Cavalry of the Clouds Read online

  CAVALRY

  OF THE CLOUDS

  CAVALRY

  OF THE CLOUDS

  AIR WAR OVER EUROPE 1914–1918

  JOHN SWEETMAN

  ‘They are the cavalry of the clouds. High above the squalor and the mud … they fight out the eternal issues of right and wrong … They are the knighthood of this war, without fear and without reproach. They recall the old legends of chivalry, not merely by daring individually, but by the nobility of their spirit.’

  (David Lloyd George, British Prime Minster)

  ‘Of the chivalry of the air, which is so fatuously and ignorantly written about, neither side could afford to indulge in.’

  (Harold Harrington Balfour, Western Front pilot)

  ‘[War] is not as the people at home imagine it, with a hurrah and a roar; it is very serious, very grim.’

  (Manfred von Richthofen, German ace)

  First published 2010

  by Spellmount, an imprint of

  The History Press

  The Mill, Brimscombe Port

  Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

  www.thehistorypress.co.uk

  This ebook edition first published in 2011

  All rights reserved

  © John Sweetman, 2010, 2011

  The right of John Sweetman, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 7604 9

  MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 7603 2

  Original typesetting by The History Press

  Contents

  Abbreviations

  List of Maps

  Preface

  Aerial Warfare

  Chapter 1

  Countdown to Conflict

  Chapter 2

  Baptism of Fire, August–October 1914

  Chapter 3

  Build-up: The First Winter

  Chapter 4

  Failed Offensives, 1915

  Chapter 5

  New Look: The Second Winter

  Chapter 6

  Hope and Despair, 1916

  Chapter 7

  Renewed Optimism: The Third Winter

  Chapter 8

  Months of Setback, March–July 1917

  Chapter 9

  Mounting Losses, August–October 1917

  Chapter 10

  Yet More Plans: The Fourth Winter

  Chapter 11

  German Offensive, March–May 1918

  Chapter 12

  Forward March, June–August 1918

  Chapter 13

  Breakthrough, September–November 1918

  Conclusion

  Peace at Last

  Appendix A

  Significant Dates

  Appendix B

  Sources and Acknowledgements

  Bibliography

  Abbreviations

  ack ack

  anti-aircraft (usually referring to fire)

  ADC

  aide-de-camp

  AEG

  Allgemeine Elektrizitäts Gesellschaft: German aviation firm and aeroplane

  AFC

  Air Force Cross

  archie

  German anti-aircraft fire

  adolphus

  British anti-aircraft fire

  Air Cdre

  air commodore

  Avro(s)

  A.V. Roe & Co. Ltd or aeroplane

  AW

  Armstrong Whitworth aeroplane

  BE

  Blériot Experimental aeroplane

  Brig Gen

  Brigadier-General

  Capt

  Captain

  CAS

  Chief of the Air Staff

  CID

  Committee of Imperial Defence

  C-in-C

  Commander in Chief

  CO

  Commanding Officer

  Col

  Colonel

  DFC

  Distinguished Flying Cross

  DFW

  Deutsche Flugzeugwerke: German aviation firm and aeroplane

  DGMA

  Director-General of Military Aeronautics, War Office

  DH

  de Havilland aeroplane

  DSC

  Distinguished Service Cross

  DSO

  Distinguished Service Order

  FB

  Fighting Biplane

  FE

  Farman Experimental aeroplane

  Fg Off

  Flying Officer

  Flt Cdr

  Flight Commander

  Flt Lt

  Flight Lieutenant

  F/Sgt

  Flight Sergeant

  FSL

  Flight Sub Lieutenant

  GAF

  German Air Force

  GHQ

  General Headquarters

  GOC

  General Officer Commanding

  Gp Capt

  Group Captain

  HE

  High Explosive

  HP

  Handley Page aeroplane

  HQ

  Headquarters

  IAAF

  Inter-Allied Independent Air Force

  JWAC

  Joint War Air Committee

  KCB

  Knight Commander of the Bath

  kg

  kilogramme

  km

  kilometre

  kph

  kilometres per hour

  Lt

  Lieutenant

  2/Lt

  Second Lieutenant

  Lt Col

  Lieutenant-Colonel

  Lt Gen

  Lieutenant-General

  LVG

  Luft Verkehrs Gesellschaft: German aviation firm and aeroplane

  mag

  magneto

  Maj

  Major

  Maj Gen

  Major-General

  MM

  Military Medal

  mph

  miles per hour

  NCO

  Non-Commissioned Officer

  NPL

  National Physical Laboratory

  OBE

  Officer of the Order of the British Empire

  OC

  Officer Commanding

  Op

  operation

  ORB

  operations record book

  OTC

  officers’ training corps

  Plt Off

  Pilot Officer

  PoW

  Prisoner of War

  PR

  photographic reconnaissance

  pusher

  aeroplane with engine behind wings

  RA

  Royal Artillery

  RAF

  Royal Aircraft Factory or Royal Air Force

  RAFVR

  Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve

  RAE

  Royal Aircraft Establishment

  RE

  Royal Engineers or Reconnaissance Experimental aeroplane

  revs

  revolutions

  RFA

  Royal Field Artillery

  RFC

  Royal Flying Corps

  RFC HQ

  Royal Flying Corps Headquarters

  RGA

  Royal Garrison Artil
lery

  RN

  Royal Navy

  RNAS

  Royal Naval Air Service

  RNVR

  Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve

  rpm

  revolutions per minute

  RSM

  regimental sergeant major

  R/T

  radio-telephony

  SASO

  senior air staff officer

  SE

  Scout Experimental aeroplane

  Sgt

  sergeant

  sortie

  single operational flight

  SPAD

  Société pour Aviation et ses Dérives: French aircraft firm or French aeroplane

  Sqn

  squadron

  Sqn Cdr

  Squadron Commander

  Sqn Ldr

  Squadron Leader

  tractor

  aeroplane with engine in front of wings

  VC

  Victoria Cross

  WAAC

  Women’s Auxiliary Air Force

  Wg Cdr

  Wing Commander

  WO

  War Office

  W/T

  wireless telegraphy

  List of Maps

  German Offensive August–October 1914

  Major British Battles 1915

  Major Battles 1916

  Major Allied Attacks 1917

  German Offensives 1918

  Preface

  Aerial Warfare

  ‘High Above the Squalor and the Mud’

  During the First World War, the air emerged as a third dimension to armed conflict, and this new form of fighting was dramatically illustrated in North-West Europe, where Britain’s confrontation with Germany and defence of her homeland against airship and aeroplane attack took place. Beyond the more measured pages of official reports and statistical analyses, powerful images of the personal impact, sometimes exhilarating but often tragic, are contained in letters between combatants of both the British and German air forces and their anxious families at home.

  With the passage of time, however, the dangerous aspects of operations have been over-shadowed by colourful misrepresentation of the reality of aerial warfare. After the Armistice, writers of articles in lurid ‘penny dreadfuls’, as well as authors of full-length adventure stories, concocted audacious tales of clashes in the sky. William Earl Johns wrote stirring novels involving his fictional hero Biggles, and contributed to a wide range of weekly or monthly publications such as The Gem and Boy’s Own, which idealised heroism, patriotism and pluck. Covington Clarke promised ‘a story of young warriors in the air, who thunder aloft to dizzy, breathtaking conflicts’. In the United States, Elliott White Springs, an American Western Front aviator, produced entertaining volumes about ‘those gallant adventurers The War Birds … packed with exciting episodes … dog-fights, 5,000 feet above the lines … six Camels attacking ten Fokkers’.

  Hollywood soon discovered that cinema audiences preferred scenes of aircraft wheeling and spiralling overhead to ranks of mud-spattered infantry advancing towards rolls of barbed wire in the face of lethal machine-guns. The silver screen has even trivialised the perilous and often fatal efforts of aviation pioneers in such epics as Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. Evidently, flying before and during the First World War was rather fun, and to some extent aerobatic performances and wing-walking stunts at post-war public displays heightened the aura of retrospective levity. Today, spectators at air shows frequently break into applause at the approach of a ‘vintage’ biplane, the relic of a curious past. Maurice Baring, who served on the Western Front, reflected that ‘the image of goggle-clad aces peering over machine-guns or discharging revolvers as they wove across the sky had become ingrained in popular mythology.’

  The fiction that airborne activity somehow constituted a detached, romantic adjunct to the traditional forms of warfare gained momentum while hostilities were in progress. In October 1917 the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, proclaimed airmen ‘the cavalry of the clouds. High above the squalor and the mud … they fight out the eternal issues of right and wrong … They are the knighthood of this war … They recall the old legends of chivalry.’

  Such idealistic bombast airbrushed ‘the turmoil and sweat of actual combat’ according to Sholto Douglas, decorated airman and future high-ranking officer. As the British official history, The War in the Air, observed: ‘Life in the Service was lived at high pressure and was commonly short.’ Aviators dreaded fire, bone-crushing crashes caused by mechanical failure, the deadly impact of multiple-fighter clashes, or the prospect of being set upon by a swarm of enemy machines. Cecil Lewis, pilot of a slow reconnaissance aeroplane, recalled: ‘It’s no joke to be shot up by a dozen machine guns for half an hour, engaged in a running fight in which the enemy can outpace you, outclimb you and outturn you.’

  Patrick Huskinson, who would survive to become an air commodore, expressed serious misgivings about the structural integrity of his biplane. Attacking a train near Le Cateau in north-eastern France from 200ft, to his acute discomfort the bomb-load exploded instantaneously on impact, ‘flinging me high like a jack-in-the-box. My wings … were nothing but a blur of flapping fabric, what I could see of the fuselage too closely resembled a sieve.’ On landing, ‘my aircraft … fell to pieces.’ Charles Portal, destined to command the RAF during the Second World War, was similarly unimpressed with the qualities of his monoplane. Take-off and landing, he discovered, could be hair-raising, and ‘the chances of death by misadventure on the aerodrome were infinitely greater than by enemy action.’

  Once aloft, the vagaries of the weather in the absence of reliable navigational instruments proved a constant danger, and sheer fatigue caused by up to four operations daily quickly drained the first flush of innocence. The greatest fear of all was knowledge that, with no parachutes for aircrew, terminal damage to an airborne machine meant a long and terrifying plunge to crippling injury or death. Among the enemy, famous personalities like Manfred von Richthofen, Oswald Boelcke and Max Immelmann admitted to these same life-threatening concerns.

  The hopes, fears and in so many cases, grief experienced by loved ones underlines the unending strain placed upon relatives left behind. Douglas Joy, Canadian-born pilot of English parents, acknowledged ‘the huge number of families that have been separated, and widely too’. To reassure his wife, when he was at the Front Joy wrote to her daily. His mother-in-law fought tenaciously to ensure that her sole surviving son did not even cross the Channel; the loss of his two brothers in action sufficient sacrifice. Philip Joubert de la Ferté, who would achieve high rank in the RAF, reflected on a particular aspect of marital stress: ‘my wife found her existence in hotels and lodging-houses when I was on home service, and with her relations when I was abroad, very little to her taste.’ Margaret Douglas, like the mothers of Richthofen and Immelmann, had two sons in her country’s air service, and Frau Boelcke had three. Each would lose one of them. Three of Mrs Amelie McCudden’s four boys, who served in the RFC or RAF were killed, and many families endured the despair of losing an only child. Sholto Douglas reflected too, on ‘the very high stress’ put on his former headmaster, many of whose former pupils were flying operationally.

  Evidence of the appalling conditions on the ground and devastating losses incurred in repeated ‘pushes’ to break the trench deadlock on the Western Front (almost 60,000 casualties on the first day of the 1916 Battle of the Somme being but one depressing figure) is now well-known. So many writers, organisers of commemorative events and producers of television documentaries focus on the undoubted horrors of the land warfare without recognising, often without even mentioning, the contribution of airmen to the Allied cause.

  Initially, British aeroplanes had a single 70hp engine, and their one-or two-man crew had only rifles, revolvers or shotguns for self-defence. Within four years, machines with four 375hp engines capable of reaching Berlin from England were ready for action, modified hand-grenades
tossed over the side had given way to 1,650lb bombs dropped with the guidance of bomb-sights honed for accuracy, and machine-guns were synchronised to fire forward through propeller blades to enhance the aggressive potential of fighters. Such technical advances, however, were often matched and at times outpaced by the Germans, the progress of military aviation being by no means one-sided.

  In the closing months of 1914, British airmen tracked the path of enemy troops advancing through Belgium towards Paris and crucially, detected their alterations of direction or tactical redeployment. The commander of the British forces at the time, as would his successor and subordinate commanders in the field, paid generous tribute to their valuable contributions to the campaign. When the number of British Army units multiplied, so squadrons expanded to become an accepted, integral part of warfare. In addition to reconnaissance, aeroplanes came to patrol the forward trench-lines, protect troops from hostile aircraft and liaise closely with the artillery, infantry and tanks. They bombed targets on the battlefield and attacked balloons from which observers directed German guns onto Allied positions. As early as November 1914, bombers attacked the Zeppelin works at Friedrichshafen inside enemy territory, and in 1916 they began systematic, long-distance raids against enemy manufacturing facilities; the forerunner of a more sustained bombing campaign two years later on Germany’s industrial heartland.