Winged Warfare (4 page)

It was a German boast at this time that their retreat from the Somme had upset the offensive plans of the British and French for months to come. How untrue this was they were soon to know. We Canadians knew that the first big “push” of the spring was to come at Vimy Ridge, where the Canadian Corps had been holding the line grimly the entire winter through. It had been a trying ordeal for our men, who were almost at the foot of the ridge with the Germans everywhere above them.

During all the long cold months of winter the old Boche had been looking down on us, pelting the infantry in the trenches with all manner of bombs and trench mortar shells and making life generally uncomfortable. During all this time, however, and in spite of the fact that the Germans had direct observation both of our lines and the country back of them, we had succeeded in massing a hitherto unheard of number of guns and great forces of reserves for the initial attack of the new fighting season.

About the first of April we heard the first rumours of the approaching storm. The British artillery was tuning up all along the line, the greatest fire being concentrated in the neighbourhood of Arras and the Vimy Ridge, running north from that quaint old Cathedral City. It was the beginning of that great tumult of artillery which eventually was to practically blow the top off the ridge—and the Germans with it. Our machines had been operating with the guns, ranging them on the German lines and the villages where the enemy troops were quartered in the rear. There had been much careful “registering” also of the German battery positions, so that when the time came for our troops to “go over” the British and Canadian artillery could pour such a torrent of shells on the German guns as to keep them safely silent during the infantry attack.

At last came the orders for our part in another phase of the “show.” It was up to us to “clear the air” during the last days of battle preparation. We did not want any more prying eyes looking down upon us from the clouds—it was bad enough to have to submit to the ground observation from the German-held ridges. We were already accustomed to fighting the enemy aeroplanes over their own ground and thus keeping them as far as possible from our lines, but now we were assigned to a new job. It was attacking the enemy observation balloons. They flew in the same places almost every day well back of the enemy lines, but the observers in them, equipped with splendid telescopes, could leisurely look far into our lines and note everything that was going on. We proposed to put out these enemy eyes.

We called the big, elongated gasbags “sausages,” and the French did likewise—“saucissas.” They floated in the air at anywhere from 800 to 3,000 feet above the ground, and were held captive by cables. These cables were attached to some special kind of windlasses which could pull the balloons down in an incredibly short space of time. Sometimes they would disappear as if by witchcraft. Wherever the sausages flew they were protected from aeroplane attack by heavy batteries of anti-aircraft guns, and also by what we came to know as “flaming onions.” These “flaming onions” appear to consist of about ten balls of fire and are shot from some kind of rocket gun. You can see them coming all the way from the ground, and they travel just too fast to make it possible to dodge them. I have never had an “onion” nearer than 200 feet of me, but the effect of these balls of fire reaching for you is most terrifying—especially the first time you have the pleasure of making their acquaintance.

Our instructions were not only to drive the enemy balloons down but to set fire to and destroy them. This is done by diving on them from above and firing some incendiary missile at them—not by dropping bombs on them, as one so often hears in London.

The British attack at Arras and Vimy was set for April 9—Easter Monday. On the fifth of April we started after the sausages. The weather at this time was very changeable, chilling snowsqualls being intermingled with flashes of brilliant warm sunshine. It was cloudy and misty the day our balloon attacks began, and the sausages were not visible from our side of the lines. I was assigned to “do in” a particularly annoying sausage that used to fly persistently in the same place day after day. It was one of the sausages with a queer shaped head, looking for all the world like a real flying pig—sans feet. Any new sort of hunting always appealed to me strongly, and I was eager for the chase when I crossed into enemy territory in search of my particular game. I flew expectantly in the direction where the balloon usually inhabited the air, but it was nowhere to be seen. I circled down close to the ground to be sure it was not on duty, and immediately found myself in the midst of a terrific fire from all manner of guns. Something told me to hurry away from there, and I did. The quickest shelter available was a rather dark and forbidding cloud, but I made for it with all my might, climbing as fast as my little single-seater would take me. What a relief it was to be lost in that friendly mist. Continuing to climb, I rose at last into the sunshine and then headed for home. My balloon had not been up, but my first experience as a sausage hunter had not been the pleasantest form of amusement and I was inclined not to like it very much. Later on I met with some success against the balloons, but the sport, while exciting, was not to be compared with another aeroplane.

The weather cleared late in the afternoon of the fifth, and for the first time in my flying career I had the privilege of going out alone in search of a fight. There was not an enemy machine in the air, however, and I returned with nothing to report.

Next morning bright and early I was again out “on my own” in search of adventure. I had been flying over the lines for over half an hour when suddenly I spied an enemy machine about a mile over in Hunland, and some distance above me. In these days I no longer had any misgivings as to whether a machine was friend or foe—I had learned to sense the enemy. Our greatest difficulty at the time was drawing the Huns into a close combat. I set out to see what sort of fighting material this particular pilot of the iron crosses was made of. Keeping him always within view I climbed to nearly 15,000 feet, and from that point of vantage dived upon him. I waited until my plunge had carried me to within 150 yards of him before opening fire. I had gotten in a burst of probably twenty rounds, when my gun jammed. The Hun saw me and dived away as fast as he could go. I dived after him, tinkering with the gun all the time, and finally getting it clear, fired another burst at 100 yards. This drove him into a still deeper dive, but he flattened out again, and this time I gave him a burst at fifty yards. His machine evidently was damaged by my fire, for he now dived vertically toward the ground, keeping control, however, and landing safely in a field.

This fight gave me a new resolve—to devote more time to target practice. I should have destroyed this Hun, but poor shooting had enabled him to escape. Going home I spent an hour that day practicing at a square target on the ground. Thereafter I gave as much time as possible to shooting practice, and to the accuracy I acquired in this way I feel I owe most of my successes. Aeroplane target practice is not without its dangers. The target on the ground is just about the size of the vital spots you aim at in fighting. You have to dive steeply at this and there is very little margin of safety when plunging at full speed to within a few feet of the earth.

April sixth and seventh were memorable days in the Flying Corps. The public, knowing nothing of the approaching attack which was to go down in history as The Battle of Arras, was distinctly shocked when the British communiques for these two days frankly admitted the loss of twenty-eight of our machines. We considered this a small price to pay for the amount of work accomplished and the number of machines engaged, coupled with the fact that all of our work was done within the German lines. In the two days that we lost twenty-eight machines, we had accounted for fifteen Germans, who were actually seen to crash, and thirty-one driven down damaged, many of which must have met a similar fate. The British do not officially announce a hostile machine destroyed without strict verification. When you are fighting a formation of twenty or more Huns in a general mêlée, and one begins a downward spin, there is seldom time to disengage yourself and watch the machine complete its fatal plunge. You may be morally certain the Hun was entirely out of control and nothing could save him, but unless someone saw the crash, credit is given only for a machine driven down. The Royal Flying Corps is absolutely unperturbed when its losses on any one day exceed those of the enemy, for we philosophically regard this as the penalty necessarily entailed by our acting always on the offensive in the air.

Technically, the Germans seldom gave a machine “missing,” for the fighting is practically always over their territory, and every one of their machines driven down can be accounted for, even if it is totally destroyed. Many of our losses are due wholly to the fact that we have to “carry on” over German territory. Any slight accident or injury that compels a descent in Hunland naturally means the total loss of the British machine. But such a loss does not involve a German victory in combat; it is merely a misfortune for us. If the machine could only have reached our side of the lines it might have been repaired in half an hour. The public often forgets these things when reading of British machines that fail to return.

Every class of our machines was now engaged in the preparations for the big offensive. The bombing squadrons were out by day and by night. They would fly over the lines with only the stars to guide them and drop tons of high explosives wherever it was considered that the resulting damage would have a crippling effect upon the defensive power of the German machine. Our photographers were busy during every hour of sunlight and our artillery observing machines were keeping long hours in company with the guns, carrying on the preliminary bombardments.

My own experiences on the seventh of April brought me my first decoration—the Military Cross. The thrills were all condensed into a period of two minutes for me. In that time I was fortunate enough to shoot down an enemy machine and destroy the “sausage” I had started for two days before. This should have been excitement enough, but I added to it by coming within fifteen feet of being taken a German prisoner and becoming an unwilling guest of the Huns for the “duration.”

I was ordered after my particular balloon and tad climbed to about 5,000 feet before heading for the lines. On my way there I had to pass over one of our own observation balloons. I don't know what it was that attracted my attention, but looking down I saw what appeared to be two men descending in parachutes. A moment later the balloon below me burst into flames. I saw the enemy machine which had set it on fire engaged with some of ours, but as I had definite orders to proceed straight to the lines and destroy the hostile balloon which had been allotted to me, I was unable to join in the fighting.

Just about this time an amusing incident was in progress at our aerodrome. A Colonel of the Corps was telephoning my squadron commander, informing him that one of our balloons had just been destroyed.

“Well, if it is any consolation, young Bishop, of my squadron, has just gone over to get one of theirs,” replied my commander.

“Good God,” said the Colonel, “I hope he has not made a mistake in the balloon and set ours on fire.”

At this moment I was serenely sailing over the enemy trenches keeping a sharp lookout for some sign of my own balloon. After flying five miles over the lines I discovered it and circled around as a preliminary to diving down upon it. But just then I heard the rattle of machine guns directly behind me and saw bullet holes appear as if by magic in the wings of my machine. I pulled back as if to loop, sending the nose of my machine straight up into the air. As I did so the enemy scout shot by underneath me. I stood on my tail for a moment or two, then let the machine drop back, put her nose down and dived after the Hun, opening fire straight behind him at very close range. He continued to dive away with increasing speed and later was reported to have crashed just under where the combat had taken place. This victory I put down entirely to luck. The man flew directly in line with my gun and it would have been impossible to have missed him.

I proceeded now to dive for the balloon, but having had so much warning, it had been pulled down to the ground. I would have been justified in going home when I saw this, for our orders were not to go under 1,000 feet after the sausages. But I was just a bit peevish with this particular balloon, and to a certain extent my blood was up. So I decided to attack the ungainly monster in its “bed.” I dived straight for it and when about 500 feet from the ground, opened fire. Nothing happened. So I continued to dive and fire rapid bursts until I was only fifty feet above the bag. Still there was no signs of it catching fire. I then turned my machine gun on the balloon crew who were working frantically on the ground. They scattered and ran all about the field. Meantime a “flaming onion” battery was attempting to pelt me with those unsavoury missiles, so I whirled upon them with a burst of twenty rounds or more. One of the onions had flared within a hundred yards of me.

This was all very exciting, but suddenly, with a feeling of faintness, I realised that my engine had failed. I thought that again, as during my first fight, the engine had oiled up from the steep diving I had done. It seemed but a moment before that I was coming down at a speed that must have been nearly 200 miles an hour. But I had lost it all in turning my machine upon the people on the ground.

There was no doubt in my mind this time as to just where I was, and there appeared no alternative but to land and give myself up. Underneath me was a large open field with a single tree in it. I glided down, intending to strike the tree with one wing just at the moment of landing, thus damaging the machine so it would be of little use to the Huns, without injuring myself.

I was within fifteen feet of the ground, absolutely sick at heart with the uselessness of it all, my thoughts having turned to home and the worry they would all feel when I was reported in the list of the missing, when without warning one of my nine cylinders gave a kick. Then a second one miraculously came to life, and in another moment the old engine—the best old engine in all the world—had picked up with a roar on all the nine cylinders. Once again the whole world changed for me. In less time than it takes to tell it I was tearing away for home at a hundred miles an hour. My greatest safety from attack now lay in keeping close to the ground, and this I did. The “Archies” cannot fire when you are so close to earth, and few pilots would have risked a dive at me at the altitude which I maintained. The machine guns on the ground rattled rather spitefully several times, but worried me not at all. I had had my narrow squeak for this day and nothing could stop me now.