The Mammoth Book of Fighter Pilots Read online

  THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF

  FIGHTER PILOTS

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  THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF

  FIGHTER PILOTS

  EDITED BY JON E. LEWIS

  WITH JULIAN JENKINS

  ROBINSON

  London

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  3 The Lanchesters

  162 Fulham Palace Road

  London W6 9ER

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2002

  Collection and editorial material copyright © J. Lewis-Stempel 2002

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

  Publication Data is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 1-84119-346-1

  eISBN 978-1-780-33272-7

  Printed and bound in the EU

  This one is for Alice Jenkins,

  Tristram and Freda Lewis-Stempel, all “ace” kids.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments & Sources

  Introduction

  THE WINGS START TO GROW Duncan Grinnell-Milne

  THE RED AIR FIGHTER Manfred von Richthofen

  BLUE NOSE William A. Bishop

  SAGITTARIUS RISING Cecil Lewis

  LETTERS HOME H. G. Downing

  FLYING FURY James McCudden

  DEATH FLIES FASTER Ernst Udet

  CRASHES AND COCKTAILS John McGavock Grider

  PRISONER OF WAR James Norman Hall

  A REGULAR DOG-FIGHT AND THE STRAFING OF A DRACHEN Eddie V. Rickenbacker

  ACTION Paul Richey

  BATTLE OF BRITAIN DIARY D.H. Wissler

  FINEST HOUR John Beard

  TALLY HO! Roger Hall

  SHALL I LIVE FOR A GHOST? Richard Hillary

  NIGHT FIGHTER Roderick Chisholm

  DOGSBODY James “Johnnie” Johnson

  THE FLYING TIGERS Claire L. Chennault

  TO KILL A MAN Gunther Bloemertz

  THE STRAITS OF MESSINA Johannes Steinhoff

  BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP “Pappy” Boyington

  HEAVY BABIES Heinz Knoke

  MISSION TO REGENSBURG Beirne Lay

  FLYING HIGH Chuck Yeager

  MARINE CRUSADER Bruce Martin

  NIGHT MISSION ON THE HO CHI MINH TRAIL Mark E. Berent

  SEA HARRIER OVER THE FALKLANDS Sharkey Ward

  INTERROGATION John Nichol

  APPENDIX I: GERMAN WAR BIRDS Anton H.G. Fokker

  APPENDIX II: DICTA BOELCKE

  APPENDIX III: FIGHTER ACES OF THE WORLD

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS & SOURCES

  The editor has made every effort to locate all persons having rights in the selections appearing in this anthology and to secure permission for reproduction of material from the holders of such rights. In the event of any errors being inadvertently made, these will be corrected in future editions. Queries regarding the use of material should be made to the editor c/o the publishers.

  “The Wings Starts to Grow” is an extract from Wind in the Wires, Duncan Grinnell-Milne, Mayflower Books Ltd, 1966. Copyright (C) Duncan Grinnell-Milne 1966.

  “The Red Air Fighter” is an extract from The Red Battle Flyer, Manfred von Richthofen, trans T. Ellis Barker, McBride & Co., 1918.

  “Blue Nose” is an extract from Winged Warfare, William A. Bishop, Pan Books Ltd., 1978. Copyright (C) Stanley M. Ulanoff 1967.

  “Sagittarius Rising” is an extract from Sagittarius Rising, Cecil Lewis, Peter Davies Ltd, 1966 Copyright (C) Cecil Lewis 1936.

  “Letters Home” by H.G. Downing, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum, London.

  “Flying Fury” is an extract from Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps, James McCudden, Aeroplane & General Publishing Co., 1940.

  “Death Flies Faster” is an extract from Ace of the Iron Cross, Ernst Udet, edited by Stanley M. Ulanoff, Doubleday & Co., 1970. Trans. Richard K. Riehn. Copyright (C) Stanley M. Ulanoff 1970.

  “Crashes & Cocktails” is an extract from War Birds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator (John McGavock Grider), John Hamilton Ltd, 1926.

  “Prisoner of War” is an extract from High Adventure, James Norman Hall, Houghton Mifflin, 1918.

  “A Regular Dog-Fight and the Strafing of a Drachen” is an extract from Fighting the Flying Circus, Captain Edward V. Rickenbacker, Stokes, 1919.

  “Action” is an extract from Fighter Pilot, Paul Richey, Pan Books Ltd, 1969. Copyright (C) Paul Richey 1969.

  “Battle of Britain Diary”, D.H. Wissler, unpublished diary, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum, London. Reprinted by permission of Edith Kup.

  “Finest Hour” by John Beard, quoted in Their Finest Hour, Allan A. Michie and Walter Graebner, Harcourt Brace, & Co., 1941.

  “Tally Ho!” is an extract from Clouds of Fear, Roger Hall, Bailey Brothers and Swinfen Ltd, 1975. Copyright (C) 1975 R.M.D. Hall.

  “Shall I Live For a Ghost?” is an extract from The Last Enemy, Richard Hillary, Macmillan & Co., 1943.

  “Night Fighter” is an extract from Cover of Darkness, Roderick Chisholm, Chatto & Windus, 1953.

 
“Dogsbody” is an extract from Wing Leader, “Johnnie Johnson”, Goodall Publications Ltd. 1990. Copyright (C) 1956, 1974, 1990 J.E. Johnson.

  “The Flying Tigers” is an extract from Way of a Fighter, Claire L. Chennault, Putnam, 1949. Copyright (C) Claire L. Chennault 1949.

  “To Kill a Man” is an extract from Heaven Next Stop, Gunther Bloemertz, William Kimber & Co. Ltd., 1953. Copyright (C) William Kimber & Co. Ltd. 1953.

  “The Straits of Messina” is an extract from Straits of Messina, Johannes Steinhoff, André Deutsch Ltd., 1973. Copyright (C) Paul List Verlag KG 1969. Translation copyright (C) André Deutsch Ltd. 1971.

  “Baa Baa Black Sheep” is an extract from Baa Baa Black Sheep, “Pappy” Boyington, Putnam, 1958. Copyright (C) Gregory Boyington 1958.

  “Heavy Babies” is an extract from I Flew for the Führer, Heinz Knoke, Corgi, 1956. trans John Ewing.

  “Mission to Regensburg”, Beirne Lay, is extracted from Bombs Away!, edited by Stanley M. Ulanoff, Doubleday, 1971.

  “Flying High” is an extract from Yeager, General Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos, Century Hutchinson, 1986. Copyright (C) Yeager Inc. 1985. Reprinted by permission of Random House Group Ltd.

  “Marine Crusader” is extracted from Life on the Line, Philip Chinnery, Arrow Books, 1990. Copyright (C) Philip Chinnery 1988.

  “Night Mission on the Ho Chi Minh Trail” by Mark Berent was first published in USAF Air Force/Space Digest, 1971.

  “Sea Harrier Over the Falklands” is an extract from Sea Harrier Over the Falklands, “Sharkey” Ward, Leo Cooper, 1992. Copyright (C) Commander N.D. Ward, DSC, AFC, RN, 1992. Reproduced by permission of Pen & Sword Books.

  “Interrogation” is an extract from Tornado Down, John Peters and John Nichol, Michael Joseph, 1992. Copyright (C) John Peters and John Nichol. Reproduced by permission of Penguin UK.

  “German War Birds” is an extract from The Flying Dutchman, Anton H.G. Fokker, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1931. Copyright (C) Bruce Gould 1959.

  INTRODUCTION

  When the Wright brothers invented the world’s first practicable aircraft in 1903, they had a dream that flight would bring the world’s people closer together. It didn’t take long, of course, for someone to come up with the nightmare ruse of turning the airplane into a weapon. Bombs could be dropped from it. Bullets could be fired from it. Whoever first took up a gun in his tiny canvas and wood aircraft is lost to history, but by the Balkans War of 1912 the armed flying machine was in service . . . and the fighter pilot born.

  Curiously, the Great War, which opened two years later was initially reluctant to embrace the fighter pilot’s martial charms. At first, the belligerents used aircraft for scouting and reconnaissance alone, with pilots waving happily to enemy airmen when they passed in the sky. This state of affairs, in a situation of total war, could not and did not last long. By winter 1915 it was commonplace for the observer in a two-seater aircraft to be toting a carbine, and soon after to be wielding a machine-gun. When Antony Fokker perfected a synchronized gear that allowed a machine gun to be fired through the propeller it allowed a single man to both fly and fire. The “classic” period of the fighter pilot followed, in which one man jousted with another in a “dog-fight” over the Western Front and “aces” (pilots with five or more kills) such as Manfred von Richthofen and James McCudden became global legends. Much romance and status attracted to the fighter pilot, who was often an officer and a gentleman from a cavalry regiment, yet it is too easy to forget that the life-expectancy of a pilot in World War I was measured in weeks. For all the daring of those magnificent men in their flimsy flying machines, they too were bullet fodder.

  In the long interval of the 1920s and 30s, before World War was recommenced, the fighter pilot went somewhat out of fashion, at least in the higher circles of military thinking. Under the influence of the Italian military theorist Douhet a number of notable air forces, including Britain’s RAF, became wedded to the notion that wars might be won by strategic bombing campaign. Only in the very last year of peace was the RAF persuaded to invest heavily in fighter, as opposed to bomber, production. As history has recorded, it was a wise move; for it was “The Few”, the fighter pilots of the RAF, who won the air Battle of Britain in 1940 and prevented a Nazi invasion of that country.

  If the First World War provided the greatest fighter pilot legends, the Second donated to posterity the most memorable fighter aircraft. The Spitfire. The Me-109. The Zero. The Mustang. This reminds us that the fighter pilot himself (and sometimes, herself) is a creature of the machine. No other warrior, not even tank crew, is so dependent on technology, on advances in technology and understanding of that technology. Invariably the pilot with the fleeter, faster and better armoured craft will triumph in an engagement. Hence the frenzied development of the fighter over the last century, a development which took a quantum leap into the air when the Luftwaffe, in the dying days of World War II, brought the jet-powered Me 262 out of the hangar. The Me 262 was produced too late to save the Third Reich but it was the writing in the sky for the future of the fighter pilot and his charge. The Korean War of 1950–3 was the last major war to see the use of propeller-driven fighter. Since then, the fighter pilot has become an ever more accomplished jet-powered technocrat. The F-16s, Tornados and Harriers which screamed over the skies of Vietnam, the Falklands and the Gulf were computerised, hitec, multi-million dollar machines that delivered death at a speed and intensity that von Richthofen would have been incapable of even imagining. Such indeed is the speed of modern jet fighters, which in the shape of the Russian Mikoyan MiG-25 “Foxbat” can top March 3, that classic dog fighting is impossible. Jet duels, instead, are high-speed passes where the missile-firing protagonists are often miles apart.

  Von Richthofen would, however, recognise much of himself in the man in the contemporary cockpit. The fighter pilot of today, like his forbear, still relies on quick wits, courage, some uncanny sixth spatial sense of danger and evasion, plus the deadly hunting instinct. (The first German air units were, incidentally, called Jagdstaffeln or Hunting Squadrons). There is a true paradox in the heart of every fighter pilot: he flies the only truly modern weapon, yet uses the same warrior skills as an ancient samurai. The sheer individuality of the fighter pilot, a man alone or at most accompanied by one or two crew, also stands out in the epoch of mass, uniformed warfare. Small wonder, then, that history and culture has tended to see the fighter pilot as a knight in flying armour, jousting with opponents in a blue battlefield. The Sir Galahad of the Air, in fact

  The pages which follow address the perennial question of the earth-bound: What is it like to be a fighter pilot? Twenty-seven fighter pilots, from World War I to the Gulf, answer that question in their own words, from their autobiographies, diaries and letters. There are necessarily and happily (for the armchair reader, at least) numerous accounts of aerial combat, but other aspects of the fighter pilot’s active service over the last century are not forgotten: R&R in World War I, capture and interrogation by enemy forces in the Gulf, being hospitalised for burns after baling out of a flaming Spitfire in the Battle of Britain. For good measure, there is also an account by a USAAF bomb crew member, Beirne Lay, on the few joys of being on the receiving end of a fighter pilot’s attention. The book follows a rough time order, to allow the reader to appreciate the changing experience, tactics and machinery of war in the air.

  Scramble! It’s now time to climb into the cockpit . . .

  Jon E. Lewis

  THE WINGS START TO GROW

  DUNCAN GRINNELL-MILNE

  Grinnell-Milne left the infantry in 1915 for training as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. The experience is recorded below.

  I arrived at Shoreham after dark. On the way from London, or rather during the change of trains at Brighton, I met an officer bound for the same destination. His name was on his luggage-labels, together with the address of the particular Reserve Air Squadron which I myself was to join. As he was a subaltern and as I saw no signs of his being a q
ualified aviator, I was not more than usually awed by the fact that he was a Gunner. I had hoped that in aviation he would be as much of a novice as I was, but in the course of conversation he informed me that he had been at Shoreham quite a long time, that he was in fact just returning from leave which, I knew, was not usually granted until one had fully qualified. My respect for him increased.

  I asked him about the Squadron. He was very willing to talk and the first impression he gave me was encouraging: few parades, no unnecessary drill, no compulsory church on Sundays, rather more liberty than in an infantry regiment – provided, of course, that one “got on well.” That, to me, meant showing promise as a pilot; my head was, so to speak, already in the air. And my companion must, I thought, be something of an expert, spending most of each day off the ground, for he told me that he “simply loved the work.”

  But a little later he let fall that he was struggling to qualify as a Squadron Adjutant and had practically given up the idea of becoming an Active Service pilot. Also he told me that no one did much flying at Shoreham and that after a few days’ trial many officers returned to their regiments. I was not quite so sure that I was going to “love the work.”

  At Shoreham station a Crossley tender met us – that, at any rate, was a step up from the infantry! – and took us over to the Mess in a bungalow near the sea. There, in addition to an air of comfortable informality, I found cheese, biscuits and beer.

  ii

  The next day was Saturday, no parades but attendance at the aerodrome. From the Mess to the aerodrome was perhaps as much as a mile; we were driven there in a Crossley tender.

  In the sheds was a collection of aircraft, most of them interesting museum pieces in which we were to be instructed, and two dangerous-looking single-seaters (said to be capable of ninety miles an hour!) with which, I was glad to hear, we were to have no dealings whatsoever. There were about half a dozen of us novices and the same number of older pupils. The instructors were pre-war regular officers, of the rank of Captain; they had flown in France, had actually been fired at in the air, had survived engine failures, forced landings, rifle fire and what not. We regarded them as living evidence that the Age of Heroes had come again.