Aces High

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by Alan Clark


  I came down closer and closer, holding my fire. My heart was pounding, and I was trembling uncontrollably, but my mind was calm and collected. I closed to ten yards, edged out of his slipstream, drew nearer still until I saw that if I wasn’t careful I’d hit his rudder. His machine was green and grey, and looked very spick and span. He had a dark brown flying helmet, with a white goggles-strap round the back of his head.

  I aimed carefully through the Aldis between his shoulders just below where they showed above the fairing. It was impossible to miss. I gently pressed the trigger, and at the very first shots his head jerked back, and immediately the plane reared up vertically. He must have clutched the joy-stick right back as he was hit. I followed upwards, still firing, until in two or three seconds he stalled and fell over to the left, and I had to slew sharply aside to avoid being hit. He didn’t spin, but dropped into a near-vertical engine-on dive.

  I went after him, throttle wide open, firing in long bursts, but he gradually left me behind. I followed, still firing through the Aldis, until he was 300 yards distant, then I stopped, there was no point in pumping any more lead into him. But I stayed in the dive and saw that he didn’t pull out …

  A few pilots lived to tell the tale of that fatal moment in a dog fight when the engine stopped.

  Instantly there was silence. And for a few seconds this silence (as it seemed by contrast with what had preceded it) would be total. Then, first to intrude because it was nearest, the song and moaning of the wires in the rigging. And hard on its heels the exhausts of other engines: the rattle, on every side, of other guns.

  To the crew of this one aircraft life and death would be in perfect equilibrium. If it was only the engine that had suffered, and if it had given out on account of some mechanical failure of its own their chances were good. Given reasonable height and cool handling, the aeroplane could glide on to friendly territory. At worst its crew would finish as prisoners of war. Even if they were seen by an enemy and their plight detected, there was a convention on both sides that persisted at least until 1918 that ‘dead-stick’ aeroplanes were left to their fate. Yet was not this convention honoured many times in the breach? The novices, the vindictive, the cold-blooded, those eager to add cheaply to their score, could not resist the easy and defenceless target which was offered to them.

  On return there would be no inquiry concerning those who were missing once the de-briefing was over. The subject was not referred to. The policy of Trenchard, the RFC’s commander in France for 1915–17, of ‘no empty chairs’, kept the messes full, even though it meant offering up the inexperienced and the partly trained as human sacrifices. It was the death of the wounded, those who had made it back over the line, in field hospitals and dressing stations, that made the biggest impact, and for that reason many pilots were reluctant to visit the hospitals even when their closest friends were detained there. Everyone dreaded the funerals, the silent crowd around an earth grave in some humble corner of a French village churchyard, marked by the white painted crossed blades of a shattered airscrew.

  There is no better description of the agonizing spectacle that death provided and the protective callousness which it produced, than Cecil Lewis’ account of Lieutenant Roberts’ crash after his tail was damaged:

  Roberts was a crack pilot, and if human skill could have got that machine out, he would have done it. His elevators and ailerons were still intact, and by shutting off his engine he almost managed to avert disaster – but not quite.

  He could not stop the machine spinning: but he could stop it going into a vertical diving spin. He tried every combination of elevator and bank. No good. The machine went on slowly spinning, round, and round, and round, all the way down from eight thousand feet to the ground. It took about five minutes. He and his observer were sitting there, waiting for death, for that time.

  The machine fell just this side of the lines. They say a man in the trenches heard shouts, as it might have been for help, come from the machine just before it struck the ground and smashed to a pile of wreckage.

  The observer was killed, for the fuselage broke in half: but Roberts escaped. He was badly smashed up, but breathing. They got him on to a stretcher and sent him down to hospital. He had been out all through the Somme battle without leave, his nerves were right on the edge, and we heard, with what truth I never knew, that this fearful experience put him out of his mind. As far as we were concerned he was gone – the dead or wounded never came back to us – and in the swiftly changing pattern of the days we forgot him.

  Part Three

  The Killing Time

  Background 1917

  By the beginning of 1917, the German Air Force had without a shadow of doubt gained the ascendancy over the Allies in the air over the Western Front. This had started with the introduction of the Albatros D I and II in the previous year. These fighters, though marginally superior to contemporary Allied types in performance, had a clear advantage in firepower, being equipped with two belt-fed and synchronized machine-guns to the Allied types’ single belt- or drum-fed type. Now the Germans were introducing their latest fighter, the Albatros D III. This was a development of the earlier Albatri (as machines of this marque were known generically in the RFC), but was fitted with an uprated engine and a new form of wing, derived from that of the French Nieuport, which had achieved such marked success against German machines in the previous year.

  This new wing planform was the sesquiplane type, in which the lower wing is shorter in span than the upper and considerably narrower in chord. The two wings are connected to each other by a pair of V-shaped struts, which led to the RFC’s nickname for the D III, and its later development the D V and Va, as the ‘Vee-strutter’. The advantages inherent in this planform, increased manœuvrability and a much better downward view for the pilot, were to a certain extent offset by its one major disadvantage, the structural weakness of the lower wing. This was caused by its narrowness, which meant that the structure had to be built up around a single spar, which in turn left the wing weak in torsion. There were several instances of Vee-strutters developing ‘flutter’ in their lower wings and having them break off, normally with fatal consequences. Despite this, however, the Albatros was in every way superior to Allied types at the outset of 1917.

  The German Jastas, which in April numbered thirty-seven, as already mentioned, were almost invariably passive in their defence of the skies over the Western Front, very seldom crossing over to the west of the lines. This, though it lost them the strategic initiative in the air, gave them a decided tactical advantage. For with these tactics they were able to climb into the sun over their own lines and wait, in numbers of considerable superiority, for the inevitable Allied reconnaisance and artillery observation machines that would cross the lines. Their task was made all the easier by the two-seaters in use with the Allies; the old Moranes and the new Sopwith 1-Strutters just coming into service with the French Air Force, and the 1-Strutters, BE 2s, and RE 8s of the RFC.

  April 1917 was set for the first big Allied offensive of the year, when the British were to launch a large scale offensive around Arras to draw German reserves away from the sector slightly to the south, where the French were to launch yet another offensive intended to drive the Germans out of the war. When it started, the French, under General Robert George Nivelle, suffered enormous reverses and casualties, which so shattered the morale of the French army, still suffering as it was from the titanic struggle for Verdun in the previous year, that widespread mutinies occurred, and the army ceased to be able to take part in any major offensive action for over a year. The British offensive at Arras, though successful on the ground, albeit with herculean casualties, was a disaster in the air.

  The RFC was decimated. Casualties were something in the order of one third. These were the highest losses suffered by the RFC in the course of the whole war, and Trenchard received considerable criticism for insisting that the RFC continue to fly offensive patrols in inferior aircraft against an enemy admirably p
repared to take advantage of such a situation. The RFC suffered losses, particularly in aircrew, that were to take more than a year to rectify. But it was not the numbers that were the most important loss, tragic as they were, but the skill and experience of the pilots and gunners who had learnt how to cope with the new conditions of aerial warfare in the second half of 1916. These were lost in great numbers, and the long-term effects included the continued alarmingly high rate of casualties among the inexperienced pilots who had to be posted straight from flying school to a front line squadron, even after the Battle of Arras had ended. The life expectancy of a subaltern, from the time of his posting to a front line squadron, varied from eleven days to three weeks. The Allies suffered grievous losses, and it was the German Air Force’s high summer.

  During April, the Allies’ only successful aircraft had been the new fighter from the Sopwith stable, the Triplane. Still under-armed by German standards, it was able to hold its own by virtue of its phenomenal rate of climb and considerable agility, unmatched by anything the German could put up against it. The Triplane was operated only by the RNAS units serving on the Channel coast around Dunkirk, although it had been intended that the RFC receive the type. This did not occur, however, as it had been agreed between the Admiralty and the War Office in July 1916 that the RNAS should receive the ‘Tripehound’, as it was nicknamed, which was then under development for the RFC, in exchange for the Spad VIIs which the RNAS agreed to transfer to the RFC during the crucial days of the Battle of the Somme. In the crisis of the Battle of Arras and Bloody April, the RFC requested that naval units equipped with the Triplane should be sent south to aid the sorely pressed RFC. The Admiralty sent No. 10 Squadron. The Triplane’s success was immediate and considerable, a fact testified to by the number of triplane designs originated in Germany after the arrival of the Sopwith original, but it could not halt the slaughter of RFC machines and men. All it could do was point to better things in the future.

  There was no let-up in the RFC7’s offensive tactics after the end of the Battle of Arras, though the scale was considerably diminished. During the breathing space so afforded, a new generation of Allied fighters, destined to overcome the dominance of the Albatros, appeared, taking over from the now badly outclassed Sopwith Pup, outnumbered Sopwith Triplane (only 140 were ever built) and outgunned Spad VII and Nieuport 17. The first of the new generation to arrive was the SE 5, designed by the Royal Aircraft Factory. This was a rugged, angular biplane, very fast, equipped with two machine-guns (though one of these was a Lewis gun mounted on the top wing rather than a second belt-fed weapon in the fuselage) and possessing a fair measure of the inherent stability to be found in all production RAF types. In the SE 5 and its successor, the up-engined SE 5 A, this inheritance was not a drawback, however, but a positive advantage, as it made the SE 5 one of the best gun platforms (which is really all a fighter is) of the war. The other Allied fighter to enter service at about the same time was the French Spad XIII, an up-engined and up-gunned development of the Spad VII. In a way the fighters were similar, both possessing excellent performance, and having the same sort of angular lines and strength, but the Spad had the advantage in armament, with two Vickers guns in the fuselage.

  Both had teething troubles when they entered service, and the SE 5 also suffered from wrong tactics in the hands of pilots who had before flown only light, sensitive, rotary-engined fighters. But once these initial difficulties had been overcome, the two machines proved to be amongst the best Allied fighters of the war, continuing in production right up to the end of hostilities.

  The eclipse of the Albatros began with the arrival of the SE 5 in late April and of the Spad XIII in late May, and was made certain in July on the arrival of the first of the Allies’ most successful fighter, the Sopwith Camel. Unlike its contemporaries the SE 5A and the Spad XIII, the Camel had a rotary engine, and had a distinct family likeness to the Pup. But its strength lay in an adequate performance, two Vickers guns and a superlative aerobatic capability, excelled possibly only by the Pup and the Fokker triplane, the Dr I. Although it was in the process of replacement by the Sopwith Snipe and Dolphin in the closing months of the war, the Camel remains the classic rotary-engined fighter of the First World War.

  The Germans, confident of continued success with the Albatros D III after April, failed to press on with the planning of a successor, so that when the Albatros supremacy began to crumble in face of the Spad XIII and SE 5A, they had to have recourse to a hurried programme to update the D III. This resulted in the introduction of the D V at about the time the Camel was making its début on the Allied side. But the improvements made in the Albatros in the way of streamlining and increased engine power were offset by the increase in weight, so that the later mark was no better than its predecessor. The only other German fighter to appear in any number at about this time was the Fokker Dr I triplane, which owed its inspiration to the Sopwith Triplane. The Dr I entered service in August 1917, during the period that the obsolescence of the Triplane had become embarrassing to the RNAS. Although its design was anachronistic in comparison with the Allied designs entering service in autumn 1917, it obtained considerable success as a result of its enormous manœuvrability, good firepower and the fact that it was issued only to the best of the German pilots, who enjoyed the advantage, conferred on them by their defensive tactics and the prevailing Westerly wind, of being able to fight over their own lines and glide towards their airfields with the aid of the wind if they received any damage.

  Finally, as far as the aircraft themselves are concerned in 1917, one must take note of the arrival of the superb Bristol F 2A and B in the spring of 1917. With the introduction of this two-seater, the Allies at last had a reconnaissance and general purpose machine as good as, if not better than, anything the Germans had. As with the SE 5, its entry into front line service was not particularly auspicious, but soon its crews realized that although it was a two-seater it had the performance, firepower and manœuvrability to take on fighters at their own game. From then on, its success was assured, and it went down in history as the most versatile aircraft of the First World War.

  In the field of tactics and organization also, 1917 proved to be the great turning point. The arrival of true fighters in 1916 had led to their introduction in small quantities initially, and this had resulted in the fighter pilot being for the most part a lone flyer, using stealth to stalk and dispatch his opponent. The tactical counter to this was the introduction of the Jasta, and the homogeneous fighter squadrons and Escadrilles de Chasse, and the year had ended with a presentiment of what was to come, as more and more units took to the skies to fight in formation. The reply to this first counter was thought of and put into practice first by the Germans. This was the Jagdgeschwader or fighter wing. The first of these, No. 1, was formed under Manfred von Richthofen’s command on 26 July 1917. Basically it was an amalgam of Jastas 4, 6, 10 and 11, and was provided with many lorries and other mobile equipment, so that it could be shuttled up and down the line to provide air superiority wherever it might be needed at any particular moment. Thus the Germans, who by now could not hope to attain an overall air superiority, could gain a local and necessary one by the dispatch to that sector of a large and élite unit. The aircraft of such units were often painted in garish colours, since camouflage was unnecessary, as a means of recognition between members of the same unit, and led to the Allies dubbing the Jagdgeschwader ‘Flying Circuses’. The only other Jagdgeschwader, Nos. 2, 3 and 4 were all formed in 1918. The other new type of German unit to be formed was the Jagdgruppe or fighter group, which was between the Jasta and Geschwader in size, usually made up of two or three Jastas. Twelve were formed eventually, but these were not permanent bodies, but rather ad hoc forces united for a special purpose. When that purpose had been fulfilled, the Jagdgruppe was disbanded.

  The British counterpart to the Jagdgeschwader and Jagdgruppe was the Wing, which might contain anything up to five squadrons to deal with an emergency. The French, unlik
e the British, had élite units, such as Les Cigognes or Les Sportifs, and though these were composed of several smaller units, the various component parts did not often serve together. But in the event of an emergency, the Escadrilles could be called together to provide local air superiority. The system of calling together large numbers of aircraft under a unified control for a special purpose was still gathering momentum in 1917, and although a few large scale battles took place towards the end of the year, they were small in comparison with what 1918 was to bring. With a few extraordinary exceptions, however, the increasing systemization of aerial fighting had sounded the death knell of the individual ace, such as Albert Ball and Georges Guynemer.

  The most important organizational change of the year was the decision by the British Government to set up the Royal Air Force, though this only came into being on 1 April 1918. The summer of 1917 had been marked by the periodic arrival of German bombers over the skies of southern England, and such was the political and popular furore, demanding protection for Britain and retribution on the Germans, that the government had set up a committee under General Jan Christian Smuts, the South African statesman and soldier, to investigate means of satisfying both these demands. In the short term, two of the RFC’s best squadrons were brought back from France (where they were sadly missed) to provide a token defence. In the long term, the committee found that it would be best to amalgamate the RFC and RNAS, whose equipment requirements had led to a wholly uneconomical priorities system in the British aircraft manufacturing trade, under a ministry independent of the War Office and the Admiralty. Such was the increase in production anticipated from this rationalization of resources (an expectation which proved entirely unjustified), that the committee also recommended that the new Royal Air Force, when it came into being, should set up a strategic bombing force along the lines of the French one that had been operating since 1915. This force, which became the Independent Air Force, Royal Air Force, finally comprised British, French, Italian and American squadrons. However, it was a year before these plans came to fruition.

 

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