Zieger was not that arrogant and was not ready to challenge the likes of the French Lafayette Escadrille, nor American ace Eddie Rickenbacker and Canadian ace Billy Bishop just yet. The Albatross, however, was set up as a reconnaissance airplane with a pilot and gunner/bomber behind him.
Zieger was simply happy to be flying an airplane that would do what a pilot commanded it to do in a dogfight.
This morning, Zieger’s mission was to reconnoiter up and down the Somme Valley and report anything of interest. There was no formation this morning. He was alone. The fighting down in Verdun had demanded most of the resources of The German Army Air Service and because the Somme was relatively quiet, there was no need for a full squadron to be present.
Zieger’s gunner/bomber was strapped in and tapped Zieger on the shoulder to signal his checks were complete. The ground men were standing by for Zieger’s signal for hot magnetos.
Zieger gave a thumbs up and rotated his hand in the air, the “okay” signal for the prop start.
“Mags on!” yelled the propman.
“On!” responded Zieger.
The propman grabbed the large wooden propeller and swung his leg high in the air. As his leg came down he used the momentum, like a baseball pitcher, to pull the prop down and move away from it all in one smooth movement. The engine coughed, but then died.
“Mags Off!” the propman yelled as he moved in for another attempt.
Zieger pushed the primer twice to add some fuel directly into the engine in an attempt to coax her to life. This time she started easily with a small puff of smoke unlike the billows of smoke created by a rotary engine.
The pilot looked over the right side of the nose to see his guide-man with two flags beckoning him to come forward. There were wing walkers running alongside holding the wing tips steady as Zieger began to taxi clear of the other aircraft and hangers. They held onto the wings until he was lined up for his take off roll into the wind.
From a nearby small tower, the controller gave the “all clear for take-off” signal with his paddles, and Zieger pushed the throttle smoothly to full open. The Albatross lumbered forward picking up speed, quickly leaving the wing walkers behind. There was now sufficient aerodynamic control from the ailerons so the wings could be kept level by Zieger’s stick movement.
The tail came off the ground as the airplane accelerated and he began to work the rudder pedals back and forth to maintain directional control. She bounced once, then again; a little gentle back pressure on the stick and they were airborne gracefully banking to the right as pilot and airplane became as one.
This was Zieger’s favorite moment as he and his machine achieved what had been believed unachievable just fifteen years before. Manned flight.
Philip had performed this reconnaissance loop may times before and saw no reason to believe this would be any less uneventful than all the others had been. But, as he started his slow right turn at around three thousand feet to head north, he noted some increased activity about two miles ahead and to the east. He knew that there was an encampment there but it appeared to have doubled in size from two days earlier.
It was a beautiful smooth morning and he gracefully banked his Albatross into a thirty-degree left turn for a closer look. Craning his neck from left to right he scanned the horizon in search of enemy aircraft, he throttled back, and began a slow descent.
As he approached the encampment, Philip was stunned by what he saw. The main road that was just behind the rolling hilltop was jammed with troops and equipment as far as the eye could see. Miles and miles of what looked like lorries pulling artillery and carrying thousands of troops to the Front. This was a massive troop buildup.
Zieger’s heart quickened as he knew British plane spotters would soon be pointing out his intrusion to the anti-aircraft batteries and they would be trying their best to prevent him from returning with this valuable information. He made several quick mental estimates about troop size and artillery types; there were a great number of large guns, sixty-pounders he guessed.
Over the roar of the Mercedes and the hiss of the slipstream a familiar sound caught his attention. Zieger banked abruptly to the east, as he knew he was now a target. Thud! That confirmed it. The thud was coming from the ground and he knew what was coming next. A large explosion of flak pounded the sky off to his left and, luckily for him, about a thousand feet too low. This was the first of many explosions that would be coming.
The volley of thuds that followed was so numerous that Philip knew he was in trouble. The sky exploded all around the Albatross rocking and jarring the airplane. Thick black puffs of smoke that spewed shards of metal were hammering the sky everywhere. Tracer bullets from anti-aircraft guns streamed up in arching waves like a line of white Christmas lights from the ground.
A series of holes stitched across the left wing leaving several large rips in the fabric, but somehow miraculously missing the wooden structure itself. Philip descended as quickly as possible and changed direction abruptly in hopes of avoiding the gunfire and flack that was being generously directed at him.
Pop, pop, pop–the sound of anti-aircraft rounds impacting the wooden covered fuselage of the Albatross causing the skin to splinter and severing the rudder cable in the process. Philip felt the rudder pedals swing freely and immediately realized he had lost the use of that flight control. As the airplane continued to descend Zieger moved his ailerons to check their control, the wings rolled left then right but the tail yawed back and forth due to the lack of rudder capability. Then he checked his elevator by pulling back on his stick. The nose began to rise as requested. That was good news! He could live without rudder control.
He glanced back at his gunner to signal him to keep his eyes open for enemy aircraft but saw that the gunner had been hit by one of the rounds that had severed his rudder cable. The man was either dead or unconscious. Either way, Zieger was now without defense. He was descending rapidly through a thousand feet and going for the ground, the lower, the better. Flack was no longer a threat at this altitude and the lower he got, the harder it was for the anti-aircraft gunners.
Zieger was keenly aware of his vulnerability to other aircraft and scanned the sky to his six o’clock position, but there was still no sign of enemy planes. As he pulled back on his stick to level off at around a hundred feet, the Albatross began to shake violently.
He glanced at his wings and noticed several guide wires on the left wing were trailing in the slipstream. The upper wing had a noticeable twist in it which was causing a buffeting effect and shaking the airplane. Zieger slowed his airspeed and the buffeting subsided. He was passing over British trenches now and was low enough where he knew that the only danger he faced was that of ground fire and that was slight, at best. As he sped over No Man’s Land, he momentarily glanced at the barbed wire entanglements that went on for miles and thought how fortunate he was not to be a foot soldier.
Suddenly there was a horrific scream that flew past his wounded aircraft and exploded in the German trenches causing a cloud of dirt and debris to engulf the Albatross. It was a British artillery round. The explosion’s shock wave shook the airplane causing it to groan and creak, yet the sturdy aircraft stubbornly continued its homeward trek.
Philip was now aware of a warm fluid covering the upper portion of his legs, he immediately worried that an oil line had been hit and looked down to inspect the damage. He knew instantly that it wasn’t oil at all–it was blood. He’d been hit in his side and he was losing blood rapidly.
Philip pressed his right hand into the wound and the blood loss subsided to a trickle. He had to land soon. With a severely damaged aircraft barely staying aloft, one hand on his side to slow the blood loss and the other hand on the stick to maintain control, he had far too much going on to even be aware of the pain.
The wounded Albatross had by now passed well over German lines, and with the comfort of the aircraft engine running strongly, the sweat that had been pouring down Ziegers’ face had started to de
crease. In fact, it began to evaporate in the slipstream as he moved farther away from danger. He was feeling better about his prospects of survival.
Several platoons of German soldiers below were cheering and waving as the broken airplane and wounded pilot flew past. Seeing the tattered airplane defiantly staying aloft after the terrific pounding it had taken was truly inspirational to these mud-soaked trench rats, but Zieger didn’t notice. He was focused on keeping the machine airborne and returning to the field.
He now had a new problem. A gray mist was forming in his peripheral vision and a constant high-pitched ring was beginning to drown out the barking exhaust of his Mercedes engine. The loss of blood was taking its toll on him, he could feel the cool grip of unconsciousness beginning to wrap its arms around him. The mud and desolation of the artillery battered No Man’s Land had given way to green fields and farmhouses. He knew the field was near, but was having trouble orienting himself.
Then, miraculously, he saw the Maltese Cross Flag waving at the end of a long field. He banked the Albatross gently around in a wide semicircle in order to line up for his final approach. It looked like a light wind, maybe five knots, down the runway according to the orange windsock. He was almost home.
Gunther Erhert was drinking a coffee and smoking a cigarette he had just rolled as he sat on the fender of the airfield ambulance. It was a quiet morning, a cloudless sky with a warm sun, not much going on. The only flight out had left forty minutes ago and was not due back for another hour. Just a routine reconnaissance flight, all the action was down south.
As he exhaled a large plume of smoke, the distant sound of an aircraft engine caught his ear. He held his breath to get a better listen. It was a distinctive sound and his well-trained ear recognized the Albatross engine’s characteristic purr as opposed to the harsh growl of a Sopwith or a Neuport.
He looked at his wristwatch. It was too soon for Captain Zieger to return–unless something was wrong. He slid off the fender of the ambulance on which he had been comfortably perched and walked a few steps away from the buildings and vehicles for a clear view of the western horizon. His long shadow fell across the lush green grass as he scanned the western sky searching for the aircraft responsible for this morning’s interruption.
There it was, low, west by northwest, barely visible. Erhert cupped his hand over his eyes. Even though the sun was to his back it seemed to enhance his vision somewhat. No trailing smoke. He picked up his pace toward the tower stand where his binoculars were and shouted out to the ground crew.
“Achtung, mein herren!”
The crew set down the cards they were playing and the letters they were writing and trotted out to see what had caught the controller’s attention. Gunter had, by now, climbed the wooden tower stand and grabbed the binoculars. He was turning the eyepieces to get a better focus on this incoming aircraft.
“Die Albatross! Kapitän Zieger!” he yelled with the cigarette dangling from his mouth.
As the airplane came closer and slowly banked to the left, Gunther got a clear view of its twisted profile. He grabbed the cigarette from his mouth and threw it to the ground below, he then pressed the binoculars harder against his eyes. How is this aircraft still aloft, he wondered.
“Crash team, crash team!” he yelled, while simultaneously grabbing and cranking the handle of the crash siren. It let out with a deafening howl and the airfield came to life. Tent flaps flew opened and trucks clattered to life. The base doctor was picked up and spirited to a mid-field position by a BMW sidecar motorcycle with a large red cross over a white background painted on it.
It was important that the doctor be among the first to the crash scene in order to tend to the aviators who were considered to be the knights of modern day.
As the field made ready for the impending crash; the once beautiful and graceful Albatross shuddered and banked right as Zieger lined the airplane up from base leg to final approach. It was now clear to Controller Erhert that the Albatross was worse off than he had originally thought and Zieger would have no idea of the imminent danger he was about to encounter. Because of the lower wing restricting the Pilot’s view he would have no idea that he had only one landing wheel remaining.
Erhert grabbed the red flag and waved it frantically hoping that the Captain would abort the landing and fly by the tower for hand signals.
Zieger reduced power on the crippled bird and the airframe vibration lessened. He cautiously glanced at his airspeed indicator to ensure he didn’t slow too much. To experience a stall in this condition and at this low an altitude would be disastrous.
The normal final approach speed of the Albatross was eighty knots and sixty knots over the fence for landing, but he didn’t dare go below ninety knots in his present un-airworthy condition. Barely hanging on to consciousness, he fought to maintain control over the airplane. There was no time for fear. This was simply survival now. He looked down the field and noticed the red flag being waved from the tower. Zieger knew what the Controller wanted him to do, but there were only moments of consciousness left. This was a one-time deal, no second chances.
Just a little over forty minutes had passed since his dawn departure and the sun was still fairly low in the southeastern sky. At about two-hundred feet, as the Albatross continued its slow, deliberate descent toward the grass landing strip, Zieger slipped into unconsciousness. The airspeed began to bleed off as he let go of the control stick and the airplane began to shake violently in a prestall buffet.
Zieger was startled awake by the shaking and grabbed the stick lowering the nose in an effort to recover his deteriorating airspeed. He had to hang on just a little longer. The Albatross was now flying at a far greater speed than he would ever consider for a normal landing, but he knew that he could allow it to bleed off in his flare.
There is a condition known as ground effect which allows an airplane to fly at a much slower than normal airspeed when it is just feet off the ground. It is important to slow the aircraft to as slow a speed as is possible for two reasons. First, if you are at or below stall speed, the aircraft won’t bounce back off the runway. Second, the airplane had no brakes, only a tail skid to slow its ground roll.
As the tattered Albatross neared the landing point, Zieger began his gentle back pressure on the stick. Then, even in his dazed condition, he suddenly realized the shadow in front of him in the grass was wrong. He now knew what the controller was warning him about. The plane’s right tire cast a long shadow, but the left was missing.
Although he instinctively tried to hold the airplane off for a moment, he knew there was no alternative–he had to land anyway. Zieger let go of his side and grabbed the stick with his blood soaked hand while he eased back on the throttle with his left. Holding the ailerons so as to keep the left wing high, he instinctively pushed on the rudder to counteract the tendency of the airplane to turn, but it was completely inoperative. He had to act fast.
The right wheel touched the grass and began to pull the airplane more to the right. He lowered the airplane onto the strip and felt her lurch momentarily as it skidded lightly across the wet grass. She continued straight down the runway for several moments until the speed bled off and the ailerons could no longer hold the weight off the left side of the airplane. The bare left axle began to plow into the grass, digging a long furrow into the runway and leaving a trail of dust and soil.
The Albatross spun hard to the left as the remaining pieces of the left gear contacted the ground and broke away. The left lower wing then hit the runway, which caused the counter clockwise twist to increase in intensity. The centrifugal force of the violent maneuver threw the weight of the aircraft hard against the right wheel and it quickly snapped off leaving the Albatross on its belly.
As a result of the right wheel digging in and snapping off, the spinning wreckage was jolted hard to the right, which slowed down Zieger’s corkscrew ride. The propeller also came apart as it contacted the ground, causing great clouds of dirt to spray in all directions. The
prop quickly disintegrated leaving only the bullet shaped nose cone and two splintered stubs of wood. The strength of the large wings kept the airplane from cartwheeling and it seemed the landing was going to be survivable after all. The wreckage slid to a stop some 500 feet from touchdown, an unrecognizable tangle of wood, fabric and wires; all was silent for a moment.
Gunther Erhart dropped the red flag to his side, as there was no point in waving it now. He watched as the Albatross, which had been the newest airplane in the aerodrome fifty minutes ago, touched down and became a spinning piece of junk in mere seconds. He slid down the ladder and hit the ground running, stopping only to ignite a red smoke flare as a danger signal for any other inbound aircraft that might be considering landing.
Two sturdy ground crew members had grabbed a large red fire bottle on wheels from its position by the tower and were pulling it at a trot in the direction of the wrecked airplane. With the dust cloud still hanging in the air, Gunther, the fire team, the doctor in his sidecar and the ambulance arrived upon the scene.
No fire–that was critical–but there was smoke and where there’s smoke, time is of the essence. The fire crew blew the CO2 fire bottle off at the hot engine and areas of potential fire. It trumpeted out a howl and engulfed the area in a cool fog. Another ground crew member cut Zieger’s safety belt off and began to drag the injured pilot clear of danger. He then attended to the gunner bomber, but it was too late for him.
The doctor with his black bag of medical tools and supplies barely waited for the ground crew to get out of his way. He knew right away that there had already been massive blood loss and it was imperative that he stop it from continuing.
He ripped open the pilot’s blood soaked uniform shirt and began to clean the area with alcohol, causing Zieger to bellow with pain. The doctor ordered the assisting medic to administer morphine, but the semiconscious Zieger held up his hand and tried to speak.
The Last Lady from Hell Page 16
