1916 Angels over the Somme (British Ace Book 3) (36 page)

This is my third foray into what might be called modern history.  The advantage of the Dark Ages is that there are few written records and the writer’s imagination can run riot- and usually does! If I have introduced a technology slightly early or moved an action it is in the interest of the story and the character. The FE 2 is introduced a month or so before the actual aeroplane.  The Red Baron is shot down six weeks before he really was. I have tried to make this story more character based. I have used the template of some real people and characters who lived at the time.

The Short Magazine Lee Enfield had a ten shot magazine and enabled a rifleman to get off 20-30 shots in a minute. It was accurate at 300 yards. Both cavalry and infantry were issued with the weapon.

For those readers who do not come from England I have tried to write the way that people in that part of Lancashire speak. As with many northerners they say
‘owt’
for anything and
‘eeh’
is just a way of expressing surprise.  As far as I know there is no Lord Burscough but I know that Lord Derby had a huge house not far away in Standish and I have based the fictitious Lord Burscough on him. The area around Burscough and Ormskirk is just north of the heavily industrialised belt which runs from Leeds, through Manchester, to Liverpool.  It is a very rural area with many market gardens.  It afforded me the chance to have rural and industrial England, cheek by jowl. The food they eat is also typical of that part of Lancashire. Harsker is a name from the area apparently resulting from a party of Vikings who settled in the area some centuries earlier.  Bearing in mind my earlier Saxon and Viking books I could not resist the link, albeit tenuous, with my earlier novels.

The rear firing Lewis gun was not standard issue and was an improvised affair. Below is a photograph of one in action.

The photograph demonstrates the observer's firing positions in the
Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2d
. The observer's cockpit was fitted with three guns, one or two fixed forward-firing for the pilot to aim, one moveable forward-firing and one moveable rear-firing mounted on a pole over the upper wing. The observer had to stand on his seat in order to use the rear-firing gun.

This artistic work
created by the United Kingdom Government
is in the
public domain
.
This is because it is one of the following
:

1. It is a photograph created by the United Kingdom Government and taken prior to 1 June 1957; or
   
2. It was commercially published prior to 1964; or
   

It is an artistic work other than a photograph or engraving (e.g. a painting) which was created by the United Kingdom Government prior to 1964. HMSO has declared that the expiry of Crown Copyrights applies worldwide.

An F.E.2
without armament

This image is in the
public domain
because the copyright has expired.
This applies to Australia, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of
life of the author plus 70 years
.

Baron Von Richthofen was actually shot down by an FE 2 during the later stages of the Battle of the Somme.  In this novel it is Bill who has that honour. The Red Baron is portrayed as the pilot of the Halberstadt with the yellow propeller. Of course the Red Baron got his revenge by shooting down the leading British ace of the time, Major Lanoe Hawker VC. Hawker, was flying the DH2 while the Red Baron flew the superior Albatros D111. That is in the future.  In this novel the best German fighter is the Albatros D1 and the Albatros D series gave the German superiority for the rest of the year.

The circle devised by Bill and Billy really existed.  It was known as a
Lufbery circle
. The gunner of each F.E.2, could cover the blind spot under the tail of his neighbour and several gunners could fire on any enemy attacking the group. There were occasions when squadrons used this tactic to escape the Fokker monoplane and the later fighters which the Germans introduced to wrest air superiority from the Gunbus. It made for slow progress home but they, generally, got there safely.

The Immelmann Turn was named after the German Ace Max Immelmann who flew the Fokker E1.  He was apparently shot down by an FE 2 although one theory is that his interrupter gear malfunctioned and he shot his own propeller off.  I prefer the first theory. This is the Immelmann Turn as a diagram.

I have no evidence for Sergeant Sharp’s improvised bullet proofing.  However they were very inventive and modified their aeroplanes all the time. The materials he used were readily available and, in the days before recycling, would have just been thrown away. It would be interesting to test it with bullets.

The Mills bomb was introduced in 1915.  It had a seven second fuse. The shrapnel could spread up to twenty yards from the explosion.

Hulluch was the scene of the first German attack with gas.  The Bavarian regiment attacked the British near to Loos.  They had some forewarning of the attack as a German deserter told them and rats were seen leaving the German trenches. (A sure sign of leaking gas bottles.) The Germans had nearly as many men incapacitated as the British but the inferior nature of the British gas mask meant more deaths amongst the British.  The bombing raid is pure fiction.

General Henderson commanded the RFC for all but a couple of months of the war. The Fokker Scourge lasted from autumn 1915 until February 1916.  It took the Gunbus and other new aircraft to defeat them. The BE 2 aeroplanes were known as Fokker fodder and vast numbers were shot down. There were few true bombers at this stage of the war and the Gunbus was one of the first multi-role aeroplanes. The addition of the third Lewis gun did take place at this stage of the war. The Germans had to react to their lack of superiority and in the next book the pendulum swings in Germany’s favour when the Albatros DI11 and other new aircraft wrested control of the air away from the RFC,

More aeroplanes were shot down by ground fire than other aeroplanes and I have tried to be as realistic as I can but Bill Harsker is a hero and I portray him as such. He does achieve a high number of kills. Lanoe Hawker was the first ace to reach 40 kills and he died just at the end of the Somme Offensive. Bill is some way behind that figure.

The Somme Offensive July1st – 18
th
November 1916

The Somme Offensive was an absolute blood bath as the table lower down shows.  However the RFC definitely won the battle of the air and dominated the battlefield completely.  It helped that the Kaiser had withdrawn his best pilot, Boelke after the death of Max Immelmann but the superior aircraft the British and allies possessed helped. On July 1
st
Major L W B Rees attacked ten two seater German aeroplanes winning a Victoria Cross in the process. The figures given for the Newfoundland Warwicks casualties are accurate as are the appalling first day casualties- 1000 officers and 20000 men dead in one day. By the end of the Somme offensive in November 1916, the RFC had lost 800 aircraft and 252 aircrew killed (all causes) since July 1916, with 292 tons of bombs dropped and 19,000 photographs taken.

The South African Division did take Delville Woods in the British push to Pozières. The German defenders were dug in the woods.  The South Africans took over 2,500 casualties.  I do not know if FE 2s bombed the woods but this period of the war did see total dominance of the skies by the RFC.  Until Boelke formed Jasta 2 in late August (The Red Baron was one of his younger pilots) flying Albatros D111 the RFC totally dominated the Somme. After that the Germans ruled the skies until Spring 1917.  In September 1916 the RFC lost 167 airmen.  Training standards did plummet as airmen were rushed to replace dead pilots. At the end of 1916 the life expectancy of a young pilot was three weeks.

The Buckingham tracer ammunition was introduced at the end of August.  The fighting around Delville Woods saw the re-emergence of the German aeroplanes and they nearly swung the battle in the German’s favour. Close contact between the aeroplanes and the ground repulsed the attacks and, by the 3
rd
of September they had secured the vital woods and surrounding area.

There was close cooperation between ground forces and the RFC.  They used mirrors to signal and laid out sheets to mark their forward positions.  Had the RFC not been so successful then there might have been less gains in the battle of the Somme.

Tanks were used for the first time but they were handled badly.  They learned lessons which enabled them to be more successful at Cambrai in 1917.  It is like the disaster of Dieppe in 1941 where the lessons led to the successful D Day landings.

Casualties in the Battle of the Somme

United Kingdom-350,000+

Canada-24,029

Australia-23,000

New Zealand-7,408

South Africa- 3,000+

Newfoundland-2,000+

Total British Commonwealth- 419,654

Total French-204,253

Germany-465,000

Killed and Missing

British Commonwealth- 95,675

French- 50,756

Germany- 164,055

Selected Specifications
for the aeroplanes mentioned in the novel

FE2b

2 crew

47 feet wingspan

12 feet 6 inches height

Rolls Royce Eagle engine 360hp

Maximum speed 81 mph (up to 88 at higher altitude)

Ceiling, 11000 feet

2 Lewis machine guns and up to 517lb of bombs

AEG G1

3 crew

52 feet wingspan

11 feet four inches height

2 Mercedes 8 cylinders in line engines 100 hp each

Maximum speed 78 mph

Ceiling 7874 feet

2 machine guns

Aviatik B1/B11

Crew 2

Wingspan 40 feet

Height 10 feet 10 inches

Mercedes D11 Engine 99hp

Maximum speed 60 mph

Ceiling 16404 feet

1 machine gun

Fokker E1

1 crew

29 feet wingspan

9 feet 5 inches height

.7 Cylinder air cooled rotary engine 80 hp

Maximum speed 81 mph

Ceiling 9840 feet