Fighting the Flying Circus

by Captain Eddie V. Rickenbacker

  On that homeward trip I experienced a great variety of feelings. I had been led to believe that German planes were not very good and that we could fly away from them whenever we wanted to. As I looked back over my shoulder and ascertained that they were gaining upon me in spite of every maneuver that I tried, I felt a queer sort of admiration for their misjudged flying ability, mingled with an unspeakable contempt for the judgment of my instructors who had claimed to know all about German airplanes. I climbed, dived, tailspun, circled, and stalled. They beat me at every maneuver and continued to overhaul me. Just when I had begun to despair of ever seeing my learned instructors again I ran into a cloud. Dimly I realized I was in a position of advantage for the moment, so I improved it to the utmost. Halfway in I reversed directions and began climbing heavenward. After thirty minutes anxiously occupied in throwing my pursuers off my trail, I ventured out of concealment and gratefully made my way home. There on the field two of my dear old comrades were waiting for me to come in. What anxiety they would have suffered if they had known what I had just been through!

  “Hello, Rick! Why the devil didn't you wait for us?” Doug Campbell inquired, as I began to climb out of my machine. “We chased you all over France trying to catch up with you!”

  “Where did you go, Eddie, after we lost you in those clouds?” demanded Charley Chapman, looking at me interestedly as he leaned against my suspended leg. “We've been home almost half an hour!” Here, it seemed were the two pilots—American instead of Boche—who had been chasing me.

  I thought very intently for a quarter of a second. Then I pushed Chapman away and descended from my machine.

  “I thought I remembered seeing a Boche back in Germany and went back to make sure,” I replied easily. “But I guess I was mistaken.”

  CHAPTER IV

  Downing My First Hun

  It will be noticed that my preparation for combat fighting in the air was a gradual one. As I look back upon it now, it seems that I had the rare good fortune to experience almost every variety of danger that can beset the war pilot before I ever fired a shot at an enemy from an airplane.

  This good fortune is rare. Many a better man than myself has leaped into his stride and begun accumulating victories from his very first flight over the lines. It was a brilliant start for him and his successes brought him instant renown. But he had been living on the cream at the start and was unused to the skim-milk of aviation. One day the cream gave out and the first dose of skim-milk terminated his career.

  So despite the weeks and weeks of disappointment that attended my early fighting career, I appreciated even then the enormous benefit that I would reap later from these experiences. I can now most solemnly affirm that had I won my first victory during my first trips over the lines I believe I would never have survived a dozen combats. Every disappointment that came to me brought with it an enduring lesson that repaid me eventually tenfold. If any one of my antagonists had been through the same school of disappointments that had so annoyed me it is probable that he, instead of me, would now be telling his friends back home about his series of victories over the enemy.

  April in France is much like April anywhere else. Rains and cloudy weather appear suddenly out of a clear sky and flying becomes out of the question or very precarious at best. On the twenty-ninth of April, 1918, we rose at six o'clock and stuck our heads out of doors as usual for a hasty survey of a dismal sky. For the past three or four days it had rained steadily. No patrols had gone out from our aerodrome. If they had gone they would not have found any enemy aircraft about, for none had been sighted from the lines along our sector.

  About noon the sun suddenly broke through and our hopes began to rise. I was slated for a patrol that afternoon and from three o'clock on I waited about the hangars watching the steadily clearing sky. Captain Hall and I were to stand on alert until six o'clock that night at the aerodrome. Precisely at five o'clock Captain Hall received a telephone call from the French headquarters at Beaumont stating that an enemy two-seater machine had just crossed our lines and was flying south over their heads.

  Captain Hall and I had been walking about the field with our flying clothes on and our machines were standing side by side with their noses pointing into the wind. Within the minute we had jumped into our seats and our mechanics were twirling the propellers. Just then the telephone sergeant came running out to us and told Captain Hall to hold his flight until the major was ready. He was to accompany us and would be on the field in two minutes.

  While the sergeant was delivering the message I was scanning the northern heavens and there I suddenly picked up a tiny speck against the clouds above the Foret de la Reine, which I was convinced must be the enemy plane we were after. The major was not yet in sight. Our motors were smoothly turning over and everything was ready.

  Pointing out the distant speck to Jimmy Hall, I begged him to give the word to go before we lost sight of our easy victim. If we waited for the major we might be too late.

  To my great joy Captain Hall acquiesced and immediately ordered the boys to pull away the chocks from our wheels. His engine roared as he opened up his throttle and in a twinkling both our machines were speeding along the surface of the field. Almost side by side we arose and climbing swiftly, soared away in a straight line after our distant Boche.

  In five minutes we were above our observation balloon line which stretches along some two miles or so behind the front. I was on Jimmy's right wing and off to my right in the direction of Pont-a-Mousson I could still distinguish our unsuspecting quarry. Try as I might I could not induce the captain to turn in that direction, though I dipped my wings, darted away from him and tried in every way to attract his attention to the target which was so conspicuous to me. He stupidly continued on straight north.

  I determined to sever relations with him and take on the Boche alone, since he evidently was generous enough to give me a clear field. Accordingly I swerved swiftly away from Captain Hall and within five minutes overhauled the enemy and adroitly maneuvered myself into an ideal position just under his sheltering tail. It was a large three-seater machine and a brace of guns poked their noses out to the rear over my head. With fingers closing on my triggers I prepared for a dash upward and quickly pulled back my stick. Up I zoomed until my sights began to travel along the length of the fuselage overhead. Suddenly they rested on a curiously familiar looking device. It was the French circular cocard painted brightly under each wing! Up to this time I had not even thought of looking for its nationality, so certain had I been that this must be the Boche machine that had been sighted by the French headquarters.

  Completely disgusted with myself, I banked abruptly away from my latest blunder, finding some little satisfaction in witnessing the startled surprise of the three Frenchmen aboard the craft, who had not become aware of my proximity until they saw me flash past them. At any rate I had stalked them successfully and might have easily downed them if they had been Boches. But as it was, it would be a trifle difficult to face Jimmy Hall again and explain to him why I had left him alone to get myself five miles away under the tail of a perfectly harmless ally three-seater. I looked about to discover Jimmy's whereabouts.

  There he was cavorting about amid a thick barrage of black shell bursts across the German lines. He was halfway to Saint-Mihiel and a mile or two inside Hun territory. Evidently he was waiting for me to discover my mistake and then overtake him, for he was having a delightful time with the Archie gunners, doing loops, barrels, side-slips, and spins immediately over their heads to show them his contempt for them, while he waited for his comrade. Finally he came out of the Archie area with a long graceful dive and swinging up alongside my machine he wiggled his wings as though he were laughing at me and then suddenly he set a course back toward Pont-a-Mousson.

  Whether or not he knew all along that a German craft was in that region I could not tell. But when he began to change his direction and curve up into the sun I followed close behind him knowing that there was a good rea
son for this maneuver. I looked earnestly about me in every direction.

  Yes! There was a scout coming toward us from north of PontàMousson.It was at about our altitude. I knew it was a Hun the moment I saw it, for it had the familiar lines of their new Pfalz. Moreover, my confidence in James Norman Hall was such that I knew he couldn't make a mistake. And he was still climbing into the sun, carefully keeping his position between its glare and the oncoming fighting plane. I clung as closely to Hall as I could. The Hun was steadily approaching us, unconscious of his danger, for we were full in the sun.

  With the first downward dart of Jimmy's machine I was by his side. We had at least a thousand feet advantage over the enemy and we were two to one numerically. He might outdive our machines, for the Pfalz is a famous diver, while our faster climbing Nieuports had a droll habit of shedding their fabric when nosed down too steeply. The Boche hadn't a chance to outfly us. His only salvation would be in a dive toward his own lines.

  These thoughts passed through my mind in a flash and I quickly decided what tactics I would pursue. While Hall went in for his attack I would maintain my altitude and work toward a position on the other side of the Pfalz, hoping to cut off his retreat.

  No sooner had I changed my line of flight than the German pilot saw me clear of my sun cover. Hall was already halfway to him when the Hun nosed up and climbed furiously for a higher level. I let him pass me and found myself on the other side just as Hall began firing. I doubt whether the Boche had seen Jimmy's Nieuport at all.

  Surprised by discovering Hall just ahead of him, the Pfalz abandoned all ideas of an attack and instead banked around to the right and started for home—just as I had expected him to do. In a trice I was on his tail. Down, down we sped with throttles both full open. Hall was coming on somewhere in my rear. The Boche had no heart for evolutions or maneuvers. He was running Uke a scared rabbit, as I had run from Campbell. I was gaining upon him every instant and had my sights trained dead upon his cockpit before I fired my first shot.

  At 150 yards I pressed my triggers. The tracer bullets cut a streak of living fire into the rear of the Pfalz tail. Raising the nose of my airplane slightly the fiery streak lifted itself like the stream of water pouring from a garden hose. Gradually it settled into the pilot's seat. The swerving of the Pfalz course indicated that its rudder no longer was controlled by a directing foot. At two thousand feet above the enemy's lines I pulled up my headlong dive and watched the enemy machine continuing on its course. Curving slightly to the left the Pfalz circled a little to the south and the next minute crashed onto the ground just at the edge of the woods a mile inside their own lines. I had brought down my first enemy airplane and had not been subjected to a single shot!

  Hall was immediately beside me. He was evidently as pleased as I was over our success, for he danced his machine about in incredible maneuvers. And then I realized that old friend Archie was back on the job. We were not two miles away from the German antiaircraft batteries and they put a furious bombardment of shrapnel all about us. I was quite ready to call it a day and go home, but Captain Hall deliberately returned to the barrage and entered it with me at his heels. Machine guns and rifle fire from the trenches greeted us and I do not mind admitting that I got out quickly the way I came in without any unnecessary delay, but Hall continued to do stunts over their heads for ten minutes, surpassing all the acrobatics that the enraged Boches had ever seen even over their own peaceful aerodromes.

  Jimmy exhausted his spirits at about the time the Huns had exhausted all their available ammunition and we started for home. Swooping down to our field side by side, we made a quick landing and taxied our machines up to the hangars. Then jumping out we ran to each other, extending glad hands for our first exchange of congratulations. And then we noticed that the squadron pilots and mechanics were streaming across the aerodrome toward us from all directions. They had heard the news while we were still dodging shrapnel and were hastening out to welcome our return. The French had telephoned in a confirmation of my first victory, before I had had time to reach home. Not a single bullet hole had punctured any part of my machine.

  There is a peculiar gratification in receiving congratulations from one's squadron for a victory in the air. It is worth more to a pilot than the applause of the whole outside world. It means that one has won the confidence of men who share the misgivings, the aspirations, the trials and the dangers of airplane fighting. And with each victory comes a renewal and recementing of ties that bind together these brothers-in-arms. No closer fraternity exists in the world than that of the air fighters in this great war. And I have yet to find one single individual who has attained conspicuous success in bringing down enemy airplanes who can be said to be spoiled either by his successes or by the generous congratulations of his comrades. If he were capable of being spoiled he would not have had the character to have won continuous victories, for the smallest amount of vanity is fatal in airplane fighting. Self-distrust rather is the quality to which many a pilot owes his protracted existence.

  It was with a very humble gratitude then that I received the warm congratulations of Lufbery, whom I had always revered for his seventeen victories—of Doug Campbell and Alan Winslow who had brought down the first machines that were credited to the American squadrons, and of many others of 94 Squadron who had seen far more service in the battle areas than had I. I was glad to be at last included in the proud roll of victors of this squadron. These pals of mine were to see old 94 lead all American squadrons in the number of successes over the Huns.

  The following day I was notified that General Gerard, the Commanding Officer of the Sixth French Army, had offered to decorate Captain Hall and myself in the name of the French Government for our victory of the day before. We were then operating in conjunction with this branch of the French Army. The Croix de Guerre with Palm was to be accorded each of us, provided such an order met the approval of our own government. But at that time officers in the U. S. Army could not accept decorations from a foreign government, so the ceremony of presentation was denied us. Both Captain Hall and myself had been included, as such was the French rule where two pilots participated in a victory.

  The truth was that in the tense excitement of this first victory, I was quite blind to the fact that I was shooting deadly bullets at another aviator; and if I had been by myself, there is no doubt in my own mind but that I should have made a blunder again in some particular which would have reversed the situation. Captain Hall's presence, if not his actual bullets, had won the victory and had given me that wonderful feeling of self-confidence which made it possible for me subsequently to return to battle without him and handle similar situations successfully.

  CHAPTER V

  Jimmy Meissner Strips His Wings

  From the entries in my diary of this April period one would get rather an unfavorable opinion of that quarter of France in which our squadron was located. “Rain and Mud!” “Dud Weather!” “No flying today!” are a few of the samples. None of the pilots or enlisted men of our American flying squadrons will be easily enraptured in the days to come with descriptions of the romance of this part of La Belle France. The villages are dismal and dirty. Every householder rejoices in the size and stench of his manure heap, which always decorates the entire area in front of his house. Sidewalks there are none. The streets slop with mud of the clinging variety, and even in the larger cities themselves the American finds but little to interest him. An overwhelming love for his own country is the most enduring souvenir the American soldier in France gained from his visits to these towns of the Vosges and the Meuse.

  To add to our irritation, we felt that every day we lost by bad weather was injuring American aviation in the eyes of our Allies. The British and the French had had three years and more of air fighting and the veterans of these squadrons looked upon the American pilots with something of amusement and something of polite contempt. They had believed in the story of our twenty thousand airplanes which had been promised by April. Here
was April at hand and we were flying ill-equipped machines that we fortunately had been able to wangle out of the French and British. Our pilots were not trained under the veteran leadership that England could provide and our methods were crude and new. Our spirit and determination were perhaps never doubted by our Allies, but all of us felt that we must show these more experienced squadrons that we could equal them in any department of aviation, even with our inferior machines, if we only might have the opportunity for flying. And still the rain continued!

  The day after my first enemy machine was brought down we were unable on account of the fog to carry out our air patrols. That afternoon a group of American newspapermen came out to the aerodrome to talk to me about my sensations in shooting down another man's machine. They took photographs of me and jotted down notes and finally requested me to make a short flight over the field and perform a few stunts. The weather was not too rough for such an exhibition, so I gladly complied and for half an hour I rolled and looped and dived about the clouds a thousand feet or so above the aerodrome. But the visibility was so bad that I could not see the ground a mile away from the field.

  On May first Major Lufbery and I made a little attempt to get a Hun, but it ended in a ludicrous fiasco. Luf was attached to 94 at that time, not as a commanding officer, but as a pilot for instruction. He was America's Ace of Aces and our most distinguished pilot. His long and successful experience in air fighting was of the greatest benefit to all of us younger pilots and every one of us considered it an honor to be sent out on an expedition with him.

  We were sitting about the hangars talking and smoking about five o'clock that afternoon, when the telephone rang and Major Lufbery was informed that a German airplane had been sighted over Montsec, just above Saint-Mihiel. Lufbery hung up the phone; grinned his confident smile and began pulling on his flying suit. I suspected something was up and walking quickly over to where Lufbery was dressing I asked him if I might go with him.