Von Richthofen: The Legend Evaluated

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  Pilot Officer Charles Harold Dyson DFC, known as ‘Deadstick’ because he had made more than one forced landing in the desert, owing to engine failure, was returning alone from a patrol over the Libyan Desert that morning. Emerging from a small cloud, he was astonished to see seven Italian aircraft close in front of him. One was a Savoia-Marchetti S59 bomber. Escorting it, in two Vs of three, were six Fiat CR42 fighters. The Italian fighter leader had not taken the precaution of detailing one of his pilots to weave astern of the formation and give warning of any approaching enemy aircraft. Nor evidently was the bomber’s dorsal gunner, who was supposed to keep a sharp lookout astern, alert.

  Dyson opened fire at once. His first burst set the three rearward fighters alight and his second took out the leading three. For the eight machine-guns of a Hurricane (or Spitfire) there was only 14.8 seconds’ worth of ammunition. None was left with which to attack the bomber. Dyson watched the six fighters going down in flames, then nipped back into cloud in case there were any more hostile fighters around.

  When he emerged, another six CR42s jumped him and he spent the next few minutes dodging their bullets until he could safely dive away at full throttle. His engine had been hit and failed, so he had to make another deadstick landing — 120 miles from base. He did not arrive back there until six days later, after much walking and lifts from Army vehicles. Only then did he learn that ground troops who had watched him destroy six Italian fighters had also seen one of these collide with the bomber, which caught alight and crashed. So he had scored seven victories in one action that lasted less than a quarter of a minute. He was awarded a bar to his DFC.

  Richthofen, in Valhalla, must have envied him and admired the aggressive spirit and determination to press home an attack from close range and down to the last round, which matched his own. This, moreover, was a hunter’s, not a shooter’s, achievement; Dyson’s multiple success was owed to the fact that he took all seven victims by surprise — he himself being considerably surprised, too, on seeing them — and not by attacking each one in turn with forethought.

  Dyson scored two more victories in the desert before his squadron was posted to Greece. There, he was shot down twice, by a Fiat G50 fighter and by flak. He is estimated to have destroyed another sixteen enemy aeroplanes in Greece and Crete, but nearly all RAF records of that short campaign were lost. He ended it as a prisoner of war.

  CHAPTER 2 - KNOW YOUR ENEMY

  Manfred was officially credited with his first victory on 17 September 1916. He was flying an Albatros D2, armed with two forward-firing Spandau belt-fed machine-guns, each loaded with 300 rounds and synchronised to fire between the propeller blades. It was Germany’s latest fighter and the most handsome military aeroplane in the world, sleek and torpedo-shaped. There is an old maxim in the aviation world, ‘If it looks right, it will fly right’; the new fighter personified this. Its 160 hp Mercedes engine gave it a maximum speed of 109 mph; in six minutes it climbed to 3,280 ft, to 6,500 ft in 9 minutes and reached its ceiling of 16,400 ft in 37 minutes.

  His victim was a two-seater fighter, the de Havilland FE2b, capable of 80 mph and taking 52 minutes to reach 10,000 ft. This was a pusher type, the engine and propeller directly behind the pilot, who had no gun. In a crash the engine was often jolted forward and crushed him. In front of him sat the observer, with a Lewis gun mounted on a post so that it could be swung through 180 degrees ahead as well as raised and lowered. It could also be aimed astern, if he kept it tilted high enough not to hit the upper wings or the propeller. Only bursts of not more than ten rounds could be fired, or the barrel would be ruined. Ammunition was contained in a drum of 47 rounds. Removing an empty drum and fitting a heavy full one was difficult: the observer had to stand, buffeted by the rush of air, in an aircraft that was being tossed about by updraughts and downdraughts or in evasive action.

  This was the first operation on which the great Oswald Boelke led a formation of his newly formed squadron: one flight of six aircraft, in which Manfred was flying as his No. 2. German aircraft seldom ventured behind the Allied front line; the British and French had to cross into enemy territory to get at them. This morning, the Albatroses intercepted eight BE2cs of 12 Squadron, escorted by six FE2bs of 11 Squadron, far beyond the German line and cut them off.

  In his autobiography, Richthofen describes the FEs as ‘seven great two-seat bomber aeroplanes’; an absurd exaggeration of size and a crass misidentification of type. It was the BE2s that were carrying bombs: 20 lb Coopers stowed in the cockpit and dropped over the side by hand. Also, the positioning of the two types must have made it clear which were the bombers and which their escort.

  FEs (known to the RFC as ‘Fees’) had been operating in France since the spring, so even the enemy airmen who had not yet seen one should have known all about them. The German intelligence branch was presumably at fault for not having propagated the information. The BE2s, smaller and more frail than their escorts, must have been a familiar sight: the RFC had been flying them since 1914. Their best speed was 72 mph and it took them 45 minutes to reach 10,000 ft.

  They were a tractor type, originally unarmed, but the BE2c carried a Lewis gun in the front cockpit. A spigot projected from its underside and there were holes around the rim of the front cockpit in which this could be located. The observer had to heft the bulky 27 lb gun and its ammunition pan from hole to hole, according to whether he wanted to fire to the front, abeam, or astern. That was hard work, swaddled in several layers of bulky garments, panting in the thin air above 5,000 ft, shifting the weapon without dropping it overboard while the light little aeroplane dipped and swayed. For firing astern, a hinged swinging arm was fixed abaft the cockpit and life became acutely disconcerting for the pilot, with a hot blast and crackle as bullets whizzed over his head; and worse when tracer ammunition scintillated past his eyes.

  Richthofen attacked an FE and they exchanged shots. ‘I tried to get behind him, but this fellow was no beginner, for he knew very well that the moment I succeeded in getting behind him his last hour would be sounded. My Englishman twisted and turned, crossing my line of fire.’

  Eventually he managed to get onto the FE’s tail and shoot pieces off its engine, which stopped. It hit the ground near another German squadron’s airfield.

  He landed near it, an act that is often attributed to chivalrous concern for its occupants. It was nothing of the sort. Richthofen wrote, ‘I was so excited that I could not resist coming down. I landed near the Englishmen and jumped out of my aeroplane.’ He had killed the observer, Lieutenant T. Rees, and mortally wounded the pilot, 2nd Lieutenant L.B.F. Morris, who died while being taken to the nearest hospital. However, he made a handsome gesture in recognition of the fight that his opponents had put up: he visited their graves and had headstones erected, ‘to the memory of my honourably fallen enemies’.

  This was a typical fight between an unwieldy two-seater armed with a light machine-gun and a nimble single-seater equipped with two heavy machine-guns.

  The other pilots whom Boelke had led were also novices. On returning to base Manfred learned that ‘Every one of the beginners had gained his first aerial victory’.

  To commemorate his, he ordered from a Berlin jeweller a silver cup 5 cm high and 3 cm wide, engraved ‘1 Vickers 2 (meaning two-seater) 17.9.16’.

  The FE was, in fact, designed by de Havilland and manufactured at the Royal Aircraft Factory. The only Vickers aircraft in France was the FB5 Fighting Biplane, called the Gunbus by the RFC, which had been at the Western Front since 5 February 1915. Like the FE, it was a pusher and the observer occupied the front cockpit with a Lewis gun on a low mounting, limited to fire through a 180 degree arc forward. On the FE2 a distinctive cylindrical fuel tank projected horizontally behind the pilot’s head. Both types had lattice booms instead of an enclosed fuselage, to which the tail unit was attached; but the shape of the tail fin and tail planes differed. There was no excuse for misidentifying either aeroplane.

  *

  The Royal F
lying Corps’s opinion of the German Military Aviation Service (Luftstreitkräfte) at that time would not have pleased the enemy. In 1916 a manual, Fighting in the Air, was issued, written by one of the most experienced and successful British pilots, Major L.W.B. Rees, commanding 32 Squadron. His use of capitals is eccentric but most of what he says must have been of great value. He begins: ‘These notes are based on experience of last year, so that it is impossible to lay down any hard and fast rules, as the conditions alter so fast. The deductions are based on the experience of many RFC officers, to whom I am greatly indebted.’

  The document was reprinted and brought up to date, as far as possible, in July 1916. Under the heading ‘Comparison of Pilots’, it says:

  The British Pilot always likes the idea of fighting and is self-reliant. He is a quick thinker compared with the enemy, so that he has the advantage in manoeuvre. He fights for the sport of the affair, if for no other reason. After the first engagement he gains great confidence from the Parthian tactics of the enemy. Very wisely, he is not hampered by strict rules, and as a rule is allowed to conduct his own affairs.

  The Enemy Pilot, on the other hand, is of a gregarious nature from long national training, and often seems to be bound by strict rules, which cramp his style to a great extent. The Enemy Pilots are often uneducated men, being looked on simply as drivers of the machine, while the Gunner or Observer is considered a higher grade than the Pilot.

  This last gives the advantage to us, as, whereas our Pilot acts from a sense of Noblesse Oblige, the Enemy, when in a tight corner, often fail to seize and press an advantage.

  We noticed that when there were two officers in the Enemy machine, they always attacked, but in many other cases the attack was not pressed home. Untrained Enemy Pilots might also account for this.

  The last paragraph does not merely cast doubt on the quality of German air crew training. There is also a manifestation of old-fashioned class prejudice in imputing lack of determination or courage to NCO air crews; and a hint of the patronising, amusedly contemptuous British attitude to other nations not unknown today: ‘One can’t expect a foreigner to know better.’

  About German gregariousness, Major Rees seems to have been right. The designers of Luftwaffe bombers more than twenty years later accommodated the whole crew in the smallest possible space, to create an atmosphere of mutual support. In only one German type were the rear and dorsal gunners in lonely separation from the rest aboard, as in the British Whitley, Wellington, Stirling, Halifax, Lancaster and Sunderland; and the American B-17, B-24 and B-29. The sole exception was the Focke-Wulf Kondor, which had an upper turret towards the tail; but it flew exclusively on maritime reconnaissance far from land, where it was seldom attacked; and only 276 were produced, compared with 6,086 Heinkel 111s, 5,709 Junkers 87s and 14,980 Ju88s.

  Under the heading ‘Comparison of Duties’, Rees explains that both the opposing air forces:

  divide the machines into two classes. Reconnaissance, by which I mean those that do reconnaissance proper, wireless, photography and bombing, and Fighting, used for fighting only. The Fighting machines are used for Patrol, and escorting the Wireless, Bombing, and Reconnaissance machines.

  The enemy uses his machines differently to (sic) ourselves. His Reconnaissance machines come over our side of the Line only at comparatively long intervals, they seldom come over far, and they travel at great heights. Sometimes fast machines come over singly, and sometimes the slower machines come over in Flights of 6-8.

  The fast machines are so fast that only our fastest machines can catch them. If fired on they immediately dive for their Lines, or for the nearest Anti-Aircraft Battery or Machine Guns. As every village near the Lines has its machine-gun, it means that the machine can dive almost anywhere so as to get a covering fire from the ground.

  He judges enemy tactics fairly. ‘These machines very seldom turn and fight, very rightly going straight back with their information.’

  On the other hand he is hard on their aircraft handling. ‘Many of the Enemy Pilots are heavy handed, so that the machine turns over on landing, if the ground is at all rough.’ This was not uncommon when pilots of any nationality and calibre had to forced-land on rough ground: aeroplanes were so light, they would tip over even with the best of pilots at the controls.

  One of his most cogent observations is, ‘Our Reconnaissance machines, on the other hand, are continually over the enemy lines, so that our Fighters have to go for miles to get a fight. This affects the tactics, in so much as the Enemy can risk getting hit on the engine or through the tank, knowing that he will suffer no more than an ordinary forced-landing. Our Fighters have to be more careful, as hits on the engine usually mean that the crew of the machine must be taken prisoner.’

  Later, he writes, ‘There should be no long range shooting, and if we can manage to disable the Enemy quickly, there will be no need to go out of action in the middle of an engagement while the drum is being changed.’

  He describes German methods of attack. Single-seaters:

  … try to creep up behind their targets unseen. If seen or fired on they dive immediately and come up again after a short while. They do not as a rule accept a set battle.

  The second type is a machine a little larger. It also is a monoplane, but carries either a Pilot alone or a Pilot with a Gunner. They fly in flights of four or six, and travel at a great altitude. When they attack a machine they dive at it firing the whole time, one after the other. They do not stop to re-load, but go straight down, even if they are not fired on. They do not usually return to the attack. They fire straight ahead and straight up, but do not usually fire astern.

  He repeats and emphasises that the duty of a fighter is to put the enemy’s aircraft out of action, and that most of the fighting is done on the German side of the lines.

  It is not sufficient to make a machine land, as machines are comparatively easy to obtain. Every effort should be made to disable the Enemy Pilot, as this nearly always ensures the destruction of the machine as well, even if dual control is fitted. In any case it prevents the Enemy using his armament effectively and stops the machine manoeuvring.

  If the pilot is taken as the target, the shots which miss the target will hit the Observer and engine, or may cause damage to the rigging.

  To be of real use the Pilot of a fighter must be extremely keen sighted. I believe one can intimidate the average Enemy Pilot more by showing that he has been seen than by doing anything else.

  When one sees a machine one is apt to think that hits anywhere will be effective. One is trained to imagine that a small thing, such as a frayed cable, is certain to cause a wreck. Yet machines go up every day and return absolutely under control, but having dozens or even hundreds of holes in different places. It should be remembered that after being over the Enemy’s Lines, machines should be brought back with the greatest care. Machines are sometimes wrecked over their own aerodromes because a thoughtless Pilot does a steep spiral, perhaps not knowing that his main spars have been pierced.

  This was a forewarning of the danger in doing a victory roll over the airfield on return from a successful fight, which killed over-exuberant pilots and wrecked Hurricanes and Spitfires in the early months of the Second World War. It was quickly forbidden. Rees continues:

  The only useful target to really attack is the Pilot himself. This target is very small, being of a size about 2' by 1' 6" by 1' 6", and even then shots which hit this target are not certain of putting the Pilot immediately out of action. Therefore one must concentrate one’s attention and one’s shooting on this small target, the Pilot, till one has obtained one’s object.

  If we attack a machine from directly in front or in the rear the engine may cover the Pilot’s body or vice versa. This is the minimum target which the machine can present, and any shots hitting the target do damage, but there is a lot of room round the target in which shots which do not actually strike do no damage.

  Now, if we imagine a machine being attacked from t
he side, or straight from above or below. The target which we must aim for still remains the same small one, but now the rounds, which before were non-effective, will hit the engine and Observer and become effective.

  This leads one to suggest that the way to attack is straight at an Enemy from above, below or from the side, keeping one’s own machine end on to him.

  It is very hard, when looking at a machine in the air, to know where the Pilot is sitting. This may sound incorrect, but if approaching from below one sees only the bottom of the Enemy’s fusilage [sic], and as the machine is unfamiliar the exact spot we want to hit is hidden.

  With a small Fighter we should close as soon as possible, keeping end on to the Enemy, so that he will have no chance of setting any sights he may have. We are then never at a disadvantage, and we have the advantage of being the attacker. A machine coming at one quickly always makes one a little nervous, especially if one does not know the Pilot.

  Presumably he means that some German aces such as Boelke and Immelmann were recognisable by their aircraft or flying style; Richthofen had not yet joined their ranks.

  Major Rees deals briefly with the difficulty of estimating relative speeds. If two aeroplanes are circling at the same speed,

  the relative motion is apparently nil, but the actual relative motion at the moment of firing is practically the same as though each machine were flying straight. The enemy apparently sits on the gun sights without motion, but the maximum allowance for speed must be made.

  Then, again, as both machines are banking over, it will be very hard to estimate if there should be an allowance, because the gun is apparently elevated.

  About the range at which to shoot:

  The range at which fighting takes place may vary from 400 yards to 4 yards. It is very hard to approach a machine to 100 yards without being seen. Hundreds of rounds are fired every day at machines at ranges estimated at 50 yards or less without doing any damage. At 200 yards one may expect to get hits, and I have taken that as the normal fighting range. I do not think that there has been a single instance in which machines have been brought down at ranges over 400 yards. Thus we see that it is useless waste of ammunition to fire at long ranges, and that one should try and close to within 50 yards in order to do any damage.