Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (11 page)

Mannock had a rough start in France. He inadvertently sat in a dead pilot’s chair during his first night at dinner, and his quiet manner was at odds with the boisterous habits of the other flyers. Cautious and a bit unsure of himself, Mick initially hung back from the swirling dogfights that sent so many pilots down in flames. Truth be known, his biggest fear was burning to death, and for the rest of his flying career, he readily admitted this and struggled to overcome the terror. This was another marked contrast to the average fighter pilot who projected a cheerful, if often affected, nonchalance about death.

Any doubts about Mick Mannock disappeared when he started killing Germans in May 1916. By the end of July he had four confirmed victories, a Military Cross, and had been promoted to flight commander.

He’d learned stalking and ambush from McCudden, then gradually perfected his own techniques. If possible, he’d attack from above or from behind (or both) and use “environmentals” such as the sun and clouds whenever they provided an advantage. A perfectionist and a thinker, Mannock devoted himself to aerial combat. Like Boelcke before him, his hard-won techniques were codified and passed on to younger, less experienced pilots.
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  1.  Pilots must dive to attack with zest, and must hold their fire until they get within 100 yards of their target.

  2.  Achieve surprise by approaching from the East.
(From the German side of the front.)

  3.  Utilize the sun’s glare and clouds to achieve surprise.

  4.  Pilots must keep physically fit by exercise and the moderate use of stimulants.

  5.  Pilots must sight their guns and practice as much as possible as targets are normally fleeting.

  6.  Pilots must practice spotting machines in the air and recognizing them at long range, and every aeroplane is to be treated as an enemy until it is certain it is not.

  7.  Pilots must learn where the enemy’s blind spots are.

  8.  Scouts must be attacked from above and two-seaters from beneath their tails.

  9.  Pilots must practice quick turns, as this maneuver is more used than any other in a fight.

10.  Pilots must practice judging distances in the air as these are very deceptive.

11.  Decoys must be guarded against—a single enemy is often a decoy—therefore the air above should be searched before attacking.

12.  If the day is sunny, machines should be turned with as little bank as possible, otherwise the sun glistening on the wings will give away their presence at a long range.

13.  Pilots must keep turning in a dogfight and never fly straight except when firing.

14.  Pilots must never, under any circumstances, dive away from an enemy, as he gives his opponent a non-deflection shot—bullets are faster than aeroplanes.

15.  Pilots must keep their eye on their watches during patrols, and on the direction and strength of the wind.

There was no standardized gunnery practice nor ongoing combat training requirements for pilots in 1917, but Mannock constantly worked on marksmanship. And it paid off, as he later wrote:

I was only ten yards away from him—on top so I couldn’t miss. A beautifully colored insect he was—red, blue, green and yellow. I let him have 60 rounds, so there wasn’t much left of him.

A born leader, he began fostering his own collection of wingmen, patiently teaching them all he’d learned. Like the predator he was, Mick had a very “hands-on” approach to teaching. “Sight your own guns,” he would say, “the armorer doesn’t have to do the fighting.” His approach even extended to letting his young pilots finish off enemy aircraft he’d damaged.
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In a fight he was merciless. The old-world notion of chivalry was utterly foreign to him, and—perhaps due to his incarceration by the Turks—he loathed the Germans. Like most fighter pilots, Mannock was a complicated man and a study in contradictions. His ruthlessness was always at odds with the conviction that he was, in his own words, “just like a murderer.”

This was a man who would also later say, “The journey to the trenches was rather nauseating—dead men’s legs sticking through the sides with puttees 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 me for a few days.”

But once he forced down a German reconnaissance plane, then strafed the crew. When asked about it, he replied hotly, “The swines are better dead—no prisoners.” Intelligent and sensitive, Mick was always high-strung and often unable to hide his fear of death. It never stopped him from fighting, though, and by October 1917 he’d been promoted to captain with a second Military Cross. Shortly thereafter, with sixteen victories to his credit, he returned to England for a well-deserved rest.

Death, it seemed, would have to wait.

“
IF IT’S THERE
, kill it!”

1917 saw the return to action of Albert Ball from his posting as a fighting instructor. He’d come back to France in April as part of 56 Squadron. Newly equipped with SE-5s and a bevy of combat-proven pilots including McCudden and Arthur Rhys-Davies, the “Fighting Fifty-Sixth” was to be unleashed in concert with the Arras offensive. Hugh Trenchard believed that the SE-5 was a game changer and that when flown by veterans leading specially selected new pilots it would turn the tide of the air war.

Designed at the Royal Aircraft Factory, the airplane was powerful, fast, and well armed.
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With its 200-horsepower Hispano-Suiza 8B engine, the SE-5a topped out at 135 mph at sea level and could climb to 10,000 feet in about eleven minutes. The 8B engine had a high compression ratio, producing greater power than any previous engine.

Unfortunately, the Hispo, as it was known, had a serious defect. The reduction gear, fitted to keep the prop turning slower than the engine, had a nasty tendency to come apart in flight, taking the driving gear with it. The airframe also had a few bugs, including the oversized windscreen. Nicknamed “the greenhouse” by pilots, it generated excess drag and interfered with the top Lewis gun. But the big broad-chord ailerons on both wings gave the SE-5 a superior roll rate compared to the Albatros. Unlike other Allied single-seat fighters, it mounted two .303 Lewis guns; one gun was fuselage-mounted to the left of the cockpit and synchronized with the prop, and the other was on an upper-wing Foster mount.

The synchronization gear, such as the Constantinescu-Colley (CC), actually permits a gun to fire by passing sonic impulses, through fluid, to the firing pin. A pilot engages the system by pulling a handle in the cockpit that raises or lowers the cam follower onto the cam disk. In the case of the CC gear in the SE-5, this was done with oil through a series of reservoirs using high pressure from the engine. By employing hydraulic pressure, which could be constantly maintained once the engine was started, gun firing was independent of the engine revolutions. Higher sustained rates of fire were possible, and the gun could be “tuned” to shoot more accurately, thus saving ammunition.

This obviously wasn’t the case with interrupter systems. When the throttle was back, the engine was revolving slower, so the gun had a lower rate of fire—certainly not ideal in a dogfight. The interrupter gear was also functioning whenever the engine was turning, so it wore out more quickly than a synchronization system, which the pilot could engage or disengage.

As with any hydraulic system, however, with the CC there were more moving parts that needed to be maintained and repaired—and which could malfunction in flight. The CC gear was susceptible to high-altitude flight limitations and extreme cold.

But the SE-5 had two guns, and that alone was a great improvement. The pilot also sat aft of the wings and had good all-around visibility. When combined with a powerful (albeit finicky) engine, you had a stable gun platform that could outrun and outmaneuver most of its opponents. Then it just came down to fate and the pilot—the Brits again had a fighting chance.

Albert Ball had begun flying in France in 1916 and had started his combat career in 13 Squadron with the old BE-2. Called a “Quirk,” it was heavy, slow, and, worst of all for him, had an observer. Back then each squadron had a few single-seat scouts attached, and Ball flew them as much as possible. Always an individualist, he continually chafed under rules and discipline. As Ball saw it, he was there to kill Huns for God and Country, not to have room inspections and fill out paperwork. Eventually his commanding officer sent him over to No. 11 Squadron with a note that read: “This young man can be entrusted with the best single-seater on the front. Please give him something to do.” Smack in the middle of the Somme battles of July 1916, Alfred Ball did army cooperation work, trench attacks, and air-to-air combat whenever he could pick a fight.

As his skills developed he was often at odds with conventional air combat wisdom. When every other pilot was preaching that “height was life,” meaning always attack from above, Ball preferred just the opposite. He’d either attack from below or dive under a formation, then pull up to fire into the enemy’s belly at close range.
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His specialty was slashing into large German formations, sometimes at twelve-to-one odds, then picking off the surprised survivors. And he was known for the captured red nose spinner that one of his mechanics had fitted to the propeller hub of his Nieuport.

He continued his furious, impetuous solo attacks until October 1916, when he was suddenly sent back to England. It seemed by now that the RFC and the government had begun to realize the propaganda value of pilots such as Albert Ball, and they sent him on a lecture tour. “Of all the fool’s games,” he complained. “I shall pass away if I don’t get a different job soon. Why must they be such fools?”

Eventually he found himself back in France as a flight commander, fighting a war very different from the one he’d left in 1916. The Germans had recaptured air superiority with the dominating Albatros, which forced a change in British tactics. The days of the lone hunter seemed past, as now patrols were carried out by flights of two or more aircraft—one to lead and the others to protect the leader’s tail.

Albert Ball was supposed to lead, teach, and keep alive other pilots rather than simply kill Germans—and he hated it. He also disliked the SE-5 and preferred fighting in his Nieuport 17. Amazingly, Hugh Trenchard permitted a compromise: during scheduled squadron patrols Ball would use the SE, but when out alone he could continue to fly the little French fighter. Lone-wolfing it one day, he attacked a pair of Germans. Running out of ammunition, he chased them back to their airfield, firing his pistol all the way. After they landed, he tossed down a note challenging the same pilots to meet him over their field the following day at the same time.

And they did . . . but not alone.

Three other enemy fighters were orbiting well above him and attacked as soon as he did. Facing odds of five to one, behind the German lines, Ball had no choice but to attack. Fortunately, everything in front of him was a target and, unlike the Germans, he had no one to watch out for. Running out of ammunition again, Ball spun down and landed in a field nearby. Slumping sideways across the cockpit, he played dead and watched three of the enemy fly away while the other two landed to claim his corpse or take him prisoner. As the two Germans scrambled out of their cockpits and ran toward him, he came to life, gunned the engine, and lurched back into the air.

His days were filled with missions like that. His tactics were simple: attack. Not a thinker like Mannock or McCudden, nor a scavenger like the Baron, he was more akin to Werner Voss in flying technique.
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But as was true for so many on both sides, the incomparable strain of daily air combat was wearing him down. He’d always lived off by himself in a hut, keeping a small garden and a hutch of rabbits. On some nights, his fellow pilots would see the red glow from a signal flare stuck in the ground and Ball’s dark silhouette as he played the violin in his pajamas.
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One of the reasons for his introspection was a woman. He’d fallen in love during his time off in England, but he refused to marry the girl until the war ended. It appears he didn’t believe he’d survive; he once said to his father, Sir Albert Ball, that “no fighter pilot who fought seriously could hope to escape from the war alive.”

MAY 7, 1917
, dawned wet and blurry, with Ball leading a flight of eleven SE-5s over the Bourlon Wood area. Destroying Jasta 11 was a priority, and the RFC had been conducting offensive patrols around the Douai sector hoping to lure the Germans into combat. The Baron had gone home on leave, and his brother Lothar was rumored to hold temporary command, so the timing was good.

On the other side of a line of clouds, they ran straight into von Richthofen’s Flying Circus. Cecil Lewis, a 56 Squadron SE-5 pilot, would later write:

The May evening is heavy with threatening masses of cumulus cloud, majestic skyscapes, solid-looking as snow mountains, fraught with caves and valleys, rifts and ravines. . . .

Steadily the body of scouts rises higher and higher, threading its way between the cloud precipices. . . .

A red light curls up from the leader’s cockpit and falls away. Action! He alters direction slightly and the patrol, shifting throttle and rudder, keep close like a pack of hounds on the scent. He has seen, and they see soon, six scouts three thousand feet below. Black crosses! It seems interminable till the eleven come within diving distance. The pilots nurse their engines, hard-minded and set, test their guns and watch their indicators. At last the leader sways sideways, as a signal that each should take his man, and suddenly drops.