Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (24 page)

Franco himself was a conservative monarchist and so viewed the Republic as a conspiracy of anarchists and Communists.
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A left-wing revolt broke out in 1934, but Franco suppressed it, labeling the insurrection as “a frontier war and its fronts are socialism, communism and whatever attacks civilization in order to replace it with barbarism.” Alarmed by Franco, the Republican government made him military commander of the Canary Islands—sending him into professional oblivion.

On July 15, 1936, a plane touched down on Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. The flight plan had originated from Casablanca, on the Atlantic coast of French Morocco, and given the events unfolding in Spain, if it hadn’t been a British aircraft there would’ve been questions. As it was, no one paid much attention to the white de Havilland Dragon Rapide, and if they had, they would’ve been satisfied with the Olley Air Service livery. The captain was W. H. “Cecil” Bebb and the “navigator” was named Pollard. There was also an immaculately dressed Mediterranean-looking man accompanied by two stunning young girls. This same dark-skinned man had remained behind in Morocco while the plane departed for the Canary Islands. Eyebrows were raised knowingly at the sight of middle-aged men flying around with blond eye candy, but no questions were asked.

Which was precisely the point. In fact, Pollard was an intelligence officer, and the girls were his daughter Diana and her good friend Dorothy Watson.
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The young women had agreed to come along as cover and were enjoying themselves immensely.

The dark-skinned man was Luis Bolin, a London-based journalist who would later become Franco’s press advisor. Bolin had chartered the plane to fly to the Canaries by way of Casablanca and pick up Franco—which they did. On July 18, the Dragon Rapide landed back in Casablanca and collected Bolin. From there, they flew to Tétuan, on the Mediterranean coast of Spanish Morocco.

Once there, Franco took command of the Spanish Army of Africa and rapidly pacified northern Morocco. He also began negotiations with Germany, Italy, and Great Britain for military support. Using mostly German-supplied transport aircraft, he was able to create an air bridge from Morocco to the southern Spanish city of Seville. By flying in about 120 soldiers per day, he had more than a thousand men in place by the first week in August. Franco was then able to defeat a Republican naval blockade and begin convoying his troops across in strength.

On August 7 the
Usaramo
began offloading her “agricultural equipment,” which was moved 50 miles up the road to Seville’s Tablada airfield. No one should’ve been surprised at the aircraft fuselages, wings, and other “farm machinery” that appeared. On August 9 six Heinkel He 51B single-seat fighters were rapidly assembled and made ready for action.
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Hannes Trautloft, a young German fighter pilot, would later write:

The next morning we found ourselves at Seville airfield. . . . On 9 August we started the job of rebuilding our six He 51s, a real piece of teamwork involving pilots and ground personnel. The Spanish personnel were quite surprised to witness us work with such energy, but we really were getting quite impatient and wanted to get our machines into the air as soon as possible.

By the summer of 1936 the Heinkel had become the Luftwaffe’s primary fighter. Powered by a twelve-cylinder, liquid-cooled BMW engine, it topped out at 200 mph with a ceiling of 25,000 feet. Tough and fast, the He 51 was armed with two MG-17 7.9 mm machine guns and could also carry bombs for ground attack.

But it really wasn’t much of a dogfighter. There were also no radios, and the guns had to be manually charged each time they were used. During a fight over Zaragoza on October 19, a flight of three Germans was attacked by thirteen Republicans. Shooting down five and losing none, the German pilots proved that their skill and training could overcome most technical difficulties. Augmented by Italian pilots from the Escuadrilla de Caza flying Fiat CR.2s, the Nationalist Air Force controlled the sky over Spain—more or less.

This would rapidly change when the Republicans began receiving arms shipments and pilots from the Soviet Union. On September 9, 1936, the freighter
Neva
docked in Alicante. Among the equipment offloaded were the disassembled fuselages of Soviet-built Polikarpov I-15 and I-16 fighters, plus engines, guns, and other equipment. The I-15 was an indigenous Russian biplane fighter, powered by a 500-horsepower Wright Cyclone engine and armed with four Nadashkevich PV-1 7.62 mm machine guns.

Arranged about the engine, the guns were synchronized to fire through the prop at over 750 rounds per minute. The top pair were bore-sighted to 400 yards and the lower guns to 600 yards. The I-15 held over 1,200 rounds and the combined damage potential of this arrangement was considerable. The back and bottom of the pilot’s seat were sheathed in 9 mm armor. To the Russians, the I-15 was a “Seagull”; the Spanish nicknamed it “Chato” (Snub-nose), while German pilots often called it a “Curtiss” because it resembled the F-9C Sparrowhawk.

The Chato was fairly forgiving and easy to fly, and with a relatively low wing loading, it landed like a big kite. Like most Russian weapons, it was overdesigned on purpose to withstand abuse from rough pilots, primitive mechanics, and poor operating conditions.

The other Soviet fighter in Spain was the I-16 Mosca. Nicknamed the “Rata” by the Germans, this was arguably the world’s finest fielded fighter in 1936. Though the cockpit was basic, the I-16 was extremely nimble, and its 300 mph speed was very fast for the time. Most dangerous to the Germans were the two 7.62 mm ShKAS machine guns mounted in the wings. This avoided synchronization issues and permitted a much higher firing rate of 1,800 rounds per minute, compared to 1,200 rounds per minute from the Heinkel. There was also more room to store ammunition and the Mosca carried 650 rounds per weapon versus 500 for the He 51. Though the gas-operated gun fired quicker, it was also prone to jamming. Still, with a heavier caliber and the ability to deliver 300 rounds on target from a five-second burst, the I-16 was a deadly threat. Subsequent versions carried an extra pair of guns on the cowling that were eventually replaced with cannons.

A low-winged monoplane with stressed aluminum skin, the Mosca had retractable landing gear, a controllable-pitch propeller, and an enclosed cockpit. With the wheels up, the little fighter and its short wings rolled extremely well. This came at the cost of high wing loading, however, so the I-16 couldn’t turn tightly in any dimension.
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As in most cases, pilot training and skill would make the difference.

On November 13, eight Moscas with sixteen I-15s pounced on a flight of Heinkels over Madrid. The Germans shot down five of them, but it was obvious that the He 51 was badly outclassed. They also lost Oblt. Kraft Eberhardt, their leader, to a midair collision with a Russian.
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Tactically, the Republican I-16 pilots would quickly learn not to get into a turning fight with the Heinkels and Fiats. It was better to drop down from altitude, using the speed advantage, and slash through formations delivering deadly, short bursts from their heavier guns.

Even so, encounters like this demonstrated the need for both experienced pilots and better planes. As one can only compensate for the other for so long. Almost all of the active flying officers in the old Republican Air Force had promptly switched sides and joined Franco. In fact, the Republican military was generally split along class lines, with the conservative, monarchist officers joining the rebels and most of the lower ranks remaining with the Madrid government. When the Republican Air Force reorganized itself into the Fuerzas Aéreas de la República Española (FARE), there wasn’t much left: flying sergeants, whom the Spanish used for reconnaissance or transport flying, and older pilots who were serving on staffs and teaching at schools.

Most of the Spanish Air Force pilots had defected to Franco, so to augment their squadrons the Republicans turned to mercenaries and volunteers. Some of these, like the American volunteers Frank Tinker and Albert Baumler, were former military aviators and were well trained, particularly in instrument flying.

Frank Tinker was a 1933 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy so how did he wind up in air combat over Spain? In a typically poorly thought-out and embarrassingly pointless move, the White House attempted to reduce its 1933 budget by
not
commissioning Naval Academy cadets who graduated that year. These men, with their expensive elite education, would be simply dumped back into the civilian world. Some sanity prevailed, however, and the resulting compromise was to only commission the top half of the class and give reserve commissions to the rest. One cadet complained to his congressman, Lister Hill of Alabama, who persuaded the Army Air Corps to accept seven naval cadets for flight training. One hundred applied for those seven spots and forty of them failed the flight physical. Luckily, Frank Tinker passed, and in October 1933 he showed up at Randolph Field in San Antonio, Texas, for training.

By the spring of 1934, ready to pass into advanced training, Tinker learned that the Air Corps also now had a surplus of officers itself, and so he would likely not be commissioned into the Army either, even after graduating from flight school. Fortunately, by this time the Navy had regained a bit of common sense and invited the Class of ’33 back into service. This brought Tinker and his surviving classmates to Pensacola in July, and there he was finally commissioned an ensign in the U.S. Navy. Awarded his wings in January 1935, Frank Tinker was assigned to the cruiser
San Francisco,
flying Vought Corsair floatplanes.

It was a short, turbulent career. In less than six months he’d been court-martialed once and had a string of professional and private mishaps to his credit. Recommended for a second court-martial, he chose to resign and began searching for aviation work. Through the Spanish embassy in Mexico City, Tinker was given a contract of $1,500 per month to fly for the Republicans plus a bonus of $1,000 for every enemy plane destroyed. A death benefit would be paid to his next of kin, and he was free to terminate the arrangement with thirty days’ notice. This was during the Great Depression, and the money was a major inducement—that $1,500 was equivalent to about $25,000 per month in 2013 dollars.
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By comparison, the American foot soldiers fighting in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade were being paid about ten cents per day for a three-year contract.

For Spain, the civil war was national life and death. For the other nations who supplied men and equipment, it was certainly less drastic, though no less important. Spain was as much a proving ground for new weapons and aircraft as it was an ideological conflict between Communism and everything else. Also, and perhaps more important, it was a tactical bridge between World War I and what was to come. Hitler decided that Spain was too good an opportunity to pass up, so he ordered increased aid for Franco to counter Stalin’s involvement. Sixty more crated He 51 biplanes arrived in Seville by the middle of November, and twenty-five freighters loaded with other weapons and equipment left Stettin for Cadiz by the end of the month.

The single Jagdstaffel Eberhardt would be reorganized into three fighter squadrons as Jagdgruppe/88. There would also be a Kampfgruppe (bomber) group, K/88, and similar groups for reconnaissance, signals, and maritime reconnaissance. A full complement of support organizations for maintenance, supply, and medical needs was also sent along. Initially labeled the Eiserne Legion (Iron Legion), its name was changed to the Condor Legion, and it was ready for action by the second week in December.

Commanded by Generalmajor Hugo Sperrle, the Germans fought back hard. Everything was under review—men, machines, and tactics. Hannes Trautloft, Werner Mölders, and eventually Adolf Galland, all gifted aviators and tacticians, went to work slaying the ghosts of World War I. The most obvious change would come from an offensive doctrine instead of a defensive one. The new Luftwaffe would be supporting ground units and gaining air superiority by attacking, rather than defending the sky over a stagnant land battle.

This meant multipurpose aircraft with radios for effective communications and sufficient firepower to destroy all types of targets. The Germans ceased flying Great War tight formations and experimented with new methods suited to the weapons, aircraft, and the current situation. Mölders created the
Rotte
, the basic fighting pair that survives to this day. Two
Rotte
then combine to form a
Schwarm
of four aircraft. Wider spacing was also used, making a wingman truly useful. Now he wasn’t just staring at a wingtip; he was scanning the sky for enemy planes, protecting his leader from threats, and attacking when necessary.

Technology had always been key to German success. From the early days of the synchronized gun on the Eindecker through the advanced Fokkers, they’d acknowledged the need to maintain technical superiority. Madrid in December 1936 was a slap of reality in the face. The skill of individual German pilots couldn’t overcome the true technological advantage of the I-16 any more than they had been able to do so against the Sopwiths and SPADs eighteen years earlier. A new plane was needed, one that could be paired with well-trained, experienced pilots and achieve total air superiority.

Fortunately for the Germans, there was such an aircraft. In July 1933 the Luftwaffe’s Technical Office for Development had issued an official “Tactical Requirement for Fighter Aircraft (Land).” This stated the need for a single-seat day fighter that was armed with a minimum of two fixed machine guns and 500 rounds per gun, a radio, an oxygen system with heat, a parachute, and the ability to reach 19,500 feet in seventeen minutes and maintain this altitude for twenty minutes at 250 mph.