Co-operation with the Army.
Reconnaissance.
In the event of France and England declaring war concurrently against Germany, the strategic plan agreed to by the British and French general staffs before the war had been that the British Expeditionary Force should be moved to the Le Cateau, Maubeuge, Mons, area and take up a line on the left flank of the French Army near Mons. But England had withheld her declaration until three days after the French, and on landing in France the first words I heard said by a Frenchman were: "Oui, l'armée anglaise arrive mais on a manqué le premier plan." It was not until after the arrival of G.H.Q. at Amiens on August 14th that, although late, it was decided that the advanced line should be taken up. The Royal Flying Corps moved by air and road to an existing aerodrome outside the antique defences of Maubeuge 12 miles from Mons on the 16th. On the 19th the first reconnaissance was carried out, and the entire country over which the German armies were advancing, as far as Brussels and Louvain, was kept under observation. One of the best reconnaissances ever made was that of August 21st, which discovered the 2nd German Corps moving from Brussels through Ninhove and Grammont.
From Maubeuge we had to retire on the 24th to Le Cateau, on the 25th to St. Quentin, on the 26th to La Fère, on the 28th to Compiègne, on the 30th to Senlis, on the 31st to Juilly, on September 2nd to Serris, on the 3rd to Touquin, on the 4th to Melun, where we were thankful at last to get orders again to advance on the 7th to Touquin, and on the 9th to Coulommiers, reaching Fère-en-Tardennois on the 12th for the Battle of the Aisne.
Of the many recollections of the early days one which will remain longest in my mind is the terrible sadness of the flocks of refugees, of the poor people we left behind. And the glare of villages burning by the hand of the Boche. It was indeed war.
Valuable reconnaissances were made during the whole Retreat from Mons to the Marne in spite of the tremendous difficulties involved by constant movement, transport, and the selection of new landing grounds, but, in the words of Sir John French, "It was the timely warning aircraft gave which chiefly enabled me to make speedy dispositions to avert danger and disaster. There can be no doubt indeed that even then the presence and co-operation of aircraft saved the very frequent use of cavalry patrols and detailed supports." The Royal Flying Corps was an important factor in helping the British Expeditionary Force to escape von Kluck's nearly successful efforts to secure another and a British Sedan.
The reconnaissance resulting in the most valuable information of all, and, I think, during the whole of the war, was that of September 3rd, during the critical operations on the Marne, which formed one of the decisive battles in the world's history, when von Kluck's turning movement to the south-east against the French left was accurately reported and Marshal Joffre was enabled to make his dispositions accordingly. "The precision, exactitude and regularity of the news brought in," he said in a message to the British Commander-in-Chief, "are evidence of the perfect training of pilots and observers." The reports of the German air service, on the other hand, would appear from von Kluck's movements to have been of no assistance to him.
The system adopted from the first was for the pilot or observer, or both, immediately on their return to bring their report to R.F.C. Headquarters, whence the Commander, or his staff officer, accompanied them to G.H.Q., where the map was filled in in accordance with the report. G.H.Q. could then ask questions and obtain any further information which the observer could give, while R.F.C. Headquarters could ascertain what further reports were most urgently required. The form of the reports, which were ready printed, had been most carefully thought out at R.F.C. Headquarters in peace and experimented with at the Concentration Camp.
The maps thus compiled at G.H.Q. from air reconnaissance reports between August 31st and September 3rd were of vital interest, though it was sometimes very difficult to get the information put on the map for prompt consideration. For instance, at Dammartin on the evening of September 1st, when it was thought that German cavalry were within a few miles, G.H.Q. made a very hurried departure, and I was unable to find anyone to whom to give very important reports.
It was at the Battle of the Marne that machines were for the first time allotted to Army Corps for tactical work, while long-distance reconnaissance was carried out by other machines operating from Headquarters. Later on, this system was established as a part of our permanent organization, squadrons being allotted to, and reporting direct to, Corps for tactical reconnaissance, artillery co-operation and contact patrols, and to Armies for longer-distance reconnaissance and fighting.
The last phase of the war of movement was the race for the Channel Ports and it devolved upon aircraft to observe the enemy's movements from his centre and left flank to meet the Allied movement to the coast, to observe the movements of the four newly-formed corps which came into action at Ypres and to maintain liaison with the Belgian and British forces at Antwerp and Ostend. Information was very difficult to obtain and on one occasion I flew from the Aisne to Antwerp, under Sir John French's instructions, in order as far as possible to clear up the general situation when our G.H.Q. was in doubt as to whether Antwerp was completely surrounded or not. It was an interesting piece of work. There was a light drizzle, and the forest of Compiègne had to be flown over at about 200 feet. The B.E. could not make the distance without refilling, and although only a short halt was made at Amiens for the purpose, it was too late to fly direct to Antwerp. Instead, a landing was made in a very sticky field under light plough, which was selected from the air about 4 miles north of Bruges, to which town I rode on a borrowed bicycle. At Bruges there was great consternation and uncertainty as to the position at Antwerp, but the Commander kindly placed a large open car and its very energetic driver at my disposal to try and get through. After many difficulties we managed to find our way into Antwerp by about midnight, and I was received by the Belgian Commander. He explained that though the Germans had broken through the South-Eastern sector and his troops were very hard pressed (and pointing repeatedly to a piece of an 18-inch German shell in the corner of the room, he said, "Mais qu'est-ce qu'on peut faire avec ces choses-là!"), he hoped to be able to hold out for a time. After giving him General French's message and obtaining as much information as possible, I managed to get clear of Antwerp, reaching Bruges again at 3.15 a.m. At 4 a.m. we set out and found a very wet machine in a wetter field and after considerable difficulty and flying through the top of the surrounding hedge, struggled into the upper air on the way back to Headquarters at Fère-en-Tardennois.
During the Battles of the Aisne and of Ypres strategical reconnaissance was carried out by the few machines available at Headquarters. Shephard, the best reconnaissance officer I have ever known, who was killed later, used to fly his B.E.2 without observer over the greater part of Belgium two or three times a week and always brought in a long, closely packed, and extraordinarily valuable report. Tactical reconnaissance to a depth of 15 to 20 miles was done by units attached to Corps.
After the Battle of the Aisne, which was the turning point in the evolution from the war of movement to trench warfare, pure reconnaissance, though still the basis of air work, tended to become a matter of routine, while many new and specialized forms of it—such as air photography and artillery spotting by wireless—were developed.
Photography.
Though experiments had been made in the problem of photography from the air before the war, principally by Fletcher, Hubbard and Laws, and its value to survey was recognized, it had not become of practical utility. We only took one official camera with us to France on August 13th, 1914, and it was not until September 15th that the first attempt at air photography was made, when five plates were exposed over positions behind the enemy's lines with very imperfect results. Its great value as an aid to observation in trench warfare was, however, very apparent, fresh brains were brought to the task, Moore-Brabazon, Campbell and Dr. Swan, and by the end of the year better success was obtained, though positions even then had to be filled in by the observer with red ink. Experiments at home during 1915 led to a great improvement in lenses, and at the beginning of 1916 air photography was universal. At the Battle of the Somme new enemy positions were photographed as soon as they were seen, and the camera did invaluable work in the reconnaissance of the Hindenburg Line during the German retreat of 1917, and the taking of over a thousand photographs was a daily occurrence. On September 4th, 1917, a record of 1,805 photographs was made.
The development of air photography, very remarkable in itself, is even more so when it is remembered that the improvement in enemy anti-aircraft guns drove our machines to carry out their work at altitudes increasing up to 20,000 and even 22,000 feet, at which heights the negatives had to be as distinct as those taken at 4,000 in the earlier days of the war.
At the beginning of the Dardanelles operations our apparatus consisted of one camera, a printing frame and a dark room lamp. The first photographs were taken by Butler in April, 1915, from a H. Farman machine at necessarily low altitudes. Butler was wounded in June and was succeeded by Thomson, who alone made 900 exposures and sent in 3,600 prints.
In addition to the assistance of air photography to reconnaissance, the war gave it great impetus as the handmaid of survey and mapping. It was, in fact, the only means of mapping or correcting the maps of country held by the enemy, which in certain cases, as at Gallipoli and in Palestine, were very inaccurate.
By the end of the war photographic processes and equipment had reached a high standard of excellence. There are still, however, certain difficulties in regard to the production of accurate maps, which have not been overcome, the most obvious being the necessity of an initial framework of fixed points and of contouring. The subject is considered so important that an "Air Survey Committee," consisting of representatives of the Air Ministry, the Geographical section of the War Office, the Ordnance Survey, the School of Military Engineering and the Artillery Survey School, has recently been formed. In addition, the School of Aeronautics of Cambridge University is studying the question. The Survey of India and the Survey of Egypt are also conducting experiments.
Wireless.
From the outset, part of the German scheme of tactics was to batter down resistance by means of superior weight of heavy armament, and with the beginning of warfare of fixed position the observation and direction of our artillery fire became as important as distant reconnaissance. Besides its immense value in increasing the effect of the batteries, it had the indirect advantage of more closely binding the ties of mutual understanding between the air and ground troops, a point which fortunately seems to have been misunderstood by the Germans. In September, 1914, the first attempts were made to signal enemy movements from the aeroplanes of a Headquarters Wireless Flight which had been formed for the purpose, and this practice was continued with success throughout the Battle of the Aisne.
In the earliest stages artillery co-operation was also carried out by dropping coloured lights, but from the Battle of Ypres onwards, though for some time very few wireless machines were available, this was effected by wireless or signal lamps. In his dispatch on the Battle of Loos, Sir John French wrote: "The work of observation for the guns from aeroplanes has now become an important factor in artillery fire, and the personnel of the two arms work in closest co-operation."
By the Battle of the Somme artillery co-operation had assumed very large dimensions. For instance, on September 15th, 1916, on the front of the 4th Army alone, seventy hostile batteries were located, twenty-nine being silenced. Counter-battery work was so effective before the offensive which opened on the Ypres front at the end of July, 1917, that the Germans withdrew their guns and the attack was delayed for three days in order that their new positions might be located.
Recognition marks on aeroplanes were at this time, and indeed throughout the war, a matter of great difficulty. It had been suggested before the war that they would not be necessary, but the reverse was found to be the case, as even with the distinctive marks which were adopted our machines were often fired at by British troops, and we should undoubtedly have lost very heavily if we had flown over our own lines with false marks, as was suggested, or none.
Bombing.
The bombing operations, which reached their climax in the raids on German industrial centres in 1918, arose from very primitive methods used at the beginning of the war. During the retreat from Mons a few hand grenades were carried experimentally in the pockets of pilots and observers, or, in the case of the larger varieties, tied to their bodies, and these were dropped over the side of the machine as opportunity occurred. At the Marne, for instance, small petrol bombs set fire to a transport park and scattered a mixed column of infantry and transport. I think I am right in saying that the first German bombs were dropped on us—unsuccessfully—at Compiègne on August 29th, 1914. It was not, however, until the beginning of 1915 that special bombing raids were started by the Royal Flying Corps, one of the first places to be attacked being the Ghistelles aerodrome in West Flanders.
The most important bombing operations and raids into Germany in the early days of the war were carried out by the Naval Air Service, units of which landed at Ostend on August 27th and operated with the Royal Naval Division from Antwerp. They were subsequently withdrawn to Dunkirk to form the nucleus of an aircraft centre from which excellent work was done in attacking the bases established on or near the Belgian coast from which German submarines and airships conducted their operations.
Just before the Germans entered Antwerp, the first raid was made against a German town, one machine reaching Dusseldorf, when it descended from 6,000 to 400 feet and dropped three bombs on an airship shed.
From the end of 1914 onwards the activities of the Royal Naval Air Service in this theatre of operations continually increased, the chief objectives being the gun emplacements at Middelkerke and Blankenburghe, the submarine bases at Zeebrugge and Bruges, the minefield and dock of Ostend, the airship sheds near Brussels, and the dockyards at Antwerp. The first airship destroyed in the air was attacked over Ghent.
An interesting experiment was the attempt by the R.N.A.S. at the Dardanelles to sink the heavy wire anti-submarine net, which had been stretched on buoys across the Straits at Nagara by the Turks, by means of parachute bombs.
To return to the Royal Flying Corps. During 1915 railway junctions were the principal bombing objectives, and raids were carried out on an ever-increasing scale, formations of fourteen to twenty machines taking part. At the Battle of Neuve Chapelle for instance, the railway junctions at Menin, Courtrai and Douai were attacked. One officer of No. 5 Squadron, carrying one 100 lb. bomb, arrived over Menin at 3,500 feet, descended to 120 feet, and dropped his bomb on the railway line. The first V.C. of the Royal Flying Corps was obtained at the Second Battle of Ypres by Lieutenant W. B. Rhodes-Moorhouse, who in bombing Courtrai came down to three or four hundred feet, under heavy fire, but piloted his machine 35 miles back to Merville at the height of a few hundred feet, and died a few days later from his wounds.
One of the most instructive features of the Battle of Loos in September, 1915, was the definite co-ordination of bombing attacks with army operations. Many types of machines, belonging both to Army and Corps Squadrons, carried bombs in order to destroy dumps, communications, cut off reinforcements, and the like, while at the Somme bombing was carried out by formations of Wings. In October, 1917, 113 tons, and for a period of six days in March, 1918, 95 tons, of explosives were dropped. This illustrates the enormous progress of bombing which was so largely resorted to in the later stages of the war. The hand grenades of 1914 had become bombs weighing three-quarters of a ton: the pilot's pocket a mechanically released rack: and aim, assisted by instruments, was becoming fairly accurate.
Night bombing, necessitated by the fact that by day a large machine heavily laden with bombs was an easy prey to the fighting scout, came into prominence in 1916, increasing in intensity up to the end of the war; and raids into Germany recommenced. Early in 1918 these raids included the bombing of Maintz, Stuttgart, Coblentz, Cologne, and Metz. Machines sometimes dropped their bombs from heights of about 12,000 feet and at other times descended to within 200 feet of their objectives.
Contact Patrol.
Contact patrol, the name given to the direct co-operation of aircraft with troops on the ground, was first extensively practised at the Battle of the Somme, though experiments in this direction had been made in 1915, messages being dropped at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle at pre-arranged points.
The main objects of contact patrols were to assist the telephone (which was frequently cut by shellfire), to keep the various headquarters informed of the progress of their troops during the attack, so also saving them from the possibility of coming under the fire of their own artillery, to report on enemy positions, to transmit messages from the troops engaged to the headquarters of their units, to attack ground formations, and to co-operate with tanks. A system of red flares on the floor of the trenches was used to mark the disposition of the troops, and aircraft communicated their information by means of signalling lamps, wireless and message-bags.
During the German retreat of 1917 contact patrols attacked enemy foundations from 100 feet and in some cases landed behind the enemy lines to obtain information. The skill of low-flying pilots in taking cover by flying behind woods, houses, etc., became increasingly important. The fact that 62,673 rounds of ammunition were fired from the air against enemy ground targets between November 20th and 26th, 1917, and 163,567 between March 13th and 18th, 1918, indicates the rapid development of this form of aircraft action, the effect of which was frequently more deadly than bombing.
Two of many protagonists of contact patrol were Pretyman and Bishop. On one occasion the latter, in attacking an aerodrome at about 50 feet, riddled the officers' and men's quarters with bullets, put two or three machines on the ground out of action, and three in succession as they got into the air. Another interesting example of contact patrol work occurred in 1917 when a pilot flew his machine at a low altitude over the enemy trenches, and he and his observer attracted the attention of the Germans by firing their machine guns and Verey lights. The Germans were so busy with the aeroplane that they had their backs turned to the front line and our infantry were able to cross no-man's land without any artillery preparation, take prisoners and bomb dug-outs.
An article in the Cologne Gazette showed what the Germans thought of low "strafing."
"The operations" (i.e. of June 7th, 1917), it says, "were prefaced by innumerable enemy airmen, who, at the beginning of the preparation for the attack, appeared like a swarm of locusts and swamped the front. They also work on cunningly calculated methods. Their habit is to work in three layers—one quite high, one in the middle, and the third quite low. The English who fly lowest show an immense insolence; they came down to 200 metres and shot at our troops with their machine guns, which are specially adapted to this purpose."
Armour was first employed as a result of Shephard finding at Maubeuge a bullet lodged in the seat of his leather suit. Thin sheets of steel were at once cut out and placed in the wickerwork seats of aeroplanes. This primitive protection developed into the armoured machine mentioned later, which was about to make its appearance at the Armistice.
I may mention here the "special duty" flights, which consisted in establishing 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 passenger and pilot being encountered over Poperinghe, we followed to Morbecque and then to Armentières. The passenger of the B.E. fired 40 rounds from his rifle and the German passenger 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 assisted 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.