On that eve of the Kaiserschlacht or Ludendorff Offensive as the German attack has become known, the RFC had sixty-two squadrons and one special duty flight in France, excluding forty-one kite balloon sections but including three Australians, one Canadian and three RNAS squadrons. Arrival of another squadron on 22 March raised the nominal strength to 1,232 aeroplanes. Of these, 579 including 261 single-seat fighters were positioned in the area of the Third and Fifth armies; opposing them were an estimated 730 German machines including 326 single-seat fighters.
Orders to the squadrons in the Third and Fifth armies’ sectors reminded those supporting the individual corps that once the battle commenced they should concentrate on counter-battery work, contact patrols, artillery co-operation, photography, harassing enemy movement with bombs and machine-guns and after day operations, night bombing behind the German lines. Squadrons more generally supporting an army were to prevent interference with the corps’ machines, attack concentrations like ‘detraining points and debussing centres’, carry out low-level attacks on enemy troops and fly patrols high over the area of operations as additional protection.
Capt S.R. ‘Toby’ Watkins, who was involved in the run-up to the battle, had arrived at Villers Bretonneux in No 5 (Naval) Sqn from Dunkirk on 6 March, and was not over-impressed with his new abode. ‘Awful aerodrome mostly soft ploughed, bomb holes and ditches the whole garnished with hundreds of red warning flags’. Three DH4s crashed on landing, two being write-offs. On a familiarisation flight that afternoon, Watkins found it a difficult ‘to find one’s way’ with a map because the terrain had been so altered by the Somme battles. He had no time to settle in, the very next day for the first time leading ‘a stunt’ to Mont d’Orginy aerodrome, east of St Quentin. Heavy cloud obscured the results of the bombing and Watkins discovered on his return that all other squadrons detailed to attack this target had abandoned the operation due to the conditions.
Watkins was kept busy, sometimes flying twice a day and often combining photography with bombing. Going to Mont d’Origny again on 9 March, he endured ‘a very warm time’ due to engine trouble and Albatros attacks before the target, on the way back and well over the British lines. A bullet had passed between his observer’s feet, missing the seat of Watkins’ pants by inches to hit the engine. Four days later, he noted that No 42 Sqn had encountered Richthofen’s ‘circus’ near Cambrai and lost six machines. ‘Hope to goodness we don’t meet them,’ he wrote.
British airmen carried out several raids against Etreux aerodrome from which twin-engine Gothas attacked Paris. Bombing operations on this and other airfields had prompted the Germans to concentrate Richthofen’s ‘circus’ of single-seat fighters in the area, ‘out for our blood’. This led the RFC to despatch bombers to a target, ordering them to circle after release of their load to entice enemy fighters into the air. Whereupon, a formation of SE5s lurking above would dive on the enemy. This particular ‘stunt’ did not always work. On 16 March at Busigny, the fighters failed to appear, so the bombers had to fight their way back at times outnumbered four to one. The following day, the scheme did function, leading to ‘the biggest scrap I’d ever seen’ according to Watkins:
The sky seemed to be full of machines looping, cartwheeling, spinning, diving in flames and going down without wings. Saw one Hun go down in vertical dive from 15,000ft and crash in the middle of a village. The net result was eight Huns bagged without a single British loss.
However, on 18 March, he acheived ‘not such a good result as yesterday’. The Germans put up sixty machines against thirty SE5s and Camels with eight DH4s. The British lost five Camels, two SE5s and a DH4, with unconfirmed claims of eleven Germans shot down. At this stage, No 5 (Naval) Sqn had lost nine DH4s in nine days and Watkins diary entry betrayed the strain: ‘Whose turn next?’ For the next two days came ‘rain all day. Thank God!’
Second Lieutenant Hervey Rhodes joined No 12 Sqn in March 1918, shortly before the German offensive. Son of a factory worker from Saddleworth, Yorkshire, he left school aged twelve to work in a mill and subsequently spent two years labouring in Canada. Returning to England, he enlisted in the Army in August 1914 ten days short of his nineteenth birthday. As an NCO in the King’s Own Royal Lancashire Regiment, Rhodes saw action at Loos and on the Somme before being recommended for a commission. At an Officer Training Unit in a Cambridge college, he recalled mixing with men of vastly different social and educational backgrounds which ‘gave me enormous confidence, when I realised I could hold my own’. Rhodes finished in the top ten of his course and was commissioned into The Yorkshire Regiment.
Returning to the trenches, with their combination of knee-deep mud, vermin and the thud of bullets hitting bodies as men went over the top did not seem attractive. Instead, ‘sick and tired of the infantry’, he volunteered for the RFC, which ultimately led to his posting as an RE8 observer to No 12 Sqn. There he teamed up with South African pilot, Lt Croye Pithey. Pithey and Rhodes would form an effective partnership in the air and become firm friends. Inexperienced when the enemy’s March offensive commenced, pilot and observer contrived quickly to master climbing to 12,000ft, taking photos of the battlefield, communicating with artillery batteries, bombing and strafing German positions during ‘very hazardous’ low-level contact patrols. As a former regimental signaller, Rhodes was proficient in the sending and receiving of Morse, which proved invaluable when spotting for the artillery. The crew’s success soon caused them to be dubbed ‘the Pithey and Rhodes Line’.
After a dry spell, on 19 March rain fell and a heavy mist settled over the area, which contrived not only to conceal but to muffle enemy movements. At 4.45am on 21 March, a ferocious barrage including gas shells drenched troops astride the Somme for a depth of 20 miles (32km). Gough’s Fifth Army bore the brunt of the assault and a new tactic. The Germans increased the machine-gun complement of their divisions and used quick-moving storm troopers to bypass strong points and attack command centres in the rear leaving infantry to consolidate gains in their wake.
The enemy bombardment severed important telephonic communications, and in the murk visual warning signals went unseen. The first that most forward troops knew of danger was the sudden emergence of Germans from the fog between 8am and 10am. By noon the storm troopers had gone through the Fifth Army’s forward zone. By evening, the enemy had advanced an astonishing 17 miles (27km) and taken some 20,000 prisoners. To avoid being cut off, the Third Army was obliged to fall back and straighten the line. The relentless advance continued. By 4 April enemy formations were within 10 miles (16km) of Amiens having penetrated 40 miles (64km) along a 50-mile (80km) front in just two weeks. The assault, in the face of Allied reinforcements and effective inner defences, now stalled.
On the opening day of the attack, 21 March, visibility was sufficient in the Third Army area for RE8 crews to report enemy activity from as early as 6.15am, and later that day artillery co-operation machines were also active. On the Fifth Army front the mist lifted in the afternoon, which allowed patrols to engage enemy aeroplanes and other machines to spot for the artillery and machine-gun German troops. Below them, though, British infantry were falling back rapidly.
As they did so, squadrons had swiftly to change airfields and a co-ordinated response proved increasingly difficult. Cpl Charles Callender, the mechanic from Stockton-on-Tees who experienced such traumatic training at Farnborough and Brooklands, recorded that at one point No 27 Sqn moved to another station, which in turn had to be abandoned. Left there were eighteen ‘large HP bombers’ with folding wings, then on the secret list and ‘never been used’, which were burnt because there was nobody to fly them.
Low cloud on the opening morning frustrated German airmen, too. Richthofen’s wing was scheduled to take off 45 minutes before the infantry attack, tasked with protecting reconnaissance machines, dealing with Allied fighters and attacking observation balloons. It did not get airborne until 12.30, and managed only fifty-two sorties to account for just two balloons.
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p; On 21 March during the artillery overture to the German attack, 6-inch shells demolished three hangars and an office on Toby Watkins’ airfield, only protective earth banks saved the accommodation huts:
One big shell burst about 10yds (9m) from my hut as I was packing. I heard it coming like an express train, and just had time to fall flat down behind my tin trunk before the world fell about my ears. Most astonished to find that I was alive and unhurt.
Watkins confirmed that the mist cleared at about 2.00pm, when dodging shell holes his and other machines took off to bomb troops crossing pontoon bridges over the St Quentin Canal. The DH4s landed at an emergency airfield on their return and from there attacked enemy troops and the pontoon bridges again the following day. On 23 March, No 5 Naval Sqn flew four operations against advancing enemy columns before falling back to Bertangles, west of their old aerodrome. By 24 March the St Quentin canal bridges were 25 miles (40km) behind the front line and that day Watkins saw enemy scouts leaving the squadron’s former station at Mons-en-Chaussée, but could not reach their height to intercept. In the evening, when the formation leader got lost in thick mist en route to a railway target, Watkins took the lead and guided the formation back on course; ‘Engine fell to bits on landing, so did not fly on the 25th.’ He took up a new machine on 26 March: ‘She will be top hole, when the engine is tuned up, but no time for even cleaning machines these days,’ There was opportunity only ‘to rebomb and refuel tanks, when we land from a raid, then all machines off again on the next … Result: machines and pilots going to pieces’.
After leading a raid on bridges across the river on 26 March, Watkins recorded that ‘the Huns were well over the Somme – somewhere between Brie and Villers Bretonneux’. That afternoon he went by car to Villers to collect one of the Squadron’s machines, which had landed there with engine trouble. He found the road ‘packed with retreating troops, transport, villagers with their goods and cattle, and ambulances’. The aerodrome was deserted. ‘There had been a stampede from there the night before and thousands of pounds worth of stores, furniture and officers’ personal belongings were left behind undestroyed’. Returning to base, Watkins led two more raids that evening against enemy transport on the Albert-Bapaume road, but clearly the Germans were still making rapid progress.
More dead than alive by evening, could scarcely get out of machine. Food is nearly as scarce as sleep – we’re mostly too tired to sleep at night – but no one thinks of giving up. I find that leading one raid tires me more than doing three when following another leader.
On 27 March, the squadron was ordered to adopt a new tactic, ‘which frightens me stiff’. A low-level contact patrol was, in his view, ‘highly dangerous work’ for scouts, but ‘on DH4s it’s suicidal’.
During three raids that day, he flew below 1,000ft ‘bombing and shooting up transport, troops and batteries two or three miles behind the lines. We passed our scouts shooting up the trenches from our [sic] side of the lines, with no Hun scouts or Archie to worry them’. On the first, he dropped his bombs from 900ft, then flew up a road to let his gunlayer fire his two guns at columns of troops marching up in support. Watkins watched the enemy scatter along the roadside and get their machine-guns ‘busy on me … Little holes began to appear in my planes (could hear the “zip” every time the machine was struck), so zoomed up to 2,000ft having first dived on a machine-gun crew and dispersed them with a burst from my front gun.’ Watkins then attacked a kite balloon, one of several ‘strung up’ close to the lines. As his gunlayer had run out of ammunition, Watkins left the balloon to another pilot, who got fifty rounds away as it was being hauled down. Suddenly Watkins realised that nine enemy scouts were closing on his tail, and swiftly made for the safety of friendly territory.
His second operation of the day was ‘a repetition of the first stunt, but with more Hun hate, in the form of pom pom tracer shells, which leave a thick green trail of smoke’. After dropping his bombs and firing at troops from 1,000ft along the Amiens-St Quentin road, he spotted a group of triplanes ‘coming down nearly vertically onto me’. Having loosed off fifty rounds at the leader, ‘I was beginning to say my prayers, when I saw an enormous plume of black smoke from a burning dump drifting towards the lines. So immediately camouflaged myself in this and got safely back over lines at about 800ft.’
Watkins’ third raid engendered ‘a very warm reception’. He dropped bombs on transport from 1,500ft ‘then fooled about shooting up troops and batteries from 1,000ft’. However, the Germans had brought up ‘a lot of anti-aircraft guns, which made some wonderful shooting’. When enemy scouts appeared and ‘things got hot’, Watkins took refuge in clouds at 2,000ft. In a ‘large clear patch’ over Foucancourt, 20 miles east of Amiens, he was ‘ringed with bursts in no time’. He side-slipped, half looped, dived and zoomed, ‘but still the “woof, woof, woof” continued all around me’. He managed to get back into clouds on a left hand turn and while hidden, turned sharp right. When he emerged into sunlight, he saw ‘dozens of Archie bursts well to my left. The blighters had followed me up on my original course’. Watkins repeated ‘this performance’ several times, aware that triplanes were waiting to pounce on any machine coming out of cloud. One of his fellow DH4s had three on his tail, and Watkins was delighted to see two of them collide ‘and go down locked together in flames’. Another DH4 shot down a triplane, ‘which fell with one wing folded back’. However, Watkins witnessed a bomber hit by ‘Archie, burst into flames and go down’, and a second was missing believed shot down.
In a ‘low stunt’ on 28 March, Watkins’ bombs hit motor buses bringing up troops near Foucancourt and in a second sortie, pontoon bridges over the Somme. He saw anti-aircraft fire score ‘a direct hit’ on a bomber, which disintegrated in the air. After a ‘critical state of affairs’ developed at Morcourt, just north of the Amiens–St Quentin road, the ‘situation was saved by a brilliant cavalry charge. I was over the charge at 1,000–800ft and led the charge firing my front gun in to the Hun troops.’ But, due to the enemy’s continuing advance, the squadron had to move back again to a field east of Abbeville, which had primitive facilities.
As it rained all day on 29 March, Watkins motored into Abbeville ‘for bath, hair cut etc’. Despite the weather, he also managed some sight-seeing: ‘Fine old town. Cathedral disappointing. Had topping dinner at the Officers Club – first good feed for weeks [sic]. Club full of officers straight from the retreat. Heard some blood curdling yarns.’ Back at the new airfield, there was no news of five missing crews, but four other men were known to be recovering in hospital.
In the air again on 30 March, Watkins bombed transport on the Amiens–St Quentin road from 2,000ft and shot up troops from 1,000ft. The following day, his target was a German advanced landing ground between Caix and Rosières, roughly 20 miles south-east of Amiens. Low cloud obscured the site, ‘so dropped my pills on hutments and troops near Froyant, spotted through hole in clouds’. After releasing his bombs, ‘found myself sharing the sky’ with seven hostile triplanes, so Watkins dived below the clouds and escaped to the lines, where he flew back and forth while his gunlayer ‘pumped lead into Hun trenches’. Nobody fired at him ‘or if they did were very bad shots’; a tame end to ‘a most interesting little tour’, he mused.
Toby Watkins’ experiences were part of a confused picture in the wake of the German advance. On 23 March, the day that long-range artillery shelled Paris and as the Fifth Army tried desperately to stabilise its front, SE5s carried out offensive patrols on enemy troops and their transport. No 84 Squadron reported ‘large swarms of enemy troops … advancing across fields near Viefville’ shortly after midday. For 20 minutes, its SE5a machines relentlessly attacked until their ammunition ran out. Elsewhere, Spad aeroplanes of No 23 Sqn stampeded mules and scattered cavalry. As they did so, RFC DH4s were attacking an ammunition dump near Cambrai and a transportation centre at Quéant. RNAS DH4s dropped 25lb and 112lb bombs on troop reinforcements massing in the rear areas, while other day bombers focused o
n railway stations.
Improved visibility dictated that more aerial combats took place on 23 March than during all of the days preceding. Thirty-six enemy machines were reported shot down in the battle area. That day, the RFC lost five aeroplanes, plus thirty-three wrecked ‘from all causes’. Next day, 24 March, forty-two German machines were reputedly shot down for the loss of eleven RFC aeroplanes with another forty written off in crashes. Capt J.L. Trollope in a Camel of No 43 Sqn, supporting Third Army, alone accounted for six of the enemy. Four days later, Trollope would be one of five pilots reported missing from ten who set out on an offensive patrol. His mother would later receive a letter from a PoW camp, in which he was keen to tell her that he had accounted for two more enemy machines before being shot down.
Desperate attempts were made by the RFC and RNAS squadrons to slow the Germans as crisis after crisis developed. With hail and snow blanketing the area, on Monday 25 March RFC HQ signalled: ‘A concentration of enemy troops has been located just west of Bapaume. Every available machine will leave the ground so as to attack this concentration at dawn with bombs and small-arms ammunition and break it up before any attack develops.’ The following day, Maj Gen J.M. Salmond ordered: ‘Bomb and shoot up everything you can see … very low flying essential. All risks to be taken. Urgent.’
The harassing work of low-flying machines was illustrated by the activity of Camels from No 4 (Australian Flying Corps) Sqn on 27 March, whose sixteen pilots achieved a total of seventy hours flying that day. Troops and transport on the move, ammunition dumps and static concentrations were bombed and machine-gunned to effect. In the period of 25–28 March an average of fifteen pilots in total flew operationally over 200 hours.
Cavalry of the Clouds Page 23