The Mammoth Book of Fighter Pilots (30 page)

This was to make the attack early in the morning or late in the evening, when visibility was poor and the approach of the buzzing engine could not be definitely located. Furthermore, he made his attack from a low level, flying so close to the ground that he could not be readily picked up from above. As he approached the vicinity of his balloon he zoomed up and began his attack. If the balloon was being hauled down he met it halfway. All depended upon the timing of his attack and the accuracy of his aim.

On June 25, 1918, my alarm clock buzzed me awake at 2:30 o’clock sharp. As I was the instigator of this little expedition, I leaped out of bed and leaned out of my window to get a glimpse of the sky. It promised to be a fine day!

Rousing out the other four of my party, I telephoned to the hangars and ordered out the machines. The guns had been thoroughly serviced during the night and special incendiary bullets had been placed in the magazines. Everything was ready for our first attack and we sat down to a hurried breakfast, full of excitement and fervor.

The whole squadron got up and accompanied us to the hangars. We were soon in our flying suits and strapped in our seats. The engines began humming and then I felt my elation suddenly begin to dissipate. My engine was stubborn and would not keep up its steady revolutions. Upon investigation, I found one magneto unserviceable, leaving me with but one upon which I could rely! I debated within myself for a few seconds as to whether I should risk dropping into Germany with a dud engine or risk the condolences of the present crowd which had gathered to see us off.

The former won in spite of my best judgment. Rather than endure the sarcasm of the onlookers and the disappointment of my team, I prayed for one more visitation of my Goddess of Luck and gave the signal to start.

At 4:30 o’clock we left the ground and headed straight into Germany. I had decided to fly eight or ten miles behind the lines and then turn and come back at the balloon line from an unexpected quarter, trusting to the discipline of the German army to have its balloons ascending just as we reached them. Each pilot in my party had his own balloon marked out. Each was to follow the same tactics. We separated as soon as we left the field, each man taking up his own course.

Passing high over Nancy I proceeded northward and soon saw the irregular lines of the trenches below me. It was a mild morning and very little activity was discernible on either side. Not a gun was flashing in the twilight which covered the ground and as far as my eye could reach nothing was stirring. It was the precise time of day when weary fighters would prefer to catch their last wink of sleep. I hoped they would be equally deaf to the sounds of my humming Nieuport.

Cutting off my engine at fifteen thousand feet over the lines. I prayed once more that when the time came to switch on again my one magneto would prove faithful. It alone stood between me and certain capture. I could not go roaring along over the heads of the whole German army and expect to conceal my presence. By gliding quietly with silent engine as I passed deeper and deeper within their territory I could gradually lose my altitude and then turn and gain the balloon line with comparatively little noise.

“Keep your Spunk Up – Magneto, Boy!” I sang to my engine as I began the fateful glide. I had a mental vision of the precise spot behind the enemy balloon where I should turn on my switch and there discover – liberty or death! I would gladly have given my kingdom that moment for just one more little magneto!

At that moment I was passing swiftly over the little village of Goin. It was exactly five o’clock. The black outlines of the Bois de Face lay to my left, nestled along the two arms of the Moselle. I might possibly reach those woods with a long glide if my engine failed me at the critical moment. I could crash in the treetops, hide in the forest until dark and possibly make my way back through the lines with a little luck. Cheery thoughts I had as I watched the menacing German territory slipping away beneath my wings!

And then I saw my balloon! The faithful fellows had not disappointed me at any rate! Conscientious and reliable men these Germans were! Up and ready for the day’s work at the exact hour I had planned for them! I flattened out my glide a trifle more, so as to pass their post with the minimum noise of singing wires. A mile or two beyond them I began a wide circle with my nose well down. It was a question of seconds now and all would be over. I wondered how Chambers and Meissner and the others were getting on. Probably at this very instant they were throbbing with joy over the scene of a flaming bag of gas!

Finding the earth rapidly nearing me, I banked sharply to the left and looked ahead. There was my target floating blandly and unsuspiciously in the first rays of the sun. The men below were undoubtedly drinking their coffee and drawing up orders for the day’s work that would never be executed. I headed directly for the swinging target and set my sights dead on its center. There facing me with rare arrogance in the middle of the balloon was a huge Maltese Cross – the emblem of the Boche aviation. I shifted my rudder a bit and pointed my sights exactly at the center of the cross. Then I deliberately pressed both triggers with my right hand, while with my left I snapped on the switch.

There must be some compartment in one’s brain for equalizing the conflicting emotions that crowd simultaneously upon one at such moments as this. I realized instantly that I was saved myself, for the engine picked up with a whole-souled roar the very first instant after I made the contact. With this happy realization came the simultaneous impression that my whole morning’s work and anguish were wasted.

I saw three or four streaks of flame flash ahead of me and enter the huge bulk of the balloon ahead. Then the flames abruptly ceased.

Flashing bullets were cutting a living circle all around me too, I noticed. Notwithstanding the subtlety of my stalking approach, the balloon’s defenders had discovered my presence and were all waiting for me. My guns had both jammed. This, too, I realized at the same instant. I had had my chance, had shot my bolt, was in the very midst of a fiery furnace that beggars description but thanks to a benignant Providence, was behind a lusty engine that would carry me home.

Amid all these conflicting impressions which surged through me during that brief instant, I distinctly remember that I had failed in my mission! With the largest target in the world before my guns, with all the risks already run and conquered, I had failed in my mission simply because of a stupid jamming of my guns.

I had swerved to the right of the suspended gas bag and grazed the distended sides of the enemy Drachen. I might almost have extended my hand and cut a hole in its sleek envelope, as I swept by. The wind had been from the east, so I knew that the balloon would stretch away from its supporting cable and leave it to the right. More than one balloon strafer has rushed below his balloon and crashed headlong into the slim wire cable which anchors it to the ground.

I had planned every detail with rare success. The only thing I had failed in was the over-all result. Either the Boche had some material covering their Drachens that extinguished my flaming bullets, or else the gas which was contained within them was not as highly inflammable as I had been led to believe. Some three or four bullets had entered the sides of the balloon – of this I was certain. Why had they failed to set fire to it?

Later on I was to discover that flaming bullets very frequently puncture observation balloons without producing the expected blaze. The very rapidity of their flight leaves no time for the ignition of the gas. Often in the early dawn the accumulated dews and moisture in the air serve to dampen the balloon’s envelope and hundreds of incendiary bullets penetrate the envelope without doing more damage than can be repaired with a few strips of adhesive plaster.

As I flew through the fiery curtain of German bullets and set my nose for home I developed a distinct admiration for the Belgian Willy Coppens de Houthulst. And since he had proved that balloon strafing had in fact a possibility of success, I was determined to investigate this business until I too had solved its mysteries.

Then I began to laugh to myself at an occurrence that until then I had had not time to consider. As I began firing at the sausage, the German observer who had been standing in his basket under the balloon with his eyes glued to his binoculars, had evidently been taken entirely by surprise. The first intimation he had of my approach was the bullets which preceded me. At the instant he dropped his glasses he dived headlong over the side of his basket with his parachute. He did not even pause to look around to see what danger threatened him.

Evidently the mother truck began winding up the cable at the same time, for as the observer jumped for his life the balloon began to descend upon him. I caught the merest glimpse of his face as I swept past him, and there was a mingled look of terror and surprise upon his features that almost compensated me for my disappointment.

On my way homeward I flew directly toward a French observation balloon that swung on the end of its cable in my path. Without considering the consequences of my act, I sheered in and passed quite close to the Frenchman who was staring at me from his suspended basket.

Suddenly the Froggy leaped headlong from his perch and clutching his parachute rigging with his two hands began a rapid descent to earth. And not until then did I realize that coming directly at him, head on from Germany as I did, he had no way of reading my cocards which were painted underneath my wings. He had decided that I was a Boche and did not care to take any chances at a jump with a blazing gas bag about his ears.

Fortunately for me, the French gunners below could read my insignias from the ground and they suffered me to pass, without taking any revenge for the trick I had played upon their comrade.

Arriving at the aerodrome at 5:45, I found that I was the last of my little party of balloon strafers to land. The other four were standing together, looking rather sheepishly in my direction as I walked toward them.

“Well, what luck?” I inquired as I came up to them. Nobody spoke. “I thought I saw a big blaze over in your direction, Jimmy!” I went on, addressing myself to Lieutenant Meissner. “Did you get him?”

“No!” replied Jimmy disgustedly. “The balloon was not up in the air at all. I didn’t get a sight of it. I didn’t even see where they had hidden it.”

“Did you get yours, Reed?” I asked, turning to Chambers.

“Hell, no!” retorted Lieutenant Chambers emphatically. “I shot the thing full of holes, but she wouldn’t drop.”

The other two pilots had much the same stories. One had failed to find his balloon and the other had made an attack but it had brought no results. All had been subjected to a defensive fire that had quite reversed their opinions of the Archibald family.

“I suppose you burned yours all right, Rick?” said Reed Chambers rather enviously as we walked up to the mess together. “What do you think of us fellows anyway?”

“I think, Reed,” replied I, “that we are the rottenest lot of balloonatical fakers that ever got up at two-thirty in the morning. But I am happy to discover,” I added, thinking of my one operative magneto, “that none of us had to land in Germany.”

ACTION

PAUL RICHEY

With the British declaration of war against Nazi Germany on September 3 1939, Paul Richey was dispatched to France with the RAF’s No. 1 (Fighter) Squadron as part of the “British Expeditionary Force Air Component”. Fortunately for No 1 Squadron they had recently converted from the hopelessly out-dated Hawker Fury biplanes to the Hurricane Mark 1 (which had a top speed of 328 mph at 20,000 feet, and was armed with 8 Browning .303 inch machine guns). After some ten months of “Sitzkrieg”, the Germans invaded the Low Countries on May 10 1940, with France the next stop. Here is Richey’s record of his actions on May 11 1940.

We were up again at two forty-five
AM
, refreshed by a sound sleep. We had to be on the airfield half an hour before dawn, but grabbed a biscuit and a cup of tea in the Mess first.

The Bull decided that our concrete pilots’ hut was too obvious a target. We guessed the German bomber had been aiming at it the previous evening, and considering he was flying at 18,000 feet his bombing had been damned accurate. Accordingly the Bull chose a spot some 250 yards away on the fringe of the trees, and we spent the first few hours of daylight rigging up a tent into which we moved the telephone to Wing, a couple of desks and our flying-kit. There was a shallow trench and dug-out nearby that looked as though they might be useful. They were . . .

We climbed into our cockpits at eight as there was a hell of a lot of bombing going on. We sat ready and strapped in, gazing into the sky to the east, with an aircraftsman sitting beside each plugged-in starter-battery. The scheme was to get the aircraft off the ground and out of harm’s way if there was a raid, and perhaps to knock down a few bombers – although this was not our primary job. In this particular case “B” Flight were ordered to get off first and chase the Huns, with “A” Flight to follow and circle the airfield, or engage if there was a chance.

My aircraftsman suddenly stood up and peered at the sky behind me. I had my helmet on and couldn’t hear much, but I could pick up a lot of crumps going off. I twisted round as far as my straps would let me and looked up. Yes, there was something up there all right! Shells from a nearby British ack-ack battery were bursting all over the place. A “B” Flight engine burst into life at the other end of the line. I waved to the aircraftsman and in a moment my prop was whirling in front of me and the machine vibrating. As I waited for “B” Flight to get off I watched engine after engine start up. In a minute the first “B” Flight aircraft roared off across our noses, followed in quick succession by the other five. I looked up right as the aircraftsman waggled my aileron and pointed. Yes! There were the buggers, turning away east at a good 15,000 feet.

Soon I too was off. No time to lose, no time to join up even, and I started climbing flat-out beside two “B” Flight aircraft – one of them with Billy’s “P” on its side – after the raiders. They must have seen us take off, and we thought later we had probably foiled a heavy attack on the airfield, for they were now climbing at full throttle dead into the sun: good tactics. They were Heinkels – about twelve – in very open formation, probably because they were flat-out. We were catching them slowly, but it became apparent that if we ever made it we would probably be over Berlin. One of the “B” Flight Hurricanes rolled over and dived away for home, in what must have been disappointed disgust. Billy kept on. It was obvious there wasn’t much hope now, so I looked around for something, maybe, within reach.