The Aces

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THE ACES

by

FREDERICK OUGHTON

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

INTRODUCTION 5

1—MYTH, SEED AND FRUITION 6

2—MANY TRIALS, MANY FAILURES 12

3—BLOOD-STAINED FLEDGLINGS 27

4—I ALWAYS LAND LIKE THIS! 38

5—BOELCKE HEADS THE WOLF-PACK 50

6—THE CIRCUS AND THE RINGMASTER 56

7—DAYS OF BLOOD AND FIRE 70

8—THE DEATH OF RICHTHOFEN 83

9—FOKKER: HOLLAND’S GIFT TO GERMANY 88

10—UNPOLITICAL MASTER-MIND 94

11—4,300 KILLER PLANES 103

12—HE LANDED ON A ZEPPELIN 110

13—THE WEAPON THAT FAILED 119

14—BLOW THE BASTARDS UP! 126

15—LOVE, EDWARD 131

16—BATTLE REPORT AND BANANA BOMBS 141

17—DEATH BEFORE TWENTY 153

18—THE RUSSIANS ‘ADOPT’ ALBERT BALL 160

19—WAS BALL A PROPAGANDA PAWN? 166

20—ESCHWEGE’S PRIVATE WAR 176

12—DRAMA AT DRAMA 184

22—A FARMAN BREAKS UP 190

23—HE PAID CASH FOR AN ACCIDENT 195

24—MAGAZINES FOR UNDERPANTS 204

25—OLIESLAGERS’ SALAD 215

26—BISHOP WHO CHARGED LIKE A BULL 226

27—BALLOON HUNT 232

28—GIANTS AT GRIPS 239

29—AMERICAN PRIVATEERS 248

30—A PLANE THAT NEEDED SPURS 255

31—DOG-FIGHT IN A BEARSKIN 263

32—SKYBORNE EXECUTIONERS 271

APPENDICES 317

APPENDIX ONE—SPECIFICATIONS OF BRITISH MACHINES (excluding bombers) 1911-1918 317

APPENDIX TWO—SPECIFICATIONS OF GERMAN MACHINES (excluding bombers) 1913-1918 335

APPENDIX THREE—PREFIX LETTERS OF GERMAN AIRCRAFT 345

APPENDIX FOUR—THE COST OF THE ZEPPELIN WAR 346

APPENDIX FIVE—GERMAN ZEPPELIN RAIDS ON BRITAIN IN 1915 347

APPENDIX SIX—AIRCRAFT PRODUCTION, August 1914–November 1918 348

APPENDIX SEVEN—COMPONENT AIRCRAFT PRODUCTION, 1914-1918 349

APPENDIX EIGHT—TOTAL AIRCRAFT STRENGTH AT 31st OCTOBER 1918 350

APPENDIX NINE—COST OF BRITISH AIRFRAMES AND ENGINES 351

APPENDIX TEN—TOTAL CASUALTIES, ALL CAUSES, TO BRITISH AND GERMAN AIR PERSONNEL, 1914-1918 353

APPENDIX ELEVEN—RATES OF PAY IN THE ROYAL FLYING CORPS 1918 354

APPENDIX TWELVE—BRITISH AND U.S. ARMY COMPARATIVE PRODUCTION RATES FOR AIRCRAFT 355

APPENDIX THIRTEEN—THE ACES AND THEIR VICTORIES 356

BIBLIOGRAPHY 361

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 365

DEDICATION

For My Mother And Judith

There shall be wings! If the accomplishment is not for me, ‘tis for some other.—Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

INTRODUCTION

Research for this book was carried out on many different fronts in several countries. War diaries were discovered and examined, libraries pillaged, official documents read and notable archives visited.

The general aim of this book is twofold: to uncover the personalities of the men called aces, and to show the reader the actual birth of courage and tenacity in wartime airpower, a heritage now shared equally by the air forces of the world.

It has been necessary to quote liberally from many sources, most of them unpublished, but including some of the books mentioned in the Bibliography. Many of the books are out of print and virtually unobtainable. It is felt that some small service is being rendered by bringing these to light.

The word ace has been applied somewhat loosely by past writers, but the present author makes a careful selection, maintaining that only very special qualities and equally special combat behaviour can combine to qualify a pilot for inclusion in that category.

In conclusion, I wish to extend my cordial thanks to all those who answered technical and historical questions and the many people who expressed a lively interest in this book while it was being written.

One of my most expert advisors, Wing Commander G. Constable Maxwell, M. C., D. F. C., A. F. C., died very suddenly on December 18 1959, while this book was being printed. A special debt of gratitude must be paid to his memory. Apart from being a famous fighter pilot of the First World War, he also played a vital part in the life of the Royal Air Force throughout the years, including 1941-45 when he commanded the night-fighter station at Ford, Sussex. Many of the valuable incidental touches which have brought the aces to life for us were drawn from his memories. He was an excellent, good-humoured man whom the author will remember with warmth for his unstinting assistance and balanced counsel.

London. 1958-1960

FREDERICK OUGHTON

1—MYTH, SEED AND FRUITION

FLIGHT and its link with the past may easily be traced to the beginning of mythology, back to the stories of Ki-Kung-Shi when the Emperor Ch’eng T’ang in the 18th century B.C. travelled by aerial chariot, a machine which had paddle-boat type wheels, perhaps an adaptation of the modern jet. Afterwards came the magical garments, the boots which gave the wearer powers of levitation and travel. There were also the winged hats and the highly-valued potions which could transport man through the clouds to distant lands where unlimited treasure waited to be taken.

Myth and legend, most of it, incorporating as it does the stories of Xerxes, Phryxus and Helle, but here and there it is possible that the mustard seed of truth does exist, disproving the fact that the Comet and the ICBM, the often-failing efforts at launching a rocket moonwards, are in fact as modern as today. These things have been tried before, often in a backyard or on some barren plain. Ancient man had his failures, too, if he had success also.

When man’s inspiration was moved by the flight of birds he tried to reason that they moved through the air just as fish slipped through water, but he was wrong. The bird is more complex than the fish because every set of feathers is different; some govern the launching into the air while others act as inhibitors and others are the supports when the bird is airborne.

These were the factors which man watched when his own flight was only a dream, and in the beginning he wanted to believe that the birds flew merely because they were able to leap into the air and flap their wings against the fluctuating currents. When birds entered into the service of man in a thousand ways he remained envious, hoping that someday, somehow, he would be able to emulate these, his own servants.

This yearning for the freedom of the heavens gave birth to the kite, an assortment of fabric, struts and string, set in a triangular or box-like pattern which could lean on the wind, ascending to great heights.

From such diverse origins as these the aeroplane came into being and with its development grew a list of casualties which includes thousands of men killed in the service of the air. At the top of the list is King Bladud, the British ruler who died in 852 B.C. Bladud was a believer in magic and he did not approach the problem of flight in a very scientific frame of mind. His subjects considered him presumptuous to fly at all, but he had a devil for a mind and insisted upon trying to mount to the clouds to demonstrate his supremacy. We do not know whether he leapt from a cliff with a pair of wings strapped to his arms, or whether he merely jumped with his faith in magic as a companion, He was, however, killed.

The idea of using wings as supports for the body is found in the Greek legend of Daedalus and Icarus. Daedalus was employed by King Minos of Crete to build the catacombs and labyrinth in which the maiden-killing Minotaur was to be kept after its capture, but while this was being done King Minos came to the conclusion that Daedalus and his son should be imprisoned within the labyrinth. Icarus, the son of Daedalus, must suffer a similar fate. Daedalus decided to escape and made two sets of feathered wings which were attached to the body. Daedalus instructed his son not to fly too close to the sun, but alas, the youth ignored his father and flew upwards to a great height. The heat melted the wax which kept the feathers in place and Icarus fell into the sea and was drowned.

Daedalus and Icarus are legend, but later comes the beginning of truth with a simple formula devised by Archimedes in 250 B.C. which was to effect aviation down through the early years. The formula says that an object placed in liquid suffers a pressure exerted upon its surface by the liquid. Replace the liquid with air and a new conception of the medium can be appreciated at once.

As a stimulus to endeavour and the search for perfection there now came several men who were not averse to jumping from towers and flapping their home-made wings in the face of a quick death, men like the Saracen of Constantinople and the English monk, Oliver of Malmesbury, who fell to his death in 1020 A.D.

Apart from the work of Roger Bacon, whose research in aeronautics made the foundations not only of flight but also rocket projectiles, the greatest cornerstone was laid by Leonardo da Vinci, a worker who, curiously enough, did not exert a specific influence upon flight until after his death in 1519 when his one hundred and sixty notebooks were published by Venturi in 1797 under the title Essai sur les Ouvrages Physico-Mathématiques de Leonardo da Vinci. While da Vinci’s greatest thoughts were awaiting publication, others workers proceeded along their own paths so that much of his finest work became merely confirmatory by the time it achieved publication.

Towards the end of the 15th century a new school of scientific and speculative writing sprang into being, some of it akin to modern science-fiction. Francis Godwin, Bishop of Hereford, compiled his work, The Man In The Moone or a Discourse of a Voyage thither by Domingo Gonsales the Speedy Messenger, published posthumously. The story related how the hero, Gonsales, tethered twenty-five geese to a space chariot and persuaded them to carry him to the moon. Godwin’s book created great interest. Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, came out with his Discovery of a New World in 1638. His later Mathematical Magick was a review of the Archimedean Theory, and it did something to influence the first aviators.

With aeronautics fast becoming the province of religious brotherhoods, Francesco de Lana-Terzi, a Jesuit Father of great learning and considerable acumen, who lived under a vow of poverty, published his Prodrome overo Saggio di Alcune inventione nuovo premesso all’arte maestro—the plans for a airship in which were incorporated details of copper cylinders and the use of sails and paddles in which the navigators would be able to speed through the air. The Jesuit was remarkable in many ways, for he was one of the first independent thinkers to perceive the possibilities which lay behind the possibility of flying machines being used as war weapons. In one of his writings he says: I do not foresee any other difficulties that could prevail against this invention, except one: but this seems the greatest of all. For God would surely never allow such a machine to be successful, since it would cause much disturbance among the civil and political governments of mankind. Who can fail to see that no city would be proof against surprise, as the ship could at any time be brought above its squares, or even the courtyards of its dwellings, and come to earth so that its crew could land. In the case of ships that sail the sea, the aerial ship could be made to descend from the upper air to the level of their sails so that the rigging could be cut. Or even without descending so low, iron weights could be hurled down to wreck the ships and kill their crews; or the ships could be set on fire by fireballs and bombs. Not only ships, but houses, fortresses and cities could be destroyed, with the certainty that the airship would come to no harm, as the missiles could be thrown from a great height.

Less practical than Francesco de Lana-Terzi but of even greater application was another Jesuit, a member of the Portuguese order, Father Laurence de Gusmão, inventor of the mystical Passarola, a womb-shaped vehicle powered by amber lodestones placed in metal spheres. It did not, however, fly. Apart from the lodestones, the Passarola also carried a flamboyant flutter of religious and patriotic flags and bunting, none of which aided ascent when the time came. The vehicle remained on the ground, its expectant and no doubt excited passengers sitting inside it, awaiting the moment when they would be able to look about them and see the clouds at close quarters.

With letters of patent granted in 1709 by the King of Portugal, Laurence de Gusmão tried to hold on to his reputation by inventing a special kind of balloon, the first of its kind to rely upon the use of heated air generated in a trough set just beneath the canvas fabric. In a demonstration, given before the King, the balloon caught fire and wafted earthwards, destroying itself completely. Because of such abortive attempts as this and others carried out within the religious orders, aviation began to be coupled with the magic arts. Gusmão was himself often accused of being in league with evil spirits. It marked the beginning of a cleft between the practical and the mystical. This stemming of a new branch led directly to the empiricism of the sixteen century when Leonard Euler, Daniel Bernoulli and Isaac Newton all formulated a theory of hydrodynamics, the study of which had close affinities with the behaviour and properties of the air about us. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, too, there was a resurgence of tower jumping. In 1742 the Marquis de Bacqueville tried to cross the Seine, using a set of wings strapped to his arms and feet, but after a sixty-foot glide which became a long fall, he landed on a tethered barge and the venture was abandoned because of a broken leg. After the bold Marquis had made his attempt, Paris was full of men who boasted that they would fly the Seine, but no record exists of any actually doing so. In the sphere of showmanship, Jean-Pierre Blanchard later made an aerial boat which he toured successfully, encouraging people to view it on the ground, though it was never known to fly.

The beginning of scientific ballooning was made by the Montgolfier brothers, Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne, sons of a paper maker near Lyons. Ardent amateur scientists, they left their father’s business in the hands of a manager. In 1782 Joseph made a successful indoor experiment at Avignon, using a silk container under which he burned a small fire. The heat rose, filled the bag, and the construction flew to the ceiling. A year passed before the brothers decided to publicly demonstrate what they suspected, that man could reach the heavens using only hot air.{1} With a bag of about 23,000 cubic feet capacity and a diameter of 38 feet, they invited hundreds of interested people to Annonay on June 5, 1783. A fire was started under the neck of the bag and it was later released, ascending to 6,000 feet and descending about 7,668 feet away from its starting place. As a result of the wholesale mystification about what caused the balloon to rise—many attributed it to something called ‘Mr. Montgolfier’s gas’—the Académie des Sciences requested a geologist, Faujas de Saint-Fond, to open a public subscription to enable the Montgolfier brothers and their followers to start making research. J. A. C. Charles decided to build his own balloon and lift it with hydrogen. The vehicle itself was made by the Roberts brothers, the material being rubberized silk. The experiment was a great success and the balloon made a twenty-seven mile journey before descending.

Somewhat squeezed out by official intervention and encouragement in their work, the Montgolfier brothers worked on together, building a balloon more than 74 feet in height in a friend’s garden. They made their tests in secret, but the final demonstration was given before members of the Académie, who at once made arrangements for the King and Queen to witness a second flight. A combination of interests now made it possible for the Charles-Montgolfier pioneers to send up a sheep, a duck and cockerel, and nearly ten minutes later the animals landed in the Forest of Vaucresson, about one mile and a half away from the starting point. In a situation which parallels the outcry in the Western Press against the Russian experiment with Laika, the dog in a rocket, the Paris newspapers pointed out that this was cruelty of an extreme kind, for the wing of the cockerel was injured. The Montgolfier brothers should be punished for such inhumanity, cried the righteous. But the honour of aviation was saved when it was found that the sheep had accidentally stepped on the cockerel’s wing soon after the landing. Nevertheless, the outcry sparked off doubts about the advisability of allowing human beings to ascend in balloons. As a partisan in favour of flying, the King himself entered into it and told the Académie that he was prepared to authorise the release of a convict from prison for the honour of flying in the first man-carrying balloon. He was quickly over-ruled by the humanists. In the end a man called Pilâtre de Rozier was selected. He had been the first man on the scene at Vaucresson when the animal-carrying balloon landed, and was noted as a physician and chemist. His first test flights dispelled public notions that the new race of aeronauts might suffer shock, vertigo and general disability, for he remained healthier than ever. The height to which the first balloons ascended was increased, and each occasion caused an outcry in the Press. During this period the Montgolfier brothers did very little ballooning themselves, confining their energies to design and the march towards perfection.

In November 1783 a Montgolfier balloon made the first free flight in history. Prior to this balloons were allowed to fly only on the end of ropes, but this time de Rozier insisted on something more ambitious. With him went the Marquis d’Arlandes and, after some anxious moments when the balloon almost caught fire, the craft passed across Paris, lifting gracefully to avoid the rooftops. The Montgolfiers and their associates followed its progress from the ground, racing through the streets in a horse-drawn carriage and followed by hundreds of people and children. After this affair ballooning tugged hard at the public fancy and nearly every magazine carried stories about it. More than one abduction and romantic interlude was carried out with the aid of a Montgolfier balloon. As a result of the rage of Paris, the sport spread to Britain and the United States where a legion of French flying men appeared to give demonstrations. Balloons sprouted jets, paddles, wings and other devices for propelling the huge envelopes along. There was some scandal about the foolhardiness of the hot-headed aeronauts when several great and famous balloons caught fire or were involved in accidents. The English Channel was first crossed by air in 1785 when the showman, Jean-Pierre Blanchard, and an American, John Jeffries, flew their own balloon across the water. Rozier and a companion, P. A. Romain, were killed trying to make a France-England crossing in 1785. Military leaders began to consider the serious uses of the balloon and in 1794 Napoleon used one for reconnaissance purposes at Maubeuge. In 1849 balloons carried out the first air raid when the Austrians sent pilotless vehicles to bomb Venice.

A recurrence of mistrust happened when scientists studying the weather took balloons up to high altitudes. In the next few years many observers lost courage on seeing the earth disappear through cloud banks. Some fainted and lost control of their balloons, sending them crashing into cities and villages. At first it was believed that the accidents were caused by the rare air, but it soon became apparent that the balloonists themselves were the victims of faint hearts.

The growing popularity of hydrogen as a lifting agent was now more widely spread, due to Blanchard’s efforts at popularising a sport which was fast becoming an exact science. But even Blanchard had his difficulties. Before one ascent from the Champ de Mars, Paris, a young man accosted him and demanded that he be taken along on the voyage. At first amused, Blanchard soon saw that he was serious. Refused the pleasure of flying, the young man drew a sword and threatened first to kill Blanchard then ruin the balloon, but while he was arguing about it the military guards threw themselves upon him, enabling Blanchard to jump into the basket and give orders for the lines to be cast off.

In Britain Vincenzo Lunardi, secretary to the Neapolitan Ambassador, tried to interest British royalty in the possibilities and pleasures of the new science when he built a balloon measuring thirty-two feet in diameter. The first demonstration was attended by the Prince of Wales at the Artillery Ground, Moorfields, London. Well stocked with provisions (Lunardi was a famous gourmet), the Italian lectured his royal guest on the function of balloons, pointing out the pair of oars which, he considered, were a great innovation for propelling the cumbersome craft along. They were useless when he tried to use them in the air. His companions were a cat, a dog and a pigeon, and his twenty-four mile journey into Hertfordshire carried him first to North Mimms where he put down because the cat was shivering and trying to scratch its way out of the padded basket. The cat released for the pleasures of the woods, Lunardi took off again and later came down at Standon, near Ware. He had been airborne for a total of two and a quarter hours. Impressed by the demonstration, the Prince of Wales gave aviation his blessing, and on June 29, 1785, Lunardi took the first step towards popularising aviation among women by inviting a Mrs. Sage to come with him on a flight. This ended badly, for an irate agricultural labourer called upon a platoon of boys from Harrow school to attack the landed balloon and its occupants. But on seeing Mrs. Sage, who had all the proportions of a busty movie queen, the boys let out a loud halloo and voted her their special heroine. Lunardi was left to argue with the labourer while she was carried off to the school.

The history of ballooning, like that of conventional aviation, continued to be chequered with the story of man’s infamy, though any crooked deeds connected with ballooning must now appear ludicrous in an age when we are striving to perfect supersonic flight and sort out the tangle presented by nuclear fission. Blanchard, one of the pioneers of ballooning, was now living the life of a celebrity and loving every moment of it, but when he was joined by his early partner, Jeffries, he seemed to be afflicted by peculiar moods of jealousy. Prior to the first crossing of the English Channel, Blanchard admitted that he wanted to do it alone. On one test flight he pointed out that the balloon was hardly strong enough to carry both of them. Jeffries discovered that Blanchard was wearing a weighted belt, and caused a fuss which was quelled only when an official of Dover Castle stepped in as arbiter. The landing at Calais, after a hazardous flight, led to both men being equally acclaimed. A now pleased Blanchard was glad to take his place as one of the leaders of aviation. Part of his wrecked balloon was found and may now be seen in a museum at Calais. With a pension and many financial awards, Blanchards visited the European capitals, demonstrating his balloons. After a tour of America he retired.

2—MANY TRIALS, MANY FAILURES

ALTHOUGH both used the air in the search for the secret of flight, the balloonist and the glider enthusiast worked along different paths during the first part of the 19th century, neither quite appreciated the fact that both methods might shortly merge and become inseparable, as was the case with the development of the dirigible. The problems of the balloon and the problems of the glider were similar and it was Sir George Cayley, a landowner with estates in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, who did much to lead the way to a clarification. He started from the basic premise of bird flight after publishing a paper on aerial navigation in Nicholson’s Journal, and in 1804 brought out a model glider with a tail-fin and wings. By using these it was possible to determine the direction of flight by means of pre-set controls, and Cayley’s first impulse was to use the machine as an aid in mountaineering, but he was opposed by the climbers. Actually hampered by having too much money, Cayley was determined to become an amateur scientist, and at times his life does bear a likeness to that of da Vinci. He claimed that more speed could be gained from the propellor, or airscrew, than by other methods, such as paddles. His first engines were powered by gunpowder, uneconomical and often dangerous, but sufficient for demonstration purposes. Later in his life Cayley tried to solve the host of problems surrounding airship construction, incorporating his ideas about airscrews. Many of his plans were never realised. Like da Vinci, he left a series of notebooks and hundreds of sketches outlining the possible future. Stringfellow and Henson worked on these at a later date, and brought some of them to fruition.

Among the first hints that the militarists might become interested in aircraft is found in the fact that in 1812 Napoleon marched on Moscow. Within the city the Russians sought out a German, Lippich, and granted him funds with which to build an airship. It was proposed to use this to bomb Napoleon’s troops. Working against time with a group of artisans and labourers, who did not understand him, Lippich tried to complete a dirigible, but in the end was defeated by French troops who entered the city hours before he was ready to attempt a trial flight.

The trend which sought to combine the dirigible with the balloon continued, and British, French and American patent files still contain many records of the marriage, including plans submitted by such men as E. C. Genet, who wanted to transport horses and other animals by air. Count Lennox travelled in France and Britain, demonstrating a new kind of aerial vehicle which could be dismantled within a few hours. Robert Hollond M. P. partnered Charles Green and Monck Mason in a venture to promote regular passenger traffic in the Great Nassau balloon, and in November, 1836, flew from London to France in the Royal Vauxhall balloon, landing in Germany after a flight which lasted more than seventeen hours. Charles Green, incidentally, was the man who first tried coal gas as a lifting agent. The Royal Vauxhall itself was resold several times and did much to increase confidence in air travel, especially in the remoter parts of the Continent where anything more than horse and carriage travel was deemed hazardous and entirely against the wish of God.

John Luntley developed a rotary balloon in which the gas container was itself an aerial screw, rotating and boring its way through the skies while passengers and crew remained in a gondola suspended below. In 1851 Luntley’s contemporaries toyed with ideas of creating propulsion by means of banks of rockets fixed to the topside and underside of the envelope, but the danger of fire and explosion deterred them, especially after some spectacular accidents with working models. The idea of rocket propulsion received an extended hearing among learned societies, but the subject was eventually relegated to the pages of theoretical speculation. In France, where a new government was in power in 1870, the situation was somewhat different because the perfection and flight of airships caught at the public fancy at a time when national prestige was far from high, and it was believed that the invention and demonstration of a dirigible might easily lead to an adulation of the nation throughout the world. Pierre Jullien, a clockmaker and constructor of flying models, was to receive official encouragement in his work. He made several models of dirigibles, including two which worked, and received a public showing. On getting the government grant, he made an airship based on his early work. It was 164 feet long and more rotund than the usual cigar shape. Jullien later lost heart and all work was abandoned. An engineer, Giffard, obtained the plans and in 1852 successfully demonstrated a steam-driven dirigible to crowds in the centre of Paris. In 1872 Dupuy de Lôme built and flew an airship at 5½ mph.

Between 1898 and 1903 it was believed that aviation’s success would be counted in terms of the practical airship, that great unwieldy gas bag and gondola. In 1898 the propaganda of the Brazilian, Alberto Santos Dumont, made it seem that aviation would in future be bound up with this form of design. To prove it, this accident-prone man who survived many crashes, worked to win the one hundred thousand francs offered by M. Deutsch de la Meurthe for the first airship navigator who took his craft round the Eiffel Tower. Santos Dumont accepted the challenge immediately. He had no option. His adventures and the worldwide publicity with six previous airships, most of which let him down badly, made it seem inevitable that he would win the prize. On October 19, 1901, he set out in an airship containing 22,000 cubic feet of gas and a 12 hp motor. It was a slow-moving spherical ovoid, hardly the sleek dream of the designer but for all that most steady and unusually reliable.

After Santos Dumont’s triumph a considerable impetus was given to the work, but it left a path of fatal accidents which did in no way deter the pioneers. Augusto Severo, another Brazilian, was killed along with his crew when his 98-ft airship rose to a height of 1,300 feet and blew up. The Secretary to the German Embassy in Paris, Baron Bradsky, designed the airship in which he was killed when the gondola fell away from the gas bag. Such terrible accidents as these did not put the designers off. Santos Dumont, for instance, was now busy with a new type of airship, this time smaller than the rest and, he believed, capable of easier handling.

The German, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, a member of the staff of the army, is credited with the creation of the biggest airship of the time, but he actually worked from copies of plans made by Spiess, a Frenchman living in Alsace. There is every possibility that von Zeppelin held these same plans for a considerable period until he was in a position to raise the sum of one million marks with which to found a company, the group responsible for building the first giant airships. In 1908, ten years after the founding of the company, the impending bankruptcy of the concern brought the German government running with offers of aid, and a public fund which contributed three hundred thousand pounds was created. Throughout the first phase of the war the Germans made a special point of embodying the Zeppelin in their war offensive. Installations were built at Emden, Keil, Heligoland and along the west and east fronts. A secret network of administration was set up to furnish the airship organisation with its intelligence, including valuable weather reports. The Zeppelin was moved into position as a means of attack. Throughout these early days Zeppelin, a hot-headed individual imbued with a love of country which would take him through the hottest furnace of criticism, built many dozens of full-scale models, the basis for the working models, perhaps the saviours of the new Germany, thought some of the leaders. Their failure did not deter Zeppelin, but he was well aware that the public was restive because the subscribed portion of the total capital had been squandered. Now over sixty, Zeppelin was not a man to listen to suggestions nor did he allow military leaders to influence him. He believed that he was on the brink of success. He was!

The first Zeppelin was 420 feet long, pencil-shaped with an aluminium framework of massive hoops and fixed cross-stays. The interior appeared somewhat frail, but during extensive tests it was demonstrated that it could withstand high winds and other extreme conditions and accidents liable to occur during forced landings. One safeguard was the series of bulkheads which formed seventeen gas holders. By means of these it was possible to fly the Zeppelin even when two or three were empty. The exterior was covered with rubberized cotton. Running from one end of the pencil-shaped gas container to the other was a catwalk to enable the crew to make certain adjustments to the gas pressure during flight. Suspended beneath the giant mass were two containers, each accommodating a sixteen horsepower Daimler motor which drove the airscrews, one on each side of the airship.{2} Part of each compartment was given over to research equipment in the prototype, but later, when the Zeppelin was put into service as a commercial airline, these were furnished on a sumptuous level. Control of the Zeppelin was managed by moving a large sliding weight in the keel, but there were also elevating planes, two in the for’rard section and two aft. When the Zeppelin went out on the first tests various adjustments had to be made to the steering mechanism, enabling it to handle in winds of more than twenty miles an hour. Zeppelin was so satisfied with the performance of the first airship that he decided to continue with his work, enlisting the further aid of the German government if necessary. In the next two years he created and perfected two more dirigibles.

After Zeppelin successfully demonstrated the qualities of his airship over long distances, public confidence in the undertaking returned. Passenger lines were set up to operate over Germany, some covering incredible areas and even extending their scope overseas. Principal among these was the Schutte-Lanz Company with Heinrich Lanz, managing director of a machine works at Mannheim, and Professor Schutte, Technical University, Danzig. These men perfected an airship made entirely from wood. After 1912 these were bought by the German government and played their part in early aerial combat. They had certain advantages over the Zeppelin and its covering of rubberized fabric, and reacted faster in poor atmospheric conditions.

With the pendulum-like swing between the balloon and the dirigible, development of the former began to take precedence. Aerial photography was introduced and the first pictures showing the rooftops of the French and British capitals were widely published and commented upon. It was the British government which first set up a research department to investigate the possibilities of taking photographs from the air, but the first specimens did little to suggest that the idea of photographing enemy fortifications could be of significance in the conduct of future wars. The application of the science to the growth of flight remained a mystery to all save the balloonists who took their clumsy cameras with them on every ascent.

In its closing years the 19th century presaged more empirical possibilities in the conquest of the air. Otto Lilienthal, the German, started first with gliders and, on adopting the profession of engineer, applied his specialist knowledge to the building of powered aircraft and, still later, came to the conclusion that the use of aeroplanes in organised warfare would be far greater than the governments of the world had yet realised.

At Sydney, Australia, Lawrence Hargrave was working independently on problems of flight, and his experiments in 1884, summarised in a paper read to the Royal Society of New South Wales, were among the most striking, especially for the development from scratch of an engine powered by compressed air on the principle of a static crankshaft about which the engine proper revolved. Models of some of Hargraves’ eighteen home-made aeroplanes reached Europe, and the French and Germans improved on the designs.

The desire to develop the glider and elevate it to the now respectable status of the flying machine, balloon and dirigible urged such men as Sir Hiram Maxim, who spent £20,000 on a flying machine project at his Kent in home 1894, Pilcher, a naval officer, and many others to work independently on different designs, some of them based on da Vinci’s sketches. The science of aeronautics was having a hard and protracted birth about this time. Many private tragedies were enacted. Men went bankrupt, trying to beat one another with wing-flapping contraptions which ended up in hedges and ditches, maiming the fliers and frightening superstitious labourers who mistook them for the black birds of destiny and fate.

There now appeared the energetic figure of Samuel Pierpont Langley, a Pittsburgh astronomer in his fifties and administrator and head of the Smithsonian Institute at Washington. Langley was an avid rider of hobby horses, and between the ages of fifty and sixty he made a series of experiments, including a flying table which could move at sixty miles an hour on a rotating arm. From the beginning he laboured under the erroneous assumption that a flying machine would not be able to rise if it had more than 1 lb load per square foot of wing, and in this fact can he found the source of failure. Despite opposition, he did demonstrate a powered aeroplane in 1891, the outcome of a fifty thousand dollar government grant. It flew for three quarters of a mile at a speed of 30 mph. Currently involved in a war with Spain over the dispute in Cuba, the American government reluctantly decided to grant Langley further sums of money with which to continue his work. Calling in his friend and assistant, Charles Manly, Langley designed an aerodrome, as he called his flying machine. Manley, who was in touch with Hargrave in Australia and had examined models of the Australian’s engines, began to build a radial power unit for the first prototypes. Langley’s initial experiments were disastrous and representatives of the government gloomily saw Langley and Manly launch one of their aircraft from the stern of a river boat. The wings snapped and seconds after it was a job for salvage men. Sometime later another attempt resulted in Manly receiving a ducking after being trapped for a horrifying moment in the network of cables and struts. The outcry against the foolishness of the two men reached such proportions that Langley lost all interest in carrying on and left Manly to do as best he could. Some years later Glenn Curtiss was given permission to inspect what was left of the aerodrome and perhaps use his findings for further development. In May 1914 Langley’s aircraft flew again, this time with greater success. Glenn Curtiss had spent the intervening years to some benefit, though the political uproar, the result of his legal battles with the Wright brothers, who regarded him as a wildcatter and a totally unoriginal man, was not to go unnoticed. The restitution of the Flyer, the first aircraft of the Wright brothers, from South Kensington Science Museum to the Smithsonian Institute at Washington did not happen until 1948 when it was replaced at Kensington with a replica made by students of the de Havilland Technical School. The story of aircraft development is full of legal entanglements and bitter hostilities with men who should have known better than waste their time considering how to oust their opponents and competitors. Even now, the battles are frequent, especially in commercial aviation.

Wilbur, the introvert, and Orville, the extrovert, Wright were true products of America, and they were the first men to achieve the controlled flight of an aircraft. The sons of a bishop at Dayton, Ohio, they first became a team when they produced and sold a newspaper, then turned to the manufacture and maintenance of bicycles. With money gained from these enterprises, they now had the chance of devoting more time to aviation experiments. Both worked in a fever of non-technical enthusiasm, but very soon the science of the subject began to grip them, and they made more than a thousand trips in three gliders which they built for themselves. At last, with construction of the Flyer, in 1903 at Kittyhawk on the coast of North Carolina, Orville piloted them through the air. As they had envisaged, the basic elements of flight were lift, propulsion and a control system by which the twisting of the wing tips and rudder turning could produce turns, climb and dive.

Orville Wright’s account of that first flight can be presented in the words of his report to the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain:

"On the morning of December 17 between the hours of 10.30 o’clock and noon, four flights were made, two by Mr. Orville Wright, and two by Mr. Wilbur Wright. The starts were all made from a point on the levels, and about 200 feet west of our camp, which is located about a quarter of a mile north of the Kill Devil Sand Hill, in Dare County, North Carolina. The wind at the time of the flights had a velocity of twenty-seven miles an hour at 10 o’clock, and twenty-four miles an hour at noon, as recorded by the anemometer at the Kitty Hawk weather bureau station. This anemometer is 30 feet from the ground. Our own measurements, made with a hand-anemometer at a height of four feet from the ground, showed a velocity of about 22 miles when the first flight was made, and 20½ miles at the time of the last one. The flights were directly against the wind. Each time the machine started from the level ground by its own power alone, with no assistance from gravity or any other source whatever. After a run of about 40 feet along a mono-rail track, which held the machine eight inches from the ground, it rose from the track and, under the direction of the operator, climbed upward on an inclined course till a height of 8 or 10 feet from the ground was reached, after which a course was kept as near horizontal as the wind gusts and the limited skill of the operator would permit. Into the teeth of a December gale the Flyer made its way forward at a speed of 10 miles an hour over the ground, and 30 to 35 miles an hour through the air. It had previously been decided that, for reasons of personal safety, these first trials should be made as close to the ground as possible. The height chosen was scarcely sufficient for manoeuvring in so gusty a wind and with no previous acquaintance with the conduct of the machine and its controlling mechanisms. Consequently the first flight was short. The succeeding flights rapidly increased in length and at the fourth trial a flight of 59 seconds was made, in which time the machine flew a little more than a half-mile through the air and a distance of 852 feet over the ground. The landing was due to a slight error of judgement on the part of the operator. After passing over a little hummock of sand, in attempting to bring the machine down to the desired height, the operator turned the rudder too far, and the machine turned downward more quickly than had been expected. The reverse movement of the rudder was a fraction of a second too late to prevent the machine from touching the ground and thus ending the flight. The whole occurrence occupied little, if any, more than one second of time.

Only those who are acquainted with practical aeronautics can appreciate the difficulties of attempting the first trials of a flying machine in a 25-mile gale. As winter was already set in, we should have postponed our trials to a more favourable season, but for the fact that we were determined, before returning home, to know whether the machine possessed sufficient power to fly, sufficient strength to withstand the shock of landings, and sufficient capacity of control to make flights safe in boisterous winds, as well as in calm air. When these points had been definitely established, we at once packed our goods and returned home, knowing that the age of the flying machine had come at last.

Looking back to the first Wright glider, this was a biplane with about 165 square feet area and embodied in it was the Chanute design which had been successful in France, though many of Chanute’s ideas for the tail plane assembly had to be scrapped. The 1902 Wright glider was built with two fixed vertical fins in place of the Chanute tail. Showing an area of 305 square feet, it had a superior staying power, though during banking it was apt to go into an oblique spin, a fact which nearly cost Orville Wright his life on more than one occasion. Because of such near-accidents a device to combat the tendency to bank obliquely was introduced. The rear fin was made movable and linked with the wing so that one acted against the other. All that now remained was the embodiment in the glider of