The First Great Air War
Page 35
As with all Trenchard’s creations, the Independent Force was efficiently organised and administered and highly effective in operation. The force flew 650 raids. Fifteen pilots and 35 observers/aerial gunners were killed: missing, respectively, amounted to 138 and 160; wounded, 39 and 34; injured 11 and 17.
The United States Air Service’s late arrival and small numbers were compensated by the same enthusiasm, fighting spirit and bravery that the RFC, l’Aviation Militaire and the Italian Air Corps — and the Luftstreitkräfte — had shown.
In the short time at their disposal, the most successful pilots did prodigiously well. Captain E. V. Rickenbacker scored twenty-six victories, Second Lieutenant Frank Luke Jr twenty-one, First Lieutenant George A. Vaughn thirteen, Captain Field E. Kindley twelve.
Others, who served with the RFC or RNAS, included S. W. Rosevear with twenty-three, William C. Lambert twenty-four, Frederick W. Gillette, J. J. Malone, Alan M. Wilkinson twenty, Major Raoul Lufbery seventeen.
Hartney’s 27 Squadron comprised one theatre owner, four salesmen, three lawyers, two journalists, five electrical and petroleum engineers, one concert pianist, one banker, one cotton planter, one motor racing driver, one mining man. As Hartney pointed out, all these jobs require clear, independent, constant thinking.
On 21st August, Major Hartney was given command of the 1st Pursuit Group, which comprised the 27th, 147th, 94th and 95th Squadrons. By the end of the war, the Group had destroyed 201 aircraft and balloons and lost 72 pilots dead, missing and wounded.
It was Hartney who devised a stratagem that became commonplace in the Second World War. Landing aircraft at night by the light of flares invited the now very active German bomber force to attack the aerodrome. Hartney had a dummy flarepath laid ten miles away. This attracted any enemy bombers in the vicinity and also acted as a beacon for his homing aircraft. Each pilot set course for base by this landmark, then flashed his individual letter by lamp shortly before entering the circuit. Three Aldis signal lamps were then shone across the airfield on the patch of ground where he should touch down; and extinguished as soon as he did. This was a hazardous way of landing, but much preferable to several sticks of bombs.
The total number of victories attributed to members of the USAS was 756 aeroplanes and 76 balloons. The method of awarding credits for victories to individuals, however, produced the anomalous total of 1513: because, whereas in the British and French Services, shared victory was divided between the participants who had fired at and hit the downed aeroplane or balloon, the Americans allowed one whole victory to everyone involved. In fact, 491 victories were each credited to one pilot; but, for the remaining 341, 1022 awards were handed out.
In addition to the fighter squadrons, there were an Observation Group consisting of three two-seater Spad squadrons, and a bombardment squadron, the 96th, all in operation by June 1918.
It must be remembered that not only were American squadrons in action over barely six months, but also the quality of the enemy aircraft and crews they fought was higher than it had been three years earlier. There were no easy victories now over obsolescent aeroplanes. Most of Rickenbacker’s victims, for instance, were Albatroses. Pilots now reached the Front after thorough training.
Two of the most interesting American pilots were Douglas Campbell and Frank Luke Jr, contrasting types in origin and nature. Campbell’s father was head of the Lick Observatory in California and sent Douglas to a private boarding school and Harvard. Luke was one of nine children who grew up in the Wild West pioneering environment of Montana, and saw more than one battle against Red Indians.
Campbell was twenty-two when he reached the 94th at the Western Front after virtually teaching himself to fly. Posted to the flying school at Issoudun as Adjutant, he had been fully occupied with office duties. He persuaded instructors to explain to him how to fly an aeroplane, and, without going through any dual, took off for the very first time in a Nieuport. He was the first American to shoot down five enemy machines; and those within six weeks. He scored six kills before he was grounded by a severe wound from an explosive bullet.
Luke was a simple, direct ranch hand whose honesty and lack of affectation often made his manner seem brash to his comrades. He was chatting to a sergeant one day when an enemy aircraft flew over the aerodrome. “Gee, that plane would be a cinch for me,” he said. The sergeant denigrated this as boastfulness. It was not: Luke was merely making a naïf statement of self-confidence. What he really meant was that the aircraft would have been an easy target for anyone who happened to be airborne near it. He was not implying that he was the exceptional pilot who could have shot it down whereas others would have missed.
Despite his excellent record there were many who disliked him. Most of his comrades were gregarious, but he was shy, which prevented them from getting to know him well. He had one close friend, Lieutenant Joe Wehner, whose death in action caused him inconsolable grief. They had been attacking balloons when enemy fighters jumped them and Luke saw his crony shot down; but not before they had brought down two balloons and three enemy machines between them. Luke’s comment to Hartney immediately after the event revealed a sensitive and considerate nature that was probably a great deal superior to his detractors’. “I’m glad it wasn’t me. My mother doesn’t know I’m on the Front yet.” A boastful man would have lost no time in telling his mother he was in the fighting instead of concealing it to spare her feelings.
Luke’s death was heroic, its aftermath tragic. The report of the Graves Registration Officer who found his grave on 29th September 1918 arouses deep sadness even seventy years on. “From the inspection of the grave and interviews held with the inhabitants of this town, the following information was learned with regard to this aviator and his heroism.
“Previous to being killed he had brought down three German balloons, two German aeroplanes and dropped hand bombs killing eleven German soldiers and wounding a number of others.
“He was wounded himself in the shoulder and evidently had to make a forced landing. Upon landing he opened fire with his automatic and fought until he was killed.
“It is also reported that the Germans took his shoes, leggings and money, leaving his grave unmarked.”
*
The Allied offensive launched on 8th August 1918 swept the Germans back to ultimate surrender and an Armistice at 11 a.m. on 11th November. On the opening day, 1800 British, French and American aeroplanes swarmed over the enemy lines and beyond. The flying effort continued unabated until the l0th and great reputations were being enhanced even in the closing weeks of the war.
On 8th August, Beauchamp-Proctor, given the honour of leading his squadron, shared in the destruction of nine observation balloons, a record for a single day. On his 24th birthday, 4th September, he led a flight of five SE5 as escorting RE8s. When the latter completed their bombing, the fighters carried on. His report said: “I saw some of our infantry advancing and a Hun machinegun team waiting to ambush them in a sunken road. I immediately dived and my flight followed. After two dives I could not see any of the machinegun crew alive. I flew round our infantry at twenty feet and saw them wave, then point towards some trenches. I climbed, then dived, whereupon thirty Huns attempted to get out of the trenches. They had been hiding in a dugout. Lt Corse, USAS, Capt. Carruthers and myself continued to shoot into the Huns until there were about five left and these were being engaged by our infantry. We engaged several small machinegun nests.”
On 8th October he shot down a two-seater, then, single-handed, attacked eight German fighters. He was wounded in the shoulder but escaped by spinning. He was sent to hospital in England. Sholto Douglas recommended him for the VC in recognition of the zest he had shown for attacking the enemy in all circumstances. “For all his size, that little man had the guts of a lion,” Major Douglas said of him.
On 27th October Major William Barker, DSO, MC and bar, who had forty-seven victories to his name, performed the most brilliant feat of arms achieved by a lone fighter pilot. Fl
ying a Sopwith Snipe, he overtook a two-seater Rumpler at 21,000 feet and opened fire. The enemy observer’s return fire destroyed Barker’s telescopic sight. Using the peep sights, Barker hit the Rumpler’s fuel tank, which caught fire. Before it exploded one of the crew parachuted to safety.
As he broke away he came under fire from a Fokker Triplane beneath. A bullet hit him in the right thigh. In great pain and with an almost useless right leg, he nearly fainted and the Snipe began to spin. When he recovered his senses and corrected his aircraft’s attitude, he saw the whole of Geschwader 3’s Jastas 2, 26, 27 and 36, totalling more than fifty Fokker D7s, above, beneath and around him. The nearest Jasta, twelve or fifteen strong, attacked him. He drove off two of them and shot one down in flames; but was himself hit in the left thigh. Loss of blood brought him to the verge of unconsciousness again. He went into a spin once more, came out of it and found himself in the midst of another Jasta. He brought one enemy down, was hit in the left elbow, fainted and spun down to 12,000 feet before regaining consciousness. Smoke was belching from his aircraft and he thought it must be on fire. He determined to ram the nearest Fokker, decided to chance a shot instead, and sent it down in flames. His engine was no longer emitting smoke: bullets had riddled one fuel tank and drained it. Intermittently insensible as he spun earthwards, unable to use the rudder bar and controlling the Snipe with stick and throttle only, he contrived to switch on the auxiliary tank and left his enemies behind. The sortie had lasted forty minutes. He crossed the British trenches at a height of a few feet, crashed, and the aeroplane turned over. Scottish soldiers extricated him before he bled to death. In hospital, he spent ten days in a coma. His legs healed in time for him to walk into Buckingham Palace to receive the Victoria Cross.
*
A French fighter pilot summed up the typical attitude of operationally experienced airmen, in La Guerre Aérienne: “Between missions, life was comfortable and enabled one to forget the war, but there was above all a great thirst to live life to the full during these short periods, in view of the uncertainties of the morrow; which they accepted. On operations, violent physical and nervous tension, caused by the fear of death.”
However, after the first exchange of fire, fear disappeared. All energy was concentrated on a single purpose. “Opening fire is, for a pilot, a sort of mild doping, visions of agony become blurred and one surmounts them.”
Another wrote: “The second time in action the shock is not so great. I had been warned. And then, of the number of shots fired, only five hit my aircraft, in harmless places. So one could get away with it and this was enough to give me the courage to carry on.”
A bomber pilot put it: “Very quickly one armours oneself with indifference and recalls of these sorties more the irritants such as a too tight necktie, a rattle or vibration, than the brief moments of action.”
A French fighter pilot with the unlikely name of Partridge shrugged off danger: “To fly alone, to be wounded, it’s not a big deal and one accepts it as one of those inevitable things.”
Even the most mettlesome sort of man, highly strung as a racehorse, the representative fighter pilot type, learned by experience to restrain his natural excitability and become phlegmatic in the cockpit.
Every man who took to the air in that first great air war must have been endowed with unusual courage: when every facet of air fighting had to be discovered for the first time; and the very machines in which they flew were so accident prone that merely being airborne was almost as dangerous as being under fire. Whatever their nationality, whether they were fighter pilots, who attracted the widest publicity, or aerial gunners who received none, courage was their hallmark, above skill at the controls or accuracy behind a gun.
Allies and enemy shared the same emotions when it was all over. Rickenbacker’s description of the reaction of the 94th Squadron, which he commanded, on being told of the Armistice, expresses the feelings of all the airmen of all the nations that had been at war.
He received the news by telephone the evening before and read it out to his pilots. In the midst of a sudden silence a nearby artillery battery fired a joyous salvo. The pilots, shouting and tumbling over each other, rushed to their quarters and emerged firing pistols and Vérey lights into the air. Machineguns lit the darkness with tracer around the aerodrome. Searchlights swept the sky. Drums of petrol were rolled out of a hangar and set alight. Everyone joined hands and circled round the blaze, dancing crazily.
“I’ve lived through the war,” someone yelled.
And somebody else shouted what most concerned them all: “We won’t be shot at any more.”
Aircraft Performance
To dogmatise about such data would be equivocal. Maximum speed at various heights, and rate of climb, of individual aeroplanes of the same type and with the same engine could differ widely. The tension of the rigging varied between individual machines. The general condition of engines, and their tuning, was not constant. The weight of pilot or crew was another variable. Aircraft instruments were not as accurate as they are now.
These facts put in doubt the validity of quoting speed in decimals or rate of climb in fractions of a minute. Where the best authority on each aeroplane shown below does so, these are shown here to the nearer mile per hour or minute respectively.
Comparison between the speeds of one make and mark and another is invidious, because the parameters are not consistent. In most instances, speed at sea level is stated; but the heights above that for which maximum speeds are given vary. So do the heights to which climb was timed.
Where there are divergences in performance of an aeroplane that was fitted with more than one make or horse power of engine, the higher or highest is given here.
MAX.MAX. SPEEDCLIMB
AIRCRAFT ENGINESPEEDAT 10,000 FT TIMEHEIGHT
Shorthorn Renault72 m.p.h.72 m.p.h.8 mins5oom
8o h.p.
Farman F20 Gnome or 65 m.p.h.8 mins5oom
Le Rhone
8o h.p.
Martinsyde Gnome87 m.p.h.
S.’8o h.p.
Voisin LA Salmson65 m.p.h.3o mins2000M
13o h.p.
Caudron G3 Gnome65 m.p.h.27 mins2000M
8o h.p.
BE2cRAF go h.p. 72 m.p.h.69 m.p.h.45 mins
Fokker Ei 8o h.p.81 m.p.h.4o minsio,000 ft
Morane-Le Rhone go m.p.h.
Saulnier N 8o h.p.
DH2Gnome93 m.p.h.25 minsIo,000 ft
Too h.p.
FE2bBeardmore 8o m.p.h.72 m.p.h.52 minsIo,000 ft
120 h.p.
FE 8Gnomeat 6000 ft69 m.p.h.24 minsIo,000 ft
h.p.79 m.p.h.
RE8RAF 14o h.p.92 m.p.h.21 minsio,000 ft
Nieuport I a Gnome97 m.p.h.16 mins2000m
8o h.p.
SopwithClerget105 m.p.h. 96 m.p.h.21 minsio,000 ft
Strutteriio h.p.
Sopwith Pup Le Rhone III m.p.h. 102 m.p.h.17 mins10,000 ft
8o h.p.
FE8Gnome69 m.p.h.24 mins10,000 ft
h.p.
Caproni Ca3 Three85 m.p.h.i3 mins2000M
Isotta-
Fraschini
190 h.p.
SopwithClerget1 14 m.p.h. 106 m.p.h.12 minszo,000 ft
Triplane130 h.p.
Albatros D3 Mercedesiio m.p.h. 103 m.p.h.14 minsio,000 ft
6o h.p.
Spad 7Hispano-][20 m.p.h. 116 m.p.h.12 minsxo,000 ft
Suiza
i5o h.p.
DH4Rolls-Royce113 m.p.h.17 mins10,000 ft
Eagle 3
25o h.p.
BristolRolls-Royce113 m.p.h.11 minsio,000 ft
Fighter Feb Falcon 3
275 h.p.
SE5aWolseley117 m.p.h.
200 h.p.
SopwithClerget104 m.p.h.12 mins10,000 ft
Camel13o h.p.
HandleyTwo Rolls- 95 m.p.h.
Page oRoo Royce Eagle
25o h.p.
Pfalz D3Mercedes102 m.p.h.41 mins15,000 ft
i6o h.p.
DH9Siddeley112 m.p.h.21 mins10,000 ft
Puma
230 h.p.
Nieuport 17 Le Rhone at 3000m96 m.p.h.12 mins3000m
h.p.103 m.p.h.
Spad 13Hispano-at 3000m8 mins3000m
Suiza’33 m.p.h.
220 h.p.
Fokker D7 Mercedes13o m.p.h. 124 m.p.h.10 mins10,000 ft
i6o h.p.
SopwithWolseley128 m.p.h.II mins10,000 ft
Dolphin200 h.p.
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