Aces (2 page)

Goldstein glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror attached to the wing. The wind was tugging back his cheeks to form
a grimace, but his eyes behind the lenses of his goggles were sparkling with anticipation. Today could be very special. His
score stood at fourteen enemy planes. At the ten mark he became an ace, and that had been an important milestone, but now
he was within range of the magic number: sixteen kills were needed to join the elite group of fliers who wore the
Pour le Mérite
, the Blue Max.

It was regulation in the German Air Service for an N.C.O. to get his commission upon becoming an ace, but the Adjutant Herr
Oberleutnant Bodenschatz had cautioned Goldstein that there was a paperwork backlog in Berlin and that it might take a long
time for his promotion to come through. The thought that he was eventually to be a lieutenant was exciting, but not half as
exciting as the thought of having the Blue Max around his throat!

The formation had reached patrol altitude and was flying toward where Richthofen had guessed they could most likely intercept
the British patrol behind German lines. The Allied fighters always came to them, which meant the German pilots used less fuel
getting to the dogfight, and that allowed for more combat time in the air. If they were shot down and managed to reach the
ground uninjured, German fliers could be back at their units and flying again within hours. For the Allied pilots, fighting
over German territory meant they had to think about saving fuel for the ride home, and if they went down, and lived, it meant
ending up a prisoner for the war’s duration.

For that reason there were far more experienced pilots flying for the Germans than for the Allies. That gave further advantage
to the Germans, because experience counted for a lot in battle flying. If a man could survive his first few weeks in order
to learn the important tricks and techniques, the odds increased that he might survive indefinitely.

Nobody dared to guess if a battle flier, Richthofen excepted, of course, might possibly be able to survive the entire war.

Goldstein never thought about that. Lots of pilots did and got nightmares and nervous conditions for their trouble. Others
flew with lucky charms, or else conducted elaborate pre-patrol rituals like shaving on only one side of their face in order
to ward off misfortune.

Not Goldstein. His only ritual was to sensibly spend his time maintaining his own plane, although for that he was considered
an eccentric. The other pilots, all of whom were commissioned officers from aristocratic families, felt it was beneath them
to get their hands dirty. The others seemed to take an inordinate pride in their ignorance of how their machines functioned.

The formation flew on, a wedge of rainbow-colored machines high up in the sky. Herr Rittmeister’s scarlet machine was still
flying point, flying at the lowest altitude, weaving from side to side like a fretful sheepdog in order to keep all of the
planes tightly grouped.

They were passing through fleecy clouds as gray as gun-smoke. Goldstein liked clouds. Flying though them gave a thrilling
sensation of speed, and banks of cloud could be useful when staging an ambush, or escaping from one. Now and then the clouds
would thin, and Goldstein could view the world below. At this altitude, the savage details had vanished. The wartorn landscape
was a seemingly serene patchwork quilt of gold and brown.

Goldstein was happy. He was in his environment. There was the engine’s vibration and its comforting drone to keep him company,
the gleam of sunlight on the varnished wood of his cockpit, and the instant response of his machine to his slightest touch.
There was, of course, the bitter windchill to contend with, and the ear pops and inevitable altitude headache, but those minor
plagues aside, he was not the least bit uncomfortable being in the air.

Goldstein had never been afraid of flying. Not even during his very first training flight. He had not been a natural. Far
from it. He’d cracked up several trainers, and had almost washed out, but he’d managed to pass the initial examinations, and
then, one day, it all seemed to click into place for him. The rest of flight school was easy.

Learning to fly had changed his life. On the ground he was still the same gangling, carrot-topped introvert, but in the air
he became something exceptional: a battle flier. He didn’t think he was as good as his idol Herr Cavalrycaptain Richthofen,
who had close to eighty confirmed kills in his two and a half years as a flier in the war, but Goldstein considered himself
to be the equal of any
mortal
…

The formation climbed to 16,000 feet and leveled off as it entered the sector where the British planes were supposed to be.
At this altitude the clouds had thinned out to wispy cirrus layers, making visibility reasonably good. Like all the others,
Goldstein was trying to be the first to spot the enemy. Seeing them before they saw you was crucial for a successful attack.

As usual, it was the Herr Rittmeister who first spotted the enemy. He waggled his wings to signal the rest of the formation,
dipping his Fokker’s nose to indicate the enemy’s position below. Once Goldstein knew where to look, the rows of black dots
flying in the opposite direction against the cloud-swept, variegated groundscape leapt out at him. The formation of ten speedy
Sopwiths was flying forward of the five more cumbersome Bristol F. 2b two-seaters.

As was prearranged, the German formation wheeled around and broke up into two ketten of ten and four. The flight of ten, led
by Herr Rittmeister Richthofen, would go after the ten fast and vicious Sopwith Camels. Goldstein’s flight of four, led by
Herr Lieutenant Dorn in his yellow and black bumblebee-striped Fokker, would concentrate on chewing up the five Bristol F.
2b two-seaters.

Neither group would be an easy target. The Camels were single-seat biplanes, as fast and maneuverable as the Fokker “tripes.”
The Bristols, while not nearly as agile, were fierce battle machines in their own right. Its pilot had a machine gun fixed
forward to fire through the prop, but it was the rear gunner’s twin Lewis machine guns that gave the Bristol its real sting.

The Rittmeister commenced the attack, diving down with his nine followers arrayed in a mini Vee. The Bristols’ rear gunners
spotted the attack and began firing, more in the hopes of alerting the Camels’ formation rather than hitting anything, but
they were too late. The attacking German formation slid by the Bristols and closed on the Camels. At what looked like point
blank range, Richthofen and his flight began firing. Members of the Camel formation scattered like a flock of frightened pigeons—some
right into the Germans’ concentrated field of tracer fire. Goldstein saw three Sopwiths fall, and then he had no more time
to watch because his flight leader was signaling to commence their own attack.

Goldstein saw that the Bristols, all painted a mottled green and tan, had formed a closed circle, flying nose to tail around
and around so that their rear gunners could ward off the diving German attack. It was a standard defense tactic for two-seater
machines, and reasonably effective, but it took experience on the part of the British pilots to have the nerve not to cut
and run when the shooting started. It was time to find out just what sorts were crewing these Bristols.

As flight leader, Herr Lieutenant Dorn would be the first to dive through the hoop formed by the circling Bristols in an attempt
to break them up. If that didn’t work, he would attack from behind and below, where the Bristols’ guns couldn’t reach, and
then rise up to take his place at the end of the line formed by his three wingmates. Goldstein would attack second, following
Dorn’s pattern, and so on. If, or when, the Bristols finally did scatter, the Fokkers would split into pairs, with one flier
watching the other’s back as they went after their targets.

Goldstein watched the Lieutenant make his dive: the bumblebee plane flew unscathed through the crisscrossing streams of tracers
coming from the Bristols’ rear guns, and right through the hoop, but the Bristols held fast.

Goldstein, high above the enemy, his concentration focused, signaled his two wingmates, and went to work.

He rolled the Fokker upside down and pulled the stick into his belly to execute a split-S power dive toward the Bristols.
He felt the giddy thrill in the pit of his stomach as he was rocked by the centrifugal force. Immediately the Bristols’ five
sets of twin Lewis guns swiveled toward him and began winking orange, but his angle of attack was too steep for him to be
an easy target. The enemy gunners’ tracers arced wildly as they tried to zero in.

The Fokker’s engine roared and the wind screamed through its wing struts as the blue, white, and red bull’s-eye roundels on
the Bristols’ wings loomed larger. Now the British gunners were finding their aim, and Goldstein was diving into a fiery orange-red
tunnel formed by the whizzing tracers, but he held his own fire until he was close enough to almost touch his targets—

Forty meters above the circling planes Goldstein aligned his fixed gunsight on a Bristol’s engine and pressed the firing button
mounted on his control stick. He couldn’t hear his gun above his own engine’s racket, but he felt the plane shuttering with
the recoil and tasted the bitter gunsmoke blowing back into his face as the orange tracers raced ahead of him like a stream
of water coming out of a hose. He fired a three-second burst; approximately twenty-seven rounds; the LMG .08/15 Spandau gun
spitting 7.92-millimeter bullets at the rate of 550 a minute; and glimpsed the smoking holes he’d punched in his target’s
engine cowling.

He knew what he was
supposed
to do next, but he had an idea. He decided to try it, even if it meant that he would later catch hell from Dorn for breaking
the formation.

As he pulled up into what he
hoped
his British adversaries would think was the beginning of a loop, Goldstein glimpsed Dorn and the others hanging in the air
above him, likely wondering what was going on. As Goldstein reached a vertical position above and forward of the circling
Bristols he kicked his rudder hard, causing his plane to sideslip to the left on its tail, and then he dropped its nose, into
another attack dive at his previous target. This time he encountered no answering fire. As he’d hoped, the Bristols’ rear
gunners had anticipated firing at him while he was upside down, above and a little behind them, finishing his loop. By the
time the rear gunners had wrestled their twin mounted guns around to face him, Goldstein was firing another burst into his
adversary’s engine.

He saw the Bristol’s prop waver, then stop, as its engine began leaking smoke. The crippled plane drifted out of its place
in the battle circle and glided toward the ground. Now that the circle had been broken the four other Bristols lost their
nerve and scattered like leaves caught in a gust of wind. Dorn and the other two pilots were on them at once, but weren’t
having much luck. The Bristols were heading home, and their rear gunners were doing a good job of holding the Fokkers off.

Goldstein knew it was high time for him to rejoin the formation, but he followed his own kill down, watching as it pancaked
on a stretch of pasture bordered by forest. The pilot and gunner seemed unharmed as they quit their plane. They didn’t try
to run for the trees, but merely stood with their hands upraised as German troops rushed toward them.

Fifteen kills. Just one more
…

By the time that Goldstein had gotten back up to battle ceiling the Bristols were long gone. Herr Lieutenant Dorn and the
other two Fokkers were distant specks headed back. The Herr Rittmeister’s flight and the Sopwith Camels were nowhere about.
Probably homeward bound, as well.

Goldstein was all alone in the sky, but he wasn’t concerned. There was no need to maintain formation once an attack was over.
Many pilots chose to, in order to guard against an ambush on their way home, but the decision was personal preference. Goldstein
had confidence in his own ability to get himself out of any situation. He liked to proceed home at his own pace.

Now he reluctantly put his Fokker into a gentle, banking turn toward Cappy. He was resigned to the fact that he was not going
to further increase his score, and that his Blue Max would have to wait for another day, but he was still emotionally keyed
up. His engagement with the enemy had lasted less than a minute. Dogfights rarely lasted longer before ending in someone’s
victory or inconclusively breaking off—

Goldstein saw the dot when it was about a quarter of a meter away, coming at him head on, an instant before it began firing
at him. The attacking machine was small and fast. It had to be one of the Camels, Goldstein decided as he banked to the right,
out of the path of the lazily oncoming tracers.

The plane flashed past him on the left. It was a Sopwith Camel, all right. Its distinctive humped engine cowling was red.
Its fuselage was painted tan with white vertical stripings. Its rudder was British-striped red, white, and blue.

The Camel had escaped the Herr Rittmeister’s attentions and was now running for home. The pilot was definitely a neophyte.
No experienced battle flier would waste ammunition firing at a target a quarter of a mile away. His lack of experience would
also explain why he had survived the dogfight. Flight leaders on both sides often ordered their green fliers to hang back
and merely watch and learn during their first couple of engagements…

The Camel was well past Goldstein as he zoomed upward, banked sharply left, and kicked his tail around to the rear to give
pursuit.

Goldstein knew that the Camel was faster than the Fokker, even a lean, mean “tripe” like his own. The Camel had about a half
kilometer lead, and the British lines were now only a couple of kilometers away, so it was clear to Goldstein that he wasn’t
going to get his all-important sixteenth kill by letting the British pilot turn this into a horse race. Once again, everything
would hinge on experience, but Goldstein already had indications that his opponent was new at this game.