Cavalry Of The Clouds. WW1 Pilots Documentary 1987

the popular image of flying in World War one is of dashing young men fighting aerial battles full of glory and chivalry yet far below those pilots lay the true reality of the war to end all wars the wretched indignity of the trenches with their mud stench and rats where ten billion soldiers lost their lives in four years the two sides shelled each other across the fields of northern France without pity day and night know why so many men looked to the sky for an alternative life in the trenches in France was absolutely miserable quite apart from the Germans shooting at you by day by night we had to face the mud we had to face the rats but what we suffered most was the lack of space we had to live work fight within a few yards and all we could see between gaps in the sandbags was about two or three hundred yards of are umpteen shell holes and very seldom saw the enemy so whenever we looked up ting there and saw these fortunate em maneuvering into the vastness of the sky we were very envious and when the army asked for volunteers to transfer to the raw Flying Corps to become either observers of pilots a large number of us immediately apply for a transfer this is the story of the cavalry of the air the daring young men into flying machines who were the eyes of the army the Royal Flying Corps was formed in 1912 its main purpose to give the soldiers on the ground vital information in lumbering vulnerable biplanes they constantly took the fight to the enemy often spending two hours or more than nearly 20,000 feet they took remarkable photographs which identified the smallest change in position of an enemy gun emplacement RFC observers took 88,000 negatives for one battle alone another duty was to bring down the German observation balloons which at the height of the war was stationed at two mile intervals along the front a hundred and seventy of them the fighters remembered more romantically than the observation aircraft evolved to protect the slower machines the the duties were numerous and exciting we had to take photographs of the frontline we had to direct the fire of our batteries onto enemy targets we had which was very exciting to me to bomb and machine gun German convoys or troops that we could see on the road and what I think was particularly squadron we were the first problem to carry out experiment with the tanks the tanks had rather restrictive visibility and there were particularly vulnerable when they went up a small hill or a big hill because they didn't know what was on the other side of the hill and we as aeroplanes as pilots could go on the other side see were these bad two enemy batteries and bombed off and help the tanks up where as the pilots carried out their soldiering beauties over the battlefields they endured constant danger from enemy fire pilots so optimistically patriotic when they arrived in France were old at 19 and often dead before 20 life expectancy for a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps in 1917 was down to two weeks at best the end would be Swift at worst a slow death in a burning aircraft my do if aerial combat against the Germans looked like killing the flower of Britain's youth it was a prospect only slightly more hazardous than the pilots initial training while some had the luxury of real lessons many just had a book shoved in one hand and the joystick in the other 15,000 aircraft were lost in training most who survived to witness action did so because they had a strong sense of preservation and the makers had built the aircraft tougher than they looked we had a three cylinder 35 whole spa and zari in a single seated job and we gradually without Indio control I had one ride round the air drum with on the chap who ran the ran the unit and about 400 feet and I may please myself as I didn't feel dizzy only it seemed very nice and without any dual control so I gradually got myself into the air I always say that and I held a book in one hand which is written by a Frenchman and and the joystick in the other and as I went along I read how you did they didn't tell you much I borrowed 75 pounds my father and went to handle the civil school and there at Hendon were three schools down the apron for a gram white school they were employed teaching naval people the London in provincial school the BT right school and a fourth the raffia Bohol school I passed the BT right school and they longed to have my 75 pounds the chief instructor there what a me to join that took me up in a little write biplane head of an 80 horse rotary engine rotary is where the cylinders revolves like a Catherine Wheel with a cappella attached to it was crank shafts is stationary and he said to me young man you all learned fly this aircraft wonderful aircraft all out 35 miles an hour good manners 34 and for those who came through the rigors of training it was after France and the glories of battle with just 15 hours of flying the young hopefuls were launched into war some was so young that at any other time they'd still have been at school yet there they were over strange hostile land covered in oil cold and woefully under trained I never lost a young novice I always had the new boy alongside me in the formation with a trained pilot outside him again they were bewildered they couldn't see I can't tell you why I just don't adjust the experienced pilot can see way into the distance the new pilot sees absolutely nothing and he hardly knows what's going on around him so I made a particular point in watching this was that these are the fellows that were shot down they were too easy besides probably the experienced pilots lasted pretty well when I got first over there the co major McClaren he greets you and he says well Smith if you can last the first 10 days you'll be all right we always lose out but he was absent in day he said all I can tell you about that is to fly closer and neck you see the Germans coming and well I'm still alive if you lasted ten days the eyes did focus and the nerve did harden they had to because at least in the early days the British pilots were flying inferior much criticized aeroplanes compared with the enemy some of the machines British hopes were built on was slow cumbersome vulnerable and short on firepower like the be2c well to fly to his like fly is like an old car but it was not not it was very easy to fly very very unstable it was about as easy as anything as we we had but for war it was all cockeyed he had the doctor pilot behind and the observer in front all mixed up in his flying wires and struts and things and these [ __ ] used to come along and the steep dive and we'll move quickly good at it and they had no feeling fired or I mean the pilot was probably an officer that didn't make it it was anybody anyway but um any case the Ghana had very little chance of doing anything effective we came up with better aircraft later on with the gunner behind and he was there much more difficult to attack for the Germans of course is not before I'd be not be to ease and b12 and then I had to do my so many hours on my operational machine which was the one who flew in France and that was the re8 which we called Harry Tate I remember sitting in the cockpit on the tarmac ready to take off and my flight commander came up to me and he said now don't forget John if you turn left you catch fire and if you turn right you go into a spin so I took off and flew straight on for a while and then happened to stall my machine and got into a spin and landed wingtip nose I was the relieved because I hadn't had my breakfast so I and into the mess and got my breakfast and watch the ambulance going for that to the wreckage the machine after that let's see what happened to know such a long time a girl that one it's more of a dream to one than anything else the aircraft improved of course and so did the pilots tactics and even though it took those early aircraft over half an hour to get to 20,000 feet the advantage of height was enormous in surprising the enemy but height brought a new enemy and there's only one way to describe it bitter did bitterly cold snow on the ground frost so January February 1917 and we covered all our faces of whale oil we had face masks goggles big long gloves boots this this line boots long boots well above the knee fleece-lined leather coats and even so it was jolly code once I was flying about about 12,000 feet doing a reconnaissance my observer wanted to do something to either the camera or the gun he took his gloves off so cold he was in hospital for next day for several weeks frostbite we all were touched for the frostbite conditions on the ground in winter could be just as taxing as life in the air especially if you were not an officer I only can tell you about the time that I went to France with the original Expeditionary Force and of course there were no camps you just slept where you could and on the machine or anywhere else and of course you would you'd ever took your clothes off in fact when times did improve a bit when you took your socks off you took the skin off your feet with them though there was no camp as such because in those days that you could land in any field it was harvest time and they'd cleared the sheaves out the machines could lend in in a good size field so you slept under the machine if you were a machine mechanic I remember on one occasion during the winter waking up in the morning and the blanket lifted up as a solid bordered frozen stiff realize that was part of our war but pilots in the Maine were officers and it was they who took to the air they are today a popular musical refrain of the day Archibald certainly not gave me mocking nicknamed Archie to anti-aircraft fire but no such scorn was heaped on the guns of the German squadrons head up up up up you know going off all the time and you never hit you shoot it wanted to get him out of the way when he was out of the way you have to look round see nothing was on your tail and pets look for another you got stoppages on them sometimes but they're they're very complex business and this Cagliostro firing through the propeller was the other way to shoot forward and you'd blow your prefer off it before we had that on it but as long as you solve it you're read between say a thousand eleven fifty you're all right you could use it but you couldn't go blazing away as you liked you got to be very careful if possible I always prefer to protect from the back I have sometimes as you attack from the side they're loud for deflection effect first first term enemy aircraft I shot down what was them and it was further from us but he came up right across me now I just pressed the button you see as he went across I didn't even know I shot him down until the pilot he was flying with me this was honest up his pup wheel and swap his pups in told when I got back I saw him go down out of control actual dog fights where enemy pilots would skillfully pursue each other to the death were rare in fact dog tracks were mostly scruffy affairs often ending with both pilots running gratefully for home dog flats they came in the rover and there they lasted a very short time matter of minutes as a room Nellie always minds you'd add I'm gonna say that you wouldn't have another one in the so many more mints and other some other formation would turn up and you have a couple of dog fights in court or an aha something like that but um they're very short of it lastly where dog fight you see it was when you got when you really got mixed up the two sides got mixed up the German the enemy and ourselves well you just had to add to fight then you couldn't do anything else you realize he was shooting at you you would see pet discipline a coming away would see bits of his tracer posterior ended the thing to do if you could was to get on his tail and that's the one thing is we had to be able to do was to do a climbing turn with a climbing turn and round or possibly climbing down the top it to a half roll and trying it on his tail and if you got WestEd anything to do with the spin put over once you put your aircraft into a spin you were pretty well invulnerable but you've got to remember that all the fighting took place well this side of the line and it was always a strong hope generated prevailing wind was in the West and quite strong and if you started spinning down in in dogfight you had better chance of getting home the thought of never getting home was of course seldom far away a fact sometimes used to cruel effect this fella cosgrove he's got interested with a young lady from the course of the Bing boys of Broadway and he was engaged to a girl in Canada and this girl used to write passionate letters to him so he came to me he said Jimmy said will you write a letter I'll dictate it how I die you know say that we gone over the lines and I'm very sorry to say that we were attacked by the Germans and poor old cloth guru was shot down in flames he had a terrible death so I said I'm not writing that oh no so he wrote it back handed you false his handwriting took 9 - time he sent it to this girl and do you know the next raid is on he wrote his death exactly in detail from the thousands who flew and fought and died in the skies over northern France there emerged on both sides and elite men whose flying skills and marksmanship set them apart from the others they were the cases perhaps the best remembered of all is the German Baron Manfred von Richthofen he was a legend even during the fighting partly because he flew a bright-red aeroplane partly because unlike the reserved British the Germans had a well-oiled publicity machine Richthofen was unquestionably an accomplished Biden he once said after I have killed an Englishman I am only satisfied a quarter of an hour many of his 80 kills that becomes a British reconnaissance aircraft impotent it'sa squadrons firepower I never liked big totally I talk as a boy of eighteen what do you know that one of his bridges is one of these he was a can you tell me the right way for bullshitter anyhow he he rather threw his weight about he had a chaplain off his tail most of the time and he was unattractive they they went for publicity so did the French so did the Americans hardly couldn't they made heroes all over the shop I'm Tom we were part of the army said well we don't make here is all the chaps in the trenches they want to make up heroes of our flying ships either anyhow that's how it was so these boy these German boys were tremendous heroes they made it an enormous splash in Germany when when that dead jester claimed to shot down two hundred enemy aircraft as US in 11 months but is not appreciated the 56th cordon shot down 200 aircraft in five months now it's never known news I mean because we never publicized and never went in for this sort of publicity well in 1917 certainly when I had this offensive what's called offensive patrols on an old one-and-a-half Strutter I did see up in the sky when I went over perhaps 12,000 feet enough in the sky and the Sun always with the Sun Richter the circus they were fighters all painted wonderful gaudy colors European roading like a lot of puppies waiting in the Sun for us and when they saw her over there side of the lines down they'd come you I worked out a maneuver tricky they started diving I gave the signal we went round in a circle trace each other's tails so all the six rear Gunners could concentrate they're far on the descending Germans and then I would move that circle very slowly round over it over our lives get to the safety but the trouble was our youngsters they came out sneaking them thirty and a difficult raid and probably made a mess of ancient roads and couldn't keep up I used to say to them if you lag behind you're a dead boy when Richtofen died the Germans lost their biggest hero and his death was marked by national mourning when I saw I felt very sorry because he looked a typical pilot of a wage 20 to 25 and I knew of his reputation and all his achievements and I thought pity we didn't get him as a prisoner rather than being killed we had our outstanding heroes to leftenant Freddie West won the Military Cross and the Victoria Cross his VC was for two remarkable episodes of devotion to duty in the summer of 1918 he was firing at enemy tanks when his aircraft was hit he brought it down on the frontline and ran to the tank commander to report the enemy's position the next day he was deep behind enemy lines when seven aircraft attacked him his leg was severed and he had to lift it off the controls he was wounded in the other leg as well but turned his aircraft so his observer could fire back he nursed the aircraft home landed safely and when he regained consciousness insisted on writing his report because when they are Canadian soldiers who rushed up to my machine to try to get me out because I was bleeding profusely on my left leg I asked them to get in touch with our squadron and tell him that I had some important information to give him about location of enemy troops and they said all right leave it to us and his matter of fact within a matter of a half an hour so an officer came and I gave him the details of the location when I always remember that the fellow concern said well done and forgetting that uh I was practically without a leg he gave me a cup of tea for things other heroes who filled the front peg just owned with their exploits didn't survive the battles they're not forgotten by those who shared those days with them an ace terrible word the Royal Flying Corps was full of characters and individuals and the great first runner Billy Bishop when I taught to fly in 1916 Billy was not a brave man because the reason is he didn't know what fear was and he was a remarkably fine shot Edward Albert ball who was in 60 squadron he was quite different temperament he knew what fear was and he overcame it when he finished patrol ball he came down all he wanted to do was to one of two things plays Thal in or go out and work it as a little garden Mick Manik was a fine chef wonderful shot killed in a stupid aerodrome accident and he was a one who developed fine tactics he once said to me Harold my boy remembers one thing he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day he said it's oles remember there in those dark hard days of 1917 every takeoff might be your last but constant death didn't necessarily fill everyone with blue the morale of the squadron was wonderful great fun we had we lived we'll enjoy ourselves when there was a blank place a table because I'm Libyan killed well that's just too bad so so he's gone west and we just go Don flit somebody playing a Pierrot everybody's singing I have helps having another drink it was a great colored ship if you compare the standard of living between the RFC and the infinity there's no comparison was heaven no more rats no more mud no more firing you had the bed to sleep in amusingly but sadly whenever we had casualties we immediately pinched the fellows carpets or any little things he had agreeable in the heart and any made our place even more comfortable any mess the old sat like a tea and as you arrived you're at the bottom of the tea palette someone sign observers on the other and as a person shot down you moved at one the tea can you imagine this and the new arrival such at the bottom of the tea now she'd say within six weeks here's at the top of the tea near the CEOs table most soldiers thought the RFC fought a cushy war because if nothing else they had a bed and a meal each night presuming they survive to see nightfall but it was the waiting for death which took its toll on hair crew particularly death by fire it was nothing for pilots to have a dozen nightmares in one night many drank heavily sometimes just before a patrol but it was the faces of the young men which told the real story of the strain of flying intensely noisy vibrating aircraft in freezing weather starved of oxygen some were constantly afraid because they knew death was inevitable afraid I don't think I can remember a second when I wasn't scared to death but once I was in the air are fun but going to the Machine and just taking off once I was up a few thousand and at night you if you had you were kept awake at night I was quite a bit thinking of what might have happened during the period that I was out to sea and that didn't help either cuz it took you a long time to get to sleep in the mornings you were gently alright we used to have a lot of sing songs at night we had a chap who was a verse amusing fellow would write words to all sorts of old songs and most indecent words the most part and we get to learn these me or shouted them out we had a good you to drink we drank a lot with ours about that we certainly did drink a great deal much more like like think about me more than people I think did in this last or hospice it was there it once relaxed you drank I don't think he defected though we're not pretty young really I could never fancy myself shooting the man in cold blood straight up to him or running a banette into him I thought that no good for me I must get into the Air Force or something where I can kill them without being seen I couldn't couldn't face doing it I don't know better I'm strange that should my feeling that's why I joined the Flying Corps in serve the infantry one day when I was doing my circle about one of the half Strutters I looked at the chap on my left just in front of it and I suddenly thought hello all the canvas on your fuselage aside has been ripped by a bullet because there was order hanging down then I thought what's that straw bundle straw I looked again and will straw moved it was a start of a star in the petrol tank and of course a moment after somebody came off me and I was upside down or something or something I remembers seeing just a flaming wreck go down a little yellow coat one of them obviously jumped out turning over and over over that's as near as I want to see men die every night some RFC men experienced awful nightmares of going down in just such a flamer unlike every generation of fighter pilots since these men had no chance to escape parachutes were only available to men in observation balloons the powers-that-be reckoned a serious epidemic of cowardice might set in if they were given to pilots now we know none us had parachutes and nor do the Germans just in 1918 the Germans started some of them very few having parachutes but they were not what we call free parachutes if our doubly free parachutes which we have today or you jump out and you pull the ripcord they were like an umbrella rolled up into a number like case and the river pilot jumped the umbrella had to come and be pulled out of his case and then opened where of course probably quite likely some part of the aircraft would hit the pilot all the thing wouldn't unfurl properly they never became into general use of the free parachute such as we have pry now really stays to start in the Royal Air Force about 1923 what it what you don't have doesn't worry you very this unpleasant idea of being burnt alive many people jumps whenever hairy aircraft was burning the rumor was and I don't know that the rumor was that most pilots took a pistol up with them because in the Flying Corps you were not provided with air with parachutes and if your claim did catch on fire it was a more pleasant alternative a common image of the war in the air is one of mutual respect that somehow the pilots of the Royal Flying Corps and the German squadrons were involved in a clean fight for those were there the recollection is a lot different well mostly I would say it's a lot of balls I think in the early stages of the war 1914 past early part of 1915 they used to polit each other with sporting rifles or something like that and they would miss and they were probably wave and and that sort of stuff but um I don't wave to her and then each other shooting him down I did and I know never know knew hundreds para never do shoe meet out if he could I just flying ass pads and with something from the dealer who tried to get above the other man and bite him and suddenly I ran out of ammunition now what we want to do Nixon to my surprise the other fellow stopped firing and we circled one here during that patent is also run and we circled run another he waved to me and I waved to him and he went back to Josh I went back to this front I never saw another any of my colleagues any acts of chivalry either on the German side or our side but I can give you a bit of experience about myself because when I was a shot down and I was very badly wounded the German pilot died or - two or three times firing his guns to make certain that we will be out of action well I have no he feeling against this German power because after all what is war you're going toward to peel your enemy and this is what this German officer was trying to do and as I say I personally never never witness an act of chivalry so no love was really lost between the protagonists but all these men were pioneers and the common bonds they shared was a love of flying the lovely mornings when we used to go up early and fly above the clouds and you saw this it had this beautiful view of the clouds beneath you you know and not far beneath you because you just managed to get about them to see this ripple and so near each other that you felt you could walk out to know and just walk along on them to a wonderful feeling but you couldn't see because you'd have a drop of fear four thousand tea it's the most exciting thing to fly an aeroplane you get you see the world different danville aerial you think poor mortals on the other piece or motor cars of me you get a feeling of moral superiority over the wrists of the mankind who doesn't fly once having been bitten by the joy of flying it's reveal for your life these early pilots really were the first of the few and should the horrors of war come again as they did in 1939 then war in the air will once again be in the hands of just a few you

Channel: ricardoroberto100

Views: 510,976

Keywords: raf, rfc, fighter, pilots, plane, war, military, ww1, cavalry, of, the, clouds, world, history, aviation

Id: wO8oWYLhT6o

Length: 38min 17sec (2297 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 10 2012

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