Undeniably, the RNAS had less friendly intentions on Christmas Day. Seven seaplanes were ferried to the take-off point at sea by converted cross-Channel steamers with the aim of bombing Zeppelin sheds at Cuxhaven, on the estuary of the Elbe river at the base of the Jutland peninsula. Unable to locate their target, the crews settled for a passive overview of the nearby Wilhelmshafen naval base, where three battleships, three battle cruisers and several other warships were sighted. As they did so, the steamers and their protective escort were attacked by German airships and aeroplanes, which failed to cause any damage. On their return the seaplanes were less fortunate. Three landed close enough to be hoisted aboard a steamer, the crews of three more were picked up by a submarine, which had to crash-dive to avoid the bombs of a Zeppelin, and the seventh crew was rescued from the sea by a Dutch trawler. So, although the crews were saved, four aeroplanes out of seven had been lost.
Back home, not all families uttered expressions of goodwill during this festive season. On learning that her son had become attached to the RFC, on 26 December 1914 the mother of Sholto Douglas pithily declared: ‘You must be mad’. A classical scholar at Lincoln College, Oxford, he had abandoned his studies for the Royal Field Artillery with which he went to France in August 1914. He later recalled, contrary to doubters like Freddie West, ‘at the mention of patriotism, we all felt an instant quickening of the pulse’.
Lt Sholto Douglas’ translation to the RFC from the Royal Field Artillery owed much to his distaste for water-filled trenches, the ‘exciting’ sight of aeroplanes aloft and not least, a somewhat strained relationship with his commanding officer, who considered him ‘a self-opinionated young upstart’. Hence, the subaltern’s request to become a flying observer was approved with alacrity. On Boxing Day 1914, three days after his 21st birthday and the same day that his mother belatedly penned her disapproval, Douglas rode his horse over to No 2 Sqn at Merville, a large grass airfield between the Lys river and Nieppe forest. He subsequently survived three weeks’ probation, during which he learnt Morse perched on a bale of hay in a barn, through the open door of which wafted an unpleasant smell from the adjacent farmyard.
Undeterred by his mother’s dismay when he opted for the RFC, Douglas informed his father that ‘I am enjoying flying immensely, and I hope to get taken on as a permanent observer.’ But he was critical of the ‘vague’ guidance given to observers, whose duties were varied and onerous. In the absence of wireless in an aeroplane, the observer needed an Aldis lamp to communicate with the artillery or any other ground position by Morse. He needed to be an adept gunner, able to identify and evaluate enemy formations, use a camera or sketch the lay-out of enemy trenches. Yet for none of these tasks did he receive formal training. A comprehensive introductory course was needed, Douglas believed.
Realisation that volunteers were often taken straight from the trenches and sent aloft without guidance, coupled with his own experiences, influenced Douglas’s opinion. Shortly after reaching Merville, he was ‘casually’ informed that he was to go on a reconnaissance operation across the line over Lille. Never having flown before, he had no idea what to look for and returned with a deep feeling of having made ‘a complete hash of things’. A sympathetic pilot helped him to fill out his report, and thereafter, Douglas taught himself how to read a map in the air and identify features below ‘largely through trial and error’. He made himself proficient in aerial photography, too, even though he had to work in a confined, open cockpit, to change each plate by hand and spoilt several photos due to ‘frozen fingers’. Leaving mastery of their operational role to individual observers was both inefficient and dangerous.
In the German ranks, another soldier destined to play an important role on the Western Front volunteered for the German air service in the face of maternal disapproval. Educated at the Dresden Cadet School from which he was commissioned into the 2nd Railway Regiment in April 1911, while attending the Anklam War Academy the following year Max Immelmann enthused about the ‘glorious and unique sight’ of aeroplanes ‘which resembled huge birds, soared into the air and executed daring turns and glides with a truly amazing self-confidence’. Shortly afterwards, he resigned from the Army to attend Dresden Technical High School, where he was prominent in the Aviation Association. Recalled to his regiment in August 1914, he complained to his mother about having to ‘play the railwayman’s overseer’. However, his application for pilot training was soon accepted, and on 12 November 1914 the 24-year-old was duly posted to Adlershof Recruitment Centre near Berlin before moving to the Johannistal Flying School close by. He acknowledged that his mother disagreed with his choosing ‘a life of dangers instead of one with few risks’, and sought to reassure her that in the air he felt ‘at least as safe as in an armchair on the ground and ten times as happy’. Writing to his sister Elfriede, Immelmann included a sketch of the German commander, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, which he maintained was more lifelike than many other portrayals, and he promised her that he was ‘taking great care when flying’.
A letter to his mother on 4 January 1915 contained a mixture of naive enthusiasm, reflection, speculation about the future and description of life at the training depot in much the same vein as RFC trainees writing to their parents. He mused about the passing of ‘the last traces’ of 1914, when figuratively the Christmas forests had been enveloped in darkness. Immelmann was more optimistic for the coming year, forecasting that ‘our Fatherland’ would once more ‘appear in its full glory’. Specifically, he believed that a Luft Verkehrs Gesellschaft (LVG) biplane (LVG C. II with a 160hp engine and a machine-gun in the rear cockpit) about to enter service would bring aerial success. More soberly, he referred to two serious training crashes: the pilot of a monoplane was lucky to escape from his wrecked machine; and that of a biplane, which had failed to level out before plunging into the ground, had been killed although his observer survived. Both accidents clearly shook Immelman, but he completed his basic flying course on 12 February 1915 and moved on to advanced instruction.
As pressure to reinforce the RFC on the Western Front mounted, so the demands of other theatres put additional strain on the embryo British aviation industry. On 27 November 1914, the first aeroplane was despatched to defend the Suez Canal after Turkey had allied herself with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Soon, forces in Palestine, Mesopotamia, East Africa, the Allied enclave at Salonika on the eastern Mediterranean coast and the Dardanelles campaign in Turkey would need support, so the RFC in France would no longer have a monopoly of supplies either of men or machines.
The vulnerability of Britain to hostile air attack continued to cause grave concern. After learning to fly in civilian schools of aviation, the RNAS gave its aeroplane and seaplane pilots military instruction at Eastchurch, those destined for airships at Kingsnorth on the River Medway. Mechanics were trained at Sheerness before posting to an operational unit. Horace Buss had secured Royal Aero Club Certificate No. 409 in 1913 and began his military tuition at Eastchurch on 31 August 1914. Having cleared that hurdle, he found himself flying regular patrols along the Kent coast and occasionally over the Channel from Fort Grange at Gosport. Fear of enemy intruders became reality, when an aeroplane attacked Dover on 24 December 1914. The Germans had formed a Brieftauben Abteilung (Carrier Pigeon Detachment) at Ostend equipped with Taube (pigeon) biplanes to mount a campaign across the Channel. Pressure to divert aerial resources to defence of the homeland intensified, when during the night of 19/20 January 1915 two Zeppelins raided King’s Lynn and Yarmouth dropping high explosive (HE) and incendiary bombs, which killed four and injured sixteen civilians including two children. Neither airship was sighted during 79 sorties (single flights) by defending aeroplanes, eight of which crashed attempting night landings, killing three pilots. RNAS aeroplanes were now deployed to Hendon, and all RFC stations except those west of Farnborough were ordered to have two machines in readiness to oppose a night attack. Additional landing grounds were established in and around London, their illumination made t
he responsibility of nearby military units. Each would have distinctive lighting to help airborne pilots to fix their position.
On the Western Front, plans were drawn up to expand the forces on the ground to six armies, each of three corps. At the War Office, Maj Sefton Brancker estimated that thirty squadrons would be needed in support: one for each Army HQ, one each for the eighteen corps and six attached to RFC HQ. On 21 December 1914, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, scribbled on Brancker’s proposal: ‘Double this. K’.
As the new year dawned, Harold Wyllie of No 4 Sqn demonstrated the widening scope of RFC activities. On 6 January 1915, he flew on a ‘strategical reconnaissance’, which entailed penetrating enemy-held territory beyond the battlefield to survey support facilities like ammunition dumps and railway centres. (The adjective ‘strategical’ or, more commonly ‘strategic’, was used in the context of a theatre of war like the Western Front; ‘tactical’ applied to a battlefield such as Ypres). Wyllie also revealed the perils, which awaited airmen not engaged in operations. Lt J.A. Cunningham, a pilot with whom Wyllie had flown, went back to England to collect a new Morane Parasol machine. Returning to France,
his engine failed over the Channel and picked up again after he had lost 2,000ft. He went on again, climbing, but the engine again failed and seeing a destroyer he made for her. He got to within 40ft of the water and had let go his belt, abandoned the rudder and was standing up in his seat holding the stick, when the engine suddenly picked up. He scrambled back into his seat, got his rudder and got to Calais. He made a good landing, but the aerodrome being under water he ran into a ditch and smashed the machine rather badly … a pretty close call.
Arrival of a Farman Shorthorn (without the prominent, forward-projecting skids of the Farman Longhorn) armed with a machine-gun on 11 January was important enough for Wyllie to note. Towards the end of the month, taking advantage of clear weather and when possible flying twice a day, Wyllie was again aloft sketching enemy trenches at St Eloi and Messines, in the Ypres area. All too often though, he recorded his frustration that cloud prevented flying.
On 5 February, he did get away on a dawn reconnaissance to Wervicq, where ‘a battery of guns opened on us … The shells were humming under, over and on both sides. There seemed to be no way out of it and neither Marsh [the pilot] nor myself thought we should want any breakfast.’ However, good fortune favoured them: ‘I never believed it possible to be under such fire and survive. The noise was deafening and the air filled with smoke. They fired over 100 rounds.’ He reflected, ‘this is getting too warm to last – sixth time my bus has been winged.’ After Marsh and Wyllie landed, a German aeroplane had the temerity to drop ‘a petrol bomb’ on the airfield. ‘Adolphus’ engaged him, ‘but the firing was bad’. Wyllie was now due for seven days leave. Between 10 November 1914 and 5 February 1915, he had flown thirty-three reconnaissance or sketching operations for a total of 54hrs 50mins at heights of 2,000–7,000ft.
‘The weather has been atrocious’ wrote an RFC pilot as the first winter of hostilities drew to a close, a sentiment amply confirmed by entries in Harold Wyllie’s diary and by Max Immelmann, who complained to his family of ‘terrible weather’. Flying flimsy machines, few of which were protected by shelters when on the ground, the RFC had not only to battle against the gales, snow, rain and biting cold, but come to terms with the stark realisation that this would not be a brief campaign, ‘over by Christmas’. On the plus side, Kitchener’s commitment to providing sixty squadrons for the Western Front confirmed that the air component had proved its worth in action and become an indispensable part of warfare.
In the short term, though, the Secretary of State’s figure comprised little more than a mirage. The harsh reality was that at the beginning of March 1915, exclusive of the Aircraft Park with eighteen machines on charge, the RFC in France comprised just eighty-five aeroplanes divided into three wings. With this limited force, twenty-one more than had initially flown to France in August 1914, it must provide support for the Army’s Spring offensive and protect other areas of the front not directly engaged in the main battle.
4
Failed Offensives, 1915
‘Ants walking across a billiard table’
On 10 March 1915, the British First Army launched a major attack at Neuve Chapelle, 10 miles (16km) south-west of Lille, to eliminate a German salient and capture Aubers Ridge. A ‘hurricane’ bombardment of 35 minutes preceded the infantry advance, which an RFC observer described as being like ‘ants walking across a billiard table’. By 13 March, when forward movement ceased, the British had captured Neuve Chapelle but not Aubers Ridge, incurred 12,892 casualties and suffered the first of many costly setbacks in 1915.
Prior to the attack, the German trench system opposite the British First Army had been photographed and sketched by RFC crews to a depth of 1,500yds (1,372m). The results were then analysed and traced onto a large scale map of the area, copies of which were distributed to all units involved in the ground operation. Once the battle began, the First Wing carried out reconnaissance in the fighting zone; Second and Third wing machines hit ‘strategic’ targets beyond the immediate battlefield.
On 10 March, Capt G.I. Carmichael of No 5 Sqn, flying a single-seat Martinsyde Scout armed with one 100lbs (60lbs explosive) light case bomb, set out to attack a railway junction north of Menin in the enemy rear. After successfully negotiating ‘archie’, he picked up the railway line and switched off his engine in the hope of gliding undetected, only for his dreams to be swiftly shattered by a stream of machine-gun bullets. Opening up his engine, he reasoned that as the target lay beyond Menin, to adjust for forward momentum he must release his bomb just after passing the station buildings – a prime example of the inexact fashion of contemporary bomb-aiming. Looking back, he saw the bomb explode short of the junction. As Carmichael turned away, he was met with a dense hail of rifle and machine-gun fire, where the previous night’s briefing had not identified a troop concentration. After heaving rifle-grenades onto his opponents, as he pulled out of a dive, his engine began to splutter. Carmichael found the joy stick sluggish, the ailerons unresponsive, and vibrating violently, his machine chugged back at 200ft. On landing the whole structure collapsed, ‘tired out and forlorn’ according to its pilot, who was given a day off to recover.
Further afield, Douai, Lille and Don were attacked by six aeroplanes on 11 and 12 March with scant success. Three RFC machines were shot down, though one observer managed to escape to neutral Holland and eventually tramp back to his unit. On 12 March a disaster occurred on the ground when a mechanic tried to fix a modified artillery shell (used as a bomb) to the wing of a No 3 Sqn Morane-Saulnier Parasol. The safety mechanism proved inadequate when he dropped the shell and the subsequent explosion killed twelve men. Not all of the load went up, but the Squadron commander forbade anybody to clear the undamaged shells and during the night, Maj J.M. Salmond (later to command the RFC in the field) did so himself. In his diary Harold Wyllie provided some light relief, describing the application of a young officer for an interpreter’s post. He translated ‘L’Anglais avec son sang froid naturel’ as ‘the Englishman with his usual bloody cold’, and, Wyllie dryly recorded, ‘was not taken on’.
HQ RFC established an advanced base at Hazebrouck to oversee direction of the air effort in the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. Required to provide close support to the troops, First Wing commanded by Lt Col H.M. Trenchard had its advanced HQ at Merville. To fulfil his formation’s allotted tasks, Trenchard organised thirty-six aeroplanes into six groups. Five would co-operate with specified army formations: two Royal Artillery groups; IV Corps; First Army HQ; and together, I Corps and the Indian Corps. The sixth would carry out ‘bombing duties’. For communication with the ground, eight of the aeroplanes were equipped with wireless sets; ten others used signal lamps. The infantry were to lay out strips of cloth to indicate progress and their capture of intermediate objectives for the airmen to see and report. In practice, thes
e arrangements were less than satisfactory. Clearly, each RFC Wing must have its own wireless machines and ultimately, each squadron its own wireless flight with, overall, a more effective training system created. No 9 Sqn was therefore disbanded and subsequently reappeared as the RFC’s wireless school at Brooklands.
Activity gathered pace at the Front as the weather improved, but ability to fire forward through the propeller of an engine still proved elusive. A French pilot, Capt Roland Garros, fixed metal plates to the wooden blades of his propeller to deflect bullets from the vulnerable mechanism, and in sixteen days he brought down five enemy machines. During a bombing raid against Courtrai marshalling yards on 19 April 1915, his engine cut out, and after a forced landing, Garros was captured before he could burn his Morane-Saulnier L machine. The Germans discovered the firing device, dismantled the aeroplane and transported it to Berlin for the designer Anthony Fokker to examine. Fokker did so out of curiosity, as he was already working on an interrupter gear to allow forward firing. Capture of Garros’ machine did not initiate the process. When Oswald Boelcke began to fly one of Fokker’s modified machines, he explained ‘quite a simple business’ to his younger brother Max. Attached to the fuselage in front of the pilot, a machine-gun had a safety catch connected to the engine by a rod, which activated whenever a propeller blade went in front of the barrel and automatically released once the blade passed clear.
During March 1915, a major reorganisation occurred in the German forces. The air service was separated from other communications bodies, like the railways, with which it had hitherto been associated. A Head of Military Aviation was appointed to control and equip all army airship and aeroplane units. Flying sections at the front remained under the orders of generals commanding the corps or armies to which they were attached, but in each of these formations an aviation staff officer now co-ordinated air operations. At the same time, the Army High Command established direct control over a bomber unit of thirty-six machines at Ostend and a smaller one at Metz for long-range operations as and when required, similar to the Independent Force of bombers created by the British three years later.
Cavalry of the Clouds Page 6