Taylor flew frequently with Green, who explained that the mysterious petrol can was for the observer to sit on once clear of enemy territory on the way home. For Taylor discovered that he was expected to stand in the 3ft deep front cockpit, which was made out of ‘a few wooden pieces covered in doped [varnished] canvas’. The machine had two Lewis guns each controlled manually by the observer. The rear gun was mounted to fire over the top of the aeroplane, but in level flight ‘your angles of fire were not numerous’. The front gun was on a mounting fixed to the floor of the nacelle, with a clip on the right and left into which it could be pressed and swivelled. Each gun fired drums of 95rnds of .303 ammunition. For quick sighting, every fifth round was tracer. When firing the front gun, Taylor learnt to press his knees apart against the mounting, otherwise the recoil would throw the gun out of the clip.
Squadron aeroplanes engaged in a bombing raid, Taylor revealed, adopted a V-formation. The leader had ribbons streaming from each of his rear wing tips; his observer carried white, red and green Very lights. The flying altitude would be announced in the briefing room. After take-off, the machines circled the aerodrome until the leader was satisfied with the formation’s height, when his observer fired a green light. If enemy machines were manoeuvring to attack, the leader would fire a red light indicating adoption of close formation to provide better mutual defence. A white light, not usually fired until across friendly lines, meant the end of an operation, time to go home and permission to break formation.
Taylor remembered clearly his first aerial combat against a German pilot of roughly his own age:
His parents, my parents and ourselves no doubt worshipped the same God. We made supplications to Him to give us victory, and I could not help thinking what a tragedy it was that men could not settle their differences without war, destroying millions of lives.
Taylor’s machine had to break away when two other enemy aeroplanes appeared, otherwise he felt certain that he would have registered a kill.
On landing, Taylor ‘gave great thought to the happenings of the day’. He decided that he might kill or be killed in aerial combat, and in most fights in the air there were casualties. ‘Killing was my duty’, he asserted, ‘It was far from being a pleasant thought, but this was war.’ He concluded: ‘One must not forget that this was total war and the order was to kill or be killed, and then chivalry had to take a back seat.’ This represented a steep learning curve for Taylor; a sharp contrast to his feeling when he first flew at the Front. Then, he often saw German scouts patrolling their own side of the line, not venturing over British territory. If two machines passed one another on their respective sides, ‘on these occasions I invariably gave one passing a salute,’ which was usually returned.
During the fighting at Verdun, the Germans had organised small groups of fighters to challenge large French formations. In this initiative, the forerunner of fighter squadrons, Oswald Boelcke led six single-seat fighters from Sivry. Following Immelman’s death in June 1916, he had been sent on a tour in the Balkans and Turkey to avoid loss of another German hero, but his rest proved short-lived. Grave concern about British aerial successes in the opening phase of the Somme battle meant that on 11 August he received orders to return to the Western Front, raise and command a new fighter unit, Jagdstaffel (Jasta) 2. Boelcke took almost two months to work up his command. He ensured that his pilots were tactically aware through familiarity with the lay-out and vulnerability of captured Allied machines, while becoming thoroughly conversant with the construction and fighting capability of their own. Through experience, he found that lurking at 5,000m (16,400ft) with the sun behind him he could profitably dive on unsuspecting opponents below; the origin of the ‘Hun in the sun’ concept. He drew up basic guidelines for his pilots, which emphasised this tactic, but also urged them to attack at close range, preferably from the rear and never be put off by ‘ruses’ or other distractions: once committed to an attack, it must be carried through.
On 2 September over the Somme battlefield, Boelcke secured his nineteenth victory. Fifteen days later, his squadron went into action for the first time, accounting for six British machines. Manfred von Richthofen, one of the pilots, wrote of the fourteen BE2a and six FE2b machines encountered, ‘of course Boelcke was the first to see them, for he saw more than most men.’ By the end of the month, Jasta 2 had flown 186 sorties and scored 25 victories for the loss of three of its own aeroplanes. Boelcke wrote to his parents that the number of men killed was not counted, only ‘the machines we have brought down … We have nothing against the individual; we only fight to prevent him flying against us.’ For some days during September, Boelcke was officially laid low with asthma, though like the mysterious stomach ailment in February may rather have been evidence of stress, the ‘nerves’ which he so strenuously denied. Three weeks after his latest illness, he again sought to quell parental concern: ‘Mother need not paint such a ghastly picture of the circumstances and dangers in which I live.’ Rather she should recognise that his combat experience and ‘technical advantages’ through improved equipment gave him a protective edge in the air.
Even before emergence of the German fighter squadrons, there was no disguising the rising number of RFC casualties. On 26 August five BE12s from No 19 Sqn were lost returning from a target. Five days later four No 27 Sqn bombers were shot down, and writing in September, Hugh Chance of that Squadron noted ‘at present we are rather short of pilots, as we have lost five in the past week or two.’ The volatile and persistent Robert Smith-Barry, having passed his training course following his severe leg injuries, returned to France in command of No 60 Sqn in time for the Somme clashes. He was appalled at the lack of training among newly arrived pilots, refusing to send them over enemy lines until they had more flying hours. Smith-Barry complained to his wing commander, Lt Col Hugh Dowding: ‘They’ve only seven flying hours to their credit, sir. It’s bloody murder.’ Sholto Douglas agreed that at this time it had been ‘sheer murder’ to send pilots into action ‘grossly short of training’.
John MacKenzie was not exposed to this uninviting environment due to the determination of his mother; Douglas Joy’s future mother-in-law. She had arrived in England in June 1916, knowing that her sons Gordon and Cortlandt had already been killed in action. Two months later, Kathleen learnt that John, her only remaining son, serving in the Army had been ordered to the Front with his regiment. She immediately set out to find the Commanding General, taking a taxi from the Imperial Hotel, Hythe, to the Arlington Hotel at Folkestone. There, Lieutenant-General (Lt Gen) E.A.H. Alderson, Inspector of Infantry and former Canadian commander in France, advised her to see Maj Gen J.C. MacDougall, currently commanding Canadian troops in Britain. In ‘thick fog and gathering gloom’, the taxi dropped her at the wrong place. She managed to find MacDougall’s house, but the General was out. ‘Not to be outdone’, Kathleen joined a crowd at a nearby corner and asked a soldier if the General was there. On being told he had gone home, she retraced her steps, and ‘so we found them’. MacDougall asked Kathleen to write down the details. He then went away and, after a time, returned. ‘It will be seen to at once,’ he said. ‘So we started home all through the mist and dark feeling rejuvenated … we [had] saved John … God be thanked’. However, this was merely the overture to a similar struggle, when John transferred to the RFC.
Mrs Margaret Douglas was not so fortunate. In October 1916 her eldest son, Maj Sholto Douglas MC, returned to France with No 70 Sqn. He took with him a worrying family problem: his brother Archibald (Archie), to whom he had given his first flight and who like Sholto had transferred from the Royal Artillery, had been reported missing. His distraught mother charged Sholto with discovering Archie’s fate. Visiting No 42 Sqn, Sholto Douglas learnt that the machine of his observer brother and the pilot, with whom Sholto and Archie had been at Tonbridge School, had disintegrated in mid-air under anti-aircraft fire. The Douglas brothers had been ‘unusually close’ and Sholto admitted to missing deeply ‘the warmth of the relat
ionship’. He had also to endure the wrath of his mother, who blamed him for influencing Archie to join the RFC, a transfer which she maintained cost him his life; ‘the illogicality of a distressed mother’, Sholto remarked.
On the Western Front, the RNAS had begun operations that would transform its role there. Arguably, by its long-range raids against Zeppelin sheds along the Rhine and the Zeppelin works at Friedrichshafen in the opening weeks of the war, the RNAS had pioneered what became known as ‘strategic bombing’ involving targets beyond the battlefield. Trenchard would later insist that attacks on ‘strategic’ targets was initiated by the RFC at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. To some extent the debate is academic for, indisputably, ‘strategic bombing’ has come to mean an assault on an enemy’s war industries – destroying battlefield weapons in their factories before they could reach the front line. In the summer of 1916, the RNAS launched such a campaign from eastern France.
In April, The Times revealed that the range of bombing operations had increased from 230 miles (368km) in May 1915 to 350 miles (560km). One aeroplane that contributed to this enhanced capability was the single-engine, two-seat Sopwith 1½ Strutter with a top speed of 100mph. Its pilot had a Vickers machine-gun firing forward via an interrupter gear and the observer behind him with a Lewis gun on a swivel mounting. The machine had a bomb-load of up to 130lbs and a flying endurance of four and a half hours.
Arrival in service of the Sopwith 1½ Strutter, so called because of the W-shaped metal bracing wires between the struts, initially raised hopes of hitting steel works at Essen and Düsseldorf from Detling in Kent, a concept abandoned because violation of neutral Dutch airspace would be involved. Discussions had already taken place, however, about co-operating with French squadrons against German industrial centres from continental bases. Opposition within the Admiralty to diverting machines for ‘inland work’ away from ‘coastal operations’ delayed any positive movement until Spring 1916. Then Capt W.L. Elder RN travelled to Luxeuil-les-Bains, 25 miles (40km) north-west of Belfort, to form No 3 Wing RNAS, which became operational on 1 July, without ever reaching its planned strength. Arguments that attacks on ‘blast furnaces and munitions factories in Alsace Lorraine’ would impede steel production to the detriment of the enemy fleet, ‘navigation over long distances was more in accordance with naval training’ and the inability of the RFC to spare machines earmarked for support of ground forces were persuasive.
Evidently, No 3 Wing carried out an impressive array of raids. It claimed not only to have inflicted heavy damage on its targets, but to have forced the Germans to deploy searchlights, balloons and anti-aircraft batteries around sensitive sites, as well as to withdraw single-seat fighters from the Front to counteract the bombers.
The facts did not quite fit this story. For example, on 22 October 1916 forty-five RNAS and French aeroplanes took off in daylight against the Mauser production complex at Oberndorf. Fewer than half actually discharged their bomb load and some of those did so on an entirely different town. Nine of the attackers were lost, and the French decided that their slow pusher machines must henceforth be confined to night operations. Ewart Garland underlined the inaccuracy of all bombing operations, day or night, at this stage of the war: ‘It was not unusual for bomb raid formations to lose sight of each other and either go over the lines and drop bombs on any target thought fit or return to the aerodrome and land with the bomb load.’ Nevertheless, ‘strategic bombing’ would now form an integral and expanding part of British aerial warfare.
Back in England, the impact of German air-raids on industrial production continued to cause grave concern. During 1916, warnings of possible Zeppelin activity in thirteen separate weeks in the Cleveland area alone led to blast furnaces being extinguished, which contributed to the annual output of pig iron being lowered by one sixth. Now that the War Office had assumed full responsibility for aerial defence, No 39 Home Defence Sqn was created to defend London. In all, eleven defensive squadrons were located throughout England from Newcastle to Hove, each with its three flights at dispersed locations. A twelfth reserve and training squadron was stationed at Northolt. Action by squadrons south of Melton Mowbray was co-ordinated by the Home Defence Wing; those further north (with responsibility up to the Firth of Forth) acted on information from the Warning Controller in their area. The RFC’s contribution to home defence was thus much more organised and comprehensive than before.
Nonetheless, in practice, airships still seemed able to roam at will. Urban centres were blacked out at the slightest hint of an attack. As one London journalist noted in his diary: ‘We rode through the dismally dark streets – the Zeppelin menace has made London a medieval city again.’ Recovering from an eye injury sustained in France, Algernon Insall took his wife to matinée theatre performances rather than risk exposure to airship raids in the evening. During April 1916, two airships had crossed north-east England. The official report read: ‘Three aeroplanes went up but saw nothing and were all damaged on landing. One pilot was killed at Cramlington.’ An appended comment was revealing: ‘The usual result of flying at night against Zeppelins.’ An onlooker, describing an attack on Portsmouth, wrote of searchlights from all sides of the harbour illuminating a ‘big silver cigar’, at which several anti-aircraft batteries opened up; ‘You could see the puffs of the shells they were sending up as they were exploding, and the noise was terrific, but it was high so it got away.’
During the night of 2/3 September, fourteen airships were over England. Sixteen had set out for London, two turned back in the face of adverse winds, heavy rain and icy conditions at high altitude, which caused the remainder to become scattered. In all, four people were killed on the ground, twelve injured and £21,072 of damage wrought. Only one airship came within seven miles of Charing Cross, the others being spotted over East Anglia, the Midlands and as far north as the Humber. Searchlights attempted to illuminate them, aeroplanes to catch them. The RNAS flew six sorties and the RFC ten, but although several pilots caught sight of an airship, only one made conclusive contact.
The experiences of Harold Buss, a pilot since 1913 and veteran of both France and the Dardenelles campaign, undertaking defensive patrols from Westgate, Kent, illustrated the frustration of so many pilots. During the afternoon of 19 March, in a BE two-seater at 3,000ft, Buss ‘sighted [a] German machine over Ramsgate at about 6,000ft’, but he lost the enemy ‘in mist’. Late that evening, he was ordered to Dover for a ‘reported Zeppelin’ without finding any trace of the intruder. During April, he flew ten patrols during which he saw no sign of ‘hostile aircraft’. In fact, the fleeting sight of an airship in March proved the only visual contact he recorded in his seven months at Westgate.
Encouragement, though, was at hand. William Leefe Robinson (known usually by his second Christian name), born in India of British parents, was commissioned into The Worcestershire Regiment in December 1914. Three months later, he volunteered for the RFC and was posted as an observer to No 4 Sqn at St Omer. Wounded in action, he returned to England on 8 May 1915 and after recovering, qualified as a pilot in August. Sent to No 39 Sqn, which was involved in London’s defence, several times he attempted to intercept Zeppelins before, on 25/26 April 1916, engaging one near Barkingside without bringing it down.
Capt Leefe Robinson took off from Sutton’s Farm, Essex, at 11pm on 2 September 1916 with orders to patrol the Hornchurch-Joyce Green area. Shortly after 1am on 3 September, he caught sight of a Zeppelin illuminated by searchlights near Woolwich, gave chase, but lost his quarry in cloud. Back on patrol, just before 2am he saw a glow to the north-west which looked like a fire, and decided to investigate. As he drew nearer, Robinson found an airship lit up by searchlights and ringed by bursting anti-aircraft shells. Despite the clear danger of being struck by friendly fire, ‘I flew about 800ft below it from bow to stern and distributed one drum along it,’ he reported; to no avail, none of the internal gas bags were hit:
I therefore moved to one side and gave it another drum distributed along
its side – without apparent effect. I then got behind it (by this time I was very close – 500ft or less below) and concentrated one drum on one part (underneath rear) … I hardly finished the drum before I saw the part fired at glow. In a few seconds the whole rear part was blazing … I quickly got out of the way of the falling blazing Zeppelin and being very excited fired off a few red Very lights and dropped a parachute flare.
Lack of petrol forced Leefe Robinson to return to Sutton’s Farm, where he landed at 2.45am.
Meanwhile, SL.11 had fallen in flames at Cuffley, Hertfordshire. A Schütte-Lanz wooden framed airship, it burned for two hours, attracting hundreds of excited spectators, reporters and photographers. Next day, Robinson’s feat – the first destruction of an enemy airship over England – attracted widespread praise and acknowledgement that a major morale boost to military defenders and civilians alike had been provided. Two days later, Robinson was awarded the VC for his achievement. Enemy airships at night were not after all invincible, and by the end of November four more had been accounted for.
While the home defences had begun to make tangible progress against enemy intruders, at the front unpleasant developments were afoot. No sooner had the Fokker menace been countered than the Germans produced even more dangerous single-seat machines. They also expanded the system of specialist fighter squadrons manned by their best pilots.
With the approach of the third winter, there was much yet to be done.
7
Renewed Optimism: The Third Winter
‘Hot milk and rum’
On 15 December 1916, eleven months of mammoth struggle at Verdun ended. The British operation on the Somme, designed to relieve pressure on the French there, had already come to a close on 18 November at a cost of 419,654 British ground casualties. In addition, the RFC lost 308 pilots and 191 observers killed, wounded or missing, with a further 268 ‘struck off strength from all causes other than battle casualties’. Yet the RFC’s operational strength in France rose during the battle. The 410 machines serviceable on 1 July had become 550 on 17 November (306 fitted with wireless), available pilots up from 426 to 585, the number of operational squadrons from 27 to 35.
Cavalry of the Clouds Page 14