The Air War in WW1 - with Josh Levine

In the second of our special interviews for the War in the Air series, we are joined by historian and broadcaster Josh Levine to discuss the war in the air in WW1, based on his best-selling book On A Wing and A Prayer.

Josh's book 'On A Wing and A Prayer' is now published in paperback at Fighter Heroes of WW1 ( Harper Collins 2011)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:07

Welcome to the podcast, Josh.

SPEAKER_01: 0:34

Thank you, Paul. It's really, really lovely to be talking to you.

SPEAKER_02: 0:38

So, the air war was a massive subject, and in a short kind of chat, we can't do it entire justice, but we can give a bit of a go. And the world was beginning to change in 1914 in all kinds of ways, wasn't it? And especially in terms of how warfare would change, and aircraft became part of the cutting edge of that change. So what was the situation in terms of aerial warfare at the very beginning of the First World War?

SPEAKER_01: 1:04

So you have a situation where airplanes exist. They've not existed for long. You know, the Wright brothers first flew at the end of 1903. So this is a very, very new technology. And, you know, it's been causing a certain amount of worry to the British. The first person to cross the Channel in an airplane was a Frenchman, Blériot, in 1909. And that very much worried the newspapers, the British newspapers, because the idea was Britain isn't an island anymore. It can be reached by means other than the sea. And, you know, a reward was offered to cross the Channel, and it was not intended that it would be a Frenchman who would achieve it. So the aeroplane... was this extraordinary new technology. I mean, I think initially it was thought that the future would be more in airships because they could, you know, they were more reliable, they could carry greater weights. but it was the aeroplanes that started to come to the fore. So you had all kinds of, you had military trials, for example, before the war. The military took up aeroplanes before the war in Britain, but you had these two rival branches. You had the Royal Flying Corps, which was the army branch. You had the Royal Naval Air Service, which was the navy branch. And as is the way with these things, they weren't working together. They were kind of in competition, but they were given... The idea was they would have slightly different roles. The Flying Corps would assist the Army, the Royal Naval Air Service would assist the Navy, but also would be responsible for the defence of Britain. So you had these two organisations. And at the beginning of the war, there was a sense, an idea, that the aeroplane would be useful for reconnaissance. That was kind of understood initially. Was it useful? It could be used for reconnaissance. How useful it would be was not certain. And certainly the upper echelons of the army... really didn't trust it at all. Because if you think about it, I mean, reconnaissance had been really the, you know, the, well, the job of the cavalry really beforehand. And, you know, the war office, a lot of the war office was dominated by the cavalry and they had absolutely no desire to lose that role, that domination. So, and it was very much mistrusted, the aeroplane. I mean, it was, you know, it was new. It was the sort of people who were flying also were mistrusted. Because before the war, flyers were kind of adventurers. They were individualists, people who took up this new craze almost. Not at all the sort of people who would be relied on in a military situation. And a lot of these people were people who then came on board at the beginning of the war as military pilots. So for a lot of these reasons, these people weren't trusted. And actually, a good example of this There's a man called Gordon Shepard. I'm sure you've come across him. And he was... He was a Royal Flying Corps officer. And the month before the war, in July 1914, this man who was an Irish Republican had travelled to Ireland, to Hoth near Dublin, with a consignment of German weapons. And these were the weapons that would be used in the Easter Rising. So you had a serving member of the Royal Flying Corps who was actually, you know, who provided the means for the 1916 Easter Rising and who then the following month was flying operationally for the Royal Flying Corps. These flyers were unusual people. They weren't regulation military people and this is one reason why they were mistrusted and the other was that the aeroplanes were this new almost fad that the military didn't trust. So that kind of was the background, I suppose. And you had, at the very beginning of the war, you had, you know, alongside the British Expeditionary Force, you had a little over 60 aeroplanes of the Royal Flying Corps who flew across to France with the sort of vague idea that they would be involved in reconnaissance. And, you know, they had to get to 3,000 feet before they crossed the Channel because the The engines were so unreliable. There was no guarantee that they would, you know, would make it across if they weren't able to. They didn't start with some height. Anyway, they made it across. And so then, OK, what what are we going to do? And within days they were flying the first reconnaissance and it was hopeless. It was, I mean, a total waste of time. Total failure. You had two men going up. One was in a Blerio. One was in a B2. And they both got lost. One was following the other. They both got hopelessly lost. And, you know, one of them apparently landed in, I forget which town, a town in Belgium, where he was thought to be a German. So he was arrested. But he was overheard swearing in English by an Irishman who was living there. So he was released. I mean, the whole thing was just a, you know, total total fiasco but it didn't take long before these aeroplanes carrying out this reconnaissance actually started to deliver results and of course it was a mobile war at this point still. So, you know, they were going up. There were no cameras yet on the planes. They were flying up and they were taking notes and they were making sketches and then coming back. And at first, so you had Sir John French, who was chief of the Expeditionary Force, and he didn't put a lot of store in them. So he called up, what's a one man? I mean, it was, the British thought they understood what was going on. One man up in his aircraft saw something you know, saw a huge accumulation of German soldiers in a particular area. He flew straight down. He was taken from the Flying Corps immediately to see John French and a bunch of other people in gold braid. And he reported what he'd seen and French basically patronised him and said to him, well, that's very interesting, but you can't possibly have seen what you... We know from other sources that you can't possibly have seen it, but what is it like up there? Is it very cold? And he had seen that. And so he was, you know, patronized it within an inch of his life. But very soon, I mean, very soon, within days, it was shown that actually these aircraft were bringing down accurate reports. And that man I just spoke about, Gordon Shepard, brought back an accurate report that allowed the BEF to react and led to the Battle of Mons. And so you had this situation where, you know, within a very short time, French was delivering a communique saying, thanking the Royal Cycle for the incredible work it was doing. And this all turned around very, very quickly. And so clearly, the Flying Corps did have a role to play. And they were working... One really interesting thing about this is that any development that was made wasn't made by... those at the top. It wasn't really being made even by the scientists. It was being made by the people who were doing it. It was all so new that the young men who were flying, who were observing, the riggers, the fitters, the people who were mending the aircraft, they were the ones who were working out what could and couldn't be done. So if something could be done, then they honed it, they developed it, they took it further. If they decided it couldn't, they discarded it. But everything that was taking place, and it was going at an astonishing pace, because in the beginning, we tend to associate the... the first war in the air with, you know, Rukatov and the fighter pilots. But of course, that's not what they were there to do at all. You know, what would be the point of just sending planes up to attack each other? No one's going to win the war that way. So the jobs, starting with reconnaissance, the sort of office jobs, these were the things they had to do. And these were all being worked out by the men themselves. So it was a kind of different, it was a different structure to the way war had been run before, I suppose. This new technology Nobody understood it, but the people who were doing it. So you had at the beginning, you had the reconnaissance. And then we can talk about this. It sort of developed, it widened. So artillery observation, guiding the guns onto their targets. And that became a very, you know, absolutely crucial thing. Bombing. I mean, how to bomb? You know, they started off literally dropping darts. flechettes. In fact, at the beginning, the planes, and I mean very beginning, the planes weren't armed at all. You know, the people, the old cliche, they really did wave at each other, the different, you know, the British and the German pilots at the very beginning. And then they realized, well, we should try and stop the others doing what they're doing and we've got to defend ourselves. So they started taking out pistols and revolvers and And that developed. Someone took up a machine gun. It didn't work at first. Then, you know, it all developed this way. And in the same way, bombing, they started with darts, grenades, bombs. How do we attach them? You know, great story of an officer called Rabiati, who was he was the observer. His pilot was a man called Louis Strange. And they decided, well, what we'll do is we'll take bombs up with us. But on the squadron, they created a sort of tin tube, which they stuck through the bottom of their aircraft. The idea was that they would, you know, shove the bombs down. One bomb, you know, it was all makeshift. A bomb got stuck in the tube with its detonator poking out below the wheels. And Rabliati tried everything, even tried climbing over the side to dislodge it. Couldn't. Came back to their airfield. He wrote out a note saying we're going to blow up. So everyone stay out the way. Dropped it. Landed at the far end of the airfield and, you know, fully prepared for the explosion and death. But they landed quickly. And where they landed, there was some tall corn and the detonator was pulled out of the bomb as they landed. by the corn. So he gave this account many years later to the Imperial War Museum. He said, you know, we were waiting to die. And then we bounced and we bounced again. And he said that, you know, the lack of anything was absolutely extraordinary. And he said, we both just ran as fast as we could. So this was all, it was all being made up as it went along. I was going to say, they're kind of

SPEAKER_02: 12:13

making it up as they're going along, aren't they? And I guess from what you've said, that those early pilots and air crew were different kind of men, not the kind of normal individual that would be a subaltern in the British Army. Probably The army thought they were dreamers, you know, curiosities almost. But yet the war pretty quickly proves that these men have a value.

SPEAKER_01: 12:35

Absolutely. And, you know, I think that's absolutely right. Dreamers, curiosity, even dangerous, you know, because they weren't disciplined in the traditional military style of discipline. I mean, they were disciplined in the sense that they were devoted to what they were doing, but not necessarily in taking orders. And that's one thing about, you know, the Flying Corps, you know, when it began, it was, you know, it was actually the guards who were instilling the discipline. And a lot of these men, this was a you know, the ordinary men. And, you know, they really objected to that. You know, they were all tradesmen. You know, the riggers and fitters were people with trades. They didn't consider themselves soldiers. They didn't want to be marched around the square by guardsmen. And they complained. And actually, you know, the regime was softened because they simply refused to put up with it. So, you know, even at that level, it wasn't just the pilots and the observers who were, you know, who were different. It was the men as well. So, yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_02: 13:37

So those men on the ground, which are often the kind of forgotten aspects of the war in the air, because no plane can be in the air without those men who are preparing it, repairing it, arming it and all the other things. Those are kind of specialists, see themselves as specialists. And like you say, they're just as kind of unique as the men who actually flew these aircraft, but don't get so much of the glory.

SPEAKER_01: 13:59

Well, they don't. And I think the point is that they were just as responsible for the developments as the pilots. They weren't working absolutely hand in glove with the pilots and observers. It was a team effort. I mean, absolutely, you know... it was a more hierarchical world then so you know they had their own mess they you know they they lived totally separate lives but at the same time they had a kind of the the office of the men kind of relied on each other in a way that in other branches perhaps there was more a greater distinction i mean there's a there's a brilliant i'm sure you know it there's a brilliant 1970s series called wings which is now on youtube i thoroughly recommend people watch it which gives I think an incredible sense of you know the of the life on the squadrons and it shows you know you see the men and you see the riggers and fitters and they did live a very very different life and they were told what to do but at the same time they were integral absolutely integral because you came down oh I mean it's an amazing story of a man who he'd been on a patrol he landed and at his airfield, and everybody looked at his plane and said, you know, why are you alive? All your flying wires have been shot away. And he looked at it and said he couldn't understand it. And he went to his rigger and said, I don't understand. I don't know why I'm alive. And he was told, well, I'd seen what was happening, and I rigged up a second set of of flying wires because I knew, you know, this was likely to happen. And the pilot just said, I just didn't know what to say to him. In the end, I just looked at him and said, thank you, Ellens, because what else could I say? You know, and so, you know, that's the kind of, I don't know what the word is, the kind of, you know, mutual reliance and a closeness that, you know, lives depended on it.

SPEAKER_02: 16:07

So with the mobile war, the value of the RFC is beginning to be seen, and then the war changes dramatically, doesn't it? It becomes this vast, static war, and I guess in that, aircraft take on another, different kind of importance.

SPEAKER_01: 16:24

Absolutely. So, oh gosh, in a thousand ways. I mean, to begin with, it's the aircraft that first spots the trenches, right? on the Aisne, you know, I found in the National Archives, I found a report filed by a pilot which says trenches spotted. You know, there it is. There's the start of the war as we know it. And then, so yes, so if you think about it, I mean, how else can reconnaissance be carried out now? I mean, you're not going to get forward of the lines. And the only thing is aerial reconnaissance. And that quickly develops because you have cameras being taken up, you know, the end of 1914, beginning of 1915. You've got this photographic unit. being set up. So at the beginning, you've got the A-type cameras, which just sort of dangled over the side, and then they're attached to the side, and then they're placed in the, you know, again, it's all this development very, very quickly. And so these mosaic maps are created, not just at the front line, but, you know, going back miles. You know, so you see the reserve lines, you see, you know, everything building up to it, the train lines, the junctions, everything. So, you know, so you're looking for any kind of action, movement, digging, you know, and they started to learn. The intelligence officers started to learn to read these mosaic maps to the point where I remember talking to a modern RAF intelligence officer, showing him one of these, you know, Great War mosaics. And he said, our job hasn't changed. And he started to read it. He started to say, well, that's recent digging. Well, that's a gun emplacement there, and it's pointing this way, so it's probably training or whatever it was. And I found that utterly fascinating. And you could read it. So, you know, smoke was an accumulation of troops, if you saw... Lots of troops in a particular area at night. It meant that they were going away in the morning. It meant they were arriving. They learned to read it as as as as though it was a language. And so and that, you know, to do that, you had to be in a very stable aircraft, which the B2C was kind of the the flying course workhorse. You know, stable is great for taking pictures at regular intervals. It's not great for avoiding attack. So it was a very, very dangerous job. Then you had artillery observation. Because artillery became, I don't think I'm telling Paul Reid anything he doesn't know, artillery became very important, Paul, whether you know that or not, I'm not sure. Son of a gunner. So you had the aeroplanes being the perfect spotters for... for the guns. And again, you see, you've got the problem, you've got, you know, the artillery, which of course has a centuries-old tradition of independence and glory, and suddenly it's being told what to do, potentially, you know, by an NCO flying in an aircraft. They didn't like that, you know, they really didn't like that, but You know, they had to swallow it. And so you had the aircraft, you know, doing a kind of figure of eight between their own guns and the target. They had a map. So sometimes the pilot, sometimes the observer doing the actual spotting. He had a map with a piece of celluloid, transparent celluloid over it. And then you had a clock code, so concentric circles over the target with the target at the center. One o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock going around. And letters A, B, C, D, E. And so the gun would fire. And the spotter would, up in his plane, would see where the shell landed and would then equate it to a particular spot on the map with a celluloid over the map. So, you know, three would be due east and, sorry, three o'clock would be due east and, you know, ABC would be however far away. from the target. And so that way, by trial and error, you know, they would guide the guns finally, hopefully, onto the target and then they'd use Morse code. You know, they had transmitters and they'd use Morse code to send back okay or, you know, the target's been hit. So, and again, this was brilliant. I mean, it was absolute, you know, this had been developed by, I think they were called Baron and James, two particular, two pilots who'd worked out this was the best way of doing things. And even though they did actually work out a system of voice transmission, You know, they didn't use it because it was more, you know, it was much better to use the Morse code system. It was more accurate. It was more precise. And so that worked very well. You had things called contact patrols where during an attack you would, well, the idea was it didn't always work very well, but the idea was the troops, once they got through, would send up a flare and show the attacking aircraft, show the aircraft, you know, how far they got, which then report that back. bombing, obviously. And bombing, you know, the Royal Naval Air Service took a big part in the bombing. You know, at the end of 1914, the Royal Naval Air Service, which was very much going off on its own trajectory, you know, seaplanes doing submarine patrols and all kinds of things. But, you know, they were carrying out basically strategic bombing of Zeppelin sites, Zeppelin sheds in Germany. which was you know the flying corps was doing nothing of that kind I mean their bombing was all very strictly tactical you know localized bombing of you know railway positions or whatever and so you know you had lots of bombing going on and you know towards the end of the war you had low level strafing which was an absolute terror to the people who were carrying it out and also to the people who were on the ground so you had all of these different roles and all developing and that's where fighter aircraft came in because you know these people doing these incredibly important jobs you know in support of the army then had to be protected and the enemy doing the same thing in support of their army had to be attacked so that's where the fighter planes and the fighter aces and the story we all know or think we know that's where that came in.

SPEAKER_02: 23:07

So I mean I guess all this intelligence gathering must have felt almost like science fiction to some senior of commanders the ability to fly over and create these mosaics and see where enemy troop movements were and everything else and then like you say both sides are doing it and suddenly the skies are full of these aircraft gathering intel and they need to be knocked out because you want your own eyes to be over the battlefield but not the enemy's eyes and that segues us straight into fighter pilots like you say the whole ethos of knights of the air that phrase that was used a lot then wasn't it and a different culture than i guess that followed in what the raw flying corps and the other air services came to stand for

SPEAKER_01: 23:50

yeah i mean that's absolutely right and and i mean if you think about it i mean the knights of the air thing you know obviously it's a it's a cliche and you know these gladiatorial battles what you know all kinds of sort of epithets used not entirely untrue in the sense that Well, first of all, there was, you know, even though they were trying to kill each other, they often said, we're going for the machine. We're not going for the man. You know, we don't have any any quarrel with the man in the machine. Our quarrel, you know, we're trying to get the the aircraft. And there was, you know, you did have, you know, when when. For example, when an enemy was shot down and wasn't badly wounded, he would often be entertained on a squadron for one night before being taken off. I mean, that really did happen. And there was a sense sometimes that we have more in common, actually, with the people on the other side doing what we're doing than with people on our side who are doing something completely different. So it's not untrue.

SPEAKER_02: 24:51

So with these men being up there, Josh, kind of facing each other, respecting each other sometimes as you've said even entertaining each other when they one of them gets shot down i i guess there is another reality to that which is that there is chivalry perhaps but it's still a brutal war up there it's still pretty raw kind of combat that combat in the air

SPEAKER_01: 25:13

absolutely and and you know they were they were these people were sharing you know a new experience um it was and also you know you've got the point that they're you know most of the war is now... Modern warfare at this point was very impersonal. Naval battles used to be about getting close and boarding the enemy ships. And, you know, battles on land used to be about two armies, you know, coming together. And absolutely still, you know, during advances and trench raids, it was still that. But these were, you know, relatively few and far between compared to how it had been in the past. But one area where, you know, the combatants still absolutely came together was during these fighter confrontations. Because the airplanes were very similar. You know, they had very similar speeds. So, you know, the quicker one tended, you know, maybe only a few miles per hour quicker than the slower one. So you ended up with these sort of genuinely gladiatorial, contests where each pilot could see the other one's head you know they could actually see each other you know the the sort of classic first world war combat is between a british pilot called lano hawker and the red baron baron manfred von richthofen and it's it's kind of the classic partly because Richton wrote about it in his diary. But the way he talks about it, he was a hunter. That was his passion back at home. And that was the way he viewed these combats. But he talks about his Lano Hawker when he writes about this with huge respect. He says, I could see his head. At one point, Hawker waved at him. They're trying to get inside each other. They're concentric circles as they're flying. Hawking is DH2. the Red Baron in his albatrosses before he had his Fokker tripling and they're trying they're getting in tighter and tighter and tighter circles you know together right together they can see each other really closely they're almost dancing and so this is an area I mean Hawker was shot down and killed and now there's a memorial to him where he where he where he died he's an interesting character you know don't have time for it really but he's a very interesting character himself and so So, you know, this appeals to people at home. You know, there aren't many sort of stories of sort of direct confrontations. But here you have this, you know, these people, they're dueling, basically. It's like an 18th century duel. And they're facing each other and it's strange. Up to a point, it's chivalrous. And so this captured the public imagination. And, you know, you had a lot of the German pilots becoming well-known aces, Richthofen and others, Bolk and other people. The British initially didn't want to turn their fighter pilots into well-known aces. uh figures because you know it was considered i think one reason was it was considered quite insulting really to the people who were doing the the bulk of the work and equally dangerous if not well yeah equally dangerous jobs but these people you know the the the the big ones um you know the albert balls the mcmannocks and mccuddens you know these people you know did become even lee robinson who shot down the uh the the first man to shoot down a zeppelin and these people became faces on cigarette cards. You know, they became heroes and it kind of served its purpose. And that was because they weren't faceless. You know, they were known and they were known to each other, the two sides. So again, very different to what was happening elsewhere. To what reason? I mean, it's such a fascinating subject, this, which doesn't always get its due. You know, every now and again, Blackadder's got a nice, you know, nod to it and whatever. But I'm quite passionate about it. It's an incredible human and technological story. And it's the beginning of, you know, modern... I think it's the beginning of modern warfare. I mean, it's... Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 29:32

But I think, you know, the kind of public... bought into the idea of these aces and knights and all the other kind of phrases that was used and they collected the cigarette cards and they had postcards and there were illustrations of them in just about every magazine that was being published at that time because I guess it kind of contrasted that what was already probably being seen as the hellish nature of what was happening on the ground with gas, flamethrowers, artillery, mud and everything else. But there was a brutal side to the war in the air as well, wasn't there?

SPEAKER_01: 30:05

Yes, there was. I mean, it's so interesting because in some ways they were living a much better life. You know, they were behind the lines. They were, you know, the accommodation, you know, varied wildly. Sometimes it was, you know, pretty rough tents. Sometimes they were in shadows. And they ate incredibly well. not only better than the men in the trenches, but better than people back in England. And they had the opportunity to go into the towns. I mean, if you read Sagittarius Rising, another fantastic book, Cecil Lewis's account of the time, he talks about the social life that the men had at this time, which was quite remarkable. And you do, I mean, you find these incredible stories of the way they lived, which was so different to others there was one officer who brought um hounds back from england not much of a i don't know a great deal about hunting but anyway he bought hounds and hunted um hares and they you know they used to have a proper hunt with the horn and the you know going around in the red coats and you know this was just behind the lines and there was another uh squadron where they built a roller skating rink You know, they sort of commandeered concrete that was quite useful elsewhere, and built a roller skating rink, and they had roller badminton, and they, you know, all this kind of stuff. And another brilliant one, there was a squadron whose commander was a very well-known West End actor called Robert Lorraine, and he had two theatre groups, basically, on the squadron. One was made up of officers, one was made up of men, and they did regular... I often wonder, if you'd spent the day in the air, how much stage fright could you possibly have going on that night? And he was great friends with George Bernard Shaw. And so he invited Shaw back to the aerodrome. where Shaw watched a performance of one of his own plays by the men. And an officer was sitting behind him and said, you know, I watched Shaw all the way through. And his shoulders were heaving all the way through and his beard was bobbling around. And he said he was laughing. He laughed all the way through. It's a very serious play. And this officer went up to Shaw afterwards and said, you know, thank you very much for coming. I hope you enjoyed it. And Shaw said, well, if I'd known it was going to be like that, I wouldn't have written it in the first place. So it was just incredible. incredibly ungracious. But the point being that these were not ordinary soldiers. They had this extraordinary other life. But at the same time, to balance that, they were also doing something incredibly dangerous, arduous, mentally tortuous. And they were going up several times a day. to do this incredibly dangerous job. So, you know, I'm certainly not gonna disparage the courage of the people, the men in the trenches who, you know, were doing something astonishingly dangerous, astonishingly arduous, the conditions were appalling, you know, regularly your life was absolutely on the line, but the men in the air were also risking their lives several times a day and losing comrades, at an extraordinary rate. You know, there's a period, the time of the Battle of Arras in 1917, which is known as Bloody April, because people would be... I think there are varying figures, but, I mean, basically, the life expectancy of a new pilot arriving at that point in that time was about two weeks. So, I mean, what can I say? I mean, it was... Actually, I've got... It just so happens that I have an account... because they're written in a hospital because the stress It was called flying sickness. Pilots and observers tended to be treated more gently by the authorities when they suffered from neurasthenia or had mental breakdowns. And in part because there were so many of them who suffered. And in part also because those higher up the hierarchy, many of them had been flying themselves and knew precisely what the stresses were and were not keen to punish people for what they'd gone through. And this is... This is a hospital casualty report. It's called neurasthenia is the title of it. There's a name there, but I won't give it. It said, joined Royal Flying Corps in August 17, crashed in November 18. He was not in charge of the machine, not physically injured. About a week later, he developed fear symptoms and became fatigued. The nervous symptoms became aggravated with depression, memory defects and lack of power of mental application, irritability of temper was marked, war dreams, insomnia, developed with headaches and nausea. He spent three months in hospital but did not improve. His legs became so shaky that he had to use two sticks. He harbors mistrust and suspicions of everybody around him, is easily upset. There are no physical signs of organic disease. And he was dealt with leniently. He wasn't considered a coward. And he was sort of quietly... sent back. And this was a very common thing. I mean, going through the casualty records are remarkable, absolutely remarkable. So many themes are coming up. People who, you know, memory loss. But, you know, a man who, an officer who came back on leave and simply remembers none of his leave. And he was spotted on London Bridge throwing his uniform into the river. And he had no memory of it whatsoever.

SPEAKER_02: 36:03

I guess with a new way of warfare that is so far-fetched to most people of that time, that it brought with it these new conditions and outcomes of those conditions, which we see in the psychological effect that it has on pilots. And there were these great fears. I mean, I interviewed three guys that were in the RFC or RAF, one trained as an observer and then a pilot, and he spoke about how they feared falling out of the aircraft, being in combat, back being jerked out as an observer he wasn't entirely always sure what the pilot was doing and you know was he going to be although they had the ability to obviously strap themselves in occasionally said he had to maneuver himself and unstrap himself to be able to take a photograph or operate a machine gun or whatever it was and then will he be thrown out 10,000 feet and then fire that was the thing that he said haunted them all all the time and he said that you know in those last few months of his service on the western front they drank very very heavily to try and get rid of that fear.

SPEAKER_01: 37:07

I'd say two things there. One, so far as the last few months on the Western Front, you've got an extraordinary book called Winged Victory, which is a novel, but it's very tightly based on the experience of a pilot. And it's so beautifully written because he drinks himself, you know, absolutely unconscious virtually every night. And he explains the situation. He talks through the life that he's living. And he's doing it just to you know, get rid of his depression, get rid of his fears, to forget for a little while what it is he's doing. And, you know, these are the low strafing runs, which are so, so dangerous. And so, you know, I recommend, it's a man called Yeats who wrote it, and I fully recommend people to buy that book and read it. It's an astonishing book. It's so vivid, so modern, you know. It's over 100 years old, and it's absolutely, the emotions he's going through, the attempts survive to stay alive to stay sane it's absolutely you know I always think it's it's dangerous to say people are always the same you know through history they're not actually because our attitudes change our expectations out of life change you know but in terms of emotions we are all the same and that book brings it home just hammers you in the gut with it so that you know that's one thing another thing to talking about the fire the fear of fire I mean I know you have Andy Saunders is on who's talking about mcmannock but it was mcmannock this extraordinary man my god he's a fascinating man i mean there needs to be a film about about mcmannock and his great fear of course was was fire was was burning to death so he took a revolver with him uh in in the cockpit with him to um well to use it rather than burn and he did you know, maybe we can come on to this, but he did crash breaking one of his own rules of combat. But we don't know whether he... whether he used the gun on himself or not.

SPEAKER_02: 39:18

Yeah, I mean, both those guys that I interviewed, all three of them, in fact, they took various methods up with them in case that they caught fire or there was a situation, either a revolver, a service revolver or poison.

SPEAKER_01: 39:34

What a situation to be in, that you have to take a means of suicide with you to do your job. I mean, that's so vivid. I mean, in some ways, that's all you need to know.

SPEAKER_02: 39:44

Yeah, I mean, it's extraordinary, really. So with the kind of, I mean, the Knights of the Air fighter pilots don't go away, but the war changes. The war becomes more industrialized on the ground, and the Royal Flying Corps have to kind of find their way within that war. And I guess perhaps the RFC, as it moves into becoming the RNAS into the RAF, becomes a more technical service in some ways in the way that it approaches fighting and the importance of those famous pilots fades away to an extent.

SPEAKER_01: 40:20

I think that's right. I think in so many different ways, because technology advances, but also in terms of... tactics, fighting tactics. So you have some of the early aces, like Albert Ball, or the German Bolker, the way they went about things was You know, basically there were no tactics. You sort of throw yourself into the melee and because they were both, you know, they would be very good video game players nowadays. You know, they had extraordinary reactions. They could see what was happening around them. They could take stock of what was happening instantly. And they could, you know, it was... fighting air fighting was a language that they both spoke brilliantly um and uh so they they sort of got by for a long time um i'll say long time it's all relative but for you know for a while on just their their flying ability and their fighting ability and they were both killed and and then it became you know rules started to to play a bigger a bigger part in things and so for example we've just talked about mcmannock mcmannock wrote out uh a a Actually, Bolger did as well. He had a series of dicta. But Manick had a series of rules. Richthofen, in his will, I've never quite understood this, his will contained a series of rules for young pilots. But I suppose that gives you a sense of how transient these lives were and how they expected to die. His actual will was speaking to people who would be left after him. And Manick's interesting because he was an older man And at the beginning, people thought he was windy. People thought he lacked courage. But actually, he was an older man who'd seen a bit of life and didn't want to lose his. And so he approached it more conservatively and worked out the best ways of staying alive. And Richthofen did too. So this was a set. Also, you know, the fighting tended to move on. So that sort of, you know, Lanner-Hawker-Richthofen duel, I mean, they still existed towards the end. But as the aircraft became more faster and better, it became a bit more like, you know, Second World War flying where they only saw each other for seconds at a time. Sometimes they didn't. Sometimes they really did chase each other and stay together for a long time. But it became less duel-like and a bit more chaotic, I think, as it went on. But you had, yeah, I mean, you had the fact that it became a bit more, a bit more tactics came into it and a bit more thought went into how they were doing it was a sign of the fact that it was developing. developing. But then, you know, it retained the element of chaos, the element of stress and inevitability in the way that you know, both Richthofen and Manick and others as well, died eventually. These were the best pilots around, even though they'd only been flying for a relatively short time. You know, Manick, I think it was 13 months coming to the Western Front and dying as one of the, you know, the greatest potential, arguably the greatest pilot who'd had the greatest experience. It's 13 months, for goodness sake, you know. I mean, what do I do in 13 months? You know, and, but they both died breaking their own rules, which I find utterly fascinating as a sort of very much an amateur psychologist but you know what there absolutely is a sense that you know these people had been raised to a to a uh you know a level of they are the they are the greats so they weren't given much leave they were looked up to by all the others um and you know perhaps they started to take chances in the sense you know perhaps i the rules don't apply to me you know, in the way that they do to others, even though I write them, but I can maybe get away with it. So Mann followed, shot someone and followed him down, which is absolutely not meant to do. Richthofen flew low over enemy territory, chasing someone. That was his second rule, don't do that. So perhaps it was that, or perhaps it was an element that, you know, it's inevitable, I'm going to die. So all that's kind of left to me, my only choice left is how and when I do it. You know, so there may be a sort of element of, you know, fatalism that, you know, I'm a dead man walking or a dead man flying. So here I go. I don't know. I mean, obviously, that's all, you know, pop psychology, but it's utterly fascinating. As is, you know, the death of Richthofen. That's a whole other story.

SPEAKER_02: 44:52

Yeah, I mean, you kind of feel that with some of them there is an inevitability about it in their mind and they kind of see them quite literally kind of flying in one direction and that direction isn't beyond the end of the war. And that year in 1918 sees the death of so many of these famous pilots from Mannach to McCudden to Richthofen and perhaps, you know, lesser known names that flew over the Western Front there The Australian Bob Little is kind of another example of that as well. But, you know, I kind of feel that as the war's coming to an end, aircraft now are very much part of the battlefield. They're part of that kind of orchestra of weaponry that's being implemented by battlefield commanders from the troops to the tanks to the artillery to the gas to whatever, plus the aircraft in the sky still performing the original purpose, which is observation with airfo and relay back to guns but also attacking things whether that's fighters or bombing but there's a huge cost and Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service coming into being the RAF there is this huge role of honour by the end of the conflict and you know with nearly a thousand of them on the Arras Memorial with no known grave as well as all those that are buried in cemeteries kind of all over the place and you kind of wonder what the pilots as armistice day approaches the ones the air crew and the ground crew that have survived what do they make of it all

SPEAKER_01: 46:24

uh well you know if you if you take the accounts of you know many of them they say we were lost you know we we came out of the war not expecting to live or some of them say that uh we were children you know they're incredibly young these people you know albert ball was 20 when he died he was a child i mean you read his diary it's all about you know, public school hijinks in the mess, you know, throwing water over each other at night and, you know, planting seeds that'll grow quickly outside his hut. So they're basically children. They've experienced, not all of them, but I mean a lot of them, they've experienced the most terrifying thing imaginable, but they haven't actually lived in... They don't know life. You know, they haven't had jobs. They haven't had girlfriends. They haven't had... You know, a lot of these men had... You know, they'd been frequently to brothels, but they'd never had a girlfriend. You know, everything was out of whack in terms of, you know, being... being a person, being an average English or French or German or American person. And so you had a lot of people just completely lost when they came out and suddenly having to start lives. They had no idea. They hadn't even expected to be living. And you had lots of stories, a very touching one I found about two men who came out of the Flying Corps and thought, well, we're going to be pilots. We're going to carry on because this is what we know. And they both bought... a sop with pup for five pounds at the end of the war. They went to wherever it was they were being sold. And they thought, right, we're going to carry on with this. Flying is brilliant. We're going to do it. And then it was sort of explained to them how much it was going to cost to maintain this, and how much it was going to cost to do it. And they realized there's no way we can afford, actually. You know, we paid for the plane, that's ours, but there's no way we can keep it running. And so they sold it back. You know, they'd lost a few shillings on it. And they realized we don't know how life works. We don't know what we're going to do. And look at some of these people who made it through. I mean, you know, the ones who didn't make it through had all the potential. But the people who did make it through, I mean, someone like Cecil Lewis is, you know, completely fascinating. I mean, whether he would have been quite as off the wall had he not been in the Flying Corps, who knows? But, you know, he became one of the founder members of the BBC. He became a devotee of science. Gurdjieff, who was a sort of spiritual leader who, I think, I could be libeling him here, but I think advocated free love or something like it. You know, a lot of these people became also, and this is not often said, a lot of them became fascists, which I find very interesting. I mean, Oswald Mosley is the obvious one, but lots of others. Victor Yeats, who wrote He was a fascist. And a lot of them were. And again, that's a really interesting subject of, you know, first of all, they were, you know, I suppose it makes sense in that they were involved in this incredible new technology that was, you know, that sort of mirrored the idea, the idea of strength through fascism. And a

SPEAKER_02: 49:44

new world as well, I

SPEAKER_01: 49:51

guess, that kind of new world concept that you often see associated with extreme politics. and sort of different kinds of breakthroughs. And then there were people who were just so psychologically damaged that you can see it running through their entire lives. And then there were people who ended up addicted to flying, went back to... Louis Strange, I mentioned him in passing before. He was the first man to mount a machine gun on an aircraft and was always there at the forefront. He actually flew again during the Second World War. He took up a... a hurricane, despite never having flown one before. You know, and a lot of them became, you know, senior in the Air Force and, you know, they'd been there before. And, yeah, I mean, a lot of them had difficulties. A lot of them thrived and a lot of them went down some pretty dubious paths.

SPEAKER_02: 51:03

And kind of to end with a kind of sense of legacy of the experience of the war in the air in the First World War we can look back and see the incredible achievements that were made through the advancement of technology and air fighting in all kinds of different ways and also the kind of experience of the men who flew and the ones on the ground but I guess there's, I mean I know like me that you've always been interested in the Second World War as well and there's a kind of between that whole culture of air fighters in the First World War and then a generation of a second wave of those air fighters in World War II?

SPEAKER_01: 51:40

Well, I mean, you know, we've forgotten now, culturally, most of the First World War pilots, who they were, what they did. It's kind of a real footnote now, which is a big shame, but they weren't to the Battle of Britain pilots. The Battle of Britain pilots looked at these men as heroes to be emulated and in fact you know you have william rhodes morehouse you know the the son of the first air vc who died carrying out his vc action uh there's a real continuity here and they were you know they were led by people who had fought in the first world war and if you think about it you know they've i mean it is astonishing i i realized i should have worked this out before i came on but if you look at the the lapse in time between dropping darts and dropping an atom bomb. It's a flash of... You know, it's nothing, absolutely nothing. And it's, what is it, 14 to 45, whatever that is, 30 years. You know, again, what have I done in 30 years? I mean, it's astonishing. So the development, and also, you know, First World War in the air, I can't say everything, but almost everything that was tried, you know, has been tried since, was tried in some, you know, rudimentary or not even so rudimentary fashion, whether we're talking about aircraft carriers or seaplanes or rockets being launched from aircraft or torpedoes being launched from aircraft or whatever. I mean, you name it. It was probably done in some fashion in the First World War in that incredibly short period of time. So while it is astonishing that the atom bomb was so soon after the dart, in some ways it's not surprising because, I mean, the cliche that war is a mother of invention. Well, my God, this was going like nobody's business. And so there's an absolute direct consequence correlation in terms of technology. Yes, actually, you could possibly say this as well. The First World War, the start of it anyway, is a much more gung-ho experience than the start of the Second World War. You've got the whole idea of people queuing to do their bit with that sort of fervor and to get their revenge on the Germans for their inhumanity and whatever else. Whereas the Second World War was much more entered into by British people. Well, it's an existential fight. We go into this with resignation, but we have to do it. Which is why I often say, people say, oh, people wouldn't fight nowadays the way they used to. I say, well, if it was existential, they probably would. But I often look at the Battle of Britain pilots as a sort of different breed. These are people who did have that same sort of ethos of going into it with this sort of incredible enthusiasm that people went into the First World War. I wonder, I'm thinking aloud now, but I wonder if there is again that kind of continuity that the air is something apart and, you know, whereas most people went off to fight the Second World War with a sense of, well, I don't want to do this, but I have to. The fighter pilots didn't, you know, didn't have that attitude. They were very much more of the First World War mindset. Anyway, get ready for the people writing in to say that's a load of rubbish. But anyway, that's, you know, that's off the top of my

SPEAKER_02: 55:04

head. Well, I mean, I think it's always interesting perspectives and I kind of think that, you know, when any study of warfare you kind of hear people in a modern era talk about how something is over tanks will never be used again aircraft are redundant and yet we're seeing a conflict a modern conflict as we speak now which has so many similarities with what was happening on the ground in the first world war with trench warfare and you know the huge kind of cost of operations but also the importance of aircraft because if you look at the kind of Ukrainian appeal over the last couple of years it's always been for aircraft to counter Russian aircraft over the battlefield so that kind of air war and the drones

SPEAKER_01: 55:48

you can just imagine drones being introduced in the first world war and again changing the sort of basis and the psychology and the way it's being fought it's just coming round and round and round and round I sometimes think it's a bit naive to say oh well we can learn from history you know just in that sort of bald that bald statement but my goodness me there are a lot of parallels that we have to pay very close attention to because otherwise we're we're we're we don't know who we are

SPEAKER_02: 56:21

no and i think even if we don't end up learning from history it's having that nod to history and an appreciation of history which i guess is what you know you and i have done a lot in our in our careers in history is to ensure that the the lives of men like mannock and albert ball and and all of the others plus the ground crew kept them there, and men on both sides fighting these incredible battles in the skies over the Western Front. it's important that that is never forgotten.

SPEAKER_01: 56:48

I mean, yes, is all I can say to that.

SPEAKER_02: 56:52

Well, Josh, I mean, as always, I could talk to you all day because you're always absolutely fascinating to discuss any aspect of military history with, and it's always a pleasure to see

SPEAKER_01: 57:02

you. Completely mutual, Paul. It's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_02: 57:05

So thank you for that, and we'll put links to your book, and I think you said there's a new edition of it as well, so we'll make sure that's kind of

SPEAKER_01: 57:13

on there. It's a paperback. basically um and uh we'll describe it as a

SPEAKER_02: 57:18

classic i think that's the best thing for for books that have been in been in print for a while yeah

SPEAKER_01: 57:23

yes absolutely i mean it's um you know a lot of the stuff i've talked about today i mean you'll you know it's it's i talk about it more length in the book so um

SPEAKER_02: 57:32

no fantastic so thanks josh thanks for joining us and i'm sure this won't be the last time we discuss some aspect of the great war here on the old front line thank you mate

SPEAKER_01: 57:40

thank you paul thank you very much

SPEAKER_02: 57:48

You've been listening to an episode of The Old Frontline with me, military historian Paul Reid. You can follow me on Twitter at Somcor. You can follow the podcast at oldfrontlinepod. Check out the website at oldfrontline.co.uk where you'll find lots of podcast extras and photographs and links to books that are mentioned in the podcast. And if you feel like supporting us, you can go to our Patreon page at patreon.com slash old front line or support us on buy me a coffee at buymeacoffee.com slash old front line links to all of these are on our website thanks for listening and we'll see you again soon