June 18: Max Immelmann is killed when his aircraft disintegrates in a dogfight.
July 27: Captain Charles Fryatt is executed in Bruges by a German firing squad for trying to ram a U-boat with his merchant vessel, a propaganda disaster for the Germans.
July–November: The Somme offensive reveals crucial limitations in the RFC’s observation and photo-reconnaissance capabilities.
Simultaneously, German aircraft encounter the same problems over Verdun.
August: The Sopwith Pup is delivered to the RNAS in small numbers. The RFC’s large order of Pups is delayed and delivered only in early 1917, by which time the newest German fighters are superior.
October 8: The creation of the Luftstreitkräfte, the near-independent German air force, from the army’s Fliegertruppen.
October 28: Oswald Boelcke is killed as the result of a collision during a dogfight.
November 23: Lanoe Hawker VC is shot down and killed by Manfred von Richthofen.
November 28: The first bombing raid on London by German aircraft (as opposed to airships).
December: Robert Smith-Barry is posted as CO of No. 1 Reserve Squadron at Gosport to institute a radical new training regime for RFC instructors and aircrew.
1917
January: Manfred von Richthofen is awarded the Blue Max for his eighteen victories.
February: RNAS Sopwith Triplanes appear in numbers and are soon seen to be superior to the German Albatros. Fokker hastily aborts his current fighter design to convert it into a triplane.
The German Navy steps up its U-boat campaign with orders to sink on sight all Allied shipping and any neutral ships heading for British ports.
April: This month is forever known to the British as ‘Bloody April’: the RFC’s lowest point when German air superiority is decisively re-established by the Albatros D.III, the skills of individual aces like the ‘Red Baron’ Manfred von Richthofen and his younger brother Lothar, and the Jasta fighter groups planned by the late Oswald Boelcke.
April 6: The United States declares war on Germany, but RFC and French expectations of vast reinforcements of American aircraft are dashed when it turns out they don’t exist. To the end of the war American pilots are almost entirely reliant on French and British aircraft.
May: The first raid on London by twin-engined Gotha bombers, the start of a series of raids that will at last lead to the organisation of a proper system of home defence.
July: The Smuts Report ‘Home Defence Against Air Raids’ calls for RFC and RNAS squadrons to have a single command and London to have better anti-aircraft defences, a proper air-raid warning system and three squadrons of fighters permanently on call.
September: The Germans introduce the giant four-engined Zeppelin-Staaken biplane bombers in raids on London.
Manfred von Richthofen tests the prototype Fokker Triplane and hundreds more are ordered.
November: The Constantinesco synchronising gear belatedly becomes standard for all British aircraft fitted with forward-firing machine guns, well over two years after Fokker’s system was pioneered for German fighters.
The Third Battle of Ypres ends with Canadian troops’ capture of Passchendaele.
British tanks are used in a devastating massed attack at Cambrai.
The catastrophic defeat of Italian forces by German and Austro-Hungarian forces at Caporetto.
December: General Allenby takes Jerusalem.
1918
March: Following the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia and Germany sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and are no longer at war.
April 1: Formation of the Royal Air Force by amalgamation of the RFC and RNAS.
April 21: Death of Manfred von Richthofen, the war’s greatest ace, with eighty victories.
June: Formation of the allied Independent Air Force for the long-distance bombing of Rhineland targets.
August: General Haig’s attacks begin the Battle of Amiens.
In the Balkans/Macedonia, the Allies break through from Salonika.
September: General Allenby occupies Damascus, but Prince Feisal, T. E. Lawrence and the victorious Sherifian forces are already in possession of the city and have announced a provisional Arab government in accordance with British promises, later reneged. Bulgaria capitulates.
November 9: Kaiser Wilhelm II (‘Kaiser Bill’) abdicates.
November 11: The Armistice signed between the Allies and Germany ends the war in Europe.
1919
August: The first scheduled commercial airline flights between London and Paris begin.
1922
August: T. E. Lawrence (‘of Arabia’) joins the RAF as Aircraftsman Ross.
Note on the Classification of Aircraft Types
For the type and marque numbers of British aircraft I have used the format favoured by J. M. Bruce in his authoritative British Aeroplanes 1914–1918. Thus the Airco (de Havilland) 4 appears as the D.H.4, the Royal Aircraft Factory’s Blériot Experimental 2c as the B.E.2c.
The original Superintendent of the Royal Aircraft Factory, Mervyn O’Gorman, devised his own system for classifying the designs produced at Farnborough. The earliest nomenclature he used was based on pre-war foreign aircraft types, which at least made it clear that at that time Britain was not yet in the forefront of powered flight. It also showed that any design at the time could be considered experimental. According to this system ‘F.E.’ stood for Farman Experimental, after the ‘pusher’ type favoured by France’s Farman brothers, Maurice and Henri, which placed the engine behind the pilot. Thus any aircraft from Farnborough designated ‘F.E.’ would be a pusher type. Similarly, ‘tractor’ aircraft with the engine at the front would duly become ‘B.E.’ for Blériot Experimental, after the monoplane that had first flown the Channel. Any ‘canard’ types with the tail mounted at the front, such as the Wright brothers’ ‘Flyer’ or Santos Dumont’s aeroplane, would be named after Santos as ‘S.E.’. However, these early canard aircraft soon vanished from the skies and thereafter ‘S.E.’ came to stand for Scout Experimental. Eventually Farnborough would also come up with other denominations including ‘R.E.’ for Reconnaissance Experimental.
The German system of classification also used prefix letters to denote an aircraft’s type and function. B machines were unarmed observation aircraft; C machines were two-seaters for reconnaissance and escort duties with the observer/gunner in the rear seat; D were single-seat multi-winged scouts/fighters; E were single-seat monoplane fighters; G denoted bombers; and so on. The numerals used were Roman. Examples of the German style would therefore be Rumpler C.IV or Albatros D.III.
French aircraft, like most British aircraft from private companies, simply had their own type number, letter or name in any combination according to each manufacturer’s whim or system. Thus from the way they were styled it is impossible to guess the roles filled by the Hanriot HD.3, the Nieuport 28 or the Sopwith 3.F.2. Hippo.
In addition, most aircraft that saw service naturally acquired nicknames, whether derogatory, affectionate or just whimsical. This was true in every air force and has remained so ever since. Sopwith’s Biplane F.1 became known as the Camel from its earliest prototype days on account of the ‘hump’ caused by the breeches of its twin Vickers guns. Martinsyde’s G.102 was known to all in the RFC as the Elephant, probably because for a single-seat fighter it was an unusually large machine. On all sides there was no lack of aircraft with even less flattering names such as ‘Killer’, ‘Flaming Coffin’, ‘Spinning Doom’ or ‘Corkscrew’, partly in acknowledgement of an aircraft’s known tendency but also perhaps as a superstitious way of taming it by making light of it. ‘Flying Coffin’ (Fliegender Sarg, bara volante, etc.) has been a popular nickname for countless aircraft from WWI onwards. To both the Luftwaffe and the German press in the 1960s Lockheed’s F-104G Starfighter was known as the ‘Widowmaker’, whereas the Canadians knew it more wittily as the ‘Lawn Dart’. The more the danger increases, the blacker aircrew humour becomes.
Glossary
&
nbsp; Some of the commoner RFC slang phrases and technical aviation terms included:
ack-ack:
anti-aircraft gunfire. This was how ‘AA’ was pronounced in the British army signaller’s phonetic alphabet (see also ack toc, ack emma, pip emma, Toc H)
ack emma:
army usage for a.m. Also RFC usage for air mechanic
ack toc:
absolutely turtle (as in: the aircraft turned ack toc)
Alphabet,
the RFC used the army’s alphabet, which ran:
Phonetic:
Ack, Beer, Charlie, Don, Edward, Freddie, Gee, Harry, Ink, Johnnie, King, London, Emma, Nuts, Oranges, Pip, Queen, Robert, Esses, Toc, Uncle, Vic, William, X-ray, Yorker, Zebra
Archie:
RFC slang for hostile anti-aircraft fire, supposedly derived from a pilot who, on being shot at, shouted out ‘Archibald – certainly not!’: the refrain from a popular music hall song by George Robey
art. Obs.:
artillery observation
Blighty:
Britain. To ‘cop a blighty’ was to sustain a wound bad enough to earn repatriation but unlikely to be fatal
Boche:
dismissive (French) slang term for any German
Bradshawing:
Navigation in the air by following railway lines
Bus:
RFC slang for aircraft
Chocks:
big wooden wedges put under an aircraft’s wheels to stop it rolling
CFS:
Central Flying School
CO:
Commanding Officer or Conscientious Objector (conchie)
Comic Cuts:
the RFC’s sarcastic nickname for the army’s official weekly newssheet, generally considered to be full of ‘hot air’
contour-chasing:
very low flying, hedge-hopping
Crate:
RFC slang for aircraft (the German air force used the same word, Kiste)
Dud:
anything useless or unserviceable or, in the case of a bomb or shell, that failed to explode. Dud weather was weather too bad for flying
EA:
Enemy Aircraft
Eggs:
bombs
Effel:
wind sock (from FL: ‘French letter’ or condom)
Emil:
German generic slang for a pilot
Fizz:
champagne, as in a ‘fizz lunch/dinner’ meaning celebratory
Franz:
German generic slang for a observer/navigator
GOC:
General Officer Commanding
gone west:
dead
Gong:
a medal
HA:
Hostile Aircraft
Harry Tate:
RFC rhyming slang for the R.E.8 aircraft. Harry Tate was a popular music hall comedian, the Harry Tate a less popular aircraft
Hate:
a ‘hate’ was a bout of enemy shelling, as in ‘the usual evening hate’
HE:
Home Establishment (i.e. Britain) or High Explosive
HD:
Home Defence
hot air:
a politer alternative to ‘balls’, it could mean anything of dubious truth. It might include any official pronouncement, a chaplain’s (or padre’s) sermon, a commanding officer’s pep talk or an airman’s boasts about his combat or amatory prowess
Hun:
either any German or a British trainee pilot. Usually more dismissively jocular than seriously derogatory
IdFlieg:
Inspektorat der Fliegertruppen: the German Army’s aviation administration arm until the ‘Fliegertruppen’ became the ‘Luftstreitkräfte’ in October 1916 and IdFlieg disappeared. Its place was taken by the Kogenluft, q.v.
Jagdgeschwader:
a group of Jastas assembled for a particular task, much like a ‘wing’ in the RFC/RAF
Jasta:
Jagdstaffel, a German fighter squadron
Kofl:
German abbreviation for Kommandeur der Flieger, a rank analogous to that of Hugh Trenchard as Officer Commanding the RFC in France
Kogenluft:
German abbreviation for Kommandierender General der
Luftstreitkräfte:
(Commanding General of the Air Forces), to whose office all claims of combat victories were sent, together with witness reports, corroborative evidence etc.
MO:
Medical Officer
Nacelle:
the boat-like housing containing the cockpit(s) in a ‘pusher’ aircraft. Nowadays the term is used for the external aerodynamic pods on aircraft that house engines, fuel, radar equipment etc.
Pancake:
either a noun or verb usually describing a stalled aircraft dropping more or less flat to the ground or water from a few feet up
PBI:
Poor Bloody Infantry: how RFC airmen thought of their earthbound colleagues
Pills:
bombs
pip emma:
army usage for p.m.
Planes:
an aircraft’s wings
Quirk:
the B.E.2c
radial engine:
a stationary engine whose cylinders are arranged in a circle about its revolving crankshaft
RAMC:
Royal Army Medical Corps
Rumpty, Rumpity
or Rumpety:
the Maurice Farman M.F.11
rotary engine:
one that revolves about its fixed crankshaft
Sheds:
‘the sheds’ was the usual name for an airfield’s hangars
Show:
‘a show’ was a sortie or mission, as in ‘a dawn show’ or ‘a good/bad show’. Clearly derived from the theatre or music hall
split-arse turn:
usually any very abrupt turn whose centrifugal force is likely to separate a pilot’s nether cheeks, but sometimes applied to a particular kind of turn resembling a reversed Immelmann
Staffel:
the German equivalent of a squadron
Stunt:
an aerobatic evolution
Toc H:
TH, standing for Talbot House in the army’s phonetic alphabet. A Christian club and rest house for soldiers founded in 1915 in Poperinghe, Belgium
Verfranzt:
German pilot’s slang for ‘lost’, implying it was the observer’s fault
Very pistol:
often misspelt as ‘Véry’ (the inventor was American, not French): a pistol for sending up signal flares of various colours
Volplane:
a controlled downward glide with the engine shut off
wash out:
either a noun or a verb meaning cancellation, as it might be on account of bad weather
Windy:
unduly nervous behaviour, with distinct overtones of cowardliness
Author’s Note
There are several scholarly histories of the Royal Flying Corps and the first war in the air, all of which treat the subject chronologically. I have chosen a less exhaustive approach by means of chapters dealing with aspects that particularly interest me – such as the medical issues of flying, how aircrew were chosen and behaved, and the relationship between the design of early aircraft and the tasks the military increasingly demanded of them. I hope by this means to give a vivid overall sense of the air war, together with its consequences for the aviation age that followed it.
In each of the chapters I have tried to preserve a rough sort of chronology. However, from time to time readers may find it helpful to refer to the Chronology on p.311 that puts some of the aviation milestones into a timeline of events on the wider battlefield in Europe and beyond.
This book does not pretend to be any sort of comprehensive survey of the hundreds of different aircraft types the various combatants flew during the war. This has already been admirably done in the specialist literature.
Acknowledgments
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br /> To this book’s dedicatee Chris Royle I owe not merely friendship but many a flight from White Waltham airfield in his shared Piper Cherokee, an invitation to speak to the club there, and the subsequent opportunity to pick the brains of his many friends, some of whom learned to fly ‘hands-on’ back in the days when the nearest thing to a modern electronic flight simulator was a Link Trainer. Their combined wealth of experience has been of the greatest value in helping me grasp the finer points of aerodynamics. This is true also of my Canadian ex-test pilot friend Richard Bentham and my retired US Navy pilot correspondent Edward Roberts.
I am most grateful to Stephen Slater for the opportunity to examine his beautiful flying B.E.2c replica at Sywell and for permission to use his picture of it, and to Matthew Boddington for spending so much time graciously answering my questions about the aircraft. To Tony Purton I owe my introduction to the Farnborough Air Sciences Trust, as well as to FAST Museum’s David Wilson who gave us an enthralling day, including flying the simulator attached to their magnificent replica of Sam Cody’s British Army Aeroplane No. 1: a challenging experience I would recommend to anyone, and particularly to pilots accustomed to biddable modern aircraft. I should also like to thank sundry informants at the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden airfield as well as at the RAF Museum, Hendon and the IWM Museum at Duxford.
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