Winged Warfare (3 page)

On the twenty-fifth of March came my first real fight in the air, and as luck would have it, my first victory. The German retreat was continuing. Four of us were detailed to invade the enemy country, to fly low over the trenches, and in general to see what the Boche troops were doing and where they were located.

Those were very queer days. For a time it seemed that both armies—German and British alike—had simply dissolved. Skirmishes were the order of the day on the ground and in the air. The grim, fixed lines of battle had vanished for the time being and the Germans were falling back to their famous Hindenburg positions.

The clouds had been hanging low as usual, but after we had gotten well in advance of our old lines and into what had so recently been Hunland, the weather suddenly cleared. So we began to climb to more comfortable altitudes and finally reached about 9,000 feet. We flew about for a long while without seeing anything, and then from the corner of my eye I spied what I believed to be three enemy machines. They were some distance to the east of us and evidently were on patrol duty to prevent any of our pilots or observers getting too near the rapidly changing German positions. The three strange machines approached us, but our leader continued to fly straight ahead without altering his course in the slightest degree. Soon there was no longer any doubt as to the identity of the three aircraft—they were Huns, with the big, distinguishing black iron crosses on their planes. They evidently were trying to surprise us and we allowed them to approach, trying all the time to appear as if we had not seen them.

Like nearly all other pilots who come face to face with a Hun in the air for the first time, I could hardly realise that these were real, live, hostile machines. I was fascinated by them and wanted to circle about and have a good look at them. The German Albatross machines are perfect beauties to look upon. Their swept-back planes give them more of a bird-like appearance than any other machines flying on the western front. Their splendid, graceful lines lend to them an effect of power and flying ability far beyond what they really possess. After your first few experiences with enemy machines at fairly close quarters you have very little trouble distinguishing them in the future. You learn to sense their presence, and to know their nationality long before you can make out the crosses on the planes.

Finally the three enemy machines got behind us, and we slowed down so they would overtake us all the sooner. When they had approached to about 400 yards, we opened out our engines and turned. One of the other pilots, as well as myself, had never been in a fight before, and we were naturally slower to act than the other two. My first real impression of the engagement was that one of the enemy machines dived down, then suddenly came up again and began to shoot at one of our people from the rear.

I had a quick impulse and followed it. I flew straight at the attacking machine from a position where he could not see me and opened fire. My “tracer” bullets—bullets that show a spark and a thin little trail of smoke as they speed through the air—began at once to hit the enemy machine. A moment later the Hun turned over on his back and seemed to fall out of control. This was just at the time that the Germans were doing some of their famous falling stunts. Their machines seemed to be built to stand extraordinary strains in that respect. They would go spinning down from great heights and just when you thought they were sure to crash, they would suddenly come under control, flatten out into correct flying position, and streak for the rear of their lines with every ounce of horse power imprisoned in their engines.

When my man fell from his upside down position into a spinning nose dive, I dived after him. Down he went for a full thousand feet and then regained control. I had forgotten caution and everything else in my wild and overwhelming desire to destroy this thing that for the time being represented all of Germany to me. I could not have been more than forty yards behind the Hun when he flattened out and again I opened fire. It made my heart leap to see my smoking bullets hitting the machine just where the closely hooded pilot was sitting. Again the Hun went into a dive and shot away from me vertically toward the earth.

Suspecting another ruse, and still unmindful of what might be happening to my companions in their set-to with the other Huns, I went into a wild dive after my particular opponent with my engine full on. With a machine capable of doing 110 to 120 miles an hour on the level, I must have attained 180 to 200 miles in that wrathful plunge. Meteor-like as was my descent, however, the Hun seemed to be falling faster still and got farther and farther away from me. When I was still about 1,500 feet up, he crashed into the ground below me. For a long time I heard pilots speaking of “crashing” enemy machines, but I never fully appreciated the full significance of “crashed” until now. There is no other word for it.

I have not to this day fully analysed my feelings in those moments of my first victory. I don't think I fully realised what it all meant. When I pulled my machine out of its own somewhat dangerous dive, I suddenly became conscious of the fact that I had not the slightest idea in the world where I was. I had lost all sense of direction and distance; nothing had mattered to me except the shooting down of that enemy scout with the big black crosses that I shall never forget. Now I began to fear that I was well within the enemy country and that it was up to me to find some way of getting home. Then to my dismay I discovered that during our long dive my engine had filled up with lubricating oil and had stopped dead still. I tried every little trick I knew to coax a fresh start, but it was no use. I had no choice. I must land in the country directly beneath me, be it hostile or friendly. I turned in what seemed to me by instinct to be the way toward our own lines and glided as far as I could without any help from the engine.

I saw beneath me a destroyed village and my heart sank. I must be behind the German lines. Was my real flying career, just begun, to be ended so soon? Was I to suffer the fate the flying man most abhors—the helpless descent in Hunland and the meek submission to being taken prisoner? A hundred thoughts were racing through my head, but in a moment they were dispersed. It was that always ghastly rattle of a machinegun, firing at me from the ground. This left no doubt but that I was over enemy territory. I continued to glide, listlessly toward the ground, not caring much now what the machine gun might do. My plight couldn't be much worse. I was convinced in fact that it couldn't possibly be worse. Mechanically, little realising just what I was doing, but all the time following that first great instinct of self-preservation, I remember carefully picking out a clear path in the rough terrain beneath me, and, making a last turn, I glided into it and landed.

Some hostile spirit within me made me seize the rocket pistol we used to fire signals with in the air—Very lights, they are called. What I expected to do with such an impotent weapon of offence or defence, I don't know, but it gave me a sort of armed feeling as I jumped out of the machine. I ran to a nearby ditch, following the irresistible battlefield impulse to “take cover.” I lay for some time in the ditch waiting—waiting for my fate—whatever it was to be. Then I saw some people crawling toward me. They were anxious moments, and I had to rub my eyes two or three times before finally convincing myself that the oncoming uniforms were of muddy-brown and homely, if you will, but to me that day, khaki was the most wonderful, the most inspiring, the most soul-satisfying colour-scheme ever beheld by the eyes of man. In an instant my whole life-outlook changed; literally it seemed to me that by some miracle I had come back from the land of the “missing.”

The British “Tommies” had seen me land and had bravely crawled out to help me. They told me I had just barely crossed over into our own country; the last 150 yards of my glide had landed me clear of the Germans. The soldiers also said we had better try to move the machine, as the Germans could see it from the hill opposite and would be sure to shell it in a very little while.

With the help of several other men from a field artillery battery, we hauled the machine into a little valley just before the German shells began to arrive. One dropped with a noisy bang some 200 yards away from us, and I fell flat on my stomach. I hadn't seen much land fighting up to this time, but I had been told that that was the proper thing to do. The Tommies, however, looked at me with amazement. The idea of anybody dropping from a shell two hundred yards away! They told me there was nothing to worry about for the moment, and added, cheerfully, that in a few minutes the Huns would be doing a little better shooting.

But I had my own back with the Tommies sooner than I could ever have hoped for. This time a shell landed about twenty yards from us and down went everybody but me. I stood up—out of sheer ignorance! I didn't know by the sound of the shell how close it was going to land, but the others did and acted accordingly. The joke of the whole thing was that the shell was a “dud.” It didn't explode, and I had the laugh on the wise artillerymen.

Eventually we got the machine behind a clump of trees where the Germans couldn't see it, and they decided to waste no more ammunition hunting us out. Although it was already six o'clock in the evening, I started to work on the engine, but after an hour and a half had not succeeded in getting a single cough out of any one of the many cylinders. So I decided to let matters rest and accept a very cordial invitation to spend the night with a battery nearby.

It would have been a very interesting night indeed if I could have had some real place to sleep, or if I had not been wearing loose, heavy flying clothes, with fleece-lined boots up to my hips, or if it had not commenced to rain about nine o'clock, or if in the middle of the night a heavy artillery battle had not started. But in spite of the discomfort and the drizzle it was all very interesting and exciting, and seemed to me a sort of fitting sequel to my wonderful first day of combat in the air.

The next day it continued to rain, and as I received no word from my squadron in answer to several telegrams, I borrowed some tools from the gunners and again got to work on my choked up engines. Within a few hours she was running beautifully. Now the problem was to find a place from which to fly off. The ground was rough and very muddy, but I decided to try to “taxi” over it. We had not bumped very far along, however, the machine and I, when a big piece of mud flew up and split the propeller. That ended it. There was nothing to do but wait for help to come from the squadron. It came the next afternoon, after I had spent a terrible night trying to get to the squadron, and rescue parties from the squadron had spent an equally terrible night trying to get to me. I had landed at a point which had been well behind the German lines a few days ago; where the roads had been mined and blocked in all manner of ways, and where the German spirit of wanton destruction had held high carnival. I had even tried to get through in a Ford, but it was no use.

It was about three o'clock the second afternoon after I landed that one of the rescue parties arrived. They had travelled about ninety miles to get to me, although the aerodrome was only fifteen miles away. By the third afternoon we had succeeded in taking my machine to pieces, and having safely loaded it into a motor lorry, began our return journey about seven o'clock in the evening. We arrived at the aerodrome at 6:30 the next morning. I slept part of the way, but never was so worn out and tired in all my life, for many times during the night it was necessary to get out and help our car out of the mud. Finally, when about six miles from the aerodrome, we went into a mud hole and stuck. It was absolutely impossible to move in any direction, so with one of the men I set out afoot to an aerodrome about three miles away. There I pulled some sleepy mechanics out of bed and got them to drive me to my own aerodrome a little further along.

Now for the first time I learned exactly what had happened in the fight on the twenty-fifth. The patrol leader had also destroyed one of the enemy machines, while the third Hun had escaped. All of us were perfectly safe and none of our machines damaged except my own, which showed a few tears from shell fragments.

It seemed to me it had been ages since the fight. But at last I was back among my companions—and I had the large total of one machine to my credit. There were fellows in the squadron who did not have any, however, and I was very proud; so proud and excited over the whole episode that despite my intense weariness, I couldn't go to sleep until late in the afternoon.

The fates had been so kind to me in my first fight in the air, that the next time I crossed the lines my squadron commander had designated me as patrol leader. I knew this was a difficult job, but it was not until after we started out that I knew
how
difficult. First of all I seemed to be leading too fast; then the pace would become too slow. Some of the machines seemed too close to me, and some too far away. I wondered why it was that everyone should be flying so badly today except myself. As a matter of fact if I had been leading properly, the other machines would have found it quite easy to keep in their assigned places.

However, one learns by experience, so at the end of two hours I was leading much better, and had progressed another step in the school of warflying. The clouds were very thick this day and rolled under us at times in great cumulous masses. We caught only occasional glimpses of the ground through rifts in the clouds a mile or more apart. It was necessary to watch very closely through these holes and to recognise familiar places on the ground, otherwise we were likely to get lost and never see home again. When our two hours' tour of duty aloft was ended though, we landed safely at the aerodrome without having seen any enemy machines.

Two days later my patrol engaged in one of the bitterest fights I have ever known. I knew that night the full meaning of that last line so often seen in the British Official Communique: “One of our machines did not return.” A second machine barely reached our lines, with the pilot so badly wounded he lived but a little while.

The patrol consisted of a flight of six machines. I led my companions up to 12,000 feet before heading across the trenches just south of Arras. Once over the lines we turned to the north, not penetrating very far into Hunland because of the strong wind that was blowing about 50 miles an hour from the West. These westerly gales were one of the worst things we had to contend with at the front. They made it very easy for us to dash into enemy territory, but it was a very different story when we started for home and had to combat the tempest. If an airman ever wishes for a favouring wind it is when he is streaking for home.

Seeing the modern war aeroplanes riding through howling storms reminds one that it was not so long ago that a ten-mile breeze would upset all flying plans for a day at any aerodrome or exhibition field. Now nothing short of a hurricane can keep the machines on the ground. As far as the ability to make good weather of it is concerned, the airman of today can laugh at a gale and fairly take a nap sitting on a forty mile wind.

We had been over the lines twenty minutes, and were tossing about a bit in the storm, when I sighted an enemy machine flying about half a mile below me. He was scudding gracefully along just over the top of a layer of filmy white clouds. I signalled to the remainder of my patrol that I had sighted an enemy, and in another instant I was diving after him. As I sped downward I could see the remainder of the patrol coming after me. I must have been plunging fully 150 miles an hour at the German with the black crosses on his wings, when suddenly out of the clouds, and seemingly right under my nose, a second enemy machine appeared. I realised now that we were in for serious fighting, that we had run into an ambuscade, for it was a great trick of the Germans at this time to lurk behind patches of clouds to obtain the advantage of a surprise attack. We soon taught them, however, that this was a game at which two could play.

When the second machine loomed so suddenly from his hiding place, I naturally transferred my attention to him. I closed to within 150 yards and then opened fire from directly behind. Nothing happened, however, for all my bullets seemed to be going far wide of their mark. I was frankly surprised at this and wondered what had happened to the marksmanship which had stood me in such good stead in my first fight. As a result of these thoughts I neglected to look behind me to see if the other machines of the patrol were following, and my first intimation that anything was wrong was the sound of machine guns firing from somewhere in the rear. I was about to turn my head to see if it was one of the patrol firing, when some flaming German bullets shot past between my left hand planes. Then I realised that a third enemy machine had gotten on my tail and had a dead shot at me. There was but one way to get out of this and I tried it. I pulled my machine right up into the air and turned over backward in a partial loop. As I did so the enemy machine flashed by underneath.

It was a narrow escape, but it gave me a breathing spell in which to look around for the remainder of my patrol. They were nowhere to be seen. Later I learned that when they were coming down to me, more enemy machines had popped out of the clouds and there had been a sort of general mêlée. The machine which got on my tail, seemed to have dropped out of the clear sky above. In all it turned out there were about ten of the enemy to six of us.

It was my luck to be mixed up single-handed with three of the Huns. Under the circumstances, wisdom seemed to me the better part of valour, and I climbed as speedily as I could, eventually managing to get clear of their range. Then looking around, I saw a fight going on about a mile further east. It was a matter of thirty seconds to fly into this, and there I found two of my machines in a go at four or five of the enemy. We fought for fifteen minutes or more without either side gaining an advantage. During all this time, however, we were steadily being driven by the gale farther and farther into German territory, and were rapidly losing height as well. We figured at this time we must be fully fifteen miles behind the Hun lines.

We had circled and dived and fought our way down to about 4,000 feet when suddenly about half a mile away I saw one of our patrol fighting for his life with two of the enemy. I broke off the futile engagement we were in and flew to the lone pilot's assistance. The other two of my pilots also broke away from the Germans and followed me as I headed over to help him. At the same moment he succeeded in escaping from the two attacking Huns, and we joined up again in a formation of four machines. At this time we were as low as 2,500 feet, but by careful flying and using the clouds to hide in, we managed to evade all the enemy flyers who came swirling after us.

The moment we headed for home, however, all the “Archies” in the neighbourhood opened fire on us. We were flying straight into the teeth of the 50-mile gale and were making very little headway against it. This slow pace made us an easy mark for the guns, and meant that we had to do a lot of dodging. We darted from one cloud to another, using them as much as possible for protection. It was again the old instinct of “taking cover” or “digging in.”

Reaching the aerodrome we were very much crestfallen. The battle had not been a success and two of our patrol, two of our most intimate friends, had not returned. Later that night, about eleven o'clock we had word that one of the missing machines had landed on our side of the lines with the pilot badly wounded. Next morning we heard the particulars of a wonderful piece of work done by this gallant boy. He was only eighteen, and had been in France but three weeks. The British Flying Corps is filled with boys of that age—with spirits of daring beyond all compare and courage so self-effacing as to be a continual inspiration to their older brothers in the service.

In the early part of the fight, this boy had been hit by an explosive bullet, which, entering him from behind, had pierced his stomach and exploded there. His machine had been pretty badly shot about, the engine damaged, and, therefore, a great resulting loss in efficiency. Mortally wounded as he was, however, he fought for ten or fifteen minutes with his opponents and then succeeded in escaping. Dazed from pain and loss of blood, he flew vaguely in a westerly direction. He had no idea where he was, but when the anti-aircraft guns ceased to fire, he glided down and landed in a field. Stepping out of his machine he attempted to walk, but had moved scarcely forty steps when he fell in a faint. He was hurried to hospital and given the tenderest of care but next morning he died, leaving behind a brave record for his brief career in the flying service.

The pilot who did not return was reported missing for about two months, and then we heard he had been killed outright, shot dead in the air. Upon looking back on this fight now, in the light of my later experience, I wonder that any of us got out of it alive. Every circumstance was against us and the formation we ran into was made up of the best Hun pilots then in the air. They fought under as favourable conditions as they could have wished and one can only wonder how they missed completely wiping us out.

Next day there were only four of us left in my patrol, but we were assigned to escort and protect six other machines that were going over to get photographs of some German positions about ten miles behind the front line trenches. I had my patrol flying about a thousand feet above the photography machines when I saw six enemy single-seater scouts climbing to swoop down upon our photography machines. At the same time there were two other enemy machines coming from above to engage us.

Diving toward the photography machines I managed to frighten off two of the Boches, then looking back I saw one of my pilots being attacked by one of the two higher Germans who had made for us. This boy, who is now a prisoner of war, had been a schoolmate of mine before the war. Forgetting everything else I turned back to his assistance. The Hun who was after him did not see me coming. I did not fire until I had approached within 100 yards. Then I let go. The Hun was evidently surprised. He turned and saw me, but it was too late now. I was on his tail—just above and a little behind him—and at fifty yards I fired a second burst of twenty rounds. This time I saw the bullets going home. As was the case with the first machine I brought down, this one also flopped over on its back, then got into a spin and went headlong to the earth where it crashed a hopeless wreck.

I rejoined the photography machines which unfortunately in the meantime had lost one of their number. We brought the five home safely—and the photographs were a huge success.