The First Great Air War

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  French approved this and forwarded it to the War Office on 1st November. The Army Council responded on the 18th that the principles were acceptable “but it appears to question whether, once intended decentralisation is completely effected, and is working satisfactorily, there will be a necessity for the permanent retention in the permanent organisation of General Officer Commanding RFC as proposed by you”.

  Henderson had been promoted to major general on 26th October. The reorganisation of the RFC that had been outlined would have no place for an officer of his seniority and achievement. A few days later he visited Farnborough. He found the volatile and short-tempered Trenchard disaffected by what he had heard from querulous officers who, returning from the Front, had complained that Henderson, over-influenced by the excessively cautious Sykes, had not made bold enough use of the squadrons so as to deny the enemy freedom of the air. In conclusion, heated as he all too often was, Trenchard said that he wanted to return to his regiment.

  Fortunately for him he was dealing with a wiser and far more equable man, who overlooked the offensive implied criticism of himself and calmly explained the proposals of which Lord Kitchener, the War Minister, and Field Marshal French had approved. He told Trenchard that he wanted him to command the First Wing.

  Instantly attracted, Trenchard would not accept until he knew what would be the egregious Sykes’s place in the new organisation. Henderson answered that Trenchard would be junior only to himself, and Sykes would have no operational authority.

  On 18th November Trenchard landed at Boulogne to take up his new command. Baring was sent to meet him; and once again made a booby of himself when they set off by car for St Omer, by letting the driver take a road that went in the direction opposite from their destination, and would have led them to the enemy lines, if a French officer at a road block had not turned them back. Their conversation cannot have instilled the new Wing Commander with confidence in him, either. “Colonel Trenchard asked me a great many pertinent questions, few of which I could answer.” They arrived at 8 p.m. and the colonel had to sleep on the floor of the guest room. One wonders what aberration from his usual behaviour restrained Trenchard from usurping Baring’s bed and consigning him to the hard lying.

  Four days later the precarious balance of personal relationships was rocked by the shock waves of a tragedy at the Front. On the day that Henderson’s promotion was gazetted, a shell mortally wounded Major General Lomax, who commanded the First Division. His second-in-command and temporary replacement did not satisfy the First Corps Commander, Sir Douglas Haig, who consulted French, who recommended Henderson. Henderson was appointed to command First Division and Sykes to take his place at the head of the RFC.

  Trenchard knew that Henderson had not dishonoured his word, but the reversal of what he had been promised naturally sent him speeding to French’s HQ where he refused to serve under a man who was junior in years and seniority, and asked to be sent back to his regiment. Kitchener, when informed of these changes, turned down Sykes’s aggrandisement, for lack of experience, and forbade Henderson’s posting. “I want him in command of the RFC,” he said to Brancker.

  “Perhaps the RFC is not a big enough command for a general of his seniority,” Brancker suggested.

  “He thinks too small, does he? Then you tell him I am going to have a lot of Generals in the Flying Corps before I finish.”

  But an unhappy Henderson had to take up his new appointment and Baring chose to go with him; no doubt thoroughly disoriented and asking route directions every few miles. Sykes, true to form, was sure that Trenchard had been machinating against him and said so.

  On the day of Henderson’s move, 22nd November, Strange and his observer, Lieutenant F. G. Small, witnessed a bizarre incident that provided an amusing insight into the relationship between commissioned and uncommissioned ranks in the German Services. The two No. 5 Squadron officers, in an Avro, on whose upper wing, in defiance of orders, they had lashed a Lewis gun, were at 7000 feet when they spotted an Albatros 500 feet below. They dived at it from abeam, then flew ahead of it and slightly below, so that Small could fire back at it. After the enemy had received the 94 rounds from the two drums of ammunition, at 550 rounds a minute, the pilot lost his nerve and landed behind the British lines. Strange and Small, circling low over it, saw that it was riddled with holes, but the crew were both unhurt. In the German Air Service the observer was always an officer and in command of the aircraft. The pilot was regarded as a mere minion and was often a sergeant, corporal or even a private. On this occasion, as soon as the Albatros touched down, the observer leaped out, dragged his pilot from the cockpit, knocked him to the ground and set about kicking him vigorously until he scrambled up and tried to take evasive action; not, of course, daring to defend himself against his superior. He must have been thankful when British troops turned up and put an end to his trouncing.

  French, resenting Kitchener’s interference, procrastinated as long as he could about complying with the War Minister’s edict that Henderson must not leave the RFC. But on l0th December, Henderson returned to command at RFC HQ and Sykes reverted to his former position.

  Baring, for all his irritating ineptitudes and the wet impression he conveyed of himself in his early wartime diary entries, endears himself by his steady application to learning a job that was utterly in contrast with any he had done as a civilian, and for his loyalty to Henderson, and, later, to Trenchard. He writes touchingly of his and Henderson’s brief exile. “I used frequently to walk or ride into Bailleul to see the squadrons which were there, and although I was very happy with the First Division, I suffered the whole time from RFC sickness.”

  This large, shambling, kindly, cultured and phlegmatic man could describe the war with originality, too. “German warfare is like Wagner’s music. The German use every possible accessory … spies … Zeppelins, flame-throwers … smoke screens … just as Wagner uses every accessory … scenery … lights … over and above the music to heighten the effect of the music.”

  By the time that Henderson and his Intelligence officer returned to St Omer, First Wing, consisting of Nos 2 and 3 Squadrons, under Trenchard, and Two Wing, Nos 5 and 6 Squadrons, under C. J. Burke, who was now a lieutenant colonel, had settled down at their new aerodromes. Air operations had begun to follow the pattern, tactically and in the enlargement of their scope, that they would pursue and develop for the next four years.

  CHAPTER 5 – 1915. Warming Up

  The BEF’s two corps had been elevated to armies. The two Wings remained where they were, under the control of their respective Army HQs. Based at St Omer were No. 4 Squadron, No. 9 Squadron — formerly the Wireless Unit — commanded by Captain H. C. T. “Stuffy” Dowding,[7] and the RFC Headquarters Squadron.

  The German Military Air Service, whose Abteilungen had been attached to the various Armies and Corps from the outset, was also still concentrating on tactics rather than strategy.

  Air operations by both sides fell into three categories: reconnaissance, whose purpose was to seek signs of fresh activity, such as troop movements by road and rail, the building of supply dumps and fortifications, the disposition of artillery units; observation, by means of which, with the aid of photography, the progress of such activity was followed; contact patrols, to keep Headquarters in touch with the ground forces during a battle, when, in an attack, ground changed hands and the situation became confused: usually with salients thrusting through the opposing line, so that friendly and enemy-held territory became indeterminate except from the air.

  Apart from the similar capabilities of their aeroplanes, the broad framework of their organisations and their functions, the three air forces had human attitudes and characteristics in common. The basic and most important common factor was that all aircrew were volunteers. This meant that, whether British, Commonwealth, French or German, they were animated by the same brand of enthusiasm, they had all responded to the urge to journey in what Elizabeth Barrett Browning called “the tingling desert o
f the sky”. As the air forces expanded, the cheerful enthusiasts of the kind who had created the heady atmosphere of Brooklands, Hendon and Reims, and the more stolid ambience of the German flying centres, hurried to join. They were bolder than the average. Much remained unknown about flying. Aeroplanes in flight offered many dangers. Engine failure could cause a fatal stall. A manoeuvre that over-strained the structure could break a wing. Parachutes existed, but were forbidden to military airmen.

  Hence the amiable, although not amicable, exchanges of greeting between enemies who flew past one another, each on his way to spy on what was happening behind the other’s lines. Both parties understood the other’s difficulties in handling the technical demands of flight; and to each the other was a rival in skill as much as an enemy. On both sides, also, airmen were to some extent frustrated by the ignorance and prejudice of senior officers who had never been airborne, but were in authority over them: a burden and a grievance that gave them mutual empathy, whatever uniform they wore.

  Field Marshal Lord Kitchener provided an instance of the rigidity of the martial mind which any pilot, whatever his nationality, would recognise. Before a visit to Farnborough, he had told Trenchard that he wanted to see aeroplanes fly past in formation. Trenchard explained that this was impossible because his aircraft were of different types, thus there was a great diversity in the speed at which each flew. Kitchener’s retort was merely to reiterate: “When I come down to inspect you, you will have four machines paraded for me, to fly past in formation.” Accordingly, in danger of collision and raggedly spaced, some aircraft did straggle and stagger through the air for his benefit.

  The USA was regarding the war from a distance but not with total detachment. Many Americans, mostly through Canada, were making their way to Britain to join the RFC. Some who were already in Europe on the outbreak of war were enrolling in l’Aviation Militaire. Their own country, so much admired everywhere for its enterprise, wealth and vitality, had lagged far behind the warring nations. This was all the more unexpected because as early as 1907 an Aeronautical Division had been set up in the Signals Corps. At first it had balloons only, but in 1908 it received a small dirigible airship, and, in 1909, an aeroplane. It did not acquire a second aeroplane until 1911; lent by a civilian. In 1913 Glen Curtiss opened his aviation school at North Island, San Diego, and the Signals Corps Aviation School at College Park, Maryland had started with twenty-eight aeroplanes. When hostilities in Europe began, nine of the latter had been wrecked and ten of the forty pupils killed. The US Aeronautical Division owned only twenty aeroplanes. Congress authorised an establishment of 60 officers and 260 other ranks, but allocated too little money to enable a force of this size to be formed.

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  Of the Americans who volunteered to fight on the Allied side before their country entered the war, Raoul Gervais Victor Lufbery was the first. Life had not been easy for Lufbery. His forebears had emigrated from England to America in the eighteenth century. His father, an industrial chemist, settled in France in 1876 and married a Frenchwoman. “Luf” was born there on 14th March 1885. Six years later his father abandoned wife and child. The boy had to start work at the age of twelve. By the time he was twenty-seven he had done casual jobs in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Rumania, Austria, Germany, Mexico, Canada and the USA. He found himself in Cairo shortly before his twenty-first birthday; and due, on his majority, to be conscripted in the French Army. He told the French Consul that he was taking his father’s American citizenship, and continued his travels. He served three years in the United States Army, then went to India. There he became mechanic to the pioneer French pilot, Marc Pourpe, who started teaching him to fly.

  At the outbreak of war Lufbery and Pourpe were back in France to buy a new Morane-Saulnier for their next exhibition tour. The French ignored Lufbery’s claim to American nationality and his voluntary service in the American Army from 1908 to 1911, and called him up for the Foreign Legion. Pourpe had at once volunteered for the Air Service and joined Escadrille MS23. It was not long before he was able to have Lufbery transferred as his mechanic but was shot down and killed behind enemy lines on 2nd December 1914, whereupon Lufbery applied to remuster to pilot. At the turn of the year 1914 he was awaiting a training course. He began it in May and qualified in July.

  The man who would emerge from this war as America’s foremost fighter ace, Edward Rickenbacker, was another who knew hardship in his boyhood. He also was twelve years old when, in 1902, his father died and he had to start work as a garage mechanic. Through a correspondence course, he qualified as an engineer. By 1908 he was road testing, for the Frayer-Miller company, cars whose sales appeal lay in their high speed. He took up race driving, set a record of 138 m.p.h. at Indianapolis in a Blitzen Benz, and, by 1915, was famous and earning $40,000 a year.

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  Raymond Collishaw, the Canadian who, at the end of the war, would be the RAF’s third highest scoring fighter pilot, was to spend most of 1915 trying to get himself taught to fly and shipped to England. Early in the year he heard that the RNAS was recruiting pilots. He resigned from the Canadian Fisheries Protection Service and joined the Royal Canadian Navy as a temporary probationary sub-lieutenant. Before being embodied, he had to obtain a pilot’s certificate at his own expense. He paid $400, equivalent to £75, for a course at the Curtiss Flying Training School in Toronto, where the Chief Instructor’s method of teaching — there was no intercommunication by speaking tube — was to bellow “Steer, damn you, steer,” at his pupils above the roar of the engine and the howling of the wind in the struts and wires. It is not surprising that autumn gave way to winter, and weather unfit for flying, before “Collie” was able to take his test.

  He was one of several volunteers who had given up their jobs and were short of money. They sent a deputation to Ottawa to ask the Defence Minister, Tom Hughes, for financial help. The advice Hughes gave the deputation leader was less than encouraging and, coming from such a quarter, astounding. “My poor boy. You and your friends have indeed been led astray and I am sorry for you. I cannot see what possible use the aeroplane is in this war. If I were the commander of a force in the field and I wished to see what the enemy was doing, I should climb a hill. If the hill was not high enough, I should climb a tree on the hill. The aeroplane is an invention of the devil and all that it has done is to draw away from us many of our best young men. My advice to you and your friends, young man, is to forget all about it and join the infantry.”

  The War Office and Admiralty in London rescued them from their plight and agreed to ship all accepted candidates to England, whether or not they had obtained their certificates. They were offered three choices: to continue their training at a flying school in the USA; to go home and wait until their turns came to be commissioned and sent to England; or to join a special company of the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve that was being formed aboard HMCS Niobe at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Eighteen, Collishaw among them, chose the last option and he was made petty officer in charge of a batch of five. His fitness for command was already apparent. On arrival at Niobe he reverted to able seaman: a useful warning of the vicissitudes of life in the armed forces. They were still undergoing training in drill, signalling, armament and general Naval knowledge when 1915 ended.

  To the future Marshal of the Royal Air Force and Chairman of British European Airways, Lord Douglas of Kirtleside, life had been gentler than to those American and Canadian contemporaries. In 1915 he was already embarked on a brilliant flying career.

  At Oxford University, in 1913, William Sholto Douglas had joined the Officers’ Training Corps as a driver in the artillery. He volunteered for service when war broke out, was commissioned in the Royal Artillery on 15th August 1914, and posted to the Royal Horse Artillery. By November he was in France. He had once seen aeroplanes at Farnborough. Now the daily sight of them overhead attracted him to the idea of flying.

  Shortly before the end of 1914, it was decided that the haphazard use of other pilots and of gro
und crew part-time volunteers as observers was not good enough. An important part of an observer’s job was artillery spotting, so transfers from the artillery were invited. Douglas immediately applied. On 26th December 1914 he was detached to No. 2 Squadron for three weeks’ trial.

  After the rigid discipline of the RHA, he revelled in the free and easy atmosphere of the Flying Corps. “The RFC and RAF,” he wrote in old age, “offered encouragement to a certain quality of individuality. Flying attracted men whose outlook on life was tinged with an exceptional independence.” That he had an abundance of the qualities which made him one of them is apparent from a report of his a couple of years later, as a pilot. The mastery of a spin had only recently been discovered. Sholto Douglas wanted to know if an inverted spin could also be corrected. He climbed to 5000 feet, turned his aircraft upside down and “put it into a spin to see what would happen”.

  For the present, however, Second Lieutenant Douglas was merely a novice observer. Lamp signalling from air to ground had been introduced, so he had to learn Morse. On his very first flight he was sent over the lines and was dismayed to find that he could not recognise any ground features at all. His pilot had to write the reconnaissance report for him. Soon he was flying almost daily and often twice a day. When he mentioned having owned a camera as a boy, he was made squadron photographer. To take photographs, he had to cut a hole in the floor of his cockpit. The cumbersome apparatus, the icy buffeting wind and his frozen hands combined to cause many spoiled plates.

  Because he was hefty, he and his pilot, to save weight, did not carry rifles. Flying with Harvey-Kelly, he saw an enemy aircraft at close quarters for the first time and was able only to exchange waves with the Germans, instead of shooting them down, as an observer named Lascelles, on another squadron, had done. Henceforth Douglas always flew with a carbine.