Diary And Letters Of A World War I Fighter Pilot, The

by Christopher Burgess

  Appendix 1

  Article by GMK for Ex-Army Quarterly – July 1964

  AN AIRMAN REMEMBERS

  Vignettes from the Sketch-book of an undistinguished Sopwith

  Camel pilot in the winter of 1917-18

  BY GROUP-CAPTAIN G. M. KNOCKER

  “Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,

  But he’ll remember with advantages.”

  These pictures, drawn from memory, may perhaps induce a

  feeling of nostalgia in others of my generation and may be of

  some antiquarian interest to the warriors of another war and

  perhaps even to those who came after.

  THE YPRES SALIENT FROM THE AIR

  Between the ruins of Armentières in the south and Passchendaele in the north lay a strip some 15 miles long and 10 miles broad of sheer and utter desolation. The water-filled shell-holes appeared to touch each other, like the holes in some monstrous honeycomb or like the hoofprints in a muddy farm gateway in a wet winter. Woods, fields, roads, villages and even trenches were blotted out. Only the blurs of what had once been Ploegsteert Wood and the Forest of Houthoulst showed up dark against the muddy mosaic and the Jew’s harp of the Étang de Zillebeke shone with a metallic brightness when the light caught it. Sitting up aloft in the cold, clean air, it was hard to believe that thousands of men were actually living in that abomination. In a morning after a fall of snow, you could always tell where there had been a “strafe” the night before, because the shells had blackened and sullied the pure white of the ground. Sometimes in the evening, the jagged ruins of Ypres would flush with a warm, yellow light and, away to the east, Menin and Roulers with their German fighter aerodromes, showed up like menacing shadows. Kite balloons hung motionless along the Yser Canal and always, almost always, the wind blew from the west... into Hunland. Such was the Salient and yet those who served there on the ground or in the air had a sort of wry affection for it and would later have a kind of pride at having fought there.

  CONFIDENCE TRICK

  “There’s a Hun two-seater low over Passchendaele and a dozen Albatroses to the east and higher up. Can I get the two-seater without being jumped?” Down I go, full of optimism, but of course the Hun dives away east at once… and then all around come the well-known whip-lash cracking and the streams of tracer as the Albatrii come clattering down. I can see their black and white chequered wings and hooped fuselages and recognize them as Von Bulow’s “Circus”... “Into a tight turn now and stay there... ah! there’s a Hun straightening out ahead... let him have it!” Pop-pop-pop-plopple-lop-plop-plop go the two Vickers… “here comes another head-on... (no Hun will face a head-on shot; they always give way first… and that’s what this one does, the blighter!)”... Crack-crack-crack and a bullet nicks the elbow of my Sidcot suit as I climb away in a turn. The Albatros overshoots and as he dives past I can see the pilot in his cockpit. He is wearing a light-coloured flying helmet like mine… “queer that there are actually people in those aeroplanes....” After that I go a little mad and try to collide with another Hun but mercifully miss him (no parachutes in those days). Then nose down and into a spiral dive (“never spin away”), with the wires screaming and the whole bus tense and rigid.... “I hope to God the wings stay on...!” Down I go to 20 feet above the shell-holes and back west as fast as the old Camel will belt. The Huns follow me down to 500 feet, but no lower. A shell bursts on the ground below me and scares the daylight out of me. And so back home, to shoot a line about it... but I wish I’d been a better shot....

  MUTUAL PROTECTION

  “‘B’ and ‘C’ Flights will carry out independent patrols at 10,000 feet, giving each other mutual protection.”

  Two flights of six aircraft, each flying in a tight formation of two threes, patrol up and down the Line. You are the inside man of the rear three of “B” Flight. There are broken cumulus clouds at patrol height and all seems quiet and peaceful until “B” Flight enters one of the clouds and to your dismay you see “C” Flight coming through the same cloud in the opposite direction. You clap your elbows to your sides, as if that would make your Camel slimmer, and hold your breath until you slide through the cloud and out into the sunshine again. And then you see bits of wing and wreckage floating down and you know that the man next to you has collided with the outside man of the other formation. Not very funny (no parachutes in those days).

  DOG FIGHT

  Twelve Camels and as many Albatroses are milling round each other at 12,000 feet. After a few circles there seem to be twenty-four Huns and no Camels. Streams of white tracer and the red of Buckingham incendiaries cross and recross each other, and now an aeroplane breaks away from the mêlée with black smoke pouring from it. A Camel comes diving past you with both guns firing and the enemy on your tail pulls away. Another comes into the ring of your Aldis sight and you press both firing levers. Your guns rattle away and the Hun goes down in a vertical dive, but you can’t tell if you’ve got him for someone else comes round onto your tail and the crazy dance starts again.... And then suddenly you are alone in the sky. You turn west and make for the Lines, looking for the rest of the formation, leaving a trail of “Archie” bursts to mark your errant passage.

  ARTILLERY OBSERVATION

  It was not nice to see an R.E.8, flying at 8,000 feet and ranging an 8-inch howitzer battery get in the line of flight of one of its own battery’s shells. It took a long time to flutter down, with one of its top planes flapping, like the broken wing of a duck... down, down down and then splash into a shell hole (no parachutes in those days).

  PERSONALITIES

  We went out as a new squadron and suffered from the fact that very few of us had been out as pilots before, with the result that we had heavy casualties for the first six months without a corresponding dividend in enemy aircraft shot down. Nearly all of us were seconded from various regiments and corps and we had little idea of fighter, or as they were then called, scout tactics. Some of us were very young and nobody had sufficiently dinned into our heads (at least not into mine) that time spent watching the mechanics overhauling one’s aircraft was time well spent or that a scout pilot, fly he never so well, who could not shoot straight was quite useless. The Balls, Bishops and McCuddens would spend hours lining up their guns and sights and doing practice attacks. As a result they would shoot down a Hun with half a dozen shots. I used to loose off 400 without the slightest apparent result and it never occurred to me that the fault was not bad luck but bad shooting. We learnt better later on and the squadron had the distinction of being credited with the destruction of 15 enemy aircraft in one day.

  There is no doubt that Trenchard’s policy of the relentless offensive was the right one, although on the occasions, when the Hun would not come up and play with us and the trail left by our coats, as we patrolled over the enemy lines, was marked only by black “Archie” bursts, we may have felt inclined to doubt it! Camel squadrons were usually compelled to fight at an initial tactical disadvantage. The enemy aircraft had the height and speed of a Camel, which with a 130 – 140 h.p. Clerget rotary engine, had a performance only slightly higher than a Tiger Moth. I can only remember two or three occasions when we actually dived on German fighters, so that it was they who could decide whether to engage or not. I must say they usually obliged! Once the battle was joined of course we could make rings round the Albatroses, which could however always break off at will by diving away. We could not catch them if they did.

  Our C.O. was a bluff gunner major. He spoke to us all before we flew out and he said, “We are not going to France for the good of our healths. There are bound to be casualties, but I don’t want them to be mentioned in the Mess: and call me ‘Major’ and not ‘Sir’.” He was very brave and used to lead many of the offensive patrols himself and as a result collected a lot of Huns.

  Two of our pilots had been observers, one having gained an M.C., but poor S. did not have much luck this time for the very first round “Archie” threw up, the first time we cros
sed the Lines got a direct hit on him (no parachutes in those days). The other ex-observer, who was also later killed and oddly enough also by a shell, had been with Alan Bott in 70 Squadron of “An Airman’s Outings” fame. He was a droll Londoner, whose favourite form of abuse, reserved for his special friends, was “Do you want a thick ear and a mouthful of blood?” Another B. was a great character, known as “Old Bill” from his mossy appearance. Before we went out he used to delight in beating up a certain house in the neighbourhood, inhabited by a lady whom he called “my windy aunt.” The Recording Officer was the C.O.’s brother, a captain in the Liverpool Scottish and the guide, counsellor and friend of all us young ones. Our Equipment Officer was a mournful soul with a very long nose. We used to say that he wore a sock on it at night in cold weather. A replacement Flight Commander was a very gallant officer, who had been flying Martinsydes on a previous tour. He collected a dozen or so Huns with us and survived the war, but died in tragic circumstances afterwards. He was a great leader.

  We used to paint names on our aircraft. One I remember was “Tid’apa,” which made more sense to me after I had been to Singapore, where its pilot had lived, than it did then. Another had his wife’s name painted on his Camel. To each his fancy....

  A Camel was a tricky little aircraft to fly, which spun very easily and fast, but it was much loved by those who mastered it. One lad had the distinction of flicking from one spin to another four times before he finally finished up in a wood from which he miraculously emerged unhurt, only to be killed in that collision in the clouds. Another bunted over onto his back while firing at a ground target. He righted it just in time. I myself had a close call when ground strafing. We used to strap in very loosely when on offensive patrol, so that we could look behind our tails frequently. The belts of those days were broad, lap-type affairs with a quick release, and not the shoulder harness worn nowadays. I had omitted to tighten my belt when flying low and on pushing my stick forward to dive at a ground target I got a “bump” under my tail which flicked the aircraft into a vertical dive, with the result that I was nearly shot out and found myself hanging over the gun. I just managed to reach the stick and pull it back to right the aeroplane. When it is realized that the replacement pilots used to arrive at the squadron with a total of only 25 hours solo flying, of which only five had to be on their Service type, the wonder is that so many survived. Alas, however, some did not even get as far as their first operational patrol.

  In 1962 some 500 of the R.F.C. and R.N.A.S. met at Lancaster House at the Jubilee Party of the R.F.C. Very brisk most of us looked and very pleased we were to see each other. You could almost catch the whiff of burnt castor oil in those august precincts... It was a notable party.

  THE MEN

  Without the air mechanics, the “Ack Emmas” as they were always called, no squadron could have operated. Generally speaking they were a splendid lot of chaps in their khaki jackets, of the kind always known as “maternity jackets”, and their forage caps and the flight sergeants with a four-bladed propeller above the chevrons on their sleeves. The mechanics would cheerfully work all night in a freezing canvas hangar (for of course there was no “black-out”), changing a mainplane or fitting a new engine. When the aeroplanes for which they were responsible had been in a scrap they would gather round and proudly count the bullet holes and shake their heads over a damaged longeron or main spar, very much as their successors did a quarter of a century later. Mercifully the breed does not change. My batman was a dear old gentleman called Davies. He was an old soldier of the best type and I loved him dearly, except on the occasion when, arriving back in my Nissen hut late one cold night, I found that he had turned up my oil-stove too high and everything was about an inch deep in smuts! I did not love him at all then.... It is a great joy at unit reunions in these later days to meet again those good fellows who worked so hard to keep the aircraft in the air. On such occasions time goes into reverse and behind the old faces you can see the young men you knew so long ago; and I never cease to wonder, with humility, at the esteem in which the ground crews held and, it seems still hold their more fortunate comrades who flew the aeroplanes they maintained.

  THE MACHINES

  The Sopwith Camel was a small, open-cockpit biplane, usually fitted with a 130 and later 140 h.p. Clerget rotary engine. It had a top speed, low down, of about 110 m.p.h. It was extremely manoeuvrable and very light on fore and aft control. The rotary engine had considerable gyroscopic effect, so that you required full left rudder on both vertical turns. It was armed with two Vickers guns, which fired through the propeller. These were subject to a number of stoppages, most of which could not be rectified in the air. They would also freeze up unless fired periodically. A Camel was a very cold little aeroplane and it had the endearing habit of soaking your right foot in engine oil. We wore, at first, leather flying coats and later a lined, wind-proof combination suit called a Sidcot suit. On our feet we wore thigh-length, sheepskin boots and on our heads a fur-lined helmet with a chin piece and masked goggles. To leave off your chin-piece was to court a frostbitten chin, despite the whale oil with which most people smeared the exposed parts of their faces. Under the gauntlets we wore a pair of silk gloves. We had no parachutes, which did not come into general use until about 1924.

  Our opposite numbers among the enemy flew the Albatros D.V and the Pfalz. Both these were biplanes with streamlined, monocoque fuselages and powered with 180 – h.p. Mercedes engines, water-cooled, which must have made them warmer than the Camel. Neither was anything like so manoeuvrable as the latter, but they were much faster, both level and in a dive. They carried two Spandau machine-guns, firing like ours through the propeller. The Fokker Triplane, which appeared early in 1918, was comparable with the Camel in performance, except that it climbed better. I only met them two or three times.

  THE 4TH APRIL, 1918

  In the thick fog of dawn on 21st March, 1918 the Germans launched their last great offensive of the war, against the Fifth Army front, east of St. Quentin, and by the beginning of April had pushed us back to within a dozen miles of Amiens. A short sector of the so-called Line went through the village of Warfusée l‘Abancourt, about a mile east of Villers-Bretonneux, and ran between the Amiens – St. Quentin road and the River Somme. It was held by an assorted collection of 500 kite balloon section men, G.H.Q. clerks and batmen, drivers, Labour Corps men and in fact anyone who could hold a rifle, all raked together by a certain Brigadier-General Carey and thrown into the line. As many squadrons as could be spared, our own among them, were withdrawn and hurried to the Somme, where they operated from any fields big enough to be used as landing grounds, to help to stem the field-grey tide.

  On the 4th April the Germans attacked again, in what was to be their penultimate push in that sector and drove us back as far as the aerodrome at Villers-Bretonneux. The battlefield as seen from the air, presented a remarkable spectacle and looked more like a field day than a battle of the First World War. Clouds were at about 1,000 feet and the air between them and the ground was thick with aircraft of all descriptions, Camels, S.E.5’s, Dolphins, Bristol Fighters and R.E.8’s, but very few of the enemy. The “Line” consisted of men lining a hedge beside a road, while the Germans lined the opposite bank of another road, forking off at an angle. Further on, men lay in extended order across a grass field and, near by, others were furiously digging rifle-pits. Behind this thin khaki line, stretcher-bearers were carrying off the wounded, riderless horses were galloping about, and a few hundred yards in rear, an anti-aircraft battery was firing level over open sights like a field battery. Crashed aircraft lay around in many fields and over all hung a pall of smoke from the burning village of Villers-Bretonneux. The Germans captured the place later and that was about as close as they got to Amiens. It was close enough.

  On the evening of the 6th April, I was flying at 2,000 feet and was just crossing the line where it ran across the aerodrome at Villers-Bret, when I felt a blow on the calf of my right leg, as if I had been hi
t very hard with a cricket stump. Some Boche soldier had let fly with his rifle and by a fluke hit me, but I don’t suppose he knew how lucky he had been, for I was able to fly back to my landing ground without difficulty. When I was taken to a Casualty Clearing Station, in pouring rain later that evening, the first person I saw was my sister, who had been out as a nurse since 1915!

  Appendix 2

  This list of aircraft flown 1917-1946 was given to the author by his grandfather – Guy Knocker, 2nd Lieutenant RGA attached RFC 1917-18; Group Captain RAF (retired) – in 1968 inside a three volume pictorial history of the RAF “Fi fty Years On … (still flying right wing low!)”

  Appendix 3

  Table of Place Names mentioned in the diaries of

  2nd Lieutenant Knocker

  Index

  Acheson, Lieutenant Commander Leon

  “Aladdin”

  “Apache Concert”

  Aprils

  “Arlette”

  Armentières

  Arques

  Auchel

  Audrique

  Auxi Le Chateau

  Bailleul

  Baker, 2nd Lieutenant B.E.

  Baker, 2nd Lieutenant E.J.

  Balfour, Lieutenant B.

  “Bat”

  Beilangle (‘Bertangles’)

  “Bella Donna”

  Berck (‘Barck’)

  “Bing Boys”

  “Box o’ Tricks”