Aerodromes

[Pips 5]

As the book "No Parachute" by Arthur Gould Lee is my favourite read, I thought I would fly a campaign with him in No.46 Squadron, starting when he did ie 22 May, 1917. And given the superb accuracy of this sim No.46 is stationed just where it should be in May 1917 ..... at La Gorgue equipped with Sopwith Pup's.

 

Unfortunately this is where the game departs slightly from reality. Not a big thing really - it probably falls under the 'too difficult' heading, where time constraints, lack of information and resources are stretched. Still, perhaps down the track this wonderful sim can address even these issues. :)

 

You see, in the game La Gorgue is like all aerodromes (well, the ones I've seen to date anyway). Nice set of huts and tents laid out beside a typically shaped rectangular landing field. But in reality La Gorgue was nothing like that layout. I'll quote from Lee's book.

 

Note: Lee has spent the last five days sitting idly by at No.1 Aircraft Depot, at St. Omer, awaiting assignment to a squadron, having been shipped over to the Pilots Pool from Portmeadow flying school. This is his first deployment overseas, although he has the surprising number of 85 hours to his credit - 72 1/2 solo, with 18 on Sopwith Pups. Most budding new pilots at this time only had approximately 15 - 20 hours total flying!

 

The day of days has come! At long last I'm with a Scout squadron in the Field in France, and feeling on top of the world.

 

I arrived about teatime, and haven't had a chance to fly yet. The suqadron is a rather different setup from what I expected, more informal, and something of a change after training squadrons in England. We're plesantly situated alongside the River Lys, near the village of La Gorgue, with two towns within easy reach, Melville and Estaires. The Lys runs eastwards towards Armententieres and on into Hunland. But ....... there's no aerodrome! At least, nothing resembling the kind that I'm used to, vast stretches of grassland like Netheravon and Portmeadow.

 

After a quick journey in a Crossley from St. Omer to Merville we came along a cobbled, poplar-lined road until suddenly we slowed down and turned off left, past a sentry, into a cindered area surrounded by numerous huts and tents, a line of Leyland lorries, and a large wooden shed, the end of one of a row backing on to the road. These were the hangers. In front of them, on a long cinderedstrech which was the tarmac, stood a few Pups, attended by a sprinkling of mechanics. In the eastern background, seeming quite close, an observation balloon hung motionless, looking like an enormous vegetable marrow.

 

But no aerodrome. Only a rough wide field of potatoes, with several bent shapes working the land. The driver had pulled up by a modest hut with oiled silk windows, a sort of overgrown packing case, with the RFC ensign flying above and a gas alarm flanking the door. As I got down I asked, 'But where's the aerodrome?' He grinned, pointed to the potatoes and said, 'There's a criss-cross of cinder tracks in the middle of that.'

 

The following day Lee went up for the first of his familiarising flights. From the air the field looked like:

 

The aerodrome is a shocker, a sort of Union Jack of cinder tracks five or six yards wide, running among the potatoes and other crops. You taxi out from the hanger for about 150 yards, with an ack-emma holding onto each rear interplane strut, to a cindered space in the centre some thirty yards square. The mechanics are there to stop you dropping into the drainage gullies that flanl the tracks, a necessary precaution, especially in a side wind, when the Pup can be darned difficult to taxi. If you run off the track when landing, over you go on your nose with a broken prop at the very least. Both Courtneidge and Williams, who've only been here twelve days or so, have had landing crashes, and they warned me to be careful.

 

When you get into the air you can't believe it's an aerodrome. The tricky cinder-tack criss-cross makes it stand out from surrounding fields, so it's bad for camouflage reasons. Apart from that, you've got a big acerage of mixed crops flanked on one side by a river lined with poplars, and on the otherby a row of hangers, backed by more poplars, also telegraph poles, on the main road. Whoever picked this place as an aerodrome must have been completely off his rocker! He certainly was not a pilot himself. Still, the odd layout of the aerodrome made for easy recognition when returning from the Lines.

 

By the by, if you haven't read 'No Parachute' you are, IMHO, missing out on the BEST book on WWI flying. Given that it was written on a day by day basis, as a deliberate attempt to record his experiences, Lee achieved an immediacy and realism that is lacking in other books - which are most often written from memory many years later eg Sagittarius Rising, An German Airman Remembers, Recollections Of An Airman, Flying In Flanders, Winged Warfare and Winged Victory. Even Flying Fury was written a year after most actions occurred.

[shredward 12]

Hi Pips,

Historical recreations of the actual aerodromes was always one of Winder's dreams. If we carry on, I hope that we manage to build at least some of the important, signature aerodromes - La Gorgue, Droglandt, Bailleul Asylum, Rekkem, Markebeeke, Boistrancourt, Douai, Mont-St-Eloi, Cappy, Vert-Galant, Bertangles, and so on.

Cheers,

the shredder

[rhythalion 0]

I shall have to search out his book and read it :)

[Mr_Dirt 1]

It is a very good book.

[Smokey 0]

"By the by, if you haven't read 'No Parachute' you are, IMHO, missing out on the BEST book on WWI flying. Given that it was written on a day by day basis, as a deliberate attempt to record his experiences, Lee achieved an immediacy and realism that is lacking in other books - which are most often written from memory many years later eg Sagittarius Rising, An German Airman Remembers, Recollections Of An Airman, Flying In Flanders, Winged Warfare and Winged Victory. Even Flying Fury was written a year after most actions occurred. "

 

 

AMEN!

 

Didn't Lee end up dropping a wheel in one of those drainage ditches and crashing at some point?

 

Gun jams are another. OFF has very forgiving gun jams compared to Lee's real life experences if I remember correctly.

 

Been a few years since I read this one.