Thursday Book

Winged Victory - V.M. Yeates

Tom Cundall is a pilot flying Sopwith Camel scout planes in France, 1918. The novel methods of aerial warfare have stabilised somewhat, and with four months experience, he's avoided becoming part of the terrifyingly large fraction of flyers who die during training or on their first few missions. It's not a pleasant lark, certainly, and Tom is no hero or 'jingo', but he's confident that he can see out a war that, after the entry of America, seems to be close to its finish.

Of course, with American troops pouring into Europe, Germany knows that it will have to move soon if it is to stand any chance of winning. When the inevitable offensive arrives, Camel squadrons are ordered to bomb and strafe the advancing troops. Suddenly, Tom's experience in the air counts for nothing, suvival becoming a matter of simply failing to occupy the same point in space and time as any of the thousands of machinegun bullets being fired from the ground. For one reason or another, it seems that Tom's last few months flying on the Front will be the ones to see him physically or psychologically undone.

Yeates wrote Winged Victory in 1933, hospitalised for the tuberculosis that would kill him a year later. The book was initially praised, and then forgotten; briefly revived by pilots during the Battle of Britain, who adored its uncompromising realism; and then out of print for the rest of the century. Only after seventy years of praise from historians citing it as an honest, realistic and almost autobiographical novel, did it finally seem to catch on, now readily available to anyone interested in the First Air War. For example: me.

And if that is your interest, this book will certainly see you well served, but it deserves to be far more widely read than that. Although the operational details of the Royal Flying Corps (and then, midway through the book, the Royal Air Force) are fascinating, they're merely the backdrop for a deeply human story that mixes satirical farce with the blackest of humour, and the most terrible tragedies with a spark of vicious wit. It's a platonic love story between three fast friends, whose brilliant and terrible philosophies and politics make up pages of inspired or ridiculous banter, and whose tragedies are heart-wrenching. It's a portrait of the toll of war on lives and minds. And its a historical indictment of the way that millions of men across Europe suddenly started killing one another, as efficiently as possible, for four long years.

Top 25 WW1 aces and their ages

Name	Age
1.Manfred von Richthofen	25 when killed
2.René Fonck	24 at end of war
3.Edward Mannock	30 when killed
4.Billy Bishop	24 at end of war
5.Ernst Udet	22 at end of war
6.Raymond Collishaw	24 at end of war
7.James McCudden	23 when killed
8.Andrew Beauchamp-Proctor	24 at end of war
9.Erich Loewenhardt	21 when killed
10.Donald MacLaren	25 at end of war
11.Georges Guynemer	22 when killed
12.William George Barker	24 at end of war
13.Josef Jacobs	24 at end of war
14.Werner Voss	20 when killed
15.Robert A. Little	23 when killed
16.George McElroy	25 when killed
17.Fritz Rumey	27 when killed
18.Albert Ball	20 when killed
19.Rudolph Berthold	27 at end of war
20.Bruno Loerzer	27 at end of war
21.Paul Bäumer	22 at end of war
22.Tom F. Hazell	26 at end of war
23.Charles Nungesser	26 at end of war
24.Georges Madon	26 at end of war
25.Oswald Boelcke	25 when killed

Order as per Wikipedia. It was going to be the top 20 until I noticed I could get Nungesser and Boelcke on there too.

Edward Mannock was the oldest of this group, at 30. He was an exceptional pilot in a lot of ways, not least with the amount of effort he devoted to ensuring that the younger pilots under his command (who knew him simply as "Mick") were properly schooled in how to survive. His devotion to his comrades manifested as an intense hatred of German pilots, and his actions and beliefs were a stark contrast to the perception of the First Air War as chivalrous.

Albert Ball and Werner Voss are the youngest listed, both aged 20 when they were killed.

Voss was a close friend and rival of Manfred von Richthofen. His final dogfight became legendary, as he single-handedly held off a squadron of planes led by James McCudden, before finally being shot down. "His flying was wonderful," McCudden said of Voss, "his courage magnificent and in my opinion he is the bravest German airman whom it has been my privilege to see fight."

Ball was a loner who was valued highly for his propaganda value. He spent his time on the ground gardening by himself, and the letters he wrote home showed a young man struggling with the repressive nature of his role, and his growing unhappiness at killing so many pilots. He crashed while pursuing the Red Baron's brother, Lothar von Richthofen, although it's unclear who (if anyone) shot him down.

Thursday Book

Fighter Heroes of WWI - by Joshua Levine

Originally published under the less jingoistic title of 'On a Wing and a Prayer', this book explores the experiences of British (and, to a much lesser extent, German) fighter pilots in the First World War, in their own words. This focus on British forces seems strange given the often quite personal nature of air combat in this era, and it's definitely at odds with the subtitle of 'The extraordinary story of the pioneering airmen of the Great War'. As Levine has to admit, it was frequently Germans like Anthony Fokker, Oswald Boelcke and Manfred von Richthofen who did a lot of the pioneering.

Still, even if the book seems to be trying to sell itself on a nationalistic angle, Levine is a very effective documentarian. In the first couple of chapters he may overdo the quotations a bit (with more than enough lengthy stories of what random people were doing before joining the Royal Flying Corps), but that's just because he seems much more interested in conveying the lived experiences of WW1 flyers than trying to build any kind of wider narrative or theory.

In fact, Levine is so happy to relate these stories that he'll frequently support a tangential aside with accounts that pre-suppose the answers to the wider question he's supposed to be addressing. Still, he's nothing if not enthusiastic, and the book does, on the whole, take us through the development of aerial warfare from the bare-knuckle hops of early civilian planes to the organised attacks of Richthofen's brightly painted Flying Circus.

You won't be surprised by now to hear that this is a part of history that interests me greatly, and although it may not convey the same (subjective) high-level view of the conflict you'll find in, say, Peter Hart's Aces Falling, this is a very worthy addition to the genre.

Histories

So Geocities are closing, and although it has become something of a byword for ugly sites with Under Construction banners, Internet historians have been keen to remind us that there's an awful lot of culture and reference in there as well.

The only reason I'm writing about this is because yesterday I randomly found myself at a pretty good Geocities site about Oswald Boelcke (one of the first fighter pilots, the father of air combat tactics, the first ace, beloved mentor of Manfred von Richtofen...)

I haven't been to a Geocities site in years, and then the day before they all start going up in smoke, there I am, staring at that spammy sidebar and thinking, "Hey, this is a good site."

A Biplane

The British SE5a. Kind of the Sopwith Camel's steadier, less showy cousin.