Pochon, his mechanic, breaking his own jaw and sustaining other injuries. He replaced the Mors with a white Rolls-Royce tourer.

  In the many ways in which Fonck, Guynemer and Nungesser differed from one another, it was the cold precision of the manner in which Fonck did his work that best exemplified his character. In comparison, Guynemer was often profligate with time and ammunition, and Nungesser totally wild, as ferocious, brave and regardless as a fighting bull. Fonck used to tell new pilots that he found ten, or, at the most, fifteen rounds enough, whereas Guynemer would fight for half an hour or more and Nungesser would thunder in blindly, intent on hitting his opponent and careless of return fire.

  Another of Fonck’s dicta was that if a bullet were ever to hit him he would apply for a transfer to the trenches. Wounds, in his view, meant lack of skill. He justified this by going through the war unscratched, with the highest score of any Allied pilot. Although his victories totalled five less than Richthofen’s, they were worth a great deal more. It is said that not only did Richthofen prey on the easiest targets, such as the BE2C, but also when he attacked in company with others he often merely finished off an aeroplane they had damaged badly, then claimed the kill.

  Fonck also exercised a certain degree of caution, which he would probably have called prudence: unlike Nungesser, who was more charging lion, rampaging elephant or wild buffalo at full tilt than game hunter, or Guynemer, who also thought less of self-preservation than Fonck. Fonck’s warning to inexperienced pilots was that it was less dangerous to attack fifteen enemy aircraft on the Allied side of the lines than five on the German side. Not that he was timid about being outnumbered. He said that a large number of opponents got in each other’s way and often held their fire for fear of hitting one of their own side. When he came upon a formation he tried to shoot down the leader, then, in the subsequent confusion, a second.

  He had devised a collimator — an instrument for adjusting the line of sight — to make his shooting as accurate as possible. Mounted between the guns of his Spad, it was a tube with a plain glass lens on which were two concentric circles. One covered a field of one metre, the other of ten, at a range of 100 metres. Knowing the wingspan and fuselage length of every enemy aircraft, he calculated its precise distance from the aspect it presented.

  Fonck has been criticised for conceit, aloofness and a coldly calculating approach to air fighting. He might have been a trifle conceited. Aloofness is no offence: it is usually the product of shyness or a quiet disposition, not a sense of superiority. As for the third complaint of his detractors: they were jealous of his infinite capacity for taking pains. His admirable traits are seldom mentioned. He was decent, self-respecting and loyal. Opinion about him was so fiercely divided among The Storks that it threatened to disrupt the harmony essential to an efficient unit. Colonel Duval, who was the latest of Barès’s successors, offered him a posting, which he refused. He was then offered command of the escadrille and the riddance of those who differed from him in his views on air fighting. He asked what would be done with his Commanding Officer. The answer was that he would be shifted. Fonck angrily dismissed this as a dirty trick and said he would never accept promotion at another’s expense. Embittered by intrigue, he withdrew further into his own company and went hunting alone.

  If Barès or du Peuty had still been “Responsable de l’aéronautique” at General Headquarters, the matter would have been handled with far greater finesse and no hint of intrigue. But Commandant Guillabert had replaced Barès on 15th February 1917, and was himself followed at the end of April by Commandant du Peuty: who left on 3rd August to join an infantry regiment — despite being an ex-cavalryman — and was killed. It was Duval
who took his place and held it until the end of the war; by when he had become a general.

  Fonck is often credited with being the only pilot on either side to shoot down six enemy aircraft in one day. In fact, Captain J. L. Trollope and Captain H. W. Woollett, both of 43 Squadron, did it with Sopwith Camels in March and April 1917 respectively.

  We have to leap forward in time to the day on which Fonck scored his greatest number of victories, but this is the appropriate and logical place for the story. He had declared an intention to bring down five hostiles in one day; which prompted more argument and the laying of bets. On the morning of 9th May 1918 he was called at four o’clock. It was misty, but he took off; only to return after half an hour. He went back to bed, telling his batman to call him at noon. The mist was still thick then, so he went to lunch. At 3.30 p.m. the sun came out and by 3.45 had dispelled the mist. Fonck took off with two others. More than half an hour later he saw a Rumpler escorted by two Halberstadts. As instructed, his companions held back. He dived and his bullets severed the wing of one Halberstadt and set the other on fire. The Rumpler turned for home. He chased it and sent it down in flames. It was 4.20 p.m.

  He stayed for a while, then returned to base to refuel and rearm. He was called to the telephone to receive the congratulations of General Debeney: the kills had been reported by the men in the trenches. As soon as possible he took off once more. Capitaine Horment, his CO, sent two others to keep an eye on him. He found an Albatros and shot it down at 5.17. Then he picked out several specks in the sky that had to be enemy fighters. On approaching he identified them as five Fokker DVIIs in V formation, with four Pfalzes in a diamond well beneath them. He stalked them through cloud and picked off the rear Pfalz; then closed to within forty metres of the Fokkers without being seen; and shot down the leader with just four rounds.[15]