Despite passing references in early letters, the McCudden family correspondence contained no details of airship raids. Their exchanges were more personal and domestic. Writing on 12 November to his younger sister, James McCudden gave a glimpse of life at the front and a yearning for news from home. Thanking Kitty for her ‘welcome’ letter, he noted that the weather was ‘positively awful’. However, he had managed eighty minutes over the enemy lines ‘yesterday’ armed with a machine-gun. He saw only one ‘Hun’, which was too far away to engage. A bonus was that ‘at 7,000ft [he] could see the Straits of Dover over 60 miles away’. McCudden hoped that his mother had received a letter in which he asked her to send him some gramophone records ‘as soon as possible … Mother can use a box and make up a parcel of the needles and what she wishes to send, and records well packed all together’. McCudden had, to his regret, not heard from ‘one of the “S” girls’ for some time, asked his sister for her latest photo and whether she was still learning French. He hoped to get leave for Christmas and ended with an optimistic comment: ‘We have now got the upper hand of the Hun’s artillery and we now put over three shells to their one. So three cheers for old Lloyd George’, the Minister of Munitions.
Another fillip to morale occurred with the gaining of a further RFC VC. Patrolling in a Vickers Gun Bus on 7 November 1915, with Air Mechanic T.H. Donald as gunner, according to the citation 2/Lt Gilbert Insall ‘sighted, pursued and attacked’ a German machine, which led the British aeroplane over an artillery concentration. Undeterred, Insall closed on the enemy so that Donald could empty a drum into him and stop his engine. The German sought refuge in a cloud but Insall did not give up, diving through, locating him below and again opening fire. The enemy aeroplane landed in a ploughed field and its crew scrambled out continuing to shoot at their tormentor. Insall therefore went down to 500ft, allowing Donald to fire again as the enemy made their way off on foot. By now, hostile ground positions had opened up, though this did not prevent Insall from dropping an incendiary on the German machine, which went up in smoke.
He turned for home, from 2,000ft diving over the enemy front line as Donald sprayed the trenches. Insall then realised that his petrol tank had been holed, but contrived to land behind the cover of a wood 500yds inside the British line, where enemy small arms fire was found to have perforated the fuselage. Overnight, screened from the enemy, repairs were carried out and the following day Insall and Donald flew back to their own station.
Five weeks later, on 14 December, Insall and newly-promoted Cpl Donald encountered and pursued another enemy machine over the German lines. This time they were not so fortunate. Donald was hit in the leg and the petrol tank holed far from home. Insall set off back only for an anti-aircraft shell to explode beneath the Gun Bus and a piece of shrapnel lodge at the base of his spine. After temporarily losing consciousness, Insall managed to land the damaged aeroplane but was immediately captured. Incredibly, one of the stretcher bearers who tended the pilot had played hockey against Gilbert and his brother Algernon Insall pre-war, when the brothers visited Hannover with the University of Paris team. Insall’s family, now back in Paris, had no news of his fate until a pencil-written post card from him noting briefly that he was alive, wounded and a prisoner arrived via the Red Cross.
His war, though, was not over. Following a successful operation and convalescence, Insall found himself in a prison camp at Heidelberg, where he and two companions took six months to tunnel out and enjoy just five days freedom before recapture. After a stretch of ‘solitary’ as punishment, Insall was moved to Krefeld, where this time he made off in a cart during daylight, to be retaken after an energetic pursuit across fields, which resulted in fifteen days solitary confinement. On to another camp, near Hannover, from which he and two more companions walked 150 miles (240km) to the neutral Netherlands in August 1917. Promoted captain, Insall would finish the war as a flight commander in a night-flying squadron defending London.
While Insall was recovering in captivity, James McCudden wrote a long letter to his mother on 20 December. Since the beginning of November, he had been flying regularly as observer with the Officer Commanding (OC) No 3 Sqn, Maj E.R. Ludlow-Hewitt, in the rear cockpit of a Morane-Saulnier P monoplane, whose parasol wing placed on struts high above the fuselage allowed McCudden’s Lewis machine-gun a wide arc of fire. On a reconnaissance to Valenciennes the previous morning, Ludlow-Hewitt evaded a Fokker, piloted McCudden believed by Immelmann, and two two-seat machines due to the Morane’s superior speed. ‘Reads like a fairy tale, don’t it?’ he wrote. ‘Archie’ proved more troublesome on the way back: a shell burst ‘under our tail … nearly knocked me out of my seat’.
During a second flight that afternoon, McCudden was busy marking enemy trenches on a map, when he glanced up to see ‘that beast Immelmann’ about to dive on the Morane’s tail: ‘I do not believe I ever moved so quickly in all my life’. Swiftly dropping his maps, he grabbed the machine-gun as Ludlow-Hewitt jinked the machine before diving sharply to the left and away. ‘I was very pleased with my work yesterday – 4hrs 40mins in the air and two fights with the famous Immelmann’, concluding his account with ‘I think I have given you enough thrills for the present’. He assured his mother that he anticipated ‘a good time’ in the Mess at Christmas, adding a domestic plea: could she send as soon as possible two pairs of ‘cycling stockings for use with my flying boots … it is jolly cold I may mention’. Crews often suffered from frostbite in their open cockpits, despite donning heavy leather clothes and fleece-lined boots. Sometimes airmen used whale oil or Vaseline to protect their skin, not always successfully.
Ludlow-Hewitt confirmed that he, too, thought they had twice encountered Immelmann on 19 December 1915 and recalled McCudden banging on the fuselage and shouting to him to straighten out so that he could get a clear shot at their attacker. The pilot opted instead to break away ‘very much to my relief and to McCudden’s disgust’. Independently, McCudden illustrated the importance of mutual confidence in air crews. He had so much faith in Ludlow-Hewitt ‘that if he had said “come to Berlin”, I should have gone like a shot’. On 19 January 1916, as they were in the throes of combat with an Albatros, McCudden’s machine-gun jammed and he resorted to using his rifle against the enemy. His days as an observer were numbered, though. On 31 January 1916, James McCudden left No 3 Sqn for pilot training, the following day being promoted flight sergeant (F/Sgt).
Trapped within the confines of the domestic training process that winter, Douglas Joy continued to stew at Dover. Writing to his mother, who was helping in a Canadian Officers’ Convalescent Home in Dieppe, on 6 December 1915 he complained about ‘a poisonous place, mud, rain, fog and wind. A rotten mess, no flying and nothing for me to do at present’.
In another letter to her on 21 January 1916, Joy perked up. The machine-gun course he was attending at Hythe he thought ‘very good’. The German Fokker, he explained, was ‘not very new to us’ though increasing in numbers. It was ‘a little faster’ than the Morane-Saulnier, which it resembled, but if he went to the front with his present squadron, he would have ‘a much faster machine’ than the Fokker. He further revealed that ‘while taking this course about machine-guns, I have heard of some devilishly ingenious scheme of fighting in the air which we propose to use. I hope that the Germans don’t think of the same things.’ Three days later, he told Jean Joy that he had flown a ‘very fast’ new machine, with which he was delighted but details of which he could not reveal; it was a Martinsyde Scout. Shortly after-wards, he expressed more mixed feelings. Delighted that the machine could climb 1,000ft a minute, nonetheless he found the Martinsyde ‘very heavy … with tremendous momentum on landing’. This made it ‘run a long way on the ground, rather bad for forced landings’.
At the end of 1915, eighteen reserve squadrons were working up in England and eight operational squadrons engaged in flying training in addition to the CFS at Upavon and its satellite establishment at Netheravon. The need for a vigorous and productiv
e training system was underlined in the final months of 1915. On 11 November one reconnaissance machine was lost and two others shot down on a bombing raid to Bellenglise; three days later a BE2c had to abandon its reconnaissance when the pilot was wounded. Worryingly, another BE2c was shot down well behind the British lines at Ypres on 14 December and five days later yet another BE2c perished near Oostcamp, while a further reconnaissance machine crashed on landing. Many of the aeroplanes engaged in reconnaissance operations that day were damaged. The inferiority of this slow pusher type had been foreseen, but more advanced machines were not yet available. Apart from its shortcomings in combat, they still found it difficult to make progress into the prevailing westerly wind. Returning from a bombing raid in a BE2c, Sholto Douglas ‘beat back against a strong wind’, found himself way off course and had to land at a convenient French airfield.
Max Immelmann was one of the German pilots inflicting losses on the RFC. He had achieved his sixth victory on 7 November and a week later in commemoration received a large Meissen plate personally from the King of Saxony, depicting a Taube machine in combat with a British biplane. In a letter to his mother describing this, he included a request for food to be sent ‘at any time’, once more underlining his dismay at the scarcity of supplies at the Front. By now Immelmann’s aerial successes had thoroughly irritated the RFC. On 13 November a formal letter was concocted suggesting that a British pilot should meet him ‘in a fair fight’ above the trenches at a designated place and time. Should the challenge be accepted, anti-aircraft guns on both sides were to remain silent. The aerial version of a medieval joust never took place; according to the British the message not dropped, curiously the Germans claimed it was.
Having each achieved eight victories, on 13 January 1916 Boelcke and Immelmann were awarded the Pour le Mérite, a medieval order renamed by Frederick the Great of Prussia in 1740, when French was the court language. Due to the deep blue colour of its cross and the name of one of the first two airmen recipients, the decoration became informally known as ‘The Blue Max’. To commemorate his award, the officers of Flying Section 62 presented Immelmann with an inscribed silver goblet, the King of Bavaria invited him to dinner, congratulatory telegrams arrived from the King of Saxony, Crown Prince of Prussia and Chief of War Aviation among many others. Tryggve Gran, the Norwegian aviator, ascribed Immelmann’s success to development of a distinctive manoeuvre, which caught ‘unsuspecting machines’ by surprise and was dubbed ‘The Immelmann Turn’. In this, he attacked an aeroplane from below, then executed a distinctly dangerous stall turn as he climbed above to attack from a different direction masked by his opponent’s wings. However, Immelmann claimed to his mother that he did ‘not employ any tricks when I attack’, and post-war the experienced RFC observer, Algernon Insall, insisted that a British pilot, Capt C.G. Bell, devised the ‘up-and-over change of direction’ later ascribed to the German.
Immelmann complained on 5 February of inclement weather, which prevented flying, but assured his mother that it was not cold enough for him to wear his fur coat, though he thanked her for sending him boots and slippers. He explained that he had no need to visit Lille for entertainment, because Douai boasted its own theatre, cinema and circus. Immelmann did not feel justified in taking leave, as he was fit and well, and was sorry that this made his sister Elfriede ‘sad’. He declared himself delighted with the Fokker E.III equipped with twin Spandau MG 08 machine-guns and the news that debates in the British Parliament had confirmed that German squadrons now exercised air supremacy on the Western Front.
Back at Douai since December 1915, Oswald Boelcke had enjoyed a wide range of cultural, sporting and social pursuits pre-war and he too wrote to his parents about formal dinners and theatre visits. Like his attempt to calm their fears about the dangers of aerial combat, this may have been a further attempt to create an impression of normality. Shortly after the award of the Pour le Mérite, in a letter he described an encounter near Bapaume which he had to break off through lack of fuel. To his brother, he admitted being economical with the truth. The main tank had been ‘shot … to pieces’ and very little remained in his emergency tank. His machine had sustained several hits and bullets had passed through his jacket sleeves. Breezily, he urged Wilhelm not to worry, as ‘I’m looking after myself all right’. Nevertheless, when Boelcke moved to the Verdun Front prior to the great German offensive, he found himself in hospital before the end of February with a high temperature and ‘some silly intestinal trouble’. He insisted that this was not stress-induced: ‘If only mother would stop worrying about my nerves’, he wrote, ‘I have none so I cannot suffer from them’.
Despite Trenchard’s reservations about the quality of the RFC machines, when he took over command in August 1915, manufacturing backlogs meant that new types arriving in France remained inferior to German machines. Neither the pusher two-seat FE2b nor single-seat DH2, which went into frontline service in 1916, had been designed to cope with the Fokker. The DH2 had the added disadvantage of proving unstable in high winds, earning it the unenviable tag of ‘spinning incinerator’. In February 1916 No 20 Sqn equipped with the FE2b reached the front, followed shortly afterwards by No 25 Sqn.
Ranald Reid, who had served in the infantry at the battle of Neuve Chapelle, took off in a FE2b of No 25 Sqn from Lympne, Kent, on 21 February 1916. Both his parents had travelled from Scotland to see him away on ‘the great day’. All the Squadron’s machines reached St Omer unharmed on completion of what was ‘quite an adventure in those days’. The airfield at St Omer was snow-covered and Reid was not the first airman to discover with dismay that an open cockpit was ‘icy, despite leather flying clothes and huge furry boots’. His first patrol proved traumatic, too:
I felt unaccountably sick and ghastly, but did not dare beg off. It was freezing cold up aloft, with strange black monoplanes looming in sight and nosing around and other quite unrecognizable flying machines all about: Friend or Foe? But I landed safely and the bright yellow jaundice all over me startled the ground crew and I was glad to know my malaise had not been funk.
Air Mechanic Charles Callender and Canadian-born pilot Douglas Joy were with No 27 Sqn, which was also ordered to France in February. Callender had broken his ‘monotonous’ existence by securing the last ground staff vacancy in the newly-formed squadron and soon found himself crossing the Channel from Southampton. He was unimpressed with the ship, which ‘bumped about all over the place’ as it slowly made its way beyond the Isle of Wight. It was ‘an eerie business’ passing through ‘a line of British destroyers’, along the French coast and upriver to Rouen, where a shock awaited Callender. ‘We were paraded stark naked on the railway platform there and inspected by three or four doctors with the French public gawping through the railings’. Having survived this ordeal, the ground staff were transported by lorry some 80 miles (128km) to the village of Treseings, where they camped in a field, the adjoining one being commandeered as the aerodrome. Eight men were allocated to a tent, which on 13 February was pitched on ground covered in snow.
Callender reflected that it was ‘a tricky business … setting down … on practically No Man’s Land’ facilities for some 300 officers and men plus their operational needs. The Martinsyde Scout would prove a sturdy fighter and bomber during 1916, but the ‘majority’ of these machines delivered from the factory were ‘not up to standard’. ‘Many modifications and attachments’ would in due course be fashioned in the Squadron blacksmith’s shop, including gun mountings, gun sights, bomb sights, camera fittings and central section petrol tanks. In the meantime, work to establish the new aerodrome went ahead in uninviting wintry conditions.
The snow proved the downfall of one unfortunate. Leaving his tent one night, he decided not to make a chilly trek to the distant latrines but relieve himself at a closer, more convenient spot. He ‘left a telltale orange coloured trickle mark in the snow’. His aberration earned him eighty-four days of 1st Field Punishment. During this period he was guarded day and night, spent
fours hours daily marching at the double carrying a 56lb pack and rifle, digging trenches and washing kitchen utensils, with two spells of one hour per day tied to a gate. His pay was stopped as well. Callender wrote that this draconian punishment for such a minor offence left its mark on the Squadron and in the ensuing two years nobody else received such a sentence.
While Callender and other ground crew settled in France, aircrew and their machines remained at Dover. To his married sister Nina, Joy explained that the ground crew had left on 5 February, the aeroplanes would follow them in a day or two. Joy outlined the organisation of the Squadron of three flights, each comprising a captain and three lieutenants; the Squadron being commanded by a non-flying major. Fortunately, the wind which prevented them from taking off kept the Zeppelins away; during their last visit seven airmen had been killed ‘but you will never see anything about that in the papers’.
On 20 February, writing to his mother from ‘RFC Swingate Downs’, Joy grumbled that they were still ‘not off’, delayed now by a lack of machine-gun mountings. A week later he declared it ‘unbearable’ that they remained in Dover. The previous day he had been required to patrol from Broadstairs to Dungeness for two hours at 7,000ft, above the cloud where the sun shone brightly, but he could not see the ground on occasions for ten to fifteen minutes and descending to 1,500ft proved ‘quite bumpy’. In his letter of 27 February, he recorded ‘great excitement’ because a ‘large liner struck a mine just off here and went down in four minutes’: the P&O liner Maloja in which 155 passengers were lost. Almost as an afterthought, Joy added that ‘one of the RNAS men killed himself in a Bristol Scout this morning’. Thus, as February closed, No 27 Sqn remained split: ground personnel in France, aircrew and their machines at Dover.
At the front, aware of the growing enemy airborne menace, on 14 January 1916 Brig Gen Trenchard declared a mandatory change of tactics:
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