Marked for Death (46 page)
Authors: James Hamilton-Paterson
Tags: #History, #Military, #World War I, #Aviation, #Non-Fiction
For the type and marque numbers of British aircraft I have used the format favoured by J. M. Bruce in his authoritative
British Aeroplanes 1914
–1918
. Thus the Airco (de Havilland) 4 appears as the D.H.4, the Royal Aircraft Factory’s Blériot Experimental 2c as the B.E.2c.
The original Superintendent of the Royal Aircraft Factory, Mervyn O’Gorman, devised his own system for classifying the designs produced at Farnborough. The earliest nomenclature he used was based on pre-war foreign aircraft types, which at least made it clear that at that time Britain was not yet in the forefront of powered flight. It also showed that
any
design at the time could be considered experimental. According to this system ‘F.E.’ stood for Farman Experimental, after the ‘pusher’ type favoured by France’s Farman brothers, Maurice and Henri, which placed the engine behind the pilot. Thus any aircraft from Farnborough designated ‘F.E.’ would be a pusher type. Similarly, ‘tractor’ aircraft with the engine at the front would duly become ‘B.E.’ for Blériot Experimental, after the monoplane that had first flown the Channel. Any ‘canard’ types with the tail mounted at the front, such as the Wright brothers’ ‘Flyer’ or Santos Dumont’s aeroplane, would be named after Santos as ‘S.E.’. However, these early canard aircraft soon vanished from the skies and thereafter ‘S.E.’ came to stand for Scout Experimental. Eventually Farnborough would also come up with other denominations including ‘R.E.’ for Reconnaissance Experimental.
The German system of classification also used prefix letters to denote an aircraft’s type and function. B machines were unarmed observation aircraft; C machines were two-seaters for reconnaissance and escort duties with the observer/gunner in the rear seat; D were single-seat multi-winged scouts/fighters; E were single-seat monoplane fighters; G denoted bombers; and so on. The numerals used were Roman. Examples of the German style would therefore be Rumpler C.IV or Albatros D.III.
French aircraft, like most British aircraft from private companies, simply had their own type number, letter or name in any combination according to each manufacturer’s whim or system. Thus from the way they were styled it is impossible to guess the roles filled by the Hanriot HD.3, the Nieuport 28 or the Sopwith 3.F.2. Hippo.
In addition, most aircraft that saw service naturally acquired nicknames, whether derogatory, affectionate or just whimsical. This was true in every air force and has remained so ever since. Sopwith’s Biplane F.1 became known as the Camel from its earliest prototype days on account of the ‘hump’ caused by the breeches of its twin Vickers guns. Martinsyde’s G.102 was known to all in the RFC as the Elephant, probably because for a single-seat fighter it was an unusually large machine. On all sides there was no lack of aircraft with even less flattering names such as ‘Killer’, ‘Flaming Coffin’, ‘Spinning Doom’ or ‘Corkscrew’, partly in acknowledgement of an aircraft’s known tendency but also perhaps as a superstitious way of taming it by making light of it. ‘Flying Coffin’ (
Fliegender Sarg
,
bara volante
, etc.) has been a popular nickname for countless aircraft from WWI onwards. To both the Luftwaffe and the German press in the 1960s Lockheed’s F-104G Starfighter was known as the ‘Widowmaker’, whereas the Canadians knew it more wittily as the ‘Lawn Dart’. The more the danger increases, the blacker aircrew humour becomes.
Some of the commoner RFC slang phrases and technical aviation terms included
:
ack-ack: | anti-aircraft gunfire. This was how ‘AA’ was pronounced in the British army signaller’s phonetic alphabet ( |
ack emma: | army usage for a.m. Also RFC usage for air mechanic |
ack toc: | a |
Alphabet, | the RFC used the army’s alphabet, which ran: |
Phonetic: | Ack, Beer, Charlie, Don, Edward, Freddie, Gee, Harry, Ink, Johnnie, King, London, Emma, Nuts, Oranges, Pip, Queen, Robert, Esses, Toc, Uncle, Vic, William, X-ray, Yorker, Zebra |
Archie: | RFC slang for hostile anti-aircraft fire, supposedly derived from a pilot who, on being shot at, shouted out ‘Archibald – certainly not!’: the refrain from a popular music hall song by George Robey |
art. Obs.: | artillery observation |
Blighty: | Britain. To ‘cop a blighty’ was to sustain a wound bad enough to earn repatriation but unlikely to be fatal |
Boche: | dismissive (French) slang term for any German |
Bradshawing: | Navigation in the air by following railway lines |
Bus: | RFC slang for aircraft |
Chocks: | big wooden wedges put under an aircraft’s wheels to stop it rolling |
CFS: | Central Flying School |
CO: | Commanding Officer |
Comic Cuts: | the RFC’s sarcastic nickname for the army’s official weekly newssheet, generally considered to be full of ‘hot air’ |
contour-chasing: | very low flying, hedge-hopping |
Crate: | RFC slang for aircraft (the German air force used the same word, |
Dud: | anything useless or unserviceable or, in the case of a bomb or shell, that failed to explode. Dud weather was weather too bad for flying |
EA: | Enemy Aircraft |
Eggs: | bombs |
Effel: | wind sock (from FL: ‘French letter’ or condom) |
Emil: | German generic slang for a pilot |
Fizz: | champagne, as in a ‘fizz lunch/dinner’ meaning celebratory |
Franz: | German generic slang for a observer/navigator |
GOC: | General Officer Commanding |
gone west: | dead |
Gong: | a medal |
HA: | Hostile Aircraft |
Harry Tate: | RFC rhyming slang for the R.E.8 aircraft. Harry Tate was a popular music hall comedian, the Harry Tate a less popular aircraft |
Hate: | a ‘hate’ was a bout of enemy shelling, as in ‘the usual evening hate’ |
HE: | Home Establishment (i.e. Britain) |
HD: | Home Defence |
hot air: | a politer alternative to ‘balls’, it could mean anything of dubious truth. It might include any official pronouncement, a chaplain’s (or padre’s) sermon, a commanding officer’s pep talk or an airman’s boasts about his combat or amatory prowess |
Hun: | either |
IdFlieg: | Inspektorat der Fliegertruppen: the German Army’s aviation administration arm until the ‘Fliegertruppen’ became the ‘Luftstreitkräfte’ in October 1916 and IdFlieg disappeared. Its place was taken by the Kogenluft, |
Jagdgeschwader: | a group of Jastas assembled for a particular task, much like a ‘wing’ in the RFC/RAF |
Jasta: | Jagdstaffel, a German fighter squadron |
Kofl: | German abbreviation for Kommandeur der Flieger, a rank analogous to that of Hugh Trenchard as Officer Commanding the RFC in France |
Kogenluft: | German abbreviation for Kommandierender General der |
Luftstreitkräfte: | (Commanding General of the Air Forces), to whose office all claims of combat victories were sent, together with witness reports, corroborative evidence etc. |
MO: | Medical Officer |
Nacelle: | the boat-like housing containing the cockpit(s) in a ‘pusher’ aircraft. Nowadays the term is used for the external aerodynamic pods on aircraft that house engines, fuel, radar equipment etc. |
Pancake: | either a noun or verb usually describing a stalled aircraft dropping more or less flat to the ground or water from a few feet up |
PBI: | Poor Bloody Infantry: how RFC airmen thought of their earthbound colleagues |
Pills: | bombs |
pip emma: | army usage for p.m. |
Planes: | an aircraft’s wings |
Quirk: | the B.E.2c |
radial engine: | a stationary engine whose cylinders are arranged in a circle about its revolving crankshaft |
RAMC: | Royal Army Medical Corps |
Rumpty, Rumpity | |
or Rumpety: | the Maurice Farman M.F.11 |
rotary engine: | one that revolves about its fixed crankshaft |
Sheds: | ‘the sheds’ was the usual name for an airfield’s hangars |
Show: | ‘a show’ was a sortie or mission, as in ‘a dawn show’ or ‘a good/bad show’. Clearly derived from the theatre or music hall |
split-arse turn: | usually any very abrupt turn whose centrifugal force is likely to separate a pilot’s nether cheeks, but sometimes applied to a particular kind of turn resembling a reversed Immelmann |
Staffel: | the German equivalent of a squadron |
Stunt: | an aerobatic evolution |
Toc H: | TH, standing for Talbot House in the army’s phonetic alphabet. A Christian club and rest house for soldiers founded in 1915 in Poperinghe, Belgium |
Verfranzt: | German pilot’s slang for ‘lost’, implying it was the observer’s fault |
Very pistol: | often misspelt as ‘Véry’ (the inventor was American, not French): a pistol for sending up signal flares of various colours |
Volplane: | a controlled downward glide with the engine shut off |
wash out: | either a noun or a verb meaning cancellation, as it might be on account of bad weather |
Windy: | unduly nervous behaviour, with distinct overtones of cowardliness |
