Cavalry of the Clouds Read online

  Non-flying personnel were also obtained via direct entry. One such volunteer was Charles Callender from Stockton-on Tees, who undertook to serve for the duration of the war as a mechanic. Sent to Farnborough for initial training, he had a rude awakening. Standing with other recruits outside the orderly office of the new barracks, he was startled by ‘a big, burly sergeant major’ bawling: ‘Jump to it, you’re in the army now … We tame lions here’. Callender recalled that, ‘soon we were to find the How, Where and Why’. The recruits were assured by the stentorian NCO that British discipline was ‘the finest in the world’ and 100 British Serviceman were worth ‘a couple of thousand of any other breed’. Intriguingly, Callender added: ‘Little did the sergeant major know that he himself would later be caught in the disciplinary machine, buttons cut off his tunic on the barrack square.’

  Scarcely had the blood-curdling welcome abated than a corporal appeared clad ‘in khaki, breeches, puttees and double breasted tunic’. He wore a cap ‘with two brass buttons at the front that shone like diamonds’ and marched them off to the Quartermaster’s Store, where Callender was allocated a number (4953), ‘viciously stamped on the wrist with an indelible stamp and it seared to the heart’. He was issued with his RFC kit and instructed to pack his civvies in a parcel to send home – the last he saw of them for four and a half years. Fourteen days of ‘hellish training’ followed, ‘a man could never forget his training and number as long as he lived’.

  As an Air Mechanic 2nd Class, Charles Callender received 2/- (10p) a day. Reveille was at 5am, first parade 5.45, by which time men had to be shaved. Drill continued until 6.30, ‘when your head was just like a spinning top, one of the humming variety … Dismiss and you had to run like hell to the dining hall if you wanted a cup of coffee and a biscuit.’

  After Farnborough, Callender went to Brooklands, where another RFC training centre had been established. For the first two weeks he was on guard duty day and night, two hours on, four hours off. ‘I had often wanted to see the motor racing track at Brooklands, but at this time I was sick of the sight of it.’ He had never fired a rifle, but on guard was issued with five rounds in the magazine. The NCOs were ‘vicious’ and constantly tried to catch

  … us rookies out at the most trivial thing. The language was a little bit alien to me. It seemed that every other word was profane but then I was to learn that this was part of the Serviceman’s stock in trade. It gave him height, strength and weight.

  Callender was equally unimpressed on seeing in flight a Henri Farman biplane, which appeared ‘just a framework of wires, struts and tubes. The pilot sitting in a bucket seat among the bits and pieces liable it seemed to be thrown out at any time’. He added that ‘more modern’ machines were being built in small factories ‘dotted around the aerodrome on the concrete race track’; one being the Martinsyde Scout, which ‘would play a very important part in my life in the Service’.

  At the Front, the first two RFC reconnaissance flights in France had occurred on 19 August. Capt Philip Joubert de la Ferté and Lt Gilbert Mapplebeck were ordered to identify the positions of Belgian troops in the Nivelle-Genappe area with Mapplebeck additionally required to locate German cavalry believed to be near Gembloux. Shortly after taking off at 9.30am, the two pilots lost contact in cloud. Joubert subsequently landed at Tournai and Courtrai, before returning to Maubeuge eight hours later with absolutely no information about the Belgians. Mapplebeck got lost over Brussels, but did find Gembloux and reported a small body of cavalry heading south-east. The reconnaissance exercise was not, therefore, an unqualified success. But the airmen were over unfamiliar territory equipped only with a map and compass.

  Getting lost was not the sole hazard RFC crews faced. Joubert admitted to being ‘rather sorry’ as he watched British troops arrive in force. ‘Up to that moment’, airmen had only been fired on by their French allies. Now they were targeted by the British, who were wary of any type of aeroplane, a ‘playful habit … [which] did detract somewhat from our expectation of life’. Years afterwards, Joubert wrote that ‘to this day I can remember the roar of musketry that greeted two of our machines as they left the aerodrome and crossed the main Maubeuge–Mons road, along which a British column was proceeding’. Cautious aviators painted a Union Flag on the underside of their wings – to little avail. Such hazards were not confined to the RFC. When serving as a cavalryman before joining the air force, Manfred von Richthofen admitted to opening fire on anything that flew: ‘I had no idea that German machines bore crosses and the enemy’s cockades’.

  The French Plan 17 was launched on 14 August; two days later Russian troops crossed the frontier of East Prussia. Both advances would ultimately fail, but in the short term they absorbed German airship and aeroplane resources to the detriment of support for the Schlieffen Plan. Although delayed by strong fortifications at Liège until 17 August, three days later the Germans took Brussels and by 22 August their columns had reached Charleroi in south-east Belgium. That day, the RFC carried out extensive reconnaissance operations. In a Blériot monoplane, Joubert and his observer flew at 2,000ft to the Charleroi region and reported that the French to the east were being driven back. British intelligence officers unfamiliar with aerial reconnaissance refused to believe them. That evening, therefore, British infantry marched towards Mons, unaware that their right flank was now unprotected. Another flight late in the day reported a strong body of enemy troops (General Alexander von Kluck’s First Army) advancing westwards out of Brussels. Sir David Henderson was so concerned that he personally took this report to Army GHQ, and it was subsequently decided that the British would hold Mons for another 24 hours to enable French redeployment. Had Joubert’s report been believed, the costly rearguard action at Mons on 23 August might have been avoided. But these were early days and the RFC had yet to prove its worth to many soldiers.

  During the evening of 22 August, a German machine appeared over Maubeuge and Lt L. da C. Penn-Gaskell persuaded Second Lieutenant (2/Lt) Louis Strange to take his No 5 Sqn Henri Farman up in pursuit. Penn-Gaskell heaved a Vickers machine-gun into the observer’s cockpit, which meant that Strange could only reach 3,500ft, well short of the 5,000ft managed by the enemy machine, which serenely completed its reconnaissance. Penn-Gaskell’s commanding officer forbade him to take a machine-gun aloft again. The current tactic was to deter aerial incursions by menacing manoeuvres. Height was therefore at a premium, and undoubtedly the extra weight became a liability in this respect.

  Having temporarily checked the enemy at Mons, on 24 August the BEF fell back to avoid being cut off and the RFC went with it – not always in an organised fashion given the fluidity of the battlefield. Its HQ, Nos 2–5 Squadrons and the Aircraft Park were frequently out of contact with one another and effectively operated as individual entities for long periods. The Aircraft Park was ordered from Amiens to Le Havre, and amid fears that the coastal area might fall, an alternative base for supplies from Britain was established at St Nazaire in western France.

  Between 24 August and 4 September, RFC HQ occupied nine different sites. Staff officer Lt the Hon Maurice Baring recorded the first chaotic halt: ‘We slept, and when I say we I mean dozens of pilots, fully dressed in a barn, on the top of, and underneath, an enormous load of straw.’ Lack of map-reading skills resulted in transport confusion, and ground staff had often to improvise landing grounds at short notice. Finding somewhere to put down was a constant headache for pilots, they often did not know whether the spot from which they took off would still be in friendly hands on their return.

  On the enemy side Oswald Boelcke, with Richthofen destined to be a high-scoring fighter pilot, revelled in the Allies’ discomfort. Like the McCudden brothers, fascinated at an early age by the sight of aircraft, Boelcke retained an active interest in aviation after joining the Army. Commissioned into a telegraphic communications unit, ‘I never get tired of watching [airships and aeroplanes] and always stare at them with eyes of longing’, he informed his parents. Transfer to th
e air service inevitably followed, but in training he experienced similar frustrations to RFC recruits. He disliked the 70hp Taube machine, which he declared a ‘brute’ unable to get airborne in adverse weather conditions, and experienced ‘great misery’ waiting for his turn to fly one of the few available aeroplanes. Boelcke therefore had only four solo flights before his first test, which entailed executing figures of eight and landing on a fixed spot. Once hostilities commenced, he fretted that the war would be ‘over before I get to the front’.

  On 15 August 1914, Boelcke qualified as a pilot. After joining his elder brother’s front-line unit, with the Allied retreat now well underway, on 1 September he flew his first reconnaissance operation taking Wilhelm as his observer. While British and French forces continued to pull back, Boelcke’s unit moved further forward, but he complained that the Allies were ‘bolting so well’ that he despaired of ever catching them.

  Boelcke would soon discover that, amid the undoubted confusion, the RFC was not idle. Shortly after dawn on 24 August, the day the retreat from Mons began, its machines were aloft and throughout that day reported the worrying progress of Kluck’s columns. During a two and a half hour reconnaissance of twelve locations on 26 August, No 3 Sqn observer Maj L.B. Boyd-Moss identified marching troops, motor and horse-drawn transport, and howitzer and artillery activity over a wide area. At one point he recorded ‘can make very little progress against wind’, a stark reminder of his machine’s lack of power. Boyd-Moss saw ‘Cambrai in flames and occupied by Germans’ after dropping ‘bomb into transport’ parked south of Blaugies. Then his and his pilot’s luck ran out, when their machine was brought down by ‘heavy infantry fire’. After burning their aeroplane, Boyd-Moss and Lt G.F. Pretyman (who on 15 September would take the first aerial photos of enemy positions) joined French troops falling back on Arras, before commandeering bicycles to reach Gouzeaucourt where a car took them to the nearest brigade HQ. Having taken off at 11.50am, they rejoined their squadron at St Quentin almost twelve hours later.

  The RFC continued to provide vital information to the ground forces. Intelligence reports indicated that on 31 July Kluck’s First Army positioned on the German right flank would wheel to the east of Paris, thus putting the BEF at risk. RFC reconnaissance machines confirmed the manoeuvre that day, allowing the BEF to fall back accordingly. Three days later, another critical change of direction was detected, when, flying a BE2a during the evening of 3 September in search of Kluck’s cavalry, Joubert came across bivouac fires and horses being watered in streams and ponds. This confirmed that Kluck had moved further east and not south in pursuit of the BEF.

  These alterations in the enemy’s line of march led to the decisive First Battle of the Marne. Striving to keep pace with the German Second Army on his left, Kluck exposed his own army’s right flank to a counter attack from Paris – French reinforcements being famously conveyed to the Front in taxi cabs. The opposing forces clashed on 6 September and for five days the fate of Paris lay in the balance. During that period, the RFC remained the eyes of the BEF and the beginnings of closer co-operation with individual formations was established. Aeroplanes of No 5 and No 3 squadrons reported directly to the commanders of the British I and II corps respectively. Each of these detachments had with it a machine from No 4 Sqn equipped with wireless and capable of communicating with a ground station at RFC HQ.

  A major boost to RFC morale occurred when Field Marshal Sir John French paid tribute to the ‘admirable work’ of the corps in his despatch of 7 September to Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War:

  Their skill, energy and perseverance have been beyond all praise. They have furnished me with the most complete and accurate information which has been of incalculable value in the conduct of operations. Fired at constantly both by friend and foe, and not hesitating to fly in every kind of weather, they have remained undaunted throughout.

  Early doubts and suspicions voiced by field commanders had seemingly evaporated.

  German retreat from the Marne on 11 September signalled the end of the Schlieffen Plan but initiated a frantic scramble by both sides to secure ground between Luxembourg and the Belgian coast. The so-called ‘Race to the Sea’ entailed a series of outflanking movements until the front lines stabilised in mid-October.

  Oswald Boelcke’s tone of triumph turned to despair, as German troops began to straggle past his airfield on 12 September. The following day ‘nasty rumours’ started to circulate of a massive rebuff for the First and Second Armies, confirmed by orders for the squadron to take off for a rear location in a howling gale. Twice more Boelcke’s unit fell back before settling at Pontfaverger 24km (15 mls) north-east of Reims, where Boelcke recorded that several airmen were suffering from ‘nerves’. ‘If I only knew what sort of things nerves were’, he wrote, before moving on to complain that poor weather had restricted flying and made life ‘inconsolably dull’. Even when conditions improved, establishment of static front lines removed the excitement of tracking enemy formations on the move. Commenting on the effect of a French aeroplane’s attack on Boelcke’s airfield, he queried the value of ‘this bomb-throwing business’. Boelcke thought that slowing a machine with the extra load was not justified by the minimal damage wrought.

  Once the trench-line had crystallised, the RFC looked to extend and refine its operational capability. However, it first had to repair the impact of a violent storm on 12 September, which tore up tents, battered aeroplanes and destroyed equipment. At dawn the following day, from the four operational squadrons only ten aeroplanes were serviceable. A list of urgent requirements was despatched to Sefton Brancker, Deputy-Director General of Military Aeronautics at the War Office, which incidentally revealed both the variety and shortcomings of the aeroplane types in use. RFC HQ did not want more Morane monoplanes, because maintenance crews were ‘not trained in their rigging and their spares etc.’ Instead, ‘standard’ BE2c and Avro biplanes were ‘wanted very badly’; Reconnaissance Experimental (RE) 5s were ‘good’ to fill one flight of four, but yet ‘not really established’. Maurice Farman Shorthorns were ‘only valuable as a gun machine’ and moreover, took ‘a lot of keeping tuned up in the weather we are having’. Until replacements arrived, the RFC in France could only muster nineteen BE2 and six Avro machines. The remaining twenty-seven of limited ability were RE5s, Blériot monoplanes and Farman biplanes. Apart from the variety of machine, Brig Gen Henderson, commanding the RFC in the field, emphasised their doubtful quality as the intensity of aerial warfare increased. He hoped that ‘a catastrophe’ would not be caused at the RAF, Farnborough, by adding that single-seat BE2c aeroplanes with ‘extra tankage (up to 5 hours at least) would be of considerable value’.

  In action, identifying targets for the artillery and reporting on the accuracy of its fire developed into an important function for the RFC. How to convey the necessary information rapidly and accurately in the absence of reliable wireless sets remained a major problem. Capt L.E.O. Charlton, flight commander in No 3 Sqn, pioneered the firing of Very lights above a new enemy gun position. This system was improved by an aeroplane flying at a predetermined height, so that artillery range finders could more accurately locate the hidden battery. On 24 September for half an hour one of the machines carrying a wireless set successfully directed fire onto a German position. The last three messages in the sequence from the aeroplane ran: ‘About 50 yards short and to the right … Your last shot in the middle of three batteries in action: search all round within 300 yards of your last shot … I am coming home now’. Three days later, Gen Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien commander of the British II Corps praised the work of an RFC machine directing the fire of 6-inch howitzers: ‘It was, at times, smothered with hostile anti-aircraft guns, but, nothing daunted, it continued for hours through a wireless installation to observe the fire and indeed to control the battery with most satisfactory results.’

  Combat in the air had now begun in earnest, and on 22 September Gilbert Mapplebeck was wounded during an attack by an Alb
atros biplane. Enemy anti-aircraft fire did not yet pose a menace to aeroplanes flying out of range of small arms though. Returning from an operation unscathed on 19 September, No 5 Sqn pilot Lt A.E. Borton and his observer Lt A.A.B. Thompson burst into the music hall ditty, ‘Archibald, certainly not!’ Borton remarked that ‘it seemed to sum up our attitude towards the anti-aircraft gun at the time’. The story of this spontaneous aerial serenade spread throughout RFC messes and thereafter the German anti-aircraft guns were universally dubbed ‘Archie’.

  While the RFC grappled with the German Air Force in France, the RNAS concentrated on home defence and protection of its own warships. The initial threat to British soil was expected from German airships, in reality the rigid-framed Zeppelin and Schütte-Lanz machines the structure of which within an outer fabric envelope contained gas-filled bags to give them lift. Their principal sheds along the Rhine could not be reached from England, so the RNAS established an aeroplane base near Dunkirk. From there it could more easily attack the airship centres, where non-rigid reconnaissance airships with a gas-filled envelope for lift also posed a threat to the fleet at sea. Winston Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, declared that ‘passive defence against aircraft is perfectly hopeless and endless. You would have to roof in the world to be safe.’ Attack was the best form of defence.

  For a short period, Antwerp remained in Allied hands and from there the first raids on the airship sheds were launched. On 22 September, four RNAS machines took off bound for Düsseldorf and Cologne. Only one of the pilots reached his target at Düsseldorf to drop four 20lb Hales bombs (each containing merely 4½lbs of explosive), three of which did not explode with the fourth dropping short. Delayed by poor weather during the afternoon of 8 October, two single-seat Sopwith Tabloids set off for the same targets. One pilot failed to locate the Cologne sheds in thick mist and released his load on the city’s main railway station. The other found better weather at Düsseldorf, registered direct hits on his target from 600ft, destroying the roof and a Zeppelin (Z.9) underneath. However, his machine had been severely damaged by ground fire and he force-landed 20 miles (32km) from Antwerp, arriving at the Squadron’s airfield just in time to join a hasty evacuation as enemy troops closed in.