Details from the Jastaschule Famars

[Olham 164]

I am just reading K.F. Kurt Jentsch's book "Beim Jagdflug tödlich verunglückt?" again.

He wrote there, that the German Jasta Echelon formation wings would change from one side

to the other in turns, to prevent anyone from falling behind.

 

Unfortunately he doesn't go into such detail as to how they knew who would cross overhead

and who crossed under the others. Also he did not mention flare signals, but I guess such

a manoeuvre would have been introduced by a flare signal.

 

Another detail I found there was, that the training at the Jastaschule Famars (S of Valenciennes)

included formation flying, and the attacking of balloons.

 

Edited September 11, 2012 by Olham

[Bullethead 12]

Neat pic!

 

Airplane formation maneuvers are very much like maneuvering formations of ships. Marching infantrymen can pivot in place but ships and airplanes require turn radii. And as with ships, airplane formation maneuvers are "equal speed", meaning all units start the same speed and maintain that speed throughout. Thus, IIRC most airplane formation maneuvers were based originally on naval maneuvers, but then folks realized that airplanes could pass above or below each other, so could do things impossible for ships. Still, in both cases, if you want to maintain the same overall formation while making a major change in direction, equal speed requires equal distance traveled, so it's always necessary for the left and right halves of the formation to switch places.

 

All such precision formation maneuvers require 2 things. First, everybody needs to know what maneuver is going to happen. Second, there has to be a signal to start the maneuver, after which everybody in the formation does their thing based on what maneuver has been ordered. With troops, you have whistles, drums, and bugels. With ships, you have signal flags. With airplanes, you have flares. So I'm sure the signal to execute was done by a flare. Perhaps another flare was used beforehand to indicate what maneuver was desired. In OFF, few planes can carry flares and they have only a handful. But photos of WW1 planes reveal racks for dozens of them.

[Olham 164]

And the flare would have to be fired early enough. In the books I read, pilots stated that they often missed

things, like the leader suddenly diving for some E/A or such things. They were also responsible for scanning

the skies for enemy planes. How easy could you miss a signal!

Gosh, the more I think about all that, the more do I come to assume, that they spent the majority of their time

and awareness on their formation flying, and only the rest on spotting E/A?

[Hauksbee 103]

Airplane formation maneuvers are very much like maneuvering formations of ships.

Interesting observation, seeing as Admiral Scheer had rehearsed his fleet in a similar maneuver called the 'Gefechtskehrtwendung, or "battle turn-around", only this was not a 90 degree move, but a full 180, in which the fleet reverses direction and comes up on the new course in the exact same formation as when it started. Scheer used it twice at Jutland to foil Jellicoe's attempt to 'cross the T'.

[Bullethead 12]

Interesting observation, seeing as Admiral Scheer had rehearsed his fleet in a similar maneuver called the 'Gefechtskehrtwendung, or "battle turn-around", only this was not a 90 degree move, but a full 180, in which the fleet reverses direction and comes up on the new course in the exact same formation as when it started. Scheer used it twice at Jutland to foil Jellicoe's attempt to 'cross the T'.

 

Ah, now you're speaking my language. I've been paid to make WW1 naval wargames, including a Jutland simulation, which is still AFAIK the only Jutland game to model not only every ship, shell, and torpedo fired, but also the whole year's campaign (in 1-year intervals) from 1 Jan 1915 to 31 Dec 1917, plus an expansion scenario pack for the 1914 battles involving Adm. von Spee. See here: http://stormpowered.stormeaglestudios.com/games/5776/index.asp (shameless plug).

 

The Gefechtskehrswendung, like all naval maneuvers prior to short-range voice radio, was signaled by flags (day) or blinker light (night). In ships, there was always some number of signalmen whose sole job was watching other ships for incoming flag and light signals and making outgoing flag and light signals for their own ships. Thus, compared to planes, more odds of spotting what the commander wanted to do, but OTOH shell splinters frequently disabled signal halyards, blinker lights, and signalmen, so potato, po-tah-to.

 

Anyway, in daylight, the signal system worked as follows: The formation commander would decide what to do and the flagship signalmen would haul up a group of flags saying what maneuver to perform. The other ships in the formation would haul up the same flag signal when they saw the flagship's and doing so indicating they'd received the order and were ready to comply. Once everybody was ready, the flagship would haul down the signal flags, which was the signal to start the maneuver. After that, all ships "danced their part in the show" on the pre-arranged understanding of what the maneuver signal required them to do based on their position in the formation.

 

Dreadnoughts chugging along at 20 knots might seem pedestrian to us glorious flyboys but consider that each one of them contained enough people to staff a regiment or even a brigade of infantry and carried enough armor and firepower qualify as a major fortress on land. The only things that were any threat at all to them were others of their own kind and things capable of laying mines or launching torpedos. And you had dozens of these things steaming going flat out with all the coal smoke that entailed, in horrid North Sea weather, barely outside musket shot of each other, and with enough momentum behind them to sink both ships if somebody screwed up the maneuver. Thus, there was a premium on effective signaling.

 

For a more thorough treatment of this subject than anybody here could possibly want, see The Rules of the Game by a guy named Gordon.

 

But to return to Scheer... The Gefechtskehrswendung was an interesting maneuver because, due to the way ships turn, it was more like an airplane maneuver with individual units turning at different times. The maneuver actually started at the rear end of the line. Once the 2nd-to-last ship saw the last ship start to turn, she put her own helm over, and so on up the line to the leader.

 

The RN was more into divisions of ships (as in flights of airplanes) doing things at the same time and the other ships in their divisions following the leader. Thus, the Grand Fleet usually steamed in parallel columns of divisions for ease of maneuvering on the approach to battle, all division leaders in line abreast and all division ships at the same spacing behind their leaders. These columns were spaced out about 1 ship's space further apart than the columns were long, so that the array of columns could form a single line of battle by having all division leaders turn the same amount in the same direction at the same time and all their division ships turning at the same spot when they got there. Again, everybody going the same speed.

[Hauksbee 103]

Very interesting looking game, BH. I took a flyer on it, laid my money down, and it's downloading as we speak.

[Bullethead 12]

I hope you enjoy it :)

[Hauksbee 103]

I hope you enjoy it :)

I'm sure I will. Please tell me that you included a Hansa-Brandenburg W-19 so I can scout Jellicoe's fleet. (If only!)

 

...and, what does the word "Famers" in the title of this topic mean?

[Olham 164]

Not "Famers" but "Famars". The Jastaschule Valenciennes was called Jastaschule Famars by Jentsch.

I guess it was based at Famars, which is just south outside Valenciennes.

[Hauksbee 103]

I guess it was based at Famars, which is just south outside Valenciennes.

There we go. A place name. Thanks.

[Bullethead 12]

I'm sure I will. Please tell me that you included a Hansa-Brandenburg W-19 so I can scout Jellicoe's fleet. (If only!

 

The only aircraft actually in the game as units are Zeppelins. All others are abstracted and just give you a chance to spot enemy ships. There's no air vs. ship combat.

[Olham 164]

Would you say, that knowledge about Naval battle orders and tactics is much required for "Jutland"?

[Bullethead 12]

Would you say, that knowledge about Naval battle orders and tactics is much required for "Jutland"?

 

Well, as with flightsims, the more you know about the subject matter to start with, the easier things will be. But also as in flightsims, you'll learn with experience.

 

At the risk of contradicting what I said above, WW1 naval combat actually had a lot in common with infantry maneuvers. But I'm talking about the grand tactics from the days of Freidrich der Grosse and Napolean. One way to view a WW1 fleet action is as a land battle from the 1700-1800 timeframe, with each battleship being a whole battalion of infantry, not an individual soldier. So, you formed up your battalions in lines and blazed away at the opposing line, perhaps trying to edge over and around his flank. The destroyers squadrons are cavalry regiments, guarding the flanks of the line and available for death-or-glory charges when you need them. Forget that the whole of both fleets are steaming along at high speed, just think about their movements relative to each other and it's like 2 armies standing in essentially the same place all day blazing away.

 

So, just as old armies marched in columns and fought in lines, so did WW1 ships. And deploying from columns into line required the columns to be spaced correctly, and for each column to wheel around to face the enemy broadside on. But you only have to worry about such things when you've decided to risk your whole fleet. Most actions will be much smaller affairs between a few cruisers and destroyers, which are much easier to control without specialized knowledge.

[Olham 164]

... So, you formed up your battalions in lines and blazed away at the opposing line ... just think about their movements

relative to each other and it's like 2 armies standing in essentially the same place all day blazing away.

That sounds pretty stupid. I read about a manoeuvre by Nelson I think at Trafalgar (?).

He acted in a completely unexpected way and let his ships sail rectangular towards and through the enemy lines.

It seemed to be devastating, as the French ships couldn't fire at the British very much, while the British could fire

full broadsides both sides, when they passed through the French lines.

(At least that's how I memorise what I saw on TV).

 

I prefer much to perform such unexpected manoeuvres.

Edited September 13, 2012 by Olham

[Bullethead 12]

Nelson could get away with that for a lot of situational factors specific to his time and place. And even with that working in his favor, his leading ships still got badly shot up charging into the French/Spanish line without being able to reply effectively, for like an hour due to the weak wind that day.

[Hauksbee 103]

That he did. In the early days of fighting sail, ships were often comandeered from the commercial fleets, captains, crews and all, and fitted out with whatever guns were available. These fleets pretty much just collided in a confused mass (mess?) and Admirals had little control in the smoke and mayhem. In time, govenments took over building warships and the two-column formation (us and them) became the agreed upon way to fight a battle since it was the best way to bring the most guns to bear, and accurately, and commanders could exert the maximum amount of control. After a century, or so , of that, Nelson essentially returns to the older, melee' attack and just dives through the enemy line cutting off the first third of the Spanish-French fleet (where a heavy percentage of the heaviest-gunned ships were) leaving it nothing to do but "wear around" and try to get back to the fight. This takes a long time. In the meantime, Nelson's ships had 'crossed the T' and were pouring 'raking fire' into the enemy. Raking fire is when a cannon ball travels the whole length of the ship, bow to stern. In the days of fighting sail, this was devastating. This also had the effect of putting a brick wall in the path of the Spanish-French, and each ship had to 'spike the brakes'. Now they're piling up behind each other. Nelson's second great stroke of genuis was that after he had given his orders to his captains, he encouraged them to question him about how and why. One of the hot-button topics of the day was, "What if, in the smoke of battle, I can't see your signal flags" and "What if I am suddenly presented with a perfect target, what do I do?" People had been court martialed and shot for not being where they should have been, or, at the least, cashiered from the service. Nelson's reply was "No captain can do very wrong if he puts his ship alongside that of an enemy" Now Nelson's Young Turks could use their iniative. And use it they did. As the two fleets converged, the Spanish-French had Nelson out-gunned. By the time the lead ships were turned around and could have headed back into the fight, the rest of their fleet had been so trashed that now Nelson had the upper hand. They broke off and called it a day.

[Olham 164]

Seems I have found a map with the Jastaschule Famars (south of Valenciennes), which I mentioned in post #1.

At least does this 1918 map show an airfield and several larger buildings or barracks at Famars.

I have projected them into a satelite view of today, and I was asthonished to see, that the formation of trees

in western Famars has not changed much at all since those days.

 

Edited October 2, 2012 by Olham

[angles1100 0]

Great thread guys , all really interesting posts thankyou

[Olham 164]

The first pic shows the area where the Famars aerodrome was. The Chateau in the distance is situated short way

after the traffic circle you see on the traffic sign. I have no knowledge, if it was required for the German officers at

Famars, but it is quite likely, as the German officers often took quarter in Chateaus.

 

 

PS/Edit:

Just found a French site, where they say the Chateau was bombed in 1918.

That seems to make it even more likely that it was used by the German military.

Then I also found a colour photo of the empty ruin of the Chateau, with a Nissen hut outside of it.

Maybe the airfield was still used in WW2?

 

 

Sources:

http://www.famars.fr/le-village/histoire.html

http://www.donnees.nord-pas-de-calais.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/diren/phototheque/produit.php?ref=B%E2timent_88%20&id_rubrique=17

Edited October 3, 2012 by Olham