organization of the war in the air. Smuts, who fifteen years before had commanded a Boer army fighting the British in South
Africa, set to work producing a report which was to shape Britain’s air forces for the rest of the century. In the meantime, improved anti-aircraft defences, barrage balloons and searchlights
and faster and better organized fighter units gradually reduced the threat from the air. On 19 May 1918 seven out of an attacking force of nineteen bombers were shot down and, with mounting
pressures on other fronts, the air raids petered out.
In three years the Zeppelins and Gothas had launched 103 attacks on Britain, killing 1,414 civilians and wounding 3,866. This was a fraction of the death toll among soldiers on the Western
Front, and fewer than the 1,480 who would be killed in a single night in London in the worst attack of the Blitz (1940–41). It was the air raids of Zeppelins and Gothas, however, rather than
any other experience of the First World War, that would change the nature of Britain’s air forces when it went to war with Germany again.
Chapter 5
Death, Drink, Luck
Despite the great expansion of the Allied and German air forces from 1916, the struggle in the skies retained a human scale. Aeroplanes were small and flimsy and the numbers
involved in the fighting were small. It was possible for the participants to make some sense of it – unlike the nightmarish clash of steel and high explosive shaking the ground below
them.
The combatants fought at close quarters. At the end of an aerial duel the protagonists might be only a few yards apart. Writing to his parents shortly after his arrival in France in February
1916, Albert Ball described an encounter with an Albatros, one of the sleek and powerful machines that were now consistently out-performing their enemies: ‘The interesting point about it was
that we could see the Huns’ faces and they could see ours, we were so near.’ 1
Aviators could identify an opponent by his flying style. Later the German aces advertised themselves by painting theiraircraft gaudy colours: blood-red for Manfred von
Richtofen, a disciple of Oswald Boelcke, who had witnessed Boelcke’s banal death in a mid-air collision with a friendly aircraft, and inherited his crown as Germany’s top ace. Another
flamboyant flier, Lieutenant Friedrich Kempf, had his name painted in giant letters on the top wing of his Fokker triplane, and the words
Kennscht mi’noch?
(
Remember Me?
) on
the middle one.
German and Allied propagandists portrayed the war in the air as a chivalrous affair. It was an easier task than trying to prettify the swarming carnage on the ground. The public swallowed the
line and, to some extent, the aviators themselves went along with it.
‘To be alone,’ wrote Cecil Lewis, who had lied about his age to join the RFC in time to take part in the battle of the Somme, ‘to have your life in your own hands, to use your
own skill, single-handed against the enemy. It was like the lists in the Middle Ages, the only sphere in modern warfare where a man saw his adversary and faced him in mortal combat.’
The airmen were grateful to be at one remove from the dirt and stink of the front lines, returning at the end of each day to an aerodrome where they could get a bed, a bath, a drink and decent
food. They looked down on the men toiling in the churned and polluted earth below and blessed their luck. One day in July 1917 Captain Edward ‘Mick’ Mannock went to scavenge a souvenir
from a two-seater he had shot down (a habit he shared with von Richtofen).
‘The journey to the trenches was rather nauseating,’ he wrote afterwards. ‘Dead men’s legs sticking through the sideswith putties and boots still on
– bits of bones and skulls with the hair peeling off, and tons of equipment and clothing lying about. This sort of thing, together with the strong graveyard stench and the dead and mangled
body of the pilot . . . combined to upset
Africa, set to work producing a report which was to shape Britain’s air forces for the rest of the century. In the meantime, improved anti-aircraft defences, barrage balloons and searchlights
and faster and better organized fighter units gradually reduced the threat from the air. On 19 May 1918 seven out of an attacking force of nineteen bombers were shot down and, with mounting
pressures on other fronts, the air raids petered out.
In three years the Zeppelins and Gothas had launched 103 attacks on Britain, killing 1,414 civilians and wounding 3,866. This was a fraction of the death toll among soldiers on the Western
Front, and fewer than the 1,480 who would be killed in a single night in London in the worst attack of the Blitz (1940–41). It was the air raids of Zeppelins and Gothas, however, rather than
any other experience of the First World War, that would change the nature of Britain’s air forces when it went to war with Germany again.
Chapter 5
Death, Drink, Luck
Despite the great expansion of the Allied and German air forces from 1916, the struggle in the skies retained a human scale. Aeroplanes were small and flimsy and the numbers
involved in the fighting were small. It was possible for the participants to make some sense of it – unlike the nightmarish clash of steel and high explosive shaking the ground below
them.
The combatants fought at close quarters. At the end of an aerial duel the protagonists might be only a few yards apart. Writing to his parents shortly after his arrival in France in February
1916, Albert Ball described an encounter with an Albatros, one of the sleek and powerful machines that were now consistently out-performing their enemies: ‘The interesting point about it was
that we could see the Huns’ faces and they could see ours, we were so near.’ 1
Aviators could identify an opponent by his flying style. Later the German aces advertised themselves by painting theiraircraft gaudy colours: blood-red for Manfred von
Richtofen, a disciple of Oswald Boelcke, who had witnessed Boelcke’s banal death in a mid-air collision with a friendly aircraft, and inherited his crown as Germany’s top ace. Another
flamboyant flier, Lieutenant Friedrich Kempf, had his name painted in giant letters on the top wing of his Fokker triplane, and the words
Kennscht mi’noch?
(
Remember Me?
) on
the middle one.
German and Allied propagandists portrayed the war in the air as a chivalrous affair. It was an easier task than trying to prettify the swarming carnage on the ground. The public swallowed the
line and, to some extent, the aviators themselves went along with it.
‘To be alone,’ wrote Cecil Lewis, who had lied about his age to join the RFC in time to take part in the battle of the Somme, ‘to have your life in your own hands, to use your
own skill, single-handed against the enemy. It was like the lists in the Middle Ages, the only sphere in modern warfare where a man saw his adversary and faced him in mortal combat.’
The airmen were grateful to be at one remove from the dirt and stink of the front lines, returning at the end of each day to an aerodrome where they could get a bed, a bath, a drink and decent
food. They looked down on the men toiling in the churned and polluted earth below and blessed their luck. One day in July 1917 Captain Edward ‘Mick’ Mannock went to scavenge a souvenir
from a two-seater he had shot down (a habit he shared with von Richtofen).
‘The journey to the trenches was rather nauseating,’ he wrote afterwards. ‘Dead men’s legs sticking through the sideswith putties and boots still on
– bits of bones and skulls with the hair peeling off, and tons of equipment and clothing lying about. This sort of thing, together with the strong graveyard stench and the dead and mangled
body of the pilot . . . combined to upset
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