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."