Wings

by Patrick Bishop

  Had the unfortunate man been equipped with a parachute he could simply have floated to safety, but although parachutes were issued to balloon observers (and German airmen) they were not given to British aviators. One explanation that gained credence among the fliers themselves was that the authorities decided against doing so as it was felt that air crew might be tempted to abandon their aircraft in an emergency before it was absolutely necessary. Another explanation is that the parachutes used in balloons were crude affairs, jerked open by a fixed line when the observer jumped. They would not have worked for anyone trying to leave a stricken aeroplane spinning earthwards out of control. It was not until 1919 that Leslie Irvin invented – and tested himself – a reliable free-fall parachute that a man could activate once clear of his aircraft.

  Once over enemy lines the work began. Reconnaissance missions no longer relied on the observer making sketches of earthworks, new roads and railway lines or anything else that revealed the enemy’s intentions. The value of aerial photography had been recognized early on and after some initial experiments a small photographic section unit was established in January 1915 under Lieutenant John Moore-Brabazon. They designed a camera for air use, a cumbersome wood-and-brass box. Initially it was operated by the observer, hanging over the side of the cockpit and holding onto the straps, but later it was fixed to the side of the fuselage or mounted over a hole cut in the floor. Despite the difficulties of operating it, by early February the German front line facing the First Army sector had been photographed in meticulous detail.

  The other principal duty was spotting for the artillery – identifying enemy guns and correcting the fire of friendly batteries. Once again, new technology greatly improved efficiency. Klaxons blaring Morse-code messages from on high and coloured flares fired from a Very pistol gave way to wireless telegraphy. The rapid development of air to ground co-ordination was largely due to two Royal Engineer lieutenants, Donald Lewis and Bron James, who pioneered the technique, each flying solo to leave room for the wireless equipment that weighed as much as a small man. The apparatus could transmit but not receive, so signals were acknowledged by placing coloured strips of cloth on the ground next to the battery.

  At first they tapped out terse instructions in Morse code with one hand, while flying with the other. ‘Fire . . . fire . . . fire again . . . a little short . . . range OK . . . you have hit them’ ran a typical sequence. It required considerable sangfroid to keep this up while Archie was bursting all around and both men were eventually killed while at work in the air. Before they died a more accurate means of directing fire had been invented, using a squared map and a ‘clock code’ that told a battery commander with some precision where his shells were falling.

  A specialist wireless squadron, No. 9, was created under the command of Captain Hugh Dowding, a gunner who had developed an interest in aviation and transferred to the RFC in August 1914. The bright plumage of so many early airmen has obscured the presence of a significant number of more sombre figures in their ranks. The public face of the air force was provided by the gallant, the dashing and the colourful, who seemed to belong in the pages of the historical adventure books that British lads were brought up on, filled with tales of knights and highwaymen. Behind them, however, stood a faceless cohort of thoroughly twentieth-century men, without whom the RFC would not have grown so rapidly in size and importance.

  Dowding belonged firmly in this category. He was a schoolmaster’s son, a solitary man who approached duties and difficulties with Wykehamist intellectual rigour and an unshakeable belief in the rightness of his views. He shared this trait with Trenchard – though this did not prevent them falling out and, indeed, probably encouraged it. Dowding’s stubborn convictions, arrived at after great thought, would steer Britain safely through the preparations for and conduct of its existential struggle twenty-six years later.

  For both, the RFC had provided a providential opportunity to display their worth and talents. The transformation in Trenchard’s fortunes was astounding. Two years before he had been a no-hoper heading for the military scrap heap. Now he was a coming man, highly regarded by his shrewd superior, Henderson. In November he got his wish and left the vital but tedious task of overseeing the expansion to go to France to command No. 1 Wing, working alongside Haig and his First Army. Trenchard sensed his moment had come, his rendezvous with destiny. His guiding principle was that ‘no call from the army must ever find the RFC wanting’ and he drove his men and machines to their limits to achieve it. An early test came in 1915 with the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, the first big British push of the spring, designed to drive the Germans out of the Neuve Chapelle salient, which was thought to be only lightly defended.

  Haig summoned Trenchard and revealed how important he regarded the role that the air element would play in the forthcoming battle. According to Trenchard’s account, Haig told him: ‘I shall expect you to tell me before the attack whether you can fly, because on your being able to observe for the artillery, and carry out reconnaissance, the battle will partly depend. If you can’t fly because of the weather, I shall probably put off the attack.’7

  The aeroplanes did fly and on 10 March 1915 the operation went ahead, but with little result for all the effort expended – a pattern that would soon become depressingly familiar. The episode, though, confirmed how far the RFC had come since its arrival. Then it had been little more than a curiosity which might or might not bring some advantage. Now, seven months later, it was unthinkable that any major operation would take place without aircraft being involved.

  At the meeting the airmen had been given another task. They were detailed on the day of the attack to carry out a couple of bombing raids on targets behind the lines to disrupt any attempt to rush in reinforcements. Expectations of what attack from the air could achieve were ludicrously high. Only three aeroplanes were allotted to the first operation and two for the second. The first flight took off at dawn for a chateau, six miles east of Neuve Chapelle, that was thought to house the enemy headquarters. It was led by Eric Conran, the Australian who had pelted German troops with hand grenades in the first weeks of the war. James McCudden often flew with him, but this time he was left behind and sitting in the observer’s seat was Major John Salmond who had just arrived to take command of 3 Squadron.

  ‘They bombed the château with great success from a height of a few feet,’ McCudden recorded. ‘Captain Conran’s description when he returned of some fat old Landsturmers [reservists] running up a road, firing rifles without taking aim, was very funny, but the Morane was badly shot about, and a bullet had passed exactly between the pilot and the passenger at right angles to the line of flight.’ It was, he reflected ‘hard to decide who was more lucky.’8

  In fact, Salmond had the closer shave. He had felt a blow to his stomach and imagined himself shot. On landing he discovered the bullet had passed through his clothing. When Trenchard heard about the escapade he wrote to Salmond: ‘You are splendid, but don’t do it again; I can’t afford to lose you.’9

  Conran was unperturbed by this or any other escapade. He seemed to be nerveless and to have an insatiable appetite for adventure. It could only end one way. McCudden remembered how, less than a week after the raid on the château, Conran and a Lieutenant Woodiwiss ‘went out to drop some bombs [just south-west of Lille] . . . they arrived back in forty minutes and as they were landing I noticed some flying wires dangling and a stream of petrol running from the machine. I ran to the Morane and found Captain Conran badly wounded in the back and the arm . . . one shrapnel ball had embedded itself in his right arm and the other had gone in at his side and come out very near his spine. The machine . . . was literally riddled with shrapnel and how the observer escaped unhurt I do not know.’10Conran survived, but it was the end of his combat flying career. The luck of Woodiwiss did not hold. In May, together with Lieutenant Denys Corbett Wilson, a prewar playboy who had been the first man to fly the Irish Sea, he was shot down in flames over Fournes.

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p; The second raid was launched in the afternoon, by two veterans – Louis Strange of 6 Squadron and George Carmichael of 5 Squadron. Strange was in a BE2c loaded with three bombs weighing less than 25 lbs hanging under the wings on racks, which he was to drop on Courtrai railway station. Carmichael piloted a Martinsyde biplane, carrying a single 100 lb bomb and his target was a railway junction at Menin. Strange came in low, below 200 feet, and was peppered by ground fire as he closed on the station. A troop train was waiting at the platform and his stick of bombs landed around it, killing, an agent reported later, seventy-five soldiers. Carmichael also managed to land his bomb on target, but with less effect.

  Strange’s success perhaps reinforced exaggerated notions of what bombing could achieve, for six weeks later a single aeroplane was once again sent to bomb the Courtrai rail junction, to disrupt the movement of tens of thousands of troops who were believed to be about to arrive there prior to an offensive to drive the British out of the Ypres salient. The pilot was Will Rhodes-Moorhouse of 2 Squadron, who, on the afternoon of 24 April, set off from Merville aerodrome in a BE, flying solo to make room for the single 112 lb bomb he was carrying. He flew in and dropped his bomb at 300 feet, but was caught in a blizzard of small-arms fire. Although wounded badly, he nursed his bullet-riddled machine back to Merville to gasp out his report to Trenchard. A few hours later he died. Rhodes-Moorhouse’s heroism won him the Victoria Cross, the first of eleven won by RFC personnel during the war. He left behind a fifteen-month-old son, also William, who earned his pilot’s licence while still at Eton, joined 601 Auxiliary Squadron, flew from Merville aerodrome during the Battle of France in 1940 and, like his father, died in combat, shot down over Kent during the Battle of Britain with eight ‘kills’ to his credit.

  Aviators reacted differently to the perpetual risk and danger. An airman could sink into introspection or assume a mask of manly indifference to death. Some of the greatest aces of the war, like Mick Mannock, did both. But collectively, the RFC developed an ethos of defiance that sought to draw the sting of death, cultivating a lively fatalism that mocked the thing we most fear in a manner that even at this distance in time is both exhilarating and profoundly moving.

  The pre-war pioneers had already expressed this spirit in a song called ‘The Dying Airman’. One of the verses runs:

  Who dreads to the dust returning?

  Who shrinks from the sable shore,

  Where the high and the lofty yearning

  Of the soul shall be no more?

  But stand by your glasses, steady!

  This world is a world of woe,

  Here’s a toast to the dead already

  Three cheers for the next man to go.

  The words would ring out defiantly at the end of boozy evenings in mess and estaminet for the duration of the war, a magnificent ‘Up yours!’ to the Grim Reaper as he sharpened his scythe in preparation for the next day’s harvest.

  The offensives of the spring and summer of 1915 confirmed the paramount importance of artillery in the struggle. Guns pulverized the battlefield day and night, obliterating the woods and churning the fields into a cratered moonscape. To escape the bombardments the soldiers dug trenches and dugouts, ever deeper and more elaborate. There they hid until the guns stopped long enough for them to stagger forward to seize a few yards of territory. In this form of warfare, close knowledge of your enemy’s fortifications and the ability to shell accurately were essential to any success. By the middle of 1915 the air forces of both sides were struggling to expand to meet the demand for information. Many of the surviving veterans were sent back to act as instructors at the flying schools now generating a stream of often poorly prepared greenhorns. They filled the ranks of the five new RFC wings created between March and November 1915.

  The growing importance of aircraft led both sides to reconsider their strategies. They arrived at the same, inevitable, conclusion. If they could drive their opponents from the skies, they would deprive them of what had become a vital component of modern warfighting and the balance would tilt in their favour.

  To do so, they could not rely on anti-aircraft artillery alone. What was needed was a means of destroying hostile aircraft in the air. From 1915 onwards the Allies and the Germans competed in a fierce technological race to develop aeroplanes and weapons that would give them the edge in aerial combat. For the rest of the war the seesaw of advantage would tip one way, then the other, as each side absorbed and adapted to each new advance in the science of aerial violence.

  Increased engine power and the development of lighter weaponry meant that during 1915 rifles and revolvers were abandoned in favour of machine guns. Firing them accurately, however, was extremely difficult and dangerous. In a two-seater ‘tractor’ aircraft like the BE2, shooting in the direction the pilot was flying was severely restricted by the arc of the propeller. The observer had to take great care not to hit the struts and spars, and the buffeting wind constantly threatened to tear the weapon from his hands. Any success depended on an understanding of ‘deflection’ shooting – the art of calculating where to aim the stream of bullets to take account of your enemy’s speed and direction as well as your own.

  The Martinsyde S3 single-seater biplane, which carried a forward-firing .303 Lewis gun mounted on the top wing, put in a brief appearance in 1915. It was faster than the BE2s, but also inherently unstable. When one arrived at 6 Squadron it was given to Louis Strange, the innovator who had already tried unsuccessfully to mount a machine gun in a Farman. One day, while off on a hunting expedition, he spotted an Aviatik reconnaissance machine. The two-seater was no greyhound, but the weight and drag of the Lewis gun meant the Martinsyde was even slower and as Strange climbed to attack, his quarry drew away. In his frustration he fired off an entire drum of ammunition and turned for home. He was now twenty miles over the German lines. He needed to reload to defend himself from attack. He put his hand up to unclip the magazine, but it was stuck fast and the wind made it hard to get a grip. He throttled back and lifted the nose to reduce speed. Still it would not budge. Strange stood up in the cockpit and began wrenching at the drum. As he did, the Martinsyde tilted to port and slid sideways, knocking Strange off his feet and onto the joystick. The machine flipped upside down. Strange was now hanging by both hands from the drum, and praying fervently that it remained jammed, while the Martinsyde trundled along upside down, 9,000 feet above the ground. Swaddled in thick flying gear and battered by the wind, he somehow managed to haul himself up and hook his legs over the inverted upper wing. The shift of weight sent the aircraft into a spin. As it tipped into a downward spiral Strange tumbled back into the cockpit. One nightmarish predicament was replaced by another. He was hurtling earthwards and there was no agreed technique for recovering from a spinning aeroplane. Whatever it was that Strange did to the controls it worked. Somewhere between 1,500 feet and the ground he pulled out and, trembling with exertion and nerves, flew home at tree-top level.11

  Strange’s 6 Squadron comrade Lanoe Hawker demonstrated that, with the limited technology available, it was possible for a pilot to shoot down enemy aircraft. He was an outstandingly courageous flyer who was also equipped with an inventive technological brain. Present in Hawker’s make-up were some of the complexities that would show up again and again in the personalities of the aces of this war and the next. He was exceptionally combative, relishing any opportunity to get to grips with the enemy, yet when he scored a victory his excitement was tempered with sympathy for his victim. He had transferred from the Royal Engineers to the RFC, arriving in France in October 1914, and flew numerous reconnaissance missions before being wounded in the foot by ground fire during the fighting around Ypres. He resumed duty just as a new fast type, the single-seater Bristol ‘Scout’, started to arrive in France and one was assigned to each squadron. The Scout could reach 90 mph in straight and level flight, nearly twenty miles an hour faster than a BE2, and climb to 6,500 feet in ten minutes – twice as rapidly as most RFC machines. In addition it was nimb
ler than the stolid Air Factory products which had made a virtue of stability, sacrificing the manoeuvrability that increasingly would be the key to both success and survival.

  Hawker got his hands on 6 Squadron’s Bristol and together with Air Mechanic Ernest Elton devised a way of fitting a Lewis machine gun to the port side of the fuselage, so that it could fire forward obliquely at an angle that avoided the risk of smashing the propeller to pieces. He alternated routine reconnaissance and artillery shoots with hunting missions seeking out enemy aircraft. On his first outings he managed to see off some intruders without succeeding in shooting them down, though he was delighted with the Scout (‘a little beauty’) and it was ‘quite exciting, diving at 120 miles an hour and firing a machine gun’.12Then, on the early evening of 25 July, he was over Passchendaele when he ran into three German aircraft and shot them down in quick succession. The feat won him the Victoria Cross. By the time he was sent home for a rest in September 1915 he had been credited with seven confirmed ‘kills’. This made him the first British air force ‘ace’, though official distaste for publicizing the feats of one man over those of his comrades meant that his fame, for the time being, was confined to the RFC.

  There were few pilots with Hawker’s skill. The business of air fighting became easier, however, with the arrival of biplane ‘pusher’ type aircraft, like the Vickers FB5, known as the ‘gunbus’, with the propeller mounted in the rear. This enabled the observer to perch in the nose of the aircraft behind a pillar-mounted Lewis gun, with a clear field of fire. The Gunbus was supplemented by another pusher, the DH2, which bore the initials of its designer Geoffrey de Havilland. It was a single-seater and equipped a new squadron, No. 24, commanded by Hawker.