Meanwhile, the winter training facilities in the United States were built to RFC specifications. The major site was at Fort Worth, Texas, and during the first year of operations, 1917–18, the agreement was extended to enable the Canadians to stay later than February as originally planned, in return for which the RFC agreed to train eight additional American squadrons. One of the instructors there was William Doré, from the little village of Arichat in Cape Breton, who had joined the 32nd Battalion as a lieutenant in January 1915 but transferred into the RFC in November 1915. Promoted to captain in April 1917, he returned to Canada to command 87 Squadron and served at the pilot training base in Fort Worth before returning to France with 107 Squadron in May 1918. As it happened, the training squadrons only spent the one winter at Fort Worth because it was decided in 1918 that winter training could in fact be done in Canada.
The RFC training program in Canada was a huge success.[24] By the end of the war, it had trained more than 16,663 personnel, including 4,800 Americans, some of whom were not actually Americans. Vivian Voss, for example, was a South African who had gone to Baltimore in 1914 to study at Johns Hopkins University. In May 1917 he went to Toronto and joined the RFC, then served in France and was awarded the MBE.[25]
The RFC Canada training program was so successful that it was replicated on a much larger scale during the Second World War as the Commonwealth Air Training Plan.[26] In expressing his appreciation, Major General W. L. Kenly, the newly appointed Chief of the U.S. Air Service, told Hoare that RFC Canada had “conferred a great and practical benefit on the United States Air Service.”[27] Needless to say, the benefits were mutual.
Not all Canadian pilots were trained by the RFC in Canada. Some, especially in the early part of the war, enlisted in the RFC directly. T. D. (Theodore) Hallam learned how to fly at the Curtiss school in Hammondsport even before the war broke out. He went overseas with the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade but promptly transferred into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and was attached to its armored car section. He served at Gallipoli with an RNAS machine gun unit until being wounded in July 1915, when he was invalided back to England. He then qualified as a pilot, was promoted to Major, and commanded the Felixstowe Air Station, which operated five flying boats engaged in anti-submarine patrolling until the end of the war.[28] Malcolm “Mickey” Bell-Irving went to England in 1914, joined the RFC, and was flying in France by March 1915. In December 1915, in the first recorded air battle involving a Canadian, he became the first Canadian to shoot down a German plane. Raymond Collishaw, who was an officer in the Canadian Fisheries Protection Service when he joined the RNAS in 1915, rose by April 1917 to command 10 (Naval) Squadron, all of whose members were Canadians. Known as the Black Flight because they painted their planes black, Collishaw’s squadron destroyed eighty-seven enemy planes during its first two months in action.[29] He went on to command bombing squadrons and became the second highest scoring Canadian pilot in the war, shooting down sixty aircraft and eight observation balloons.[30]
Others, especially if they had only recently emigrated from Britain, returned home and enlisted in the British army and subsequently transferred into the RFC. The brothers Wulstan and Edmund Tempest, for example, who had gone out to Canada in 1911 and were farming in Saskatchewan when the war broke out, immediately returned home and enlisted in the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, then transferred into the RFC. Wulstan was serving in 39 Home Defence Squadron when he shot down L.31, a German zeppelin, in October 1916. He subsequently commanded 100 and 36 Squadrons. Edmund shot down seventeen German planes, remained in the RAF after the war, and was killed in December 1921 while serving in Mesopotamia.
Most Canadian flyers were unable to join the RFC directly, however, or even to train in Canada. They joined the army and subsequently transferred into the RFC, either because that was their original intention or because flying airplanes would liberate them from the horrors of trench warfare. The best known among them were William “Billy” Bishop and William Barker. Bishop joined the 4th CMR Battalion as a captain but soon transferred into the RFC. He became the top Allied ace of the war, having shot down seventy-two enemy planes, and was awarded the Victoria Cross. Barker went overseas as a machine gunner in the 1st CMR Battalion but then transferred into the RFC and served in France and Italy. He rose to command 9, 66, and 139 Squadrons, shot down fifty-three enemy planes, and became (and remains) the most highly decorated Canadian serviceman in history. He received not only the Victoria Cross but the Distinguished Service Order and Bar, the Military Cross with two Bars, the Medaglia d’argento al valore militare (twice), and the French Croix de Guerre.
A particularly interesting case was that of Harry Yates, who joined the Canadian Army Service Corps as a lieutenant in 1916 but transferred into the RNAS in January 1917. He trained pilots for Handley-Page long-distance bombers and in 1919 flew Harry St. John Philby, a Foreign Office official (and the father of the double agent Kim Philby) to Cairo for an important meeting, picking up T. E. Lawrence at Crete along the way. He set a record time of five days and was awarded the Air Force Cross. Yates also flew members of the British government between London and Paris during the 1919 peace conference.
In several cases, men transferred from the army because they had been wounded and either were no longer fit for service in the army or just wanted to try the new aerial technology. Ralph Bell, for example, went overseas as a captain in the 3rd Battalion but, after being hospitalized because of the effects of gas, transferred into the RFC. Horace Bray enlisted in the 7th CMR Battalion in 1915 but, after being wounded at Ypres, transferred into the RFC. John Caw went overseas as a lieutenant in the 32nd Battalion but transferred into the 5th Battalion and, after being wounded, joined the RFC in November 1917.
There being no Canadian air force, thousands of Canadians (and Americans)—roughly 23,000—served in the RFC and RNAS during the war. It was widely believed at the time that about a third of RFC pilots were Canadians, but the reality is that no one knew then or knows now exactly how many there were because of the wholly inadequate records kept by the flying services. Wise thinks that 35% “is probably much too high,” although he acknowledges that “in particular squadrons at certain stages in their operational life the proportion of Canadians was frequently as high as 35 per cent and occasionally substantially more than 50 per cent.”[31] William Barker’s biographer claims that when Barker was serving in Italy, more than 40% of the aircrew in the four RFC squadrons there were Canadians. Of that number, 1,563 were killed, and 3 earned the Victoria Cross.
Whatever the percentage, Canadians distinguished themselves in the air war. Aside from “Billy” Bishop and William Barker, mentioned above, Arthur Ince was the first Canadian pilot to shoot down a German aircraft, which he did off the coast of Belgium while serving in the RNAS in December 1915. Basil Hobbs, who took his flight training at the Wright school at Dayton, Ohio, before joining the RNAS, was the only Canadian pilot in the war who shot down a zeppelin (L.43 in June 1917) and sank a submarine (UB-32, on September 22, 1917).[32]
The first Canadian “ace,” meaning a pilot who had destroyed at least five enemy aircraft, was Redford Mulock, who also became the first RNAS ace. By the end of the war, four of the top twenty Allied aces were Canadians. Another five were British and one was Australian. The top Allied ace was “Billy” Bishop,[33] and the third was Raymond Collishaw. Other leading aces were Donald MacLaren, who had fifty-four victories, and William Barker with fifty-three.[34] The third VC awarded to a Canadian pilot went to Alan McLeod, who initially joined the Fort Garry Horse at the age of fourteen but was sent home. He then trained at the RFC school at Long Branch and was serving in France when he shot down four enemy planes in March 1918. Despite having suffered three wounds, he landed his own plane, which was in flames, and rescued his observer.[35]
A number of Canadian fliers encountered Manfred von Richthofen,[36] the so-called Red Baron, who was not only Germany’s top ace in the war but the top ace of a
ll the belligerent powers, with eighty victories. Harold Hartney was shot down and badly injured by von Richthofen in February 1917, and Wilfred “Wop” May, a fighter pilot in 209 Squadron, participated in the dogfight on April 20, 1918, when von Richthofen was shot down while May was chasing his cousin, Wolfram von Richthofen.[37] Roy Brown, another Canadian, who had trained at the Wright brothers’ school in Dayton, Ohio, was credited with shooting down the Red Baron in the most famous air battle of the war. Although many now believe that shots fired by machine gunners of the Australian 14th Artillery Brigade actually disabled his plane and caused the crash, Brown was certainly engaged in combat with him at the time.
Many Americans joined the RFC as well, especially before the U.S. entered the war in April 1917. One prominent example was Frederick Libby, a cowboy from Colorado who moved to Calgary in May 1914 and enlisted in the Canadian Army Service Corps in September, drolly describing himself as a chauffeur. He subsequently transferred into the RFC and flew two American flag streamers from the struts of his airplane. He quickly became an ace, with twenty-four victories to his credit,[38] and was awarded the Military Cross. After the United States entered the war, Libby transferred into the U.S. Air Service but was unable to continue flying because of illness. In October 1918 he auctioned the two flag streamers at Carnegie Hall and New York City’s Public Library, raising an astonishing $4,000,000 in Liberty Bond subscriptions.[39] Similarly, if less dramatically, Eldridge Roberts, who was from Duluth, Minnesota, but had been living in Canada for a number of years when the war broke out, enlisted in the 10th Battalion but transferred into the RFC after being wounded in 1916.[40]
If these two men were not colorful enough, there was also James Warner Bellah. Born in New York City, he was attending the University of Maine when he crossed into Canada in 1917 and joined the RFC. He served in 117 Squadron until 1919, then became a journalist and popular writer, publishing nineteen novels and many short stories, three of which—“Fort Apache,” “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” and “Rio Grande”—were made into films directed by John Ford. Another interesting example was Raymond Chandler, an American journalist who was born in Chicago but was living in Los Angeles when he went to Victoria, British Columbia, in August 1917 and enlisted in the Canadian army.[41] After being wounded while serving in the 7th Battalion, Chandler transferred into the RFC in the summer of 1918 and was training when the war ended. After the war, he worked in the oil industry until the 1930s, when he turned his hand to writing fiction and became the highly successful author of the Philip Marlowe detective series.
Other Americans were sent directly to England to serve in the RFC after the United States entered the war. One of them was Clayton Knight, a commercial artist, who was one of the original 150 American pilots sent to England in the summer of 1917. He served in 44 Squadron, a home defense unit that pioneered the use of the Sopwith Camel fighter aircraft for night operations and achieved its first victory on January 28/29, 1918. The commanding officer of 44 Squadron was Major Arthur Harris, who rose to become Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris in the Second World War. Knight subsequently served in 206 Squadron on the Western Front, flying bombing raids and carrying out reconnaissance. He was shot down and wounded on October 5, 1918, but survived and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner in a German hospital.
In the spring of 1917, by which time the Canadian Corps had established itself as a formidable fighting force, Borden changed his mind on the idea of a Canadian air force. The catalyst appears to have been “representations . . . placed before me which indicate that Canadians in [the] Flying Service are not receiving reasonably fair pay or adequate recognition.” In other words, he was being told that Canadians serving in the RFC were not being promoted at the same rate as British officers. He also complained about the fact that a British officer, Cuthbert Hoare, had been sent out to command the RFC training program in Canada. “The question of establishing a Canadian Flying Corps demands immediate and attentive consideration,” he concluded, adding that “I am inclined to believe that the time for organizing an independent Canadian Air Service has come.”[42]
This was a remarkable about-face, and it reflected a number of factors. Certainly Borden had received a few complaints, which the RFC investigated and insisted were unfounded. Perhaps its senior commanders did not look hard enough. William Barker complained that none of the four RFC squadrons operating in Italy when he was there had a Canadian commanding officer, even though 40% of their aircrew were Canadians.[43] And it cannot be denied that only two Canadians rose above operational rank in the British air services.
The highest ranking Canadian in the RFC was Alfred Critchley, who commanded cadet training in Britain with the rank of Brigadier General, making him the youngest Brigadier General in the British army at the age of twenty-seven.[44] The next highest ranking Canadian in the RFC—actually the highest ranking officer, because Critchley was only on loan to the RFC—was Redford Mulock, who had gone overseas with the Canadian Field Artillery in 1914 but transferred into the RNAS in 1915.[45] By 1918 he was commanding 3 Squadron, half of whose members were Canadians, and when the RFC and RNAS were merged into the RAF in April, he was promoted to Wing Commander—the equivalent of a Lieutenant Colonel in the army—to command 82 Bomber Wing. Arthur Bishop, son of Billy Bishop, later described him as “the most experienced combat pilot, aerial leader, administrator, and organizer of any Canadian” in the war, and “by the war’s end he was the RAF’s chief bomber commander.”[46]
In other words, from approximately 23,000 Canadians who served in the British flying services during the war, only one rose to a rank equivalent to that of the commanding officer of an army battalion, which contained approximately 1,000 officers and men. Clearly, something was wrong. At the same time, the Canadian Corps now consisted of four divisions, each of which was commanded by a Major General. Given the number of Canadians serving in the RAF, it was not illogical to suggest that they should be formed into an equivalent organization that would operate in support of the Corps and would be led by a Canadian of appropriate rank. Loring Christie, Borden’s chief advisor on imperial and international relations, pointedly asked his chief why his position on aviation would be any different from his position on the army. Generals Currie and Turner supported the idea of a Canadian air force because they understood the importance of air support in army operations. Public opinion also played a role, as a distinct Canadian air force would build on the national pride already engendered by the work of the Canadian Corps.
Sir George Perley, the Minister of Overseas Forces, was not keen on the idea, however, and delayed matters in England simply by not pursuing it. By May 1918, however, Sir Edward Kemp, the Minister of Militia and Defence, had decided that Borden was right and that public opinion required that action be taken. He now demanded a distinct Canadian unit within the RAF, and the Air Ministry accepted the inevitable, albeit reluctantly.[47]
No doubt one reason it did so was that the other Canadian air unit, the RCNAS, was already in the process of being established, so the principle had already been conceded. Remarkably, Kemp and his senior officials had not been made aware of this by the Minister of the Naval Service and remained completely unaware of it “for some time.”[48] This was typical of the Canadian government’s handling of the air service issue throughout the war, which Wise has described as “variously negative, indifferent, inconsistent, and puzzling” and “almost always ill-informed.” This “small-mindedness, a species of unimaginative colonialism,” was “out of keeping with its strong stand over command control of the Canadian Expeditionary Force and with its political and constitutional thrust for recognition and status within the councils of the British Empire.”[49]
In any event, by the end of the summer the Canadian Air Force had been established. Its first commander was “Billy” Bishop, who had been working on this project in London for some time and was now promoted from Major to Lieutenant Colonel. The CAF consisted of two squadrons intended to operate, like the C
anadian Corps, as a distinct unit within the Royal Air Force. Six additional squadrons were planned as well, but the war came to an end before they could be organized or the CAF could actually become operational, so it was, as Wise puts it, “virtually stillborn.”[50]
The obvious question which needs to be asked is why Canada decided in 1918 to establish not just an air force but two separate air forces. It certainly was not following the example of the British, who had merged the RFC and the RNAS into the Royal Air Force in April 1918. In fact, the example it was following was that of the United States, which had both an army air corps and a naval air service. We can only assume that Canada emulated the American example instead of the British in this instance because of Borden’s belief that Canada’s circumstances were more compatible with those of the Americans than those of the British. In view of the fact that the war was drawing to a close, this decision was of no real significance, although it did indicate that even staunch imperialists like Borden no longer thought the British were always right.
The Canadian Air Force began in a farcical manner and only came into existence in the final days of the war, too late to actually participate, after some 23,000 Canadians had served in the British flying services. If the war had continued past November 1918, as many expected it would, it would undoubtedly have contributed to the ultimate victory, but more importantly, it would also have brought together in a distinct unit like the Canadian Corps at least some of the Canadian airmen who had already played a significant role in the British air services. That would have enhanced Canada’s new status as an Allied nation rather than a subordinate Dominion and heightened the pride of Canadians in their overall role in the war.
Canada's Great War, 1914-1918 Page 26