His greatest desire was to fly single-seaters. He constantly pressed his squadron commander to let him do so, until eventually he agreed to allow him and another pilot, Hans Reiman, to share a Fokker: Manfred to make the morning patrols and Reiman the afternoon ones. On their second day, Reiman, fighting a Nieuport, was forced down in no-man’s-land. He set fire to his machine and, after dark, made his way to the German trenches.
The Fokker, despite its many good qualities, had a notoriously unreliable motor, which made its pilots reluctant to cross the British or French lines. When a replacement aeroplane was delivered, Manfred’s first sortie was drastically cut short: the engine failed just after take-off, he crash-landed and the brand new fighter was badly smashed. At every flying school in the world, one of the first orders pupil pilots were given was never to turn back if they lost an engine: the aircraft would inevitably stall into a fatal crash; they must always land straight ahead, however rough or tree-encumbered the terrain. Many, neophytes and the experienced, who ignored this had proved the literal truth of the warning. Manfred was wise not to succumb to his habitual over-confidence and relish for taking risks and try to regain the aerodrome.
On 18 June, Immelmann was killed in combat with an FE2b of 25 Squadron, to the pilot and observer of which the RFC credited the victory. The Germans, on the contrary, insisted that Immelmann had shot off his own propeller again. They also misidentified the British aircraft as a ‘Vickers two-seater’, thinking it was an FB5 Gunbus; but then, they also referred to the de Havilland DH2 as a Vickers.
Although Immelmann had been assessed the best pupil on his flying training course, he broke several aeroplanes during his early career. His most important contribution to fighter tactics was the turn he invented, which is still known by his name. Its purpose, if his first attack did not despatch the enemy, was to regain height and make a second attack in the shortest possible time. After diving and firing, he continued the dive below his target, then began a loop that would take him climbing fast ahead of it. At the top of the loop, he rolled from an inverted to an upright position and ruddered hard into a diving turn that brought him down on the other aircraft’s tail once more, and fired again.
His death was a demoralising shock not only for the flying service but also the whole nation. The Kaiser, determined not to risk losing Boelcke as well, sent him on a public relations tour of Germany’s allies in the Near East and Balkan countries. This was a disappointment for Manfred, who was on the point of asking for a posting to Boelcke’s squadron.
In the same month, a new offensive began on the Eastern Front. At the turn of the year the German Military Air Service had been reorganised and formations, known as Kampfgeschwader, the equivalent of British Wings, were formed. The one to which Manfred’s squadron belonged, No 2, was transferred to the Russian Front in July. There, the personnel lived aboard the train that had brought them, but the nights were so airless and hot that he and two other pilots camped in a forest beside the track, in which they also went hunting during the night.
The Albatros CI returned to its bombing role, which he found himself enjoying. The Russians had few aeroplanes, so the chances of shooting one down were slim, but by dropping bombs he was striking hard at the enemy and relished the spectacle of the damage he was doing. Having bombed, he used to go down to strafe whatever ground troops he could find and said that it was most entertaining to attack a cavalry column, because it threw horses and riders into such confusion. Did he ever, as a lover of horses — or was it only of riding them? — feel remorse and pity for those he killed and wounded?
General ignorance about flying prompted many ridiculous rumours on all the battle fronts. One, derided in an article by C.G. Grey, Editor of The Aeroplane, was about a German aircraft which climbed so high in evading its Russian attackers that both the occupants froze solid. The aircraft was alleged to have glided down to a landing behind the Russian lines, undamaged. The pilot and observer were found ‘untouched by bullets, but stone dead with the cold’!
Changing fortunes at the Western Front necessitated another revision of German fighter units and the introduction of the name Jasta, an abbreviation of Jagdstaffel (fighter squadron). In mid-August Boelcke was recalled from Turkey, which he had reached on his foreign tour, and given command of Jasta 2. He resolved that it would be an elite body and set about selecting the pilots. Two whom he chose were Manfred and a thirty-seven-year-old Leutnant, Erwin Böhme.
CHAPTER 7 - THE REAL START OF A FAMOUS CAREER
On 1 September 1916, Manfred arrived at his new squadron’s airfield at Bertincourt, near Cambrai. Since the first few months of war, when no British or German aeroplanes mounted a machine-gun and pilots and observers began to carry rifles or shoot at each other with revolvers, the war in the air had passed through two major phases and was entering a third.
During the initial period of bumbling attempts by the Royal Flying Corps, Aviation Militaire and Luftstreitkräfte to shoot one another down, the British often and the French sometimes fitted a Lewis machine-gun to the upper wing of their biplanes, a rough and ready improvisation. By the time war was declared, France was manufacturing more aeroplanes, of more types, than any other European country. It was not surprising, therefore, that when the war began one of those in military service, the Voisin III (Type L), a pusher two-seater in which pilot and observer sat side by side, had a Hotchkiss machine-gun in front of the latter on a properly designed mounting. The advantage this could give over the enemy was made obvious when, on 5 October 1914, one of these, flown by Lieutenant Joseph Frantz, with a mechanic, Private Louis Quénault, manning the Hotchkiss, shot down a German Aviatik two-seater, the first flying machine ever to be brought down in this way. It is remarkable that no use was made of these aircraft, with their evident potential for wreaking mayhem on a large scale, as a fighter. One reason appears to be that owing to the plethora of aeroplane types and the many design weaknesses in those early years, manufacturers were kept so busy making spare parts that production of complete machines lagged.
The more important reason was that the Voisins were regarded as essentially bombers. In 1914 the French had already perceived the importance of not only tactical but also strategic bombing. The First Bomber Group, comprising three Voisin escadrilles was formed. When the Germans fired chlorine gas shells into the French lines for the first time, on 22 April 1915, they invited a terrible reprisal. On 26 May all three Voisin squadrons bombed the acid and chlorine works at Ludwigshaven and Oppau, an operation that involved five hours’ flying. The priority given to bombing meant that no Caudrons could be spared for fighter duties.
Quénault’s triumph was not the first aerial victory. On 13 August 1914, Lieutenant H.D. Harvey-Kelly of No. 2 Squadron, which flew BE2cs, was the first to take off for France. It was fair enough, therefore, that on 25 August he and two others were the first in the world to bring down an enemy aircraft, although they did not fire a shot. How could they? Their aircraft were unarmed. Their escapade was a typically mischievous, high-spirited RFC (and RAF) prank. Harvey-Kelly had intercepted one of the earliest German machines, a wretched affair called a Taube (Dove), and proceeded to torment its two occupants by flying a few feet astern and following its every evasive movement. Presently two of his squadron mates joined in the fun, one on each side of the quarry, and the three of them forced it to land. Its pilot and observer bolted into a wood where the three Britons pursued but did not catch them, so set fire to the abandoned aircraft.
The practice of lashing a Lewis gun somewhere and somehow within the pilot’s reach, instead of fixing it firmly in the cockpit and under his hand, did not end with Roland Garros’s innovation of bullet-deflectors on propeller blades. When the Germans swiftly improved on the device in the winter of 1915, the Fokker E series, the first real single-seat fighters, began to enjoy a period of supremacy on both the British and French fronts. The EI was soon followed by the faster EII. Both were highly manoeuvrable and difficult to see head-on, being monoplanes
with thin wings and a slim, round fuselage. The Vickers FB5 Gunbus could not out-manoeuvre them. Although the new Nieuport 11, known as the Bébé, was as agile as the Fokker, it carried a Lewis gun on the upper wing, which, even with a purpose-designed mounting, was much inferior to a Spandau in front of the cockpit. No British or French fighter could match the German’s fire power. The RFC’s casualties were so heavy that Parliament debated the ‘Fokker scourge’ and air crews were spoken of as ‘Fokker fodder’.
The second phase began in February 1916 with the formation of the first homogeneously-equipped British single-seater fighter squadron, No. 24, and the entry into service of its aircraft, the DH2. This was a pusher, its only weapon a Lewis gun mounted in front of the pilot, but it was more manoeuvrable than the Fokker E I, II and III. No. 24 Squadron began to develop offensive rather than defensive tactics when escorting reconnaissance and bomber machines as well as patrolling in search of enemy fighters. Some RFC squadrons were being supplied with the Nieuport 11, which was also winning fights against the Fokker, thanks to its agility. A new British fighter that matched the Fokker in performance but was handicapped by having a wing-mounted Lewis gun also entered the lists in August: the single-seater Sopwith Pup, with a top speed of 105 mph.
The third phase was introduced by the advent of the Albatros DI and II, their speed and armament both superior to any other fighter’s in the world.
During the Verdun battles the French air force had introduced another innovation, this time in fighter organisation. Its first élite escadrille was N3 (for Nieuport). It was known as Les Cigognes, (The Storks), because each aeroplane bore on both sides of the fuselage a depiction of this bird in flight. The unit was expanded into a Groupe of six Nieuport escadrilles, N3, N23, N26, N73, N103 and N167. Capitaine Felix Brocard, N3’s commanding officer, now became the first commander of a fighter Wing and led the first large fighter formations.
The popular image of a fighter pilot of any nationality had by now become firmly established. A French magazine, La Guerre Aérienne, described him as ‘a man exceptional for his physical and moral qualities, an adventurer out of the ordinary; a sort of champion towards whom popular fervour is directed’. This was why, it said, everyone who entered the aviation service aspired to fly a fighter.
The first Frenchmen to attract fulsome praise were Jean Navarre and Charles Nungesser, on the Verdun Front. By April 1916, Navarre had shot down seven enemy aircraft and Nungesser had scored six.
According to La Guerre Aérienne, ‘Fighter pilots are an elite, a glorious elite, universally praised, officially very much appreciated. To become one of them is to receive a mark of distinction, it is the consecration of exceptional qualities. They are entrusted with a supple, highly-strung prodigiously fast machine. This seduces sportsmen by its lively charms, in particular the intoxicating speed that increases tenfold the sensation of power. What justifies the fighter pilots’ liberty is the fact that they put it to good use. For that intrepidity, courage, love of sport and a taste for risk are necessary.’
The magazine even praised the ‘daring, even temerity’ of the British.
‘Every day they accomplish exploits that prove how useful sport is as a training for those who make war. Perhaps one could even reproach them for their sporting spirit, which makes them ignore danger. They hurl themselves at the enemy impetuously, with admirable bravery.’
Reference to sport is erroneous in the context of a lethal contest. The French, who assembled their best pilots in virtually segregated elite units, did form a squadron, N77, which enrolled noted sportsmen. One had captained France at rugby football, others were international horsemen, fencers and racing drivers. They were not conspicuously more successful than others. It is undeniable that young men who pitch themselves whole-heartedly into sports and games, particularly those in which injuries through bodily contact are common, show the kind of spirit that makes good fighters on land or at sea as well as in the air; but that is as far as the association of sport with war goes.
Manfred von Richthofen possessed this spirit abundantly. He fought with the bravery and dash that he displayed in equestrian competitions, which were as dangerous as any games that the British or French played.
Certainly, the RFC liked to play games for recreation when possible. This is evidenced in War Flying, written under the pseudonym ‘Theta’, and published in November 1916, containing letters home from an 18 year-old pilot who joined a BE2c squadron in France that year. He wrote,
Everyone here is cheerful and thinks flying is a gentleman’s game and infinitely better than the trenches; when your work is over for the day there is no more anxiety until your next turn comes round, for you can read and sleep out of range of the enemy’s guns … There has been a craze here for gardening recently and people are sowing seeds sent over from England and building rockeries and what not … There is a river near the aerodrome where we all go swimming … The ping-pong (table tennis) set has arrived … Cricket is the great “stunt” here in the afternoon and rugby in the evenings. The mornings are spent repairing the damage of overnight caused by rugger. All this, of course, provided the little incidentals of flying and so on do not interfere to excess … We have a game here now which is something like tennis. Instead of racquets and balls we use a rope quoit which must be caught and returned as per tennis. We are getting a tennis court made … Yesterday I was in the middle of a game of tennis when, with one or two others, I was ordered to fly over to a neighbouring aerodrome to be ready for a special job in the morning.
Manfred and his squadron comrades had no time for such pursuits; anyway, sport meant, to them, shooting and riding. They were single-mindedly dogged about killing the enemy. There is no record of the French sportsmen’s squadron indulging in games at the front, either.
Adulation of fighter pilots, in less ecstatic terms than the French journalists’, was accorded by the German press to Boelcke, Immelmann and other celebrities such as Gontermann and von Röth, who specialised in destroying observation balloons, which were strongly protected by anti-aircraft batteries. They both won the Blue Max. The awards of British decorations were, of course, published in the home newspapers as well as the official London Gazette. For instance, Major Lanoe Hawker, commanding 24 Squadron, was well-known because he had won the Victoria Cross and Distinguished Service Order in 1915. With so much publicity, both sides knew the names of their most dangerous opponents.
News came also of events on the Italian front, where Italy was fighting Austria-Hungary. Francesco Baracca, destined to become his country’s leading ace, Fulco Ruffo di Calabria and Pier Ruggero Piccio were becoming known to a wider public than their native one.
All this was heady stuff for the contestants in all the air forces. Manfred, who had been raring to be embroiled where the hottest air fighting was to be found, was keyed up to show what he could do when provided with a first-class aeroplane, a devastating pair of guns and an abundance of opponents. So were his squadron comrades.
The challenge to Boelcke’s Jasta was uncompromising and all the more provocative because of the manner in which the RFC had won the upper hand over the hitherto invincible Fokker E series. On 24 April, four of 24 Squadron’s DH2s were escorting five BE2cs of 15 Squadron on reconnaissance. Twelve EIIIs took them on, some circling to prevent the BE2cs turning back, the rest waiting to make their familiar dive and zoom. When it became obvious that the little reconnaissance machines, as defenceless as sheep against wolves, had no intention of going home yet, by which time the whole British formation was deep behind enemy lines, the circling Fokkers re-formated on the others and the whole lot swarmed down on the British. The tightness with which the DH2s turned and made straight for their attackers came as a surprise. Disconcerted by this unprecedented tactic, the Germans pulled out of their dives and broke right and left. Within seconds the DH2s were among them and shooting. Three Fokkers quit the scene, damaged. The remainder withdrew to circle again, hoping to draw the defenders away from their flock, but
Lanoe Hawker’s pilots stayed put. The Fokkers did not attack again and all nine British aeroplanes went home unharmed.
The DH2 had broken the Fokkers’ grip on the Western Front and, five months on, it was the intention of Jasta II’s commanding officer and all his pilots to re-establish German supremacy at once.
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The manner of Manfred’s first victory for the Jasta has already been told. The significant psychological change he experienced during that combat radically affected his attitude and skill. He had begun the fight wondering whether he would win. Presently he told himself that his opponent ‘must fall’ and this absolute determination, to which he attributed great importance as essential total resolution in any fighter pilot, was to be his mental attitude in every future contest. In this engagement Boelcke shot down his twenty-seventh victim.
Six days later Manfred shot down a Martinsyde, which was like destroying a 1924 Hawker Woodcock (top speed 132 mph, twin Vickers guns) with a 1940 Messerschmitt 109E (354 mph, various combinations of machine-guns and cannon). The helpless pilot, of 27 Squadron, was killed. Manfred again ordered a cup to celebrate the event and continued to do so after every kill. He took the Martinsyde’s gun as a souvenir.
Von Richthofen: The Legend Evaluated Page 6