Authors: Patrick Bishop
The growing importance of aircraft led both sides to reconsider their strategies. They arrived at the same, inevitable, conclusion. If they could drive their opponents from the skies, they would
deprive them of what had become a vital component of modern warfighting and the balance would tilt in their favour.
To do so, they could not rely on anti-aircraft artillery alone. What was needed was a means of destroying hostile aircraft in the air. From 1915 onwards the Allies and the Germans competed in a
fierce technological race to develop aeroplanes and weapons that would give them the edge in aerial combat. For the rest of the war the seesaw of advantage would tip one way, then the other, as
each side absorbed and adapted to each new advance in the science of aerial violence.
Increased engine power and the development of lighter weaponry meant that during 1915 rifles and revolvers were abandoned in favour of machine guns. Firing them accurately,
however, was extremely difficult and dangerous. In a two-seater ‘tractor’ aircraft like the BE2, shooting in the direction the pilot was flying was severely restricted by the arc of the
propeller. The observer had to take great care not to hit the struts and spars, and the buffeting wind constantly threatened to tear the weapon from his hands. Any success depended on an
understanding of ‘deflection’ shooting – the art of calculating where to aim the stream of bullets to take account of your enemy’s speed and direction as well as your
own.
The Martinsyde S3 single-seater biplane, which carried a forward-firing .303 Lewis gun mounted on the top wing, put in a brief appearance in 1915. It was faster than the BE2s, but also
inherently unstable. When one arrived at 6 Squadron it was given to Louis Strange, the innovator who had already tried unsuccessfully to mount a machine gun in a Farman. One day, while off on a
hunting expedition, he spotted an Aviatik reconnaissance machine. The two-seater was no greyhound, but the weight and drag of the Lewis gun meant the Martinsyde was even slower and as Strange
climbed to attack, his quarry drew away. In his frustration he fired off an entire drum of ammunition and turned for home. He was now twenty miles over the German lines. He needed to reload to
defend himself from attack. He put his hand up to unclip the magazine, but it was stuck fast and the wind made it hard to get a grip. He throttled back and lifted the nose to reduce speed. Still it
would not
budge. Strange stood up in the cockpit and began wrenching at the drum. As he did, the Martinsyde tilted to port and slid sideways, knocking Strange off his feet and
onto the joystick. The machine flipped upside down. Strange was now hanging by both hands from the drum, and praying fervently that it remained jammed, while the Martinsyde trundled along upside
down, 9,000 feet above the ground. Swaddled in thick flying gear and battered by the wind, he somehow managed to haul himself up and hook his legs over the inverted upper wing. The shift of weight
sent the aircraft into a spin. As it tipped into a downward spiral Strange tumbled back into the cockpit. One nightmarish predicament was replaced by another. He was hurtling earthwards and there
was no agreed technique for recovering from a spinning aeroplane. Whatever it was that Strange did to the controls it worked. Somewhere between 1,500 feet and the ground he pulled out and,
trembling with exertion and nerves, flew home at tree-top level.
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Strange’s 6 Squadron comrade Lanoe Hawker demonstrated that, with the limited technology available, it was possible for a pilot to shoot down enemy aircraft. He was an outstandingly
courageous flyer who was also equipped with an inventive technological brain. Present in Hawker’s make-up were some of the complexities that would show up again and again in the personalities
of the aces of this war and the next. He was exceptionally combative, relishing any opportunity to get to grips with the enemy, yet when he scored a victory his excitement was tempered with
sympathy for his victim. He had transferred from the Royal Engineers to the RFC, arriving in
France in October 1914, and flew numerous reconnaissance missions before being
wounded in the foot by ground fire during the fighting around Ypres. He resumed duty just as a new fast type, the single-seater Bristol ‘Scout’, started to arrive in France and one was
assigned to each squadron. The Scout could reach 90 mph in straight and level flight, nearly twenty miles an hour faster than a BE2, and climb to 6,500 feet in ten minutes – twice as rapidly
as most RFC machines. In addition it was nimbler than the stolid Air Factory products which had made a virtue of stability, sacrificing the manoeuvrability that increasingly would be the key to
both success and survival.
Hawker got his hands on 6 Squadron’s Bristol and together with Air Mechanic Ernest Elton devised a way of fitting a Lewis machine gun to the port side of the fuselage, so that it could
fire forward obliquely at an angle that avoided the risk of smashing the propeller to pieces. He alternated routine reconnaissance and artillery shoots with hunting missions seeking out enemy
aircraft. On his first outings he managed to see off some intruders without succeeding in shooting them down, though he was delighted with the Scout (‘a little beauty’) and it was
‘quite exciting, diving at 120 miles an hour and firing a machine gun’.
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Then, on the early evening of 25 July, he was over
Passchendaele when he ran into three German aircraft and shot them down in quick succession. The feat won him the Victoria Cross. By the time he was sent home for a rest in September 1915 he had
been credited with seven confirmed ‘kills’. This made him the first British air force ‘ace’, though official distaste for publicizing the feats of one man over those
of his comrades meant that his fame, for the time being, was confined to the RFC.
There were few pilots with Hawker’s skill. The business of air fighting became easier, however, with the arrival of biplane ‘pusher’ type aircraft, like the Vickers FB5, known
as the ‘gunbus’, with the propeller mounted in the rear. This enabled the observer to perch in the nose of the aircraft behind a pillar-mounted Lewis gun, with a clear field of fire.
The Gunbus was supplemented by another pusher, the DH2, which bore the initials of its designer Geoffrey de Havilland. It was a single-seater and equipped a new squadron, No. 24, commanded by
Hawker.
In the summer of 1915 the British air force seemed to be at least holding its own in the battle for the air. Improved machines were arriving at the front, as well as a supply of new airmen
– though the training they received was a poor preparation for operational realities. The engine of expansion was turning, albeit rather slowly – there were still only twelve squadrons
in France at the start of the autumn. Above all there was energy and purpose, emanating in pulsing waves from the inarticulate but passionate figure of Trenchard, who had taken command of the RFC
in the field in August when Henderson went back to London to become Director General of Military Aeronautics. ‘Boom’ Trenchard would remain in charge for most of the rest of the war,
driving the new force forward, stretching and exposing his men and machines, with a fervour that impressed all, while at times seeming to border on the inhuman.
The life-and-death demands of war forced the pace of technological innovation. As the summer progressed, a new development emerged that was to alter the balance dramatically
in the enemy’s favour. It ushered in a period of the air war that became known as the ‘Fokker menace’ and it began in an almost accidental fashion. Roland Garros was a French
aerial trailblazer, the first man to fly the Mediterranean. In 1915 he and the designer Raymond Saulnier set about trying to solve the problem of how to fit a machine gun to an aeroplane that could
be fired straight ahead without the gymnastics required to operate a wing-fixed weapon. The main difficulty seemed to be the obstacle presented by the whirring propeller, oscillating at 2,000
revolutions a minute. But the pair decided that, unlikely though it might seem, most of the bullets could pass through its arc without striking the twin blades. Those that did hit could be
deflected without doing damage by fitting wedge-shaped metal plates.
On 1 April Garros tried out a prototype and promptly shot down a two-seater. In the next seventeen days he repeated the performance twice. The device was fitted to other aircraft and other
pilots repeated his success. Then Garros was shot down. He was too late to set fire to his machine and the wonder gadget fell into German hands. The propeller was handed over to a Dutch aircraft
designer, Anthony Fokker, who was working with the Germans. On examining it they were reminded of a pre-war patent – which almost incredibly had been overlooked – for a synchronized gun
with an interrupter gear, which timed the stream of bullets so they passed through
the spaces between the blades. They revived it and tested it. It worked. The deflector plates
became instantly obsolete.
Fokker developed a new aeroplane, the Eindecker E1 monoplane, on which to mount the new weapon system. Now a pilot had only to point his machine in the direction of his enemy to threaten him.
Fokker had developed what was, in effect, a flying gun – the first efficient fighter aeroplane. The first few Fokker Eindeckers or E1s began to appear in July 1915, operating in pairs as
defensive escorts for patrol aircraft. It was a little while before the Germans realized their offensive capability. It was pilots, rather than commanders, who grasped their potential. They were
led by Oswald Boelcke, who had worked with another soon-to-be famous airman Max Immelman, with Fokker on the development of the E1.
Historians later claimed that despite its reputation the Eindecker was nothing special. However, Ira Jones, a young Welsh mechanic who went on to fly with 56 (‘Tiger’) Squadron and
was credited with shooting down forty enemy aircraft, saw it in action and had a due respect for its qualities. It was a ‘fast, good climbing, strong-structured, highly manoeuvrable aeroplane
– all essential qualities of an efficient fighting machine. When flown by such masterly, determined pilots as Boelcke and Immelmann it was almost invincible.’
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During the autumn British pilots came to fear these two names.
Max Immelman was born into a family of wealthy industrialists in Dresden. He perfected a manoeuvre of diving, climbing and flicking over, ready to attack again, which became known as the
‘Immelmann turn’. Oswald Boelcke was
the son of a militaristic schoolmaster. He overcame childhood asthma to become an excellent sportsman. He was as diligent in
the classroom as on the playing field, and most enjoyed mathematics. According to Johnny Johnson, one of the great British aces of the next conflict, he was ‘a splendid fighter pilot, an
outstanding leader and a tactician of rare quality . . . his foes held him in high regard.’
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Boelcke brought a scientific coolness to air
fighting, codifying tactics in a book called the
Dicta Boelcke
. He laid down four basic principles: (1) the higher your aeroplane, the greater your advantage; (2) attack with the sun
behind you, so you are invisible to your opponent; (3) use cloud to hide in; and (4) get in as close as possible. They sound simple, but in the sudden chaos that characterized fights, these rules
were easily forgotten.
For all his professionalism he enjoyed the kill, as is apparent from his description of the downing of an unsuspecting Vickers ‘Gunbus’. Boelcke was flying at 3,500 feet when he saw
the enemy aircraft fly over the lines at Arras and head for Cambrai. He crept in behind it unseen and followed for a while. His fingers were ‘itching to shoot’, but he controlled
himself.
‘[I] withheld my fire until I was within 60 metres of him,’ he wrote afterwards. ‘I could plainly see the observer in the front seat peering out downward. Knack-knack-knack . .
. went my gun. Fifty rounds, and then a long flame shot out of his engine. Another fifty rounds at the pilot. Now his fate was sealed. He went down in long spirals to land. Almost every bullet of
my first series went home. Elevator, rudder, wings, engine, tank and control wires were shot up.’
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Surprisingly,
both
the pilot, Captain Charles Darley, and the observer, Lieutenant R. J. Slade, survived.
As the war entered a new year, it was vital to come up with a means of countering the German challenge if the British and French air forces were not to be cleared from the skies. Trenchard was
determined that patrols should continue despite the threat. His solution was to provide a cluster of escorts for each reconnaissance flight. The method soaked up resources. On one flight, on 7
February 1916, a single BE2C from 12 Squadron took off, accompanied by twelve other aircraft. The approach was unsustainable.
Eventually Allied technology came up with an antidote to the Fokker and the menace subsided. In the spring of 1916 the trim French Nieuport 11, nicknamed the ‘Bébé’,
began to arrive on British squadrons. Its Lewis gun was fixed on the top wing, but it was more agile than the E1 and good pilots could get the better of it. The ‘Bébé’ was
joined by another French type, produced by the French firm JPAD, which carried a synchronized Vickers gun. The second-generation pusher types – the DH2s and robust FE2 ‘Fees’ also
learned how to cope and even prevail, exploiting the fact that the gunner, perched in the front nacelle, had a wide field of fire and his weapon laid down a more rapid stream of bullets than the
armament of the Fokker, which was slowed by the interrupter gear. It was a Fee that did for Max Immelmann, who was brought down by the fire of Corporal J. H. Waller, an observer with 25 Squadron,
on 18 June 1916 over the village of Lentz, shortly after he had scored his seventeenth
victory. The appearance of the excellent two-man Sopwith ‘1½
Strutter’, which combined a synchronized Vickers for the pilot and a Lewis for the observer, helped to turn the tide.
But no advantage lasted for long. The respite was short. The RFC’s ascendancy faded with the appearance of the Albatros, a sleek, fast biplane with twin, fuselage-mounted Spandaus, which
in ‘Bloody April’ of 1917 would generate a new crisis. Each season brought another frightening novelty. This fear was not confined to the combatants. Across the Channel, civilians were
learning what the birth of military aviation meant for them.