Wings (8 page)

Many did not mind admitting that the experience rattled them badly. Comparing the accounts of airmen in the First and Second World Wars one is struck by the greater willingness of the pioneers
to acknowledge fear.

‘I wonder how long my nerves will stand this almost daily bombardment by “Archie”,’ wrote Lieutenant William Read of 3 Squadron. ‘I notice several people’s
nerves are not as strong as they used to be and I am sure “Archie” is responsible for a good deal. I would not mind so much if I were in a machine that was fast and that would climb a
little more willingly. Today we both had a good dressing down by “Archibald” and some of the shells burst much too near and I could hear the pieces of shell whistling past – and
they have to burst very close for one to be able to hear the shrieking of loose bits of shell above the noise of one’s engine. Well, well, I suppose the end will be pretty sharp and quick if
one of Archie’s physicballs catches one. I think I would rather it caught me than
crumple up Henri [his Henri Farman aeroplane], because one would have too long to think
when falling from 4,000 feet.’
⁶

There were several ways to die in an aeroplane. All must have shared Read’s view that death by bullet or shrapnel was the best. The alternatives, burning up or a long, conscious descent to
collision with the earth, did not bear too much reflection. Grotesque accidents abounded. Captain George Pretyman of 3 Squadron was returning from a reconnaissance when his aeroplane was rocked by
turbulence. He looked behind to check on his observer only to see that the seat was empty. When Pretyman looked down, his comrade was turning somersaults on his way earthwards.

Had the unfortunate man been equipped with a parachute he could simply have floated to safety, but although parachutes were issued to balloon observers (and German airmen) they were not given to
British aviators. One explanation that gained credence among the fliers themselves was that the authorities decided against doing so as it was felt that air crew might be tempted to abandon their
aircraft in an emergency before it was absolutely necessary. Another explanation is that the parachutes used in balloons were crude affairs, jerked open by a fixed line when the observer jumped.
They would not have worked for anyone trying to leave a stricken aeroplane spinning earthwards out of control. It was not until 1919 that Leslie Irvin invented – and tested himself – a
reliable free-fall parachute that a man could activate once clear of his aircraft.

Once over enemy lines the work began. Reconnaissance
missions no longer relied on the observer making sketches of earthworks, new roads and railway lines or anything else
that revealed the enemy’s intentions. The value of aerial photography had been recognized early on and after some initial experiments a small photographic section unit was established in
January 1915 under Lieutenant John Moore-Brabazon. They designed a camera for air use, a cumbersome wood-and-brass box. Initially it was operated by the observer, hanging over the side of the
cockpit and holding onto the straps, but later it was fixed to the side of the fuselage or mounted over a hole cut in the floor. Despite the difficulties of operating it, by early February the
German front line facing the First Army sector had been photographed in meticulous detail.

The other principal duty was spotting for the artillery – identifying enemy guns and correcting the fire of friendly batteries. Once again, new technology greatly improved efficiency.
Klaxons blaring Morse-code messages from on high and coloured flares fired from a Very pistol gave way to wireless telegraphy. The rapid development of air to ground co-ordination was largely due
to two Royal Engineer lieutenants, Donald Lewis and Bron James, who pioneered the technique, each flying solo to leave room for the wireless equipment that weighed as much as a small man. The
apparatus could transmit but not receive, so signals were acknowledged by placing coloured strips of cloth on the ground next to the battery.

At first they tapped out terse instructions in Morse code with one hand, while flying with the other. ‘Fire . . . fire . . .
fire again . . . a little short . . .
range OK . . . you have hit them’ ran a typical sequence. It required considerable sangfroid to keep this up while Archie was bursting all around and both men were eventually killed while at
work in the air. Before they died a more accurate means of directing fire had been invented, using a squared map and a ‘clock code’ that told a battery commander with some precision
where his shells were falling.

A specialist wireless squadron, No. 9, was created under the command of Captain Hugh Dowding, a gunner who had developed an interest in aviation and transferred to the RFC in August 1914. The
bright plumage of so many early airmen has obscured the presence of a significant number of more sombre figures in their ranks. The public face of the air force was provided by the gallant, the
dashing and the colourful, who seemed to belong in the pages of the historical adventure books that British lads were brought up on, filled with tales of knights and highwaymen. Behind them,
however, stood a faceless cohort of thoroughly twentieth-century men, without whom the RFC would not have grown so rapidly in size and importance.

Dowding belonged firmly in this category. He was a schoolmaster’s son, a solitary man who approached duties and difficulties with Wykehamist intellectual rigour and an unshakeable belief
in the rightness of his views. He shared this trait with Trenchard – though this did not prevent them falling out and, indeed, probably encouraged it. Dowding’s stubborn convictions,
arrived at after great thought, would
steer Britain safely through the preparations for and conduct of its existential struggle twenty-six years later.

For both, the RFC had provided a providential opportunity to display their worth and talents. The transformation in Trenchard’s fortunes was astounding. Two years before he had been a
no-hoper heading for the military scrap heap. Now he was a coming man, highly regarded by his shrewd superior, Henderson. In November he got his wish and left the vital but tedious task of
overseeing the expansion to go to France to command No. 1 Wing, working alongside Haig and his First Army. Trenchard sensed his moment had come, his rendezvous with destiny. His guiding principle
was that ‘no call from the army must ever find the RFC wanting’ and he drove his men and machines to their limits to achieve it. An early test came in 1915 with the Battle of Neuve
Chapelle, the first big British push of the spring, designed to drive the Germans out of the Neuve Chapelle salient, which was thought to be only lightly defended.

Haig summoned Trenchard and revealed how important he regarded the role that the air element would play in the forthcoming battle. According to Trenchard’s account, Haig told him: ‘I
shall expect you to tell me before the attack whether you can fly, because on your being able to observe for the artillery, and carry out reconnaissance, the battle will partly depend. If you
can’t fly because of the weather, I shall probably put off the attack.’
⁷

The aeroplanes did fly and on 10 March 1915 the operation went ahead, but with little result for all the effort expended – a
pattern that would soon become
depressingly familiar. The episode, though, confirmed how far the RFC had come since its arrival. Then it had been little more than a curiosity which might or might not bring some advantage. Now,
seven months later, it was unthinkable that any major operation would take place without aircraft being involved.

At the meeting the airmen had been given another task. They were detailed on the day of the attack to carry out a couple of bombing raids on targets behind the lines to disrupt any attempt to
rush in reinforcements. Expectations of what attack from the air could achieve were ludicrously high. Only three aeroplanes were allotted to the first operation and two for the second. The first
flight took off at dawn for a chateau, six miles east of Neuve Chapelle, that was thought to house the enemy headquarters. It was led by Eric Conran, the Australian who had pelted German troops
with hand grenades in the first weeks of the war. James McCudden often flew with him, but this time he was left behind and sitting in the observer’s seat was Major John Salmond who had just
arrived to take command of 3 Squadron.

‘They bombed the château with great success from a height of a few feet,’ McCudden recorded. ‘Captain Conran’s description when he returned of some fat old
Landsturmers [reservists] running up a road, firing rifles without taking aim, was very funny, but the Morane was badly shot about, and a bullet had passed exactly between the pilot and the
passenger at right angles to the line of flight.’ It was, he reflected ‘hard to decide who was more lucky.’
⁸

In fact, Salmond had the closer shave. He had felt a blow to his stomach and imagined himself shot. On landing he discovered the bullet had passed through his clothing. When
Trenchard heard about the escapade he wrote to Salmond: ‘You are splendid, but don’t do it again; I can’t afford to lose you.’
⁹

Conran was unperturbed by this or any other escapade. He seemed to be nerveless and to have an insatiable appetite for adventure. It could only end one way. McCudden remembered how, less than a
week after the raid on the château, Conran and a Lieutenant Woodiwiss ‘went out to drop some bombs [just south-west of Lille] . . . they arrived back in forty minutes and as they were
landing I noticed some flying wires dangling and a stream of petrol running from the machine. I ran to the Morane and found Captain Conran badly wounded in the back and the arm . . . one shrapnel
ball had embedded itself in his right arm and the other had gone in at his side and come out very near his spine. The machine . . . was literally riddled with shrapnel and how the observer escaped
unhurt I do not know.’
¹⁰
Conran survived, but it was the end of his combat flying career. The luck of Woodiwiss did not hold. In May,
together with Lieutenant Denys Corbett Wilson, a prewar playboy who had been the first man to fly the Irish Sea, he was shot down in flames over Fournes.

The second raid was launched in the afternoon, by two veterans – Louis Strange of 6 Squadron and George Carmichael of 5 Squadron. Strange was in a BE2c loaded with three bombs weighing
less than 25 lbs hanging under the
wings on racks, which he was to drop on Courtrai railway station. Carmichael piloted a Martinsyde biplane, carrying a single 100 lb bomb and
his target was a railway junction at Menin. Strange came in low, below 200 feet, and was peppered by ground fire as he closed on the station. A troop train was waiting at the platform and his stick
of bombs landed around it, killing, an agent reported later, seventy-five soldiers. Carmichael also managed to land his bomb on target, but with less effect.

Strange’s success perhaps reinforced exaggerated notions of what bombing could achieve, for six weeks later a single aeroplane was once again sent to bomb the Courtrai rail junction, to
disrupt the movement of tens of thousands of troops who were believed to be about to arrive there prior to an offensive to drive the British out of the Ypres salient. The pilot was Will
Rhodes-Moorhouse of 2 Squadron, who, on the afternoon of 24 April, set off from Merville aerodrome in a BE, flying solo to make room for the single 112 lb bomb he was carrying. He flew in and
dropped his bomb at 300 feet, but was caught in a blizzard of small-arms fire. Although wounded badly, he nursed his bullet-riddled machine back to Merville to gasp out his report to Trenchard. A
few hours later he died. Rhodes-Moorhouse’s heroism won him the Victoria Cross, the first of eleven won by RFC personnel during the war. He left behind a fifteen-month-old son, also William,
who earned his pilot’s licence while still at Eton, joined 601 Auxiliary Squadron, flew from Merville aerodrome during the Battle of France in 1940 and, like his father, died in combat,
shot down over Kent during the Battle of Britain with eight ‘kills’ to his credit.

Aviators reacted differently to the perpetual risk and danger. An airman could sink into introspection or assume a mask of manly indifference to death. Some of the greatest aces of the war, like
Mick Mannock, did both. But collectively, the RFC developed an ethos of defiance that sought to draw the sting of death, cultivating a lively fatalism that mocked the thing we most fear in a manner
that even at this distance in time is both exhilarating and profoundly moving.

The pre-war pioneers had already expressed this spirit in a song called ‘The Dying Airman’. One of the verses runs:

The words would ring out defiantly at the end of boozy evenings in mess and estaminet for the duration of the war, a magnificent ‘Up yours!’ to the Grim Reaper as he
sharpened his scythe in preparation for the next day’s harvest.

The offensives of the spring and summer of 1915 confirmed the paramount importance of artillery in the struggle. Guns
pulverized the battlefield day and night, obliterating
the woods and churning the fields into a cratered moonscape. To escape the bombardments the soldiers dug trenches and dugouts, ever deeper and more elaborate. There they hid until the guns stopped
long enough for them to stagger forward to seize a few yards of territory. In this form of warfare, close knowledge of your enemy’s fortifications and the ability to shell accurately were
essential to any success. By the middle of 1915 the air forces of both sides were struggling to expand to meet the demand for information. Many of the surviving veterans were sent back to act as
instructors at the flying schools now generating a stream of often poorly prepared greenhorns. They filled the ranks of the five new RFC wings created between March and November 1915.