The work of the RFC kite (static) balloons, responsible both for providing tactical information and directing artillery fire, should not be overlooked. As Ewart Garland noted, these ‘basket-carrying balloons with two men and used by both sides for observing were normally about 2 miles (3km) behind the lines’. At 2pm on 7 June, a British kite balloon identified enemy reserves advancing against II Anzac Corps on the British right and as a result, artillery batteries dispersed the threat. The Second Army intelligence report read:
Most useful work was done by kite balloons on the 7th, reporting the intensity and extent of enemy barrages, progress of our own barrages, locations of hostile artillery activity centres and the progress and location of tanks.
Although the Germans did rally after the initial assault, British gains along the ridge were consolidated and after a week major fighting came to a halt. The right flank of the main thrust towards the Passchendaele Ridge had been cleared.
Before an Allied attack on Passchendaele Ridge could be launched, serious developments occurred in England which would have an immediate impact in France. In 1915, the German firm Gothaer Waggonfabrik had developed a twin-engine bomber, which the following year evolved into the Gotha II with two 220hp engines, 1,000lb bomb load, a top speed of 90mph and a three-man crew. Two forward firing guns were supplemented by a third capable of firing backwards and downwards through a channel in the underside of the fuselage. Stationed at St Denis Westrem and Gontrode airfields near Ghent, the Gothas had London within range. On 25 May 1917 twenty-three set out for the capital. One crashed on take-off, and the remainder were frustrated by poor visibility in the Thames estuary and spread out across Kent instead.
Twenty-one of the raiders attacked Shorncliffe and Folkestone, killing 95 and injuring 195 in the crowded Whitsun streets. The Chief Constable of Folkestone told an inquest:
I saw an appalling sight which I shall never forget. Dead and injured persons were lying on the ground. Three or four horses were also lying dead between the shafts of vehicles, and fire had broken out in front of premises which had been demolished.
A public meeting condemned ‘the wholesale murder of women and children of the town’ and urged the Government to take action to prevent a repetition. On 5 June, twenty-two Gothas caused more devastation in Sheerness and Shoeburyness, killing eleven and injuring thirty-four. This time, sixty-six defending aeroplanes went aloft, five got near enough to attack but the only raider to fall was a victim of anti-aircraft fire.
London received a severe shock on Wednesday 13 June. In daylight, 17 Gothas dropped 118 bombs, hitting among other places Liverpool Street station and two schools: 160 men, women and children were killed, 408 injured. A further two men were killed and eighteen men, women and children injured by spent anti-aircraft shells. Fifty-two defending aircraft failed to bring down any of the intruders; just one was lost through mechanical failure. The following day, The Times printed full details of the debacle under headlines: ‘The Trail of the Raiders’ and ‘Infants Killed in School’ (one bomb on a school had killed ten and injured fifty children). Massive public meetings demanded immediate retaliation, ‘to pay back the enemy in the same way as he has treated this country … a policy of ceaseless air attacks on German towns and cities’. One inquest ascribed the deaths to ‘wilful murder’.
The Norwegian Tryggve Gran was one of the unsuccessful defending pilots. Flying a BE12 from North Weald towards Shoeburyness for ‘shooting practice’, crossing Sutton’s Farm airfield he noticed ground signals indicating an enemy raid in progress and ‘at the same time’ saw smoke towards the south which he took to be exploding bombs. Approaching Maidstone at about 10,000ft, he saw German machines being pursued eastwards by two British pushers. ‘I tried to manoeuvre myself across the enemy’s course but got the sun in my eyes and in the strong glare accentuated by wisps of fog lost sight of him.’ Turning north-east, he climbed to 12,000ft where there was virtually no fog and near Southend he saw a formation of ‘six huge aircraft’ about 1,000ft higher. In striving to reach the enemy’s altitude, he fell behind and lost contact. Over Colchester, Gran turned right along the coastline and in the distance above the River Crouch saw a formation of aeroplanes, which he took to be British. ‘Suddenly smoke dots began to appear round the formation and I realised I had made a mistake and made after them.’ Flying at 12,000 ft, the same altitude as the enemy, he quickly caught up. ‘With my back to the sun’, from behind he approached ‘the enemy phalanx’ of twin-engine machines. At a range of 100ft, and still undetected, Gran
… let go with my two machine guns [Lewis and Vickers]. The observer in the seat aft fell over his gun and I concentrated fire on the mid-section. The German machine swung out to the side and disappeared below. At the same moment the three other machines opened fire on me and I thought it wise to remove myself. My motor seemed to have been hit and revs had dropped to 10,000 per minute. I steadily lost height and made for the airfield at Rochford where I landed at 1pm.
Gran concluded his report to the OC 39th Home Defence Squadron: ‘My main struts were riddled with bullets and my motor slightly damaged.’
Two days after the raid, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), Gen Sir William Robertson, wrote to Sir Douglas Haig in France complaining that there was a lack of ‘the right sort of machines’ to defend London and ‘the idea is that you should send over for a week or two one or two squadrons of good machines so as to give the enemy a warm reception.’ Considerable debate took place in the War Cabinet about the feasibility of attacking German towns, but it was agreed that there were insufficient bombers to sustain a worthwhile campaign. However, in the charged atmosphere, expansion of the RFC from 108 to 200 squadrons was formally approved, and two squadrons were detached from the Front to defend the capital. One of these returned on 6 July, a day before disaster struck once more.
On Saturday 7 July, the Gothas came back to the capital, this time hitting commercial and residential properties on both banks of the Thames, including the City and Bermondsey. Twenty-one attackers dropped 73 bombs, killing 53 and injuring 190. Ninety-five defending machines shot down one of the attackers, and it emerged that the seventy-eight RFC pilots involved flew twenty-one different types of aeroplane. Greater loss was incurred by the defenders than by the Germans: two pilots were killed in action, one observer died of wounds, and another was wounded in the two aeroplanes shot down by the Gothas. Two more machines crashed on landing.
This time Tryggve Gran did not even get airborne. He was resting in his London club when ‘a servant’ told him that his base was on the phone. ‘Is that you, old bean?’ came the voice of the OC, Capt A.T. Hope. ‘For goodness sake hurry up and come along … The Huns are swarming across the Channel.’ After fifteen minutes’ effort with the starting handle, the engine of Gran’s car failed to turn over. So he witnessed the second Gotha raid on London from the ground. ‘The German formation was brilliantly led and every plane seemed glued in its place,’ he remarked.
When he eventually got back to Sutton’s Farm, the base ‘did not give the impression of war and newly fought battles. The scorching sun of July covered everything.’ Outside the door of the mess, he found two pilots lounging in shirt sleeves. ‘Any luck?’ he asked. ‘Colossal luck, old bean – we didn’t see a Hun.’ Apparently fog had blotted out visibility in the upper layer of air. Only in clearer conditions along the coast were the enemy machines spotted and attacked.
Once more a furore demanded the return of squadrons from the front (eventually one was agreed despite Haig’s protests) and reprisal raids on German towns. The press again whipped up public opinion. Under the heading, ‘Victims of Useless Raid’, The Illustrated London News published photos of a terror-stricken mother fleeing with a child in her arms, and an injured man leaving hospital on crutches. Robertson, who attended War Cabinet meetings, wrote to Haig that ‘one would have thought that the world was coming to an end … I could not get a word in edgeways.’ The long-term impact was a commitment of
more resources to home defence and the psychological legacy of a need for a bombing campaign against the German homeland far more comprehensive than the minor efforts of the Luxeuil wing in 1916. ‘Reprisals on open towns are repugnant to British ideas, but we may be forced to adopt them’ concluded a memorandum from Haig’s headquarters. Amid the mayhem, Trenchard made a significant admission: ‘Daylight bombing from a height is still very inaccurate and though large towns and big stations are easy to hit, it is very hard to hit a small individual shed.’
On his nineteenth birthday, 3 June 1917, John Jeyes was at length ordered to France, where he joined No 21 Sqn near Poperinghe. La Lovie airfield was very small, surrounded by hop poles and farm buildings. After half a dozen circuits and landings alone, he went up with Lt C.P. Wingfield, who showed him the front lines around Ypres. On 16 June, with Wingfield, he flew an artillery shoot in co-operation with a howitzer battery. Wingfield explained to him how an observer had to spot bursts from the guns and communicate necessary corrections to the battery. Jeyes thought the lack of dual controls for the observer a disadvantage:
[He] could only contact his pilot by pointing out these positions at 3–4,000ft and indicate as best he could when to turn the machine towards our battery position and front line – and when to turn again and prevent the machine from flying over Hun territory.
All the time, the observer had to keep a sharp look-out for enemy machines coming out of cloud or bright sunlight while the pilot was fully occupied with flying the aeroplane. Preparing for the forthcoming Passchendaele battle, Jeyes was rapidly learning.
He was soon flying his own two-seat RE8, equipped with a machine-gun in each cockpit and racks for two 112lb bombs beneath the wings, and teaming up with Lt M.L. Hatch, who had been senior to him at Oundle.
After our first detail together over the lines, we soon found that we could work together in the air … It gave me confidence to think that a boy like MLH, who had been my school prefect and also had been an officer in the Light Infantry, had confidence in my ability as a pilot.
Jeyes believed that boys from schools like Oundle, which taught engineering, ‘had a better chance of coping in the RFC’ than those from Eton or Harrow or ‘any other classical school’.
At an operational airfield, Jeyes learnt the ‘Drill of Vital Actions’ necessary before take-off. Inspection of controls, camera and plates, machine-guns and ammunition; one and a half to two minutes run up of engine to test revs; maps and details of shoot all in place in cockpit; taxi into wind, another quick burst to test revs; proceed to far end of airfield, check engine not overheating, controls and trim; circle airfield for observer to test guns; confirm agreed call signs with the base radio operator and release aerial. If the aerial was let out too fast it might snap, which would entail a tricky landing again with a full load of petrol and ammunition to get it fixed. Repair could take twenty minutes, after which the whole checking procedure had to be laboriously followed once more. Jeyes recalled that an observer in another machine had let his aerial out too quickly so that it snapped and went through a tent on the outskirts of the airfield, hitting a man on the head and killing him. The observer, operating in a cramped space, had a difficult job to wind in the aerial before landing even in normal circumstances.
Overall, John Jeyes’ participation in pre-Passchendaele work involved ‘patrolling and doing shoots, photographs and bomb dropping’ in his RE8. Often he combined three operations in one. Having set up an artillery shoot on the Allied side, he would slip across into enemy territory, take photos and ‘drop my bombs on the German lines’ before nipping back to complete the shoot. On these exercises, ‘the ack ack fire was always intense, and the sky was black with gun bursts all around us, both on the way over and back again.’ He and Hatch often considered themselves overworked during the long days of July. Dawn patrols, followed by two other operations the same day all of three hours’ duration, in the face of enemy fighters and ack-ack were, to say the least, tiring.
During July, Jeyes recorded several close shaves. For example:
One day I was up about 3–4,000ft quietly doing my shoot over Ypres with ML Hatch, when I got a sharp rap on the head from him. I jumped and he pointed at the Huns attacking us. There were three of them preparing to dive at us out of clouds. Hatch immediately took aim at them and I manoeuvred the machine so that he could get a good shot.
As Hatch exchanged fire with the enemy, Jeyes kept going in circles until he realised that his observer had stopped firing. Looking round he saw that his machine-gun had jammed and Hatch was frantically dismantling it; ‘I immediately got my machine into a spinning nose dive with the engine full on’. The RE8 dropped 2,000ft but the Germans were still firing at it. They must have thought Jeyes was finished, regained formation and flew off. ‘Mercifully’ Jeyes pulled out of the dive at 1,000ft and as Hatch failed to get his gun working, made for La Lovie to land ‘safely, none the worse but rather pale and wanting something strong to drink to calm us down’.
On 24 June, the German Fourth Army had gathered its four fighter squadrons into Jagdgeschwader (Fighter Wing) 1 under the command of Capt Manfred von Richthofen. What the British termed his ‘circus’ had been born. Unknown to the British, on 6 July 1917 Richthofen would be brought down and seriously wounded. In a tussle with a FE2d pusher, he was hit in the head, momentarily ‘completely paralysed’ and temporarily blinded. Richthofen regained his senses just in time to bring his diving Albatros safely down in a field near Wervicq, Belgium. He discovered, though, that he had incurred ‘quite a respectable hole in my head’ and a fractured skull which needed surgery. Incredibly, Richthofen would return to duty with JG 1 on 25 July to gain yet more victories in the coming months, although he would continue to be plagued by headaches.
On the Allied side of the line, during the run-up to Passchendaele, the volunteer from Australia Ewart Garland became a victim of what later became known as battle fatigue. On 2 July, when flying at 10,000ft under attack from enemy machines, he admitted to having a ‘breakdown’, though the very next morning he took up a Portuguese officer for instruction, did two hours artillery spotting in the afternoon and flew a night bombing operation. Nevertheless, on 7 July he was posted to ‘a staff job for a rest cure’. Before finally being sent back to England in September, he wrote that ‘my conscience pricks when I am recording pilots’ activity in action etc.’
Also operating in the Ypres sector, while serving at Boisdinghem, 8 miles (12.8km) west of St Omer, Edwin Bousher – a former Rolls-Royce fitter who had enlisted in the RFC in 1915 and begun flying training the following year – recorded a catalogue of accidents suffered by No 57 Sqn in the build-up to the offensive. Recalled from a bombing raid on 5 July due to heavy cloud, one DH4 crashed on landing and caught fire. The observer jumped clear but the pilot was burnt to death. The very next day, a machine crashed on take-off and both crew members were burnt to death. On 12 July a DH4 developed engine trouble on a bombing operation and force-landed behind enemy lines. Two No 57 Sqn observers were killed on 27 July though the pilots brought their machines back; the following day three machines failed to return, one having been seen spinning down over enemy territory.
These and other losses had to be replaced. On 13 July 1917, Capt Orlando Beater, serving with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers at Ypres, responded to an appeal for observers and left the battalion for the RFC. Returning to England, he had two weeks leave with his wife in Dublin before reporting to the School of Military Aeronautics at Reading. Subsequently sent to the Hythe School of Aerial Gunnery, on 1 August he learned that ‘the big push’ at Ypres had begun the previous day.
9
Mounting Losses, August–October 1917
‘The aircraft was smashed to pieces’
The plan to take Passchendaele Ridge entailed a parallel advance along the North Sea coast on the left, coupled with the British Fifth Army moving forward from the Ypres Salient roughly along the axis of the Ypres-Roulers railway. The Germans foiled the coastal phase
by launching a successful attack there on 10 July, thus the assault on the ridge became an isolated operation. When the Battle of Passchendaele (or Third Ypres) opened, fifty squadrons (including five RNAS) and the Special Duty flight totalling 858 aeroplanes opposed an estimated 600 German machines, roughly one third of them fighters and including Richthofen’s ‘circus’.
Detailed orders were issued to squadrons directly supporting the corps and those acting further afield. During the preceding night, No 100 Sqn flying FE2b and BE2e machines would hit selected airfields and then on a second raid
… bomb any camps, billets, dumps, trains, railway stations or lighted aerodromes seen in the area Ypres-Menin-Courtrai-Ingelmunster-Roulers-Bixschoote … The type of bomb for both raids is left to OC, No 100 Squadron.
Other RFC squadrons were required to machine-gun enemy airfields at dawn to discourage German airmen from interfering with the ground advance. Underlining the separate nature of the British air arms, Maj Gen Sir Hugh Trenchard would ‘be glad if the Senior Officer, RNAS Dunkirk, could consider the possibility’ of bombing specified targets during the night.
In poor visibility moving north-east from Ypres on 31 July, twelve divisions of Gen Sir Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army advanced a mile before heavy rain and enemy counter-attacks halted them. French troops on their left and the British Second Army on the right also made limited progress. Thereafter intermittent downpours so saturated the ground already churned up by artillery shells that Gough’s troops failed to regain momentum. After three weeks of disjointed forward movement, the axis of the attack was switched southwards to Gen Sir Herbert Plumer’s Second Army. In all, it would take thirteen weeks to overrun Passchendaele Ridge at a cost of 238, 313 men from the two armies, 65,319 of them killed or missing.
A cloud base of 500–800ft on the first morning and torrential rain in the afternoon, frustrated full execution of the aerial plans. Despite the conditions, fifty-eight patrols were flown over the battlefield. The reluctance of British infantry to reveal their positions forced the machines low in an effort to chart the extent of the advance. This exposed them to small-arms fire, and thirty aeroplanes were badly damaged. Beyond the battlefield, twenty-seven Martinsydes attacked enemy airfields with 20lb bombs and a 230lb weapon (110lbs of explosive) specially designed to be released from 400ft. Twenty-three aerial combats were recorded on 31 July; eight enemy machines destroyed. Four British airmen were killed, three taken prisoner and eight wounded.
Cavalry of the Clouds Page 18