Aviation in Peace and War Part 4

I may mention here the "special duty" flights, which consisted in establis.h.i.+ng secret communication between our Intelligence Branch and agents in the territory occupied by the Germans. Agents, mostly French and Belgian, were carried by aeroplane over the enemy lines and landed there. This work was started in 1914.

_Fighting._

At the beginning of the war it became obvious that it was not only the duty of aircraft to obtain information but also to prevent enemy aircraft crossing our lines. In addition to the reconnaissance machine, and in order to make its work possible, a machine designed purely for fighting was required. In August, 1914, the aeroplane's armament consisted simply of rifle, or carbine, and revolver, but our pilots nevertheless attacked hostile machines whenever the opportunity occurred. The first German machine to fly over us was at Maubeuge on August 22nd, 1914, and, though fighting on an extensive scale did not take place until 1916, as early as August 25th, 1914, there were three encounters in the air in which two enemy machines were driven down. One interesting report of an early fight is that between a B.E. and a German machine on December 20th, 1914.

"A German aeroplane with one pa.s.senger and pilot being encountered over Poperinghe, we followed to Morbecque and then to Armentieres.

The pa.s.senger of the B.E. fired 40 rounds from his rifle and the German pa.s.senger replied with some rounds from his revolver. The B.E. crossed the bows of the German machine to permit the pilot to use his revolver. The German switched off and dived below the B.E., and is believed to have landed somewhere north-west of Lille."

Another instance of the early air combats was when Holt, single-handed, and armed only with a rifle, lashed to a strut of his machine, attacked ten Germans near Dunkirk, causing them to drop their bombs in the field and make off to their own lines.

We managed to bring down a number of German machines, mainly by rifle fire (five had already been brought down by September 7th, 1914), but our great difficulty early in the war was to get the enemy into action, and, although during October and November, 1914, there was a certain amount of fighting, as a rule the German when attacked made for his own lines and the protection of his anti-aircraft guns. This, though offensive carried to the extent of wastefulness of life is equally bad, was a serious mistake in all ways from his point of view, entailing as it did a tendency for the confidence of the troops and the morale of the air service to be undermined from the outset. The error was rectified, but only temporarily, at the Somme.

As the specialized duties of aircraft increased, the Corps machines engaged in them needed protection and it was realized that the best method of protection was the development of the air offensive. This was rendered possible by the adaptation of the machine gun to the aeroplane.

Early in 1915 the invention of the "synchronizing gear" enabled a machine gun to fire through the propeller, and by the end of 1915 fighting in the air became the general rule. The first squadron, No. 24, composed purely of fighting machines, took its place on the Western Front in February, 1916, and gradually Wings were attached to Armies solely for fighting and the protection of Corps machines. During the long months of the Battle of the Somme, for instance, when, though the Royal Flying Corps dominated the air, the Germans put up a strenuous opposition, bombing machines were protected by fighting patrols in formation on the far side of the points attacked. The rapidity with which fighting in the air developed is shown by the fact that at the end of 1916 twenty new fighting squadrons were asked for on the Western Front; the establishment was increased to twenty-four machines per squadron, and by the end of the war even night-fighting squadrons were operating with considerable success and, had the war continued, would have proved a very important factor in air warfare.

The development of aerobatics, air fighting, and formation tactics brought many airmen into prominence. For example Albert Ball, who ascribed his successes to keen application to aerial gunnery; J. B.

McCudden, the first man to bring four hostile machines down in a day; and Trollope, who later on brought down six. Hawker met his death fighting von Richthofen, who describes the fight in his book _The Red Air Fighter_ as follows:--

"Soon I discovered that I was not fighting a beginner. He had not the slightest intention to break off the fight.... The gallant fellow was full of pluck, and when we had got down to 3,000 feet he merrily waved to me as if to say, 'Well, how do you do?'... The circles which we made round one another were so narrow that their diameter was probably not more than 250 or 300 feet.... At that time his first bullets were flying round me, as up to then neither of us had been able to do any shooting."

At 300 feet Hawker was compelled to fly in a zig-zag course to avoid bullets from the ground and this enabled Richthofen to dive on his tail from a distance of 150 feet.

This indicates a heavy disadvantage under which our aircraft laboured in all their work on the Western Front. The prevailing westerly wind which, while it a.s.sisted the enemy in his homeward flight, made it very difficult for a British machine, perhaps damaged by anti-aircraft fire, to make its way--still under fire--to its base.

I cannot leave the subject of air fighting without giving one or two more examples. One which comes to mind is that of five British machines attacking twenty-five of the enemy. One of ours gliding down with its engine stopped and being attacked by two Germans was saved by another British one attacking and driving off the two enemy. The result of the combat was five German machines destroyed and four driven down out of control, whilst all of ours returned safely. Another example, that of Barker who, whilst destroying an enemy two-seater, was wounded from below by another German machine and fell some distance in a spin.

Recovering, he found himself surrounded by fifteen Fokkers, two of which he attacked indecisively but shot down a third in flames. Whilst doing this he was again wounded, again fainted, again fell, again recovered control and again, being attacked by a large formation, shot down an enemy in flames. A bullet now shattered his left elbow and, fainting a third time, he fell several thousand feet, where he was again attacked, and thinking his machine had been set on fire he tried, as he thought in a final effort, to ram a Fokker, but instead drove it down on fire!

Barker was by this time without the use of both legs and an arm. Diving to a few thousand feet of the ground he again found his retreat barred by eight of the enemy, but these he was able to shake off after short bursts of fire and he returned a few feet above the ground to our lines.

Though at the beginning our machines were rather better than either the French or German, it was the marked superiority of our pilots which gave us the greatest advantage. We should have been superior even had the machines been exchanged.

CO-OPERATION WITH THE NAVY.

We have seen that the functions of co-operation with the Navy--Coast defence and Fleet a.s.sistance--were very complicated, and that at the outbreak of war the splendid pilots and excellent equipment of the R.N.A.S. were not so highly organized and were wanting in cohesion, but that the R.N.A.S. had advanced further than the Royal Flying Corps in specialized technical development. In the earlier part of the war, in addition to its main duties, the R.N.A.S. ventured in many directions, many of them of considerable value to the Army, as, for instance, at Antwerp.

_Coast Defence, Patrol and Convoy Work._

Immediately war broke out a system of coastal patrols was established between the Humber and the Thames Estuary and over the Channel--the latter serving as an escort to the Expeditionary Force crossing to France. Patrols were at first, through limitations of equipment, mainly confined to the Home coast, but, as the war went on and machines improved, they were rapidly extended, especially in connection with the detection and destruction of submarines; reconnaissances were carried out over the enemy's sh.o.r.es, and in 1918 there were forty-three flights of seaplanes, thirty flights of aeroplanes, together with flying boats and airs.h.i.+ps, operating from, and communicating with, an ever-increasing number of sh.o.r.e stations. Not only was anti-submarine work carried out in the vicinity of the coast, but organized hunts were made for submarines, s.h.i.+ps were convoyed on the high seas, s.h.i.+pping routes were protected, and action was taken to bar the pa.s.sage of submarines through narrow channels. This was effected by an intensive system of combining and interlocking patrols, and by maintaining, in close co-operation with surface craft, a protective barrage across suitable stretches of water, such as the Straits of Dover.

Airs.h.i.+ps from the beginning, when patrols operated from Kingsnorth during the crossing of the Expeditionary Force to France, proved particularly useful for escort, in addition to patrol work, and twenty-seven small airs.h.i.+ps, known as the S.S. type, were completed in 1915. In 1916 the Coastal type with a longer range was designed and constructed and new airs.h.i.+p bases were established.

_Fleet a.s.sistance, Reconnaissance, Spotting for s.h.i.+ps' Guns._

The successful use of Drachen kite-balloons borne in s.h.i.+ps at the Dardanelles led to their extensive development. Up to about May, 1915, when the vessels to which they were attached could stand in close to sh.o.r.e and overlook the enemy's positions from a distance of three or four thousand yards, a large amount of spotting of great value was carried out by these balloons for s.h.i.+ps at Gallipoli, but when the Turks brought long-range guns into position, kite-balloon vessels were obliged to lie out beyond 11,000 yards and their services were rendered comparatively slight for this purpose. From 1916, however, they were towed by merchant auxiliaries and light cruisers to spot submarines, observers communicating with the patrol s.h.i.+p by means of telephone. One of the most wonderful sights I have ever seen was from the observer's basket of the kite-balloon let up from S.S. "Manica" in June, 1915. We were spotting for the guns of H.M.S. "Lord Nelson" bombarding Chanak.

The sky and sea were a marvellous blue and visibility excellent, the peninsula, where steady firing was going on all the time, lay below us, the Straits, with their s.h.i.+ps and boats, the Asiatic sh.o.r.e gradually disappearing in a golden haze, the Gulf of Xeros, the Marmora, and behind one the islands of the aegean affording a perfect background. No one who was at the Dardanelles, however vivid the horrors and the heat and dust and flies, will forget the beauty of the scene, especially at sunset, and it was seen at its best from the basket of a kite-balloon.

The ever-increasing a.s.sistance rendered by aircraft to surface vessels in crippling Germany's submarine campaign is shown by the fact that in 1915 ten submarines were attacked from the air and in 1918 126 were sighted and 93 attacked. Nor was the principle forgotten in countering the submarine menace that offence is the best defence, and among the many duties of R.N.A.S. aircraft, based on Dunkirk from the early days of the war, were anti-submarine patrols along the Belgian coast and the bombing of hostile submarine bases, such as Bruges.

As in the case of the Army Corps observation machines, fighting scouts became necessary for the protection of patrols and to counter the enemy's efforts at raids and sea reconnaissance, and the considerable amount of experiment in air fighting which the R.N.A.S. had made before the war bore useful fruit.

For the immediate protection of the Grand Fleet seaplane and aeroplane bases were established at Scapa Flow and Thurso at the beginning of the war, but, owing to damage from a gale in November, 1914, aircraft operations with the Fleet were carried out from the seaplane carrier "Campania." The problem of using carriers with the Fleet had not been seriously tackled before the war, and though experiments were strenuously carried out, and there were fourteen carrier s.h.i.+ps in commission in 1918, and a seaplane carrier operated with the Battle Cruiser Squadron at Jutland, the use of aircraft in this way did not become very efficient. One of the chief difficulties was limitation in size, and consequently in radius of action, of aircraft employed from carriers or the decks of battles.h.i.+ps. The total number of aeroplanes and seaplanes allotted to the Grand Fleet in 1918 was 350.

Seaplane carriers occasionally co-operated with fighting s.h.i.+ps. For instance in October, 1915, a fast carrier at the Dardanelles accompanied s.h.i.+ps detailed for the bombardment of Dedeagatch, and her seaplanes not only co-operated in spotting but also made a valuable reconnaissance of the Bulgarian coast and railway. But as a rule fighting and reconnaissance aircraft had mainly to work from sh.o.r.e bases. To a.s.sist in this direction, units were sent overseas to be nearer their sphere of action, as, for instance, the R.N.A.S. squadrons stationed at Dunkirk which, besides general reconnaissance, helped the Navy to keep open the Straits of Dover, carried out bombing raids against German bases and dockyards, such as Ostend, Zeebrugge, and Bruges, and co-operated with monitors in the bombardment of the Belgian coast. The development of a long-range seaplane or flying boat was also taken in hand, though an efficient type was not produced until the last year of the war.

As with the Army, an important part of naval aircraft duties was spotting for gunfire; and likewise single-seater fighters were required for the protection of our own aircraft, for preventing enemy aircraft reconnaissance, for attacking the enemy's fleet and protecting our own.

The use of offensive patrols steadily increased during the war.

_Bombing._

I have already referred to bombing and mentioned the attack on Dusseldorf as an instance of the work done. Bombing raids had always been looked on with favour by the R.N.A.S. and were used throughout the war as a means of countering hostile aircraft operations from bases in Belgium. One of the first successful raids was that against the Friedrichshaven Zeppelin works by three Avro machines, which flew 250 miles over enemy country on November 21st, 1914. Another noteworthy example was the attempted raid against Cuxhaven on Christmas Day, 1914, carried out by seaplanes, which were still in an experimental stage, and three carriers escorted by naval units. Powerful machines for bombing purposes were ordered and bombs of greatly increased size and gear for dropping them were designed.

_Torpedo Attack._

The impetus given to bombing helped forward another use of naval aircraft: torpedo attack. This is likely to develop in the future into one of the most important uses of aircraft in naval operations, but during the war it was never given an objective by the German fleet. In May, 1915, two Sunbeam Short machines were embarked in the "Ben-my-Chree" for operations at Gallipoli, and it was in this theatre that for the first time in history s.h.i.+ps were sunk by torpedoes released from aircraft. I shall never forget the night when we steamed silently up the narrow Gulf of Xeros and lay waiting to release our seaplanes in the still darkness of the early morning. The machines were lowered noiselessly into the water, and, their engines started, flew across the narrow neck of Bulair under fire from the old Turkish line; then, reaching the northern end of the Dardanelles at dawn, they descended low (one machine actually landed on the water and discharged its torpedo), sank their targets, and returned. In addition to the possibility of submarine attack, the Gulf of Xeros is so narrow that our s.h.i.+p could have been hit by the cross fire of field guns. It was a very fine performance and, although during many years I have spent anxious hours hoping for the distant purr of a safe returning machine, I have never been happier than when after a long wait our seaplanes were again quickly raised on board. The only torpedo machine employed at the Battle of Jutland was a Sunbeam fitted with a 14-inch torpedo, and it was not until just before the Armistice that a squadron of torpedo aircraft was ready for operations with the Grand Fleet.

The Germans also tried to develop the use of torpedo-carrying seaplanes and, as with their submarines, had the advantage over us of a vast number of targets close to hand in our North Sea and Channel s.h.i.+pping, but fortunately the British fighting scouts were able to destroy several of their machines before they had done much damage.

HOME DEFENCE.

At the beginning of the war the R.N.A.S. a.s.sumed responsibility for the defence of Great Britain against attacks by hostile aircraft, and a scheme for the defence of London and other large towns was entrusted to an anti-aircraft section of the Admiralty Air Department. Its resources, however, consisting of a few unsuitable and widely scattered aeroplanes, some 1 pdr. pom-poms with searchlights manned by a special corps, were inadequate and it was fortunate that only three small daylight aeroplane raids, mainly for reconnaissance, were made during 1914--the first German machine to visit England dropping a bomb near Dover on December 21st.

_Night Flying and Night Fighting._

In spite of continuous action by the R.N.A.S. against German airs.h.i.+p bases in Belgium, there were in 1915 nineteen airs.h.i.+p and eight aeroplane raids--one by night--over England, and, although the new and powerful Zeppelin L.Z.38, which attacked London on May 31st, was destroyed by an aeroplane counter-attack in its shed near Brussels, no real counter measures were evolved until 1916, when Home Defence was taken over by the War Office. During that year a Home Defence Squadron of B.E.2c's, rapidly expanded to a Wing, was formed; and the systematic training of night pilots, the standardization of night-flying equipment and armament, and the lighting of aerodromes, was taken in hand. A continuous aeroplane and searchlight barrage with night landing grounds was gradually formed between Dover and the Forth; the wireless signals employed to a.s.sist Zeppelins in finding their way were intercepted, thus enabling our rapidly improving fighting machines to pick up and attack raiding airs.h.i.+ps; and the constant attacks to which airs.h.i.+p sheds were exposed in Belgium, caused their withdrawal to positions further inland and increased their distance from England. During 1916 there were twenty-two raids by airs.h.i.+ps, six of which were destroyed, the first being brought down in September at Cuffley by Leefe Robinson.

Thenceforward airs.h.i.+p raids declined, the destruction of the majority of the largest and latest which raided England on October 19th, 1917, sealing their fate.

On the other hand, aeroplane daylight and night raids on London, the first of which occurred in November, 1916, increased in number and strength with the object, in addition to the destruction of material and civilian _morale_, of forcing upon us the unsound retention at home of a considerable air defence force. The largest of these attacks was made by seventeen aeroplanes at midday on June 13th, 1917, but, the Zeppelin danger nullified, counter measures to meet the new menace were gradually evolved. New squadrons were raised and the number of home defence squadrons was raised to fourteen service and eight night training squadrons; a Northern Home Defence Wing was formed at York; and the Home Defence Group became the 6th Brigade. The first night aeroplane raid occurred in September, and the systematic training of night-fighting pilots on scout machines was hurried on. Separate zones for aeroplanes, guns and searchlights--the latter provided with sound locators--forming an outer barrage, were inst.i.tuted, and ap.r.o.ns, supported by kite-balloons, formed a protective barrage up to 8,000 feet. A system of wireless and ground telephonic communication was improvised for plotting the course of attacking aircraft and thus enabling squadron commanders to concentrate machines at the point of attack. By 1918 the night-fighting aeroplane, a.s.sisted by these means, had countered the night-bombing aeroplane. At first, this had been the result of the retention of a large number of fighting aircraft and a complete organization at home.

Meanwhile, night fighting, especially the protection of night bombers by fighting machines, had become of paramount importance on the Western Front. The chief feature of activity in September, 1918, was the successful co-operation between searchlights in the forward areas and No. 151 night-fighting squadron. This was the first night-fighting squadron, trained by the 6th Brigade, to be sent to France. It was proposed to send four more such squadrons and thus form a first line of offensive defence which would react on hostile raids over England. Thus once again the old doctrine was gradually observed that offence is the only true defence, and that purely defensive measures, however efficient, by keeping men and material from the vital point, are necessarily expensive out of all proportion to their effectiveness. Both the Germans and ourselves made the initial mistake of organizing large local defence systems partly to placate public opinion. During the German offensive of 1918 a further development of night fighting took place in the bombing and low strafing of enemy troops and unlighted transport with the aid of flares.

THE MACHINE AND ENGINE.

Turning now to the machine and engine, the Military Trials held in 1912, when the Royal Flying Corps was started, represented the first organized effort to a.s.sist the evolution of service aeroplanes in this country and a brief comparison will be useful to show the performance of the average machines and engines of that date, at the beginning, and at the end of the war, and of civil machines of to-day.

At the Military Compet.i.tions of 1912, of the eight types--Avro, B.E., Bristol, Cody, Bleriot, Deperdussin, Hanriot, and M. Farman--the first four were British, though only the Avro had a British engine, and the last four French, fitted with French engines. The average horse-power was about 83, the average maximum speed 67, and the minimum 50 miles per hour; the climb to 1,000 feet was effected in 4-1/2 minutes with an average load of 640 lb., which included pilot, fuel for four hours and useful load. The loading per square foot was, for biplanes, about 4-1/2, and, for monoplanes, 6 lb.

On the outbreak of war, and until the end of 1914, of the ten types in use--Avro, B.E., Bristol, Sopwith, Vickers, M. Farman, H. Farman, Caudron, Morane, and Voisin--five were British and five were French and all were fitted with French engines. The average horse-power was still about 83, but the average maximum speed had risen to 74, and the minimum had fallen to 41 miles per hour. The load averaged 609 lb.

A remarkable advance in machine and engine construction is shown by referring to the tables for 1918. At the Armistice of the twelve types--Avro, Bristol Fighter, Sopwith Snipe, S.E. 5a, de Havilland 4 and 9a, Vickers Vimy, Handley Page O/400 and V/1,500, Fairey Seaplane 3c, F.

2 A. and F. 5--all were British and, except the de Havilland 9a, which had an American engine, were fitted with engines of British manufacture.