Chapter Twenty-One
Yet Another Hotel Room
I won’t say it didn’t hurt like hell, and I won’t bore you with the details. It’s enough to say that I found a hotel, and another place for the motorbike, and laid about on the couch like a miserable piece of shit for a couple of days. I drank heavily. I got sick.
I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die. I prayed for God to kill me. I cried a lot, and I had no one there this time.
It was all very sad.
I couldn’t just drink it away. I had to get back to the job. No matter how much it hurt. People were depending on me. Not so much the students, but my buddy Bob, and others. Even some people, completely unknown to me. The students could have been sent to a squadron, or they could have been absorbed back into the system, if worst came to worst.
I flew back to Norfolk in a bloody snowstorm. Talk about dedication. But those students were all I had to hold onto at the time. That and my so-called dignity.
The bike was in storage, my heart was on ice. My mind was focused, laddie.
Fuck the world. And for the first time in a few months at least, I wondered what it would be like to go home. What would it be like to sit on the porch and look out over the fields and watch my corn growing? To listen to my cows lowing?
Heaven was too far away.
It was just a hazy dream.
***
I threw myself into the work. With a couple of days in hand before the class returned from Christmas, I put some ideas on little cards, and re-wrote them endlessly. I worked on a handbook to be bound and issued to pilots. The book was tentatively entitled, ‘Hints and Kinks of Aerial Fighting.’
By the time fighting instruction resumed, I was ready for them and all set to go. They looked fit and refreshed, eager to get on with their learning.
“All righty then, are we all here?”
They responded, ‘Two here, Three here, Four here,’ et cetera.
“Today we’ll be flying in spite of the weather. We don’t have much daylight this time of year, so I’ll get right to the point. Number Five, what if you were eastbound, five miles behind the lines, just you and your wingman?”
I started off by drawing on the blackboard. I quickly sketched in the Western Front, a broad squiggle which occasionally moved back and forth, often quoted at about two hundred and fifty miles. But there were so many twists and turns, salients and pockets, from the North Sea and Belgium, to Switzerland. Who really cared about the exact length? This part of the drawing was permanently painted by my pet mechanic, on one large panel in particular. The map was painted. The front line was chalked, but it didn’t move much.
I drew a simplified drawing on another panel.
“Okay, here’s the front, here are you two, and you’re confronted by three enemy machines. You have half a tank of fuel, and are also aware of an enemy formation (dot-dot-dot) two miles behind to the west.”
The Western Front.
“What’s our altitude?” Asked Number Five, Powell.
He leads the second flight of this class.
“Sixteen thousand.” I told him.
“And what about the enemy?”
“They’re at about fifteen thousand, climbing, half a mile away, a little to the right.”
They’re coming towards you, Powell…think man, think.
“What time is it?” He asked.
I looked at my watch and the class broke up in laughs, which is good, for it proves they’re watching. I watched Powell. Quickly catching on, he looked up at the big pole-light, grabs his model. His wingman moved out with him onto the tarpaulin floor.
“Yeah, yeah. I would engage,” he said after a minute.
Two mechanics, then a third, were holding their models and they want to shoot down the flyboys. Their big, happy grins left no doubt about that. Which is exactly the attitude they should have. I’d focus that in on the enemy flyboys later, when we get some tools and spare parts for our thirty-one aircraft of various types and conditions. We also have a few wrecks which we hope to rebuild as circumstances and time permit. My boys were thinking.
“Why?” I queried.
“This is the perfect chance to try out the high-low split.” Powell told his wingman, almost ignoring my presence. “You stay low, I zoom-climb up to about another thousand real quick, and they can’t match my climb rate because they’re heavy, we’re light and already above them.”
Powell was thinking it out. Slowly, but he’s thinking.
“Show him the hand signal,” I instructed.
Powell put his hand straight out, in a widely stretched V-sign, palm perpendicular to the mat.
“They’ll go after you. Thinking we’ve panicked.” Powell would dive onto an enemy machine’s tail.
Blast it out of the sky.
After a head-on pass at the enemy formation, his wingman would turn into the sun and climb, spiraling back sunwards, pulling hard to re-form with Powell…Powell looked confused.
“What happens next?” He asked.
“You have a moral edge,” I said, then hesitated.
This was hard to put into the proper words.
“Confidence, and aggression, is what wins in the air, and I suppose in real life, too.”
How could he disagree?
“If you have a kill, go for the others because they likely won’t engage if you’ve already shot one of them down and have speed on. You want them to run. Then you’re behind the sons of bitches and you control the situation.”
His wingman got it better than Powell did, but that was fine with me. It was Powell. I was trying to teach him to lead, because I thought he should have, I don’t know, the drive, the ambition.
He just seemed slow. Don’t look around for a nod of approval in combat. Just do it.
“By the time they break, scatter, and re-form, you can climb up and do it again.”
Come on, Powell.
“This is slow work sometimes, men. I’m pleased with your progress. You were right to engage, but there is no telling what the enemy would have done after your attack.”
“Yes, sir.” They both smiled, and went back to their places.
If nothing else, I could work on their confidence. That alone might save their lives.
“Never hesitate. Just take the shot and worry about the CO’s approval later.” I told the assembled crew.
Hopefully they appreciated what I was trying to say.
Progress was being made. Would it ever be enough? I would have liked to have seen more initiative on their part. They should think things out and try them. But then, these men lacked that hatred, that fucking defiance that sets the survivors apart from the mere mortals.
“O.K. Where’s Jimmy?”
Jim was a new guy. Having checked him out, I knew he could fly, and he had in fact been wounded in combat on his third mission flying Camels.
He was a ‘Camel Merchant,’ not a very imaginative label, but that happens in war.
“Okay. Bring your plane, I’ll show you a special trick, Jim.” He came out to engage the little green tri-plane which I used sometimes.
I always played the bad guy, and I knew all the tricks.
“Jim, let’s say you’re coming up fast from behind and I don’t see you, and then I start to turn away by coincidence. You’re going real fast. What are you going to do?”
“Don’t really know.” Jim said. “Follow you, I guess?”
“You can’t turn that tight, Jim.”
He stands there thinking…too long. In action, there’s no telling what he might have come up with. But he needs to be able to see it in his head.
“If you blow past me, and I see you off to one side, I will simply reverse my turn and get on your tail. Then I’m going to shoot you down.” I waited.
“I’ll show you. Lets say I turn left, give me your plane,” and he handed it to me.
Imperial War Museum.
“What you’re going to do is a barrel roll attack. You have to climb, rolling almost inverted to watch him go away. In other words, he’s turned left and you’ve pulled up. This bleeds off enough speed, and altitude means that you can dive down onto his tail again. It wastes a couple of seconds, and you’re in a good place. Where he still can’t see you…”
“So, I do a kind of fucked-up rudder turn, and then I dive onto his tail?”
“No, do a climbing, rolling, barrel-roll kind of a turn. A rudder turn is too slow.” I said. “You’ll bleed off all your energy. Keep your speed up and watch out for a trap. Then you do your dive, up under his tail, and ka-boom. Down he goes. And you don’t have to take your eyes off him for a second.”
“How do I know he doesn’t see me?” Jim asked.
“Good man, excellent question.”
I waited, then went on.
“Well, you don’t. Look for a trap. But if he saw you coming up from behind real quick, wouldn’t he break more suddenly? To throw off your aim?” I asked. “He can out-climb you. He should have pulled up, if he knew you were there.”
“Yes, sir. Why do I have to go upside down?”
“So you can see him, Jim.”
A little light went off in his head.
“Ah.” He murmured.
“And anyhow, maybe it’s not exactly a hundred and eighty degrees of roll, maybe more like a hundred-twenty? Maybe a little more?”
“O.K.” He nodded, with a quick grin. “Now I get it.”
I had high hopes for Jim.
I thought of another angle, since he seemed brighter than some, and had experience.
Why not keep going? Going over to the side table, selecting a Biff model and a yellow Pfalz to represent the enemy, I tried Jim on another problem.
“Let’s say you’re flying along in your Biff, heading east at five thousand feet. You look over to the right, and there is this fellow, going west at the same altitude. He’s about three hundred yards away. You both see each other at the same time. Neither has the element of surprise. What do you do?” I queried.
“Well, I can’t turn with him and catch him. He’ll come up from behind and get me. The normal thing to do is turn in the opposite direction and dive to outrun him.”
“But we’re not going to do the normal thing, are we, Jim?”
“No-o-oh?”
“What if you keep going straight? What if you pull back on the stick, and do a stall turn? By turning into the threat, you spoil his turn, and what if you meet him head on?” I asked Jim. “And as you go by your observer gets a crack at him with the rear gun.”
“Well, he should have been firing at him all along.”
“That’s very true, Jim. You have guns front and rear. He only has guns in front.”
He listened in focused attention.
“You and your plane are more than a match for any piss-ant Pfalz, if properly flown. What do you think? Did you know that your plane has more power and speed than a Pfalz fighter? Their engines are all obsolete.”
“I suppose you’re right, sir,” he agreed.
Well, good. But does he understand? I hope so.
“Imagine if you had a wingman, backing you up. He could circle in the opposite direction, or even just stick right with you. Right, Jim?”
He nodded, and shuffled back into the group.
Who do I get to shoot down next? I could go on all day like this. How much can they pick up in one little lesson? They needed to practice flying. They needed to be fed in little bits. Sometimes the instructor wonders if he is just babbling to hear himself talk. Maybe he needs a rest.
The SE-5a fighter aircraft.
“Come on skipper, give us one more.” Someone called.
I like your line of thinking, whoever the hell that was.
“All right, Snotty, get out here.”
He and his wingman Geoff came out.
Geoff didn’t have to ask, ‘Duh. Do you want me to go with him?’
Geoff knew his job by now, and it helped my peace of mind to match up men very carefully. Geoff would look after Snotty. I had no doubts. That’s what friends are for.
“You men are flying at medium altitude, with two other planes,” and I waved out two mechanics.
Sometimes I did this to illustrate that you might have to fly with new people or even strangers. And if the mechanics can get it, so can the flyboys, was the unspoken message.
A lot of mechanics go on to fly, it’s in the blood.
More mechanics simulate enemy machines, six in number. The paths converged on the hangar floor. The men shuffled around as I explained the bracket.
“Left element of blue section breaks left, right element separates right. The enemy formation holds tightly together for mutual protection.”
All eyes followed as we went along.
“The entire bad-guy formation makes a head-on attack on the right-hand element of blue section. The left-hand element of blue section makes a blind side attack, and shoots down two enemy machines. The commander of the enemy formation didn’t know what to do, or how to direct his aircraft. He should have had several sections, to say the least. If nothing else, he should have been able to break into two groups.”
I stood there a moment, hands on hips, exuding confidence.
“It’s simple, gentlemen, utterly simple. There is no mystery to fighting in the air.” I concluded.
“One more thing. This may sound like bragging, but it is no more than the simple truth. But I am always the first one into a fight, and I’m always the last one to leave. This isn’t motivated by bravery, I can assure you, gentlemen. It is not motivated by a desire to kill, or hatred. I don’t give a shit about decorations and awards. I am motivated by a strong desire to live. I’m here today to tell you that my methods work very well indeed.”
There was a long silence after that one.
“Out to the flight-line in fifteen minutes.” I added, almost as an afterthought.
The next fifteen minutes would be hell, because now I had time to think of her.
Which I did a lot of, when I had the time. An officer by day, narcissistic youth by night.
By now we were up to twenty-three pilots, and were starting to get a flow of other personnel. Howard-Smythe, he became our adjutant, so deaf he couldn’t hear a briefing, but that allowed him to concentrate on the paperwork. We had the sergeant pretend to be him and make all the phone calls. The sergeant had a wicked cockney accent, and calling himself ‘oward-Smoife on the phone, it just broke the place up every time.
I guess you had to be there. Anyway, Captain Howard-Smythe was deaf, so he didn’t mind. He saw us all happy, he was happy too. We had a dead-beat corporal, we had some good people.
We had one half-decent mechanic and a boy for each aircraft, but only one rigger for every two airplanes. That’s not good. It takes a lot of time to rig a plane after uncrating.
Some of our planes, like my own hack Avro 504-C, were flown into our site, but we got three brand spanking new Camels one day. They had to be unloaded from the nearest rail siding, at a mill in the nearby village. Then each one was brought over on a hay wain. We had our little canvas-topped lorries and a couple of antiquated fuel trucks. Our farmer friend let me drive the team.
I enjoyed that day more than I should have, but we were all excited by the new machines. It was good to work with horses again. When I saw the stables, and the neat condition they were in, it was obvious he was a respectable man.
Each plane was uncrated, assembled, the motor put on, all the controls, the fuel system all hooked up. Everything was checked over, signed off on the ground, and then the fully-completed aircraft had to be flown on air-test.
Putting on the wings, hooking up the flying, landing and control wires, making sure the wings and tail were straight and true, set at the proper angle of incidence, it all took up too much time. Landing wires support the wings on landing, so they don’t snap at the fuselage and fall off. Flying wires help to support the weight of the craft in flight. It can be confusing, and of course it takes knowledge and experience. One time a mechanic hooked up the ailerons wrong when connecting the control cables to the joystick.
Simple mistake, but it could have killed someone. Lucky we caught it—this is why we have a pre-flight check after all.
It took a lot of time. We had nine Bristol fighters, F2 B’s, three badly-worn old Camels, three new ones, a half a dozen Avros, and six crated SE-5a’s which I was saving.
The rest were all old SE’s that needed a lot of work, even complete overhauls.
Not enough other parts for any serious maintenance or repairs. Three squadrons could be up to sixty pilots and six hundred other personnel. To keep it small had its advantages.
That’s why we flew Brisfits and Avros a lot at first.
There were small blessings, like when Smith-Barry ‘discovered’ some new engines in the back of a storage shed, for what he called the ‘obsolescent’ 504-C’s. When they arrived, they turned out to be miss-labeled. Brand new Clerget 130-hp engines, which could theoretically fit on the Avro, with some minor but time-consuming adaptations.
Actually, they were much better suited to the Camels. Robert was a nice guy.
I never asked where he had stolen them.
We had three squadrons, but only on paper. Maybe we would get more men, maybe we wouldn’t. However, it justified throwing my weight around to get the materiel needed to build up our strength, in terms of ground personnel, tools, transport, machinery, and my latest obsession, some spare motors. A few Rolls-Royce Falcon engines for the Bristols would have been nice. If I could ever get some. Certain things, I felt justified in saying, or even doing. I was prepared to steal those engines. If I could locate some, I intended to do just that. It could be frustrating, at times.
And I could be a cold bastard, when necessary.
END
A Nieuport 11 Bebe in Italian markings.
Images. That Louis guy, with a bit of help from the internet.
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