by Peter Albano
“My idea, sir. Add a little more streamlining and maybe
two, three miles per hour.”
“Where did you get it?”
“We only had one, Major.” The Irishman gestured to the north. “I took it from that L.V.G. you shot down last week.”
“I’ll be damned,” Randolph said, chuckling, remembering the audacious German observation plane he had shot down back of British heavy artillery positions and only five miles from the field. Curious and an insatiable scavenger, Cochran had been one of the first men on the scene with his toolbox and a borrowed lorry. Still chuckling, the squadron commander walked slowly around the aircraft toward the cockpit. He was very, very tired. The elusive sleep that escaped him night after night was taking its toll.
As Randolph reached up for the hand grip and placed his foot on the wing of his fighter, he felt the big hand of the chief mechanic on his arm. “You all right, sir?” he asked in his soft Irish brogue.
“Yes. Quite all right,” the major answered. However, he welcomed the help in climbing up onto the lower wing and then the slight push up as he threw a leg over the coaming of the cockpit. As he settled into the cockpit he was impressed, again, by the improved view of the S.E.5 and he remembered how hard it had been to peer over the huge rotary engine of the Nieuport. But the plane rocked far too much and the horizon seemed to be turning. While Randolph scanned his instruments and made the usual checks, he felt Cochran tugging at the safety harness locks. After grunting his approval, the mechanic slid to the ground and took his station at the propeller.
Then pilot and mechanic went through their French starting ritual and the big Hispano-Suiza burst into life with a volley of reports like a ragged firing squad, exhausts belching clouds of blue smoke. Within seconds, the warming V-8 engine settled down into its distinctive full-throated roar. Pretending to check his oxygen bottle, Randolph put the tube into his mouth, opened the valve, and sucked some gas into his lungs. His throat felt seared but immediately there was a clearing in his head, the horizon stabilized, and he felt stronger. After securing the tube, more deep breaths helped clear his head further. Strange how the two drams of rum had affected him this morning. He felt stronger. He was ready.
The cold air at twelve thousand feet helped. Head clear, Randolph continued to climb, pointing the formation north toward Bapaume. They would have trouble finding anything in today’s cloudy sky and he mumbled thanks for the S.E.5’s new instrument, the lateral bubble, which told him if he was on an even keel when blinded by clouds. Looking down, he saw thick clouds stretching to the horizon in layers. The lowest level, at two thousand feet, was streaking horse’s-tail cirrus. Above this deck ranged dense cumulus still heavy with moisture from yesterday’s rain. Randolph was leading Number Five Squadron up through the last lingering milky-white remnants of the thick layer and he was wiping the condensation from his windshield and goggles with the back of his glove when the mist wraiths drew back with breathtaking suddenness, the sky above opening into an arena of brilliant sunshine domed by a perfect eggshell blue. Dazzling, the light came from every direction, from the heavens, the clouds, from every atom of air.
The slaughter and heartbreak had never inured Randolph Higgins to the stunning beauty to be found in the heavens. To the north and east thunderheads tossed their monstrous heads to twenty thousand feet like a range of majestic mountains, the morning sun rouging the tops of the billowing masses with fleshy tones of vermilion and rose while canyons and valleys were the color of burned antimony, gold, and tarnished silver. Below, as far as he could see, a flat plain of radiant whiteness reached to all four horizons, sparkling in the sun like a tray of diamond chips. Brilliant, thrilling, the province of the gods and those few mortals who dared thresh into the skies in their flimsy machines—tenuous contraptions that seemed to hang motionlessly like butterflies dangling from a collector’s ceiling.
He looked at his wingtips only thirteen feet away. There was nothing between him and oblivion except a pair of fragile linen-covered wings, wooden airframe, skinny wires, struts, and a two-hundred-horsepower engine. He looked up. The fabric on the top wing was actually bellying up into the suction above the airfoil—the vacuum that pulled the machine into the sky as he continued his climb. A rip in this fabric and he was a dead man. How insignificant was man in these limitless dimensions where he hung motionless and time and distance had no meaning. An intruder. A gnat. A speck of dust blown on the wind. Transient and gone in a blink.
The wires thrummed, relaxed, and sprang taut as the wing structures reacted to the invisible forces rushing past, rising and falling as the Hispano-Suiza roared and the wooden propeller clubbed the air, pulling the scout relentlessly higher and higher. He scorned parachutes. All RFC pilots considered the use of parachutes cowardly. Anyway, a man should stick with his aeroplane. He who chooses to challenge the skies with his machine should stay with his machine regardless of the consequences.
His head began to feel light. A glance at his altimeter told him he was approaching sixteen thousand feet. Carefully, he adjusted the spring-loaded nose clip over his nostrils and slipped the oxygen tube into his mouth. Checking the canister, the pressure gauge indicated the tank was still nearly full of liquid oxygen and the bladder pulsated as it should with his breath. The nose clip was uncomfortable and the gas always left his throat raw. But they would soon be at twenty-one thousand feet. No man could survive long above sixteen thousand feet without his oxygen canister.
He pounded his head in frustration. It was past time to clear guns. After pumping his fist skyward like a man ringing for a servant, he fired a half dozen rounds from his Vickers. Within seconds, the other eleven pilots cleared their own weapons. Randolph snapped the safety lock back on.
The effects of the oxygen were like a tonic and Randolph looked around with new alertness in his usual search pattern. But the gales sweeping the cockpit made him shiver. He instinctively hunched down, trying to hide from the icy slipstream, and he was glad he had lowered his seat. They had been in the air less than thirty-five minutes and already his neck was beginning to ache. Every day the muscles became stiffer, turned to wood that he rubbed and sometimes pounded with his open fist. Was it fear? Cumulative fatigue? Tension? He had flown over three hundred combat sorties. He firmed his resolve by remembering Hollweg and the way he had murdered Reed.
Wheeling slowly to the west, he estimated they had crossed the lines. Although his visibility directly below was still obscured by cloud cover, far to the south the layers had broken and he could see the ribbons of the Somme and the Oise. Too high to be seen by the naked eye and obscured by clouds, there was no German archie reaching for the patrol. He glanced back at the eleven S.E.5s rising and falling on the invisible waves of air like migrating geese he had seen so often when hunting game birds in the Kentish downs. They too flew in formations, rising and falling in V patterns behind their leader. They, too, were fast, elusive targets. But they could not shoot back. His geese each mounted a Vickers Mark 1 machine gun capable of firing six hundred rounds a minute with a weight of fire of two pounds in a six-second burst; the fastest, most deadly serial weapon on the Western Front.
Finally, they were at twenty-one thousand feet and he felt new confidence despite the bitter cold. The S.E.5 was a marvel. He had expected the controls to go mushy in this rarefied atmosphere, but they were still firm. He rejoiced in the knowledge that no German fighter could be above them. At last he had a machine that eliminated the dread of “the Hun in the sun.” Now he and his chaps had the advantage of the fighting scout’s greatest asset—altitude—and they were eager to give some Germans a very unpleasant surprise. Checking the rivers to the south, which could be seen quite clearly now, he wheeled the flight over where Bapaume should have been. The cloud layers were thinning and he could catch glimpses of the ground, but there was no sign of other aircraft and from this altitude, he could not even distinguish the front lines. He looked for the char
acteristic salvo firing of German archie; saw nothing.
His eyes kept moving, but his mind was suddenly on Cynthia Boswell. She continued to write. He answered with an occasional field postcard. She professed love and still promised to wait for him. He laughed out loud. Then he saw Brenda. The auburn hair, the blue eyes, the fine white skin. He loved her. Could never have her. Between the lines of her letters he saw clearly she was involved with Reginald Hargreaves—possibly in love with him. Maybe he was her lover. The idea churned his stomach and left him feeling sick. His mind moved to his mother’s letters, which had been heartbreaking. She could not understand why he refused his leaves. He chuckled humorlessly. Well, she did not see Reed die. She did not know his new chaps and how helpless they were.
Warmed by the sun’s rays, the cloud cover below broke suddenly and Randolph had a clear view of thousands of square miles of northern France. Then the salvo firing began, to the north and far below. German antiaircraft. He saw Hendon and Barton waggle their wings and both were pointing. Randolph waggled his in return. Leaning over his coaming, he saw them. At perhaps ten thousand feet, two B.E. 2 observation planes circling to the north of Bapaume and at least seven miles behind the German lines. Flying in pairs behind and above the observation planes was the escort; four ungainly D.H.2 pusher fighters. Ugly black and brown puffs of exploding shells pockmarked the sky all around the lumbering observation planes.
The twelve gaily painted Albatrosses appeared suddenly, diving in pairs out of a layer of clouds to the north at about seventeen thousand feet. “Tally-ho!” Randolph screamed, pulling the Very pistol from its rack and firing a red star shell. Punching the throttle to the fire wall, he jammed the stick to the left, balancing with rudder until the horizon rotated ninety degrees and all lift was lost, nose dropping. Then with the stick horsed forward, the S.E.5 screamed downward into a near vertical dive with the remaining members of the patrol bunched close behind.
Carefully, Randolph worked his controls until the nose of his fighter was pointed toward the Albatrosses. The powerful engine pulled the little plane downward at a speed that exceeded the most optimistic estimates of its designers. But the Hispano-Suiza was smooth, the howling wires and bracing firm, and the wing spars strong. This airplane would keep its wings in a dive. Anyway, there was no time for concern—for caution. The Germans would arrive at their targets before Number Five Squadron could intercept. Randolph pounded the coaming, pushed the safety lock off, and impatiently caressed the firing tit with his thumb.
A black machine with a jagged yellow arrow stretching the length of its fuselage was leading the German attack. Randolph felt his hate flare. Hollweg. The swine. The killer. The leader of Jasta Boelcke. And he was not hanging about high above the fight as he usually did, hoping to pick off a helpless cripple and build up his score. Not today. Then Randolph noticed only seven of the Albatrosses were bizarrely painted; the remaining five wore the standard camouflage of the German air service. New men. Hollweg was breaking in new men. But Randolph knew they would be picked. Top flyers. It made no difference. Teeth bared, neck muscles tight like steel, he stared through his ring sight, the usual early fear that gripped him when first sighting the enemy overwhelmed and washed away by the hatred he felt for Hollweg. The only thought on his mind was to bring the black and yellow Albatross into his sights. Randolph laughed wildly and spittle sprayed into the slipstream. The Huns would never expect an attack from above, and as far as he could tell, the Germans were not as yet aware of the death hurtling down on their tails.
The D.H.2s turned bravely to meet their attackers and the B.E.s banked and dived toward the British lines. Suddenly, brown smoke trailed the leading German machines as twin Spandaus came to life. Immediately, one of the British scout planes dropped off on one wing and fell into a tight spin, dead pilot flopping in his cockpit. Another burst into flames and turned downward, leaving a black smear across the sky. A third lost its propeller and, shedding fabric from its top wing, turned toward its own lines. But the fourth D.H. scored, putting a dozen rounds into the engine of a camouflaged Albatross. The German, with a dead Mercedes, began a glide northward.
The sacrifice of the D.H.2s had turned the Germans north and west away from the fleeing observation planes and flattened their dives, causing a loss in speed. The pilot of the lone surviving D.H.2 was unbelievable, charging into the middle of the Jasta and forcing the Germans to break their formation and to take evasive action so that they would not collide with each other and die the way Boelcke died. Another burst from the D.H.2 caught an Albatross in the fuselage, but the entire German formation swirled around the gallant pusher in a twisting, snarling box. Then the Germans saw the S.E.5s.
There was a frantic waggle of wings and the D.H.2 was forgotten as the shark-nosed fighters turned upward to meet these strange S.E.5s plunging from an impossible height. Randolph laughed out loud as he brought a camouflaged enemy plane into the center of his ring sight. At a hundred yards, screaming, “You never met an S.E.5 like this, you murdering bastard,” he thumbed the tit. He had a perfect zero deflection killing angle. The Vickers bucked, spent cartridges flew from the breech, and the machine gun spewed ball and tracers that smashed first into the Albatross’s upper wing and then squarely into the cockpit. The pilot, riddled by a dozen rounds of .303 ball, died instantly, throwing up his hands and sagging against his safety harness. The plane fell into a flat spin.
As Randolph plunged through the German formation, guns were chattering all around him and tracers etched the sky like insane spiders’ webs. He felt a familiar reaction possess him; a fighting madness, a near frenzy to kill more, a heightening of senses and vision to abnormal luminous clarity, and a complete disregard for injury and death itself. He shouted with joy as Leefe Hendon scored, his bullets smashing a German’s fuel and oil tanks. Immediately, a green and yellow striped Albatross fell off on one wing and began its flaming plunge.
Calming himself, Randolph glanced at his altimeter. He was down to ten thousand feet already. A sharp turn costs a plane a lot of speed and a dogfight tends to degenerate into speed-killing turns and near stalls with each pilot diving to regain speed, losing altitude, and repeating the cycle.
Pulling the stick back hard into his stomach, Randolph saw the dihedral increase in his wings and the wires, spars, and bracing creaked and snapped under the enormous forces as the dive flattened and the horizon dropped below the hood. His seat sagged under his increased weight and he felt the skin stretched tight against the bones of his face and the blood draining from his head.
Looking upward, Randolph screamed with horror and anger as Hollweg, climbing and making a perfect three-quarter deflection shot, caught the left hand S.E.5 of the last three in the wing root and the fighter’s lower left wing ripped away like a postage stamp in a gale. Losing its shape, its balance, and no longer presenting a precise line with its airfoils, the S.E.5 ceased functioning as a winged machine; instead its great speed destroyed it in the rushing gale just as if it had run into a stand of poplars. Weakened by the pull of wires and struts of the shot-away wing, the upper wing cracked, bent up, and then ripped away completely. Randolph saw Flight Lieutenant Cowdry’s terrified face turned toward him as the bare fuselage of the scout plane plunged past him like an arrow pointed toward the earth. The young flyer would die the same way Boelcke died, trapped in the coffin of his fuselage. Luckily, Randolph could not hear Cowdry’s screams. But that white, contorted face would remain with him for the rest of his life.
Higgins turned toward Hollweg, but McDonald’s S.E.5 flashed by with a red and yellow checked Albatross on its tail. Kicking rudder and correcting with his stick, Randolph tried for a flat, offhand turning shot that he had used so successfully with the Nieuport. The S.E.5 reacted like a thoroughbred, skidding on its tail as its nose yawed with the target, but slowing. Showing his experience, the German kicked rudder, and rolled away at the last instant, most of Randolph’s rounds taking the Albatross in the st
urdy plywood fuselage behind the cockpit. Cursing, Randolph dove for speed and pulled back hard on the stick, climbing up behind the Albatross which had settled again behind McDonald’s S.E.5.
The three planes formed a murderous daisy chain. McDonald, taking advantage of the S.E.5’s power, pulled back on his stick and scissored back and forth from side to side while gaining altitude. And the German, too, tried to emulate the maneuver, keeping an eye on Randolph, who was four hundred yards behind and sweeping from side to side in his own sine curve, gaining and trying to intersect the German’s curling path.
The German fired. McDonald jinked and half rolled away as if he had read the German’s mind. But another burst hit the S.E.5’s lower wing and engine and Randolph saw coolant or petrol begin to spray into McDonald’s slipstream. Gently, the major eased his controls, finally intersecting the intent German’s path. The German had completely underestimated the S.E.5’s speed and the Albatross quickly filled all three rings of Randolph’s sights. Laughing gleefully, he pressed the tit.
His tracers chewed into the Hun’s upper wing and smashed into the engine. Although surprised, the German showed he was a master flyer, kicking rudder and snapping into a half roll to the left and then all the way over on his back, dropping his nose down into a graceful curving dive. He was trailing smoke. Then flame and he began to sideslip.
Randolph took a quick look around. The dog fight had deteriorated into a series of individual combats that sprawled over miles of sky. Four funeral pyres rose in thinning black columns, but it was impossible to tell who had died. The doughty D.H.2 was still in the thick of it, its brave pilot fighting with a single camouflaged Albatross. He saw Hollweg’s plane far to the west and south engaged with two S.E.5s. But Randolph’s obligation was to McDonald and he wanted to kill the German who was sideslipping slowly away.
