In March 1918 Mannock went as a flight commander to an SE5A squadron, No 74, which was working up for the front. He had developed an extrovert dimension to his naturally introspective character: he was the life and soul of the mess, where he led his brother officers in song and, with a pair of drumsticks, beat the rhythm on a tympani consisting of cans, tankards, pots, pans and glasses tied to the back of a chair.
The squadron arrived in France on 1 April 1918, the date on which the Royal Air Force was born. Mannock’s analytical mind prepared for every patrol he led and, prompted as much by his natural garrulousness as by his innate thoroughness, he briefed his pilots carefully before taking off and de-briefed them with equal loquacity when they landed back. He was such a kind man that one of his many concerns was about the effect on his inexperienced pilots of seeing aeroplanes shot down in flames. In those days of easy conflagration and no parachutes, this sight could unnerve a hypersensitive youth. He himself was still highly vulnerable to the trauma that such spectacles could cause; and when one of the SE5As crashed on the airfield and he smelled burning flesh, it brought him close to a breakdown.
One evening, after Cairns, a particular friend of his, had been killed, he made sure that the mess gave him a ‘good send-off’. After the customary riotous games had been played, he made a speech, probably his shortest ever: ‘To Captain Cairns and the last dead Hun. Sod the Huns.’
In June, by which time the DSO and bar had been added to his medals, he went on leave, during which a second bar to his DSO, his promotion to major and his appointment to command 85 Squadron were gazetted. At his farewell to 74 Squadron, he wept. It was such habitual revelation of his feelings that endeared him to his comrades.
His new squadron also flew SE5As. He found its morale low. His predecessor, Major Billy Bishop VC, DSO, MC, who was the current RAF top-scorer with 72 kills, was a keen loner and unenthusiastic leader. Mannock interviewed all the pilots and got rid of those about whom he did not feel confident. There were three Americans, Elliott White Springs, Larry Callaghan and John Grider, all of whom he kept.
The first time he took the squadron up, he chose three men to go with him as decoys. The other flights followed at different altitudes. At 8.20 am he sighted ten Fokker DVIIs approaching. These had a best speed of 124 mph, the SE5As’ was 130. Mannock and his decoys dived, followed by the enemy. On his signal, five of the flight next above his dived on the pursuers; then the third dived and took the enemy further by surprise. The battle began at 16,000 ft and finished at 2,000. Number 85 Squadron had no losses, the Germans lost five, of which Mannock brought down two.
Soon after this he heard about McCudden’s death and became depressed, full of forebodings about his own. When he equalled Bishop’s total and a friend he had invited to lunch told him, ‘There’ll be a red carpet reception for you after the war’, he replied ‘There won’t be any after the war for me’. Later, when his friend talked about a flamer he had shot down, Mannock asked, ‘Did you hear the swine screaming? When it comes, don’t forget to blow your brains out’. Many pilots wore a revolver for that purpose, rather than he roasted to death.
He was shot down after one more victory and awarded a posthumous VC. His reputation stands above all his contemporaries of any nation in the First World War as what Air Vice-Marshal J.E. ‘Johnny’ Johnson, the RAF’s second-highest scorer in the Second World War, describes as ‘the master of team fighting, gunnery, ambush and decoy’.
Where Manfred von Richthofen stands in the scale by which these accomplishments are measured will be established when all the evidence in both great wars has been considered.
CHAPTER 12 - FRENCH, ITALIAN AND AMERICAN ACES 1914-1918
The French air force had many gifted fighter pilots, few of whom were outstanding tacticians or formation leaders. The national attitude to life is selfish, so it is logical that there was an abundance of young airmen who wished to make their best possible demonstration of patriotism, and to distinguish themselves most, by individual achievement rather than as part of a team.
Italians, although by nature inclined towards flamboyance, and bravura performances that excite their own and their admirers’ emotions, had many fine bomber, as well as expert fighter, pilots. That the number of the latter was much fewer than in the British and French air services is owed to the smallness of Italy’s indigenous aircraft industry, late entry into the war on 24 May 1915 and the small size of their enemy, the Austro-Hungarian Air Service.
For those who are unfamiliar with it, l’Armée de l’Air system for identifying its squadrons is confusing. The squadron number was preceded by the initial letter of the make of aircraft it flew: thus, No. 3, Les Cigognes, flying the Morane Saulnier, began its existence as MS3; when it had the Nieuport it became N3 and when it flew the Spad it changed to S3.
Public adulation of the air services, above all, of fighter pilots, which surpassed admiration for the army and navy, was common to all the combatant countries. In France this reached its apogee.
In the early years of military aviation it was soon recognised that, whatever their nationality, pilots tended to be resentful of any discipline not directly connected to flying, were adventurous and usually had a streak of wildness in them. Whatever constraints they were under during their early training, this was relaxed when they qualified. In the peacetime RFC, for instance, it was common practice for officers to land in the grounds of friends’ country houses on a weekend visit.
The French service appears to have been the most lenient. A pilot sergeant wrote, about his kith, ‘Once called to the firing line he is treated on the same footing as an officer, whatever his rank’. Brindejonc de Moulins informed his parents, ‘Apart from the guns which one clearly hears rumbling, this is the veritable country life lived in a château and, my word, I should greatly enjoy myself here. Yesterday I ate wild duck. Today it will be partridge for lunch and probably pheasant for dinner. What admiration we should have for the men in the trenches.’
Single-seater French pilots protested against any measure that tended to withdraw privileges from them and reduce them to the level of those in other combatant arms. To mitigate the ground troops’ supposed jealousy, it was proposed to increase from five to ten the number of aerial victories needed to qualify for mention in despatches. Jacques Mortane, editor of La Guerre Aérienne, complained on the pilots’ behalf in his columns and clinched the matter by denying that other arms envied them: ‘Our troops are more tolerant, thank God!’
The most reckless and colourful of the brotherhood was Charles Nungesser, aged twenty-two when he enlisted in the hussars at the outbreak of war, with the intention of transferring to the air force. He was sent to the front on 20 August 1914. On 3 September he was given the Médaille Militaire. In January 1915 he transferred to the air service, qualified as a pilot on 2 March and on 8 April joined a Voisin bomber squadron, V106. On 22 April he was promoted to Sergeant for distinguishing himself in action. By 15 May he had flown fifty-three day and night sorties and was made a Warrant Officer. On 31 July he shot down an enemy fighter. In November he was posted to a fighter squadron, N65, with which he spent the rest of his career. He celebrated the event by weaving among the chimneypots of Nancy, looped over the main square and flew along the main street at 30 ft. For this he was put in open arrest. Breaking arrest by ostensibly taking an aircraft on an air test, he shot down another German machine.
He had many crashes and suffered numerous injuries that would have discouraged the average man. He summed up his hare-brained method of fighting: ‘Before firing my gun I shut my eyes. When I reopen them, sometimes the boche is going down, sometimes I am in hospital.’
In defiance of superstition, his aeroplane had a skull and crossbones, a coffin, two lighted candles and a black heart painted on it. After a British pilot fired on him he so mistrusted the RFC’s aircraft identification that he had a red, white and blue V painted on his upper wing between the roundels.
A bad accident in 1915 was followed by fo
ur months of hard fighting at Verdun. When he crashed on an air test, he broke both legs and the control column penetrated his palate and dislocated his jaw. When he rejoined his squadron two months later, straight from hospital, he was on crutches but managed to get into his cockpit. A bullet split his lip; he dislocated a knee forced-landing; forced-landing again his machine overturned and broke his jaw for the second time. He did not rise above the rank of lieutenant: although he inspired the other pilots in his squadron, he was not an example to emulate except in courage. In combat, he was like a fighting bull let loose among a bemused matador and his henchmen. Astonishingly, he survived the war. It is no surprise that he was France’s third-highest scorer, with 45.
An equally ebullient pilot, Jean Navarre, joined l’Aviation Militaire on the declaration of war five days after his nineteenth birthday. He began squadron life as a bomber pilot on MF8 and immediately began to exhibit the same brand of recklessness that made Nungesser so conspicuous. The first time he met the enemy, the German flew alongside and waved. Navarre waved back, then put a rifle to his shoulder and fired at him, taking both hands off the joystick and nearly stalling.
Deciding that the Maurice Farman was a platform from which no weapon could he accurately fired, he moved to MS12 and by April 1915 had two victories. Next, he flew for N67 on the Verdun Front. He had red stripes and a skull and crossbones painted on his Nieuport 11, did aerobatics over the French lines and became known as la Sentinelle de Verdun. On a dawn sortie he attacked three enemy two-seaters, two of which departed at once. The observer in the third one stood up with raised hands, so Navarre escorted it to his own base as a prize of war. His favourite attack was from astern and slightly below, then he stood up to fire his Lewis gun and could easily have been tipped out. When he had scored seven victories, Nungesser had six. On 4 April he shot down three hostiles on four patrols, but two fell behind German lines and were not counted.
On 17 June he was leading a patrol of three that shot down three Roland two-seaters. He then, from 12,000 ft, spotted another two-seater 3,000 ft below and led the section in a diving attack. To give his companions the best chance of shooting it down, he deliberately turned aside to draw the enemy’s fire. One bullet broke a bone in his arm and another wounded him in the side. He fainted but managed to recover enough to make a crash landing. He lost so much blood that he was delirious in hospital for some days and suffered brain damage. This meant that he never flew on operations again. He had a total of twelve victories, which was no small achievement at that stage of the air war.
The records credit him with being the great innovator among French fighter tacticians: ‘At Verdun Navarre innovated combat between aircraft, and methodical attack. He demonstrated how the little monoplane, obedient to one sole will, could become a dangerous weapon for its adversary, in the hands of a pilot who was skilful, experienced and brave to excess.’
The second-highest scorer, Georges Guynemer with 53 victories, serious, ascetic and religious, was a very different sort from Nungesser and Navarre. In his early youth his parents feared that he was tubercular. When, four months before his eighteenth birthday, France went to war with Germany, he volunteered for any of the armed services that would have him; but looked so frail that he was turned down by all. In November 1914, at his third attempt to enlist, he was accepted as an aviation mechanic. Force of character got him onto a pilot’s course and he qualified in April 1915. He began flying with MS3 in one- and two-seater Morane Saulniers. Three months later, with Private Guerder as his observer, they shot down a German reconnaissance machine. Guynemer received the Médaille Militaire for this. In November he was credited with bringing down a single-seater. This time, he was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur.
By May 1917 he was the longest-serving member of Les Cigognes, now flying the Spad 13, and one of the youngest. On 25 May he made four kills. On 11 June, with a score of forty-five, he became an Officer of the Legion of Honour. When August ended he had become the leading French ace, with forty-nine victories. In September he added four more. If his aeroplane was unserviceable, instead of borrowing someone else’s, he took any that was awaiting a new arrival in the squadron. These machines were always the worst and often needed servicing before being flown, but he ignored that. One day three of his sorties had to be cut short for this reason and he made three forced landings that the average pilot would not have survived; moreover, in two fights his guns jammed. He flew four sorties of two and a half hours each on four successive days. Photographs of him at that period show him looking gaunt, tired out and ill. On 11 September it was raining but he took off, accompanied by Sous Lieutenant Bozon-Verduraz. They attacked a lone two-seater. It was a baited trap: three Albatroses appeared. Bozon-Verduraz fought them and managed to get away safely. He did not see what happened to his No. 1. Days later the Germans informed the squadron that Leutnant Kurt Wissemann had shot Guynemer down and killed him.
At the end of the war, the Allied pilot with the greatest number of victories was a Cigogne, Capitaine René Fonck, with 75. Whereas both Nungesser and Guynemer, like most pilots in all the air forces, were regardless of the amount of ammunition they used in a fight, Fonck, in contrast, told new pilots that he found ten, or at the most fifteen, rounds enough. He also said that if he were ever hit by a bullet he would apply for a transfer to the trenches: in his view, to be wounded indicated a lack of skill. This, of course, was nonsense, as there were so many factors in combat that contributed to victory or defeat. One of the more sensible things he did tell inexperienced pilots was that it was less dangerous to attack fifteen enemy aircraft on their own side of the lines than five behind the German lines. This apparent anomaly was in fact a shrewd observation: he maintained that if one fought several opponents at the same time, they got in one another’s way and often held their fire in case they hit one of their comrades. When he engaged a formation he tried to shoot down the leader, then, in the consequent confusion, take out another.
His style was cold, calculating and thorough. To make his aim as accurate as possible, he designed a species of sight, a tube with a plain glass lens at one end, on which were painted two concentric circles. He looked through the other end. The bigger circle covered a field of ten metres at a range of 100 metres. He had memorised the wingspan and fuselage length of every enemy aircraft, so could calculate its distance from the aspect it presented. The smaller circle covered a field of only one metre, which he found useful when very close to his target.
He was criticised for being aloof and conceited, but shyness often gives this impression and it is more likely that there lies the reason for his manner. The French are quarrelsome and critical. Opinions about him were fiercely conflicting in the squadron. The atmosphere became so unpleasant that Colonel Duval, who was the air adviser at General Headquarters, offered Fonck a posting, which he refused. Duval then offered him command of the squadron and transfer of all those who disagreed with his views on air fighting. He asked what would become of the present commanding officer and was told that he would also be transferred. Fonck dismissed this as a mean action, said he would never accept promotion at his own CO’s expense and withdrew even further into his shell, sickened by the intrigue. Henceforth he went looking for the enemy on his own.
He was one of only three fighter pilots to shoot down six aircraft in one day. The other two were Captain J. L. Trollope in March 1917 and Captain H.W. Woollett a month later, both flying Sopwith Camels in 43 Squadron.
Another time, having said he would shoot down five the next day, 9 May 1918, Fonck got up at 4 a.m., took off, found the weather too misty and returned to bed after half an hour. He was roused again at noon, found the mist still thick so had lunch and waited until the sun appeared at 3.30 p.m. Accompanied by two others, he took off a quarter of an hour later, when the mist had cleared. After thirty minutes a Rumpler escorted by two Halberstadts came in sight. He told his wing men to keep back, shot down one Halberstadt and then the Rumpler. It was now 4.20 p.m. Presen
tly he returned to base to refuel and rearm, then took off again accompanied by two different pilots. He shot down an Albatros at 5.17 p.m. Next, several aeroplanes appeared in the distance. Closing them, he saw that they were five Fokker DVIIIs in V formation and four Pfalz DIIIs in diamond at a lower level. He stalked them through cloud, shot down the rearmost Pfalz, then, from forty metres’ range, shot the leading Fokker down with only four rounds of ammunition.
When Fonck wrote his autobiography after the war, he maintained that to be successful a fighter pilot must know how to control his nerves, how best to attain absolute mastery of a situation and how to think coolly in difficult ones. He also shared a guiding principle with Manfred von Richthofen, who asserted that a fighter pilot must go into action telling himself that his opponent ‘must fall’. Fonck put it: ‘I always believed that it is indispensable to maintain absolute confidence in ultimate success, along with the most complete disdain for danger.’
He had more detractors among his comrades than any other famous Allied or German pilot. His comrades sneered at him for opening an attack only when he was in a position of such advantage that he was certain of victory and of no injury to himself. The truth is that he was a decent man who showed his loyalty, high personal standards and repugnance for intrigue when he refused the offer to supplant his commanding officer. As for the accusation of fighting only when in a position of supreme advantage, the words of a Second World War fighter leader puts that in its true perspective.
Squadron Leader Peter Blomfield DSO, DFC, who commanded 260 Squadron in Desert Air Force, said about Squadron Leader Osgood Hanhury who was commanding the squadron when ‘Blom’ joined it: ‘He gave the impression of being as mad as the proverbial hatter on the ground, however a cold, efficient leader in the air. I flew as his Number Two for the next two months. What I learned in that short time probably enabled me to stay alive in spite of all the Me109s could do and to remember his oft-repeated adage, “He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day; the fool who stays and takes a chance gets took home in the ambulance”. No wonder we all loved him.’
Von Richthofen: The Legend Evaluated Page 11