Aircraft and Submarines Part 12

Incredible as it may seem the sh.e.l.l which hit his machine also tore through the leg--luckily without exploding--unknown to Lieutenant H. Probably the force of the blow and excitement of the moment caused it to pa.s.s unnoticed and the torn nature of the wound helped to close the arteries and prevent his bleeding to death. He recovered, and though no longer flying is still engaged in doing his duty for the duration of the war.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Raid on a Troop Train by John E. Whiting._]

The courage and dash of the American aviators, serving with the French Army, led the Allies to expect great things of our flying corps which should be organized immediately after our declaration of war. About the time of that declaration Major L. W. B. Rees, of the British Flying Corps, came to the United States for the purpose of giving to our authorities the benefit of British experience in raising and equipping aerial fleets and in the development of the most efficient tactics. Major Rees in an official statement set forth many facts of general interest concerning the various flying services of the belligerent armies. The British, he said, fly on three levels with three different kinds of machines. Nearest the ground, about six thousand feet up, are the artillery directors who hover about cutting big figure eights above the enemy trenches and flash back directions by wireless to the British artillerists. These observers are, of course, exposed to attack from anti-aircraft guns, the effective range of which had by the middle of war become as great as ten thousand feet. Yet, as has already been noted, the amount of execution done by these weapons was surprisingly small.

The observers are protected from attack from above, first by the heavy fighting planes, flying at ten thousand feet, carrying two men to the plane and able to keep the air for four hours at a time at a speed of 110 miles an hour. They are supposed to use every possible vigilance to keep the enemy's fighters away from the slower and busy observing machines. In this they are seconded by the lighter one-man fighting machines which cruise about at a height of fifteen thousand feet at a speed of 130 miles an hour and able to make a straight upward dash at the rate of ten thousand feet in ten minutes. The aviators of these latter machines came to describe their task as "ceiling work," suggesting that they operated at the very top of the world's great room. They are able to keep the air only about two hours at a time.

Americans, perhaps, gave exaggerated importance to the work of the Lafayette Escadrille which was manned wholly by American boys, and which, while in service from the very beginning of the war, was the first section of the French Army permitted to display the flag of the United States in battle after our declaration of war. It was made up, in the main, of young Americans of good family and independent means, most of them being college students who had laid down their books for the more exciting life of an airman. They paid heavily in the toll of death for their adventure and for the conviction which led them to take the side of democracy and right in the struggle against autocracy and barbarism months, even years, before their nation finally determined to join with them. In the first two and a half years of the war, seven of the aviators in this comparatively small body lost their lives.

Harvard College was particularly well represented in the American Flying Corps--although this is a proper and pertinent place to say that the sympathy shown for the allied cause by the young collegians of the United States was a magnificent evidence of the lofty righteousness of their convictions and the spirit of democracy with which they looked out upon the world. When the leash was taken off by the declaration of war by the United States the college boys flocked to training camps and enlistment headquarters in a way that bade fair to leave those inst.i.tutions of learning without students for some years to come.

But to hark back to Harvard, it had in the Lafayette Escadrille five men in 1916; three of these, Kiffen Rockwell, Norman Prince, and Victor Chapman, were killed in that year. A letter published in _Harvard Volunteers in Europe_ tells of the way these young gladiators started the day's work:

Rockwell called me up at three: "Fine day, fine day, get up!" It was very clear. We hung around at Billy's [Lieutenant Thaw] and took chocolate made by his ordonnance. Hall and the Lieutenant were guards on the field; but Thaw, Rockwell, and I thought we would take _a tour chez les Boches_. Being the first time the _mechanaux_ were not there and the machine gun rolls not ready.

However it looked misty in the Vosges, so we were not hurried.

"Rendezvous over the field at a thousand metres," shouted Kiffen.

I nodded, for the motor was turning; and we sped over the field and up.

[Ill.u.s.tration: U. & U.

_A Burning Balloon, Photographed from a Parachute by the Escaping Balloonist._]

In my little c.o.c.kpit from which my shoulders just protrude I have several diversions besides flying. The compa.s.s, of course, and the map I keep tucked in a tiny closet over the reservoir before my knees, a small clock and one altimetre. But most important is the contour, showing revolutions of the motor which one is constantly regarding as he moves the manettes of gasoline and gas back and forth. To husband one's fuel and tease the motor to round eleven takes attention, for the carburetor changes with the weather and the alt.i.tude.... The earth seemed hidden under a fine web such as the Lady of Shalott wove. Soft purple in the west, changing to shimmering white in the east. Under me on the left the Vosges like rounded sand dunes cushioned up with velvety light and dark ma.s.ses (really forests), but to the south standing firmly above the purple cloth like icebergs shone the Alps. My!

they look steep and jagged. The sharp blue shadows on their western slopes emphasized the effect. One mighty group standing aloof to the west--Mount Blanc perhaps. Ah, there are quant.i.ties of worm-eaten fields my friends the trenches--and that town with the ca.n.a.l going through it must be M----. Right beside the capote of my engine, showing through the white cloth a silver snake--the Rhine!

What, not a quarter to six, and I left the field at five!

Thirty-two hundred metres. Let's go north and have a look at the map.

While thus engaged a black puff of smoke appeared behind my tail and I had the impression of hearing a piece of iron hiss by.

"Must have got my range first shot!" I surmised, and making a steep bank piqued heavily. "There, I have lost them now." The whole art of avoiding sh.e.l.ls is to pay no attention till they get your range and then dodge away, change alt.i.tude, and generally avoid going in a straight line. In point of fact, I could see bunches of exploding sh.e.l.ls up over my right shoulder not a kilometre off. They continued to sh.e.l.l that section for some time; the little b.a.l.l.s of smoke thinning out and merging as they crossed the lines.

In the earlier days of the war, when the American aviators were still few, their deeds were widely recounted in their home country, and their deaths were deplored as though a personal loss to many of their countrymen. Later they went faster and were lost in the daily reports. Among those who had early fixed his personality in the minds of those who followed the fortunes of the little band of Americans flying in France was Kiffen Rockwell, mentioned in an earlier paragraph, and one of the first to join the American escadrille. Rockwell was in the war from sincere conviction of the righteousness of the Allies' cause.

"I pay my part for Lafayette, and Rochambeau," he said proudly, when asked what he was doing in a French uniform flying for France. And pay he did though not before making the Germans pay heavily for their part. Once, flying alone over Thann, he came upon a German scout. Without hesitation the battle was on. Rockwell's machine was the higher, had the better position. As aerial tactics demanded he dived for the foe, opening fire as soon as he came within thirty or forty yards. At his fourth shot the enemy pilot fell forward in his seat and his machine fell heavily to earth. He lighted behind the German lines much to the victor's disgust, for it was counted a higher achievement to bring your foe to earth in your own territory.

But Rockwell was able to pursue his victim far enough to see the wreck burst into flames.

Though often wounded, Rockwell scorned danger. He would go into action so bandaged that he seemed fitter to go to an hospital. He was always on the attack--"shoved his gun into the enemy's face" as his fellows in the escadrille expressed it. So in September, 1916, he went out after a big German machine, he saw flying in French territory. He had but little difficulty in climbing above it, and then dashed down in his usual impetuous manner, his machine gun blazing as he came on. But the German was of heavier metal mounting two machine guns. Just as to onlookers it seemed that the two machines would crash together, the wings of one side of Rockwell's plane suddenly collapsed and he fell like a stone between the lines.

The Germans turned their guns on the pile of wreckage where he lay, but French gunners ran out and brought his body in. His breast was all blown to pieces with an explosive bullet--criminal, of course, barbarous and uncivilized, but an everyday practice of the Germans.

Rockwell was given an impressive funeral. All the British pilots, and five hundred of their men marched, and the bier was followed by a battalion of French troops. Over and around the little French graveyard aviators flew dropping flowers. In later days less ceremony attended the last scene of an American aviator's career.

Another American aviator, also a Harvard man, who met death in the air, was Victor Chapman of New York, a youth of unusual charm, high ideals, and indomitable courage. At the very outbreak of the war he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion--a rough entourage for a college-bred man. Into the Foreign Legion drifted everything that was doubtful, and many that were criminal. No questions were asked of those who sought its hospitable ranks, and readers of Ouida's novel _Under Two Flags_ will recall that it enveloped in its convenient obscurity British lordlings and the lowest of Catalonian thieves. But in time of actual war its personnel was less mixed, and Chapman's letters showed him serving there contentedly as pointer of a mitrailleuse. But not for long. Most of the spirited young Americans who entered the French Army aspired to serve in the aviation corps, and Chapman soon was transferred to that field.

There he developed into a most daring flyer. On one occasion, with a bad scalp wound, after a brush with four German machines, he made his landing with his machine so badly wrecked that he had to hold together the broken ends of a severed control with one hand, while he steered with the other. Instead of laying up for the day he had his mechanician repair his machine while a surgeon repaired him, then, patched up together, man and machine took the air again in search for the Boches.

In June, 1916, though still suffering from a wound in the head, he started in his machine to carry some oranges to a comrade lying desperately wounded in a hospital some miles away. On the way he saw in the distance behind the German lines two French airmen set upon by an overwhelming force of Germans. Instantly he was off to the a.s.sistance of his friends, plunging into so unequal a fight that even his coming left the other Americans outnumbered. But he had scarce a chance to strike a blow. Some chance shot from a German gun put him out of action. All that the other two Americans, Lufbery and Prince, knew was that they saw a French machine come flying to their aid, and suddenly tip and fall away to earth. Until nightfall came and Chapman failed to return none was sure that he was the victim.

The part played by young Americans as volunteers for France before the United States entered upon the war was gallant and stimulating to national pride. It showed to the world--and to our own countrymen who needed the lesson as much as any--that we had among our youth scores who, moved by high ideals, stood ready to risk their lives for a sentiment--stood ready to brave the myriad discomforts of the trenches, the bursting shrapnel, the mutilating liquid fire, the torturing gas that German autocracy should be balked of its purpose of dominating the world.

And the service of these boys aided far more than they knew. The fact that our countrymen in numbers were flying for France kept ever before the American people the vision of that war in the air of which poets and philosophers had dreamed for ages. It brought home to our people the importance of aviation before our statesmen could begin to see it. It set our boys to reading of aircraft, building model planes, haunting the few aviation fields which at the time our country possessed. And it finally so filled the consciousness of our people with conviction of the supreme importance of aviation as an arm of the national armed service that long before the declaration of war the government was embarra.s.sed by the flood of volunteers seeking to be enrolled in the flying forces of the nation.

CHAPTER IX

THE UNITED STATES AT WAR

The entrance of the United States upon the war was the signal for a most active agitation of the question of overwhelming the enemy with illimitable fleets of aircraft. Though the agitation was most vociferous in this country whence it was hoped the enormous new fleets of aircraft would come, it was fomented and earnestly pressed by our Allies. France sent a deputation of her leading flyers over to supervise the instruction of our new pilots. England contributed experts to advise as to the construction of our machines. The most comprehensive plans were urged upon Congress and the Administration for the creation of a navy of the air. A bill for an initial appropriation of $640,000,000, for aircraft purposes alone, was pa.s.sed and one for a Department of Aeronautics to be established, co-ordinate with those of War and the Navy, its secretary holding a seat in the cabinet, was introduced in Congress. Many of the most eminent retired officers of the navy joined in their support.

Retired officers only because officers in active service were estopped from political agitation.

There was every possible reason for this great interest in the United States in wartime aviation. The nation had long been shamefaced because the development of the heavier-than-air machines, having their origin undoubtedly in the inventive genius of Professor Langley and the Wrights, had been taken away from us by the more alert governments of France and Germany. The people were ready to buy back something of our lost prestige by building the greatest of air fleets at the moment when it should exercise the most determinative influence upon the war.

But more. We entered upon the war in our chronic state of unpreparedness. We were without an army and without equipment for one. To raise, equip, and drill an army of a million, the least number that would have any appreciable effect upon the outcome of the war, would take months. When completed we would have added only to the numerical superiority of the Allies on the Western Front. The quality of a novel and decisive contribution to the war would be lacking.

So too it was with our navy. The British Navy was amply adequate to deal with the German fleet should the latter ever leave its prudent retreat behind Helgoland and in the bases of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven.

True it was not capable of crushing out altogether the submarine menace, but it did hold the German underwater boats down to a fixed average of ships destroyed, which was far less than half of what the Germans had antic.i.p.ated. In this work our ships, especially our destroyers, took a notable part.

The argument for a monster fleet of fighting aircraft, thus came to the people of the United States in a moment of depression and perplexity. By land the Germans had dug themselves in, holding all of Belgium and the thousands of square miles of France they had won in their first dash to the Marne. What they had won swiftly and cheaply could only be regained slowly and at heavy cost. True, the Allies were, day by day, driving them back from their position, but the cost was disheartening and the progress but slow.

By sea the Germans refused to bring their fleet to battle with their foes. But from every harbour of Belgium, and from Wilhelmshaven and Kiel, they sent out their sinister submarines to prey upon the commerce of the world--neutral as well as belligerent. Against them the navies of the world were impotent. To the threat that by them Germany would starve England into cowering surrender, the only answer was the despairing effort to build new ships faster than the submarines could sink those afloat--even though half a million tons a month were sent to the bottom in wasteful destruction.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo by Levick.

_A Cap.r.o.ni Biplane Circling the Woolworth Building._]

Faced by these disheartening conditions, wondering what they might do that could be done quickly and aid materially in bringing the war to a triumphant conclusion, the American people listened eagerly to the appeals and arguments of the advocates of a monster aerial fleet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: International Film Service.

_Cruising at 2000 Feet._

_One Biplane photographed from another._]

Listen [said these advocates], we show you a way to spring full panoplied into the war, and to make your force felt with your first stroke. We are not preaching dreadnoughts that take four years to build. We are not asking for a million men taking nearly a year to gather, equip, drill, and transport to France, in imminent danger of destruction by the enemy's submarines every mile of the way.

We ask you for a cheap, simple device of wood, wire, and cloth, with an engine to drive it. All its parts are standardized. In a few weeks the nation can be equipped to turn out 2000 of them weekly. We want within the year 100,000 of them. We do not ask for a million men. We want 10,000 bright, active, hardy, plucky American boys between 20 and 25 years of age. We want to give them four months' intensive training before sending them into the air above the enemy's lines. In time we shall want 25,000 to 35,000 but the smaller number will well do to open the campaign.

And what will they effect?

Do you know that to-day the eyes of an army are its airplanes?

Cavalry has disappeared practically. If a general wishes to pick out a weak point in his enemy's line to a.s.sault he sends out airmen to find it. If he is annoyed by the fire of some distant unseen battery over the hills and far away he sends a man in an airplane who brings back its location, its distance, and perhaps a photograph of it in action. If he suspects that his foe is abandoning his trenches, or getting ready for an attack, the ready airmen bring in the facts.

And of course the enemy's airmen serve their side in the same manner. They spy out what their foe is doing, and so far as their power permits prevent him from seeing what they are doing.

Now suppose one side has an enormous preponderance of aircraft--six to one, let us say. It is not believed, for example, that at this moment Germany has more than 10,000 aircraft on the whole western front. Let us imagine that through the enterprise of the United States our Allies were provided with 25,000 on one sector which we intended to make the scene of an attack on the foe. Say the neighbourhood of Arras and Lille. For days, weeks perhaps, we would be drawing troops toward this sector from every part of the line. Through the reports of spies the enemy's suspicions would be aroused. It is the business of an efficient general to be suspicious. He would send out his airplanes to report on the activities of the other side. Few would come back. None would bring a useful report. For every German plane that showed above the lines three Allied planes would be ready to attack and destroy it or beat it back. The air would be full of Allied airmen--the great bombing planes flying low and inundating the trenches with bombs, and the troops on march with the deadly flechettes. Over every German battery would soar the observation plane indicating by tinsel or smoke bombs the location of the guns, or even telegraphing it back by wireless to the Allied batteries safe in positions which the blinded enemy could never hope to find. Above all in myriads would be soaring the swift fighting scouts, the Bleriots, Nieuports, Moranes or perhaps some new American machine to-day unknown. Let the wing of a Boche but show above the smoke and they would be upon him in hordes, beating him to the ground, enveloping him in flames, annihilating him before he had a chance to observe, much less to report.

What think you would be the result on that sector of the battle line? Why the foe would be cut to pieces, demolished, obliterated. Blinded, he would be unrelentingly punished by an adversary all eyes. Writhing under the concentrated fire of a thousand guns he could make no response, for his own guns could not find the attacking batteries. Did he think to flee? His retreating columns would be marked down by the relentless scouts in the air, and the deadly curtain of fire from well-coached batteries miles away would sweep every road with death. If in desperation he sought to attack he would do so ignorant whether he were not hurling his regiments against the strongest part of the Allied line, and with full knowledge of the fact that though he was blinded they had complete information of his strength and dispositions.

The argument impressed itself strongly upon the mind of the country.