Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men (21 page)

Once, early in his flying career, he had disobeyed orders, leaving his post on the ground to go skywards and take on eight German planes which were reported to be approaching Nancy in north-eastern France. As it turned out, he threw himself into the fray with such gusto that he brought one plane down and made the others scatter.

The following day, he was hauled before his commanding officer. ‘Lieutenant Nungesser,’ the colonel said. ‘What would you do to an officer who deserted his post?’

‘Sir,’ Nungesser replied evenly, ‘if he destroyed an Albatros with a primitive Voisin, and made seven others run for their lives, he deserves the Croix de Guerre.’

‘I agree,’ the colonel had replied. ‘The Croix de Guerre—plus sixteen days’ arrest.’
⁹

Nungesser famously bowed low and replied: ‘
Mon colonel
,
vous êtes trop genereux.
’ Another fifteen decorations were to follow his aerial conquests—with decorations unknown for his even more outstanding amorous conquests—and though he frequently took outrageous risks, and had many crashes which resulted in shocking injuries, somehow he survived them all, to keep climbing skywards and taking on the Germans.

Kingsford Smith had arrived in France with a squadron of sixteen pilots, and after one month there were only three of them left. Under that kind of pressure, many a surviving pilot lost his nerve and mentally collapsed, certain that to take to the skies would mean his own demise. Kingsford Smith did not, and though in letters home he sometimes referred to problems with his ‘nerves’,
¹⁰
he kept going.

And on this occasion, on the early morning of 10 August 1917, when Smithy was flying back towards the safety of his own lines, keeping an eye out for potential trouble, he spotted something interesting…

On his starboard quarter, about a mile ahead and as far below, he could see a German plane just coming into Allied territory. Nudging his joystick forward, the Australian pilot quickly swooped and aimed towards the spot where he judged the German would be in forty-five seconds. It turned out he had judged it almost perfectly and opened fire before the poor bastard knew what hit him. Certainly, Kingsford Smith took some peppered flak from the German Archie as they tried to save their man, but it was to no avail. Smithy had the great satisfaction of seeing his quarry hit the ground and turn over. It was a confirmed ‘kill’.

No matter the slight damage inflicted by the Archie, Kingsford Smith was in the mood to continue, and he flew on, looking for other enemy planes he might attack. Shortly thereafter, well into German territory, he noticed something strange about a particular section of road. It was oddly sunken, with the shattered remains of massive poplar trees lining both sides. But what was that black stuff on it? He looked closer…

Could that be a black mass of humanity? Soldiers, in full kit, resting?
German
soldiers? Nosing down, he realised it was exactly that—German soldiers on their way to the front, having a brief rest—and made an instant decision. He would attack! Cutting the engines so he could glide in quietly closer before they were fully aware of his presence, his ears were suddenly filled with the pleasant sound of the wind rushing over his wings.
¹¹

And then Charles Kingsford Smith, a twenty-year-old Australian flyer, became a veritable angel of death. At a velocity of just over 100 miles per hour, he swooped down on the Germans and held his fire until he was so close he simply couldn’t miss…
Now!
¹²

The instant his fingers tightened on the triggers, his two machine guns started spitting lead, and before him dozens, upon
dozens
, of German soldiers were simply flung every which way by his bullets.
¹³
Many of them tried to run out of the way, but they were too densely packed upon each other in the culvert and there was no room to move. He couldn’t miss! And he didn’t.

Screaming now—some kind of primeval shriek that came from deep within him—he kept his guns furiously spitting death for the entire length of the culvert, even as angry flashes from below indicated that some of the soldiers were firing their rifles back at him. Kingsford Smith didn’t care. Perhaps it was his own experience of trench warfare that possessed him—and the knowledge that every one of these Germans he killed might mean one fewer to kill his mates—but
something
got into him at this moment that he would never quite be sure of.

Perhaps bloodlust…

Executing a tight turn and swooping even lower, he came back for a second run and, shrieking all the while, did exactly the same from the opposite direction. The dozens of prone blobs on the road that didn’t try to scramble to safety clearly marked the results of his previous run, but still the Germans were packed so tightly against the unforgiving walls of the culvert that there remained plenty of targets, and he had no hesitation in emptying his chambers upon them, still possessed by an unearthly joy all the while.

Die
, you bastards.

And die they did. For good measure, the young Australian pilot then dropped some incendiaries on huts and set fire to them…

Still possessed by a kind of incandescent and bloody joy which he had never experienced before, Kingsford Smith flew back to his base, landed…rolled to a stop…and turned his engine off. Suddenly, all was silent on this bright, beautiful day, apart from the distant rumble from artillery shells exploding on the front lines, which was so constant you barely noticed it. Birds were singing. Somewhere in the distance he could hear men laughing and talking, one of the mechanics in the hangar over yonder was whistling as he worked on the engine of a nearby SPAD…

What had he done?

What had he done?

Had he really just taken the lives of dozens of men, been the cause of dozens of death-knocks on dozens of doors across Germany, families being told that their husband, father, son, brother, nephew, cousin was dead? Had
he
really done that?

He had.

Whatever deathly mania had possessed him was now entirely gone, leaving in its place revulsion, sheer revulsion for his act. Climbing shakily out of his plane, he leant against the fuselage and vomited. And vomited some more. And kept vomiting until he was dry-retching, trying to expel the last of this thing that had taken hold of him.

Barely out of his teens, he had just killed many men and hadn’t the
faintest
idea why. For those few minutes he must have gone completely insane, and now he felt utterly miserable because of it; hated his own weakness for doing what he had done.
¹⁴

In Dayton, the granddaddy of aviation, Orville Wright, was equally appalled. ‘What a dream it was,’ he wrote, ‘what a nightmare it has become.’
¹⁵
While Lord Northcliffe, who had maintained a correspondence with Orville’s sister, Katharine, wrote ruefully, ‘I do not suppose that Wilbur and Orville realised the part their work would play in modern warfare. You have probably read of the harrowing experiences of flying men. A great many have been killed…’
¹⁶

While the business of being a war pilot was clearly a bitter and bloody one, as well as most likely fatal, still the number of those wanting to join the ranks of the ‘angels of death’ were legion. So exciting was the notion of flying, some men were impatient to get through all the proper channels. One of these was a young Gallipoli and Western Front veteran from Sydney by the name of Charles Ulm, who, though twice wounded in battle and sent home, had returned to England when his father had said to him, ‘What are you doing back here when you still have two arms and two legs?’
¹⁷

No matter, Ulm had already decided there was more for him to do in this war, and by the latter months of 1917 was training in England, where he had become fascinated with flight. This fascination had compelled him to finagle several flights with some friendly military pilots, during which he had taken the opportunity to observe closely everything they did to get airborne, control the plane while in the air, and then get back down. Fancying that he probably had it mastered, he decided to have a go himself on an aeroplane that had been left unattended.

So it was that one day in November 1917, he found himself behind the controls of a plane for the first time. Ulm had no formal training, no pilot’s licence and no authority to be in the plane, but that didn’t bother him. Nor did he care that he risked a court martial if he was found out. After all, he would have to survive the flight to be court martialled, which meant that the worry about what his military masters might think was only a secondary concern.

He gunned the plane forward and only a hundred yards or so onwards, his magic moment came and he was airborne. Despite the fact that he was proceeding on instinct mixed with observation, he somehow managed to circle the field twice before bringing it in for a ‘landing’—read ‘bouncing’.

And like so many who had been blessed with the experience of being in control of a plane, he had returned to the ground a different man. An aphorism among pilots was that your first time flying was better than orgasm, and who could argue? Nothing Ulm had done in his life to that point compared to the thrill he had just experienced and he resolved then and there that, whatever else, flying would be a big part of the rest of his life.

14 August 1917. Despite what they were about—looking for men in other planes to kill—there was something fantastically beautiful about the French countryside, even from this height of 7000 feet, and Charles Kingsford Smith enjoyed it keenly as its green, hazy endlessness stretched magnificently before him. In terms of enemy planes, however, there was no sign and after half an hour or so, their squadron leader fired a Very light from his cockpit signalling to the squadron to return to base. Smithy was about to do exactly that, swivelling his stick to the right to make a graceful turn along with the others, when he saw that one pilot in the squadron had instead turned left, and was now about to fly towards German territory. Thinking that perhaps this pilot had spotted something, Kingsford Smith decided to follow him. Alas, just a few clouds later, Smithy couldn’t find him anymore and suddenly realised he was on his own, except for the irrepressible hobgoblin called Archie now popping all around.
¹⁸
Was it him, or was it getting a little warm? Deciding it might be a good idea to head back to base after all, he now turned his plane firmly towards the safety of the western horizon and then he spotted them.

Down there!

Some 1000 feet below him, two Hun two-seaters were cruising eastwards with clearly no idea that he was above them. Nudging his plane down and getting ready to rain hell upon them in a death swoop from on high, Kingsford Smith got himself into position—800 feet and closing…700 feet…500 feet. His airspeed indicator registered that he was descending at the wonderful rate of 220 miles per hour and the two planes, which had looked liked toy models far below, were now looking larger with every passing second.

Now!
With grim satisfaction he pressed the trigger to unleash a deadly fusillade upon the nearest of the planes.

Only a second after firing though, it was, bizarrely, his own plane that was vibrating, shaking itself to bits. Around him pieces of the cockpit were flying all over, as splinters cut into his face and blood ran down his chin. It was an instant before he understood what was happening. He was under attack!

Even higher than Kingsford Smith had been when he spotted the two German planes, a third Hun fighter had been lurking in the clouds, and while he had been stalking the pair below, he was being stalked himself. Instinctively, Kingsford Smith stamped his feet to hurl his rudder to the left and right to enable his plane to swerve but the fighter above had his measure. It seemed that whichever way he turned, nothing stopped the bullets that kept pouring into his plane. In the midst of the maelstrom the Australian was dimly aware that he had been hit in the left foot, and that…from nowhere…a fog of blackness…was…filling his cockpit…no…maybe just…his head…Must…turn…and get back…have another go…at the…bastard…who had…got him…
Must.
His nostrils filled, as he later recounted, ‘with the unmistakable odour of the German tracer bullets as they streamed past like a jet from a hose’,
¹⁹
even as he was also dimly aware that his left boot was all sticky and wet.

From above, the German pilot, satisfied to see the Allied plane tumble off into a death roll and spiral down towards the earth, stopped firing. From 4000 feet on high, Kingsford Smith’s plane, travelling at a rate now of around 220 miles per hour, had barely a few seconds before it would hit the ground and…

Suddenly the fog cleared a little. Kingsford Smith opened his eyes to see a crazy quilt of beautiful French countryside spinning like a top and hurtling up towards him. Instinct took over. Not quite knowing what he was doing, but doing it anyway as he dimly remembered something from his training in England, he
pushed
on his joystick, and somehow, almost impossibly from the point of view of observers on the ground, his plane pulled out of the spin and flattened out just a bare 100 feet above the ground, caressing mother earth with an air kiss, instead of slamming into her.

The fog in Kingsford Smith’s head didn’t lift entirely, but at least enough that the wounded airman was able to make it back to base and land, whereupon he again lost consciousness and was unable to climb out of the cockpit. After base medical staff had carefully lifted him out and rushed him to hospital, mechanics set to work on his plane and were astonished that it had been able to fly at all. They counted over 180 bullet holes in the fuselage; including dozens in the spot where the pilot’s head would have been had he not lost consciousness and slumped forward. How on
earth
had he managed to survive such an attack?