Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (14 page)

Paris hosted a colony of American expatriates. Usually wealthy, they counted businessmen, entertainers, literary figures, and students among their numbers. The American Hospital of Paris had been founded by Dr. Edmund Gros to tend to their needs, so when war broke out, he created a transportation unit that would eventually become the American Field Service.

There were Americans fighting in the Foreign Legion, but their identity was lost in this body; they were simply units in a tremendous group. Dr. Gros and his associates dreamed of some other form of service in which Americans might participate as Americans, even though the flag of the United States might not officially be carried into the war. The idea was constantly before them, and, when they found that among the Americans already in France and already anxious to help as best they might, were men who had learned the art of flying in this country, the plan for a special American flying corps was conceived and developed.

On April 18, 1916, Nieuport 124, a squadron of seven Americans under the command of a French
capitaine
, Georges Thenault, was officially designated as the Escadrille Américaine. In response to German protests, the name was changed in November to the Escadrille des Volontaires and finally to the Escadrille Lafayette by December 1916.

Volunteers from the American expat community included college students looking for adventure, mercenaries, and a few criminals. The volunteers were mostly patriotic young men who felt that America belonged in the war. Many of them started out in one of the ambulance services but decided that shooting back was preferable to dying driving a truck. Others had joined the French Foreign Legion directly, defending Champagne and Navarin Farm during the opening battles of 1914.
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A committee, including the prominent financiers William Vanderbilt and J. P. Morgan, was appointed to oversee recruitment and provide private funding for the aviators. There was tremendous propaganda value in the involvement of the volunteers, as America was still officially undecided about a commitment. It was hoped that the Escadrille Américaine would fire imaginations. Coincidentally, most of the committee members owned extensive property in France and had significant business ties to French government and industry.
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A less cynical motivation would be the development of a trained, combat-experienced cadre of pilots who could be used by the American military once the United States actually declared war.

These young men, whatever their reasons, did not have to serve. Of the 269 volunteers, 169 of them were college men of good family and various levels of wealth. Thirty-five were from Harvard, and another forty-two came from Yale, Princeton, or Dartmouth. Norman Prince was a graduate of Harvard Law School and a practicing attorney in Chicago. His father was a financier and investment banker who’d made an enormous fortune in railroads and stockyards. Others had similar stories—in short, they could’ve led a life of ease and safety, but they chose not to. There was something in all of them that made them fly.

To cope with the influx of men, the Franco-American Flying Corps was formed by mid-1916 to spread the volunteers among French units.
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Eventually 179 of these pilots would go to more than ninety different French squadrons. The Aviation Section ofs the U.S. Army Signal Corps would retrieve 128 of them when America entered the conflict in 1917. Sixty-three of these men, including Norman Prince, would die in combat during the war.

By the late summer of 1917, the Germans were steadily losing the war of spare parts and aircraft. The Luftstreitkräfte had been unofficially combining their
Jagdstaffeln
to meet the waves of allied aircraft and now decided to organize its fighter units into
Jagdgeschwader
(JG), with four
Jastas
per group; command of JG 1 went to Manfred von Richthofen.

He immediately began making changes. A long and vocal opponent of camouflage, the Baron had taken to painting his own plane bright red. This was partially to help his pilots identify him and partially as a challenge to his enemies. Pilots were permitted individual color schemes, though each
Jasta
had something unique about it, such as Jasta 10’s yellow cowlings. JG 1 also occasionally traveled by train to wherever the fighting was, setting up in tents on makeshift airfields. Both the brightly colored aircraft and the trains were the reasons for the “Flying Circus” nickname.

They fought in a swarm. The sky would be empty one moment, then filled with swooping multicolored planes. Tactically, the Circus would overwhelm whatever enemy formation was encountered, breaking it apart by sheer numbers. Protected by their wingmen, the leaders would then attack the stragglers. This was fine up to a point, but visual signals from a flight leader only worked temporarily. Tight formations of fighters meant that wingmen were really only watching their leader, not the enemy—and dogfights happen
fast
. Without radio communications, there was then no way to coordinate a fight, and mutual support disappeared quickly. Yet the steadily increasing Allied numbers and technical superiority were able to counter the Circus’s tactics, costing the Luftstreitkräfte nine of its top aces by the end of 1917.
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On June 24 a DH-4 from 57 Squadron was shot down by a red Albatros D-V over the Polygon Wood area of southwestern Belgium. It was a bit past 9 a.m., and Manfred von Richthofen, back in action after a long leave, pulled away from the smoke trail satisfied with his fifty-fifth victory. The next day a 53 Squadron RE-8 was bounced by the Flying Circus near Le Bizet, south of the Messines Ridge. The Baron shot it down, but his patrol was in turn attacked by a formation of all-black Sopwith Triplanes.

This was the infamous “Black Flight” from 10 (Naval) Squadron, commanded by Raymond “Collie” Collishaw. During June and July they would shoot down more than eighty Germans with the loss of only one pilot—and that was today. Flight Sub-Lt. G. E. Nash was flying Triplane N5376, called
Black Sheep
, when he went down east of the ridge late that afternoon. Karl Allmenröder of JG 1, former medical student and the Baron’s good friend, claimed the kill.
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Stung by the loss, two days later the Black Flight went hunting and caught the Circus over Courtai. Like angry wasps, both groups of fighters shot each other up as the dogfight drifted over Polygon Wood. White tracers arced across the afternoon sky, and Collishaw, flying
Black Maria
, picked out Allmenröder’s green and red striped Albatros. Collie made a slashing pass and fired one burst, after which the thirty-victory German ace nosed over to crash near Zillebeke. The rest of the Circus, including von Richthofen, had scattered for the day.

A few weeks later more than a hundred aircraft met up together over Polygon Wood. From the surface to about 18,000 feet, Sopwith Pups, Camels, and Triplanes fought the new Pfalz D-III and Albatros fighters. Down lower, two-seaters traded shots as planes dove, twisted, and came apart in the darkening sky. Surprisingly, there were very few confirmed shoot-downs—possibly because everyone involved was more concerned about avoiding midair collisions.

The French-built Nieuport 24 began rolling off production lines that summer to replace the very successful Nieuport 17. Also designed by Gustave Delage, the N-24 had rather unique rounded wingtips and a larger 130-horsepower Le Rhône engine. Not much faster than the Nieuport 17, it was widely used by the British Royal Flying Corps and RNAS as an interim fighter until their own domestic aircraft production caught up.

The SPAD VII had been introduced in late 1916 and was also used to replace aging Nieuports. Louis Béchereau had been with SPAD (by 1917 this was an acronym for Société pour l’Aviation et Ses Dérivés) since the prewar years. His early refinement of the monocoque technique and its outer, load-bearing shell produced a strong, streamlined fuselage better able to withstand the strain of dogfighting than its predecessors. The SPAD VII was a well-made, relatively agile dogfighter. Though downward visibility was poor and radiator issues caused cooling problems throughout its service life, the SPAD VII combined many of the lessons learned to date and was a successful trade-off between strength, speed, and versatility.

ON JUNE 7
at 3:10 a.m., the Messines Ridge south of Ypres disappeared in an explosion so powerful that it was felt across the English Channel in London. Despite groundwater and blue clay, the British had managed to pack nineteen tunnels under the ridge with high explosives. Preceded by a weeklong bombardment using more than 3.5 million artillery shells, the II ANZACs with the British 9th and 10th Corps attacked.

Gen. Sir Herbert Plumer, the very able commander of the British Second Army, had large-scale maps and, using engineers with RFC aerial photography, had plotted more than 90 percent of the German gun positions. He’d also calibrated his own guns (one for every seven yards of line) and accomplished surveys of forward positions his guns would move to following the attack. This, combined with army cooperation flights (close air support), would mean his infantry would never be without artillery cover. The RFC conducted trench-strafing missions, counterair against German observation aircraft and fighters, and daylight bombing against the airfields around Courtrai.

Results were ambiguous. Both sides broke even on casualties: about 25,000 to 28,000 Germans and 24,562 British, ANZACs, and Canadians. What it did accomplish was the capture of some critical ground, permitting the British to extend their supply lines. It also allowed General Plumer and others to see the weaknesses of the German defensive strategy, thus making the Third Battle of Ypres possible.

The RFC blooded its new pilots and worked out bugs from aircraft such as the SE-5, Triplane, and Camel. It further refined army cooperation missions and trench strafing—both vital to continued Allied success on the ground. Signaling systems were refined using a combination of colored cloth and Very lights. Two-seat aircraft had the inestimable benefit of wireless sets and could communicate directly with ground units. So many generals on both sides had become accustomed to the Western Front mentality of mindless mass attacks that the idea of concentrated, combined arms assaults hadn’t quite caught on.

Except to Sir Herbert Plumer. A skilled general and open-minded in his tactical thinking, Plumer had found the big weakness in the German defensive system. The premise behind the Hindenburg Line was a semimobile defense in depth; rather than resist to the last man, defenders would fall back, pulling the attackers into the meat grinder of artillery and fresh reserve troops. The trick, Plumer realized, was not to penetrate far enough through the German lines to trigger a counterattack.

During the dry weeks of September he amassed enough artillery to place a gun every five yards along the trenches. The barrage itself would be different as well. Planned as five zones, 200 yards each, the initial attack would begin with shrapnel followed by high explosives. Third came indirect machine gun fire, then two more zones of high explosive.
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This created a pattern of destruction a half mile deep that consumed more than 3.5 million artillery rounds during his September 20 assault. Known as the Battle of Menin Road, it was wildly successful and caught the Germans flatfooted. Plumer’s men halted at their initial objectives, then set about digging in and improving their positions as their artillery was moved up. The Germans never countered, and six days later the Allies attacked again.

Through this and the short battles that followed, the French Air Service and the RFC spotted for artillery, bombed German positions, and strafed supply lines. They were opposed by Albatros or Pfalz fighters with the unwelcome addition of Fokker Dr 1 triplanes. Copied from a captured Sopwith, the new machine had all the same qualities: it was light and very maneuverable, and Fokker had added two synchronized Spandaus with centrally mounted triggers on a stick in the cockpit, letting the pilot aim the plane like he would a rifle. Unfortunately, he also installed a nine-cylinder, 110-horsepower rotary engine. The triplane had a top speed of only about 100 miles per hour, some 30 mph slower than the SE-5, but with its low wing loading and low weight, it had superb climbing capabilities.

They’d appeared over the front with Jastas 10 and 11 in late September and immediately began killing. Werner Voss shot down eleven aircraft in September, during the last twenty days of his life. Manfred von Richthofen was also part of the combat evaluation, shooting down a Sopwith Pup and an RE-8 early in the month.

But the triplane was also prone to wing failures. As a lack of varnish on the wing spars weakened them when wet—a common occurrence on the Western Front. Lt. Heinrich Gontermann, a thirty-nine-victory ace and commander of Jasta 15, was killed after his triplane came apart in flight. By the time the modified and strengthened production aircraft began appearing in German squadrons, 1917 was drawing to a close.

It began raining on October 3, turning Flanders into a large, shell-pocked puddle of mud. Plumer wanted to stop the offensive, knowing full well that with the drainage system destroyed, the entire region was impassable. The weather would hamper air support, and without photo reconnaissance or artillery-spotting missions, any further assaults were doomed. Nevertheless Haig, the BEF commander, ordered a further attack to capitalize on his gains. Knowing Lloyd George’s reaction to the casualties already incurred, he continued to gamble with the lives of his soldiers by assaulting Passchendaele on the north flank.

Valley of the Passion indeed.

It was impossible from the start. The muck meant that infantry could barely move, not to mention the heavy artillery. Even if guns were fired, the shells often disappeared into the saturated earth and never detonated. The ANZACs fought their way up to the entrenched German machine guns and then were driven back, leaving wounded comrades literally drowning in mud. The Canadians tried on October 26 and again four days later. After suffering nearly 16,000 casualties, they would eventually take Passchendaele Ridge in early November, finally bringing an end to the Third Battle of Ypres.