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Red Baron II
Historical Overview
By: Dark Vortex (Quan Jin)
darkvortex0012000@yahoo.com
Version 1.2
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----[ Table of Contents ]------------------------------------------------------
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1. Introduction...............................................[1000]
2. Overview...................................................[2000]
3. Version History............................................[3000]
4. Legal Disclaimers..........................................[4000]
5. Credits and Closing........................................[5000]
To find a section quickly, press Ctrl-F and type in either the name
of the section along with its content number (ie. 1., 2., 3., etc.)
OR you can use the codes on the far right. Simply type in the
brackets with the code number to get a jump.
This is a Historical Overview. This means I'm basically giving you a history
lesson. I might've included this in my Strategy Guide for Red Baron II but I
thought it would take up too much room. After all, it's a doozy to read.
You may not find this guide that interesting. However, this guide is for those
looking for references that they can't find in the game itself.
This historical overview was taken directly from the PDF file manual. This is
for those particular players who didn't get the PDF file manual included with
their game.
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A. April 21, 1918 : Amiens Front
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When the pilots of JG-1 crawled out of their bunks in the early morning hours
of April 21, 1918, they found their aerodrome at Cappy shrouded in thick, gray
fog. The blanket of mist clung to the ground, making any flying impossible.
Delighted by the break, the pilots gather near their planes to await the events
of the day.
They needed the break. Since March 21st, the men had been in action nearly
every day, fighting with a desperation born from the knowledge that this last,
great German offensive would determine the course of the war. They knew that
their nation had gambled everything -- resources, men, equipment, aircraft, and
money -- on this final effort. At first, it had succeeded. Below the wings of
JG-1s Fokkers and Albatros fighters, the infantry had poured through a broken
British line. German reinforcements flooded to the breakthroughs, pushing the
Tommies back nearly 40 miles. In a war that measured success in yards, 40 miles
seemed a ringing victory. But as JG-1 discovered, it proved to be a hollow
success. Now, a month later, the British had turned to fight, stopping the
advance cold before any real strategic success could be achieved.
All that was left to do was fight on with sheer momentum. Already, gossip
around the mess tables at night told stories of friendly infantry units
breaking and routing; of fighter squadrons running out of gas, rubber, and
oil; of discontent in the ranks. In some cases, the red specter of Socialism
seemed to play a part, boding ill for the future in light of Russia's
Revolution the previous fall. Clearly, four years of stagnant, bloody, trench
warfare had just plain worn out the German army, and now its men were being
asked to do too much.
That was also true of the Air Service, and of JG-1 in particular. For the last
month, they'd been flying four or five times a day. The men were exhausted,
their lives measured in mere days as the inferno over the trenches claimed
pilot after pilot.
For the ground crew, times were nearly as trying. They worked through the days
and nights in a never ending battle to keep the planes airborne. With stocks
of spare parts low, and replacement aircraft a wishful dream, the geschwader's
fighting strength slowly drained away. Just to keep their remaining planes in
fighting shape, parties of mechanics would scour the front for wrecks, from
which they cannibalized all the rubber parts and brass fittings they could
find.
Two things kept these men going: their love of Germany and their love for their
leader, the legendary Manfred von Richthofen.
He was the type of man others instinctively followed. He lead by example, by
devotion to duty, and by sheer force of will. After four years of combat --
first with the cavalry on the Eastern Front, then as a fighter pilot in the
West -- Rochthofen was burned out. Nevertheless, he carried out his duty with
grim determination that inspired all around him. His insistence to stay at the
front endeared him to his men almost as much as it frustrated and worried the
German high command. Richthofen, General Hindenburg once remarked, was worth
at least one full division. He was the soul of the fighter force, the
inspiration to all in the Air Service after three years of battling the
British of Germany's best fighters. Alive, he was a great propaganda asset, a
symbolism of everything the German fighting men stood for in this long and
dreary war. To the core, he was a combat pilot, a hunter of the sky. And that
is why he never let up.
Not even after he nearly died did he give much thought to taking some desk
job far from the front, though his superiors urged him to do just that. Nearly
a year before, in July, 1917, he had been in a wild dogfight with Naval Ten
Squadron and some FE2s from a local RFC unit. During the fight, one of the Fee
gunners had shot Richthofen in the head. Nearly out of his mind with pain, and
practically blinded by blood gushing over his eyes, Germany's ace of aces
spiraled down to the trenches below and crash-landed within friendly lines.
Some soldiers pulled him from the wreckage and carried him to a field hospital,
where his wounds were dressed. After a spell at home where he was sent to
recover, he returned to action once again that fall.
Despite his leave, he never really recovered from his wound. Now, months later,
he looked gaunt and hollow. He suffered from terrible headaches that at times
threatened to confine him to bed. Yet, he doggedly pressed on, shooting down
an ever increasing number of allied aircraft, until by April 21, his total
stood at 80 kills.
As the sun rose over Cappy that spring morning, Richthofen appeared at the
flight line to check on his pilots. He was in fine spirits, by all accounts,
since the day before he had claimed his 80th victim. As he toured the scene,
he tripped over a stretcher laid out on the ground. When he looked back to see
what he'd fallen over, he saw Leutnant Wenzl, a young tiger who had just
transferred into geschwader from Jasta 31 at the end of March. Playfully, the
Rittmeister tipped over the stretcher, spilling Wenzl into the mud.
Laughing at their leader's prank, the other pilots plotted revenge. Later that
morning, they kidnapped the Rittmeister's dog, Moritz, and tied a wheel chock
to his tail. Moritz had already seen much of the war, and, in fact, was missing
part of an ear. Some months before, the Great Dane was chasing Richthofen's
Fokker Triplane as it began its takeoff roll. The dog got too close and
collided with the propeller blades, which chopped off a good portion of his
ear.
So it was on the morning of April 21st, Moritz, the half-eared dog came
whining to his master, a wheel chock dragging at his hind legs. The Rittmeister
took the gag in stride, laughing at the sight as he knelt down to free Moritz
from the chock.
Little did anyone know that this would be the last time the Rittmeister's
laughter would ring in their ear.
With late morning came a break in the weather. A strong wind scattered the fog,
and as blue skies appeared over Cappy, the mood at the aerodrome became serious
and businesslike. They'd be going into battle soon, and the men knew the odds,
as usual, would be heavily stacked against them.
The call came shortly after 10:30. A German observation point reported enemy
aircraft heading for JG-1's patrol area. The news sent the pilots scurrying for
their planes. In minutes, two ketten -- flights -- were airborne. Richthofen
led them off in his blood-red Fokker Dr. I.
The men left behind at Cappy anxiously awaited the return of the geschwader's
aircraft, going about their duty as they strained to hear the warm sound of
engines approaching the airfield.
Finally, in the early afternoon, they straggled in. The ground crew watched
the Fokkers swing around the aerodrome, their quirky Oberusel engines coughing
and burping as the pilots hit their "blip button" to slow their planes down
to landing speed.
But one aircraft was missing. The blood-red that belonged to the Rittmeister
was nowhere to be seen.
Through the afternoon they waited for news, despair threatening to overcome
this once happy band of German's elite aviators. As the sun went down that
afternoon, dread filled their hearts. He had fallen behind British lines, and
now all they could do was hope he had been taken prisoner.
When word did come of their leader's fate, it was not what they had all feared.
Their Rittmeister, the great Manfred von Richthofen, was dead.
British guns destroyed the heart and soul of the German fighter force that
April day, and with it, so died Germany's last hopes of winning the air
war.
And yet, something else happened that day, something that none of those present
at Cappy Aerodrome could ever have imagined. With the death of Manfred von
Richthofen, a legend was born -- one that would endure long after they were but
dust in a soldier's grave -- the legend of the Red Baron.
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B. Chapter 1 : Europe In Flames
===============================
One wrong turn changed the course of history. On June 28, 1914, Austrian
Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo intent on attending
army maneuvers in that recently annexed province of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire. The results of that visit set in motion a chain of events that lead
to the bloodiest war in world history. Long after the players that day were
dead and buried, the effects of their actions resounded for decades, affecting
the course of both Europe and the United States for generations to come.
It began at the train station in Sarajevo, where the Archduke, his wife, and
his entourage climbed into several open-topped touring carts to begin the short
drive to City Hall, where they would meet Sarajevo's mayor.
Unknown to them, assassins lurked along their planned routes. As the Archduke's
car trundled down the street, one of the killers jumped forward to throw a
bomb. By chance, the bomb missed, bouncing off the car then landing in the
street. It exploded next to the car directly behind the Archduke's, wounding
several of his good friends and staff members. The injured men were rushed to
the hospital while Ferdinand, furious at what had just happened, continued to
City Hall.
Once he arrived there, he greeted the Mayor icily. "So, you welcome your guests
here with bombs?" he asked angrily. The Mayor brushed aside the remark and
welcomed his Austrian dignitary to his city, assuring the Archduke that the
would-be assassin had been caught. The meeting ended with Ferdinand announcing
he wished to visit his two wounded officers in the hospital. This required a
change in plans, which almost, but not quite, saved the Austrian's life.
That day, a number of pro-Serbian assassins had staked out the Archduke's route
throughout the city. If the first assassin failed, there were backups to
him -- and backups to those backups. The Austrian's route through the city
had been well known, and it was dotted with gun wielding, bomb toting fanatics.
Trained by the Serbian terrorist organization known as the Black Hand, their
goal was to secure Bosnian independence from Austria.
Now, though, circumstances foiled their plot. The Archduke would not be
traveling on his pre-selected route to the army maneuvers. Instead, he insisted
on going to the hospital. He should've missed all the other assassins waiting
for him.
Enter Franz Urban, the Archduke's person chauffeur. Urban had never driven in
Sarajevo before and did not know exactly how to get to the hospital. He tried
his best, though, working through the maze of narrow streets, trying to follow
his maps and instructions. In the end, he got lost.
Somewhere along the way, he made a right turn into a single-lane alley that
was so narrow he could not turn the car around. He went only a few dozen yards
down the alley before he realized his mistake. He slowed the car down, getting
ready to turn it around. Then he saw he would have to back up to the main
street he had left. He touched the brakes just as a shabbily dressed young man
crossed in front of the car a dozen or so feet ahead. Franz watched the man --
a boy really -- look up and see the car.
The boy was a 19-year-old Bosnian Serb student named Gavrilo Princip. Trained
by the Black Hand, he had been posted on the Archduke's original touring
route. When the Austrian had not shown up, Princip got bored and decided to
head for home. Running into the Archduke on this confined back alley was a
complete accident.
Princip capitalized on the chance meeting. Quickly, he pulled his revolver and
stepped toward the car. Shots rang out. The Archduke and Archduchess slumped
forward, bleeding from their bullet wounds. Horrified, Franz Urban jammed the
car into reverse and sped to the hospital. But by the time he arrived there,
both Austrians had bled to death.
Princip did not enjoy his victory. Bosnian police arrested him immediately,
and he spent the next four years languishing in prison before dying of
pneumonia in 1918. He lived long enough to see the war -- to see the millions
killed or maimed -- that had been touched off by his single act of madness.
And still, none of it would have happened if Franz Urban had not made that
wrong turn. Urban's moment in history lasted but an instant. When it passed,
he disappeared from view and lived out his life as anonymously as any other
average person. Still, his single mistake triggered the events that consumed
Europe in a four-year war that killed millions and destroyed an entire
generation. Entire nations, including Urban's own, were erased from the map
and new ones took their place. In the end, when the shooting finally ceased,
nobody could remember what they had been fighting for in the first place.
In the wake of the assassination, the battle lines were quickly drawn. Soon,
all of Europe seemed to be sucked into the crisis. Austria blamed Serbia for
the assassination and threatened war. Russia, always the "savior" of the Balkan
Slavs, came to Serbia's defense. With Russia now involved, the Germans backed
their ally, Austria-Hungary, to the hilt. With Germany now enmeshed in the
crisis, France came to Russia's aid. As the diplomats fussed and fumed, the
armies began to mobilize. Once that happened, war was inevitable.
Austria attacked Serbia, declaring war on July 28, 1914. On August 1, Germany
declared war against Russia then invaded Luxembourg and Belgium in order to
get to France. Two days later, Germany declared war on France. The next day,
Britain went to war against Germany after learning of that country's invasion
of Belgium. On the 6th, Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia. In the days
that followed, the fighting spread from Belgium to the Balkans, from Alsace to
East Prussia.
And all because of a wrong turn in Sarajevo.
At first, the war delighted Europe. There were mass rallies in support of the
war, and all the old divisions within France and Germany disappeared in a
ground swell of nationalism. Volunteers flocked to the colors, and millions
went off the battle with songs on their lips. Universally, Europe thought the
war would be quick, sharp, and bloodless. A few weeks of fighting, and the war
would be over.
The armies clashed in early August. Wearing brilliant colored uniforms and
fighting with leftover Napoleonic tactics, Europe's legions were in for a
sudden shock. The stand-up, shoulder-to-shoulder fighting their great-
grandfathers had done at Austrerlitz and Waterloo a hundred years before may
have worked fine in the age of the muzzle-loading muskets, but in the age of
rapid fire artillery, machine guns and magazine rifles, they were invitation
to slaughter. And that's precisely what happened.
France first went after its "lost territories" -- the Alsace and Lorraine
which it had ceded to Germany after the 1871 war. In nine days of fighting,
known as the Battle of the Frontiers, the French launched massive human-wave
attacks into the teeth of machine gun and artillery fire. They were
slaughtered by the thousands. By the time the commander of the French army,
Marshall Joffre, abandoned the offensive, 300,000 of his men lay dead on the
killing fields from Mulhouse in the south to Nancy in the north.
Modern technology, as all sides soon discovered, made obselete their battle
tactics.
With the French offensive in the east stopped cold, the German army swept
down from Belgium, threatening Paris from the north. Just in time to help
avert disaster, the British Expeditionary Forces arrived, 100,000 strong. In
its first three battles, the Germans nearly destroyed it.
By early September, the situation was desperate. The Germans were on the
outskirts of Paris. The BEF had taken huge losses in the last few weeks, and
the French had been bled white defending Nancy. It seemed as if nothing could
stop the German army from taking Paris and fulfilling all the promises that
this would be a short war.
But then, another anonymous figure stepped into the historical spotlight and
changed the course of the war. For the first time ever, that anonymous figure
would be an aviator. France would be saved by the aeroplane.
========================================
C. Chapter 2 : The Rise of the Aeroplane
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"... As experience has shown, a real combat
in the air, such as journalists and romancers
have described, should be considered a myth.
The duty of the aviator is to see and not to
fight."
~ German 1914 staff report
The British knew exactly what the Germans were doing. When the BEF crossed the
Channel into France in August, the troops took along 48 planes -- the entire
strength of the Royal Flying Corps. These primitive machines soon proved their
worth as the "eyes" of the BEF. Each day, the pilots scouted out ahead of the
ground troops, searching out German intentions as they lumbered overhead. At
the end of August, with the situation on the ground growing increasingly
desperate, the aviators brought home a bit of good news.
On the far right flank of the German thrust into France, General Alexander von
Kluck's First Army suddenly shifted its line of advance. Instead of going
around Paris to the west, von Kluck turned his corps southeastward, cutting
inside the capital on his right flank. British pilots Lieutenant A.E. Borton,
Captain D. LeG. Pitcher, and Lieutenant C.G. Hosking all spotted the move,
reporting back to HQ. Word of the change passed up the chain of command until
it reached Marshall Joffre's desk. After studying the situation, he decided
the time was ripe for a counter-offensive against von Kluck's army.
As planning began for the great counterattack, von Kluck made another mistake.
As he moved south across the Marne River, a gap opened between his army and
the Second Army on his left flank. This gap grew wider and wider as von Kluck's
men marched south.
Again, the eagle-eyed pilots and observers of the RFC spotted the mistake.
Again, word of the hole in the German lines sped up the chain of command.
On September 5, 1914, the Battle of Marne began. The French, with the help
of the multi-colored Parisian taxi cabs, moved into place an entire army on
von Kluck's right flank. On the 5th, they went on the attack, surprising the
Germans and nearly overwhelming them. General von Kluck, more concerned with
his advance to the south than any "spoiling" attack the French could launch
on his flank, ignored the brewing battle for two days. Finally, though, on
September 7, von Kluck awoke to the danger and moved swiftly to crush the
French attack. As he did, his forward units had to re-cross the Marne and
swing back north and west to get into the battle.
The hole between von Kluck and the rest of the German army had just grown
bigger. Into that gap flowed the resurgent British Expeditionary Forces as
well as the French Fifth Army. The Germans, nearly enveloped now on both
flanks, knew the game was up. Reluctantly, von Kluck ordered a retreat which
later forced the rest of the Germans to go on the defensive as well. The great
push for Paris had collapsed in failure, as did any hopes that the war would
be a short one.
The aeroplane had helped save France that September. Without the vital
information the pilots brought back from their trips behind the lines, the
Allied armies never would have been in a position to roll up von Kluck's
army. Now, as the war settled into a long stalemate that would stretch from
the North Sea to the Swiss border by Christmas, both sides wondered how else
they would use this new weapon of war. Would the airplane just be used as the
eyes of the armies, or could it be even more useful?
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D. Chapter 3 : The Birth of Air Fighting
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"Just an old fashioned Avro with
old fashioned ways
And a kick that says 'back fire' to you,
An old Mono engine that konks out and stays
When the toil of a long flight is through,
Tho' the pressure will drop, and it loses its prop,
And the pilot's inclined to resign,
I'll rejoice till the day -- that I learnt how to fly
In that old-fashioned Avro of mine!"
~ RFC Squadron Song
The Austrian Baron Rosenthal was the first to die in air-to-air combat. His
victor, Russian Captain Nesteroff was the second. On September 8, 1914, just
as the Battle Of Marne reached its climax, Nesteroff encountered the Baron's
fragile craft over the Eastern Front. Without thought to his own safety,
Nesteroff dove after the Austrian plane and crashed his own into it. Locked
together, the two wooden machines tumbled earthward, both crews dead.
In the early days of the war, Nesteroff's suicidal battle with the Baron
Rosenthal was an aberration. In those first weeks of the war, pilots shared a
sort of kinship that transcended nation boundaries. German pilots who stumbled
across French or British planes would often toss their enemies a jaunty wave
-- and nothing more. For the most part, the Allies did the same.
This sort of honeymoon didn't last much past the Battle of Marne. When both
sides realized the importance of air reconnaissance, air-to-air fighting
became inevitable. Pilots and observers began carrying shotguns, revolvers,
carbines, and even bricks and bottles. Some of the more creative thinkers
hauled aloft machine guns. RFC pilot Louis A. Strange convinced his observer
to bring aboard a Lewis gun on one reconaissance flight. Unfortunately, the
weight of the gun kept the plane from climbing above 3,500 feet -- well below
the German planes Strange had been hunting. When his commanding officer
learned of his idea, he ordered Strange to remove the gun and focus on his
real job -- scouting for the army.
Others continued to try. On October 5, 1914, French Sergeant-Pilot Frantz went
aloft in a Voison biplane with his mechanic, Corporal Quenault. Over the lines
that morning, Franz spotted a German Aviatik at about 3,500 feet. He closed
on the unsuspecting German until Quenault, armed with a light machine gun,
found the range and opened fire. The Aviatik dove away, turning northward for
its own lines. Frantz would not be deterred. He followed the German while
Quenault snapped out short bursts from the gun. In his haste to catch the
Aviatik, Frantz accidentally overshot it. As he passed on by, the German banked
away from the Voison and tried to run. Frantz reversed his turn, ending up
behind the Aviatik. Quenault poured rounds into the ungainly German plane,
even as the pilot tried to climb away from them. But Quenault's marksmanship
was too good. The German plane, riddled with bullets, fell into a dive. The
pilot fought the controls all the way down, pulling the nose up three times
before losing it again. Finally, the Aviatik plunged into a small copse of
trees, where it exploded.
Running to the scene of the crash, one observer recalled, "The motor was
almost entirely buried in the ground, the fuselage was twisted, and the wings
were broken into a thousand pieces. One of the aviators lay quite dead three
yards away from the motor. The second, the observer, with beautiful hands
exquisitely cared for and perhaps, a great Prussian name, was caught under the
red motor, now a wreck in flames. He seemed to us to attempt to pull himself
out, but the movement was probably convulsive; he looked at us, clawed the
earth with his hands, and died before our eyes."
The honeymoon was over. The air war was about to get dirty.
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E. Chapter 4 : Deflectors and Interrupters
==========================================
"A sort of mystery surrounded the Fokker...
rumour credited it with the most fantastic
performance! It could outclimb, outpace, and
outmanoeuvre anything in the R.F.C. You were
as good as dead if you as much as saw one..."
~ German 1914 staff report
The land war on the Western Front remained a bloody standoff throughout 1915.
Both the French and the British launched offensives of their own. Always, the
attacks succeeded in gaining a little ground, but no attack made the
"breakthrough" all involved sought.
Poison gas, a new and deadly weapon, was tried by the Germans for the first
time even during a local attack outside the city of Ypres in April, 1915. The
gas caused panic among the British and French troops, sparking a stampede to
the rear. A four-mile hole opened in the lines as men threw down their weapons
while fleeing the terrible gas clouds. Seventy thousand Allied soldiers fell
during that attack, but the Germans could not exploit their success. Not
expecting such a reaction from the Allies, the German high command had not
backstopped the attack with enough reserves to achieve a decisive victory.
The Allies responded with gas attacks of their own, though none succeeded like
the German one that April. By late 1915, the Allies had lost close to a half a
million men for no gain at all in a series of vain offensives. The year ended
with the lines drawn as they were the previous December.
While the ground war grew increasingly and futile, the air war evolved through
1915 into a battle between technology and tactics. As each side developed new
planes, new refinements, and new weapons, the other side scrambled to develop
tactics to counter these new threats. It was a race begun by a young French
daredevil named Roland Garros, and it would not end until the Armistice in
November, 1918.
Before the war, Roland Garros was a well-known figure in aviation circles. As
one of France's air pioneers, he had entered nearly every contest and race in
Europe, winning acclaim for his incredible feats. He was the first to fly
across the Mediterranean Sea, a risky proposition at best in that age of fussy
engines and flawed designs. He later entered and won Paris to Rome and Paris
to Madrid races, and in 1911 he won the Grand Prix d'Anjou.
When the war broke out in 1914, Garros was in Germany. Worried he that he might
be arrested, he abandoned his belongings and took the first train to
Switzerland. He returned to Paris as fast as he could, where he offered his
service as an aviator. Along with many other pre-war daredevils, the French
Air Service assigned him to M.S. 23, a squadron flying early Morane
monoplanes.
During the first winter of the war, Garros began thinking up new ways to shoot
down German observation planes. He concluded that the best way would be to
mount a machine gun on the nose of his plane so that he wouldn't have to carry
an observer to shoot the gun. If the machine gun were fixed to fire forward,
Garros could aim the gun by simply pointing his nose at his target. A great
idea with one huge flaw: the propeller was in the way.
For several weeks, Garros and his mechanics tinkered with one of the Morane
monoplanes, trying to come up with a way to protect the prop from the machine
gun. As they experimented, they discovered that only about 10% of the bullets
fired ever hit the prop blades. If they could just take care of that one in
ten, their idea would work.
They settled on what they called a "deflector system." By mounting steel wedges
onto the back of each propeller blade, any bullets that would normally damage
it would just ricochet off. The wedges were angled so that the bullets would
not fly back and hit the pilot.
In the spring of 1915, after weeks of experimentation, Garros and his new
weapon took to the air in search of a victim. Once aloft, he headed for his
primary target, a railroad station outside of Ostend which he would bomb.
Along the way, though, he came across a lone Albatros two-seater, intent on
spying behind Allied lines.
His original mission forgotten, Garros turned his Morane-Saulnier monoplane
after the German. He crept up on the unsuspecting plane from behind, a tactic
that confused the German observer. Then came the clatter of Garros' Hotchkiss
machine gun. The observer fought back with a carbine, but it was really no
contest. The Albatros burst into flames and crashed. Garros, horrified by what
had happened, later reported, "I gazed below me a long time to convince myself
that is was not a nightmare."
Garros' jury-rigged experiment had just given birth to the first true fighter
planes in aviation history.
For eighteen days, Garros terrorized the local German units on the Belgian
coast. German pilots, filled with rumors of new French superweapons, began
avoiding all monoplanes to the outrage of their commanding officer, one of
whom accused his aviators of having the "hallucination of old women."
Garros' one man war ended almost as quickly as it had begun. After shooting
down three planes, he himself fell victim to a German bullet on April 18, 1915.
With his fuel line severed, he coasted down for a crash-landing behind German
lines. Before he could burn his craft, German soldiers appeared and took him
prisoner. His precious machine had fallen into enemy hands.
Garros remained a prisoner until January, 1918, when he and another French
pilot escaped from their captors and made their way to England. Upon returning
to France, Garros rejoined the French Air Service, not realizing the tremendous
changes that had taken place between his daring experiment and his return to
combat. After flying only a few missions, the Germans shot him down again. A
great pioneer of air combat technology had died at the hands of the weapons
he helped invent.
Though Garros started the air combat revolution, it was the Germans who refined
his ideas, making them both practical and deadly. In April, 1915, when Garros
went down behind the lines, the Germans captured his Morane-Saulnier. After
local officials examined it, they realized Garros' plane was an incredible
intelligence coup. Quickly, they packed it up and sent it to young Tony Fokker,
a Dutch aircraft designer working in Germany.
The German Air Force asked Fokker if he could duplicate Garros' invention.
Fokker agreed to have a look, but instead of copying the deflector gear, he
improved on it. Later, Fokker claimed that his novel idea came with a flash of
inspiration. More likely, however, was the fact that the German Air Service
provided Fokker with the details of a synchronizing system patented in 1913
by LVG engineer Franz Schneider. In exchange for Fokker's time and effort, the
Air Service apparently promised to protect him from lawsuits.
It took only a few days for Fokker to work through the kinks of the new system.
Instead of protecting the propeller, Fokker built a system of gears into the
machine gun and engine that would ensure no bullets were fired when the
propeller blade passed in front of the barrel. Fokker called his invention the
"Interrupter Gear."
Earlier in 1915, his company had been hired to build a lightweight, single-
seat aircraft whose chief attribute was speed. Fokker copied the Morane-
Saulnier design and even used a license-built built version of the French
Gnome rotary engine -- the Oberusal. Now, with his Eindeckers aircraft just
reaching production stages, Fokker married his interrupter gear to it and
created the world's first true fighter plane.
When the first Eindeckers arrived at the front in mid-May, 1915, they were
allocated in penny-packets to the existing reconnaisance units. Initially, the
German pilots balked at the Eindecker's capabilities. Having learned to fly on
slow, awkward biplanes, or the Austrian Erich Taube, the speedy Fokker proved
to be a difficult adjustment. Compared to the Aviatik and the early Albatros
two-seaters, the Fokker was far more maneuverable, unforgiving, and quirky.
Fokker realized this problem early on and helped establish a training school
to teach the proper techniques needed to fly his creation.
The transition period lasted until early August, and for some reason the
German Air Service doubted the effectiveness of Fokker's new aircraft. In some
cases, the interrupter gear malfunctioned, shooting off the propeller blade
and killing the pilot in the ensuing crash. After three fatal crashes in July
and August, the Air Service forbade its further use. It even disbanded Fokker's
training school at Doberitz.
The Air Service very nearly killed the best weapon at its disposal by its
overreaction. Two pilots, however, stepped in to save the day. They were Max
Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke.
On August 1, 1915, a flight of nine British Be2 "Quirks" flew over the German
airfield outside Douai. The Allied planes surprised the German the German
pilots, who had been napping in their quarters nearby. Max Immelmann, a
talented twenty-five year old pilot from Dresden, awoke to a "terrible row."
When he reached his window, he spotted the British planes passing overhead,
dropping bombs on the airfield. He telephoned for a car at once so he could
get to his plane.
While waiting for his ride to the airfield, Oswald Boelcke, a smart Saxon with
one kill already too his credit, buzzed by on his motor bike, heading for the
airfield and his awaiting Fokker Eindecker.
Boelcke and Immelmann were F.F.A 62's two best pilots. When the squadron
received a pair of Eindeckers earlier in July, their commanding officer
assigned both of them to fly the new planes. Immelmann had only been flying
the Eindecker for three days, but his raw talent as a flier would more than
make up for his lack of experience on this day.
Immelmann reached the airfield ten minutes after Boelcke took off after the
British Quirks. He fumed impatiently as he waited for the ground crew to roll
his Fokker out of its shed, then climbed aboard once it was ready to go.
Finally, well behind his comrade, Immelmann took to the skies, ready to test
Fokker's fussy, but potentially deadly, interrupter gear.
Immelmann climbed to about 6,500 feet when he saw Boelcke abandon his attack
on two Be2s. Boelcke dived away from the British planes and did not return to
the action. Immelmann later discovered Boelcke's gun had jammed.
With the Quirks split up into at least three groups, Immelmann climbed after
the two Boelcke had been stalking. Then he spotted another British plane
slightly below him, dropping bombs on Vitry. He turned toward it and gave
chase. Diving down, he opened fire on the Be2, firing 60 rounds before his
gun jammed. He broke off to clear it, noticing that the other two Quirks were
now closing in on him. He freed up his machine gun and made for his original
target. Two more times in the course of the fight his guns jammed. Yet, his
marksmanship carried the day. In the end, the Quirk fell off into a long,
shallow dive which Immelmann followed, firing his gun whenever he could get the
jams cleared. Four hundred and fifty rounds later, the Quirk crash-landed in
German territory.
Eager to meet his foe, Immelmann landed in the same field. Unarmed, he
approached his two enemies cautiously, yelling, "Prisoniers!" In French at
them. They offered no resistance, and the pilot held out his right hand to
shake Immelmann's.
"Bonjour, monsieur," Immelmann said, but was surprised when the Allied pilot
responded in English.
"Ah, you are an Englishman?" he asked.
"Yes," came the reply.
"You are my prisoner," Immelmann said.
The Englishman, appearing unruffled, offered Immelmann congratulations, "My
arm is broken. You shot very well."
As the German looked over his prisoner, he discovered that one of his bullets
had smashed the Englishman's forearm. Indeed, he had shot very well.
The Fokker Scourge had begun.
Throughout that fall, Boelcke and Immelmann made life miserable for the
British pilots in Flanders. Together or individually, they would roam the skies
over the trenches, looking for Allied recon planes in their Fokker Eindeckers.
On August 19, 1915, Boelcke scored his first kill in his monoplane fighter.
Immelmann scored again on the 26th, and by the end of the year had seven
victories. Boelcke finished the year with six. As their scores mounted, both
men became heroes to the German people. Starved for good news in a war filled
with seemingly purposeless slaughter on the ground, Germany embraced their
young air heroes with pure adulation. When, in January, 1916, the Air Service
awarded both men the Pour Le Merite -- the most prestigious Prussian award for
bravery in battle -- their rise to fame seemed complete.
Not only did they become national figures, Immelmann and Boelcke set the tone
for the next eight months in the skies over the Western Front. Following their
example, other pilots began stalking Allied planes in their speedy Eindeckers.
Soon, though there were fewer than sixty Fokkers at the front at any one time,
the British and French Air Service fell into a panic over their losses. Other
Eindecker pilots, including Ernest Udet and Kurt Wintgens, also began taking
a toll on Allied planes. The French, who had been bombing Germany for months
without serious losses, suddenly had nine planes shot down in one mission.
Other attacks suffered the same fate, forcing them to abandon daylight bombing
raids.
As the Fokkers made their presence known, Allied morale plummeted. Even the
sight of a distant monoplane was enough to cause an Allied pilot to cut out for
home. Missions were not being completed, and the myths surrounding the Fokker
grew and grew until Allied aircrew were convinced it was an unbeatable super-
weapon.
Allied leaders knew only two things could stop this German onslaught. First,
new planes had to be deployed that could beat the Fokker. Second, tactics had
to be developed to counter the Eindecker threat. In the meantime, the French
and British pilots would have to take their losses, buying time with their
lives until the next generation of aircraft arrived at the front. For nearly
six months, the Allied pilots waited and bled, knowing that the Germans for
the first time had command of the air over the Western Front. As the war went
on, the battle for that command would grow both furious and bloody.
========================================
F. Chapter 5 : The Swing of the Pendulum
========================================
"You seem magnetically attracted to any German
aeroplane you see, and never weigh the
situation. I saw one of your machines take on
one Fokker, then two Fokkers, then three
Fokkers, before being shot down at Lille."
~ Captured German Pilot Lt.
Baldamus to his British
interrogators.
Major Lanoe Hawker was no stranger to air combat. In early 1915, he earned the
Royal Flying Corps' second Victoria Cross, England's highest award for bravery.
Hawker, a small, sensitive man prone to fits of depression, mounted a Lewis
gun on the side of his Bristol scout and went hunting for targets. He found
two German planes, one of which he shot down and the other he forced to land
behind German lines. He did it by aiming the gun off to the side outside the
propeller's arc.
That sort of ingenuity and agressiveness convinced the RFC to give Hawker
command of the world's first true fighter squadron. It almost proved his
undoing. Hawker had been flying in combat since the war began with No. Six
Squadron. When the RFC ordered him to England in the fall of 1915, Hawker was
the last original member of his squadron. Everyone else had been killed or
wounded.
Command in England did not go well at first. With all the fighting he's seen,
Hawker sometimes appeared on the verge of a total mental breakdown. The strain
of his new position pushed him even closer to that edge. Nevertheless, this
tough former engineer knew his duty, and carried out his responsibility well.
By December, 1915, No. 24 Squadron was ready to go to France.
Equipped with the new Airco DH-2, Hawker's men would be the spear point of
the RFC's response to the Fokker Scourge. Relatively fast for its time, the
DH-2 carried a single machine fixed to fire forward. To solve the problem of
firing through the propeller, British designers gave up on their own version
of the interruptor gear and just moved the engine behind the pilot. This
pusher design solved the problem admirably, but created others. As Hawker's
men discovered, the DH-2 had some nasty habits. Its unreliable engine tended
to catch fire, which usually meant the end for the unfortunate pilot. Worse,
it spun easily, an especially bad characteristic in an age where nobody knew
how to recover from a spin. With their usual grim humor, the pilots nicknamed
the DH-2 the "Spinning Incinerator."
Hawker's Squadron, as the outfit was nicknamed, went into action in early
February, 1916. He taught his men to be aggressive -- "Attack everything,"
he once told them. After arriving in Flanders, the squadron's DH-2s sought
out the dreaded Eindeckers and brought them into battle. Though the DH-2 had
many problems, it was far superior to the Fokker monoplane. Soon, as other
DH-2 squadrons arrived at the front, the German Fokker menace gradually
evaporated.
In early 1916, the French captured an intact Fokker Eindecker. After test
flying it, they discovered the plane had only limited maneuverability,
especially compared to the latest Allied types arriving at the front. When
these facts filtered down to the squadrons, the Fokker at last ceased to be a
psychological threat.
Instead, they were hunted until the Germans were nearly driven from the skies.
Resurgent Allied airpower had crushed the Fokker Scourge.
=====================
G. Chapter 6 : Verdun
=====================
"Victory was to be bought so dear as to be
almost indistinguishable as defeat."
~ Winston Churchill
On February 20, 1916, a crushing bombardment -- the biggest ever seen in
human history -- all but wiped out the forward French guarding the strategic
position of Verdun. The next day, eight German divisions attacked on a narrow
front, grinding their way through the remains of the French defense. By
nightfall, good progress had been made on every sector.
The biggest and most important battle of the war had just begun.
As the battle raged below, a new struggle unfolded in the air. For their
offensive, the Germans had amassed four observation squadrons, 14 balloons,
and some 20 Fokker Eindeckers. The Eindeckers were charged with protecting
the artillery-spotters as they went about their vital task.
When the battle began, the Eindeckers cleared the skies of all French machines.
Outnumbered, and with their aerodromes under heavy artillery fire, the French
squadrons fled to Verdun for safer areas. However, the retreat did not last
long. At the end of February, Colonel Bares took command of the shattered units
around Verdun. General Petain, head of the ground forces in the Verdun sector,
ordered Bares to hold and seize air supremacy at all costs. The brutal
artillery barrages had to be rendered ineffective, and the only way to do that
was to shoot down the German spotter planes.
Bares immediately called for reinforcements until he had almost 120 planes
under his command. By early March, he had eight reconnaissance, two artillery,
and six fighter escadrilles at his disposal. To lead the fighter squadrons,
he chose Major Tricornot de Rose, a pre-war aviator who was France's first
military pilot. An experienced leader, whose drooping moustache had made him
a well known figure in the Air Service, de Rose set to work reorganizing the
fighter escadrilles to carry out their mission.
The first important change came on March 21. Prior to Verdun, aviation units
had always been under the control of the local army commander. Now, the French
tried a new system. After de Rose collected no fewer than fifteen fighter
squadrons under his direct supervision, Marshall Joffre took his group out of
the major chain of command. Instead of reporting to the local ground
commanders, de Rose reported directly to de Bares, who in turn answered only
to Joffre himself. This way, the immediate need of the army commanders would
not interfere with the overall objective: air superiority over Verdun.
Major de Rose, with his chain of command secured, soon modified the very way
his fighter squadron did battle in the air. Until Verdun, Allied fighters had
patrolled the front in small numbers, just as the Germans had done with their
Eindeckers. Lanoe Hawker and No. 24 Squadron started to change that in Flanders
when they flew missions as a squadron. At about the same time, Major de Rose
ordered his squadrons to do the same thing.
No longer would there be single plane patrols over Verdun. Instead, de Rose
taught his escadrilles to fly and fight in formation. He developed escort
tactics and worked out effective ways to intercept incoming German aircraft.
His experiments and their applications led to the first truly homogenous
fighter squadron. It did not take long for his ideas to spread through the
French Air Service, as Hawker's did in the RFC.
The new tactics, combined with new aircraft like the Nieuport 11, went a long
way toward saving France that grim spring. On the ground, the Germans slowly
advanced toward Verdun, taking huge losses but grinding up the French army
in the process. In the air, the Germans lost their brief control of the air
over Verdun as their Eindeckers, scattered throughout the reconnaissance units,
ran afoul of superior numbers and better French airplanes.
Once the Eindeckers had been vanquished, Major de Rose instituted a a daily
patrol system that he felt eliminated the need for escort missions altogether.
Each day, his squadron would patrol their assigned sectors in groups of five
or six. Sometimes, above these patrols would be the squadron's elite aces --
men like Jean Navarre and Alfred Heurteaux. By using their comrades below as
bait, they racked up high scores in the vicious fighting at Verdun.
And it was vicious. The French showed no mercy to their outnumbered German
enemies.
Twenty-six year old Albert Deullin rose to acehood over the skies of Verdun,
shooting down five planes between February and June, 1916. On June 4, France
awarded him the Legion de Honor, its highest award for bravery. On one of his
notable missions, Deullin was full of rage at the Germans after having lost
his close friend, Lieutenent Peretti, in battle over Verdun. Thirsting for
revenge, he caught an Eindecker from behind and closed to less than thirty feet
before opening fire. Twenty-five rounds from his machine gun struck the
cockpit, and as Deullin recalled, "The fellow was so riddled that vaporized
blood sprayed on my hood, windshield, cap, and goggles. Naturally, the descent
from 2,600 was delicious to comtemplate."
It got even uglier. Bernard Lefont in his candid book, Au Ciel de Verdun,
detailed the brutal side of the war. One time, a Caudron bomber force-landed
at his aerodrome. When he and his friends came out to see it, they discovered
that the Caudron's gunner had been shot in the head. The pilot, Lafont noted,
was unhurt but quite shaken as he was "covered with blood, {his} clothes and
face, for in the wind of the motors, the blood that poured out of the
passenger's wound lashed him."
Another time, Lafont's squadron commander assigned him to burial detail. He
spent his days recovering the mutilated bodies of his comrades. Once, after a
nighttime crash, Lafont arrived at the crash site the next morning and noted:
It is Senain. He received three bullets in the head, which exploded like
rotten fruit; brains and blood trickle on the face and clothes. The helmet
moves on a broken skull.
Both are horribly crushed. The stretcher bearers who pick them up have only a
bloody pulp in their hands.
Another time, he recovered the body of a Farman crewman, who had fallen to his
death from his airplane.
The second fell on the roof of the house. I clearly heard the dull sound of a
body when it was crushed in a heap. Flouc!... The body was recovered from the
roof, entirely broken, shattered and shapeless and without rigidity like a
heap of ooze.
Clearly, the air war over Verdun was not for the faint of heart.
================================
H. Chapter 7 : Germany Resurgent
================================
"As a pilot in France I chanced over the lines
And there I met an Albatros Scout.
It seems that he saw me, or so I presumed,
His manoeuvres left small room for doubt.
He sat on my tail without further delay,
Of my subsequent actions I think I might say --
My turns approximated to the vertical,
I deemed it most judicious to recede.
I frequently gyrated on my axis,
And obtained collosal atmospheric speed,
O descended with unparalleled momentum,
My propeller's point of rupture I surpassed,
And performed the most outstanding evolutions --
In other words -- I SPLIT-ASSED!
~ "In Other Words" RFC squadron song
By early April, the air fighting over Verdun had all but driven the German
Air Service from the skies. The Nieuport escadrilles had carried out Petain's
desperate February order to win command of the air. Now, the German army
below was blind, its reconnaissance and observation planes shots out of the
sky. No longer would their artillery fire be nearly as effective as it was
at the outset of the battle. As this happened, both sides realized the
importance of air fighting and renewed their efforts to take or maintain air
superiority. The struggle took on a desperate intensity.
As their enemies concentrated their fighters into dedicated squadrons, the
Germans began to react in the same way by the Spring of 1916. Separate Fokker
squadrons were established, sometimes called Fokker staffels or Single-Seat-
Combat Flights (KEKs). These primitive fighter squadrons helped offset the
Allied advantage in aircraft design until better German fighters could make
their debut over the front.
At first, the German tried to defend every piece of sky at once. They flew
"barrage patrols" where each staffel was assigned a sector to scour. No Allied
planes were supposed to cross the barrage patrol barriers. But to cover every
inch of sky in a given sector required the Fokker staffels to break down into
flights of two or three each. Again, their tactics left them outnumbered and
frequently overwhelmed by the larger formations of Allied planes.
Summer started poorly for the Germans and only got worse. In June, the great
Max Immelmann, known to his countrymen as the "Eagle of Lille" died in combat
with a British Fe2. Later investigation indicated that Immelmann's interruptor
gear had failed and he had shot his propeller off. Tony Fokker, always worried
about negative press, went to great lengths to deny this. In any case, the
British were happy to take credit for Immelmann's death. He had been one of
the top aces of the war at the time of his death, with 15 kills to his credit.
As the summer wore on, the German Air Service continued to be rolled back by
the Allied change in tactics and aircraft. When the British launched their
Somme Offensive in July, the air fighting heated up once again. Though the
RFC squadrons took heavy losses, the Germans seemed on the ropes for sure.
Given the disaster the ground offensive produced, the success in the air
provided a glimmer of hope to the tiring Allied home fronts.
The German Air Service knew it had to do something soon to redress the balance
in the air. To do it, they called on Oswald Boelke, their leading ace and
master tactician.
Clearly, the KEKs and Fokker staffels were a step in the right direction. Just
as clearly, they had not gone far enough. Starting in late summer, the Germans
began organizing dedicated fighter squadrons of nine planes each. Boelke was
given a free hand to recruit for his squadron, which would be one of the first
formed. Called Jagdstaffels -- or hunting flights -- these new units were sure
to be an improvement over the earlier, ad-hoc collection of Eindeckers in the
KEKs.
Jagdstaffel 2 -- or Jasta 2 as everyone soon called it -- was given to Oswald
Boelcke. He spent the end of the summer traveling all over Germany and the
front lines selecting his pilots. In Russia, he found a former cavalry-officer-
turned-reconnaisance-pilot named Manfred von Richthofen. Richthofen had proved
time and time again his aggressiveness in the air. The attribute appealed to
Boelcke who invited him to join his new squadron. The young Prussian aristocrat
quickly accepted.
In Werner Voss, Boelcke found another great fighter pilot. A shy, enigmatic
nineteen year old, Voss impressed Boelcke with his remarkable flying abilities.
He would later become one of Germany's top aces.
By mid-September, 1916, Jasta 2 was ready for combat. Assigned to the First
Army, Boelcke's men would be going up against the best British squadrons in
Flanders. In the weeks that followed, the squadron routinely ran up against
Lanoe Hawker's No. 24 Squadron -- and came out on top. After nearly six
months of thrashing at the hands of the Allies, the German Air Service was
slowly coming back on top.
Boelcke himself went on a scoring frenzy unmatched so far in the war. Between
September 2 and October 27, 1916, Boelcke downed no fewer than twenty British
planes. His men paced his achievement. Richthofen knocked down six in the same
period while Boelcke's wingmate, Erwin Boehme, claimed another five.
The string of victories continued through the fall, as Boelcke taught his
elite group of pilots all that he had learned in his many prior combats. To
help the entire Air Service, he set down on paper his famous "Dicta Boelcke"
which spelled out the most important tenants of air combat. Those same basic
principles apply today just as they did in the war-torn skies of France some
eighty years ago.
But Boelcke was wearing himself out. Flying two or three missions a day
throughout that fall had given him a haggard, gaunt visage. Despite his
exhaustion, he continued to lead his men into battle. Nevertheless, the air
fighting had long since become unforgiving, and the destruction in the skies
that he helped develop and refine eventually claimed his life.
On October 28, 1916, Boelcke and his squadron were scrambled to intercept
Lanoe Hawker's No. 24 Squadron. In his haste to get airborne, the great
German tactician had forgotten to strap himself into the cockpit -- a mistake
born from exhaustion that would soon prove fatal.
With faithful Erwin Boehme on his wing, Boelcke led his Jasta up against
Hawker's Squadron. Soon, a whirlwind dogfight raged, with planes zipping all
over the sky. As usual, Boehme stayed close to his leader. Suddenly, though,
Manfred von Richthofen cut in front of Boelcke, intent on killing a diving
DH-2. Boelcke had to swerve to avoid colliding with the Prussian. As he did,
his wing scuffed Boehme's Albatros D. II. It was barely a collision, Boehme
recalled later, but it was enough to be Boelcke's undoing. His Albatros fell
out of control toward the front lines below. The master tactician fought his
plane all the way down and even managed to make a relative soft crash landing.
But since he was not strapped in, even the modest impact of the crash
killed him.
Boehme, who's plane was also damaged, managed to make a successful landing
and emmerged from the tragedy physically unhurt. Emotionally, he was
traumatized by the accident. For weeks, the brave native of Holzminden carried
the guilt of Boelcke's death on his conscience. It did not help that his own
comrades blamed him for their leader's death. Another man would have been
broken by the accident, but not Boehme. He continued to fly and fight, winning
back the respect of his fellow pilots with his impressive string of victories.
He would continue to fly combat through 1917, despite two severe wounds
including one terrible head injury that kept him out of combat for nearly
five months.
Oswald Boelcke was gone, but his legacy lived in both the spirit and
organization of the German fighter force. He had taught them how to fight,
and how to fight successfully despite being outnumbered. Now, though, his
death created a leadership vacuum that would not be filled until early
1917.
The man who filled that vacuum was none other than Boelcke's former protég?
Manfred von Richthofen.
A cold, calculating pilot whose flying skills were not nearly as refined as
some of his comrades, including Verner Voss, Richthofen nonetheless possessed
all the ingredients for acehood. He had a thirst for hunting British planes,
as well as a knack for picking the right flights and avoiding disadvantageous
situations. He was a stalker, a plotter, a master of patience. All of these
things paid off in spades as he continued to fly with Jasta 2.
His first big splash came on November 23, 1916, a day in which Jasta 2 met
Hawker's Squadron twice. The first encounter came that morning over Le Sars.
Though a whirling dogfight erupted between the two sides, no planes were
shot down. After a sharp, intense action, both the British and Germans
retreated to rearm and refuel.
Later that day, three DH-2s took off on another patrol. This flight, led by
Major Hawker included Captain J.O. Andrews and Lieutenant Robert Saundby, a
future Air Marshal.
Over the lines, Hawker's Squadron ran afoul of Jasta 2 again. This time, the
British were outnumbered and soon thrown on the defensive. Early in the
dogfight, an Albatros D.II slid behind Hawker's DH-2, but before it could open
fire, Andrews chased it off. He paid for saving his squadron's commander
moments later when another German hit his engine, forcing him to disengage
and return to No. 24 Squadron's aerodrome at Bapaume.
Somehow in the fray, Hawker ended up one-on-one with an Albatros D.II. The
German plane, flown by Manfred von Richthofen himself, was not as nimble as
the DH-2, but was faster and could climb better.
What developed was a battle of two masters. Hawker used his DH-2's
maneuverability to avoid every attack Richthofen attempted. For his own part,
the Prussian ace relied on his climb rate to get him above and behind Hawker's
pusher. Round and round the fight went, all the while the wind blowing the two
combatants deeper into German-held territory.
It was a standoff -- neither pilot could get into position for the killing
shot. But time and circumstance began to tell against Hawker. The farther the
fight moved behind German lines, the more anxiously the British ace looked
after his fuel gauge. Finally, with no other choice, the nine-kill Victoria
Cross winner had to cut out for home. He chose to dive out of the flight,
building airspeed as he sped back towards his own lines.
Richthofen gave chase, his Albatros tucked in right behind the DH-2. Hawker
saw the danger and started to zig-zag, trying to throw off the German pilot's
aim. At the same time, however, his sharp maneuvering killed off his airspeed,
allowing Richthofen to close the range.
The Albatros' guns chattered briefly then stopped. Richthofen's guns had
jammed! Hawker, now mere feet off the tree tops, was only a few hundred yards
from his own lines. If he could just make that stretch, he would be okay.
Undeterred by his jammed guns, Richthofen continued the chase while banging
away on his Spandaus with a tiny hammer. Working feverishly, he cleared one of
the machine guns and opened fire again. This time, his bullets did their
grisly work. One round struck Hawker in the back of the head, killing him
instantly. His DH-2 dropped into the shell-torn landscape right in front of a
German grenadier unit. The great British leader and tactician had met his
match.
Of the fight, Richthofen later wrote, "[It was] the most difficult battle...
that I had experienced thus far." He had emmerged unharmed, a hero to his
squadron mates. Word quickly spread throughout the German Air Service that
Richthofen had killed "The English Boelcke," Lanoe Hawker. And so began the
rise to fame of this Prussian aristocrat. In time he would match, then eclipse
the score and tactical genius of his mentor, Oswald Boelcke as he rose to
become the war's most famous ace.
=============================
I. Chapter 8 : April Massacre
=============================
"When you soar in the air on a Sopwith Scout
And you're scrapping with a Hun and your gun
cuts out
Well, you stuff down your nose 'til your plugs
fall out
Cos you haven't got a hope in the morning.
For a batman woke me from my bed
I had a thick night and a very soar head
And I said to myself, to myself I said
Oh! We haven't got a hope in the morning!'
We were escorting Twenty-Two.
Hadn't a notion what to do,
So we shot down a Hun and an FE too!
Cos they hadn't got a hope in the morning.
We went to Cambrai all in vain
The FE's said, 'We must explain,
Our cameras broke; we must do it again'
Oh! We haven't got a hope in the morning.
~ "We Haven't Got a Hope
in the Morning" 54 Squadron,
RFC
As the Jagdstaffeln made their presence felt all along the Western Front,
Allied aviators found themselves again on the verge of losing control of the
air. The German Air Service, now equipped with tough, nimble biplane fighters
like the Albatros D.II and Fokker D.II, had come a long way since the
bloodletting over Verdun and Flanders.
Now it was the Allies who were at a disadvantage. Their tactics and
organization had been copied by the enemy, and now the German aircraft they
met were at least as good as their own, and frequently better. While fighting
development in France and Britain produced such excellent designs as the Spad
7, the Nieuports 11 and 17, and the Sopwith Pup in 1916,reconnaissance designs
languished. The British were forced to keep using the hopelessly inadequate
Be2 Quirk. German aces like Manfred von Richthofen feasted on these hapless
planes, making a living by easily knocking them out of the sky. The Be2's
replacement, the RE8 -- nicknamed the "Harry Tate" by its crew -- turned out
to be a disaster. Ungainly in the air, and prone to all sorts of mechanical
failure, the RE8, at best, a marginal improvement over the Quirk.
Then, in early 1917, the next generation of German fighters reached the front.
Led by the agile and swift Albatros D.III, the new German designs caught the
Allies totally unprepared. Their own replacements for the Nieuports and Spad
7s were just reaching squadron status and had not arrived in strength on the
Western Front. These included the famed SE5 and the temperamental Sopwith
Camel. While the front-line squadrons waited for these new planes, they did
the best with what they had on hand, their morale soaring with the knowledge
that the Germans seemed on the verge of defeat on the ground.
The year started on a high note for the French and British on the Western
Front. The battle at Verdun had finally ended in December, 1916, with the
French pulling a victory out of what looked like certain defeat. On the Eastern
Front, the Brusilov offensive had nearly crushed the Austrian army before
petering out when the Germans arrived to bolster their sagging partner. By the
end of the year, it looked like the Germans would be finished off in 1917.
Allied fortunes were finally on the rise, and all looked forward to what they
thought would be the final campaign season.
April, 1917 shattered all their hopes. That month started and ended with
disaster, both on the ground and in the air.
On the ground, the French launched a massive, go-for-broke offensive against
the Chemin-des-Dames. Naturally, overhead, the air war heated up as the troops
went over the top. The operations turned into disaster. In 48 hours, the French
lost 120,000 men to the stiff German defense. The medical corps had prepared
only enough beds for 10,000 wounded, causing untold misery to the thousands of
wounded who died while waiting to be examined by a doctor or an orderly. As the
slaughter continued, the first crack in the French army appeared. Some units
refused to advance, others in the rear would not go back into the trenches,
even when their officers threatened them at gunpoint. The rebellion spread like
wildfire from the 6th Army (the one involved in the Chemin-des-Dames offensive)
into the rest of the army. By the end of April, 68 of France's 110 infantry
divisions were in open mutiny. It took until June to quell the unrest, but by
then the damage had been done. Morale in the French army remained low, and for
the rest of the war all it could manage were mainly defensive duties and
limited offensive operations.
The fighting in the air mirrored the fortunes below. With the new Albatros
D.III in full service, the Jastas entered the month and better shape than ever.
Tempered by the pitched air battles of the previous fall, the German pilots
had both the tactics and experience to deal the Allied air services a heavy
blow. They took full advantage of it.
In Flanders, as Sir Douglas Haig's BEF flung itself at the German defenses
around Arras, the Royal Flying Corps was called upon to give full support to
the offensive. En masse, artillery spotting Quirks and Harry Tates crossed the
line to lend a hand in the fighting, only to be chopped out of the sky by
prowling Albatros scouts. The fighter squadrons, now flying aging 1916 designs,
could offer little support. As the losses mounted, the replacement pilots
entering the fray were so poorly trained that they were hardly more than cannon
fodder. Morale in the observation units plummeted as the death toll mounted.
The British started the battle of Arras with total superiority in aircraft.
Three hundred and sixty five RFC planes blanketed the skies over the battle,
fully a third of them fighters. Against this force the Germans could muster
only about a hundred fighters and a hundred other planes. By the end of the
month, the British had lost 176 machines, while the Germans suffered losses
of only 21 pilots and crew killed, and 15 wounded.
Nowhere was the carnage worse than around Douai, where two Nieuport squadrons,
No. 60 and No. 29 were stationed. In one four-week period, both squadrons lost
100% of their pilot strength in action. Only the constant flow of inexperienced
replacements kept the Nieuports manned for the daily dawn patrols over Douai.
Morale sank as losses increased, but the two squadron fought on in part
because of rising stars like Billy Bishop and Albert Ball, as well as by the
false assumption that the Germans were being hit as hard as they were. Day in
and day out throughout April, they clashed with a deadly new threat,
Jagdstaffel 11, now commanded by the legendary Manfred von Richthofen.
Richthofen took over Jasta 11 earlier in 1917 at a time when the outfit had
done little in the air. It took only a short time for him to whip the squadron
into fighting shape. By April, it had all the trappings of an elite formation
-- experience, dedication, high morale, and a tremendous commanding officer.
When they went into action during the Battle of Arras, they soon proved their
superiority over the best the British could field. Throughout the month,
Richthofen set the pace for all his pilots by shooting down no fewer than 20
British planes, most were elderly Quirks and slow FE2s. Other pilots in the
unit chalked up amazing tallies as well. Lothar von Richthofen, Manfred's
younger, and more reckless brother, claimed fifteen kills that month, showing
in the process that air combat ran in his family's blood. Another Jasta 11
pilot, Kurt Wulf, outshone his commander by knocking down no fewer than
twenty-two RFC planes between April 6th and April 30th. Karl Allmenroder, a
future 30-kill ace, got eight more that month.
By the end of the month, Jasta 11 and its cohorts killed or wounded 443 British
aviators. Since the British insisted on offensive operations at all costs in
the air, most of the wounded pilots and observers fell behind German lines
and spent the rest of the war in POW camps.
The slaughter, known to the British as "Bloody April," had a profound effect
on the air war. In the summer of 1916, the average life expectancy of an RFC
pilot was 295 combat hours. After April, 1917, the number fell to 92. The war
would be fought from then on by a small core of hardened veterans surrounded
by neophytes who were little more than victories-in-waiting for the likes of
Manfred von Richthofen.
After April, the British and French spent the rest of that spring deploying
their latest generation of fighters and bombers. The arrival of the Camels,
SE5s, RE8s, Bruegets, and SPAD 13s helped redress the imbalance in the air.
For almost two years now, the air war had seesawed back and forth, with one
side gaining the advantage and slaughtering the other until the technological
balance swung to the other side. By the summer of 1917, the latest German and
Allied planes were just about evenly matched. The technological advances
enjoyed in the past -- if but for fleeting moments -- would never again be
seen. For the rest of the war, the technological race would remain a near dead-
heat, a fact that forever changed the nature of the fighting over the Western
Front.
Through the summer and into the fall, the air war settled down into a
strangling struggle of attrition. No longer would individual feats of bravery
affect the course of fighting as it had back in 1915 when Boelcke and Immelmann
struck terror into their British opponents. Two years removed from the Eagle
of Lille's heyday, the air war became a simple battle of numbers. The Allies
had them, the Germans did not. Compensating for their lack of numbers, the
average German pilot was more experienced and bettered trained than his Allied
counterpart. That fact alone helped even the odds as more and more Allied
planes poured into German territory.
Losses were staggering. French and British units took 70% losses each month,
but carried on anyway. Others suffered nearly 100% aircrew losses a month, and
as the old veterans died, fewer and fewer of the new replacements lived long
enough to be of use to their squadron.
Despite the horrifying casualties, the Allies insisted on prosecuting an
offensive air war. By maintaining the pressure on the Germans, they hoped to
wear them down. As bloody as the strategy proved, the effect on the German
Air Service slowly began to tell. By 1918, the strategy would finally bear
fruit.
In the meantime, the killing continued.
One of the first great Allied pilots to die as the war evolved into this battle
of attrition was Albert Ball. Ball cut his teeth in combat in the early days
of air combat where he learned to be a lone-wolf style hunter. He fought with
reckless abandon, throwing himself into every fight no matter what the odds or
risks may have been. He emerged undaunted after every fight, sometimes through
sheer audacity. In the air, he was a one-man whirling dervish, but on the
ground, he was a troubling character whose odd habits sometimes made his
comrades nervous. He spent much of his off-duty tending to his gardens, but on
occasion he would build a bonfire, then dance around the flames madly playing
a violin. Needless to say it was a quirk that did not endear him to his
squadron mates.
Though he prefered to stalk his aerial prey alone, by 1917, circumstances
forced him to fly in with other pilots from 56 Squadron. He carried out his
duties with squadron, flying the SE5 -- a plane he detested -- in formation
like the others. After he completed these routine patrols, he would frequently
exchange his SE5 for the more maneuverable Nieuport 17 and fly solo missions
over the front. It was an increasingly dangerous pastime.
On May 7, 1917, Ball led a late afternoon patrol over German lines around Lens.
The squadron ran right into Richthofen's Jasta 11, and a series of confused
mini-battles raged all over the front. Towards the end of the fight, Albert
Ball was seen to dive on an Albatros D.III, almost certainly flown by Lothar
von Richthofen. He overshot the German fighter, which was then attacked by
Ball's wingman, Lt. C.M. Crowe. As Lothar fended off this second attack, Ball
continued down into a thick cloud layer just below the brewing fight. It was
the last time anyone from his squadron saw him alive.
Witness's later reported seeing Ball's SE5 plunge out of the cloud inverted
with its propeller stopped. Too close to the ground to pull up, the SE5
smashed into the ground, killing Ball instantly.
Later research has shown that Ball probably became disorientated in the cloud
and accidentally entered an inverted dive which choked the carburetor and
killed the engine. The doctor examining Ball's corpse concluded he had
suffered a broken back but no combat injuries. Later, the Germans tried to
claim that Lothar von Richthofen shot Ball down. They even went so far as to
fire a revolver into his SE5's wreckage then show the bullet holes as evidence
of Lothar's success.
Either way, Britain's first 40-kill ace was dead.
Four months later, Germany's greatest lone wolf ace, Werner Voss, met his end
in one of the great air battles of the First World War.
Voss, like Ball, did not have many friends on the ground. He kept to himself,
eschewing friendships with his fellow pilots in favor of spending time alone
with his motorcycle. He spent hours tinkering with the cycle, working away on
its tiny engine while dressed in an ancient green sweater much too big for his
spindly frame. He loved machines and would spend much time talking to his
mechanic about his airplanes and how they could improve on them.
While on the ground he was an awkward, retiring fellow, Voss was pure pilot in
the air. A gifted flier with a phenomenal grasp of aerobatics, he could quickly
maneuver for a killing shot in almost any situation. Combined with his
incredible flying skills were his sharpshooting abilities with his plane's
machine guns. Voss was a deadeye shot who used his uncanny accuracy to spare
the lives of his opponents. Having been a two-seater pilot once himself, he
felt sympathy for his enemy to a degree few of his peers showed. Instead of
shooting to kill, he would aim for the engine, hoping to knock it out, while
leaving the crew unharmed. In Voss' mind, that at least gave his quarry a fair
chance to make a crash landing -- and he could claim a victory as well.
By early September, 1917, Voss had risen to command of Jasta 10. His 48
victories made him the second leading ace in the German Air Service, a fact
that earned him much publicity and praise. Just 20 years old, Voss hated his
new responsibilities. Command did not suit him, and whenever he could, he'd
fly his favorite lone wolf patrols.
On September 23, 1917, Voss flew his last patrol. The night before, the young
squadron commander had attended a party for one of his who had just earned the
Pour Le Merite. He awoke the next morning groggy from a hangover. As a result,
he was not at his best.
Alone, he set out over the front that afternoon in his Fokker Dr.I Triplane, a
new type just entering use in the German Jagdstaffeln. Near Poelcapelle, he
ran across B Flight, 56 Squadron. Led by no less a figure than ace Jimmy
McCudden, B Flight represented one of the most experienced formations in the
entire RFC. Six-to-one odds did nothing to deter Voss, who fought McCudden and
his comrades to a standstill in an epic, 10-minute fight. He drove off one
SE5, put holes in the other five until, at last, sheer numbers began to tell.
Somewhere in the flight, Voss probably took a bullet that severely injured
him. His flying became erratic, and when he went into a shaky, shallow dive,
Author Rhys-David slipped onto the Fokker's tail and poured a long burst into
the Triplane. The fusillade of bullets tore into the Dr.I, and Voss spun into
the ground where his craft exploded in flames.
Perhaps the last, great lone-wolf hunter had met his end. With him, so ended
the last vestiges of the earlier air war. From now on, the fight in the air
would grow increasingly impersonal and bloody as the final climax of the war
approached.
=====================================
J. Chapter 9 : The Year of Exhaustion
=====================================
"I can't write much these days. I'm too nervous.
I can hardly hold a pen. I'm all right in the
air, as calm as a cucumber, but on the ground
I'm a wreck and I get panicky. Nobody in the
squadron can get a glass to his mouth with one
hand after of these decoy patrols, except Cal,
and he's got no nerve. But some nights, we both
have nightmares at the same time and Mac has to
get up and find his teeth and quiet us. We don't
sleep much at night."
~ Elliot White Springs, Diary of
an Unknown Aviator.
When the winter of 1917-18 hit the Western Front, the air fighting died down as
the ground war lapsed into another weather-induced lull. As the rain and snow
came down, the winter months became a time for renewal and preparation as both
sides readied themselves for the coming spring.
With Russia knocked out of the war, the Allies knew they'd soon be hit by the
full weight of the German army in one last, all-or-nothing effort to win the
war. They spent the time building up reserves, sending additional squadrons to
the front, and bickering over how best to employ theh thousands of troops
America was just beginning to send to Europe. Though the U.S. entered the war
in April, 1917, it had yet to make an impact on the Western Front.
The Germans did likewise. After the Russians surrendered that December, the
Germans began transferring hundreds of thousands of troops west to France
where they would undertake one last massive offensive designed to end the war
before before the Americans could get into any numbers. Called the Ludendorf
Offensive, the initial plan was to drive a wedge between the French and
British sectors of the front with specially trained assault troops equipped
with light machine guns, mortars, and flamethrowers.
On March 21, 1918, the Germans opened the Ludendorf Offensive with stunning
success. At first, the British seemed to crumble under the weight of the
German attacks. Ground that cost millions of casualties to gain was surrendered
in the first few days of the battle. Along a 60-mile stretch of the front,
the German shock troops overwhelmed and threw back the Allied defenders. As
the crisis mounted, the British began retreating toward the channel ports,
while the French focused on the protection of Paris. Into the growing gap
between the Allied armies flowed division after division of German soldiers.
For a time, it looked like the offensive would finally break the Allies, but
Ferdinand Foch, the commander of all Allied forces in France, threw in his
reserves. The German advance slowly lost steam as resistance stiffened and
material shortages, including weapons and ammunition, began to plague the
army. By April 5th, the offensive came to a halt after gaining some 40 miles
of ground.
The second part of the offensive opened on April 9th. Again aimed mainly at
the British, the attack succeeded for a time, but then ground to a halt as
British reserves were flung into battle. No breakthrough had been achieved,
but the assault cost the British 100,000 men in less than a month's fighting.
The next phase of the German offensive came on May 27th against the French 6th
Army along the Chemin-des-Dames. Initially, this attack proved even more
successful than the other two combined as the dispirited and weakened 6th Army
buckled, then collapsed. The Germans poured south towards the Marne in hot
pursuit of the retreating French. Then, with their advance element almost to
the Paris suburbs, the German attack was stopped cold at a little town called
Chateau-Thierry. Ominously, for the Germans, their opponent at Chateau-Thierry
was the 6th U.S. Marine regiment.
The Americans had arrived in force. Germany had lost the race against time.
When the German offensive opened in March, the air war exploded with renewed
intensity. Losses over the two Flanders operations were staggering as both
sides fought with a desperation unsurpassed in the war. Hundreds of Allied
pilots died in the ensuing weeks attempting to slow the German advance with
bombing and strafing attacks.
On the German side, the Air Service cooperated with the ground troops in new
ways. Using "infantry battle planes" like the Hannover CL.III and Halberstadt
CL.II, the German Air Service swept ahead of the advancing infantry to bomb
and strafe Allied strongpoints and troop concentrations. It was hazardous duty
at best, flying down low amidst rifle and machine gun fire. Losses in the
ground attack squadrons -- known as Schlastas -- approached critical levels
during the spring offensives. Despite the casualties, their support proved a
valuable component to the early successes in Flanders and along the Chemin-des-
Dames.
Battle casualties and operational losses took a staggering toll on the German
air units supporting the spring offensives. Between mid-March, and mid-May, the
squadrons in Flanders lost 479 planes, of which 135 were fighters. The rest
were infantry support planes and reconnaisance aircraft. Later, historians
calculated that the German Air Service lost at least one-seventh of its total
strength each month during the spring of 1918 -- a figure their limited
remaining resources just could not support.
Meanwhile, the Jastas continued to take a heavy toll of Allied aircraft. To
compensate for the superior numbers they faced all along the front, the Germans
began concentrating their Jagdstaffeln in critical areas in an effort to gain
local air superiority. During the initial days of the March offensive, the
Germans actually outnumbered the British on the sixty-mile stretch of the front
by almost 200 planes. Flying in geschwaders of up to four squadrons at a time,
the Germans mowed down their opposition at an alarming rate. In one 10-day
period alone, the Germans knocked down 478 British planes. By April 29th, the
toll had risen to 1,302, the majority of which came from the reconnaisance and
ground attack squadrons. Still, the British had the reserves and kept throwing
raw replacements into the Western Front grinder, hoping that sheer volume would
make up for experience and training.
To counter the new German tactics, the British and French began layering their
patrols and overlapping their squadrons so as to provide each other with mutual
support. At times, three or four squadrons would be stacked from 15,000 feet,
down to three or four thousand, with different fighter types at different
altitudes. Camels usually formed the low patrols, while SE5s and Spads covered
their comrades below at increasingly high altitudes.
With the German squadrons now concentrated into Jagdgeschwaders, the spring
campaign gave rise to some of the largest air battles of the war. At times,
over a hundred fighters could be involved in these tremendous dogfights that
raged from just off the shell-torn landscape up to 20,000 feet and higher. It
was the climax of the world's first air war that had begun just three years
before with solo patrols in unwieldy Moranes and Eindeckers.
Though the Germans were giving more than they received, the steady drain of
experienced began to take its toll. By early summer, the units were growing
exhausted. The tactic of concentrating large numbers of Jagdstaffeln on one
critical front had not succeeded in winning local air superiority, for the
Allies responded in kind and could absorb the tremendous losses the Germans
inflicted on them.
On April 21, the German Air Service suffered its worst loss of the war. On that
day, the legendary Red Baron -- Rittmeister Manfred von Richthofen -- took off
from Cappy Aerodrome with nine other pilots from Jasta 11. The 10 planes broke
up into two flights. The lead flight of four planes was led by Jasta 11's
commanding officer, Leutnant Hans Weiss. Richthofen, in his scarlet Fokker
Dr.I Triplane, took the rear flight of six and set off behind Weiss in search
of Allied prey.
At 10:40 that morning, Weiss spotted a pair of RE8s from No. 35 Squadron. At
7,000 feet, the two planes were busy taking pictures when the sky around them
suddenly erupted with German fighters. Miraculously, the RE8s held their own,
fighting back with their rearward firing machine guns with fierce desperation.
One of the RE8 gunners actually hit Weiss' fighter, severing his rudder
control. Crippled, Weiss limped back to Cappy.
Five minutes after the first flight attacked the RE8s, Sopwith Camels from
No. 209 Squadron, led by Captain A.R. Brown, appeared on the scene at 12,000
feet. Brown saw Richthofen's men far below at 5,000 feet and dove to the
attack. Soon, Richthofen's men were embroiled in a swirling dogfight with the
aggressive Camel pilots.
Flying with 209 Squadron that day was a young neophyte pilot named Lieutenant
W.R. May. His flight leader, Captain Brown, had given him explicit orders not
to stay in a fight should one develop. Instead, he was to dive for home and
avoid contact with any German planes.
When the fight started, May did exactly as he was told. He dove out of the
growing dogfight, running westward toward the village of Vaux-sur-Somme. Above
him, the Baron saw the lone Camel disengage and must have figured the pilot
would be easy meat. Down went his scarlet Fokker after May, the fight behind
forgotten.
May saw the red Triplane and knew he was in trouble. He put the Camel right on
the treetops and sped along the countryside for safety. Try as he might, May
could not shake Richthofen. The Baron closed the distance quickly and began
snapping out short bursts at May's Camel.
Overhead, Captain Brown saw May's trouble and dove down to help. Just east of
Vaux-des-Somme, he slipped behind the Fokker Dr.I. May led the two other
planes right over the village and up over a ridge just as Brown got off a
long machine gun burst at Richthofen's Fokker.
Suddenly, the Baron's plane lurched upward in a sharp right turn. Now going
east, away from May, the Fokker swerved left then crashed into the ground
next to the Bray-Corbie Road.
The great Red Baron was dead. He took no fewer than 80 Allied planes with him
in the course of his spectacular three-year career.
The stunned German Air Service at first refused to believe the news. After so
many battles and so many close shaves with death, it seemed inconceivable that
Richthofen could have finally been killed. Throughout the day and into the
next, they waited for news that their leader and inspiration was not dead, but
rather a prisoner of the English. When word came through that Richthofen died
in the crash, all of Germany mourned his loss. As for the German fighter corps,
it had suffered a brutal blow to its morale, one from which it would never
quite recover.
After Richthofen, it seemed that one-by-one, the great German aces begun to
fall. That summer, Erich Lowenhardt was killed during a fight with 56 Squadron
when he collided with a comrade's Fokker D.VII. When he died, he was the
leading active ace in the German Air Service with 54 kills. The veterans that
had so long helped stave off the Allied air offensive were beginning to
disappear.
Even worse, material shortages began to strike at the Jagdstaffeln. Spare parts
became increasingly harder to find, and rubber and brass fittings became almost
unobtainable. Units were reduced to stripping wrecks in no-man's-land for
strategic material. By the end of the summer, though the fighter squadrons
were still offering stiff resistance, the German Air Service began to run out
of fuel.
At the same time, the ground war turned decisively against the German army.
That summer, the British, Americans, and French launched a series of offensives
that threw the Germans back all along the front. On August 8, 1918 -- the
"Black Day" in the Germany army -- the British came within a whisker of
achieving a total breakthrough at Amiens. In just three days, they captured
11,000 Germans, 400 guns and 10 miles of ground.
The Germans gambit to end by the summer of 1918 had failed. With it went all
hopes of winning the war. As fall approached, Germany teetered on the brink
of a military collapse on the Western Front even as it faced revolution and
civil war at home.
=============================
K. Chapter 10 : The Americans
=============================
"You cannot guess how I hate to put these new boys
into the hardest kind of fighting, while they are
still so totally inexperienced that they do not
know how to properly protect themselves. One knows
perfectly well when one sends them out that some
of them are going to be killed... it is absolutely
necessary to throw the green men in, and when they
don't come back, one has to simply grin and bear
it."
~ Major Charles J. Biddle, USAS
The Americans stepped into the maelstrom of fighting in strength during the
summer of 1918. After a year of organizing and sending troops across the
Atlantic, the United States was at last ready for war.
During the spring, the first American fighter squadrons saw action. Most
notable of these was the 94th Aero, a unit that would become the closest thing
to an elite outfit in the U.S. Air Service. Flying outdated Nieuport 28s at
first, the 94th Aero Squadron went through a tough baptism of fire, but in
the process, discovered it had one of the best pilots of the war in its ranks
-- Eddie Rickenbacker.
Captain Eddie, as Americans came to know him, was a pre-war daredevil auto
racer whose love of all things mechanical naturally drew him toward aviation.
Enlisting soon after the war broke out, Rickenbacker at first became the
personal chaffeur to the command of the American Expeditionary Forces, General
John J. "Blackjack" Pershing. Eventually, he managed to convince the general
to release him for flight training, a move that proved wise indeed.
It did not take long for Eddie Rickenbacker to show his stuff in combat. On
April 1, 1918, he downed a Pfalz D.III from Jasta 64 over Baussant. A month
later, he claimed another Pfalz, this one flown by Lt. Sheerer of Jasta 64.
By the end of May, his score rose to six, including two more fighters and a
pair of Albatros two-seat recon planes.
Just as his star began to rise, fate stepped in. He came down with an inner
ear infection that required hospitalization. As a result, he missed the bitter
fighting of that summer. In September, during the worst month in the history
of the USAS, Eddie returned to action. Flying Spad 13 fighters, he cut a swath
through his opponents like no other American pilot. Between September 14th and
October 30th, he scored 20 more kills in the vicious fighting over St. Mihiel
and the Argonne Forest. When the war ended, his grateful nation later awarded
him the Congressional Medal of Honor, one of only two given to fighter pilots
for service in France. Rickenbacker later started an automobile company before
becoming president of Eastern Airlines. He lived a long, full life, dying at
age 82 in Zurich, Switzerland on July 27, 1973.
While Rickenbacker was gaining fame as America's premier ace, the rest of the
USAS was taking a pounding at the hands of veteran German Jastas. In the final
months of the war, the fledgling American squadrons were pitted against the
best formation of the entire war -- J.G.1. Now commanded by Hermann Goring,
the Richthofen geshwader was transferred south to the fighting around the
Meuse-Argonne to help beat back the latest Allied offensive.
That October saw the USAS take terrible losses as it supported the Allied
drive in the Meuse-Argonne area. When the offensive started, the Americans had
a total of 646 planes at the front. Throughout the last two months of the war,
new replacements and fresh units joined the fighting, but the service suffered
such high casualties that the number of planes available actually shrank by
the time of the Armistice.
From the nearly 650 planes ready at the outset of the Meuse-Argonne offensive,
the USAS had on 579 by October 15th. When the war ended, 479 were left in the
front-line units. During that time, the three persuit groups in action went
from a total strength of 300 Spad 13s to less than 150.
In October alone, the Americans lost 573 planes in action and 583 aviators.
Additionally, training claimed the lives of hundred more pilots and aircrew.
A 1920 evaluation concluded that for every American killed in action over the
front, three more died in training.
Yet, despite the losses, the Americans were the final element needed in the
Allied equation to secure victory over the stubborn German defenders. Though
losses ran high both on the ground and in the air, the influx of fresh
American pilots and soldiers swelled the ranks of the advancing Allied armies
and ensured the victories at St. Michel and the Argonne Forest. In the final
days of the war, America lost nearly 100,000 men to achieve that victory.
After four years of brutal, exhausting warfare, Germany had at last reached the
end of its rope. At home, its citizens were war weary and threatened with full-
scale starvation. Influenza outbreaks all over Germany had killed thousands
and left the population weakened and dispirited. Finally, as the German army
slowly collapsed on the Western Front, the navy mutinied at home, sparking a
revolution and rebellion that lasted until 1920.
Germany had no choice but to surrender. As the Kaiser fled to neutral Holland,
Germany asked for an Armistice based on American President Wilson's famous
Fourteen Points. On November 11, 1918, at 11:00 in the morning, the fighting
ceased. The worst four years in European history had finally come to an end.
The death toll was appalling. Ninety percent of all French males between the
ages of 18 and 24 had been killed or wounded in action. Sixty percent of its
army became casualties during the war. The British had 900,000 dead; the
Germans, 1,800,000. Much of Europe lay in ruins or in hopeless poverty.
Diseases ravaged the Central European nations as starvation continued to claim
victims as well.
In the end, all the suffering, the misery, and death the war caused solved
nothing. The peace treaty signed at Versaille in 1919 went a long way to
ensuring that. Within that document lay the seeds for a second great war within
a generation, a war that would surpass even the carnage of World War I. So the
lull that fell across no-man's-land that November was but a stay of execution
for much of Europe. For 20 years the uneasy peace lasted until Hitler's armored
spearheads ground into Poland in September, 1939. When the panzer's rolled
that autumn, the ghosts of the Great War rode with them. The great European
calamity, sparked by that one wrong turn by Franz Urban in of June of 1914,
was at last complete.
==================================
L. Epilogue : The Air War's Legacy
==================================
By the time the fighting finally ended in 1918, every major element of modern
warfare had been developed and employed in action by Germany or the Allied
powers. From the early days of bottles and bricks being thrown at passing
aircraft, air-to-air combat had been refined to a deadly science. Bombing
raids, once ineffective and almost laughable, had also become more effective,
with specific targets like railroad stations or vital bridges. In the infantry
attack planes used to support the ground troops in 1918, one can see the
inspiration of the Stukas and Sturmoviks of the Second World War. Even the A-10
Thunderbolt II has its roots in the armored aircraft used by the Schlastas at
the end of the Great War.
The zeppelin raids on British industries represented the first strategic air
campaign in history, where one side tried to destroy the other's means of
waging war. The subsequent Gotha raids on London and its environ through the
remainder of the war convinced the British that strategic bombing in the future
could win wars by airpower alone.
The strategic air war also had one other impact on the future. The Royal Flying
Corps became an independent branch of the military in Great Britain on April
1, 1918, largely due to the constant air raids over London. Unchained from the
army and navy, the new Royal Air Force set to work justifying its independence
through the remainder of the war, and continued to do so in the 20s and 30s
by focusing on strategic aviation. The two issues became hopelessly interwined,
leading the British to make some pretty serious doctrinal mistakes in the
inter-war years. Incidentally, the same thing happened to the Americans.
Today, the First World War is but a dim memory in the United States. In Europe,
its horrors have been overshadowed by the misery and carnage of World War II.
Still, the Great War set the tone for the first half of the 20th Century, and
from its mud-filled trenches and bullet-torn skies, the future could be
gleaned. In the air, the Great War saw the fastest rate of technological
advances ever made in aviation history. Today, the legacy of the air war still
endures in the sleek modern fighters, bombers, and ground attack aircraft used
the world over. On their steel wings fly the undiminished memories of the
Great War's Camels, Fokkers, and Spads.
===============================================================================
----[ 3. Version History ]-------------------------------------------- [3000]
===============================================================================
Version 0.2 - The Historical Overview has been completed all the way up to
Chapter 3 : The Birth of Air Fighting. Expect the Overview to be
halfway done by next update.
Version 0.4 - The Overview is "almost" halfway through. The long Chapter 4 and
the shorter Chapter 5 have been completed and I consider that a
pretty nice accomplishment. =D
Version 0.7 - Completed up to Chapter 8. Only a few more to go.
Version 0.9 - Completed up to Chapter 10.
Version 1.0 - Historical Overview completed fully through Chapter 1 to the
Epilogue.
Version 1.1 - Added http://www.honestgamers.com to the site listings.
This FAQ is the property of its author, Quan Jin. All rights reserved.
Any stealing, selling for profit or altering of this document without the
author's expressed consent is strictly prohibited. You may download this file
for personal and private use only.
Breath of Fire is a registered trademark of Dynamix and Sierra. The author
(Quan Jin) is not affiliated with Dynamix or Sierra in any way or form. All
other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
===============================================================================
----[ 5. Credits and Closing ]----------------------------------------- [5000]
===============================================================================
Hey, what do you know? The FAQ is officially over. There's not much here to say
except enjoy the rest of Red Baron II. Many props to the ones listed below.
GameFAQs - The largest FAQ archive on the net. Thanks to CJayC for accepting
this piece of work. He hasn't failed us yet.
The FCSB - They didn't help too much but what can I say, where would I be
without a few of them? Major props to these great board members who
are also prized FAQ writers. Some examples being; Crazyreyn, Psycho
Penguin, Gbness, Karpah, SinirothX, Meowthnum1, Guitarfreak86,
Joni Philips, War Doc, Merca, and last but definitely not least,
Gobicamel1. You all rock!
- All outside sources which have contributed to the making of this guide in
some form have been cited in this section. Any sources that have provided any
information at all are listed in the credits. I am not taking credit for others
hard work and I hope they do the same. Not giving proper credit is plagiarism
and it's against the law.
