by Alan Clark
An immediate and unfortunate growth of class differentiation set in. It was virtually impossible for a pilot or gunner of a two-seater to reach this score and among the single-seaters it was far easier for the Nieuport pilots than any other. The authorities encouraged the division by grouping the best Nieuport pilots in one Escadrille. The original Escadrille selected was N.3 and every pilot in it identified himself as being one of that select company by painting a white stork in flight on the side of his fuselage. As the aces multiplied propaganda had a snowball effect. More of the Cigognes Escadrilles were formed and became a magnet to attract outstanding flyers from other units. (It is worth noting that the Cigognes were among the first to be re-equipped with the Spad, from early autumn 1916.)
Almost incidentally the French had chanced on the most effective system of tactical deployment of their single-seat fighter strength – putting into practice a conclusion which was reached somewhat later and on purely tactical grounds by Oswald Boelcke and General von Hoeppner. There is no doubt that the strength and gallantry of the Cigognes group was of critical importance during the Battle of Verdun. During May Boelcke, whose Fokkers were still operating in threes, was urging that larger Jagdstaffeln (the first use of the ‘hunting pack’ term) should be started. Had this been done there is little doubt that the Cigognes would have suffered the fate which was later to befall them over the Somme. But Max Immelmann’s death on 18 June led to a personal order from the Kaiser that Boelcke should be grounded lest he too were to be lost to Germany, and the German ace had been sent on an inspection tour of the Russian front.
Probably the only unit in the French Air Service that could rival the Cigognes in reputation and extravagance was N.77, known as Les Sportifs on account of the number of sportsmen and playboys who passed through its ranks. One of its most famous was Maurice Boyau, captain of the French International Rugby team in 1914, and another Georges Boillot, the racing driver, who had fought so valiantly and lost to the three white Mercedes of the German team in the last Grand Prix before war was declared.
The Escadrille N.77 was an exclusive club where the private incomes of the members lavishly supplemented their pay from the Republic. They brought their own servants and motorcars and quartered their ladies in the most expensive hotels in the area. Their contacts and influences, particularly that of Capitaine l’Hermite, their Commanding Officer, ensured that both their equipment and publicity were the best. However, a critical examination of the score recorded by its members seems to indicate that although there were exceptions, the ‘Sportifs’ seem to have spent most of their time shooting down balloons.1
In contrast the Cigognes were more desperate men and among them rivalries and loyalties burned fiercely. Some of them were poor, and had to subsist on their income as officers, but the system of grants from private sources which the Michelin brothers had started was an extra incentive to raise their tallies. The pace of living was furious: the Cigognes were always surrounded by touts, pimps and salesmen of all kinds who set up quarters in the vicinity of their aerodromes. They were lionized in Parisian Society and hostesses would send their Delaunay limousines to wait beside the hangars so that when the pilots landed from the afternoon patrols their favourites could be hurried back to Paris in time for the night’s festivities. Paris was the very hub of the alliance, her society uniquely self-important, over-flowing with money and with unlimited pleasures available.
Mistinguett was drawing huge crowds at the Folies-Bergères: the great Bernhardt, though aged and ailing, was still seductive as ever, dividing her time between the theatre and her hospital for the wounded at the Odéon: at the Opéra Comique Manon was all the rage, and in May, when the Germans were hammering their way on to Côte 304, there was a glittering film première of Salammbô and the Spring Flower Show was reinstated in all its pre-war glory.
In such a setting the glamorous airmen were prestigious toys to be courted and shown on every occasion.
During the autumn and winter of 1916–17 the Cigognes Escadrilles were being re-equipped with the Spad single-seater and their numbers (3, 26, 73, 103 and 167), now carried the prefix ‘SP’ instead of ‘N’. The change from the Nieuport symbolized their altered status. The little rotary engined sesquiplane, nimble, delicate, dependent on the pilot’s skill for its effectiveness was infinitely rewarding to those who could excite its response, but would not tolerate clumsiness or cowardice. The Spad with its inline liquid-cooled engine was faster, but less agile; its orthodox construction made it stronger, but heavier. The storks on the side of the fuselage were now painted black,2 and like the change from red to black on the Rolls-Royce, a legend arose that could be neither proven nor denied that it was an expression of mourning for their patron, Guynemer.
Georges Guynemer personified the dedicated and obsessive hero (see Chapter 5). But more typical is the rough and glamorous figure of Charles Nungesser. Seconded from the Hussars in 1914, he had already packed a life-time into his youth. He was a champion swimmer and boxer and had taken up motor cycling and automobile racing with ardour. He successfully flew an aeroplane solo on the very first occasion that he tried the controls and then decided to design his own. The outbreak of war put a stop to this, but in the first few weeks Nungesser distinguished himself, as a hussar, by way-laying a German Staff car behind the enemy lines, shooting the occupants and driving it across No-man’s Land under fire from his own side. He was allowed to keep the car and was awarded the Médaille Militaire, but scorning both these he declared that his greatest wish was to be transferred to the Air Service.
For the next three years this extraordinary man went closer and more frequently into the arms of death than any other flyer of the First World War. After six adventurous months with a reconnaissance squadron in the north of France, his fire and courage brought him a transfer to a Nieuport Escadrille at Nancy. Flouting the superstitions that were rife among single-seater pilots, Nungesser adorned his Nieuport with the symbols of ill-omen. A coffin, two lighted candles, the skull-and-crossbones over a black heart. He did not believe in the efficacy of the French roundel after being attacked by a British Camel, and so added a tricoleur ‘V’ to his upper wing.
On the day that he reported to the Escadrille N.65 Nungesser first ‘beat-up’ Nancy in a most spectacular fashion, flying in and out of church steeples and tall buildings, looping over the Place and charging up and down the Boulevard at an altitude of thirty feet. By the time he landed at his aerodrome, an official complaint from the townsfolk had already been laid on the Commanding Officer’s desk. The latter, somewhat acidly, told his newest recruit to confine his aerobatics to enemy territory. Nothing daunted, Nungesser had his aircraft refuelled and forced several of his colleagues to accompany him to the nearest German airfield where, covered by his comrades, he repeated his performance.
In January of 1916 Nungesser was the victim of a serious accident when testing a new aeroplane. The joystick went through his mouth, dislocated his jaw and perforated his palate; in addition both his legs were broken. Yet within two months he was flying again, although he could move to and from his Nieuport only on crutches. Throughout April, Nungesser had to return to hospital for periodic treatment of his injuries. But while he was flying fresh wounds accumulated. His lip was slashed by an explosive bullet; his jaw was again broken when he inverted a damaged aircraft making a forced landing; and in another crash in No-man’s Land, he dislocated his knee. In December he had to return to hospital to have all his fractures broken and reset, and was forced into a two month rest. But in May 1917 – the peak period of Albatros domination – Nungesser returned again to the fray in his personal Nieuport, now fitted with a Clerget engine of greater power.
Nungesser’s return, in a period when Allied opposition was frail, and sometimes timid, was immediately noticed by the Germans. On 12 May a lone Albatros dropped a message challenging Nungesser to single combat that afternoon over Douai. Yet when he arrived at the appointed rendezvous, Nungesser found not one, but six of the
enemy were waiting for him. But still he could not be killed; in the dogfight that followed this betrayal, Nungesser shot down two of his enemy (Paul Schweizer and Ernst Bittorf), and the rest scattered.
His health continued to deteriorate. Now two mechanics had to carry Nungesser into his cockpit for he could no longer manage even with his crutches. Throughout August he flew and fought, but his strength was épuisé. Unlike Guynemer who was also on the threshold of a nervous collapse, Nungesser allowed himself to be sent back to Paris on sick leave. On his flight home he was set on by a solitary Halberstadt. For over half an hour the two planes fought single-handed. Perhaps it was Nungesser’s poor health, perhaps it was the exceptional skill of his opponent, but neither could gain the advantage. Finally, his fuel almost exhausted, Nungesser landed at Le Touquet airfield and was surprised to see his unknown adversary land also and taxi towards him. When the two were side by side, the German waved gleefully, then opened his throttle and took off again. Curiously, this sporting gesture, so typical of the earlier days of aerial combat, was seen by Nungesser as a terrible humiliation and he was to spend hundreds of hours of his future flying life (for by now Nungesser had a roving commission and his attachment to N.65 was no more than nominal) searching for that same Halberstadt so that he could retrieve his honour.
That winter Nungesser skidded his Mors touring car on the icy road while driving back from Paris in the middle of the night. The car overturned and Nungesser was thrown out, once again breaking his jaw as well as suffering other injuries. But his faithful mechanic, Soldat Pochon, who was responsible for the maintenance of all Nungesser’s planes, was trapped in the car and killed. Nungesser went back to hospital and for the remainder of the war his flying periods were punctuated by long spells in the care of doctors. While he was flying he struggled desperately to raise his score above that of his great rival, René Fonck, but in fact the highest that he could manage by Armistice was forty-five compared with Fonck’s seventy-five (which made Fonck the Allied ace of aces), and the fifty-four which Guynemer had managed before his own death.
Although he survived, Nungesser, like so many of the aces, was diminished by his experiences and could not live in contentment without the stimulation of mortal danger. In search of his early inspiration he had built for himself, by Levasseur, a seaplane with which he intended – or so he claimed – to fly the Atlantic. Known as the Oiseau Blanc it was painted white overall but carried Nungesser’s war-time insignia. The Oiseau was filled with enough fuel for the 4,000 mile flight and on a May morning, the anniversary of his greatest achievement, the single-handed defeat of the German ambush over Douai, Nungesser took off and pointed the Oiseau into the Atlantic haze. The seaplane flew due west until its engines could be heard no more. Like Guynemer, Nungesser disappeared without a trace.
René Fonck, who surpassed both Nungesser and Guynemer, was a man of very different mettle. He served in SPA. 103, an otherwise relatively undistinguished member of the Cigognes group, and was credited with three-quarters of the Escadrille’s kills. The secret of Fonck’s success was different from those of his two nearest French rivals, and the reason is plain to see after an analysis of each man’s temperament. Nungesser and Guynemer were highly-strung, emotional and impulsive, and their victories were achieved in tempestuous flights, with the result often being very much in the balance. Fonck’s victories were achieved in an altogether different way. He was a conceited, arrogant but thorough and painstaking pilot, and a superlative shot. Most of Fonck’s later victims succumbed after Fonck had fired an absolute minimum number of rounds. This was made possible by Fonck’s constant practice with machine-guns and carbines, and a careful analysis of German tactics and machines and how best to beat them both. By these means Fonck achieved the highest Allied score of the war, at minimum risk to himself, and also pulled off a unique feat: twice he shot down six German machines in a day, on 9 May and 26 September 1918. And on the second of these occasions, but for a jam in his machine-guns, he might well have despatched eight German machines. But despite his enormous success, Fonck never gained the emotional popularity Guynemer enjoyed.
Part Four
The End of the Battles
Background 1918
The year 1918 opened with a clear Allied superiority in the air; the British SE 5As and Sopwith Camels and the French Spads had done their work well, and over the whole Western Front the Allied Air Forces maintained their tactical air offensive, overwhelming the German machines on their own side of the lines and allowing their own reconnaissance and observation machines to go about relatively unhindered. The one bright spot for Germany was the fact that she could wrest air superiority from the Allies locally by moving in a ‘Circus’, but this was costly in machines and trained personnel as the German fighters were still outclassed at this time. Although the French held the greater length of line on the ground, in the air it was the British that were the Germans’ main opponents, as an examination of the forces arrayed against the British and French sectors clearly shows. At the end of March 1,680 German aircraft were operating in the British sector, and only 367 against the French. This was partly a result of large portions of the French front being ‘quiet areas’, partly the more aggressive ground policy displayed by the British, but partly also, the failing of the French tactical doctrine. Like the Germans the French had grouped together their best pilots in élite fighter units, leaving other fighter squadrons and all reconnaissance and observation units bereft of good pilots, and all the experience and morale they could have provided. This left these other squadrons so unaggressive and ineffectual that a few good German units sufficed to keep them in check, allowing most of the strength to be deployed against the British in the north.
More important, however, was the development of German offensive tactics in the field of army co-operation. We have already mentioned the growth of Schutzstaffeln (Protection flights) and Fliegerabteilungen-Infanterie (Infantry contact patrol), equipped at first with modified C types, pending the arrival of the J class machines. In the autumn of 1917, the Air Force authorities had foreseen the need for a lighter version of the J class, in fact something between the C and J classes, and ordered the CL class, which was to be able to act as escort for C class machines on reconnaissance flights, but also to fly ground attack missions. With the growing need for ground attack formations, a special title was introduced for the new units – Schlachtstaffeln (Battle flights) and later, when such units had grown in size and importance, Schlachtgeschwadern (Battle wings). The first major victory of the Schlastas (as they were abbreviated) was during the second half of the Battle of Cambrai in 1917, the world’s first large scale tank offensive, when the German ground forces had been taken entirely by surprise and pushed back several miles, but had later been able to regain much of the lost ground with the help of the Schlastas.
Throughout the winter and spring after the Battle of Cambrai, the Schlastas were developed, strengthened, trained and brought as near as possible up to full complement with the latest equipment, the Halberstadt CL II and the Hannover CL II and III series. Just as the German Air Force had laid contingency plans against the arrival of huge American forces in France, so had the German army. Five large offensives for the spring and early summer of 1918 had been planned, to drive the Allies out of the war before America could make her weight felt. The Schlastas were to play a very important role in these offensives, the first of which, on the Somme, started on 20 March. The German tactics had been carefully worked out. It had been realized that the old style of offensive, preceded by a massive artillery bombardment, which threw away any chance of obtaining surprise, and carried out by slow-moving infantry, was useless. The new style was to have some of the elements of Blitzkrieg in it : the artillery bombardment was to be short and sharp, just to throw the enemy off its balance; at H-hour, this was to become a creeping barrage, with swiftly-moving ‘stormtroopers’ moving in its wake, pressing on as fast as possible, ignoring strongpoints which could not be taken immediatel
y, to take the enemy’s artillery and to keep him off balance; behind the stormtroopers were to come the ordinary infantry, to mop up and consolidate. Over the whole would operate the Schlastas, harrying the enemy with machine-gun fire and light bombs, and keeping the High Command informed of the progress of the ground troops, so that the barrage could be speeded up if necessary in the event of the stormtroopers’ advance being faster than anticipated. It was essential that aircraft of the Schlastas operate in groups of about four to six aircraft, so that any commander could control his unit personally but still have a powerful offensive force, and that each section of the front be patrolled by a group, with a constant stream of replacements moving up to relieve those that had exhausted their ammunition or fuel. The Schlastas, therefore, fulfilled the roles of airborne light artillery in direct support of the ground troops, and as aerial liaison officers for the High Command.
The plan worked brilliantly in the first offensive, though the British were finally able to halt the advance after it had outrun its services. But the four subsequent offensives were less successful as the Allies worked out plans of their own to halt both ground and air offensives. On the ground, defences were prepared in greater depth and with greater elasticity, while offensives were spotted before they started now that it was known what to look for. In the air, the Allies were forced to keep their fighters aloft even under the most hazardous conditions to check the Germans by shooting down their aircraft and harrying their ground troops, learning in combat the lessons which the Germans themselves had been able to prepare with greater time and thought. But finally the offensives were halted, the Germans were exhausted, and it was time for the Allies themselves, now with American aid, to go over on to the offensive.