Aircraft Down: Landings, Crash Landings and Rescues

by Alec Brew

  The headquarters of No. 5 Wing was at Heliopolis, but the two squadrons operated flights as wide apart as Port Sudan on the Red Sea and Sidi Barrani on the Mediterranean near the Egyptian/Libyan border. No. 17 Squadron in particular operated flights within Egypt at El Hammâm, Suez, Assiut, Meheriq, and Port Sudan, with brief detachments to airstrips all over the country.

  7. A No. 17 Squadron BE2c, somewhere in the Middle East, the type flown by Second Lieutenant Ridley on his last flight.

  The BE2c aircraft had, by now, begun to suffer a poor reputation on the Western Front, where its great stability, and low performance made it a not very agile opponent when faced with the new generation of fighter aircraft that were appearing. Its observer was sited in the front cockpit, between the wings and surrounded by a veritable birdcage of struts and bracing wires, so that aiming a gun at an attacker, no matter how ingenious the gun mounting, was almost an impossibility.

  In the desert, however, its stability, low landing speed and relative robustness, made it an almost ideal support to the Camel Corps, as long as aerial opposition remained scarce. The engine was the Royal Aircraft Factory’s version of the old 70 hp air-cooled Renault V8, which had equipped early versions. The RAF1a engine gave an extra 20 hp over the old Renault, giving the aircraft a moderate absolute top speed of 86 mph at sea level. The RAF1a engine did not take kindly to running on maximum rpm for very long, however, and cooling of the rear pair of cylinders was always marginal. A curved air scoop was fitted over the engine to help channel air to the rear. The immense heat of the Sahara desert in the summer months only made the problem worse.

  On 16 April two aircraft of No. 17 Squadron’s flight at Assiut, on the Nile about halfway between Cairo and Aswan, were moved to Meheriq in the Kharga Oasis, a large oasis around 180 miles west of the Nile. In June Second Lieutenant Stewart Ridley, more usually know as ‘Riddles’ to his RFC colleagues, arrived in Egypt, and was sent straight down to Meheriq to join this isolated detachment. The hot, dry weather of the Sahara must have had a severe impact on a lad more used to the bracing winds of the north-eastern coasts of England.

  On 15 June, which was a Thursday, he was detailed to fly a BE2c solo as escort to another aircraft, flown by a pilot named Gardiner, with a mechanic named JA Garside in the observer’s seat. Gardiner and Garside were going to a new airstrip about 60 miles to the west at a small oasis; the airstrip had been prepared by a patrol of the Imperial Camel Corps, which had travelled out there some days earlier.

  They left in the afternoon, and flew steadily west in loose formation. The airstrip should have been about an hour’s flying time from Meheriq, but as time passed by there was still no sign of it, though the shadows of the camel patrol would have been long in the setting sun. After an hour and a half it was beginning to get dark as the sun dropped below the horizon ahead of them, so Gardiner signalled that they should land.

  He chose a suitably flat-looking spot in the gravel desert, and brought his BE2c in for a reasonable landing. When Ridley saw that Gardiner was down safely, he followed. They set up camp for the night, having brought food and water, as a natural precaution. The Saharan night was cold, but there was nothing with which they could light a fire, so they had to keep warm as well as they could.

  They awoke to an inclement morning, and Ridley suggested that he should take off solo and try and find the tracks of the camel patrol, returning to them when successful. Garside swung the four-blade propeller of the BE2c, but the engine would not start. It had been running roughly the previous afternoon.

  Gardiner decided that he should fly solo back to Meheriq, to find the exact location of the new airstrip. He would return the following morning, which would be Saturday 17 June. He left all the remaining water and food with Ridley and Garside, and took off. When he landed back at Meheriq he found the Camel Corps Patrol already there. When the aviators had not arrived on the Thursday they had returned to find out what was happening. The captain of the patrol climbed into Gardiner’s BE2c and flew with him to the new airstrip.

  The following morning they set off for the site of the forced landing. When they found the site, with some difficulty, they found Ridley’s aircraft had gone. Gardiner landed in the hope that some sort of note had been left, but though there were odds and ends lying about there was no sign of a note. They took off again and flew back to Meheriq, fully expecting to find Ridley and Garside waiting for them there, having flown back when they got the recalcitrant engine going, but there was no news of them.

  An immediate search was organised with camel patrols, motorcars and aircraft setting off to scour the desert between the two airstrips. The patrols found nothing until the following day. On the afternoon of Sunday 18 June, a pilot found signs of another forced landing in the desert, about 25 miles from the first one. The pilot landed and confirmed that the other BE2c had been there. Repairs had apparently been made to the aircraft, before they had flown on.

  The search continued but they began to give up hope when the tracks of two men walking were discovered; these tracks were joined and followed by another set of tracks, the tracks of several camels. It was feared that a group of Senussi had followed the two men, but whether they might have killed or captured them was a matter for conjecture.

  On the afternoon of Tuesday 20 June a motor patrol finally saw Ridley’s BE2c standing in the desert. As they drove nearer they could see two men lying on the ground, one beneath the shade of the aircraft’s wing, one lying some way away in the burning sun. As the cars drove up there was no sign of movement from the two figures.

  The cars stopped, and the engines were switched off, but there was still no movement from the figures. As the searchers approached the man lying in the sun, it was immediately clear why he was not moving. The sickly smell and the gathering flies would have been enough to tell them he was dead. It was Ridley, and it was obvious that he had been shot in the head. His service revolver was in his hand. It was Garside lying in the shade of the wing, and he too was dead, though with no apparent marks on him. It was suspected that he had just died of thirst, waiting for the rescue which had come too late.

  Luckily, Garside had left a short scribbled diary, which explained what had happened when Gardiner had left them in the desert. After the other BE2c had flown away they had worked on the engine, and managed to get it going. Garside quickly threw everything they needed into the aircraft, with the propeller blowing up a cloud of dust, and then he clambered into the front cockpit. Ridley took off, but after flying for 25 minutes the engine stopped once more and Ridley brought it down for a second forced landing in the desert.

  Garside once more began to tinker with the engine, but did not manage to get it going until the following day, which was the Saturday. Working on an engine in the full heat of the mid-summer sun in the Sahara desert, is not easy. Metal becomes too hot to touch, spanners left lying in the sun will burn the hand that picks them up. Nevertheless, Garside managed once more to breath life into the stubborn engine. Again Ridley took off, but this time the engine stopped after they had only gone about 5 miles, and they made a third forced landing.

  They spent another cold night in the desert, and then all through Sunday morning they tried to get the engine going again. However, swinging the big propeller was not easy, and Garside was soon sweating profusely. He was getting weaker and weaker and using up his precious bodily fluids far too quickly, and there was only about half a bottle of water left. Ridley suggested they walk to a line of low hills they could see not too far away, where they might have a good vantage point to spot searching parties.

  They began the walk across the desert, the only sound the crunch of their boots on the gravel. In the unusual perspectives of the desert the hills were much further away than they had seemed, and by the time that the two men arrived at their summit, they were both exhausted. They stared around the naked horizon, but there was nothing to see, except their own aircraft, a tiny insignificant toy in the vast emptiness.

  Deflated, t
hey began the weary walk back to the aircraft. By the time they collapsed to the ground under the shade of the wing it was beginning to get dark, with the suddeness that was usual in the desert. Ridley was totally despondent. Their thirst was overpowering, they were exhausted, and rescue seemed further away than ever.

  At about 10.30 pm, when Garside’s back was turned, Ridley took his service revolver and shot himself in the head. As the sudden shot cracked the silence of the night, Garside spun round, but there was nothing he could do. Though it would be suggested that Ridley had shot himself so that his companion would have a better chance of survival, there was only a drop of water left; his death would make little difference. Despair was the most likely explanation; the despair of a man who had only been in the desert for a few days, who had not acclimatised to its fierce heat, and its vast loneliness.

  The following day, Monday, 19 June Garside just lay in the shade of the wing, conserving what little strength and bodily fluid he had left. He did think of the water in the aircraft’s compass. He managed to get about half a pint of fluid from it, and drank it though he found it was some kind of spirit. He fired four rounds from the Lewis gun, but that attracted no attention. That night he fired the last cartridges of the Very pistol. They arced forlornly into the desert sky, but brought no help. His last entry in his makeshift diary read ‘Could last days, if had water’.

  The two men were buried on the spot beneath a heap of stones. The following Sunday, 25 June, a chaplain came out and conducted a service over the graves, and then two crosses were erected in that lonely place.

  Only a week later, on 2 July 1916, No. 17 Squadron sailed from Alexandria en route for Salonika, to take the war against the Turks into the Balkans. They left behind a mute memorial to four days of suffering for two young Englishmen far from home, isolated graves probably never visited again, and all but forgotten. It would not be the last time a forced landing in the Libyan Desert would claim the lives of an aircrew as they waited in vain for rescue.

  CHAPTER 4

  Down on Lake Tanganyika

  In 1915 the Belgians fought a very private and isolated war with the Germans across the waters of Lake Tanganyika. Four Short seaplanes supplied by the British played an integral part of this little war. These aircraft pioneered military aviation in the heart of Africa, where any kind of modern facilities were non-existent, and where a forced landing was liable to be in the most inhospitable of places.

  At the beginning of the First World War the Dark Continent had seen very little of the aeroplane, but the requirements of war, and the vast distances between the belligerent armies in Africa, soon led to their introduction. The bulk of Africa was largely carved up between five European nations: Great Britain, France, Germany, Portugal and Belgium. The colonists lost no time in following their home nations into the War and the German colonies of Tanganyika, South West Africa and Cameroon found themselves with enemies on all sides.

  The Germans in Western Tanganyika were very swift to organise belligerent action. On 15 August 1914, only the day after war was declared, they launched an attack by boat across Lake Tanganyika on the Belgian Congo village of Mokobolu. A few days later they struck again, this time against the larger town of Lukuga (later to be renamed Albertville, and now known as Kalémié).

  The Belgians were completely unprepared to defend the vast territory of the Congo, and only had a few companies of soldiers and a handful of artillery pieces. Communications between garrisons were often reliant on native runners, as telegraph wires did not survive long in the jungle, and roads were practically non-existent. The River Congo was the main artery of communication, but away from that communities were very isolated.

  Worse was to come after the Germans salvaged some guns from the heavy cruiser Konigsberg which was sunk by the British in the Rufiji Delta. These were fitted to a couple of large steamers, which had previously plied the waters of the Lake on purely peaceful purposes, the Graf von Goetzen and the Hedwig von Wisman. These ships proceeded to shell the Belgian garrisons on the west bank of the Lake with impunity.

  As well as these two powerful ships, which were based at Kigoma (the western terminus of the railway across Tanganyika and the main German port on the Lake), the Germans had two smaller gunboats, the Wami and the Kingani. In opposition the commander of the Belgian forces, General Tombeur, fitted out a small steamer, the Netta, and a trawler, the Vengeur, with a couple of old three-inch guns, and also had two smaller armed boats. The British had nothing on the Lake, though they occupied the southern shoreline in Northern Rhodesia. They transported two armed launches, the Mimi and the Toutou, from England, setting out from the Thames on 15 May 1915. They were shipped to Cape Town and then transported by rail as far as Fungurumee, the nearest point to the Lake on the Rhodesian Railway. From there they were hauled by steam traction engine many miles overland to the Lake, where they were operated by twenty-seven officers and men.

  On 6 March 1915 General Tombeur sent a detailed report to Belgium complaining that there was little that he could do with the facilities at his disposal. He suggested that some aircraft might at least have a reconnaissance role to play, furnishing him with details of where the Germans actually were. The Belgian Air Force had few aircraft on the Western Front, and none of those were suitable for conversion to seaplanes for operating on Lake Tanganyika. The Belgiums asked for help from the British Admiralty, who offered to supply them with four Short Type 827 seaplanes, which had been shipped out to No. 8 Squadron, operating from Zanzibar.

  The Short Type 827 was a two-seat biplane with an upper span of 53 feet, 11 inches and a length of 35 feet, 3 inches. It was powered by a 150 hp Sunbeam Crusader V8 side-valve engine, which gave it a maximum speed of 62 mph and a duration of 3.5 hours. Three of the four aircraft concerned (3093, 3094, and 3095) were actually the first three built by the Sunbeam Motor Car Co. in Wolverhampton, the first three of forty they were to build, fitting their own V8 Crusader engines.

  The three seaplanes had all been delivered to RNAS Grain in November 1915, before passing on to Short’s at Rochester for testing. They then went to RNAS Westgate for onward shipment to East Africa aboard the seaplane carrier, Laconia, along with a fourth example, serial 8219, which had been built by Parnall & Sons at Bristol. When the Laconia arrived in East Africa the seaplanes were operated from Chukwani Bay.

  The four seaplanes were reassigned to the Belgians, crated and transported round to the mouth of the River Congo, and then up the river, before being transported overland to Lukuga. The Belgian air and ground crew assigned to operate the four seaplanes travelled out from Europe. The crews for the seaplanes had been selected from volunteers on the Western Front, of which there was no shortage.

  The detachment, which left Europe on New Year’s Day 1916, was commanded by Commandant de Bueger, and included three pilots, Lieutenants Orta, Behaeghe and Castiau, and as observers, Lieutenants Colignon and Ruschaert. There were also two mechanics and two carpenters. They arrived at the mouth of the Congo on 4 February, and went up river to a point where they could trek overland to Lukuga.

  8. One of the Short 827s destined for the Belgian Congo, under construction in the Sunbeam factory in Wolverhampton.

  Once by the Lake it was clear that its vast size made it more an inland sea than the calm lake they had expected, with very strong prevailing winds and waves to match. It was clear that operating the Short 827s from the main lake would be a hazardous business, except on the few days when sufficiently calm conditions prevailed, and they began looking for a more suitable place. North of Lukuga they discovered a small side lake, named Tongwe, near the village of M’Toa.

  The Navy loaded the seaplanes and about 500 tons of equipment that were now at Lukuga and transported them up the coast. The Belgian Army established a defensive ring around the new base. They then set the natives to work digging a short canal to link the two lakes. In the event this was never finished, as the earth proved too soft, and there were frequent land slips. All the equipment
therefore had to be hauled overland from Lake Tanganyika to M’Toa.

  They also had to construct huts to house themselves and their equipment, which included 10,000 gallons of petrol, 500 gallons of oil, 250 No. 65 lb bombs, 750 No. 16 lb bombs, four machine-guns and about 30,000 rounds of ammunition. The four seaplanes came in eight crates, and there were also a few spare parts and two spare engines.These were essential for the early Sunbeam side-valve engines, which were not very reliable. The valves tended to run hot, and then distorted on cooling. Wherever possible, mechanics would change an engine after each flight.

  9. Short 827s being assembled at M’Toa on the banks of Lake Tongwe.

  10. Short 827 No. 8219 at M’Toa. This was the sole Parnall-built aircraft of the four.

  While the laborious process of establishing an air force on the Lake was taking place, the Allied naval forces there achieved a major success. On 9 February a joint British and Belgian force found and attacked the Hedwig von Wisman and destroyed it. This was only a few days after the British launches had captured another German steamer, the Kingani. There only remained the Graf von Goetzen, but that was easily the most powerful warship on the Lake.

  By 13 May the first seaplane was ready to fly, and the following day Lieutenant Orta took it up on its first test flight. It was also his first flight in a Short Type 827, or any kind of seaplane, as there had been no time to find one to practice with before leaving Europe. The second seaplane was ready on 24 May and an operation against the Graf von Goetzen was planned with all haste.