In fighting, your machine is dropping all the time. I glanced at my instruments and my altitude was between eight and nine thousand feet. While I was still looking at the instruments board, a burst of bullets blew it to smithereens, [while] another bullet went through my upper lip.
Any chance of survival for such a pilot depended on the severity of his wounds and his ebbing skills to steer his plane to the ground. Despite the fact that his propeller had also been hit and the petrol tank punctured, O’Brien guided his plane down although he had no memory of landing, and awoke in an enemy artillery officers’ headquarters.
A number of captured RFC pilots were so badly injured that they were exchanged, returning to Britain before the war was over. Once home they were interviewed, and related stirring accounts not only of combat but of extraordinary and heart-stopping struggles in fatally damaged aircraft. Lieutenant John Howey, an observer with 6 Squadron, was one such individual. At 10,000 feet he was attacked by two German aircraft and, from below, an anti-aircraft battery.
One of these shells burst within a very few feet of us, killing my pilot instantaneously, and breaking off half the propeller, at the same time making a large hole in the radiator. The machine commenced suddenly to nose-dive steeply to earth, with the engine full on, and vibrating terribly. I looked round and saw the pilot’s head hanging over the side, with a large wound on the left of his forehead, quite dead.
As soon as I could get out of my seat, I leant over and switched the engine off (I experienced some difficulty in doing this, as the machine was spiralling as well as nose-diving). I then pushed the joy-stick back and to one side, and managed to get the machine level. I immediately stepped over the partition that divides the pilot’s seat from that of the observer, and sat on the pilot’s lap, taking over the controls, which were undamaged. The aeroplane then put her nose up, and her tail down, and completely lost her flying speed. She stood thus for a second, or so, and at first I thought she was going over backwards, but she tail-slid instead and managed to right herself. I immediately put her nose down and made a very fast landing.
I must have been pitched out and temporarily stunned, because I know I never climbed out of the machine, but found myself looking at a mounted German officer and several armed soldiers. I was then marched to the village of Ledeghem. A German officer gave me a photo of my machine, which I still have.
Another pilot to leave an exhilirating account of his final dogfight was Captain Francis Don. He had already served at Gallipoli in 1915 with the 1/1st Scottish Horse, and then transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. In early June 1917, he was shot down near Le Cateau.
My engine was hit at about 10,000 feet which compelled me to descend. I was attacked the whole way down. My observer and I were both wounded; one of his fingers was shot away, and he had also a wound in the arm. I was first hit on my right side, which proved a trifling wound and when within about 1,000 feet of the ground I got three or four bullets in my left arm. We landed without accident. The German pilot continued to fire on us making several dives at what was a stationary target. Fortunately we were not hit again.
Rapid improvements were made in aircraft reliability throughout the war and by 1917 planes were much more robust than the flying coffins that took to the air three years earlier. All the same, death and injury as a result of engine malfunction were common and because of this pilots would sometimes take scrunched-up newspaper or a mouthful of chewing gum to plug in-flight oil leaks. Lieutenant Duncan Grinnell-Milne was on a reconnaissance deep over enemy lines. As he and his observer set a course for home, an ‘ominous knock’ was heard from the engine. ‘Suddenly there was a loud explosion; pieces of metal flew past my head and the machine was enveloped in a cloud of blue smoke.’ The plane began to descend.
I find it almost impossible to describe my feelings as it gradually dawned on me that we were certain to come down within enemy lines. I had a sensation of misery, depression and hopelessness, which grew so strong as time went on that I felt almost physically sick. I suppose it was a form of nostalgia – or was it just cowardice? At any rate, I felt unbearably sad at the idea that in all probability I would have to spend that night in a German prison.
Although it was rare to survive an uncontrolled crash, a pilot might walk away from a crash-landing, albeit badly bruised or injured. Escaping the aircraft was a priority in case petrol or petrol fumes ignited. Then, if downed behind enemy lines, relief at survival was soured by the bitter knowledge that capture was inevitable. There was one upside: a stricken pilot could expect his surrender to be routinely accepted, for the enemy converging on a crash site were typically neither pumped up with combat adrenalin nor stressed with battle fatigue.
Yet no surrender was guaranteed. When a German pilot took it upon himself to launch a ground attack, first strafing a lorry to which an observation balloon was tethered and then shooting up some adjacent horse lines, it was probably imperative that he get away. In his case he was immediately brought down. ‘Everybody was savage at the machine-gunning, we being so helpless in the wagon lines,’ wrote one of the men who chased across open fields towards the fair-haired and youthful pilot. The pilot may have had no inkling of the ill will bearing down on him for a staff car drew up and he was bundled into the back. ‘There was an attempt to rush the car, but the sight of senior British officers defending it with their sticks checked us, and the car got away.’
Lieutenant Duncan Grinnell-Milne’s aircraft landed in a ploughed field and within minutes the observer had alerted him to the enemy’s approach. The two men set light to the aircraft but, as the Germans closed in, a series of loud explosions halted them in their tracks. In the flames the machine gun’s bullets began to explode.
The effect on the enemy was quite extraordinary. Half their number threw themselves flat on their faces while the remainder took refuge in flight. Of those who were lying down I tried a few phrases of my choicest German, informing them that we were quite harmless and would like to surrender. To this they made no reply, merely staring at us wide-eyed. It was a strange position to be in; we begged to be allowed to surrender but our enemies either lay flat on the ground in front of us or ran away. I felt like shrugging my shoulders and walking away in disgust, but presently, when our ammunition had burnt itself out, they plucked up courage and started to return. We were soon surrounded by a large crowd of harmless enough individuals, who stood gaping at us as though we had dropped from Mars. Then some German flying officers arrived and introduced themselves to us with much bowing and saluting as if the war had never existed . . . The German flying officers tried to engage us in an interesting discussion on aero-dynamics, about which we knew nothing, and we took a last look at our ill-fated craft. A few minutes later we walked away with several German officers and reaching a road where a large Mercedes touring car was waiting we were bowed into the most comfortable seats and driven off at a great speed for a village.
One pilot who received mixed treatment on capture was Captain Harold Rushworth. The thirty-seven-year-old had been badly wounded in the right knee while serving with the infantry at the Battle of Loos. After recovery he joined the RFC. In August 1917, while flying over the Ypres Salient, he was attacked and wounded in the ankle, bullets also smashing the aircraft’s rudder bar and perforating the petrol tank. In a spin from 12,000 feet, he regained partial control three-quarters of the way to the ground. Directing his plane into a straight dive, he crash-landed in a potato field, knocking himself unconscious.
I found myself being pulled out from the wreckage by some German private soldiers of a Württemberg Minenwerfer Company. They handled me very gently and at once rendered ‘first aid’ to the best of their ability. I was particularly struck with the manner in which they removed my boot from my injured foot, keeping a careful watch on my face for any indications of pain. They used two of their own handkerchiefs to form a tourniquet with which to stop the bleeding, and bandaged the wounds with their own field dressings. One of them went off to fetch
a stretcher, and soon afterwards a German staff officer of high rank arrived on the scene. He appeared to be extremely angry, and insisted on my standing up in his presence. This I did, but apparently I fainted, and the next I remember is being carried off the field on a stretcher.
Since victorious pilots made a point of visiting the crash sites of downed aircraft, former opponents were commonly brought face to face. Captain Francis Don was shot down by, he discovered, one of the great German aces, Lieutenant Werner Voss (forty-eight victories). Voss’s continued attack on Don and his observer after they landed ended only when Voss himself touched down in order to meet the two airmen. ‘He hastened to inform me that I was his 34th victim’ and was ‘perfectly polite’.
Lieutenant John Howey’s meeting with the enemy was memorable not least for an unholy row that broke out in his presence. Bethke, the German pilot, claimed victory but was accompanied by a German officer from the anti-aircraft battery who also claimed the ‘kill’, maintaining his battery had fired the decisive shell.
The two German officers commenced to have a very heated argument with each other in German, both were very red in the face, and I expected to see them come to blows any moment. Then one of them left and the other turned to me and said in perfect English: ‘Excuse me, but were you brought down by a shell from one of our anti-aircraft guns or by one of our aeroplanes?’ He then explained to me that he was the pilot of one of the two German machines . . . He insisted on shaking hands with me, and said he was sorry we could not have another fight together.
While the men had striven to bring each other down, there was no animosity. On the contrary, Howey gave Bethke his mother’s address and his wristwatch to post home and Bethke assured Howey he would ‘do his very best in the matter’. Shortly afterwards an interpreter entered the room and Howey was taken to the town hall in Courtrai for questioning.
Meeting on cordial terms proved useful to stricken RFC pilots eager to let comrades know they were alive. Werner Voss spoke English and, while talking with Captain Don, offered to drop a note over British lines confirming that the officer was a prisoner. ‘He asked the number of my squadron and the locality of the aerodrome, this of course, I refused. However, he promised to drop a note anywhere over the trenches, and he took my name and rank and those of my observer.’
In 1916, much the same offer was made to Lieutenant Harvey Frost and his observer, shot down by another ace, Max Immelmann.
I wrote that I was ‘slightly wounded and doing well . . .’ The German aviator who had been deputed by Immelmann to drop our note, visited us [in hospital in Courtrai] and told us that he had gone over in a ‘Fokker’ and dropped it on the aerodrome at Bailleul. He had been chased by two British machines on his return. The observer of the LVG [a two-seater reconnaissance plane] we had been fighting also visited us, and showed us photographs of the wreck of our machine. All the officers of the German Flying Corps that I met in captivity were very chivalrous and anxious to do anything in their power for our comfort.
Immelmann presented Frost with a pipe.
Wherever Royal Flying Corps pilots were taken after capture - and many were made transitory guests at the aerodrome mess - their initial treatment at the hands of the enemy appears, in the main, to have been exemplary, impressing those who received such courtesy.
Grinnell-Milne was taken to an officers’ mess in a comfortable chateau where he and his observer chatted with German pilots until four in the afternoon. ‘Here we were entertained to a most excellent lunch, accompanied by numerous wines and liqueurs.’ Second Lieutenant Patrick O’Brien, taken instead to an artillery officers’ headquarters, was given wine and sandwiches before Lieutenant Müller took him to a ‘clearing’ house for flying officer prisoners.
I was there two days and was not put under any guard, but Lieutenant Müller slept in the same room. I know no German, but he spoke English very well, and he told me that he had come from South America on the same boat [from New York] as [Sir Roger] Casement, and that they both came on forged passports. He told me he had translated two books for Casement.
I had my meals in the dining room in an adjoining house, and with the exception of breakfast which I had alone, I had them in company with Lieutenant Müller. I was given three meals a day and tea. I used to get roast meat, potatoes, two kinds of bread and jam. I also had a proper bed to sleep in.
There was an innate affinity between British and German pilots, the vast majority of whom were officers. Combat took place between gentlemen, as they saw it, men who had devised and therefore understood the rules of the ‘game’ even if those rules were interpreted and executed ruthlessly. The German staff officer who had insisted Captain Rushworth stand in his presence was old-school and did not understand the pilots’ etiquette. During Rushworth’s careering descent, he had shot down an enemy aircraft inadvertently crossing his path. ‘The [non-flying] staff officer considered it an act of treachery,’ wrote Rushworth, ‘in as much as, in his opinion, the surrender was consummated when my machine was rendered uncontrollable.’ It was not a view shared by pilots serving in the victim’s squadron: they regarded Rushworth’s action as ‘perfectly legitimate’.
Cordiality was understandable, but the Germans were the enemy and active war did not end with capture. Regrettably, once-clear distinctions blurred amidst handshakes and liqueurs, the risk that Royal Flying Corps pilots would be seduced by such bonhomie was all too real, as Lieutenant Patrick O’Brien saw when taken to Courtrai. ‘There were two British officers who had been there for some time with whom I and the others did not care to associate, as in our opinion they, or rather one in particular, was too familiar with the German commandant, going to tea with him and, I believe, to church. Everyone thought it was going too far.’
The early appearance of Intelligence Officers would alert British pilots to the fact that questions were bound to follow, questions they were not at liberty to answer. These enquiries could be batted away without too much difficulty and might not need to be addressed at all. When Captain Frost was introduced to Max Immelmann, the German ace arrived accompanied by an Intelligence Officer. ‘When I refused to answer any of the questions,’ recalled Frost, ‘Immelmann very considerately requested him to stop worrying me.’
It would have been entirely understandable if British pilots, still experiencing the euphoria of having survived, relaxed. Waving away Intelligence Officers would encourage British pilots to drop their guard as mess wine and good food were served. In such a convivial atmosphere, British tongues might wag, as the Germans well knew.
It is impossible to gauge what chat was mere banter and what constituted ‘softening up’, or direct efforts to collect intelligence. Lieutenant Geoffrey Parker, taken prisoner in May 1917, recalled meeting a German captain who was ‘most interesting’.
He informed me that his relatives were English and that he was a professor of History at one of the German universities. He asked me one or two questions as to the number of my squadron, where our aerodrome was etc and I replied that I would rather not answer . . .
He could not understand why we had come in [to the war]. I then gave him my reasons. He went on to say that every nation had the right to expand, and that Germany was fighting for expansion. I asked him how he explained Belgium and he said . . .
Such conversation seems innocent enough but did Parker say more than he remembered? Where did the conversation lead? What, if anything, might the captain have been trying to winkle out of his prisoner? It is interesting how many captured pilots made reference to the excellent English spoken by Germans they met, and to the number who claimed either familial ties in Britain or pre-war residency. Were their numbers suspiciously disproportionate, or just representative of the significant influx of Germans into Britain? After speaking to a German interpreter, Lieutenant Howey was approached by a German staff officer whose English, he noted, was superb.
‘I see you are in the Bedfordshire Yeomanry, I know a few of your officers very well.’ He told me
he had been educated at Oxford, and was billeting in the town with a friend, who had also been to Oxford, and he would like me to come and dine with him. He explained that I would have to give a verbal promise not to escape, otherwise I would not be allowed to dine with him, but would be placed in a cell for the night, from which there would be no possibility of escape. I agreed to this, and he took me round to his billet. His name was Oppenheim. He lent me five pounds, as I had no money at all, and he took me into the town to buy a few things. He gave me a very good dinner of champagne and oysters, and told me he had procured a very comfortable room in the Red Cross hospital, where I could sleep the night. In this hospital I was treated exceedingly well. The next morning I was taken round to Oppenheim’s billet again.
If there was a blueprint on how to soften up an enemy officer then surely this was it. Asking Howey to promise on his honour not to escape manifestly led Howey to believe he too was dealing with a man of honour, a man not involved in espionage or intelligence. The German officer’s action might seem somewhat unsophisticated today, but RFC pilots were untutored in the concepts of subtle interrogation.
How much was gleaned from officers young and junior in rank is, nonetheless, debatable; not much, believed Grinnell-Milne. In unsubtle questioning, he was asked about the disposition of corps and divisions, of which he knew almost nothing. He was then taken from the enemy’s aerodrome to Army Headquarters where he and other captured officers were ‘pumped’ for information; he wrote that ‘all kinds of tricks [were] played on us in an attempt to extract important news which, perhaps fortunately, we did not in reality possess.’ Grinnell-Milne did not record what those ‘tricks’ were.
Meeting the Enemy Page 22
