Hindenburg and the German Crown Prince figure in the group on the left.
Another characteristic of all types was the V-shaped interplane strut, which, although the Germans also used them in their D3 Albatros, made the machines easy to recognise in the air.
In conclusion, the Silver Nieuport was a good machine to fight in, but a bad one either for running away or for catching a faint-hearted enemy, as its best air speed, even near the ground, rarely exceeded ninety-six or ninety-seven miles per hour.
CHAPTER III
ARRAS
With the beginning of March 1917, the Boche became very active in the air. The D3 V-strut Albatros appeared in numbers on the 3rd Army front, and about the same time a squadron of red-painted machines of this type, known to the R.F.C. as “the Circus,” did a good deal of damage to British machines and annoyed us very much. One aeroplane in particular, called the “Pink Lady” on account of an absurd story that it was flown by a woman—the machine itself was coloured bright red—was often seen between Arras and Albert. It is thought that the pilot was Freiherr von Richthofen the elder. This machine it was that, venturing well over our side of the line on March 6, 1917, crashed an F.E. and went on and engaged and shot down Evelyn Graves, whose machine caught fire. When picked up, he was found to have been shot through the head, so that he was spared the pain of death by burning.
After Evelyn Graves’s death, A. J. L. Scott, of the Sussex Yeomanry, was appointed to succeed him. He was a flight commander in 43—a Sopwith two-seater squadron—and was also lame as the result of a crash during the early part of the war, being the third lame squadron commander in succession appointed to 60.
Scott took up his appointment on March 10, 1917, about the time that the aerial offensive precedent to the Arras battle began to develop.
There had been, on the 3rd Army front, a lull during January and February, and by a lull is meant that pilots were doing one job a day instead of the two that they were almost certain to be called upon for when business was good. The casualties lists show this clearly, as, though E. O. Grenfell and Gilchrist were wounded in December, there were only two more casualties until Evelyn Graves’s death in March—R. Hopper, killed on January 11; and E. G. Herbert, wounded on the 28th. February passed without the loss of a single officer. This was due mainly to the month of hard frost referred to above, which kept the Hun machines on the ground. Even when machines did meet in the air at this time, it was very difficult to get the guns to fire, so that on several occasions the pilots, after manœuvring round one another for a while, waved hands and went home. A non-freezing gun-oil was brought out before the next winter, which put an end to these not altogether unwelcome interludes to the sterner business. Mention of Grenfell’s wound calls to mind the occasion on which he received it. An O.P. (offensive patrol) led by him, and consisting of Caldwell, Daly, Whitehead, Weedon, and Meintjies, met a two-seater Albatros over Dainville on our side of the line. All our machines opened fire, and the Hun hurriedly landed. Grenfell, anxious to get down and claim him, crashed and broke his leg, while all the other five machines landed, and three of these also crashed, not so seriously as to injure the pilots, but enough to prevent them taking off again. Thus the Hun in one field was flanked by a crashed Nieuport in every adjoining enclosure, while, to make matters worse, the Boche observer—who, unlike the pilot, was not wounded—set fire to his machine to prevent it falling into our hands. The machine shortly exploded, seriously injuring the observer and several of our own infantry who by that time were standing by. If these had grasped the situation a little more quickly they could easily have prevented the destruction of the machine, which it was important to preserve.