Chapter Thirty-Three
Brat-a-tat-tat
“C’mon, c’mon. Burn, baby, burn.”
Brat-a-tat-barattata-tatt—the siren song of battle.
Hot fumes stung my nostrils, as an enemy machine hurtled below, belching white vapor. The gas tank was all shot to hell, and he was going the same way.
You can almost hear, but it is probably the imagination, which supplies the whoof, as she goes up in a big orange and black fireball.
Some poor bastard was screaming his life out in there.
“Cut to the bone, cut through the wire.” For some reason I would talk to myself.
“Swing away, little girl, swing away.” And yet another one blasted past, with a pair of Camels hot on his tail.
My fingers had that characteristic sting to them, but not frostbite. Not yet.
Twisting, turning, rolling, diving and climbing, and all the while it was dog eat dog.
When a target presents itself, blaze away at it. Sometimes, he’s gone as quickly as he appeared, and you’re unlikely to hit him.
They just go whizzing past. Other times, you get in close behind, where the bullets are traveling along his flight-path, and they converge in the middle.
The stench as they catch fire, and crumple up in a ball, and begin the long fall to earth.
Terminal velocity depends on shape, which causes drag, and mass, which determines the pull of gravity. Terminal velocity might be a hundred miles per hour in a burning plane, with failed engine, all twisted out of shape. It could be two hundred miles an hour.
I don’t care to find out.
From 20,000 feet, to fall in flames could last an eternity.
Twenty thousand feet, that’s almost four miles up in the air.
One hundred miles an hour is one and a half miles per minute. You could fall in flames for up to three minutes. Even longer in a spin or a fluttering, falling-leaf type of state. That’s why guys jumped out. That’s why the German fliegers were beginning to use parachutes. We were seeing more of them lately.
Basically I told the men to ignore parachutes. Don’t shoot at them, just rally up with some pals and take it from there. Don’t sit around watching the novelty of it.
Down to one-quarter tank. Check the altitude. Two guys, then three, and they did rally. We broke off pursuit and headed for home. It would appear that we have again splashed a few bad guys. We’d find out soon enough. By all appearances we’ve severely mauled a couple of German ‘hunting-squadrons.’
The deep robin’s-egg blue of the sky was punctuated by fairy fart clouds. Little white puffs artlessly cast aside by some goddess, seated at the Olympian vanity mirror. Used cosmetic swipes, tinted by the setting sun.
Leaves floating on the surface of the brook, and like a good minnow should, we used them for cover, watching for predators above and behind them as well.
It was surreal. The view went on for miles. The shadows of late afternoon lengthened. While ever-scanning the sky, I also counted shadows on the ground when possible. Just habit. Too many shadows would be bad news, though.
Sea gulls soared over the battlefield. The white, wheeling shapes were a reminder of more peaceful times. It’s just like when the farmer ploughs his field, and the flocks come into the field to get the grubs. Sea gulls, geese, and ducks.
The gulls also come to the battlefield. So do crows, vultures, and other scavengers.
“Take me to the river.” I sang sweetly to the instrument panel, as the compass held steady and true.
It’s not always easy to locate yourself after a big dogfight. We tended to get blown back over enemy lines, but the wind wasn’t constant at any level, and we flew at all levels.
In a ten or twenty-minute scuffle we drifted five or six miles. The fact that a few of the boys were with me was a good sign. Here we were. The river, as requested.
“Seek and you shall find.” I reminded myself.
I wondered how those enemy sound detectors were doing, and how the enemy observers were faring. The new squadron to our north was doing a good job of taking care of the balloons in this sector. The Huns put one up, they shot it down. Day in and day out.
They were pretty keen.
It was our turn tomorrow, and I needed to do some thinking about that. In order to get cooperation from them, we had to give something back. Blake’s boys were pretty darned good to us. They passed on the good word to the new set.
The whole bunch of us landed in good order. Most of the boys were already back.
Two planes shot up, one minor wound. We were lucky again.
One of the gunners had a scratch on the left hip. Machine gun bullet. Back in a day or two. I always tried to give a guy a couple of days off for even the most minor wound received in combat. The psychological impact of discovering one’s mortality can be pretty profound, but he would be fine. A pat on the back, and a good long sleep can work wonders sometimes. He’s pretty young. Hopefully a good drunk, maybe get laid or something. He’ll be bursting at the seams to return to duty so he can tell us all about it.
Nothing lasts forever. Sooner or later we would have a bad day. Often I felt a long moment of dread, especially when walking into the briefing room, and seeing all those innocent young faces beaming after their latest escapade.
Oh, yeah, Biggsy and Brubaker had really screwed up, so they were on the carpet.
***
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| Poor bastard. |
They say truth is stranger than fiction. That’s because fiction has to make sense, otherwise the editor sends it back. Sometimes life doesn’t make sense, and war is of course the greatest absurdity of all.
You have to keep that in mind.
Rome was governed by ‘bread and circuses.’ Modern ‘civilization’ works the same way. Even Bismarck knew that, which is why he brought in social security for the aged, and lots of big military spectacles, parades and such.
No Englishman, (or Frenchman, or Belgian,) ever thought to ask why an aristocrat, a conservative reactionary, had concerned himself with the problems of the aged, the sick and the crippled, or the working classes.
It was the price he was willing to pay, to weld together a state from something like three hundred and fifty lesser Germanic states. The Germans had a long history. They had states like Prussia, Saxony, Mecklenberg, Bavaria, little Duchies and Princedoms all over the place. Symbolism is important. Bismarck gave them a flag and an emperor. They had lots of Bishoprics and ‘free cities.’ He needed to weld Germany together in order to lead it into war.
The Sleschwig-Holstein thing, the whole Bohemian thing. The Austro-Hungarian thing. They had to weld it all together with a lot of propaganda. It’s not that we didn’t have our own propaganda, but theirs was very effective. They built heroes, where our policy officially discouraged heroes. I agreed with the policy but for different reasons.
I wanted professional war-pilots. Heroes are dangerous to themselves and to others.
They think they don’t have to play by the rules. Much of what I ‘knew,’ about German fliegers came out of our own popular press. In the early days, the Baron’s red Albatros lent itself to all kinds of crazy rumors.
Some thought the pilot was a girl, due to the garish hue. But the Baron experimented with paint jobs for a number of reasons. For one thing, on his Albatros, which I saw months earlier in other encounters, he did away with the white on the crosses. The red plane with dull black markings served him well. As a hunter, he used what cover or deception he could find. And unlike a stag, or grouse, or partridge, his new quarry could shoot back.
Lothar was an interesting character. Younger, more impulsive than Manfred, he was probably in awe of his brother. Little bit of hero-worship, a little of the show-off.
According to, ‘information obtained by a source close to Lothar,’ the Baron first experimented with earth tones, but found that no color made him invisible in the air. In my own experience, even pale blue, which might be fine if seen from below at a distance, clearly distinguished itself when seen against the ground from almost any distance, and it showed up against a white cloud as dark and against a dark cloud as light.
It seemed almost luminous at dusk and dawn, no matter what the angle.
The Boche called him, ‘the Rote Kampflieger,’ which translates more or less as ‘red battle-flyer.’ Manfred wrote a popular book by that title. Oddly enough a couple of English publishers tried to get hold of it. Sheer profit motivation, right?
One interesting thing Lothar told our source, possibly an American journalist, while they were still neutral…? Lothar said it was ‘fun,’ at first, ‘like a game.’
It quickly became more serious. His brother had changed since his head wound.
Always a loner, he became more reserved and withdrawn. Perhaps Lothar got drunk at a party, shooting his mouth off to diplomats from a neutral state? Something like that? I don’t necessarily trust my own sources.
Is this person in a position to know something like that? One of the first rules of criticism. When you grab an enemy trooper out of a trench in the middle of the night, and under questioning, he tells you, ‘Twenty divisions are planning to attack at dawn,’ we usually just laugh in his face.
Then we smack ‘em around a bit.
That’s neither here nor there.
Later, in the diminutive little tri-plane, his black crosses were backed up by big white squares. Red, white and black is the most visible color combination in the sky, due to its good contrast. It’s a lot easier to focus on the little details, and that makes it easier to judge distance. Dazzle-paint might work on ships. Had anyone tried it on a plane? To break up that distinctive airplane shape? Aircraft look like black dots in the sky, long before color becomes apparent.
Maybe a nice, soft, medium grey, a milky color would work.
He painted his aircraft bright red to let people know who he was, which wasn’t very smart. He wanted to be feared, and he got his wish. At some point everyone wanted his head. I gave careful study to everything Dawley and Bernie had provided on the subject of Manfred von Richtofen.
It was interesting reading.
Young Manfred joined the First Regiment of the Kaiser Alexander III cavalry, the renowned ‘Uhlans.’ Iron Cross at Verdun in September 1914. As a cavalry officer he was trained in observation, reconnaissance, and for command.
In a letter dated August 28, 1917, Manfred admitted: ‘I’ve noticed that I’m not quite right myself. I have just made two patrols. Of course, both were successful, but after each one I was completely exhausted.’
Holy shit.
Where was I in late August 1917?
On his first patrol after being wounded, ‘something almost happened,’ and he also wrote that his head wound was healing ‘frightfully slowly.’ He got hit when an ‘excited’ enemy opened fire from the unheard-of range of about three hundred yards. He got hit by the observer’s fire. That happened July 6, 1917.
Heart pounding. Where was I that day…but it just wouldn’t come. Nah. Couldn’t have been me…could it?
We’ll never know.
I tried not to think of how we obtained this information. Someone like the Countess? The Baron’s servant, bribed to copy his letters? In the cause of the International Workingman’s Association, or some such nonsense? Bolshevism, or that other specter of the land-holding elite, International Jewry?
It really doesn’t matter, I take it all with a grain of salt.
It’s just my way.
“Very interesting…but stupid.” That was my first impression.
Most of the information turned out to be useless. Young Manfred started off as a bold and impetuous cavalry officer. He became a canny, scientific fighter pilot, an adult.
One aged well beyond his twenty-something years. Food for thought, but otherwise inconclusive. In the early days, in the cavalry, a taste for glory almost got him killed more than once, but he learned the lesson. When he took to the air, it was like a game again. He had to learn the lesson again.
And, ‘with all due respect,’ to the Kaiser and the German officer class…
They gave out Iron Crosses like so many hot rolls. To be a member of the Junkers and not have one would have been the exception.
Courage was the rule, not the exception.
Brains would have been the exception.
A little imagination would have been unique.
One more thing. In his memoirs, (posthumously compiled after the war. –ed.) he mentioned some English two-seaters visiting the Jasta one night. Didn’t hit anything of importance, but they knew the English would be back. They set up machine guns and waited. The English didn’t come the next night. But they came the next. Three of our machines were shot down, and all the crews captured.
The score was evened up a little. Those men were friends of mine. I thought they were dead. But I didn’t owe the Rittmeister any favours.
Not to mention the three balloons shot down today, all nice and confirmed by ground observers and others.
Our own balloons were shot down too, of course.
It was all just part of the game. But how in the hell did our spies come up with some of this stuff? It was real cloak-and-dagger work, that’s for sure.
***
There are four major forces acting of an aircraft in flight: lift, thrust, mass and drag.
Old Biggsy was a massive fellow.
“This is a drag.” He said.
“Relax Biggsy, don’t sweat the small stuff,” I advised, watching Doc and Dr. Scolz assisting him.
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| Howard-Smythe looks askance. |
Next it was Brubaker. When a guy fucked up he took his wingman with him. That was the rule. Seeing as they flew Biffs, i.e. two-seaters, this also dragged their gunners into it. Saul looked pretty unhappy, but it was just him as Dawley had volunteered to ride along on the mission.
“It’ll look good on my resume.” He joked.
“Wrap yourself in the flag, and do it for your country,” I acknowledged.
I owed him a favor. Having a high-ranking officer along gave it the sanction of a Higher Authority. Normally Biggsy flew with Dempsey, but Dempsey was employed elsewhere that day. To say Brubaker was pissed with Biggsy was a slight understatement. As a commander, let me tell you, peer pressure has its uses.
Poor guys, their naked hairy asses exposed, as they pulled on the two sets of very tight elastic women’s, like leotards. They had to pull real hard to get them over their shoulders. Poor old Biggsy made a bizarre, scary sight, all red-hairy-beard and big white belly as he was. Sheepish-looking, too. I’ll bet that’s the last time he breaks the most basic rule.
Don’t fly with a broken airplane.
It’s just fucking stupid.
“Lift up your, ahem, ‘mass’ for a moment.” Joked Doctor Scolz.
No laughs from the guinea pigs.
“Didn’t like the thrust of that remark.” Said the real doctor.
We laughed but the guinea pigs didn’t, much.
We put bands of hockey tape around each ankle, just below the knee, above the knee, the upper part of the legs, as high as we could ‘comfortably get,’ and then one around the pelvis, and one a little higher just below the navel. We put strips of tape up and over the shoulders to help hold them up. They struggled into a maximum-size girdle, and those had no stretch at all. We had a bugger of a time to get the little hooks fastened on Biggsy. Remarkably quickly, he donned his flight suit, as we worked on Brukaber and then Dawley and the gunner, Saul. He normally flew with Brubaker.
What an unhappy bunch of lads. Biggsy disobeyed orders. Having detected a fuel leak, while still on our own side of the lines, and actually quite near home, the idiot had proceeded with the mission.
This was, ‘contrary to instructions,’ as I flatly told him. The fact that he got damaged in combat, with his wings shot up, tail shot up, landing gear shot up, and flipped over on landing, hadn’t helped his case. In my view, it put the final polish on what he did. He and Saul, his gunner, were fuckin’ lucky there was no fire.
“I didn’t waste all that time in training to have you go fucking everything up.” I told them. “I expect you to know your ass from a hole in the ground.”
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| I swear he's writing his memoirs, and on my time, too... |
They were trained to switch off the ignition in the event of a forced landing, but that’s not important. A hard impact can strike sparks kinetically, like banging rocks together. All you need is a leak from a ruptured tank, a torn-off fuel line, or exactly the kind of damage that happens in a crash.
This was their punishment.
“My toes will be much warmer.” Said Dawley.
Why was he volunteering for stuff? Maybe he wants to fly. It gets in your blood.
He made funny little side-to-side curtsying motions, like he was breaking in a set of leather underwear. He waddled over to the side of the tent and let himself down on a bench.
“I can sit. I can sit.” He cried.
He seemed awfully cheerful. Playing it up for all it’s worth. Perhaps he’s planning to write his memoirs after the war, and needs something to put in it.
“Pray you don’t have to shit.” Said Howard-Smythe.
He winked at me.
“Tell me about it.” Winced ‘the happy gunner,’ Saul, who was the last to get suited-up.
“The whole thing shouldn’t take twenty minutes.” I advised. “Can you hold it?”
Saul nodded glumly.
“We have half a dozen sets of scissors. We can cut that stuff off you guys pretty quick, when you get back.” I reassured him.
Preparations complete, the doctors went back to more normal duties.
“Now this little gadget here.” I noted, pulling a spare one out of a box. “Is mounted in your two aircraft.”
I put it on the table and they gazed at it.
“What you do is to take off, move south of the aerodrome, where our Camels can protect you, and then simply fly in circles.”
I had their attention.
“You start off by flying a head-on pass, then you each roll left, and then start turning left. Try to keep the wings at plumb ninety degrees, although you won’t be able to do it.”
That was for safety, put them on opposing sides of a circle.
“At two thousand feet, you take a reading off the gauge, at three thousand feet, you take a reading off the gauge. You have to write down your speed at that time. That’s why the observer is looking over your shoulder and not manning the gun today.” I explained further.
“Every thousand feet, take a reading, both the gauge and the speed.” And write it all down. “Try to max out the gauge, okay?”
The mission profile had them going up to 15,000 feet, which would be enough of a punishment, especially in a full turning climb like that.
“Pull as hard as you can and still maintain climb and flight control. Any questions?”
Not so far.
“We’ll monitor you, and make our own comments and observations. I’m very proud of this little device, because I invented it.” I explained.
It was built from two thin plates of aluminum, about a sixteenth of an inch thick, and held an inch apart by spacers. There was a slot in the front plate. A thin, red-painted needle was attached to the back plate, and stuck out of the slot in the front plate. It was a narrow strip of spring steel with a weight on one end.
I held it up in front of them.
“See, one gravity.”
Two gees were determined by doubling the weight, three gees by tripling the weight.
How accurate they might be, I wouldn’t care to speculate. Probably not very, to be honest.
I gave it a little shake.
“See, the increase in g-factor moves the weight up and down the scale.”
The base-plate was screwed to the dash of the plane, where it could be easily seen and read, even over the pilot’s shoulder by the gunner or observer. The needle moved up and down the gauge as the plane maneuvered. Dead simple.
The boys at Farnborough very kindly made them up for us, and they were properly calibrated with numbers and little marks on the plate.
“Your planes won’t take a lot of negative gravity without the engine stalling.” I told the men. “An outside loop is verboten.”
The men sagely nodded, even Dawley. We could rotate the gadget, mounting it in another way, for example in the ‘fore and aft plane of rotation,’ as the explanation went.
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| "A little more room in the crotch might be nice." - Saul. |
Then it would be on the side of the cockpit. We could measure pull-ups, and dives, even mount it in the rear cockpit. (Which would have made more sense for this test. But I did want the pilots to have some feedback as well. Otherwise g’s are purely subjective, and observations vary from pilot to pilot. )
“How’s that tape holding?” The corporal asked Saul.
Whittington was assisting us.
“Tight as a duck’s ass.” Came the reply.
“You ruddy Canadians always say that.” Complained Brubaker. “I could never figure out some of your quaint colloquial expressions.”
Brubaker was the prim and proper type, always well-spoken.
“A duck’s ass has to be tight.” I patiently explained. “Otherwise it would sink.”
Perhaps it was the alien scene, or the personal discomfort, which unleashed the gales of laughter. The look on Brubaker’s face was simply priceless.
“While we’re into explanations, what’s all this stuff about brick shit houses?” Dawley asked.
“Because every once in a while you have to dig a new hole, which means that you also have to pick it up and move it.” I explained patiently. “It’s just a joke, basically.”
Absolutely deadpan, Dawley looked over, catching my eye.
“Don’t forget the special cream.” He reminded.
“The special cream.”
I almost did forget.
Corporal Whittington went over to the command tent.
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| Ah, yes, the Special Cream. |
“We keep it in the safe,” I explained.
When they were all ready, except for the cream, I would give them the rest of the mission profile. There were one or two other tests, sharp pull-ups and the like. I asked them to make observations of ‘P-effect,’ if possible. Otherwise, ‘put something in the report about it,’ and that way if the Ministry queried it, we could explain further. The blast from the propeller hits the aircraft in a helical motion, and most of our aircraft still didn’t have trim tabs or any such consideration. Also, when a plane is climbing, it’s a strong headwind, and the propeller is ‘chopping’ the air into little bits at an extreme angle. This creates high pressure beneath, and low pressure above, in an asymmetrical fashion. This is different from simple engine torque.
To be honest, I loaded their heads up with all kinds of nonsense. Trim tabs would have made it easier to fly the machine. It would reduce the work-load and thus pilot stress. We had to go through the motions of running tests, ‘scientific tests.’
It gave us a chance to tell the Ministry what we wanted.
I knew they would work.
While waiting for the corporal, I asked Biggsy, “How does it feel?”
He just grunted.
“The general idea is that we keep the blood from pooling down in your legs. We want to keep it up in your head, where you need it.”
If you’ve ever seen those spinning black and white shiny things swirling around in the corners of your vision, then you know the early stages of a ‘head spin.’ Lay around for half a day, smoking and reading on the couch. Then suddenly stand up. If you return to consciousness lying on the floor, you’ll know how dangerous it can be, and how it would be all too easy to get shot down in combat.
“I can see how it might help.” He ventured, uncertainly. “Maybe something properly designed would work.”
Whittington came in with a screw-cap jar. It had a bogus Air Ministry label on it, ‘Sample # 114-A,’ or some such nonsense.
“Okay boys, the cream goes on your faces and hands. Just before you put the gloves on, and your masks.” I instructed but there was more chit-chat.
The cream was just bullshit, part of the punishment. It’s to make sure they don’t talk about it.
Hell, let them take their time. More talk. The Camel can climb ten thousand feet in nine minutes, and the SE in about eleven minutes. How fast they can do it in a Biff eluded me for the time being, but this test shouldn’t take too long. We can always find out.
Sooner or later someone else will screw up.
“It’s not at all ideal.” Saul said.
“That’s my fault, I’m afraid.” Admitted Dawley. “It turns out I’m colour blind.”
“No one cares whether it matches.” Brooded Saul darkly, and we broke up in laughs again. “Just get this shit over with.”
“I’ll be honest, it was kind of weird to go in the store and buy them.” Allowed Dawley with a glint of humor in his eyes.
I giggled along with him.
Soon the men mounted up in our special Biffs, ‘The Tadpole,’ and ‘Shovelhead,’ which while named, had no assigned drivers.
“You gentlemen are privileged to try out the only three-hundred-twenty horsepower Rolls-Royce Falcon engines in existence.” I informed them.
Other pilots and staff watched from one side. The boys were distinctly uncomfortable.
Those of us in the know were just dying not to laugh.
Saul’s handlebar mustache looked droopy. He seemed a little subdued. He was normally one of these contrarians, who contradict every damned thing you say.
You know the kind.
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| Mustache a bit droopy there, Saul... |
If you say, ‘good morning,’ they say, ‘Fuck you, somewhere in the world someone is suffering.’
‘Tell me about it,’ was my usual response.
Saul was as slick as a red-ass fox. He was always taking the opposite tack. The opposing point of view, no matter what you said. You could say one thing one day, and he would argue against it. You could contradict yourself the next day, and he would suddenly contradict you, and whatever he’d said the day before, as well.
You could manipulate Saul.
You could get him to say anything you wanted, if you were willing to work at it.
“This all seems a little silly to you men, I’m sure.” I informed Saul, as I stood by the fuselage.
Biggsy, intent, was going through his checklist thoroughly.
“No, I don’t think so.”
He was, ‘firmly convinced,’ that we needed, ‘more funding committed to research and development.’
I reached in and gave a tug on his strap for him.
“It’s obvious we’re operating on a shoe-string.” I ruefully acknowledged.
He had to disagree.
“I think everyone’s all doing pretty well.” He said witheringly.
“Any suggestions?”
“More room in the crotch.” According to Saul.
No one had any other ideas.
“All right men, off you go then.” And then they fired up, and taxied off to launch the mission.
I looked around from in front of the briefing tent door and beckoned at a couple of pilots out there. The tag was now removed from the post, to be hung up on the board.
“All clear.” I told them.
They could use the room to study their maps or plan their vacations or whatever, and I went back to the command tent and more little chores.
END
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| They were all volunteers. |
Note: the above video is WW II aircraft, due to the difficulty of finding the proper footage. The viewer does get some flavor of what an early rocket attack looked like. #Louis
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