The Great World War 1914–1945: 1. Lightning Strikes Twice. John Bourne

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СКАЧАТЬ do this an air force required pilots who were prepared to take risks and to operate in an offensive manner. The canard ‘the best form of defence is attack’ was expected to be an unconscious part of a fighter pilot’s character. This applied across national boundaries in both World Wars; fighter pilots were required to be aggressive to be successful – and that success might be measured on occasion by whether they lived or died. Aggression could, and did, bring casualties when applied recklessly. Pilots also needed to judge when to be aggressive and when not to be. There was little room for men who were unable to think quickly and press home the advantage when they had it. This did not preclude some degree of fellow-feeling for enemy pilots. Most preferred it when the pilot of an aircraft they destroyed escaped alive. Arthur Rhys-Davids, the conqueror of Werner Voss, was heard to express his dismay that he was unable to have brought him down alive. Mannock, on the other hand, was a notable exception to the vague bonds of comradeship that fighter pilots had towards one another, and was not the only one. Pilots with these sentiments tended to be exceptions: even though the Vietnam war ‘ace’ Randall Cunningham argued that it was better to go into battle with some ‘hate in your heart’, this did not extend in either war to attacking a defeated opponent on the ground or in a parachute. Although this did happen, pilots from both sides on the Western front (in both wars) generally regarded such actions as unacceptable.

      Whether an ‘ace’ or simply a regular squadron flyer, the fighter pilot has always been slightly apart from other warriors. Aggression, teamwork, popular recognition and adulation combined with danger, fear and the random nature of simple fate to make the fighter pilot’s task demanding and different. Whether German, American or British, whether fighting in the First or Second World War, or whether flying a Fokker Triplane or Supermarine Spitfire, the fighter pilot’s experience was remarkably similar. The nature of their task made it so.

      Notes on contributors

      Dr David Jordan, Joint Services Command and Staff College, Bracknell, UK

      Dr Jordan is a Lecturer at King’s College London, based at the Joint Services Command and Staff College. He was educated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and the University of Birmingham, where he took his doctorate. He specialises in air power and international relations and is currently writing a book on the development of tactical air power in the First World War.

      Recommended reading

      Gould Lee, Arthur, No Parachute: A Fighter Pilot in World War I (London: Jarrolds, 1969)

      Lewis, Cecil, Sagittarius Rising (London: Greenhill Books, 1993 (1936))

      Liddle, Peter H., The Airman’s War 1914–1918 (Poole: Blandford, 1987)

      Richey, Paul, Fighter Pilot: A personal record of the campaign in France, 1939–1940 (London: Leo Cooper, 1990)

      Shaw, Robert L., Fighter Combat: Tactics and Manoeuvring (Annapolis: Naval Institute 1985, and Wellingborough: Patrick Stephens Limited, 1986)

      Sims, Edward H., Fighter Tactics and Strategy, 1914–1970 (London: Cassell, 1972)

      Spick, Mike, The Ace Factor: Air Combat and the Role of Situational Awareness (Shrewsbury: Airlife, 1988)

Chapter 6

       War in the air: the bomber crew

      Christina Goulter

      ‘The principal operational elements in the strategic air offensive are: first, the calibre of the crews, which is a question of selection, training, experience, leadership and fighting spirit; secondly, the performance of the aircraft and of the equipment and bases upon which they depend; thirdly, the weather; fourthly, the tactical methods and, fifthly, the nature of the enemy opposition.’¹

      The authors of the British official history, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, 1939–1945, which remains the best single work on the subject, acknowledged the importance of the human element in this campaign. This acknowledgement was overdue. The decades following the Second World War were dominated by interest in the technological and scientific contributions to Allied victory, and the development of nuclear weapons merely reinforced the idea that science had done away with the need for the clash of massed armies. The idea that all operational problems could be subjected to and solved by scientific principles and the application of technology was a particularly strong thread in US military thinking after 1945, and this has persisted, in spite of the Vietnam experience, which demonstrated that the hi-tech nation does not always win. In Britain such ideas were less strong, for reasons of economy and the fact that the nation was engaged in more counter-insurgency and brush-fire wars, but in both countries there was a tendency to de-emphasise the contribution of the individual and to emphasise the big picture, in which nuclear strategy in a bi-polar world was the prime concern.

      Although Vietnam was not Britain’s war, it had a profound effect on the way most of the world has thought about war, especially its human face. So, the ground was fertile for the proliferation of autobiographical and semi-autobiographical accounts of individual war experience, especially from the pens of the Second World War’s aviators. What has been lacking, however, is the type of study that examines aircrew experience in the round: what motivated men, in general, to volunteer for aircrew service; whether their training equipped them adequately for the job they had to do; the contrast between expectation and combat reality; combat stress; and, finally, the re-adjustment to civilian life.

      These are universal questions, which are valid for any combat flying under consideration, and, because we are dealing with the human element, there are striking similarities between apparently very different wars. Thus we are able to observe many parallels between the aircrew experiences of the First and Second World Wars, even though, some would say, the technological advances during the intervening time meant that the nature of the war differed substantially between the two conflicts.

      Whether we are talking about historical examples or today, a prime motivation for joining the air force has undoubtedly been the glamour associated with aviation. This was certainly true of the First and Second World Wars, when aviation was a new and exciting science, and interest in the ‘third dimension’ pervaded society at large. For those who were coming from Allied countries, there was the added excitement of an overseas deployment. A New Zealand pilot reflected that he and his friends joining the Royal New Zealand Air Force in 1939 were ‘moved more by the spirit of adventure’ and a need to validate their manhood ‘than by the burnings of patriotism’, although, invariably, this developed and ‘loyalty shone bright’.²

      What is also almost universally true is that men volunteered for flying duties because they had their sights on becoming pilots, rather than other aircrew trades. To be a pilot was glamorous; to be an observer, navigator, wireless operator or gunner was not. So, almost without exception, those who joined to fly joined to be pilots, and, within the pilot hierarchy, to be a fighter pilot always held the greatest cachet. However, there were no guarantees in either the First or Second World War that those wishing to be pilots would necessarily end up as pilots. Depending on the aircrew selection process, or simple supply and demand, a pilot candidate could find himself channelled into other aircrew trades.

      Those who volunteered to fly in one of the air services in the First World War had witnessed aviation’s extraordinarily rapid development, from the Wright Brothers’ 1903 flight of a few hundred yards to bombing aircraft capable of round journeys of hundreds of miles by the middle СКАЧАТЬ