BATTLES IN THE AIR
He who conquers the fear of death is master of his fate. Upon this philosophy fifty thousand young men of the warring nations went forth to do battle among the clouds. The story of these battles is the real romance of the World War. In 1914 no one had ever known and history had never recorded a struggle to the death in the air. When the war ended a new literature of adventure had been created, a literature emblazoned with superb heroisms, with God-like daring, and with such utter disdain of death that they were raised out of the olden ranks of mere earth-crawling mankind and became supermen of the air.
Some of these heroic names became household words during the war. These were the aces of the French, American and German air-forces. The British adopted a policy in news concerning their airmen similar to that governing their publication of submarine sinkings. They argued that the naming of British, Canadian and Australian aces would direct the attacks of German aviators against the most useful men in the British forces. They also felt that publicity would tend toward the swagger which in English slang was "swank" and toward a deterioration in discipline.
Raoul Lufberry, Quentin Roosevelt, son of ex-President Roosevelt, and
Edward Rickenbacher were names that figured extensively in news of the
American air forces.
Lufberry and Roosevelt were killed in action. Rickenbacher, after dozens of hair-raising escapes from death, came through the war without injury. The pioneer of American aviators in the war was William Thaw of Yale, who formed the original Lafayette Escadrille.
Besides these men, America produced a number of other brilliant aces, an ace being one who brought down five enemy planes, each victory being attested by at least three witnesses.
The French had as their outstanding aces Georges Guynemer and Rene Fonck. Guynemer went into the flying game as a mechanician. He became the most formidable human fighting machine on the western front before he was sent to death in a blazing airplane.
Lieut. Rene Fonck ended the war with a total of seventy-five official aerial victories. He had an additional forty Huns to his credit but not officially confirmed. His greatest day was when he brought down six planes. His quickest work was the shooting down of three Germans in twenty seconds.
He fought three distinct battles in the air when, on May 8, 1918, he brought down six German airplanes in one day. All three engagements were fought within two hours. In all, Fonck fired only fifty-six shots, an average of little more than nine bullets for each enemy brought down—an extraordinary record, in view of the fact that aviators often fired hundreds of rounds without crippling their opponent.
The first fight, in which Lieutenant Fonck brought down three German machines, lasted only a minute and a half, and the young Frenchman fired only twenty-two shots. Fonck was leading two other companions on a patrol in the Moreuil-Montdidier sector on May 8th, when the French squadron met three German two-seater airplanes coming toward them in arrow formation. Signaling to his companions, Lieutenant Fonck dived at the leading German plane and, with a few shots sent it down in flames. Fonck turned to the left, and the second enemy flier followed in an effort to attack him from behind, but the Frenchman made a quick turn above him and, with five shots, sent the second German to death. Ten seconds had barely elapsed between the two victories.