Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (4 page)

Benjamin Hotchkiss, from Connecticut, went to France for financial backing, since the U.S. War Department showed no interest in his weapon. By the end of World War I, some forty-seven thousand had been delivered, and it had become a staple of the French army. The Hotchkiss gun was an
open-bolt
design, like an automatic rifle, meaning that the bolt was pulled back to cock it and firing would chamber a round. Using gas from the discharge, the bolt would cycle back after each shot, ejecting the case and self-loading another cartridge.

A simple gun with only thirty-two moving parts, the Hotchkiss fired a twenty-five-round strip of 8 mm ammunition. It was also air-cooled and weighed much less than water-cooled systems with their tanks and hoses. Unfortunately, an open-bolt system was very difficult to synchronize for firing through the propeller arc (which is why Roland Garros employed his wedges).

Maxim Ltd. teamed up with Vickers and Sons to produce the Vickers medium machine gun. The British Vickers was a belt-fed, .303-caliber (7.7 mm) gun using a
closed-bolt
system, which made synchronization much easier. Extremely reliable and very tough, one ground unit continuously fired off a million rounds from their ten Vickers during a single twelve-hour fight.

The infantry version was water cooled via a bronze jacket surrounding the barrel. Water cooling was unnecessary when the gun was mounted on an aircraft, but the jacket was still required for the recoil mechanism, so slots were cut for air cooling and the jacket remained in place. There were also problems with the original 250-round belt, as the canvas would constrict when wet and often jam the gun. This was solved by using an aluminum link system, which would feed any length of belt an aircraft could carry.

Ironically, as business knows no borders, Germany’s Spandau machine gun was actually a Vickers-Maxim design built under license in Berlin. The Spandau, especially the twin-mounted type common on German single-seat fighters, sent hundreds of Allied aircrews to their deaths. The aircraft variant was the Maschinengewehr 08 (IMG 08), a lightened water-cooled adaptation of the standard German infantry gun. Incidentally, it was Manfred von Richthofen, the air ace who later became known as the “Red Baron,” who suggested the use of a trigger instead of a thumbpiece to fire the weapon. He said it was “more natural for a marksman to fire a gun with his trigger finger rather than with his thumb.” He was right.

The Lewis gun was extensively used by the Allies after 1915, and with the heavy cooling jacket removed it became relatively lightweight.
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More important was the self-contained, drum-style ammunition feed system. The Lewis had a forty-seven-round (later a ninety-seven-round) capacity, with a drum that could be replaced in flight. Some aircraft, such as the SE-5a, had a wooden tray added to the pilot’s console so he could quickly switch drums when needed.

There were also rockets. Yves Paul Gaston Le Prieur, a French naval officer, tackled the knotty problem of bringing down observation balloons.
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He filled a cardboard tube with 200 grams of black powder, fitted a knife blade into the conical head, attached the assembly to the wing struts, and wired it to the cockpit. The rockets were fired consecutively at a range of about 100 yards and always against the wind. Interestingly, the weapons were inclined to 45 degrees so that the pilot could fire from a dive and not get caught in the balloon’s explosion. Carried by the Allies on the Nieuport, SPAD, and Sopwith fighters, Le Prieur rockets were successful against balloons (but not Zeppelins) and were widely used until the development of incendiary bullets.

Mounting weapons, preferably a machine gun, wasn’t a new idea. But to do this effectively, one also had to be able to aim the gun while engaged in a wild, corkscrewing dogfight. Furthermore, the pilot was better situated to fire the weapon, as observers were at the mercy of the pilot’s maneuvering. There was no intercom or headset, and communication between two men in an open-cockpit aircraft was problematic at best. So single-seat fighters with the gun or guns aimed along the aircraft axis was the natural progression.

Unfortunately, the propeller was in the way. This was a problem that had to be solved, and quickly. Roland Garros, as noted in Chapter 1, devised the deflector plate solution. The way he figured it, a prop rotating at 2,000 rpm would allow at least 10 percent of the gun’s bullets through, which would be sufficient if the pilot got close enough. His armed Morane-Saulnier Type L was a battlefield shock, though it would not be long before the Germans figured out what Garros had done. After he disposed of his sixth victim, engine failure forced the French flyer down behind enemy lines. He tried setting fire to his aircraft, but the wet wood and fabric wouldn’t burn, and searching German soldiers found him in a ditch.
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They took possession of the French “secret weapon” and sent it to Berlin for aviation pioneer Anthony Fokker’s evaluation.

Wedges were impractical, and Fokker knew it immediately. They were aerodynamically unpredictable and could throw the propeller out of balance. Then there was the very real danger of ricochets, not to mention the inefficient use of a gun’s very limited ammunition supply. Also, French bullets were sheathed in copper, so deflection via wedges
was
possible for a while, but German shells were steel-jacketed and would splinter the propeller in no time.

In any event, Fokker instinctively knew that a better, less French, solution was possible. Perhaps his childhood in Holland throwing rocks through the arms of windmills inspired his answer. Or perhaps he simply borrowed the idea, as both August Euler and Franz Schneider had designed similar mechanical solutions. In any event, it was only a matter of days before he had a simple, workable interrupter gear installed and tested. Fokker wrote:

I attached a small knob to the propeller, which struck a cam as it revolved. This cam was hooked up with the hammer of the machine gun, which automatically loaded itself. Thus as I slowly revolved the propeller, I found that the gun shot between the blades.

During the night I found out the basic operation, and began next morning to perfect the device. One blade was enough to strike the cam, because the gun could shoot only 600 times a minute, while the blades passed a given point 2,400 times a minute. To the cam was fastened a simple knee lever, which operated a rod, held back by a spring. In order that the pilot could control the shooting, a piece of the rod which struck the hammer was hinged to hit or miss as the operator required. That was the entire device.

The Fokker A-III and M-5K scouts were shoulder-wing monoplanes and nearly identical in appearance to Garros’s Moraine-Saulnier. Modified with a 7.92 mm Parabellum light machine gun (LMG) and the new interrupter gear, the upgraded plane was called the Fokker E-1. The Eindecker (meaning “one wing”) would change aviation history.

The Germans insisted Fokker prove his invention by shooting down an enemy aircraft. However, as he was Dutch, and the Netherlands was a neutral country, the designer demurred, only to be told that if he refused he’d be drafted and sent to the trenches. His mind made up for him, Fokker was forcibly dressed in an
oberleutnant
’s uniform, with the proper ID in his pocket, and sent up over Douai to shoot something down. Like many savants, he’d never really considered the practical consequences of his inventions, and was now face-to-face with a very real problem. Despite putting himself in a perfect position to kill a vulnerable Farman two-seater, Fokker just couldn’t pull the trigger.

Who actually did score the first shoot-down with this new weapon system is debatable. Max Immelmann, Kurt Wintgens, and Oswald Boelcke have all been credited, but the records are ambiguous. On July 1, 1915, the fifth production Fokker E-1, flown by Lieutenant Wintgens, engaged a Moraine-Saulnier L near Luneville. Wintgens claimed a kill, but the enemy aircraft disappeared too far behind French lines for verification. A French squadron, MS 48, subsequently reported that one of their aircraft had been forced down.
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Immelmann, who’d only managed to pass his last set of flying tests in March, didn’t score his first victory until the first of August. When Anthony Fokker departed from the Douai aerodrome in May he left his Eindecker behind. Oswald Boelcke was there and took a keen interest in the test work, so he might have been the first line pilot to fly the monoplane yet he was still officially listed as a two-seater pilot until July 4, three days after Wintgens’s victory.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter who was first. With the combination of a maneuverable aircraft, a lethal machine gun, and aggressive flyers, the age of the fighter pilot had begun in earnest. As Boelcke himself wrote, “I believe in the saying that ‘the strong man is mightiest alone.’ I have attained my ideal with this single-seater; now I can be pilot, observer and fighter all in one.”

So who were these men who weren’t content to be just aviators and scouts, these men who made themselves into fighter pilots? What did they have in common beyond the very high likelihood of dying young and dying soon? The stereotypical World War I flyer cut a dashing, heroic figure, and he was viewed as honorable and brave; a knight of the air, and the last of a chivalric breed of gentleman warriors. For men caught in the transition between the old ways and modern, industrialized mass warfare, there was some truth in this perception. Remember, once the armies dug into their trenches, aircraft took over from cavalry and in any army, the cavalry was an elite force of fast-moving shock troops. As such, it attracted many adventorous young men from the upper classes and nobility.

Transitioning to their various air services was a logical move for hundreds of these officers once the need for cavalry faded. Flying was a new profession, inspiring awe and admiration among a public that really didn’t understand it. So the attraction for these men was the danger, the unique skill involved, and the chance for inclusion in a very selective brotherhood. They also shared a love of flying and a genuine desire to serve their country. As flyers, they were generally free of the hidebound traditions permeating their respective militaries, and being pilots, they had unique control over their fate, unlike the “poor bloody infantry,” as the Brits called foot soldiers.

In 1914, Britain placed most of the responsibility for her security on the Royal Navy and maintained only a small volunteer army. Before the war, officers in all branches were overwhelmingly from the upper classes. A career as an officer was an honorable and acceptable profession for such men, many of them younger sons who would not inherit family estates. They possessed important family connections, often came from military families, and were graduates of the public school system (roughly equivalent to American prep schools). Through a classical education, sports, and an emphasis on proper conduct this produced educated, socially responsible leaders with a sense of obligation to the nation and the Crown. Combining these attributes with the English ideal of extreme (perhaps even suicidal) courage produced the typical British officer. It was said that “the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton,” and there was truth in this. In 1914, nearly all of Britain’s 28,000 army officers fit this mold. On the Western Front they formed the British Expeditionary Force, which was deemed so insignificant by Kaiser Wilhelm that he called it “contemptible.” With perverse English pride, the BEF took on the nickname “The Old Contemptibles.”

The original Royal Flying Corps pilots and observers were seconded from regular military and naval units. Initially, many of the pilots were sergeants and regarded as mere “drivers.” The officers took the role of observer and aircraft commander, as they had been trained to read maps, navigate, and spot for artillery.

But a month after fighting began in France, it was apparent that the rapid military expansion required more officers, so commissions were offered to veteran sergeants of the prewar regular army and qualified volunteers within the ranks. Many of the soldiers who had answered the call to duty in August 1914 had been university or public school students before signing up. Because they all believed the war would be over by Christmas and didn’t want to incur the commitment of a commission, they’d simply enlisted as private soldiers. However, some 13,000 of them had been enrolled in their school’s Officers’ Training Corps (rather like the American ROTC system) and most of these men were directly commissioned—even those who didn’t apply.

By contrast, the typical German officer of 1914 was a member of a caste, rather than a member of a social class. While social classes were present, of course, German society and government were much more autocratic than the English system. Industrialization had arrived somewhat later, and as a result, democratic thinking and liberalism had been slower to take root. When they did, these progressive ideas ran squarely into opposition from the landed gentry and the military-based aristocracy, who opposed any change that threatened their status.

Germany was also intensely segregated; the north was generally Protestant, while the south was predominantly Catholic. Most of the industry lay in the west, as opposed to immense agrarian interests in the east. Only in 1871 had the four kingdoms of Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, and Wurttemberg been united into the Deutsches Reich by Otto von Bismarck. Also called the Zweites (Second) Reich, it was ruled by the noble Prussian House of Hohenzollern.
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The Kaiser was subsequently more of a warlord than a sovereign monarch, with each of the four kingdoms maintaining its unique identity and a separate military. However, within the new German confederation, Prussia reigned supreme and was itself ruled by landowners, called Junkers (the word derives from
Juncherre
, “young lord”), who exerted tremendous influence on Prussian politics and Germany.