Little the airmen of the first air war achieved seems reflected in any discernible political reality today, except perhaps for their having established aviation as a vital dimension of modern warfare. Yet their more benign legacy survives indelibly in the aircraft we fly about the world in and whose safety we take for granted. In effect they were all unwitting test pilots, which is why so many were marked for death as they climbed up among the wires and spars into their tiny bare cockpits and called to the mechanic to swing the propeller.
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Picture Section
Endpapers
Chronology of the First Air War
Note on the Classification of Aircraft Types
Glossary
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Endnotes
List of Illustrations
Index
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James Hamilton-Paterson
Also by James Hamilton-Paterson
An invitation from the publisher
Picture Section
1. An early B.E.2c. A remarkably stable British machine designed in 1912 expressly for reconnaissance and photography, it later acquired unfair notoriety by being pressed into combat situations such as artillery spotting in which it was virtually defenceless.
2. A photo by Stephen Slater of Matthew Boddington flying their replica B.E.2c. Unlike the earliest versions of the type this has staggered wings and ailerons instead of using wing-warping. The skid undercarriage was authentic until spring 1915.
3. A ‘Rumpity’ or Maurice Farman MF.11 ‘Shorthorn’. The flares throw into relief the birdcage construction that so baffled trainee RFC pilots like W.E. Johns when first they tried to climb into the exposed nacelle of this prewar ‘pusher’ design.
4. The Fokker E.III, the world’s first warplane with a synchronised machine gun. It was primarily responsible for the ‘Fokker scourge’ of winter 1915–16 and was much feared despite its poor handling due to using wing-warping rather than ailerons. It also had a tendency to shed its wings in a dive.
5. Anton ‘Anthony’ Fokker (1890–1939) the Dutch pioneer aviator and designer. He went to work in Berlin before the war and produced several of Germany’s best fighter aircraft. The unarmed prototype M.18 seen here never became one of them. He is also credited with designing the first reliable synchronisation gear in 1915.
6. A pre-war flight instructor and test pilot for Louis Blériot, Adolphe Pégoud was the second man ever to loop the loop and the first pilot to parachute from his aircraft. In 1915 he became the world’s first air ace and was known in France as le roi du ciel.
7. The king lies dead. Pégoud was shot down in late August 1915 by one of his ex-students, Walter Kandulski. When he learned who his victim was, Kandulski reportedly burst into tears.
8. An RNAS Sopwith 1½-Strutter taking off from a platform built over the forward turret of a battle cruiser, probably in 1917. This was the first British aircraft with a synchronised machine gun, although the aircraft on test here is plainly unarmed.
9. German aces Max Immelmann (l.) and Oswald Boelcke (r.), arguably the joint founders of aerial combat as combining technique in the air with organisation on the ground. Both were killed in 1916 leaving a legacy that long outlived them.
10. French ace Georges Guynemer pictured days before he went missing in September 1917 with 54 victories. His body was never found. The stick-thin legs and thousand-yard stare betray the true cost of becoming a national hero. He was 22.
11. A recruitment poster of 1915 in response to the early Zeppelin air raids on London. The admonishing, homiletic tone cloaked the reality that the military authorities were utterly unable to protect the capital or organise its citizens’ defence.
12. Women workers applying dope to aircraft wings. The complete absence of protective clothing – not even gloves - is striking. Such workers were frequently overcome by toxic fumes. Chronic poisoning and even death were not uncommon.
13. A downed German aircraft near Verdun in 1916. French soldiers shield their faces from the intense heat while one appears to be going through the airman’s papers to identify him. Such papers in a wallet often miraculously survived.
14. Curious German soldiers contemplate their fallen enemy. From the proximity to his body of the barbette ring it is possible the dead British airman was the observer/gunner. He is wearing the thigh-length sheepskin-lined boots known as ‘fugs’.
15. This famous image of a falling German airman was revealed as a hoax in the early 1980s. Wesley D. Archer, an American pilot who had served in the RFC, faked this and sundry images of dogfights in a studio and published them anonymously in 1933.
16. An RNAS Sopwith Pup armed with Le Prieur incendiary rockets for attacking observation balloons. The much-loved Pup charmed all who flew it. The notoriously inaccurate rockets were much less popular, needing to be fired in a steep dive at a maximum range of 100 yards through a barrage of defensive fire.
17. The Siemens-Schuckert R.VIII was the last of the ‘Giant’ series of German bombers. Designed in 1916, it was the world’s largest bomber by far, with six engines and a wingspan of 157 feet: greater than that of the Second World War’s Boeing B-29 Superfortress.
18. Manfred von Richthofen wearing his ‘Blue Max’ in Cologne on 17th June 1917. Fresh from the recent ‘Bloody April’ he now had nearly 60 Entente victories. The Albatros C.III behind him was not his: he was probably ferrying it back to Jasta 11 in Courtrai.
19. The Nieuport 11 or ‘Bébé’ did much to end the ‘Fokker scourge’ in 1916. For many months RFC aces like Bishop and Ball preferred this superb French fighter despite its lack of a synchronised machine gun. Note the narrow lower wings of its ‘sesquiplane’ design.
20. No. 1 Squadron RAF’s officers, ground crew and at least two canine mascots drawn up on Clairmarais aerodrome near Ypres in July 1918. The aircraft are S.E.5a scouts. The men at either end of the front group are two American pilots who served with this British squadron.
21. Billy Bishop in the cockpit of his Nieuport 17 in late summer 1917. With 72 victories he was not only the top scoring Canadian ace but that of the British Empire as well. His very dangerous ‘lone wolf ’ tactics led to controversy over unverifiable claims and especially over his Victoria Cross.
22. The observer in an F.E.2d’s nacelle demonstrates firing back over the top wing. With no parachute or safety belt he might have to balance on the cockpit rim during violent manoeuvres. He also manned the front Lewis gun and the camera visible on the right.
23. Ernst Udet standing beside his Albatros D.III. Udet became Germany’s second-highest scoring ace of the war with 62 victories and survived to become a playboy alcoholic. He shot himself in 1941, exasperated by Hitler’s mishandling of the Luftwaffe
24. The SPAD S.XIII: another excellent French fighter, with a top speed of 135 mph and a ceiling of 22,000 ft. It was flown to brilliant effect by Guynemer, Fonck and Baracca as well as by the Americans Luke and Rickenbacker (whose insignia this aircraft bears).
25. The Sopwith Triplane was a revolutionary design flown by the RNAS. In its short career it showed superiority over the Albatros D.III and triggered a triplane fashion among the Central Powers that produced Fokker’s Dr.I and thirteen other lookalikes.
26. The Fokker Dr.I was a quite different aircraft to the Sopwith, highly manoeuvrable but prone to wing failures. Although he only scored 19 of his 80 victories in the triplane Richthofen is indelibly associated with this type in which he died.
27. W. O. Bentley’s magnificent B.R.2, perhaps the apotheosis of the rotary engine and the last of its kind to be used by the RAF (in the post-war Sopwith Snipe). It also powered some Camels. With a displacement of nearly 25 litres it was rated at 250 h.p.
28. The highest-scoring of all WWI fighters, the Sopwith Camel was also a serial killer of incautious and trainee pilots. Engine, gun, fuel tanks a
nd pilot were all contained in the aircraft’s first six feet. Those who mastered it swore by it. Those who didn’t swore at it.
29. This S.E.5E was a version of the S.E.5 built in America after the war as a trainer. It lacks armament but is otherwise the same aircraft that in sheer strength and speed outdid the Camel. Many pilots thought it the most successful British design of the war.
30. A replica of the Fokker D.VII, the aircraft reputed to ‘turn a mediocre pilot into a good one and a good pilot into an ace.’ Its reputation led to the Allies’ nearsuperstitious confiscation of hundreds of these capable but outmoded aircraft after the Armistice.
31. A German aerial shot of a bombing raid on a British camp near the Suez Canal. The sun was low, making the uncamouflaged bell tents look like ice cream cones. Given such air attacks, pitching them together in neat ranks displayed little military acumen.
32. A D.H.4 daybomber drops its ‘pills’ some time after May 1918. This outstanding aircraft is the type W.E. Johns flew and was shot down in. The machine depicted is one of the 3,227 D.H.4s built in America for the RAF and has the Usdesigned Liberty 12 engine.
33. This archive photo is captioned ‘An Italian aeroplane chases an Austrian Albatros in the Alps.’ Its main value is to show the forbidding terrain such airmen constantly overflew outside Western Europe and in which they frequently disappeared.
34. A German ground crewman holds the eightfoot static line of his pilot’s Heinecke parachute. The Heinecke saved many German and Austrian lives in the last six months of the war. By contrast, no Allies’ aircrew were ever issued with parachutes.
Endpapers
Chronology of the First Air War
1903
The Wright brothers’ first powered and manned flight.
1908
Sam Cody makes the first powered aircraft flight in Britain at Farnborough.
1909
Louis Blériot flies the Channel.
1910
Hon. Charles Stuart Rolls becomes the first person in Britain to die while flying a powered aircraft.
1911
Italian army airmen in Libya are the first to drop bombs from an aircraft.
1912
French army airmen bomb Moroccan rebels.
The British Army forms the Royal Flying Corps strictly for aerial observation. The Central Flying School is established for instructors. The Royal Navy forms the Royal Naval Air Service and inherits the Army’s Balloon Corps. The Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough becomes the official British aviation research establishment under its superintendent, Mervyn O’Gorman.
1913
February: German airships are seen over Whitby.
August: Sam Cody is killed at Farnborough.
1914
July 28–August 4: the First World War breaks out incrementally. Britain declares war on Germany on August 4.
August 13: Britain’s four RFC squadrons of largely obsolete aircraft fly in stages to France, one crashing at Netheravon and killing both aircrew.
August 22: The first RFC aircraft to be shot down, an Avro 504, succumbs to ground fire from German infantry.
All the combatants’ air forces are beginning to employ aircraft for observation.
September: Observation and reconnaissance by RFC aircraft prove invaluable to Allied commanders on the ground in the Battle of Mons and the Battle of the Marne, where the German advance into France is halted.
Aircrew on all sides are using pistols and rifles to shoot at each other in the air as the war on the ground becomes increasingly static and literally entrenched. Various experiments are made in mounting machine guns in aircraft for the observer’s use.
October: A French Voisin shoots down a German Aviatik: the first successful downing of one aircraft by another.
October–November: First Battle of Ypres. An Allied Pyrrhic victory in which the regular British Army is decimated, emphasising the need for rapid recruitment.
December 16: German warships shell Scarborough and Hartlepool.
December 24 & 25: Two German aircraft drop the first bombs on British soil near Dover and Sheerness. Opposed only by inaccurate anti-aircraft fire, they escape.
1915
January: Zeppelins bomb Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn.
The European battlefront has more or less stabilised and now stretches from the Channel to Switzerland.
Most aircraft over the battlefields in France and Belgium are still two-seat observation machines but single-seat ‘scouts’ are being designed purely as fighters.
January–February: Ottoman and German forces attack the Suez Canal at the start of a long Middle-Eastern campaign in which aircraft play a major role in reconnaissance.
February: British and French troops respond to a Russian request to help weaken a Turkish attack in the Caucasus. The naval campaign begins.
April: The Gallipoli campaign also gets under way on land.
First Zeppelin air raids on London.
April 1: The French airman Roland Garros in a Morane-Saulnier ‘Parasol’ monoplane becomes the first pilot in history to shoot down another aircraft using a fixed machine gun firing through the arc of his own propeller, but the synchronisation gear still needs development.
April 22: Second Battle of Ypres begins, during which Germans use poison gas for the first time. Heavy British casualties.
May: British Cunard passenger liner RMS Lusitania is sunk by a German U-boat, causing outrage on both sides of the Atlantic.
The British Army’s growing shortage of artillery shells causes the ‘Shell Crisis’ whose repercussions will help bring down the Asquith government in 1916.
Italy joins the war on the side of the Entente (Allies).
July 11: The German light cruiser SMS Königsberg is destroyed in German East Africa as the result of aerial reconnaissance by RNAS aircraft.
July 18: The French pilot Adolphe Pégoud shoots down his sixth German aircraft and is awarded ‘ace’ status, becoming the first-ever air ace.
July 25: Captain Lanoe Hawker shoots down three German aircraft in one day, earning the Victoria Cross.
A turning point is reached in the history of aerial warfare. Having learned from a crashed Parasol’s secrets, Anthony Fokker designs his own superior synchronisation system and installs it in his new E.I Eindecker (monoplane). Thus begins the so-called ‘Fokker Scourge’ that lasts roughly six months when Allied aircraft, lacking synchronised machine guns, are regularly outclassed in the air. The RFC’s B.E.2c observation aircraft prove particularly easy meat and increasingly need to be escorted by F.E.2s and Vickers ‘Gunbuses’ to have much hope of survival.
By the autumn Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke, both flying the new monoplanes, have become the first German aces.
October 12: Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad for spying, causing widespread condemnation of German ‘frightfulness’.
December: French and British forces abandon the Dardanelles/Gallipoli campaign with heavy losses and retreat to Egypt and Salonika.
Lanoe Hawker VC becomes the first British ace with seven victories, achieved by means of a single-shot rifle.
1916
January: Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke are both awarded the Blue Max.
March: Noel Pemberton Billing MP’s maiden speech in Westminster mocks the RFC’s inadequate aircraft and its inept administration.
The ‘Fokker Scourge’ is effectively ended by the Nieuport ‘Bébé’ plus the D.H.2 and F.E.8.
April: Romania enters the war on the side of the Entente.
April: In Mesopotamia the RFC carries out daily drops of food and supplies to besieged British and Indian troops in Kut-al-Amara, Iraq.
April 29: Major-General Charles Townshend humiliatingly surrenders Kut and 13,000 Allied troops are taken prisoner by Ottoman forces.
May: The RFC in France takes delivery of the first Sopwith 1½ Strutters with Sopwith-Kauper synchronised machine guns.
June: Sopwith’s prototype t
riplane fighter is sent to France for evaluation.
RFC squadrons participate in the Macedonian campaign.
June 1: At the Battle of Jutland Admiral Jellicoe’s fleet comes off second best to the Germans’ in terms of ships lost and damaged.
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