I.
To appreciate the work of the flying service, it must be remembered that the pilot in the machine is only the spearhead of the weapon, and behind the spearhead must be a stout and reliable haft, so that the business end can be driven home with full effect.
The helve of the haft consists of the carpenters who true-up, inspect, and repair the machines; the engineers who clean, test, and keep the engines in order; the armourers who adjust the bombs and machine-guns; and the working party who push about the boats and fill the tanks with petrol.
These men constantly worked against time at night, for long periods at a stretch, frequently rocking on their feet with fatigue, engaged on work which had to be done honestly and without mistake, for on it depended the lives of the crew, the safety of valuable material, and the success of the operations.
In the popular mind all work done by the flying service seems to be credited to the pilot, and the work of the men behind him gets overlooked—work which is hard and exacting, and with little honour and reward. Owing to the shortage of machines, and the booming out of patrols in the summer months from three in the morning till ten o'clock at night, the men were driven at high pressure.
On the afternoon of the last day of April the Engineer Chief reported that the engines of one of the boats had to come out and be replaced. It was a job that usually had taken four or five days. The bomb-gears had to be stripped, the wings unshipped, the petrol piping and water connections cast adrift, and the engines whipped out. And then the whole process had to be reversed. But the tom-tom was beaten, a War Council of the four Chiefs held, and in the grey misty twilight before dawn next morning the boat was rolled out on the concrete to have her new engines tested, the men who had shoved the work through in the fierce stabbing of the blazing yard-arm groups, standing about her, pallid, drooping, and haggard.
Two hours later she took the air.
'Twas May-day, and the happy pilots, Perham and Tiny, went off in her to look in the Spider Web. They were out past the North Hinder intently sweeping the horizon for signs of Fritz, when the engineer passed forward to them a signal pad, on which was scrawled—
"Sir, a float seaplane on our tail."
Perham popped up through the front cockpit like a Jack-in-the-box, and looked back. He saw a large and nasty-looking twin-engined machine right behind, and the smoke of tracer bullets lacing the air. On his frantic signals, Tiny shoved forward the controls, and dived for the water at a rate of knots. Just above the surface he made a sharp right-hand turn.
The Hun dived after them, all guns going, but failed to get a burst home. He flashed past when the boat changed direction. Having lost the advantage of surprise, the Hun pilot carried straight on, and quickly disappeared at high speed towards Zeebrugge, both propellers rotating briskly.
This Boche, when he got back to his base, must have told tall tales of the encounter; he was finally interned in Holland, where he was met by Perham, who unfortunately also became a guest of the same neutral country some time later. The flying-boats were painted a light grey, and the enemy pilot was spreading the pleasing report that it was no use attacking them, as they were made of armoured steel. He knew this, he said, because he had attacked one at close quarters, and had seen his bullets bouncing off. As a matter of fact, a careful examination of the boat failed to bring to light any traces of bullet holes.
Retribution fell upon us on this day for the loss of 8659, for it was found that she should have been sent to the seaplane station at Killingholme, and sundry unjust people, accusing us of performing the act of hot-stuffing, demanded one of the War Flight's precious boats in lieu thereof. Two "alien" pilots arrived and picked out our newest and best, a boat which had just been painted, provided with wireless, and fitted with all possible conveniences and comforts, and in spite of our shrieks of protest shoved her down into the water and flew her away.
Seven enemy submarines were sighted and five bombed during the month of May; the first attempts to convoy the Beef Trip were made, not very successfully; and the first anti-Zeppelin patrols were carried out.
The Beef Trip, as it was called by the pilots at Felixstowe, or the Dutch Traffic, as it was known officially, was a convoy of merchant ships which ran two or three times a month between England and the Hook of Holland, and was alleged by the aforesaid pilots to carry Dutch beef to England and English beer to the Dutch.
In the dark hours of the chosen morning fifteen or sixteen cargo-boats would gather in X.I. channel near the Shipwash, and would be picked up there by destroyers and light cruisers from Harwich. The merchant ships would get into formation and start across the North Sea. The keen destroyers, sharp as needles, would zigzag and throw circles around them, like a group of rat-terriers chasing a cat around a knot of old ladies. They did this in order to intimidate any submarine commander out pot-hunting. While the swift light cruisers, stately and imperturbable, would boil along well out on the dangerous flank, apparently ignoring the fuss and fury of the show going on near them, but keeping a good look-out in case a striking force of Hun destroyers made a snatch at the convoy.
At the Hook of Holland another fleet of cargo-boats would be waiting in neutral waters to be escorted back, and the whole circus would start off again for England.
The pilots of the flying-boats patrolled the ever-changing route the night before, in case a hungry Fritz, bent on sinking the beef and beer, was lying in wait, and the following day would provide an aerial escort for the convoy, looking out for submarines, enemy seaplanes, which might desire to lay explosive eggs on the ships, or Hun surface craft.
When attacking single ships Fritz endeavoured to close to a range of from three hundred to six hundred yards before firing a torpedo. But when attacking a convoy they fired at ranges between five hundred and a thousand yards, and sometimes longer, in which case they did not pick out an individual ship, but merely fired into the brown. They waited in front of a convoy until the ships were sighted, and then submerged, therefore the pilots in the flying-boats flew in great loops from from five to ten miles in front of the surface craft.
Destroyers on Beef Trip.
As the Beef Trip plodded along at eleven knots, taking eleven hours to cross, the flying-boat pilots were sent out in relays, meeting the surface craft at various places on the route as requisite, and remaining with them until relieved. The relays were so arranged that each set of flying-boats was out for five hours and a half.
This work called for extreme nicety in navigation, in order that the boats should make contact with the moving ships at the correct time and position. At first the results were rather ragged, but eventually it became an evolution. The pilots were later informed, in a letter of appreciation, that before they took a hand in the game the crews of the destroyers and light cruisers were kept at action stations throughout the entire trip, but that, now the flying-boats accompanied them, half of the men were allowed to stand off.
Zeppelins from the sheds of Wittmundshaven, Nordholz, and Tondern ran regular daylight patrols outside the Bight and as far south as Terschelling Bank. They did their navigation by wireless, so their positions and courses were fixed by the English direction-finding wireless stations, in the same way as the German submarines were fixed. The euphonism for this method in the service was to say: "We are told by the Little Woman in Borkum that Anna is at so and so." Anna being the first Zeppelin, Bertha the second, Clara the third, and so on. But they were wily birds and hard to catch, their crews keeping a sharp look-out around and all about. The boats had to cross the North Sea to get at them, and they could outclimb a flying-boat heavily laden with petrol for the return journey. They could only be attacked successfully by surprise, and at first the boats had no success.
These Zeppelins kept a suspicious eye on what our light naval forces were doing, and occasionally dropped bombs on the Harwich submarines doing surface patrol on the Dogger Bank. But fortunately gas-bags roll too much for good dropping to be done from them, and their bombs had little effect. Sometimes they would wireless for seaplanes to come out and bomb our submarines, but as, almost up to the end of the war, the Huns used bombs which touched off and burst on the surface of the water, they had little success.
I blew over to Parkeston one day to yarn with a submarine commander about this. He put me into a big soft arm-chair in the wardroom of the mother-ship, placed a potent cocktail in my fist, provided me with a cigarette, and then we communed sweetly together.
"Remember the Fritz your fellows sighted twice last month on the Brown Ridge?" he asked. "Sent out an E-boat to stalk him. Caught him blown on the surface. Put a tin fish into him. Thanks."
He did not use many words but said a great deal. I asked him if submarine often stalked submarine.
"Talked to a fellow up from down south. On diving patrol. Saw Fritz on surface. Torpedo blew Hun commander out of conning-tower. Sole survivor. Seemed much worried. Finally opened heart. Warned our man to clear out as four more U-boats were working in immediate area. Said he could not bear to be sunk twice in one day."
"Please go on," I asked.
"Boat from here stalked Fritz. Fritz heard him—dived. Both went blind under water dead slow. Our chap felt Fritz scrape past under him. Opened everything. Made himself as heavy as possible. Drove Fritz down to bottom. Soft mud. Sat on him for twelve hours. Tide silted them in. Our boat nearly caught. Just managed to pull himself out."
I asked about bombs.
"Don't think much of bombs. Bombed by Zepps several times. Crockery smashed. Great enthusiasm, small results. Boats are hard to kill dead."
"Sometimes," I agreed. "But how about that U-C off Ireland?"
"Which?" he asked. "U-C's are mine-layers. Double hull. Only one hatch to conning-tower. Vulnerable point."
"The one whose commander popped up right beside a trawler, found himself looking into the skipper's whiskers, didn't like 'em, panicked, and pressed the diving button. The trawler was armed only with a rifle for sinking mines found on the surface."
"Right," he cut in. "I remember. Skipper shot commander. Body jammed hatch open. Boat dived. Fished up two weeks later in fifteen fathoms. Valuable information."
"And all done," I chuckled, "with an ounce of nickle-coated lead and a pennyworth of cordite. We carry bombs weighing one hundred pounds, we are shortly getting bombs weighing two hundred and thirty pounds, and will soon carry bombs weighing five hundred."
He was very polite but not impressed, until I added: "And we burst 'em with a delay-action fuse eighty feet down. The bombs dropped on you by the Huns burst on the surface."
He asked me how we took aim. I told him about the bomb-sight, and that at eight hundred feet the bomb-dropper should make one hit out of three on a visible target. And I added that the flying-boats did eighty-two knots to the Zeppelin's fifty-five, so that a submarine had less chance to get down.
"That's all different," he said. "Hope the Germans don't do the same. Life's getting harder and harder."
Later on he told me this yarn.
"Life's hard. Nobody loves us. Ships fire first, inquire afterwards. Off Terschelling at daybreak. Suddenly saw Harwich flotilla. Didn't know they were out. Infuriated destroyers coming straight for me. Dived. Hit sandbank. Conning-tower showing above surface. Broadside on to flotilla leader. Right on top of me. Reversed one engine, went ahead on other. Swung round. Destroyer shaved past. Wash lifted me off. Slid into deep water. Depth charges dropped. Electric lamps and crockery broken. Much annoyed. Said so when I returned."
I had another yarn with him in 1918. He said:
"On Dogger Bank. Saw Zeppelin. Later saw seaplane. Dived. Hundred and fifty feet. Bomb exploded eighty feet above me. Shook boat badly. Moved north eighty miles. Same thing happened. What's to be done?"