The Escape Artists

by Neal Bascomb

  On July 1, 1916, shortly after Blain arrived in France, seventeen Allied divisions had begun a massive offensive to break through German lines on the upper reaches of the river Somme. At “zero hour,” 7:30 a.m., to the sound of whistles blowing, lines of khaki-clad British soldiers and their blue-gray-uniformed French counterparts rose from their trenches and attacked the Germans through no-man’s-land under the withering chatter of machine-gun fire.

  On the offensive’s first day, the Allies took but a bite out of the enemy’s ruined line—at the cost of almost twenty thousand British dead and double that figure in wounded: the greatest loss of life in a single day in the country’s military history. In the weeks that followed, wave after wave of attack and counterattack resettled the lines largely to where they had started. While continuing to attempt to wear down the enemy with small offensives, the British and French prepared for their next major move.

  For the No. 70 Squadron, there had been no pause from the unrelenting schedule of patrols and reconnaissance missions. Just the day before, Blain had helped thwart a run by ten German bombers over Allied trenches, harassing them in the sky until they retreated.

  As the five Sopwiths traveled across no-man’s-land, the sky went thick with sudden coughs of black smoke. Before the smell of cordite stung their noses, the same thought ran through the whole patrol: Archie! Innocuously nicknamed by pilots after a popular London music-hall song, whose refrain went, “Archibald! Certainly not!,” these shells delivered death in many ways. A direct hit would crumple a plane in an instant, sending it in a precipitous drop from the sky, like a bird downed by a shotgun. The explosion alone could hurl a plane into an irrecoverable spiral. And Archie shells could kill an entire aircrew with a 360-degree spray of shrapnel that tore through flesh and the fragile structures that kept the planes aloft.

  On the port side of their formation, a shell rocked one Sopwith, but its pilot recovered. Another cut confetti-sized slits into the wings of Blain’s biplane, and shrapnel pinged against his engine cowling. As the wouft, wouft, wouft of Archies pounded in their ears, Blain inspected his controls. Everything looked OK. He glanced back at Griffiths, and they exchanged a thumbs-up. As quickly as the barrage began, it ended.

  Onward they flew toward Maubeuge to continue their reconnaissance. Now that they were beyond enemy lines, Blain knew that German fighters were likely to attack their formation, and he noted that there was little cloud cover in which to hide. Griffiths readied himself at his mounted Lewis machine gun, and they both searched the sky. Seconds later, their flight leader wiggled his wings, a warning signal. In the far distance, Blain saw a colorless dot framed by the sun. The British formation remained tight, waiting to see if this speck in the sky would take the shape of a German patrol airplane.

  Nerves tight, prepared to separate from the formation for an aerial fight, Blain waited. He soon picked out the black crosses of a lone two-seater German reconnaissance plane. Some pilots likened the sensation of first seeing the enemy to “plunging into a cold bath.”

  One aggressive move from it and the Sopwiths would engage. Instead, the enemy plane swept past them in a straight westward line, no doubt on a scouting mission of its own in Allied territory. The Sopwiths continued east, no other planes in sight. The Germans might well wait to ambush their formation on its return toward Fienvillers. The airmen would be tired, dulled by the bitter cold, short on fuel, and slowed by the almost constant west wind that blew across northern France. Sixty miles behind enemy lines, they sighted the glint of sun off the river Sambre and reached Maubeuge. The ancient city had been besieged and sacked many times over the centuries, handed between French, Spanish, and Austrian dukes and counts almost too many times to count. Yet it had never suffered the kind of heavy-artillery bombardment unleashed by the Germans in their advance toward Paris in August 1914. When Blain descended toward Maubeuge, he saw that its fortress walls were spilled piles of rubble.

  The Sopwiths broke away from one another to begin their reconnaissance. Cutting over the city, Blain and Griffiths looked for the airship base marked on their maps. They passed the train station, the puffs of steam from a departing locomotive rising into the air. Up ahead, the mammoth gray sheds were easy to spot. On his first pass, Blain saw nothing of note, but the Zeppelins could well be inside. He banked around and descended low for a second look.

  Approaching the sheds again, he eased back on the throttle. In that moment, a spout of blue flame burst from the Sopwith’s rotary engine. Determining that one of the intake valves might be jammed, Blain increased throttle again. More flames flashed out of the engine. As he tried to regain altitude, the engine’s rhythmic, continuous drone became an irregular stutter. The Sopwith began to vibrate around him. A glance at the revolutions-per-minute counter confirmed the fear that had already shot through him: engine trouble. The best he could hope for now was to get his plane out of enemy-occupied territory. There was a chance. He turned westward.

  One cylinder was definitely cutting out. Any attempt to alter the carburetor mix or clear the stuck valve failed. Blain pushed to maintain altitude. The acrid stench of hot metal filled the air, and the Sopwith bobbed slightly up and down in the airstream as it slowed. Blain continued to woo some effort from the engine, mile after precious mile. Then, with a frightening shriek, a piece of metal ripped through the engine cowling and flung off into the air behind them. Flames flared from the broken intake valve and, all of a sudden, the propeller stopped dead.

  Its violent arrest rattled the Sopwith. Blain feared the whole engine might come loose. When its bearings held, he finally faced the realization that they remained far from home. They were going down. The best he could do now was get himself and Griffiths onto the ground alive.

  When Orville Wright performed the first flight in a powered airplane on December 17, 1903, he declared it to be “the introduction into the world of an invention which would make further wars practically impossible.” Hyperbole aside, Wright was correct that airplanes would bring a revolution in war, but not in the way he imagined. Instead of an instrument for peace, the airplane became a multipronged weapon in a conflict that would envelope the world.

  The British military establishment was slow to this realization. In 1910 the chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir William Nicholson, regarded aviation as “a useless and expensive fad advocated by a few individuals whose ideas are unworthy of attention.” The First Sea Lord, Sir Arthur Wilson, followed up by stating that the “naval requirement for aircraft was two.” Nonetheless, given developments in aviation, popular fascination with cross-channel flights, and the rise of air forces on the European continent, the Royal Flying Corps was founded in April 1912.

  Many remained unconvinced, including Douglas Haig, future commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Force. Four weeks before Kaiser Wilhelm II sent German troops into Belgium, Haig declared to a roomful of generals, “I hope none of you is so foolish as to think that aeroplanes will be able to be usefully employed for reconnaissance in the air. There is only one way for a commander to get information . . . and that is by the use of cavalry.”

  With such lack of support, the new branch of the British Army entered the war a fledging force staffed mostly by enterprising, well-heeled amateurs. The aircraft they brought to France were made from wood, wire, and canvas. They had only seventy-horsepower engines, sped barely over seventy-five miles per hour, and took almost an hour to climb to their ceiling height of ten thousand feet. Pilots carried rifles for weapons and grenades for bombs. Soon after fighting began, however, many credited their bird’s-eye role tracking troop movements with staving off the German envelopment of British troops and an early knockout blow in the war. A dispatch to London from the field commander praised the RFC’s “skill, energy and perseverance.”

  Beyond reconnaissance and artillery observation, squadrons started bombing German targets, tracking U-boats, battling the enemy for control of the skies, and defending the home front from Zeppelin and other att
acks. An ever-widening war and increased duties demanded the RFC mint faster, more maneuverable, better-armed, and more stable planes. Further, they needed to recruit thousands of pilots to fly them.

  By summer 1915 there were only two hundred trainees at flying stations. The force did little to shake its preference for individuals of means, pedigree, and attendance at the best schools. Applicants abounded from Harrow and Eton, Oxford and Cambridge. After first asking why a potential candidate wanted to be a pilot, some interviewers followed with, “Do you ride?” The director general of military aeronautics stated that “flying is perhaps a little easier than riding a horse because you sit in a comfortable armchair in a quiet machine instead of a slippery saddle on a very lively horse.” Candidates were also asked, “What is your favorite amusement? Who is your favorite poet? Do you mind solitude?” According to a journalist who reported on the selection process, “Kipling or Stevenson was supposed to indicate greater promise than Shelley or Meredith. A football player stood better with the examiners than a pianist.” It also did not hurt if applicants rode motorcycles, fast.

  Notwithstanding the desire for gentleman pilots, Hugh Trenchard, the RFC’s commander in France, looked for other characteristics as well: “High spirits and resilience of youth . . . They should be under twenty-five, and unmarried. Athletic, alert, cheerful, even happy-go-lucky, the paragon would also reveal initiative and a sense of humour. The greatest strength was an incurable optimism.”

  In temperament and background, Cecil William Blain fit the bill perfectly. Born in 1896, he was the eldest son of a wealthy cotton merchant in Bromborough, a village on the Wirral Peninsula south of Liverpool. His mother, Mary, was a descendant of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter and founder of the Royal Academy of Arts. Blain attended the Loretto School, the Scottish institution that had churned out its share of famous bankers, politicians, judges, and clergymen. The boarding school was also known for its sporting prowess, and like his younger brother, Harry, Cecil excelled at cricket, rugby, and golf.

  On graduation at seventeen years of age, he did not join his classmates at university. Instead, he journeyed to South Africa, where his uncle owned a large ranch and pineapple farm. Rather than follow his father into business, he intended to be a farmer, where he could tend a field, ride horses, and spend his days in the sun. The outbreak of war foiled these free-spirited plans. Blain felt compelled to return to fight for his country. With connections and letters of reference, he secured a spot in the RFC. Its glamour and gallant reputation made it an attractive service for most young men.

  To start his training, Blain ran the gauntlet of School of Military Aeronautics lectures on everything but the practical aspects of flying. Then, in mid-December 1915, he traveled to Northolt aerodrome outside London for flight school. Hours after his arrival he was climbing into a Maurice Farman Longhorn biplane for his first spin in the air. He stepped carefully as he boarded so as not to put his foot through the canvas wing.

  With a fifty-foot span and powered by a V8 engine, the Longhorn looked as unsteady as the first plane flown by the Wright Brothers. “The whole contraption was held together with piano wire,” one trainee described. “Lift wires, landing wires, drift wires, bracing wires: we used to say you could safely cage a canary in a Longhorn without fear of losing it.” For his maiden flight, sitting in the toe of the shoe-shaped cockpit with an instructor behind him, Blain did not have command of the Longhorn’s dual controls. His instructor simply wanted to see how he reacted to the flight—and if he lost his wits when the instructor staged a planned stall in midair.

  Blain passed the test. Then he had a few lessons in the Longhorn, where he learned to fly the aircraft himself. He took off, performed left-hand and right-hand circuits, and landed, all the while suffering the shouts and kicks to the back of his seat from his instructor, who would take over the controls only if they were at the precipice of a crash. After too few hours of flying experience, he was charged with his first solo.

  Blain was not following a set syllabus or instruction technique. Neither existed, nor were his instructors professionals. Most were simply RFC veterans on leave from the front, some washed out from trauma. At Northolt, crashes were frequent, often deadly. Of the roughly nine thousand men who died in the RFC over the course of the war, one in four was killed in training. Planes pancaked on rough landings or overshot the runway altogether, smashing into trees. Midair collisions occurred. Planes overturned and spiraled out of control. Engines died. Petrol ran out. Wings became untethered. Rudders stuck. Pilot inexperience or mechanical failure—or both—delivered death equally. On a typical day of training, it was standard fare for a cadet to witness a dozen crashes. Often the wreckage was so grisly the ambulance did not have to hurry. The flight school took up collections to pay for funerals, and trainees often found themselves serving as pallbearers.

  When Blain took his first solo flight, pilots stood at the aerodrome perimeter, a last will and testament held aloft in their hands. The gallows humor was meant to cut through the tension, but Blain would have to have been made of stone to be unafraid. In his memoir, Sagittarius Rising, World War I pilot Cecil Lewis best described the terrifying thoughts that sprinted through a cadet’s head when first flying solo. At the takeoff: “Rudder—Elevator—Ailerons . . . God! Who said they wanted to fly . . . She’s lifting away! She’s away.” At midflight: “Try a right turn now. Now . . . Oh, she’s shuddering. There’s something wrong. Straighten! Quick! Straighten . . . No, it’s all right.” At landing: “Throttle back and nose down together . . . Shall we get in? Yes. No. A bit more engine. That’s it . . . You’re flying into the ground! Pull her up! Up! Not too much . . . Bang! Bounce! Bounce! Rumble! . . . We’re down . . . I’ve done it. I haven’t crashed!”

  Blain survived his fifteen-minute solo. After a test flight on January 14, 1916, that included a pair of figure-eight turns, a climb to nine hundred feet, and a pinpoint landing with the engine cut off, he was issued his wings. Donning the double-breasted, high-collared uniform that pilots nicknamed the “maternity jacket,” Second Lieutenant Blain had no more than a handful of hours in the air.

  Over the next five months, he continued training in England, a benefit many new pilots missed before shipping off for a squadron in France. At Northolt and reserve squadrons elsewhere, Blain witnessed more crashes, more death, all the while growing to be a steady hand in Avros, Blériots, and Sopwiths. Although no pilot could avoid his share of surprise stalls or strut-smashing landings, Blain proved himself a natural in the air.

  In June the RFC assigned him to the newly formed No. 70 Squadron, responsible for long-range offensive patrols in enemy territory. He left for France in time for the launch of the Somme offensive. Eight weeks later, of the thirty-six original pilots and observers in his squadron, Blain was one of only nine who remained. Some dropped out from nerves, others were severely wounded, and the rest had been killed or captured by the enemy.

  “No use! Got to land!” Blain called back to Griffiths. “Throw your gun overboard!” With the propeller stopped, and the altimeter reading 3,000 feet, they were going down. The lighter the plane, the more distance Blain might be able to eke out of their glide. Five miles was likely the maximum, far from the safety of Allied lines. At best, they had made it two dozen miles from Maubeuge.

  As Griffiths tossed out drums of ammunition, then the Lewis gun, Blain performed a delicate dance in the air. He alternated between leveling the nose of the plane and pointing it downward. Too much of the former, they would lose height quickly. Too much of the latter, they would stall, the wings not producing enough lift to keep the Sopwith in flight. He played by feel, by the sound of the biplane’s wires moving through the air. Whenever the wires started to vibrate at a high pitch, he needed to pull back on the control stick and level out some. When they went almost quiet, he angled the nose down again. With the engine dead, the cockpit was unnervingly silent but for the singing of the wires and the rushing wind.

  At last, the
re was nothing Blain could do but land. They sailed over a French village, low enough to see its inhabitants looking up at them with incredulous faces. Blain spied a level pasture dotted with cows, and he aimed to land on a path between the beasts. He set the plane gently down, and its wheels rumbled to a stop in the high grass.

  Alone but for the cows, Blain and Griffiths scrambled out of the plane. If they were able to fix the engine quickly enough, they could get themselves back in the air and out of harm’s way. A quick inspection dashed their hopes. The crankcase was a shred of metal. One of the nine cylinders of the rotary engine was loose and its piston was crushed. Knowing full well they were stuck, Blain and Griffiths set upon their plane, putting fists and feet through the wings. Of the few instructions their commanders gave them in the event they were shot down, the first was to destroy their machine so the Germans could neither use it nor learn from its advances. In this new battlefield in the sky, every advantage in developing technology might prove the difference between defeat and victory.

  By this time a crowd of women and young children had crossed the pasture toward them, shouting and gesturing frantically at the two Englishmen. Blain understood them to be saying that they had landed near Caudry, far on the wrong side of the line. He smiled and shook their hands repeatedly—the Allies were winning the war, he reassured them. The women urged the two aviators to return into the sky. “Les Boches arrivent,” they said.

  Griffiths opened the fuel tank and soaked a cloth with some petrol. He then circled the biplane, smearing petrol across the wings, while Blain moved the crowd away. Then he set the biplane on fire with his lighter. Flames ran across the fuselage and wings as the first German soldiers marched into the pasture, weapons drawn.