Chapter Ten
The Savoy Hotel
The big car dropped me off at the Savoy; but only after Smith-Barry had pressed a card into my hand. He gave me a whole pile of papers in file folders as well.
“It’s pretty obvious that you need your leave.” He apologized. “But. Call me in a couple of days. And try to write that up, if you get the chance. Maybe you could come up to a friend’s house for the weekend?”
I quickly forgot about it, as I checked into a room with some gratitude. This town was full up, with officers from a dozen nations. All the government ministries were going full blast. Salesmen, promoters, royalty from all over Europe came and went. Every place you went, even for a cup of coffee or a sandwich, there was a queue. Every race, creed, color, nationality, language, and uniform in the Empire and a hundred other countries were represented.
My room was very expensive.
It was a nice room, actually a suite. Very nice.
Like Caruso’s boiler room, I mused.
Or the Kaiser’s field latrine. All baroque, or rococo, or something like that.
Resolving to move to a more affordable, commercial hotel as soon as possible, I dropped into the bath. It wasn’t so much a matter of money. Rapid promotion had given me a growing bank account. My needs were simple. A bed, a roof, a job, food, and you, my love.
“Oh. Golly.” I groaned. “Where is she now?”
Sad, sad Will Tucker. As some of the aches and pains began to ooze away, all except the one in my knee which was on fire, the words rolled over and over in my head.
‘Not sporting,’ and, ‘Top Secret.’
And then I thought, ‘why not?’
The idea appealed to something deep within.
Why not just fucking do it? If Smith-Barry was just kidding around, I’d call his bluff.
I started off by writing a few notes, gathering my thoughts.
***
So far, the Germans have tended to rely on defending their own airspace, making us come to them. They know we have to dodge Archie, our own as well as theirs. They know we have to fight that western wind, simply in order to get home again. The Germans, who are not cowards, have the option of joining combat when the terms are most to their liking.
Richtofen, Von Krumholtz, and others were known to hover far above the battlefield. Some said as much as twenty-five thousand feet. I had my doubts about that. However, we couldn’t overlook the possibility of a one-off, high-performance machine, or even the use of oxygen. How would one go about enticing someone like Richtofen, who was a scion of the lesser Prussian nobility? How could we get him to come down out of his high perch? His technique was similar to the way my uncle and I had hunted deer in the woodlots along the Tenth Line, in Enniskillen Township.
But deer don’t try to get the hunter to come down out of the tree.
As a boy, what was he like? Where did he learn? I would need to make up a watch list of names, and get it to someone in military intelligence. I would need complete dossiers on all the major identifiable German aces, with the names and numbers of their Jastas, along with descriptions of their planes.
It all seemed a bit far-fetched.
The British had a unique outlook, the product of a public school education, and the class system. This was geared to outdoor sport and physical fitness as much as the study of the classics. While Greek and Latin literature may have some bearing on life, they’re not much preparation for war. Quite frankly, much of it is overrated.
Perhaps it was useful in order to awe and to govern underlings, but not to fight against true professionals.
Maybe that’s why they needed me.
High performance aircraft, that idea would bear some investigation. I know at least one pilot on our side who milled down the cylinder heads on his rotary-engine scout, thus gaining the ability to climb, a couple of thousand feet higher than the rest of the squadron.
Height is always an advantage, although he may have exaggerated.
Formation flying is a definite skill and a useful asset in combat tactics. But, as soon as combat is joined, the formation becomes unwieldy and unmanageable. There is no communication, occasionally, not even identification. Once after returning from a mission in two-seaters, my flight leader gave me proper shit for not joining up at his impatient signal.
“But I was right there beside you all the time.” I spluttered. “On the left with fuckin’ Dingbat and Wedge.”
“Um, um, um…who in the hell was that out there on the right, then?”
My flight leader was furious at being contradicted—and wrong.
“For all I know, it was Von fucking Klausewitz himself.”
I laughed in his face.
My new orders had arrived. Screw him.
The point is, the tactics would have to be simple, well-practiced and relevant. For our purposes, the aircraft would be painted in normal markings and paint jobs. The men themselves might not even know what the mission was. Then, if they were captured, they couldn’t give the game away. They didn’t need to know. It would be my job to shove them around on the battlefield. Like a big game of chess.
Even if we never did get a shot at the Baron, we could learn a lot about the art of aerial combat. Climbing up and out of the bath, drying myself carefully, I checked my scars. The angry red sockets would never look pretty. Bathing by the seaside would take moral courage, but no more than the courage of the faceless ones, the thousands of nameless, wounded infantrymen who haunted the street corners in every part of France.
Germany must have her share of ‘faceless ones.’
No more courage than they would need, either. The courage to face the peace.
This scheme would give the brass a chance to evaluate Smith-Barry’s methods, with a whole wing of pilots trained in a consistent fashion to newer, higher standards. Instinct told me, at the very least, their survival rate would be better. Fewer aircraft would be lost in senseless accidents, and who knows what kind of combat record they might achieve.
That would largely be a matter of opportunities presenting themselves.
And I make my own luck.
There could be a lot riding on the outcome. Maybe the boss wasn’t quite so casual as he pretended to be. Bob wasn’t exactly stupid. With a sigh, for it was after two a.m., I reached for the stack of files.
***
‘It seems strange that Major S. A. Wilcox reported the enemy fighters he fought on 28/09/17 as Albatros D-IV’s. According to confidential sources at M.I., (military intelligence,) the D-IV is an experimental variant.’
Powered by a 160-h.p. Mercedes power-plant, equipped with a spur gear allowing a propeller airscrew of larger diameter and therefore greater efficiency, according to the report.
‘The rear fuselage and rudder are rounded. The machine was built by OeFFAG, the Oesterreichische Flugzeugfabrik A.G. Otherwise, the aircraft mentioned in the report are probably improved D-III’s with modified fuselages…’
A lot of intelligence work is much ado about nothing, but they must glean a kernel out of all the chaff from time to time. Otherwise why do it? High altitude version, eh? Might be something in that. Why did old Smith-Barry have all this stuff in his briefcase?
I fell asleep at some point, sitting in my armchair, with an ashtray heaped up beside me.
Tomorrow would be another day, and an eventful one at that.
Proposal for Air Fighting Development Flight
Air Ministry, Whitehall.
Flight-Lieutenant William S.F. Tucker R.F.C.
Savoy Hotel, London, October 23, 1917.
We have absorbed valuable lessons from the French experience at Verdun.
Having had time to absorb this data, now it is time to do something about it.
Visual observation and aerial photography are vital in the gathering of fresh military intelligence. It is an absolute necessity to have a unified overall direction and proper co-ordination of fighter units when engaged in offensive operations. We have identified a need for units that are more adaptable to changing situations and capable of performing a variety of missions.
Numerical superiority during any offensive is critical. Fighters have to be employed in formation, on continuous patrols over enemy lines. This is a costly policy, because the Germans wait over their own territory. Two out of every three casualties due to ground fire are Allied pilots. The Huns don’t need to cross the lines to shoot down our planes. We go to them, flying both ways through the anti-aircraft belt. In the early years of this conflict, the haphazard application of air power resulted in conditions where a few noted individuals could rack up a big score. The vast bulk of new pilots were shot down within five or ten flight hours of reaching the front.
It is extremely difficult to avoid surprise in the air. Yet no one ever predicted this.
The Brass thought men were being shot down because they were cowards—and so the offensive policy. If you weren’t constantly attacking, you were a coward. No one expects a private, without supply and support, to constantly attack the enemy lines.
Might as well be hung for a wolf as a sheep.
The training of our pilots doesn’t prepare them to take on professionally-handled enemy machines, and many get themselves killed for no purpose.
Buddha says, ‘Don’t be stupid,’ and, ‘Do nothing without purpose.’
Our entire rationale for the offensive stance is to permit freedom of action to our artillery-spotting, reconnaissance and other ground support aircraft, and to deny such freedom to the enemy.
One machine working with a partner has a better chance of a decisive outcome.
Working in pairs, with proper combat separation, they exemplify mutual support and co-ordination. Simply put, one man in a Pup may be no match for one man in a Fokker. Two men in Pups can take on three or four enemy planes with proper tactics and co-ordination. At the very least they provide a second pair of eyes to scan the vulnerable blind spots behind and underneath your partner’s machine. The avoidance of surprise is a distinct combat advantage. It enables the pilots to break away and not engage if the enemy is vastly superior. Four, or five, or even six planes cannot be maneuvered by one flight leader effectively. Individual pilots must have more initiative. They also need to know what their partner is going to do. This requires training.
Incidentally, by doubling up our planes, we force the enemy to do the same, but most of them are already doing it.
Imagine two scouts, British, flying at 10,000 feet. They are directly beside each other, and separated by a hundred yards. You are in the left hand machine. Look over to the right. You can see your number two, and without craning your neck away back, you can see his cone of blindness behind the tail, and under the rear fuselage.
If you see a threat, don’t even signal to your buddy. Just turn into it. There’s plenty of room, and he can see instantly what you’re doing. You can blast an enemy off his tail before he even has time to know it’s there. Pilots shouldn’t even have to think about this.
It must become second nature.
Four aircraft flying in pairs are more than a match for any badly-handled group of five or six. Especially if you can see them coming. This is where Boelcke’s Dicta, or our own, ‘Notes on Air Fighting,’ simply cannot tell the whole story.
The fact is that experience, all alone and of itself, is a huge advantage. What is the problem with our pilots at present? Lack of operational experience when they arrive at the front. Generally, the operational side of training happens at Squadron level or even Flight level. Senior staff at the Front really don’t have time for this.
Some don’t even have the necessary knowledge, in regards to squadron or flight leaders. The blind are leading the blind when it comes to training pilots. Seventy hours of total flying time are not enough.
‘Notes on Air Fighting,’ helpful as they may be, need to be verified, modified, and taught. Practice makes perfect. You can’t learn to fly from a book. You have to strap your ass to a plane. You can’t learn air combat from a book either.
You need to practice in a safe environment.
Leadership is always hard to find. In war it is even more difficult. The demand is high, and the supply is small. Attrition is high. Training takes too much time to waste it on dead men. We cannot replace all unimaginative CO’s, and the new ones we churn out have little aerial combat experience. With all due respect to some brave and well-meaning men, maneuvering a five or six-plane flight in the horizontal plane is no substitute for proper combat tactics.
Our men need to know what to expect when they go into combat, as well as what is expected of them. We must give them the tools to succeed.
Another problem is that the pilots who come out of our new scheme are posted alone, or in very small batches to the squadrons at the front. Once there, they are subject to the CO’s assessment of their abilities, not to mention the fact that he may be using old tactical formations. What chance does the cherry have to put his new-found knowledge to work? To show the CO what is actually possible? When like-minded individuals, with a common book of maneuvers and tactical situations, fight as a team?
My preference would be to institute well-trained squadrons as a group, familiar with each other, using a common tactical doctrine, from day one.
Only experiment can discover if the theories are valid. Consider a two-seater, alone, aware of an enemy on his tail. Our two-seater pilots are not trained in dog-fighting. They turn tail and dive for the ground. ‘Experience,’ has taught them that the enemy can’t get below them and out of the defensive fire of the observer’s gun. Enemy pilots often break off attacks under these conditions because they refuse to risk ground fire, or to engage with an enemy who hasn’t been taken by surprise.
Many of the newer two-seaters have a gun in the nose. The pilots don’t know how to maneuver the aircraft to best advantage, using both guns to defend or engage, in spite of a few noted individuals with a good record of success. Some of these individuals have learned to attack. This proves that it can be done, with the knowledge, training and confidence of an experienced pilot at the controls, and with an observer trained to work with him as a team.
Then they wouldn’t have to dive into the ground fire, especially if they were working with another aircraft.
Statistics aren’t available, but four out of five combat kills probably never saw their assailant coming. The first thing they knew was that they were already under attack and damaged or injured. To escape a properly-executed surprise attack is something of a miracle.
Aerial combat isn’t about jousting in the air. It’s about killing enemy aircraft.
If that doesn’t strike one as very sportsmanlike, tell that to von Richtofen, who hovers in the sun waiting to strike at the first crippled aircraft to leave a dogfight.
The Junkers class prefers driven game to a real hunt, where the quarry is aware of the situation, and can shoot back. Most pilots know that a Pup or a Camel can out-turn an enemy aircraft of a given type. Many know that at a given altitude, they may lose this advantage. If it were possible to work out tactics using dissimilar aircraft, under both ideal conditions and non-ideal, new chapters in the book of air-fighting may yet be written.
Three squadrons, one of Bristol Fighters, one of Camels and one of SE-5a fighters would be the minimum suitable to carry out the program I propose to work out in conjunction with Air Ministry requirements and other authorities as directed or as the need is identified, or as I deem fit.
The Flight would be based where logistical support can be established, where it does not conflict with existing operations, and contributes to Home Defense. It needs to be where security concerns are minimized, and where noise and nuisance complaints by civil authorities won’t become a problem. A remote area far from the city and the supervision of deskbound warriors is desirable. Due to the rather experimental nature of our work, security concerns are addressed by the remoteness and the small size of the working group.
Norfolk, perhaps ‘the Broads’ area, might be suitable due to the nature of the terrain, and its proximity to Gotha and Zeppelin routes. This presents a credible excuse to train at high altitudes and at night.
With the sparse population, and lots of lakes and swamps for air-to-ground gunnery practice, the Broads would be ideal. Other than a major offensive build-up, there really is no way to entice the enemy forces to fly over our lines, other than occasional strategic reconnaissance, night bombing, or nuisance raids.
On the ground, we have no choice but to attack. In the air, it is the same.
There is no trench fighting in the air, no tunnels, no submarines.
While legendary battles in the air may have taken thirty minutes, the truth is most last just a few seconds. It is vital to use those seconds wisely.
We’ve all heard the expression, he who hesitates is lost. My students will be trained in every conceivable combat scenario, and know exactly what to do.
My men will not hesitate. My men will not be lost.
Our men must be trained to, see him, kill him, and get the fuck out, and everything else is just nonsense. But in the light of our decision to take the battle to the enemy, for we surely have no choice if we expect to win, then we have to be able to conduct our forces to minimize our own losses while ‘improving’ the enemy loss-ratio.
The sad fact is, right now half our casualties are from accidents, many in training. It is a sad fact, but more than half of all fliers lost in combat go down due to being Archied. This is no excuse for inadequate combat training. The survivors still need it. We need to train our pilots how to fight back, without having to dive into the ground fire.
Personally, I would love to meet Voss, Immelman or Von Krumholtz in person, face to face, man to man. Because when you don’t see him coming you’re dead. And it’s better than being blown to kingdom come by Archie.
It’s not all that easy to shoot a man down. The successful ones like Guynemer, Mannock, Bishop, Ball, Boelcke, they made a science, a study of it. They relied on speed, surprise, and a knowledge of the other man’s weaknesses. They looked for blind spots.
If we plan to overwhelm the enemy with superior numbers and an offensive policy, it’s time to put a little thought into how that overwhelming force may be used to best advantage.
***
With a borrowed typewriter from the hotel, it was all written up, when he called on me two days later.
It may have been a bit long-winded, but it was all I had, italics, barbaric style and all. Bear in mind, I really didn’t have much schooling…
“Good work. I thought you might have forgotten.” Smith-Barry looked pretty down, and I reflected how sad he was lately.
He missed her, I could tell. It would have sounded stupid to say, I understand, for of course no one really does. His recently-departed wife clouded his mood from time to time.
“Nice. Short, sweet and to the point.” He said. “Most of us are afraid to criticize our superiors.”
“Many men hope to have a post-war career, whereas I’ll probably go back to Canada.”
“Ah, yes. That’s always a consideration, bureaucracies being what they are.”
The boss relaxed in his high-backed wing chair and signaled for another round of drinks.
“I hope you’re enjoying your leave,” he said.
“It’s all right,” I said.
The strong, silent type. The man of action.
We sat in the quiet, leather-bound world of his exclusive club, where the split-tailed coats of the waiters were bottle-green. Thick rugs, polished oak paneling, ceiling framed in ornate coves and with rosettes around the chandeliers. Creamy rugs, indigo curtains. Tasteful, subdued. The boss read. I sat very quietly, and counted his page-turns so as to know how far along he was.
“In the early days, we were often sent out without the benefit of any intelligence reports. Authorities did not co-operate in any way. Such reports as did reach us were weeks out of date, and were not intelligently used…” He was quoting me to me.
He looked up.
“Wow. Not pulling any punches, eh, Will?”
He went back to reading silently while I just sat there savoring the whiskey, and taking in the atmosphere of this famous, and very high-class club. A long way from Enniskillen Township, and a hundred-forty acre dirt farm.
“I like the way you have it written. It’s non-controversial,” His eyes flicked over.
“Trying to keep personalities out if it. I’m not pointing the finger or assigning blame, but if this idea is valid, then the people you present it to must be made aware that the way things were done in the past is simply unacceptable.” I explained, in a rather long speech for me.
“Well, they’ll remember this. This is good. Hit the buggers, excuse me, right where they live.”
He went on.
“Early reconnaissance reports by RFC observers were invariably disbelieved by Military Intelligence staff at Headquarters. It is a historical fact that Von Kluck refused to accept reports from his own aerial observers, who reported that a gap existed between the British and French armies. If he had believed and acted upon this information, then surely he must have crossed the Marne and Paris would have fallen.”
“By the way, that other matter may never come up.”
He looked up.
“And we shouldn’t lose sight of the benefits.” I advised.
I had my hands relaxed in my lap. None of this Gallic gesturing in a quiet English club atmosphere. Sometimes you just have to concentrate on being totally relaxed. The end result of all this was still uncertain.
“I mean Manfred.” I noted.
There was a pause.
“This will be presented through the proper channels.” He began. “But I have some pull in other, shall we say, corridors.”
“Hell. It’s just an idea. You wanted it, you got it. Write someone else’s name on it.”
He smirked at that remark.
“I doubt if we’ll get three squadrons. Actually, the rest of it shouldn’t be too big of a problem.”
From a purely technical point of view, Bob had a few squadrons already under his command.
“The military intelligence aspect may be a toughie.” I responded, thinking aloud.
“You know what pisses me off?”
I bit back further expletives, but got no stern looks from the other denizens of the place. I had to remember, I was back in the real world.
“No, Will. What pisses you off?” Smith-Barry looked askance. “Is your whiskey too light?”
He reached for the decanter, and I let him. He was looking a trifle jug-eared. Perhaps he wasn’t a drinker. I find you have to be attuned to it.
The kind of guy who wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful, like my Uncle Ed.
Obviously, he was under some form of stress at the time.
“Think of Von Krumholtz, or Crown Prince Friedrich, or some other dickhead, the way they call themselves sportsmen.” I told him. “You know the way they hunt?”
“No. Not really.” He admitted. “Go on.”
“They stand up on a big ledge, on a cliff. Off in the distance they can hear gun-shots. That’s the beaters. Then, when they see an aurochs, that’s like a big pre-historic ox, when it walks into the clearing below them…they take a high-powered, big-bore weapon with a telescopic sight, and they blow it away. From about thirty yards.”
“And you want…?”
“Give me three squadrons.” I suggested. “And a couple of hundred thousand pounds, and about three dozen pilots.”
Spare engines, mechanics, motor transport, a ship…a train.
“I’ll see what I can do.” He said, looking all introspective.
The conversation trailed off after that.
END
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