by Джон Биггинс
The mission involved photographing a wood near Gradisca which was known to be concealing a large naval gun mounted on a railway carriage. This weapon—at least 30cm according to intelligence reports—had been brought up the previous week and was now causing a great deal of grief to our troops on the Carso. Known popularly as “Waldschani”—Viennese dialect for “Johnny-in-the-Wood”—it had been sending shells over at the rate of one every three minutes or so, day and night, to crash down on the trackways behind Fajtji Hrib amid the supply columns of men and mules struggling in the red mud. It was not known how they were aiming the guns—secret wireless messages from spies had been spoken of—but the Italians were certainly finding their targets now with depressing frequency. Normally this would not have weighed much in the counsels of the generals: being blown to bits by half-tonne shells wailing down out of the darkness was what common soldiers were for. But the previous day Waldschani had succeeded in dropping a shell alongside the farmhouse near the village of Vojscica which served as headquarters for the 9 th Infantry Division. Its commander the Archduke Joseph had not been injured when the roof fell in on him, only shaken and covered in soot from the chimney. But insults of that kind—a direct threat to the safety and well-being of staff officers, no less—could not be tolerated; especially when one of the officers in question was a member of the Imperial House. An order had gone out that all possible measures must be taken immediately to put an end to Waldschani’s destructive career.
A heavy bombing-raid would have to be laid on, since no Austrian gun on the Carso Front had enough range to reach Grandisca. The first requisite for this, though, would be to find out exactly where the gun was firing from, since we had now lost the heights along the rim of the Carso and no kite-balloon could get high enough to peer over the edge. Photo reconnaissance by aeroplane would be called for. But it would not be an easy task. The Italians would be expecting photographers and would certainly have ringed the site with flak batteries as well as detailing fighter aircraft to cover it. The best that we could do was to aim for surprise— after all, even Nieuports could not hover in the air all day long—and provide an escort for the two-seater taking the photographs. However, the mission was of the utmost importance, we were told, so not one but two Brandenburgers would be used—Potocznik’s and mine. It would also mark the operational debut of Austria-Hungary’s first single-seat fighter aeroplane, the Hansa-Brandenburg KD—the “Kampfdoppeldecker” or “fighting biplane.”
The fighter escort had been a last-minute decision on Vienna’s part, made possible by the fact that the first four Brandenburg KDs had been delivered from Berlin to the aircraft park at Marburg the previous day. So you may imagine that we were fairly dancing with anticipation that evening of 24 September as we received the telephone call and rushed out to watch the tiny specks materialise in the distance above the mountains, coming in to land at Caprovizza flying field. Only Meyerhofer remained in the Kanzlei hut, to speak with the Air Liaison Officer at the other end of the line. But we had been promised four aircraft, he said. And now Oberleutnant Potocznik was standing by him to report that only three aeroplanes could be seen. Yes, said Air Liaison; there had been . . . er . . . an unfortunate mishap on take-off from Marburg, so it would now be only three aircraft. However, that should be more than sufficient for our needs tomorrow. Meyerhofer put down the receiver and rushed out to join us on the field just as the aeroplanes were lining up to land.
“Lining up” is scarcely an accurate term for what was going on: the three aeroplanes were swaying and weaving through the air like a flight of drunken gnats. The first two managed untidy, bouncing landings on the field, but the third had no sooner touched its wheels to the ground than it promptly nosed over, seemed to stand still with its wheels like a recalcitrant mule, and stood on its head, then did a sort of forward somersault to end up lying on its back with a smashed propeller and a badly bent undercarriage. We all ran over to the wreck to find the pilot alive but badly concussed, hanging upside-down by his seat straps. We got him down and wheeled him to the ambulance on the hand barrow used for the injured. Then we went to look at the aeroplanes that had survived the journey, standing now under camouflage netting in the bora shelters. We all stood gazing for some time in silence.
Bear in mind if you will that in the year 1916 aeroplanes had not been flying for very long. Szuborits was the youngest of us, little more than an adolescent still, but even he had been at junior school in 1903 when the Wright brothers had made their first flight. Since that time every possible layout had been designed, built and (usually) crashed by aspiring designers: tractors, pushers, monoplanes, biplanes, triplanes, sesquiplanes, canards and deltas. There was as yet no settled notion of what an aeroplane ought to look like. Yet even so, standing there that evening, we all realised that there was something not quite right about the Hansa-Brandenburg Kampfdoppeldecker. It was as if the plans for an aeroplane had mistakenly been posted to a manufacturer of agricultural machinery.
True, it was a conventional enough aircraft in layout: a small single- engined tractor biplane with a propeller at one end and a tailplane and rudder at the other. It was just that compared with the pretty little Nieuport, which was as delightful to look at as it was dangerous to engage, something seemed to have gone badly wrong with the Brandenburg KD’s proportions, as if we were looking at a normal aeroplane in a fairground distorting mirror. It seemed so inordinately high off the ground in relation to its length and wing span. The fuselage was a deep, narrow mahogany trunk of an affair with an Austro-Daimler engine completely blocking the forward vision, so that the pilot had to look along the recessed sides past the cylinder block (as with many of his other designs, Herr Heinkel seemed to consider forward view an unnecessary luxury). The rudder was tiny, a mere comma-shaped flap hung on the knife-edge sternpost of the fuselage. The short wings were squared-off and of equal width, so that the pilot had a badly restricted view downwards. Likewise his upward view was not too good, through a cut-out in the trailing edge of the upper wing. But the most bizarre thing about the whole contraption was the struts holding the wings apart: not pairs of sticks as in a normal aeroplane, but an arrangement of pyramids held together in the middle by a star-shaped metal bracket, rather like the four legs of a canvas field-washbasin.
And to crown all these eccentricities, making an already high aeroplane look higher still, like a dwarf wearing a top hat, was a curious wood- and-aluminium fairing structure atop the upper wing. This, we learnt, housed the aeroplane’s armament of a single Schwarzlose machine gun. It appeared that when he had designed the aeroplane for the k.u.k. Fliegertruppe Heinkel had assumed that he would be able to have a machine gun firing through the propeller arc as in all the latest German machines. Not a bit of it though: the German War Ministry had refused to sell Fokker interrupter gear to Austria and had in fact even refused to license the patent to us. The machine gun on top of the wing was an afterthought, and the fairing—universally known as “the Baby’s Coffin”—was a desperate attempt to reduce the drag. Not only did it do next to nothing to help the aeroplane’s speed, it made it completely impossible—as we would soon find out—to clear a machine-gun stoppage in flight. In the years since, I have heard it said that we used to call the Brandenburg KD “the Flying Coffin.” I cannot say that I remember that nickname being used, even though I suppose looking back on it that it was quite apt, and that the varnished mahogany fuselage did look rather like a burial casket. The only name I ever remember being used for it—and that but seldom—was the “Spinne,” or “Spider.” Nicknames, after all, are usually reserved for people and things for which we feel a glimmer of affection, and certainly no one who flew the KD could ever feel that.
We made our way back to the mess tent in silence. The two delivery pilots were already there, being plied with drinks by the orderlies like two unhurt but still intensely shocked survivors of a train crash. One was a Hungarian called Terszetanyi, if I remember rightly, the other a Pole ca
lled Romanowicz. The latter was still chalk-faced as he poured himself yet another schnapps with a trembling hand.
“Holy Mother of God,” he said, “I’m volunteering for the trenches tomorrow. Anything: storm-battalion, flame-thrower company, gas, burying corpses—I don’t care.”
“Was it that bad? ”
“Bad? Jesus Christ I’ve never flown anything like it. Not even the Aviatik Rocking-Chair. The thing’s a disaster. The first time I took it up was yesterday afternoon, and it got me into a spin at two thousand metres. I managed to pull out just above the ground, God alone knows how. It wanders from side to side like a snake, while as for landing the thing, I don’t know how I managed not to tip over on my head like poor old Belounek. We took off from Marburg well enough—the pig climbs quite decently if nothing else—but we were hardly out of sight of the airfield when Metzger’s plane went into a spin for no reason at all.”
“I suppose that must have been Air Liaison’s ‘problems on take-off’?” Romanowicz smiled grimly and gulped his drink. “Yes, I suppose you could call it that. Only for Metzger it’s the end of his problems for ever. The poor bugger dived straight into the ground and went up like a firework: ‘strengthened the ranks of the angels,’ as we say back home.” “Why didn’t you turn back?”
“No choice, old man: orders and all that. Terszetanyi and I were with Flik 14 in the Ukraine, you see. We had some trouble there earlier this year over another flying abortion, the Aviatik BIII of blessed memory, commonly known as ‘the Rocking-Chair’ or ‘the Fairground Swingboat.’ The thing killed so many of our chaps that in the end we had a little mutiny—‘mass refusal of duty’ is the polite term among officers, I believe—and said that we weren’t going to fly it any more. So they broke up the unit and moved us all to other Fliks. We were officers and not rankers so they couldn’t shoot us all or stick us into a penal battalion. But I tell you, we’re marked men. One more refusal of duty and we’re for the high jump and no mistake.”
“What do you think the KD will be like as a fighting machine?” asked Potocznik. Romanowicz found this immensely amusing.
“A machine that will rapidly carve for itself a lasting niche in the brief annals of aerial warfare, if you ask me: the Italians will either think we’ve all gone mad and stop fighting or crash into the ground following us down. Here . . .” he rummaged inside his tunic. “Here’s my will, made out ready and signed. Be a good chap and leave it in the Kanzlei safe, will you? As for my personal effects, you can auction them here among yourselves to save you the bother of sending them back to Marburg.”
The mist was clearing from the valley the next morning as the remnants of Flik 19F took off from Caprovizza airfield, accompanied by their two ungainly escorts. I was in the leading aeroplane with Toth as pilot, while Potocznik and Leutnant Szuborits followed in the unit’s other serviceable Brandenburger. Low cloud lay over the Vippaco Valley, but the Meteorological Officer had assured us by telephone that it was clearing rapidly west of the Isonzo and giving way to bright autumn sunshine: ideal conditions for photography. We droned around in circles to gain height, entering the cloud at about a thousand metres and emerging at two thousand to form up with our escorts. We watched the two KDs pop up from the fleecy white carpet, then got into line with them on either side of us and about fifty metres above. I watched them anxiously from my place behind the machine gun. They seemed a little unsteady to be sure. I supposed that Terszetanyi and Romanowicz were sitting in the cockpits, knuckles white with gripping the control column and waiting for the first tell-tale lurch that would presage the fatal spin down to disaster. Not for the first time I was glad that, whatever the hazards of front-line aviation, at least the Brandenburg two-seater was an easy and gentle old bus to fly, with no conspicuous vices; sturdily built and tolerant of wayward piloting.
I waved to them, but they did not wave back: mainly (I suppose) because they were too frightened to take a hand off the controls. At least they seemed to be managing the aircraft a little better than on the previous day. Perhaps it was just that the KD took some getting used to for pilots who had previously flown only two-seaters. It certainly seemed to have adequate speed. We were flying at seven-eighths throttle to gain height, but the two KDs seemed to be ambling along at only about three- quarters to judge by the exhaust smoke, which used to turn black at high revs. Perhaps things would not work out so badly after all.
We met with a little ill-directed flak as we crossed the Monte Cosbana ridge north of Gorz. As agreed, we then made a wide circle over the town of Cormons and approached Gradisca from the rear. So far there was no sign of any hostile aircraft. We flew over the target at three thousand metres; Toth and I first, then Potocznik. We were covering the same area with our cameras, but the whole operation was judged so important that it had been decided to have two aeroplanes carry it out in case one failed to return. Try as I might I could see no sign of the railway gun on its carriage in the wood below, only the spur of railway track leading off the main line into the trees. But that was not my affair: my job was to work the camera, get the twenty or so plates back to Haidenschaft and then leave it to the intelligence experts with their magnifying-glasses and stereoscopic viewers to detect where exactly Waldschani was lurking. After about two minutes of ambling over the area as instructed, I fired a green signal rocket to indicate that we were finished. Potocznik waggled his wings in answer, and we all turned to give full throttle and run for home, the two Brandenburgers and their escorts who had been circling overhead. We had got away with it so far, but surely the Italians must be coming up after us by now. Being of a naturally rather suspicious cast of mind, it worried me more than a little that we had been allowed to fly over the target, quite obviously engaged in photography, without attracting so much as a single flak shell from below.
We found out as we crossed the Isonzo that it had indeed all been too good to be true: three Nieuports fell upon us out of a patch of cloud. I abandoned the camera and stood behind the Schwarzlose, ready and hoping that the ammunition feed would not seize up like last time. Remember, I thought, don’t fire too soon: rely on Toth to fly the aeroplane and just fire defensively when a target presents itself. Our real hope of salvation lay in getting up enough speed in a shallow dive to outrun the Italians. We were not far from our own lines after all. Weaving and jinking to throw them off their aim before it was absolutely necessary would only lose us speed and make us easier to catch. The Italians needed to close to thirty metres or less to be sure of hitting, and their gun magazines only held about fifty rounds . . . It was with thoughts such as these that I tried to hearten myself as the three familiar shapes closed with us. Yet when all is said and done, no thoughts are really cheering enough to console a man who will shortly be required to stand up full-length with only a thin plywood sheet for protection, three thousand metres above the ground, and face an assailant armed with a machine gun at a range less than the length of most people’s back gardens.
The thing about aerial combat, as opposed to making a U-Boat attack, is that everything happens so fast. I always found it rather like going under anaesthetic for an operation, when the last thought that one takes in is also the first thought as one comes out, the intervening couple of hours having somehow got lost. It was very like that over the Isonzo that morning: a desperate, savage, confused bout of wheeling and shooting which perhaps lasted no more than a minute. Our first concern was to keep formation and support one another as the Italians tried to break us up, seeking to fasten on to an aeroplane and worry it to death, as wolves will detach a stag from the herd and then run it down. A Nieuport flashed past us some way above with a KD—Terszetanyi’s as it turned out—on his tail trying to take aim. I think that I saw Terszetanyi fire a few times, but then I suppose that his gun must have jammed. At any rate, as he wheeled back into view below us I saw that he had broken off the attack and was now kneeling half out of his cockpit, steering with one foot and hammering at the gun fairing with his fist in an e
ffort to pull it off and get at the gun. He did not succeed. Horror-struck, I watched as his aeroplane suddenly slipped sideways into a spin. My last sight of him is still branded into my mind’s eye seventy years later: of his arms and legs flailing wildly as he fell to his death on the Carso rocks three thousand metres below.
There was no time to mourn him, only to try and save ourselves as a Nieuport came at us out of the sun. Blinded by the glare, I swung the gun around and felt it jolt and clatter in my hands as I pressed the thumb triggers. Bullets spacked through the fuselage as he aimed for the black Maltese cross on our side. But we lived; the Nieuport shot past under our tail as I gave him another burst. He came up on the other side and I fired again. He was visible just long enough for me to make out the black-cat emblem on the side of his fuselage. Then it was hidden by a stream of smoke and a sudden bright tail of red and yellow flames. The Nieuport banked away and spun downwards, leaving a curving trail of smoke behind it as the fire licked around the wing roots and spread towards the tail. It dawned upon me belatedly that I had just shot down Major Oreste di Carraciolo, the Black Cat of Italy.
All this happened in an instant, though I see it still with the vivid clarity of a dream. But we had not the leisure to congratulate ourselves on our victory. We could only thank our lucky stars and run for home as best we could. In the end Potocznik and I crossed the lines circling around Romanowicz’s KD like lapwings protecting a fledgeling from hawks: a ludicrous state of affairs in which the escorted ended up escorting back the aeroplane which was supposed to have been escorting them. The Nieuports only left us in peace after we had reached Dornberg and the protection of our own flak batteries.