"Aeroplanes and airships would have given us an enormous advantage
against the Boers. The difficulty of laying ambushes and traps for
isolated columns--a practice at which the enemy were peculiarly
adept--would have been very much greater. Some at least of the
regrettable reverses which marked the early stages of the campaign could
in all probability have been avoided."
So wrote Lord Roberts, our veteran field-marshal, in describing the
progress of the Army during recent years. The great soldier was a man
who always looked ahead. After his great and strenuous career, instead
of taking the rest which he had so thoroughly earned, he spent laborious
days travelling up and down the country, warning the people of danger
ahead; exhorting them to learn to drill and to shoot; thus attempting to
lay the foundation of a great civic army. But his words, alas! fell upon
deaf ears--with results so tragic as hardly to bear dwelling upon.
But even "Bobs", seer and true prophet as he was, could hardly have
foreseen the swift and dramatic development of war in the air. He had
not long been laid to rest when aeroplanes began to be talked about,
and, what is more important, to be built, not in hundreds but in
thousands. At the time of writing, when we are well into the fourth year
of the war, it seems almost impossible for the mind to go back to the
old standards, and to take in the statement that the number of machines
which accompanied the original Expeditionary Force to France was eighty!
Even if one were not entirely ignorant of the number and disposition
of the aerial fighting forces over the world-wide battle-ground,
the Defence of the Realm Act would prevent us from making public the
information. But when, more than a year ago, America entered the war,
and talked of building 10,000 aeroplanes, no one gasped. For even in
those days one thought of aeroplanes not in hundreds but in tens of
thousands.
Before proceeding to give a few details of the most recent work of the
Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service, mention must be made of
the armament of the aeroplane. In the first place, it should be stated
that the war has gradually evolved three distinct types of flying
machine: (1) the "general-purposes" aeroplane; (2) the giant bomb
dropper; (3) the small single-seater "fighter".
As the description implies, the first machine fills a variety of roles,
and the duties of its pilots grow more manifold as the war progresses.
"Spotting" for the artillery far behind the enemy's lines; "searching"
for ammunition dumps, for new dispositions by the enemy of men,
material, and guns; attacking a convoy or bodies of troops on the march;
sprinkling new trenches with machine-gun fire, or having a go at an
aerodrome--any wild form of aerial adventure might be included in the
diary of the pilot of a "general-purposes" machine.
It was in order to clear the air for these activities that the "fighter"
came into being, and received its baptism of fire at the Battle of the
Somme. At first the idea of a machine for fighting only, was ridiculed.
Even the Germans, who, in a military sense, were awake and plotting when
other nations were dozing in the sunshine of peace, did not think ahead
and imagine the aerial duel between groups of aeroplanes armed with
machine-guns. But soon the mastery of the air became of paramount
importance, and so the fighter was evolved. Nobly, too, did the men
of all nations rise to these heroic and dangerous opportunities. The
Germans were the first to boast of the exploits of their fighting
airmen, and to us in Britain the names of Immelmann and Bolcke were
known long before those of any of our own fighters. The former claimed
not far short of a hundred victims before he was at last brought low
in June, 1916. His letters to his family were published soon after his
death, and do not err on the side of modesty.
On 11th August, 1915, he writes: "There is not much doing here. Ten
minutes after Bolcke and I go up, there is not an enemy airman to be
seen. The English seem to have lost all pleasure in flying. They come
over very, very seldom."
When allowance has been made for German brag, these statements throw
some light upon the standard of British flying at a comparatively early
date in the war. Certainly no German airman could have made any such
complaint a year later. In 1917 the German airmen were given all the
fighting they required and a bit over.
Certainly a very different picture is presented by the dismal letters
which Fritz sent home during the great Ypres offensive of August, 1917.
In these letters he bewails the fact that one after another of his
batteries is put out of action owing to the perfect "spotting" of the
British airmen, and arrives at the sad conclusion that Germany has lost
her superiority in the air.
An account has already been given of the skill and prowess of Captain
Ball. On his own count--and he was not the type of man to exaggerate his
prowess--he found he had destroyed fifty machines, although actually he
got the credit for forty-one. This slight discrepancy may be explained
by the scrupulous care which is taken to check the official returns.
The air fighter, though morally certain of the destruction of a certain
enemy aeroplane, has to bring independent witnesses to substantiate his
claim, and when out "on his own" this is no easy matter. Without this
check, though occasionally it acts harshly towards the pilot, there
might be a tendency to exaggerate enemy losses, owing to the difficulty
of distinguishing between an aeroplane put out of action and one the
pilot of which takes a sensational "nose dive" to get out of danger.
One of the most striking illustrations of the growth of the aeroplane
as a fighting force is afforded by the great increase in the heights
at which they could scout, take photographs, and fight. In Sir John
French's dispatches mention is made of bomb-dropping from 3000 feet. In
these days the aerial battleground has been extended to anything up
to 20,000 feet. Indeed, so brisk has been the duel between gun and
aeroplane, that nowadays airmen have often to seek the other margin of
safety, and can defy the anti-aircraft guns only by flying so low as
just to escape the ground. The general armament of a "fighter" consists
of a maxim firing through the propeller, and a Lewis gun at the rear on
a revolving gun-ring.
It is pleasant to record that the Allies kept well ahead of the enemy in
their use of aerial photography. Before a great offensive some thousands
of photographs had to be taken of enemy dispositions by means of cameras
built into the aeroplanes.
Plates were found to stand the rough usage better than films, and not
for the first time in the history of mechanics the man beat the machine,
a skilful operator being found superior to the ingenious automatic
plate-fillers which had been devised.
The counter-measure to this ruthless exposure of plans was camouflage.
As if by magic-tents, huts, dumps, guns began, as it were, to sink into
the scenery. The magicians were men skilled in the use of brush and
paint-pot, and several leading figures in the world of art lent their
services to the military authorities as directors of this campaign of
concealment. In this connection it is interesting to note that both
Admiralty and War Office took measures to record the pictorial side
of the Great War. Special commissions were given to a notable band of
artists working in their different "lines". An abiding record of the
great struggle will be afforded by the black-and-white work of Muirhead
Bone, James M'Bey, and Charles Pears; the portraits, landscapes, and
seascapes of Sir John Lavery, Philip Connard, Norman Wilkinson, and
Augustus John, who received his commission from the Canadian Government.