The Last Lady from Hell (25 page)

We left his tent not really knowing what to say. As the three of us walked slowly away, two British officers walked by speaking loudly to each other.

“The bloody Irishmen are an undisciplined lot, wot?” said one.

“Quite so,” the other replied.

I wanted to poke one, or maybe both of them in the nose. Then around the corner came three Irish soldiers. They were laughing and poking each other as they approached, obviously chums.

“Well look here. You lads must be our pipes and drums!” one said as the three stopped in front of us and looked us up and down.

“And a fine band, if ever, I saw one” another said. The three were members of the Irish Fusiliers who had a distinct green and white feather hackle in their hats to indicate their association.

“Well, I don’t know,” said the third. “Something’s missing. Perhaps this will liven up your glengarry.” He took off his hackle and placed it behind my cap badge. The other two did the same to Bill and Sean.

“Now, there’s a smart looking trio,” he said. “You’re honorary Irishmen now and you won’t know who’ll be shooting at you first, the Brits or the Huns!”

They all broke into roaring laughter and walked away slapping the fellow on the back that made the wisecrack.

“Interesting guys,” Bill said, understating the encounter.

GERMAN ARMY AIR SERVICE, “KESTA” #5

Bapaume Aerodrome, June 20, 1916

A
viator Philip Zieger was walking from the hangar toward his aircraft. He lit a Camel cigarette and drew in the smoke. Pausing for a moment he blew a series of perfect smoke rings and smiled at his handiwork. It was quite common for the aviators of the time to be eccentric rascals and American cigarettes were all the rage even though this brand bore the name of his airborne enemy–the Sopwith “Camel.”

The heavy morning dew on the grass soaked his boots and leggings but that was of little interest to him at that moment. His attention was on his new aeroplane, the Albatross CV.

What a fine looking bird, he thought as the morning sun crested the eastern horizon behind it.

“You should be called Falcon or Osprey, not Albatross. An Albatross is a clumsy, slow bird!” he said in the cool morning air. “You are a fine bird of prey.” He spit out pieces of tobacco from the camel and tossed it into the grass. It hissed as the dew met the hot ember.

The Albatross was a relatively new addition to the German Army Air Service and was far more pleasing to the eye than the previous
menace of the Western Front, The Fokker E IV. The Fokker was a monoplane (single wing) and had a maze of wires on top and on bottom of the wing and fuselage to add strength for high “G-load” dogfights. Its long, slender fuselage and small rudder gave it a deceptively non-threatening look. The Fokker was, as were most aircraft of the time, covered with fabric stretched over a wood frame. This combination kept it lightweight but gave it a box kite appearance. It was this aircraft that provided German Aces Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke with the bulk of their kills during the early part of the war and it had earned great respect from the allied pilots, who called it the “Fokker Scourge.”

The British Sopwith Camel and Pup along with the DH 2 and Neiuport had recaptured the skies over the Western Front for now, but the Albatross was taking it back. There was heavy fighting down south in Verdun and “The Flying Circus”–Immelman, Boelcke and a new ace Von Richthofen had been concentrating their talents on that event for several months. Unfortunately, Immelman had been shot down and killed two months earlier and Kaiser Wilhelm had grounded Boelcke for a while for fear of losing another ace and the demoralizing effect it would have on Germany. This opened the skies for Von Richthofen, who was making a huge name for himself in the process.

Philip Zieger wished he could be down in Verdun to prove himself as well.

“After all it’s what I trained for,” he said as he pre-flighted his Biplane.

“What?” his gunner asked.

“Nothing,” Zieger tersely replied

Zieger, like Manfred Von Richthofen preferred the flight characteristics of this airplane compared to the Fokker. The E IV had an Oberursel, nine cylinder, 110-horsepower rotary engine. This type of pow
erplant was common in many French, British, and German aircraft because of its simplicity and light weight-to-power ratio.

The rotary engine did, however, have several outstanding drawbacks.

First, the engine was mounted on the aircraft by its drive shaft and the propeller was bolted onto the engine. The entire engine and propeller would spin.

Second, the engine had no carburetor and thus had no control over the power–it was either full power or off, accomplished by means of a “kill switch” mounted on the flight control stick.

Third, the engine was cooled by its spinning, and lubricated by centrifugal force in the process.

To elaborate on these drawbacks, first because the engine was spinning it created a gyroscopic influence on flight characteristics, when you pulled on the control stick to go up, the airplane would lurch to the left. If you pushed down on the stick it would lurch to the right. This made for some very spasmodic dogfighting and presented the pilot with many unwanted inputs during his maneuvers.

Second, because there was not control over the power, the pilot had to work the “kill switch” on and off during a dogfight or on landing. Not that big of a problem during landing, but when you’re pulling, banking, looping, and shooting, leaving the power on at the wrong time could over-stress your airplane and structural failure could occur.

Third, because the lubrication of the engine was centrifugal, Castor oil, the best lubricant for that engine, would often spew out and cover the windscreen, fuselage and pilot’s face with ample amounts of the smelly, sticky substance.

The Albatross, on the other hand, was amply powered by a Mercedes 220-horsepower, liquid cooled, in-line engine. It had no gyroscopic influence, it was carbureted, and the engine could be controlled from idle to full power by means of a throttle.

The oiling system was fully contained consequently there was no oil to scrub off of your goggles, leather helmet and face.

The Albatross also had a wooden skinned fuselage for added strength, and it was a Biplane, which many believed increased maneuverability.

Later in 1916, Manfred Von Richthofen, in a display of either arrogance or extreme self-confidence, had his beloved Albatross CI Fighter painted bright red, earning him the nickname of “the Red Baron.”

Zieger was not that arrogant and was not ready to challenge the likes of the French Lafayette Escadrille, nor American ace Eddie Rickenbacker and Canadian ace Billy Bishop just yet. The Albatross, however, was set up as a reconnaissance airplane with a pilot and gunner/bomber behind him.

Zieger was simply happy to be flying an airplane that would do what a pilot commanded it to do in a dogfight.

This morning, Zieger’s mission was to reconnoiter up and down the Somme Valley and report anything of interest. There was no formation this morning. He was alone. The fighting down in Verdun had demanded most of the resources of The German Army Air Service and because the Somme was relatively quiet, there was no need for a full squadron to be present.

Zieger’s gunner/bomber was strapped in and tapped Zieger on the shoulder to signal his checks were complete. The ground men were standing by for Zieger’s signal for hot magnetos.

Zieger gave a thumbs up and rotated his hand in the air, the “okay” signal for the prop start.

“Mags on!” yelled the propman.

“On!” responded Zieger.

The propman grabbed the large wooden propeller and swung his leg high in the air. As his leg came down he used the momentum, like a baseball pitcher, to pull the prop down and move away from it all in one smooth movement. The engine coughed, but then died.

“Mags Off!” the propman yelled as he moved in for another attempt.

Zieger pushed the primer twice to add some fuel directly into the engine in an attempt to coax her to life. This time she started easily with a small puff of smoke unlike the billows of smoke created by a rotary engine.

The pilot looked over the right side of the nose to see his guide-man with two flags beckoning him to come forward. There were wing walkers running alongside holding the wing tips steady as Zieger began to taxi clear of the other aircraft and hangers. They held onto the wings until he was lined up for his take off roll into the wind.

From a nearby small tower, the controller gave the “all clear for take-off” signal with his paddles, and Zieger pushed the throttle smoothly to full open. The Albatross lumbered forward picking up speed, quickly leaving the wing walkers behind. There was now sufficient aerodynamic control from the ailerons so the wings could be kept level by Zieger’s stick movement.

The tail came off the ground as the airplane accelerated and he began to work the rudder pedals back and forth to maintain directional control. She bounced once, then again; a little gentle back pressure on the stick and they were airborne gracefully banking to the right as pilot and airplane became as one.

This was Zieger’s favorite moment as he and his machine achieved what had been believed unachievable just fifteen years before. Manned flight.

Philip had performed this reconnaissance loop may times before and saw no reason to believe this would be any less uneventful than all the others had been. But, as he started his slow right turn at around three thousand feet to head north, he noted some increased activity about two miles ahead and to the east. He knew that there was
an encampment there but it appeared to have doubled in size from two days earlier.

It was a beautiful smooth morning and he gracefully banked his Albatross into a thirty-degree left turn for a closer look. Craning his neck from left to right he scanned the horizon in search of enemy aircraft, he throttled back, and began a slow descent.

As he approached the encampment, Philip was stunned by what he saw. The main road that was just behind the rolling hilltop was jammed with troops and equipment as far as the eye could see. Miles and miles of what looked like lorries pulling artillery and carrying thousands of troops to the Front. This was a massive troop buildup.

Zieger’s heart quickened as he knew British plane spotters would soon be pointing out his intrusion to the anti-aircraft batteries and they would be trying their best to prevent him from returning with this valuable information. He made several quick mental estimates about troop size and artillery types; there were a great number of large guns, sixty-pounders he guessed.

Over the roar of the Mercedes and the hiss of the slipstream a familiar sound caught his attention. Zieger banked abruptly to the east, as he knew he was now a target. Thud! That confirmed it. The thud was coming from the ground and he knew what was coming next. A large explosion of flak pounded the sky off to his left and, luckily for him, about a thousand feet too low. This was the first of many explosions that would be coming.

The volley of thuds that followed was so numerous that Philip knew he was in trouble. The sky exploded all around the Albatross rocking and jarring the airplane. Thick black puffs of smoke that spewed shards of metal were hammering the sky everywhere. Tracer bullets from anti-aircraft guns streamed up in arching waves like a line of white Christmas lights from the ground.