Wings Read online

  To outsiders the air force gave the impression of being more free-and-easy than the army and navy. On joining, they found that this was something of an illusion. Flying was new, but traditional discipline was imposed on the new recruits arriving from Civvy Street to join the military wing. Sykes agreed to a transfer of some Guards drill officers, whose roars soon echoed around the Aldershot barracks where the recruits were housed. Joubert noted approvingly that ‘in the end the RFC became an extremely smart and highly efficient corps . . . there is no doubt in my mind that the meticulous disciplinary training to which our mechanics were subjected made them more thorough and more reliable in their technical duties.’13

  Nonetheless, fitting, rigging and repairing aircraft and maintaining the engines that powered them was an empirical process. Everything was new. Progress was largely achieved and problems solved by trial and error. It was found that the copper pipes that fed oil and petrol to the engines cracked easily. The constant vibration hastened metal fatigue and regular annealing was required to stop them splitting and catching fire. Eventually, rubber hoses were substituted, but the rubber had a tendency to perish and block the flow.

  The principles of flying were still only barely understood. In 1912 very little was known of the science of aerodynamics. Biplanes were more stable than monoplanes, but they were still subject to erratic and inexplicable behaviour, and even relatively experienced pilots still worried about stalling, spinning and nose-diving.

  Attempts were made to codify flying drills. Major Charles James Burke, a stout Irishman known behind his back as Pregnant Percy, was the commander of 2 Squadron, which with 3 Squadron formed the first two aeroplane units of the RFC (No. 1 was a balloon squadron). Burke had served in the ranks in the Boer War before joining the Royal Irish Regiment. According to Raleigh, he ‘was not a good pilot and was most famous for his crashes. He was not a popular officer. He was not what would be called a clever man. But he was single-minded, brave and determined, careless alike of danger and of ridicule.’

  Burke approached his work with missionary zeal, spreading the word through papers with titles like ‘Aeroplanes of Today and their Use in War’ and recording his thoughts in a booklet of ‘Maxims’. These included such musings as ‘nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems,’ but also practical observations. ‘Waiting about on an aerodrome has spoilt more pilots than everything else put together,’ he noted. Thirty years later the pilots of the Battle of Britain would agree that it was waiting at dispersal for the ring of the telephone and the order to scramble that jangled their nerves almost as much as actual combat.

  The most pressing task facing those in charge of the new service was to find aeroplanes that were tolerably safe, reasonably reliable and relatively easy to fly. At its birth the RFC had only eleven serviceable aircraft. They were primitive machines capable of climbing only a few hundred feet and travelling at no more than sixty miles an hour. In August 1912 trials were held on Salisbury Plain to find a higher-quality machine with which to equip the service. The contestants were to demonstrate that their machines could carry out simple manoeuvres, including landing and taking off from a ploughed field. The prize was won by Sam Cody who seems to have benefited from being last in the order, so that by the time he had to perform, the field had been nicely flattened out. His machine, though, was never adopted: the ‘Cathedral’ was neurotically sensitive, particularly on the forward and aft control, and needed its master’s touch to stay airborne. After two pilots used to less unstable machines crashed, it was dropped and the RFC adopted instead the BE2, which was already in development at the Royal Aircraft Factory. The letters stood for ‘Blériot Experimental’, in recognition of the fact that it was an adaption of a design by the French pioneer. The modifications were largely the work of Geoffrey de Havilland.

  The BE2 certainly looked good. Its upper wing lay further forward on the fuselage than the lower wing, giving it a rakish angle in profile, and the slender tail swelled into a graceful, rounded tailplane. It was considerably more stable than Cody’s machine, and would generally fly straight and level without constant adjustments by the pilot. In other respects it was less satisfactory. The Wolseley, then Renault, engines with which the BE2 was equipped were badly underpowered. Later, on the Western Front, if long flights were planned the observer and his gun had to be left behind. The observer’s secondary job of defending his aircraft was hampered by his position, forward of the pilot’s cockpit, where he was surrounded by struts and wires that cramped his field of fire. The aircraft’s improved stability meant it was less prone to sudden involuntary actions. But it also made it less responsive when the pilot did want to change course swiftly, which meant it was slow to take evasive action against more manoeuvrable enemies.

  At the time, though, the BE2 seemed like a sound and versatile machine, and 3,500 of them would be built in several variations by a number of manufacturers in the years to come. The Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough, nonetheless, continued to produce other types, and by the time hostilities began the RFC was equipped with a plethora of different designs acquired over the early years.

  The navy’s approach to aviation was more enterprising. In the search for good aircraft they did not restrict themselves to the products of the Farnborough factory and sought out the wares of the private manufacturers like Short, Sopwith and A. V. Roe, springing up around the country, as well as encouraging Rolls Royce production of aero engines. The army believed that the main function of aviation in time of war was reconnaissance. The navy took a more aggressive approach. Airships and aeroplanes could be used against enemy shipping. They were also aware that the enemy would come to the same conclusion. They fitted floats on existing aircraft to create seaplanes and ten bases were set up around the coast, stretching from Anglesey in the west to Dundee in the north, from where they could defend the island and launch attacks against the enemy. Experiments took place in flying aircraft off ships, dropping 100 lb bombs and even torpedoes.

  This independent policy reflected the fact that the Admiralty had never accepted that the RFC should have control over affairs that it believed lay firmly within its own domain. In July 1914 this divergence of opinion was formalized with the establishment of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). From now on the RFC would operate solely as the air force of the army, while the RNAS answered to the Admiralty. The two would carry on their separate paths through most of the coming war, complicating the lines of command and competing for resources.

  By the time the split was made official Europe was floundering into war. Most of the young aviators welcomed the prospect of action and adventure. Their spirits were dampened, though, as they surveyed the motley array of aircraft they would have to fight in.

  ‘I shall never forget the solemn meeting of No. 3 Squadron when our Squadron Commander, Major [Robert] Brooke-Popham, told us what was expected,’ wrote Philip Joubert. ‘Up until then it is unlikely any but the more seriously minded of us young ones . . . had thought very much about war with Germany, but here we were faced with it in the near future and we knew that although we had plenty of energy and confidence, our equipment was woefully bad. There were at least eight different types among the serviceable aircraft, and of those only three were British. The engines were largely of French origin. We had no transport of our own worth mentioning, spares were lamentably deficient and the reserve of pilots and mechanics were derisory.’14

  However, with Lord Kitchener now in charge at the War Office, plans were already under way for a massive expansion. Over the next four years this ragged outfit was to transform itself into the greatest air force in the world.

  Chapter 2

  A Wing and a Prayer

  As the British Expeditionary Force embarked for France in August 1914, the RFC ranked low among its concerns. The airmen were left to make their own way to the war. There were four formed squadrons: Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5. Two more – 6 and 7 – were being assembled and No. 1 Squadron was in the process of switching from bal
loons to aeroplanes. Two squadrons – Nos. 2 and 4 – were equipped with BE2s. The rest flew with the ill-assorted array of machines acquired in the first rush of growth.

  The first great test was to get to the battlefield. Between them and the plains of northern France, from where they would operate, lay the English Channel, still a formidable obstacle. When the order came to move to a temporary encampment at Swingate on the cliffs above Dover, the squadrons were scattered around the country. No. 2 Squadron under Burke was in Montrose on the east coast of Scotland and got there without mishap. The journey of No. 3 Squadron, based at the new Netheravon aerodrome on Salisbury Plain, began disastrously. On the morning of 12 August, James McCudden, the former boy bugler who had now joined the RFC’s ground staff, swung the propeller of an 80 hp Blériot carrying Lieutenant Bob Skene, a renowned aerobat, and Air Mechanic Keith Barlow, and watched ‘the machine flying very tail-low until it was lost to view behind our hedge up at about eighty feet’.

  Then the engine stopped. There was silence, followed by the rending noise of a crash, ‘which once heard is never forgotten’. McCudden ‘ran for half a mile and found the machine in a small copse of firs, so I got over the fence and pulled the wreckage away from the occupants and found them both dead.’ Despite all the carnage McCudden was to see in his short life, he wrote later that he would ‘never forget . . . kneeling by poor Keith Barlow and looking at the rising sun and then again at poor Barlow who had no superficial injury, and was killed purely by concussion, and wondering if war was going to be like this always.’ Barlow and he had shared a tent earlier that summer while Netheravon was being built and McCudden had found him ‘an awfully interesting fellow . . . a really genuine soul and moreover a philosopher’. Despite the experience, McCudden’s determination to move from ground duties to flying was undiminished.1

  Other mishaps complicated the departure. No. 4 Squadron suffered two non-fatal crashes on the way to Dover. No. 5 Squadron was held up in Gosport and would have to follow later. But at 6.25 on the morning of 13 August the aircraft that had made it began, on schedule, to take off. First away was Lieutenant Hubert Harvey-Kelly, of 2 Squadron, at the controls of a BE2a. Like a number of the early aviators, ‘Bay’ Harvey-Kelly was of Anglo-Irish stock, hailing from Roscommon in County Mayo, and radiating an insouciance that made him stand out even in the risk-loving company of his peers. He was followed by Burke, who led his men over the French coast, then turned south towards the mouth of the Somme, which pointed them towards their destination, Amiens aerodrome. Harvey-Kelly was determined to touch down first and broke formation to cut across country, arriving at 8.20. The pilots of 2 Squadron all landed safely and by nightfall there were forty-nine aircraft on the base. The local people – who had been in some doubt as to whether the British would come to their aid – gave them an ecstatic welcome.

  Henderson was to command the RFC in the field and went to France by boat with his deputy Sykes and the stores and ground staff. They left behind Major William Sefton-Brancker to represent the RFC in the War Office and Trenchard, who, to his intense frustration, was ordered to take over the rear organization, charged with overseeing the planned great expansion and maintaining the flow of equipment and new squadrons to the front. When the headquarters group arrived at Boulogne they, too, received a warm welcome. James McCudden remembered crowds apparently chanting ‘Live Long and Tear!’ He later realized they were shouting ‘Vive l’Angleterre!’ On their way to Amiens, whenever they stopped, they were ‘piled up with fruit and flowers and kissed by pretty French girls’.2

  On 16 August the fliers moved forward to Maubeuge, seventy miles to the north-west on the border with Belgium and about twenty miles south of Mons. They left behind the crocks, including an old Blériot, acquired from the Daily Mail, which had been flown around Britain for an advertising stunt and still carried the newspaper’s name painted in large letters under the wings. Even so, some of the machines they retained were treacherous. Second Lieutenant Evelyn Copeland Perry of 2 Squadron, an experienced pilot who had taught Trenchard to fly, was climbing away after takeoff when his aircraft stalled, appeared to catch fire and plunged to earth, killing him and his passenger, air mechanic Herbert Parfitt. The machine was a BE8, the last of the variations on the Blériot Experimental that emerged from the Aircraft Factory and regarded by those who flew it as a vicious contraption. Another ‘Bloater’, as the pilots called them, belonging to the newly arrived 5 Squadron went down shortly afterwards on the way to Maubeuge, seriously injuring the pilot Lieutenant Bob Smith-Barry and killing Corporal Fred Geard.

  Six men were already dead from the tiny force and they had yet to encounter the enemy. The Germans were only forty miles away and the soldiers of the BEF were flooding up the road to Mons to block their path. The airmen spent the next few days checking engines, tuning flying wires, adjusting struts and studying maps, while they waited for the chance to show their worth. Their job was observation and reconnaissance. They had practised it in training on the BE variants that de Havilland had specifically designed to provide the stability to allow them to note enemy movements and strengths.

  On 19 August the RFC received its first order to launch a reconnaissance. The British army had taken up positions along a twenty-five-mile sector around Mons, there to make a stand against the advancing Germans. Any information about enemy dispositions would have a high value. The mission was given to Philip Joubert of 3 Squadron and Lieutenant Gilbert Mapplebeck of 4 Squadron. Liverpool-born ‘Gibb’ Mapplebeck, an unhelpful six-foot three inches tall and not quite twenty-one, was known for his crashes and stunting and had been disciplined for defying a ban on pilots risking their necks and their aircraft by ‘looping the loop’.

  They were operating with tiny scale maps and Joubert got lost almost immediately. He was forced to land close to some friendly troops to ask for directions. None of the aviators had been issued with identification documents and it took some time to persuade the soldiers that he was not a spy. He returned with no useful information to impart. Mapplebeck did better, carrying out a limited air search and spotting a small cavalry force at a place where a large concentration was thought to be assembled. It was an uninspiring start.

  Flights over the next two days had more success and some German units moving westward towards Mons were located and reported. On Saturday 22 August the squadrons flew twelve missions and this time they were able to build up a clear picture of a large enemy movement which appeared to be attempting to outflank the British line at Mons. This information played an important part in the development of the battle and helped Sir John French in his deliberations as he moved to escape envelopment.

  This was a memorable day in other respects. The RFC recorded its first enemy-inflicted loss when the Avro 504 flown by Lieutenant Vincent Waterfall of 5 Squadron, with Lieutenant Gordon Bayly as observer, was brought down by enemy fire just inside Belgium. Bayly was killed, though Waterfall survived to be taken prisoner. Later that day a German aircraft appeared, approaching Maubeuge aerodrome at about 5,000 feet. The sight of the enemy sent the crews racing to intercept. One of the pilots was Louis Arbon Strange, the son of a wealthy Dorset farmer who had shown an immediate natural aptitude for flying and, after obtaining his certificate, had been commissioned directly into the RFC in 1912. He had become convinced early on that aircraft would make viable gun platforms and had mounted a weapon on his machine as an experiment. Now the chance had come to put his theory to the test. He climbed into his Henri Farman with another pilot, Lieutenant Leslie da Costa Penn-Gaskell, whose job was to operate the Lewis gun. It was fixed in the nose, where, as the Farman was a ‘pusher’, there would be a clear field of fire unobstructed by the propeller, which was mounted behind the pilot. The aeroplane was woefully underpowered with a top speed of under 60 mph. By the time it had struggled to 1,000 feet the German was on his way back to his lines. ‘Its occupants must have enjoyed a good laugh at our futile efforts,’ Strange recorded wryly.3The commander of 5 Squadron, ‘Josh
’ Higgins, blamed the weight of the gun for the failure to close on the enemy and the pair were told to use rifles in future.

  The British stand at Mons gave way to a long retreat and the RFC fell back with them, setting up makeshift camps at Le Cateau-Cambresis, then St Quentin, then Compiègne, sleeping wherever they stopped, sometimes in a hotel bed, more often in a hayloft or even in the open under the wings of their aircraft. Despite the chaos they managed to maintain a flow of reports to headquarters. The main hazards came from the vagaries of their machines and from ground fire, which rose to greet them indiscriminately no matter which side of the lines they were over. Joubert described later and without rancour ‘the playful habit of the British soldier of firing at everything that flew, regardless of its appearance and nationality’.4 The French troops were no more fastidious and in the early days the crews were as much at risk from friend as they were from foe.

  Their duties did not prevent them from trying whenever possible to take the war to the enemy. On 25 August Lieutenant Euan Rabagliati, the short, energetic Yorkshire-born son of a prominent nutritionist, was flying as observer at 3–4,000 feet with his pilot Lieutenant C. W. Wilson – known as ‘Daddy’ on account of his venerable thirty-seven years – when they sighted a German Taube monoplane in the distance. They had already encountered several enemy aircraft, but the Germans appeared to be under orders to avoid combat and stick to their reconnaissance duties. Rabagliati recorded that ‘this chap stayed and we immediately joined in and manoeuvred around’. Rabagliati was armed with a service rifle. The German appeared to have a Mauser pistol with a shoulder stock. Wilson manoeuvred their Avro ‘tractor’ into a position where his observer could get in a shot.