CA-WW1 - No Parachute

[33LIMA 972]

Bringing Arthur Gould Lee's classic WW1 book to life with Wings Over Flanders Fields!

 

The man and the book

'Thursday, January 3rd. Ferrie has been killed. He led his patrol out this afternoon, had a scrap, came back leading the others, then as they were flying along quite normally in formation, his right wing suddenly folded back, then the other, and the wreck plunged vertically down. A bullet must have gone through the main spar during the fight.

   The others went after him and steered close to him in vertical dives. They could see him, struggling to get clear of his harness, then half standing up. They said it was horrible to watch him trying to decide whether to jump. He didn't, and the machine and he were smashed to nothingness.

   I can't believe it. Little Ferrie, with his cheerful grin, one of the finest chaps in the squadron. God, imagine his last moments, seeing the ground rushing up at him, knowing he was a dead man, unable to move, unable to do anything but wait for it. A parachute could have saved him...'

 

So wrote Arthur Gould Lee in 'No Parachute'. Lee learns to fly in the late summer of 1916 in the Maurice Farman 'Shorthorn', having been commissioned into the Sherwood Forresters. He misses being shipped to Gallipoli due to a motorcycle accident, then has his (third!) application to transfer to the Royal Flying Corps accepted. He then flies the Avro 504 and BE2 with 66 Squadron, still in England. Lacking proper instruction, he crashes an Avro after an engine failure. His injuries delay his posting to an operational squadron in France until May 1917, enabling him to gain more flying hours, including eighteen on the Sopwith Pup he will fly for most of his spell at the front.

 

His posting is to No.46 Squadron at la Gorgue, which has just transitioned to the Pup from the obsolescent two-seater Nieuport 12. He flies through the summer and into the autumn, fighting many battles against the formidable Albatros V-strutters, with which the Pup can compete only at higher altitudes, outgunned with what Lee describes as 'our pop-pop-pop gun' against the German's twin Spandaus, which by contrast he describes as making a sound like calico being ripped.

 

During November, the squadron is finally re-equipped with the Sopwith Camel. Although the pilots are looking forward to flying their offensive patrols with an aircraft that will enable them to meet the Albatros on more equal terms, they are instead diverted to 'ground strafing' duties for the Battle of Cambrai, making very dangerous low level gun and bomb attacks on German troops and positions in and near the front lines. Lee is shot down three times in nine days. In January 1918, with the rank of captain and the appointment of flight commander, he's posted home for a well-earned rest. After a period as an instructor, he joins a squadron equipping with the sopwith Salamander - a ground-attack version of the Snipe - but the war ends before he is deployed to France. Looking at his logbook at the conclusion of his combat service, he finds he's done 386 hours solo, 260 of them in France, including 222 over the Lines; he's made 118 patrols and ground-attack flights, had 56 air combats, and claims 5 victories and another 6 shared.

 

Lee's book 'No Parachute' was published in 1968, but was written at the time, comprising extracts from the many he wrote to his wife, supplemented by some diary extracts. It's a veritable treasure-trove of accounts of air fights, ground attacks and squadron life (including the lyrics of many classic RFC songs) with many snippets of information about aircraft performance and markings of the sort that enthusiasts in particular love to see. Lee rose to senior rank in the RAF after the war and profited from his experience to add to the book appendices criticising the dominance of the Royal Aircraft Factory in aircraft supply, the RFC's persistence with deep patrols and standing patrols, and of course the failure to peffect and supply parachutes to aircrew. It's certainly my favourite WW1 aviation memoir. Lee followed it up with an equally good sequel, 'Open Cockpit', which covers his whole wartime career. Both are highly recommended.

 

The mission

This was originally planned to be a mission flying the Sopwith Pup in mid-1917. But that year was getting a bit crowded and to better illustrate the development of fighing aircraft, I decided instead to fly the Camel later in the year, and to finish this series of reports as planned with Rudolph Stark's 'Wings of War', but flying the famous Fokker D VII rather than the Pfalz D III. I enlisted in 'Forty Six' as Lt Richard Lee, starting in late november 1917, by which time WOFF has us entirely equipped with Camels.

 

 

 

Here's the briefing for the first mission. We've been summoned to the front to deal with some reported aerial intruders. I'm leading 'B' flight with four Camels, whose pilots included Arthur Gould Lee himself. The second flight ('A' Flight, shown in the panel on the right below) includes Ferrie, the pilot whose sad and dramatic death is described in the excerpt from the book quouted at the start of this mission report.

 

 

Air defence systems being rudemintary in WW1, I knew there was every prospect that the Huns reported over the front might well be gone by the time we got there, and so it was to prove. We started optimistically enough, roaring off the grass from our aerodrome at Filescamp Farm. I had chosen the skin for Victor Yeates, author of the famous 'Winged Victory', although I'm not sure he served with 'Forty Six' at this point in the war

 

 

I turned for the target area, disregarding the planned dog-leg route so as to arrive faster; if this throws off 'A' flight, well, there were only two of them and that was a chance I was prepared to take. My own flight soon caught me up. I opened the throttle and began climbing hard to the south-east.

 

 

 

 

I didn't trust the briefed mission height of under 4,000 feet and climbed to nearer nine thousand, reluctant to be jumped from above by marauding V-strutters and thinking that if the enemy were indeed low down, I would be able to pick them up from the whitish British anti-aircraft bursts they were more than likely to attract. So much for that plan! When I arrived over the trenches, dodging warily around the large clouds hanging in the sky, there was a lot of shelling going on down on the ground, but not a soul to be seen in the air, apart from our good selves.

 

 

Up and down the front we flew, getting intermittently Archied for our troubles. But of the Hun fliers, we saw not a sign, high or low. It began to look like we would have to make our own entertainment.

 

 

...to be continued!

[Adger 86]

Another great report with excellent shots...From a  great book ..nice work 33Lima

[33LIMA 972]

The party begins!

 

 

Up and down the Lines we trailed. I descended to about five thousand feet, thinking that perhaps I might spot some low-flying Huns underneath us, who'd been invisible from higher up. I even took a detour several miles into Hunland as far as Douai, where there was a cluster of German aerodromes, hoping I might well see some aerial activity in that vicinity, and maybe surprise some Huns forming up or going home.

 

No such luck, just the same result - empty skies with no other aircraft to be seen, friend or foe. Except for the balloon. At the southernmost limit of one of my trips down the Lines, I had noticed a German observation ballloon, quite low down on the edges of the shelled area, near a town I judged to be Athies or Monchy. I decided that if I didn't meet any Huns on my next circuit, I'd have a crack at that balloon.

 

 

One last time, I swept up and down the Lines with my Camels, anxiously watching the skies above as well as down below, now that we were at a lower level. But never a Hun did we see. The bombardment raged on below us, but the skies stayed clear, as we steered between massive banks of cloud all around.

 

 

Heading south again, towards the balloon, out of boredom I blipped my engine a couple of times, cutting the ignition and powering up again when I released the switch. This was a bad idea. My flight decided I was having engine trouble and broke off to continue the patrol without me. I continued south. I had intended to release them anyway, before tackling the balloon, so now was as good a time as any. I searched for that balloon, my vision hampered by those large clouds which blocked out much of my view in all directions.

 

 

Finally I saw him, about half right and lower down. I rolled over, throttled back slightly and dived onto him. The clouds seemed to have hampered the German gunners too, for I was unmolested by Archie.

 

 

I took full advantage of this happy situation and as the range closed, I raked the balloon with my twin Vickers Guns, being careful to fire in short bursts to avoid stoppages. It all worked out rather nicely.

 

 

 

But I wasn't done yet. In stalking the balloon, I had noticed a Hun airfield nearby, just outside the shelled area. I hadn't attacked the airfields on my little diversion to Douai as that would have meant losing all my altitude a good distance into Hunland. But I was now at low level and this German airfield was close enough to the Lines that I could quickly escape across into friendly terrirory, if things got too hot. If the Huns wouldn't come to me, I decided, well, I would just have to come to the Huns. And this lot would do nicely.

 

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA 972]

Airfield attack!

 

 

I rolled into a strafing run on the Hun airfield, lining myself up with the front of a row of canvas hangars, where I judged it likely there would be some aircraft parked. But all I could see was two or three Albatros scouts. I picked the nearest of these, a red-nosed job, and gave him a burst, hosing the furthest aircraft rather inaccurately as I pulled up.

 

 

It was in the final stages of my pass that I realised that a line of objects along the near edge of the airfield was a better target - a long row of mostly silver Pfalz scouts. By now, I was taking some return fire from ground MGs. But this was too tempting a target to leave untouched.

 

 

So I pulled up and around, swinging over to the east, so as to make a firing pass from east to west, that would see me heading in the direction of friendly territory as I came out of my firing run. I was not going to make a third pass; no point in over-doing it.

 

 

I swept in and over the line of enemy aircraft, hopefully getting some hits but without visible results. Most of my rounds ended up being fired at the last in line, a green and mauve machine which looked like a two-seater, likely the squadron hack.

 

 

If nothing else, I'd thumbed my nose at an airfield full of Huns! Off I went, back to the Lines, feeling reasonably satisfied with my day's work. But another opportunity now presented itself. There, to my right, was another balloon. It was practically on my way home so I quickly decided that I would pay him a little visit, too.

 

 

This time Archie was wide awake and black bursts appeared all around, but it didn't much help the balloon, which was soon going down in flames like the first one, just a few minutes earlier.

 

 

Pursued noisily but ineffectively by Archie, I maintained my course westwards and was soon back in friendly territory. The flight back to Filescamp was uneventful and I landed without mishap.

 

 

I was presented with a claim form and filled it in claiming two baloons destroyed. This was rejected out of hand, likely as I'd got one balloon but the other had been a victim of his own AA fire. A tad frustrating, but I knew I was responsible for the destruction of two balloons - one way or another - and for a rather daring solo raid on a Hun airfield, confirmations or no confirmations. As Bruno Stachel was told after his unconfirmed first kill, 'Then you have the deep satisfaction of knowing you have served the Fatherland.'

 

 

Coming next in CombatAce-WW1 - 'Wings of War' by Rudolph Stark