November 1917 thus brought mixed fortunes for the British. Although two thirds of those committed were disabled through mechanical malfunction or enemy action, the potential for formations of massed tanks had been demonstrated. The growing importance of aerial operations had once more been heavily underlined. On the other hand, the Battle of Cambrai incurred 47,596 casualties (including 15,886 killed or missing).
Capt Harold Balfour had reached the front once more during the battle without being closely involved in it. Following his crash on Vimy Ridge in April 1917, he spent several weeks in hospital. While convalescing he received the MC, which gave him ‘an inordinate sense of pride’. After a spell of instructing, he briefly served with No 40 Sqn before rejoining his old squadron, No 43, in the Vimy-Armentières sector.
In France for the fourth time, the third as an airman and still aged only twenty, Balfour confessed to bouts of introspection and doubt. Walking around the airfield one still night, he experienced ‘pangs of intense and inexplicable sadness and loneliness’. He pondered that he had known only boyhood prior to enlisting and on another occasion, as he looked at the Milky Way one ‘brilliant starlit night’, asked a fellow pilot ‘if he could imagine what life would be without a war’. Not the first, nor the last, combatant to pose that question.
Relocated at La Gorgue, seven miles behind the front line and flying a Sopwith Camel with four 20lb bombs slung underneath, Harold Balfour took part in low-level bombing and strafing of enemy infantry, artillery and motor transport. But his days at the Front were numbered. He began to feel ‘seedy’, was unable to sleep and half fainted in the Mess. The doctor diagnosed a heart murmur, a legacy he believed of diphtheria. Balfour conceded that ‘with nerves near to breaking strain [sic] I will admit that in the Doctor’s verdict I found nothing unpleasant,’ and he was invalided home in March 1918.
Further north, the RNAS was still attacking targets in enemy-held Belgium, especially airfields. Flying with No 7 (Naval) Sqn from Coudekerque, on 16 February 1918 Observer Sub Lt Aubrey Horn took part in his first night bombing raid on Mariakerke aerodrome north-west of Ghent in a HP O/400 (improved version of the O/100), carrying a crew of four and fourteen 112lb bombs (totalling 560lbs explosive). The twin-engine bomber had an internal bomb-bay capable of carrying one 1,650lb bomb (800lbs explosive) or the equivalent in smaller bombs. One or two machine-guns were fitted both to the front cockpit and that behind the wings, and another fired backwards and downwards through a trap door in the fuselage.
In the direction of take-off for Horn’s machine lay ‘an immense T of electrical cable illuminated at intervals by glow lamps’. The bomber, accompanied by one other, flew ‘up and down the coast a few miles north and south of Dunkirk’ to gain height. Sitting in the rear cockpit although
… very limited in detail … the view was rather striking. The exhaust pipes were red hot and red flames capped by blue stabbed viciously into the darkness. Sometimes a long string of sparks was flung far behind the tail planes, and one begins to think that perhaps the Huns could see the sparks and flames being shot out into the night and then pick it up when over enemy country.
Below, the moon shone on flooded ground and star shells fired after they crossed the enemy lines colourfully reflected off the water as they fell. Crossing Ghistelles airfield two powerful lights ‘flashed like rapiers’ but were probing well above the British bombers. ‘They swept over us and stood for a fraction of a second with a dazzling glare upon us, but evidently we were not seen’ and the searchlights vainly stabbed the sky well behind them as they flew on southeastwards. Glancing to his left, Horn saw
a wonderful protective display over Ostend. Here was a spectacle that even the greatest lover of fireworks could feast his eyes upon and find no fault with. The scene is indescribable and put shortly is made up of a cluster of powerful searchlights, green balls fired up in groups of three, rockets, and a most extraordinary chain of green fireballs.
Evidence of an air-raid in progress. The scene at Bruges was ‘equal to Ostend’ with a vast number of
… ‘flaming onions’ as the strings of fireballs are called. They appear to break into flame at some height above the ground and soar up into the air in ever-increasing spirals to 9,000ft … [It was] not definitely known whether they are connected by wire or are separate … They are certainly no source of amusement when one looks over the side and sees one or more of these sinuous forms worming and screwing its way up towards one at an astonishing speed.
Doubling back over the docks at Ghent, the bomber attacked its target. Two bombs hung up and were subsequently deposited ‘somewhere in Belgium’ on the way back. Over Mariakerke aerodrome the shrapnel did not bother Horn, but the machine was held in a powerful searchlight. He opened fire with his Lewis gun without effect. Then the pilot ‘by a weird series of banks, turns and side-slips at last evaded him [the searchlight], and the Lewis gun was no longer needed, as tracer bullets give the position away … This was perhaps the most exciting time of what was a very quiet evening.’ That is, until landing.
Horn knew that this was the pilot’s first night solo. Arriving over base, the illuminated T was in place, a searchlight shining across the ground. A Very light was fired asking permission to land, which attracted a red rocket indicating ‘stand off’. The searchlight picked out an aeroplane nose down after landing in a ploughed field, which could hardly have inspired the inexperienced pilot as he circled. When the HP O/400 did so, Horn saw the aerodrome brightly illuminated
… and looking over the side we observed a machine gliding in with dazzling landing flares under each wing. These lit up all the ground and enabled the pilot to judge his distance. The machine, which was landing, presented an almost uncanny sight as she glided in noiselessly like a huge ghost.
Then a white rocket went up clearing them to land. The pilot circled down to 15ft above the ground and with ‘a touch of an electrical button, over wing flames spluttered and burnt into dazzling brilliance’. Horn wondered how the pilot would cope. He slightly overshot to within 15yds (14m) of the canal, but otherwise ‘a splendid landing’. Horn climbed out ‘well satisfied’ with his first night raid and made for to the mess ‘to satisfy a good appetite’.
Two days later, he was off to another bomber aerodrome, St Denis Westrem, with a crew of three, a bomb load of four 250lb and six 112lb bombs with Horn acting as ‘rear gunlayer’ (naval term for gunner).
The green ball station at Ostend was sending her signals soaring into the air. Looking over the port side, I saw far below a round dark blot on the ground. While wondering what town it was, a red rocket soared up and burnt into a million scintillating stars. This was the signal for undisguised hate on the part of the Hun occupants of the town.
Shrapnel and luminous balls of fire ‘made their way upwards as well as the inevitable flaming onions’. He admitted that he had got the description of a flaming onion wrong: fired from three or four guns, the net result was a spiral. This night they were too close for comfort: ‘I cannot but say that I had “the wind up”, the strength of the latter not known on Beaufort’s scale, for they almost seemed to envelop the tail.’ The machine passed over the Brugeoise works, where it was treated to ‘a vertically hostile anti-aircraft’ display.
The bomber released its load from 9,000–10,000ft, one 250lb bomb causing a ‘terrific explosion’ which Horn could just hear. ‘The appearance of this explosion was a thick oily dark reddish ring of flame, which surrounded a bright red flash. Judging from the size of this flame, the explosion must have been tremendous.’ Immediately after the bombs landed, searchlights began to probe ‘feverishly’ and a further array of flaming onions shot skywards.
On the way back, the bomber encountered an Albatros, which
… provided the ‘star turn’, the grand finale to the evening’s dark deeds. My first intimation of an unusual event was when the machine suddenly nose-dived, thus bringing my meditation to a rude and abrupt end, at the same time laying the foundation for a
‘vertical hurricane up’. The next surprise was the rattling of our forward machine-gun, and this completed the strength of the cyclone which raged around me. I flicked my flying gloves off, which I had secured by a long cord round my neck, and seized my gun butt but too late. I then scrambled down to the lower deck and got behind the gun there, fully convinced that the Hun was on our tail.
From here he could ‘rake with impunity’ the Handley Page’s blind spot. But the bullets never came.
Apparently, Observer Sub Lt Hudson in another bomber saw the enemy 200ft below deliberately turn ahead of his aeroplane and fly straight up towards Horn’s machine. Crawling from his seat into the forward turret, Hudson ‘fitted a pan and put a burst of 100rnds into the fuselage of the Hun, who was about 50ft below us. The Hun’s nose turned vertically upwards, stalled and did a vertical nose dive.’ Hudson poured a second burst into the Albatros, ‘which was crashing earthwards along with the pilot’s vision of Iron Crosses and other decorations’. Horn thought this might have been the first time that a Handley Page bomber had attacked an enemy scout, in an action which took about ten seconds ‘but it seemed to be hours’.
Life at Coudekerque, one mile south of Dunkirk, was often interrupted by enemy action against the aerodrome itself and the port, raids on Calais and Gravelines and long-range artillery. Horn recorded that the anti-aircraft defences put up a ‘deafening defence’, which the airmen watched from a distance until ‘Hun machines’ got too close, when they ‘hastily’ ducked into a sandbag-shelter or dugout.
The approach of an enemy aeroplane, was signalled by ‘Mournful Mary … an appellation fitting’ for the siren. Its ‘piteous wail … closely resembles the bellowing of a cow, which has been lost from its herd, and is in fact dubbed by the French La Vache’. With its first note, ‘searchlights feel round the sky, each searching a little while a suspicious area, then finding nothing there to satisfy it takes a long sweep backwards and forwards intently until it is lucky enough to pick up a Hun, which it tries to hold’, for anti-aircraft gunners to engage.
About 25 miles (40km) east-north-east of Dunkirk, close to Ghistelles air base, was the Pièce de Leugenboom, a 17-inch cannon. ‘The first indication that this machine is taking part is a deafening crack immediately followed by a rolling noise exactly similar to a heavy roll of thunder, and it rolls for some seconds afterwards.’ When in action, one shell arrived every seven minutes from this cannon, and Horn noted that a bombardment in 1917 went on throughout one night. Over Dunkirk, an enemy aeroplane spotted for the gun and occasionally the ‘local wireless station’ would jam its transmissions. In the war, Dunkirk would endure 177 air raids, during which 5,092 bombs were dropped, four off-shore naval bombardments and thirty-two attacks by the long-range gun.
FSL Watkins (christened Siegfried by his father – a devotee of Wagner’s operas – but known as Toby) took part in the aerial operations against the enemy positions in Flanders, details of which he recorded in a journal. He sailed from Dover in the afternoon of 13 January 1918: ‘Jess [his wife] behaved like a brick. Felt like jumping overboard,’ he confessed. Reporting to No 12 (Naval) Squadron at Dunkirk, enigmatically he recorded receiving a ‘chilly reception’. The aerodrome was awash and on the evening of 15 January an enemy aeroplane came over machine-gunning from 1,000ft. ‘No time to get to the dug out, so played touch round a tree trunk’. The airfield remained water-logged until 23 January, before which several more hostile raids took place.
On 24 January, Watkins did his first ‘flip’ in a Sopwith Camel, only catching sight of hostile formations in the distance. The following morning, he went up again but could not catch a German photographing the station. He had just gone to bed on 26 January, when the 17-inch cannon described by Aubrey Horn opened up: ‘Hell of a din and a general rush for the dug out’. 1 February proved, ‘a red letter day – had a bath in Dunkirk, the first in three weeks’. Five days later proved eventful for a different reason, when an enemy machine dropped a letter from FSL Carr, who had been posted missing a few days earlier. Carr had been shot down by somebody he knew at Oxford, was unhurt and writing from ‘an Air Service Mess’, where he was being well-treated.
Watkins, like Horn, was soon engaged in raids on enemy airfields of which that on 15 February, when flying a DH4 as flight leader, proved rather uncomfortable. ‘Archie active and accurate as soon as crossed lines near Dixmude’, he noted. The main rear spar of his machine was shattered by an anti-aircraft shell and the formation was attacked by ten German machines as it turned away from the target. Seeing an Albatros under the tail of the bomber ahead, Watkins dived and fired tracers at it. The enemy ‘half-looped away’, and Watkins suddenly found him under his own tail, and ‘bracing wires on the left side’ being shot away. Fortunately, the German did not persist, but Watkins’ ‘wonky’ machine fell behind the others and was repeatedly attacked by more fighters. In the DH4’s damaged state, Watkins ‘dare not go full out’, so he ‘had to side slip and stall continuously to enable my gunlayer to get his own gun on them’. Having reached the Allied line, he saw another DH4 surrounded by eight enemy fighters and turned back to help. On getting closer, he realised that the whole formation was German, ‘so retired as hurriedly and as quickly as I could’.
On the last day of February, No 5 (Naval) Sqn and Watkins were ordered south to Villers Bretonneux, 35 miles (56km) west of St Quention, to reinforce the air component preparing to counter the anticipated German ground attack.
Back in England, the training of aircrew continued to give concern. Maj Robert Smith-Barry followed up his criticism of the low standard of pilots being sent into action, voiced while commanding a squadron in France, with a comprehensive critique of the training syllabus. He insisted that it was unrealistic, as well as too short. Pupils were given no real impression of what awaited them at the Front. They should be instructed in ‘every possible manoeuvre from taking off across wind to spinning’, instead of encouraging them not to get into difficulties, they ought to be taught how to extricate themselves from dangerous situations.
Smith-Barry’s outspoken views brought him command of No 1 Reserve Sqn at Gosport, where he put his ideas into practice. Possibly his most important legacy, however, was the ‘Gosport tube’, a length of tubing inserted in dual control machines for instructor and pupil to communicate verbally. So successful was this experiment that it became standard in all two-seat machines not only for training but operations.
Steps were also taken to improve training elsewhere. When Douglas Joy had learned to fly, facilities in Canada were sparse. With the need to provide many more pilots for the RFC, that country now experienced a vast expansion of training venues. The Curtis Center near Toronto had long been inadequate, and many Canadians underwent their entire training in Britain. In October 1916, the Canadian Government recommended the establishment of ‘an aeroplane factory and aviation school’, the former supplying the machines for the latter. With pressure to greatly expand the number of squadrons in France, it now seemed prudent to form twenty reserve squadrons in Canada, each in effect a training school. By February 1917, 1,000 applicants were in the administrative pipeline and that month the training flights were ready for action. On 16 March 1917, the first pupils went solo.
Although the USA had entered the war on 6 April, for the seven months from June 1917 American citizens could enlist in the RFC directly from a recruitment office in New York. The United States agreed to make aerodromes in Texas available for RFC training squadrons in the winter months. It undertook to purchase 180 machines from Canada for this programme and provide petrol, oil, lighting and power so long as everything was left in good order when the squadrons left. As part of the deal, American squadrons would be trained at the Texas airfields and in Canada during the summer months. The RFC advanced training HQ was opened at Fort Worth in September 1917, and on 19 December the first American squadron of twenty-five pilots, having passed qualification tests, with its own back-up staff, left for England. Nine more American squadron
s would follow by March 1918. In the year up to 26 January 1918, the Canadians sent 744 trained pilots to the RFC in England, had 2,923 more in the training system, and recorded only thirty-four fatal accidents. The initiative, therefore, proved highly beneficial.
At the Front, flying a single-seat machine, during December 1917 James McCudden added fourteen victories to his existing twenty-three, one day shooting down four, and on another three. On 28 December, Trenchard signalled: ‘Well done again. I wish I could have seen you to have said what I think.’ McCudden’s success attracted less welcome attention after the visit of an agency reporter to No 56 Sqn on 30 December. Articles subsequently appeared in the Daily Chronicle and Daily Mail at the beginning of January 1918 trumpeting the deeds of a ‘Wizard of the Air … [a] fair-haired, slight, shy and delicate-looking youngster’ and broadening the story to laud ‘beardless boys of Britain’, who flew ‘high in the icy sky’ over France ‘proving that they belong to the breed of the unafraid’. Indignant scribes complained that official policy prevented them from identifying the ‘hero’ who had achieved thirty-seven victories. Not for long. On 7 January, McCudden was named and his photo published. Readers learnt that this 5ft 6ins tall ‘slim figure is athletic and his boyish pinky-white complexion gives a touch of delicacy to a countenance that is full of character’. McCudden’s father William was of Irish origin and from a military family, his mother (née Amelie Byford) from ‘Scottish stock’, her father and grandfather former Royal Marines. His elder brother, F/Sgt W.T.J. McCudden had been killed at Gosport, 2/Lt Anthony McCudden MC had brought down ‘several German machines’ and Maurice Vincent McCudden (aged sixteen) was already in the RFC ‘pining to be a pilot’.
Cavalry of the Clouds Page 21