Fighting the Flying Circus

by Captain Eddie V. Rickenbacker

“CoupezF' I replied as I cut the switch with one finger while wriggling the rest of them into my fur gloves. Three or four downward strokes of the stick and the mechanic paused a second to look over the fuselage into my face.

  “Contact?” he yelled determinedly.

  “Contact it is!” I called back, snapping on the switch. The well-groomed motor caught with a roar at the first heave and at almost the same time I saw that Hall and Green were in equal readiness for the business of the day. A moment later the three machines lifted their spinning wheels from the ground and heading straight toward the little city of Pont-a-Mousson on the Moselle, we began climbing as we flew.

  When I looked down and found the roofs of Pont-a-Mousson below me, my altimeter indicated an elevation of 12,000 feet. Nothing appeared to be in sight inside the German lines, so I turned to the west toward Saint-Mihiel. The winding river there traced an indistinct line around the hills about Saint-Mihiel, and finally disappeared near distant Verdun. I focused my eyes a little closer and detected a moving shadow some two or three miles inside our lines in the vicinity of Beaumont, about halfway to Saint-Mihiel. It was a Boche—this I saw at the second glance. Looked like a two-seater and was evidently directing the Huns' artillery fire against some American position back of Beaumont. I dipped my wings to signal my discovery to my companions and as I did so I saw Jimmy Hall's Nieuport play the same maneuver. The three of us began our direct dive together.

  As we neared the vicinity of our unsuspecting prey I noticed a German Archie shell break, not near me but in close proximity to their own machine. The Hun shells emit a black smoke upon bursting, which distinguishes them from the Allies' shells, which show a white smoke. Instantly the two-seater Albatros turned and dived for Germany.

  A moment later three more German shells burst ahead of the retreating two-seater. And these three bursts were at about our present altitude. It seemed to be a previously arranged method of conversation which the gunners below were carrying on with the airplane high above them. They were telling the Albatros that our three fast fighting machines were approaching from the east, and they indicated by the smoke bursts the precise altitude at which we were flying.

  Many times since have I noticed this simple signaling arrangement between the antiaircraft gunners and the German airplanes. Upon one occasion I saw shell bursts informing the Boche pilots of my presence above a cloud when I was hiding and planning a surprise party for the oncoming Huns. This admirable liaison between German artillery and their aviators might be imitated with great advantage by our own army. For not only does the threatened machine get this valuable warning, but airplane reinforcements far distant can see these smoke bursts and fly to the rescue with full information as to the number, altitude and perhaps the type of hostile machines ahead of them. Almost invariably a reinforcing enemy formation appeared shortly after these signals were sent up.

  Still another signal was adopted by the Hun batteries to indicate the formation of our machines to their pilots. Through their powerful telescopes they ascertained the relative position of each machine in our formation. If one of our machines climbed high above the rest of the formation in order to perch well upstairs and guard against a surprise from the ceiling, this maneuver was communicated to the Boche pilots by sending up one shell which burst well above the others. Immediately the Boche pilots were on their guard against an antagonist who was hiding in the glare of the sun and could not be seen by them. The single high burst notified them that he was there.

  As Captain Hall, Lieutenant Green, and myself drew nearer to the slower two-seater machine, another smoke-burst signal came from the batteries below. I turned my head and looked about me to see if enemy machines were coming in answer to these signals. Back toward Pont-a-Mousson I thought I saw something in the sky. Keeping my gaze fixed in that direction, my suspicions were soon verified. Four Pfalz scouts were in hot pursuit after us and were diago-naling our course so as to cut off our retreat.

  Sheering in ahead of Captain Hall, I wigwagged my wings and headed away to the right. This is the signal given to the leader of a flight, to draw his attention to a danger that he has overlooked. The next moment Captain Hall had again taken the lead and all three of our machines had turned and were headed eastward. The oncoming enemy formation was flying much below us, which gave us a decided advantage. We could dive down to the attack when we chose and could keep out of their reach so long as we kept above them. Our machines were at that time some three or four miles inside the German lines.

  For some unexplained reason Captain Hall began turning more and more into Germany. I wondered what could be the trouble. Either he saw something in that direction, or else he still was ignorant of the near presence of the four Pfalz machines. I debated the matter for an instant, then darted in ahead of Jimmy and gave him another signal. Fully convinced now that he must see the Boche formation which was hardly more than a mile from us, I came out of my dive and headed down for the attack. With a man like Captain Hall behind me, I did not fear for the outcome. His machine followed close behind mine.

  From our superior height we soon accumulated a speed which brought us into a very favorable position. I selected the rear Pfalz scout and got my sights dead upon him and prepared to shoot. My aim never wavered as the distance between us narrowed. At two hundred yards I pressed my trigger and watched my tracer bullets speeding ahead into the Pfalz's wings. My gun continued to fire steadily until I had approached to within fifty yards of the Pfalz. Then the enemy machine turned over and fell into a spin. I did not dare to follow him farther. I zoomed up until I stood fairly upright on my tail, in which position I looked swiftly around me.

  My first thought was that during the intentness of my pursuit against my victim one of his companions might be getting a similar position over my tail. To my great relief no enemy was behind me. But off to the right, not a hundred yards away, I saw a Nieuport diving steeply down, and on his tail was a diving Pfalz pouring streams of living fire into the fuselage and cockpit of the American machine. Even as I watched this frightful death chase, the tables were suddenly turned. Hall or Green, whichever it was, seeming to tire of the monotony, zoomed quickly upward and looped his machine completely over, coming out of the loop just as the Pfalz went under him. In a twinkling the situation was reversed and the Nieuport was pouring bullets at the rate of 650 per minute into the Boche machine, ahead.

  The Boche fell and I piqued down and flew alongside the victorious Jimmy Hall. My surprise can be imagined when I discovered not Hall, but Green looking across at me from his seat! And no other machine was in the sky. What could have happened to Jimmy Hall?

  We flew homeward together, Green and I, encountering a furious storm of Archie as we crossed the trenches. Arrived at the landing ground, I immediately ran over to Green to inquire for news of Jimmy. My heart was heavy within me, for I was certain what the answer would be.

  'Went down in a tail spin with his upper wing gone!” Green informed me without my speaking. “I saw him dive onto a Boche just as I began my attack. The next I saw of him, he was going in a spin and the Boche was still firing at him as he was falling. He must have struck just back of those woods behind Montsec.”

  I cannot describe the joy that came to the squadron about a month later when we received a letter from Jimmy Hall himself. He wrote from a hospital in Germany, where he was laid up with a broken ankle. He had not been shot down in the combat, as we had supposed, but had dived too swiftly for the weak wing structure of a Nieuport. His upper wing had collapsed in full flight; and not until he had almost reached the ground had he been able to straighten out his airplane. In the crash he had escaped with merely a cracked ankle. In another fortnight he hoped he would be as good as ever.

  On November 19, 1918, when the day came for the French Army to march in and occupy the fortress and city of Metz, several of the officers from our squadron flew over from our aerodrome at Rembercourt to witness the ceremony. We appeared to be the first Americans that the Metz popula
ce had seen. One of the first citizens that spoke to us while we were overlooking the triumphal procession through the Plaza, asked us if we knew an American aviator named Captain Hall. We immediately gathered around him and drew him to one side.

  “Well,” he said, half in French and half in German, “your Captain Hall was confined in the hospital here for many weeks and then was in a prison. Only yesterday the Germans evacuated Metz and all their prisoners were set at liberty. Captain Hall left here yesterday in the direction of Nancy. He walked away quite nicely with the aid of a cane, and perhaps he will be able to get a ride part of the way.”

  Upon our return to the aerodrome from Metz next day, we learned that Jimmy Hall had indeed come through the lines. He had gone to Paris for a rest. A number of his old friends immediately got into their machines and flew to Paris, where they greeted their long lost comrade with appropriate ceremonies at the justly celebrated Inn of Monsieur de Crillon—that American aviator's rendezvous and oasis in Paris.

  And from Jimmy Hall himself we learned the true facts of his accident that day over Montsec. He had overtaxed his Nieuport by too fast a dive. A wing gave way and threatened to drop him into the woods below. But by nursing his machine along with engine half on he was succeeding, just as Jimmy Meissner had done the day before, in making appreciable headway toward home, when he felt a violent blow on his engine. His motor stopped dead. Again he dropped utterly out of control and eventually crashed in an open field, suffering a badly broken ankle.

  One of the pilots with whom we had just been fighting landed nearby and came over and made him prisoner. A brief inspection of his motor showed that the violent blow he had felt in mid-air was the result of a direct hit by a dud shell! By some miracle it had failed to explode!

  The Pfalz pilot took Captain Hall to his own squadron quarters where he dined that night with the German aviators. They admitted to him that they had lost two machines in the fight with our formation that day.

  Two machines! Green shot one down, but who got the other? I had seen my man fall in a spin, but having no time to follow him down, I had concluded that he was shamming and was in reality quite unhurt. I had not even thought that I had won a victory in that combat. Imagine my surprise when Captain Hall later described how he himself had seen my antagonist burst into flames and crash, burned to a crisp! And the surviving pilots of his squadron admitted to Captain Hall that they had lost two machines in that day's fight! Thus do victories sometimes come to the air fighter without his realizing it. This enemy machine was never claimed and never credited to me.

  Captain Hall's disappearance that day was known to the whole civilized world within twenty-four hours. Well known to the public as a gifted author, he was beloved by all American aviators in France as their most daring air fighter. Every pilot who had had the privilege of his acquaintance burned with a desire to avenge him.

  Within fifteen minutes after I had landed from Hall's last patrol I encountered old Luf walking toward the aerodrome with a set look of determination on his usually merry features that presaged no mercy to the enemy. He was, I knew, one of Jimmy's very intimate friends. For many months they had flown together in the famous old Lafayette Escadrille.

  His mechanics, seeing his approach, anticipated his wishes and began pushing out his plane and collecting his flying equipment for him. Without uttering a word Lufbery pulled on his flying suit, climbed into his machine and set out toward Germany.

  He flew for an hour and a half without encountering an enemy plane. Then with but half an hour's petrol remaining he flew deeper into Germany to attack singlehanded three fighting machines which he detected north of Saint-Mihiel. One of these he shot down and the others took to their heels. The following day his victory was confirmed by an advanced post which had witnessed the combat.

  Pathetic and depressing as was the disappearance of James Norman Hall to all of us, I am convinced that the memory of him actually did much to account for the coming extraordinary successes of his squadron. Every pilot in his organization that day swore to revenge the greatest individual loss that the American Air Service had yet suffered.

  CHAPTER VII

  New Responsibilities

  It was on May 8, 1918, the day following the melancholy disappearance of Captain Jimmy Hall, that I was notified that I was to take his place and henceforth was to command Number 1 Flight in our squadron. While very much gratified by this promotion I could not help realizing that before the day was over some other man in my Flight might be taking over the command in my place just as I was taking it from Captain Hall.

  Several ideas that might enable me to prolong my life in aviation had made indelible impressions upon my mind during the past weeks. Several of them had come to my attention through the ludicrous blunders I had been making. I resolved as soon as I became Flight Commander, that I should begin by schooling the pilots under my care in some of the life-saving tricks that I had learned. The dangerous frailty of the Nieuport's wings was one item to bear in mind.

  Another of these little precautions that might spell the difference between life and death was the habit I forced upon myself always to make one or two complete circles of the aerodrome before landing at the end of a patrol. The necessity for such a trifling precaution is reasonable. Diving swiftly and suddenly from fifteen thousand feet altitude where the air is thin and very cold, to the ground level where the change in the pressure upon the ears is often severe, may very easily make the airman dizzy. He may misjudge his distance above the earth and crash unexpectedly when trying only to skim the ground. A circuit or two just above the surface of the landing field will give him time to adjust his vision and accustom himself to the change in the air pressure. It takes but a minute and may save a life. Incidentally one can look about and see that no other planes are preparing to land in the same spot at the same time.

  Two days after assuming my new command I was returning with my Flight late in the afternoon from a patrol. As we circled about our field I noticed a plane flattening out for a landing below me. I watched him for a moment and saw that he was coming in perfectly. The next instant I noticed another plane coming in to land from exactly the opposite direction. The wheels of both machines touched earth at the opposite ends of the field at approximately the same moment. I was powerless to do more than watch the climax of this stupid proceeding, though I believe I did try to shout to each of them to look out for the other fellow. Of course I could not make myself heard by anybody, but I couldn't help shouting, for I knew instinctively that they were in for a jolly good crash.

  The two machines sped gracefully toward each other head on, very much like a staged railroad collision at a county fair. Exactly in the middle of the field they met, the two wings embraced each other in an “aleman left” figure of the lancers and around and around they went, spinning like a top. In the midst of the revolving dance the synchronizing mechanism on Captain Kenneth Marr's machine gun became involved and flaming tracer bullets and incendiary bullets shot out of the merry-go-round at the rate of 650 rounds per minute. From my box seat above it looked very much like a Fourth of July celebration, with a gigantic pinwheel shooting out living sparks in every direction.

  Fortunately not a soul was hurt during the entire celebration, as seems to be the usual lucky outcome of mimic war maneuvers. Both pilots crawled out of the wreckage, shook hands and walked over to the hangars to tell the men in shelter that the show was over. Then we made our landing.

  Next day Reed Chambers accompanied me on a patrol across the German lines and we made another rather interesting discovery. Four splendid Albatros machines were approaching us from over Thiaucourt, which was about four miles inside the enemy's territory. They were in good formation and were at about our altitude. I wigwagged over to Reed and he wigwagged back to me. We both understood each other. We were two against the enemy four, but the two on our side had full confidence in each other and both were fairly well bucked up over the recent successes of our squadron. Perhaps the oppos
ing four might be lacking in this mutual confidence. At any rate, it was worth the chance of trying a bluff to see if we could not get them separated.

  It is half the game to know thoroughly one's partner and his capabilities in air fighting, as it is in any other accomplishment. Reed Chambers was a daredevil to all appearances, and was always an eager flier, but I had noticed that he combined a rare caution with his recklessness, making him an excellent and reliable comrade in a fight. Subsequently Reed accumulated seven official victories to his credit and at the end of the war he stood next to me in the number of hours' flying over enemy's lines.

  Turning simultaneously toward the Albatros group, we put on our engines and headed directly into them. We didn't swerve an inch from our parallel course as we shot straight at the center of the approaching quartet. Whether they thought we were two furious expert fighters from the United States or two crazy amateurs who might ram them in mid-air I do not know, but before we had arrived within fair shooting range the leader banked over, turned tail and, the rest of the formation sheepishly following him, they all four dived steeply down into Germany, leaving us a vacant sky over Thiaucourt. We had bluffed out a superior formation through sheer impudence.

  May 12 was “dud” as far as aviation was concerned, but it was brightened with one of the pleasantest incidents that marked my stay in France. Colonel Mitchell telephoned over to the aerodrome to invite several of us to make a call with him at Chateau Sirur, a magnificent estate of an old French family, situated some fifty miles south of our aerodrome. Major Huffer, with several other officers from our squadron, left the mess with me immediately after lunch and we reached the chateau within a few minutes of the arrival of Colonel Mitchell and Major Hall. The Countess gave us a most cordial greeting, then took us over a part of the estate, which consisted of a park some ten miles square. The grounds were heavily wooded and beautifully kept. Through the woodland curved a winding stream which was spanned at intervals with quaint and ancient stone bridges. Fish ponds and shooting preserves provided the chateau with wild game the year around. Several wild boars crossed our road a few paces in front of us during our walk. Shooting wild boar, we were told, was one of the favorite pastimes of the occupants of the chateau.