The First Great Air War

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  The Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo opened on 18th August 1917 on a front of forty-two kilometres with the usual artillery blast. Spotting aircraft were airborne all day. On the 19th, when the infantry went in, 85 Caproni bombed the enemy rear, reconnaissance aircraft dropped small bombs and ground-strafed, and in all 280 aeroplanes operated that day and 261 the next. Between the 19th and 28th August there was an average of 225 serviceable aircraft every day and 1474 sorties were flown. Of 300 pilots and observers involved, 81 were killed.

  September began with an act of great heroism. Sergeant Arturo Dell’Oro, on solo fighter patrol, attacked a two-seater. His gun jammed. Rather than abandon the fight, he rammed the enemy aircraft’s wing with his undercarriage. Entangled, both crashed. All three occupants were killed. Sergeant Dell’Oro was posthumously awarded the Gold Medal.

  Baracca was always the leading Italian fighter pilot. By the first week of June 1917 he had scored thirteen confirmed victories, been promoted to captain and was commanding the 91st (“The Aces”) Squadron, flying Spads. With him were Lieutenants Barrachini and Prince Ruffo di Calabria. On 31st July Baracca brought down his fifteenth victim with only four bullets, fired from thirty metres. He constantly risked wing-to-wing collision with enemy aircraft in his endeavours to get on their tails at close range.

  Ruffo di Calabria had shown himself a born fighter pilot in his first combat, flying a Nieuport II, on 23rd September 1916. On 1st January 1917 he shot down his fourth Austrian machine. In February he had five fights, in four of which his opponents quit. The fifth, Ruffo abandoned with a jammed gun. In April and May he was in twenty-six combats and made four kills.

  Other distinguished members of the 91st were Ferruccio Ranza, who eventually scored seventeen, Luigi Olivaro who brought down twelve, Gastone Novelli, who finished with eight, and three who made six kills: Cesare Magistrini, Bortolo Costantini, Guido Nardini.

  Thirty-seven-year-old Pier Ruggero Piccio, in June 1917 a major and commanding First Fighter Group, had six victories to his name. Between July and November he scored eleven more, two of them in one action. On 19th August, after leading a fighter escort for a Caproni squadron, he refuelled and went back over the lines alone. He soon saw an enemy aeroplane flying high towards the south-west and climbed above it. He dived, approached, aimed; and was about to shoot, when he was amazed to see the enemy burst into flames and fall, smothered in fiery smoke. Looking around, he turned his aircraft and saw Francesco Baracca: who had mischievously poached his target from him with one short burst.

  Disaster befell the ground forces on 24th October, when Austria—Hungary launched a well-prepared offensive. The Italian generals’ ineptitude had already led to a succession of defeats and heavy losses. This time, their troops broke and the enemy swept across sixty miles to the Piave River in eighteen days, taking a quarter of a million prisoners.

  The British and French each rushed an army corps to the Italian Front. The RFC moved two squadrons there. Four more followed soon after.

  No American Expeditionary Force or air squadron had arrived in France yet, but as early as March 1917 a conference had been held in Rome to agree terms for the training of American pilots in Italy. It was agreed that 500 pupils would be accepted in the flying schools at Foggia South and Foggia North, with a further 500 to come later. The first course began on 28th November 1917.

  CHAPTER 17 - 1917. The Allies Resurgent

  “He was a tiny little fellow and used to have blocks of wood fixed to his rudder bar pedals so that he could reach them,” said his first flight commander, Captain K. G. Locke. “A well-educated and keen young officer always willing to learn.”

  Sholto Douglas, his squadron commander, said: “He was courageous, a first rate shot and a good formation leader. His moral effect on the squadron was excellent. His eyesight was exceptionally keen and he could spot any enemy aircraft further away than anyone else.”

  They were talking about Andrew Weatherby Beauchamp-Proctor, who was born on 4th September 1894, in South Africa; stood only five feet and one inch tall; destroyed 22 enemy aircraft, drove 16 down and shot down 16 balloons; and won the VC, DSO, MC and bar, DFC, Croix de Guerre and Légion d’Honneur.[17]

  “A quiet and likeable chap,” said one squadron comrade. Another described him as: “A very likeable chap. Not a particularly good pilot, but an excellent shot.” Someone else: “He would attack anything in the sky, oblivious to danger.”

  “‘Procky’ was a very serious-minded young fellow,” a colleague recalled. “As a fighter pilot he had one great advantage: twenty-five pounds less weight made a great difference in the performance of the SE5A.”

  “Procky” Beauchamp-Proctor had been an engineering student at South African College, later the University of Cape Town, before joining the Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Rifles as a signaller on 1st October 1914. He served in the South-West African campaign, transferred to the South African Field Telegraph and Postal Corps, and was demobilised in August 1915, whereupon he resumed his engineering studies.

  Early in 1917 he met Major A. M. Miller, DSO, RFC, who was on his second recruiting tour of South Africa, volunteered for the Flying Corps, and was attested as a third-class air mechanic on 12th March. He began training at South Farnborough on 13th April and after six weeks went on to No. 5 Reserve Squadron at Castle Bromwich. Pupil pilots had a long working day and made short flights. On 25th May he went up at 5.20 p.m. for 15 minutes’ dual in a Farman Longhorn at 500 feet. At 8.30 p.m. he was airborne for half an hour’s dual at 3000 feet. On 2nd June he flew from 6.40 to 6.50 a.m. and from 6.55 to 7.10 a.m. These were typical days. On l0th June he was up from 4.40 to 5.15 a.m., before making his first solo, 5.30-5.55 a.m., at 1500 feet. He crashed on landing and broke his undercarriage and left lower mainplane. By 16th June he had accumulated 9 hours 50 minutes, 4 hours 35 being solo. He was given his wings on 29th July. He joined Sholto Douglas’s 84 Squadron, where he soon crashed again. By then he had 33 hours 20 minutes flying time, 20.15 solo. On 21st September the squadron moved to France and on 14th October he had his third crash when his engine seized. He flew nineteen operations between 21st October and 22nd November, helped to bring down a balloon and crashed on landing.

  Up on an engine test over Arras on 5th December he met a two-seater, fired both guns from 200 yards and sent it into a vertical dive. He could not follow it down, because it had damaged his tail plane and control wires with return fire. He was awarded a probable.

  On 15th December he crashed an SEE, landing with no petrol, and wrote off the radiator, propeller and upper planes.

  A few days later he received news that both his parents had died, within a few days of each other. This, his comrades said, changed his attitude from one of placidity to extreme aggression. He made his first kill shortly after. But that was in January.

  *

  1917 was a vintage year for aeroplanes as well as for pilots. The Germans introduced the Albatros DV and the Fokker Triplane. The former was a V-strutter and prone to flutter and collapse of the lower wing in a dive, but fast and handy. The three German ground-attack fighters pioneered this specialist type.

  Among the French the Spad XIII was even better than the VII, and, when fitted with a Rolls-Royce engine capable of 133 m.p.h. and a climb to 10,000 feet in 8 minutes. The Nieuport 28 was almost as fast. The Breguet 14B2 was an excellent reconnaissance and bomber aeroplane, strong and reliable. The ground-attack variant had two Lewis guns, front and rear, inclined downward, and the crew were protected by armour plate. The Voisin VIII night bomber had a quick-firing 37-mm Hotchkiss cannon, a formidable piece of ordnance.

  But the British had the best of the year’s innovations. The F2B Bristol Fighter is usually rated the best all-round performer of the war. The Rolls-Royce-engined SE5a could fly at 130 m.p.h. The Sopwith Camel was a devastating fighter, the first British aeroplane fitted with twin synchronised Vickers guns. The Sopwith Dolphin was the war’s most under-rated fighter, with excellent performance at high altitude and a
top speed of 128 m.p.h. It also had two synchronised Vickers, and one, sometimes two, free Lewis guns. The DH5 was a fine single-seater ground-attack type. The DH4 was the best day bomber of the war. It carried two 230-pound or four 12-pound bombs and was armed with one, later two, Vickers for the pilot and a Lewis for the observer. The Handley Page 0/100 and 0/400 bombers were gigantic: wingspan 100 feet, length almost 63 feet. Their two 250-h.p. Rolls-Royce engines gave a speed of just under 100 m.p.h. Both carried a crew of four, the 400 sometimes five, and five machineguns. Their bombload was 2000 pounds.

  The Camel, officially the Sopwith F1, derived its name from the hump over its two guns, but its performance in no way resembled the ambling gait of its namesake. At 118 m.p.h., its top speed was not exceptional, but it reached 10,000 feet in 10½ minutes. Its handiest trait was the astonishing speed with which it turned to the right, thanks to the tremendous torque of its 130-h.p. Clerget rotary engine. It could flick right round in a full circle in the time it took any other fighter to turn 90 degrees. It was so quick that a pilot wanting to face an adversary on his left could turn right-handed through 270 degrees faster than he could turn go degrees to the left. It was a handful to control and its violent turn easily became a spin. Flown by an experienced pilot it was a superb weapon. More enemy aircraft were shot down with this fighter than with any other on either side.

  These were the aircraft that contested the air battles of the last seventeen months of the war: closely matched, many of them flown by pilots highly experienced in combat, well-armed and with ample endurance, they were able to fight in a manner that had not been possible for their predecessors. Their pilots still had to labour for breath in the rarefied air at high altitude, although crude methods of oxygen supply were gradually being developed. They still suffered from agonising cold. Those who flew behind rotary engines still had to inhale the sickening fumes of castor oil and find their view obscured by the stuff, which smeared goggles and windscreens and dirtied faces. Guns still jammed.

  On 31st July 1917 the Third Battle of Ypres began. This is the long battle that is usually referred to as “Passchendaele”, the ridge seven and a half miles north-east of Ypres that was the last objective won; on 6th November.

  Air activity increased during the three weeks, preceding the battle —by which time Richthofen was back, head still bandaged — until the first great dogfight of 26th April when 94 aeroplanes mixed it at various levels from 5000 feet to 17,000 feet. At the bottom of the stack a few unspecified German two-seaters awaited a chance to reconnoitre behind the British lines. At 8000 feet 30 Albatros DIIIs and DVs and Halberstadts attacked 7 DH5s. Between 12,000 feet and 14,000 feet, 30 Camels and SE5s fought 10 Albatroses. Another 10 Albatroses and 7 RNAS Sopwith Triplanes were engaged at 17,000 feet.

  The next day, 8 FE2ds entered the same area to tempt the enemy: who obliged by sending 30 Albatroses and Halberstadts to try to take them out. Then 59 SE5s and 5As and Sopwith Triplanes hit them. One SE5 was lost and nine of the enemy were brought down.

  Arch Whitehouse, the long-suffering aerial gunner, claimed to have started the first real dogfight over the Western Front. By the time 22 Squadron exchanged their FE2s for Bristol Fighters he was credited with seven enemy aeroplanes and six balloons. He could also, he said, fly the Fee so well, after being given dual instruction by several pilots, that Captain Clement, with whom he usually flew, tried to arrange for him to remuster to pilot on the spot without going to flying school. He should have been thankful for his prospects of living to see the end of the war, instead of resentful, that the request was turned down. He alleged that it was because it would have offended “the caste system”, which was ridiculous. It would have offended good sense: to be a real pilot he had a great deal more to learn.

  He had recently been awarded a Military Medal when he set off with Lieutenant Youl, deputy leader of a formation of six Brisfits, to escort twelve DH4s that were going to bomb Gontrode, forty miles behind the enemy lines. Soon after the rendezvous the engine began spluttering, so he stood to look over the pilot’s shoulder at the instruments, decided the fuel line was blocked, and gave the pressure pump a few strokes. (Most pilots would have reprimanded him for interference.) Then he “told” Youl to try to catch the others up, as the engine note improved. The engine faltered again. Whitehouse advised Youl to turn back, which he did. The engine continued misbehaving. So, according to Whitehouse, he told Youl to change tanks. The rest of their formation were long gone. The engine resumed running smoothly, so Youl turned towards the target once more. Six Belgian Spads joined them. Soon a flight of SE5s tacked itself onto the group that was following Youl. Presently another flight of Spads and some Camels added themselves to the formation.

  One of the Camels fired a red Vérey light. A large German formation was in sight overhead. Whitehouse told Youl to climb (he claimed). Finally, according to him, he fired a signal and “led the pack of at least thirty fighters” into the fight. Lieutenant Youl seems to have been a remarkably docile and obedient officer, to take his orders from a corporal. There was pandemonium. Tracer was zipping about in all directions, machines were colliding, bits of aeroplane were fluttering down, men were tumbling from their shattered cockpits. He saw an SE5 pilot climb onto the wing of his burning machine and, reaching into the cockpit, try to sideslip it to the ground and direct the flames away from himself. The aeroplane exploded. This feat was not unique. Eyewitnesses in other combats have described pilots resorting to this desperate measure.

  Two days later Whitehouse crossed the airfield to look at 56 Squadron’s SE5s. McCudden spoke to him. “When are they sending you home?” (For pilot training.) “I don’t know, sir. I expected to be sent home after fifty hours over the lines.” “I hear you’ve done very well. How long have you been flying?” “I’ve done nearly four hundred hours as a gunner.”

  That was a huge amount of operational flying and Whitehouse deserved more than one MM for it. But he did eventually go back to England and become a pilot, after having been put up for a Distinguished Conduct Medal.

  *

  Third Ypres had begun with the Germans at a disadvantage. Their total strength was 600 aircraft, of which 200 were fighters. The Allies had 320 fighters out of a total of 852. Throughout the three and a half months of the battle, ground strafing went on in increasing strength and bombing continued day and night against tactical targets near the front and strategical ones deep in enemy terrain. A few Camels sometimes flew at night, trying to intercept the German bombers that were returning the attention their side was receiving from the British and French nocturnal raiders.

  The arrival of the RFC in Italy brought to prominence the pilot whom Billy Bishop, after the war, called “the finest fighter pilot the world has ever known”. At that date, most people would have awarded this honour to Bishop himself. Bishop’s nominee was another Canadian, William Barker. When Barker arrived in Italy he had shot down nine hostile aeroplanes: one as an observer, eight as a pilot. Of his total of fifty-three victories, Barker scored twenty-seven in Italy. His was an exuberant nature and he was a gifted pilot: his instructor sent him solo after one hour’s dual. So late in the war, with Smith Barry’s influence on instruction, this was phenomenal. During one spell in England he had aerobatted over Piccadilly Circus and escaped retribution by disappearing back to France the next day. He frequently beat up any airfield where he was stationed and delighted in low flying.

  Very little has been written about the small and virtually independent British air force that fought alongside the Italians. Among these men were many of colourful personality who generated a special spirit of effervescent enthusiasm that gave the Italian campaign a unique character. Their small numbers nurtured an intimate family spirit that could not have existed at the Western Front at this stage of the war. Also, many American pilots, after training in Italy, joined Italian squadrons to fly Caproni and Ansaldo bombers.

  The Italian archives proudly draw attention to the fact that their Service and the British
were the only two in the world that planned and followed a line of development as independent arms from those early days. In all other countries, the air forces were mere appendages of the Army and Navy — as they began by being in Britain and Italy — and remained so long after the war: in many instances, until the Second World War.

  The squadrons posted to Italy all came by train from France. The first to arrive were 28, equipped with Camels, on which Captain Barker was a flight commander, and 34, which flew RE8s. Barker scored the first British victory in Italy, when, leading an offensive patrol of four, at 10,000 feet on 29th November, five Albatroses attacked. In the next twenty minutes of fighting, seven more Albatroses joined in. He dived on one, which pulled out at 5000 feet, whereupon he fired eighty rounds into it. Its top wing folded back, then the lower one broke off. Between then and the end of the year, No. 28 Squadron shot down eight hostiles and two balloons. No. 66 downed four aircraft and No. 45, two. All three flew Camels.

  On Christmas Day the clouds were low, visibility was bad and no operational sorties were ordered. Barker, restless and always ready for any prank, preferably a practical joke, took Lt Hudson with him to the enemy aerodrome at Motta, where he dropped a large sheet of cardboard bearing the message: “To the Austrian Flying Corps from the English RFC. Wishing you a Merry Xmas.” They then strafed the hangars and any Austrians who were incautious enough to venture out of doors to see what was going on.

  On Boxing Day, soon after breakfast, about thirty enemy bombers, in ragged formation, appeared over and near the RFC airfield at Istrana; thinking it was the home of 28 Squadron. In fact, 42 (RE8) Squadron had left there nine days earlier to make room for 45 (Camels), which had not yet arrived, and only 34 (RE8s) was there. The officers lived in a nearby villa, from where they watched the attack. It was not a good one. Splinters hit all the RE8s but did no serious damage. Less than half the raiding force bombed the target. The rest dropped their loads innocuously about the countryside. One bomb did hit a hangar in which there were two Italian aircraft, which caught fire. The fire set off their ammunition. Braving both the flames and wildly darting bullets, Italian officers and troops wheeled the other aeroplanes out to safety.