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Aviation History
1916
1916 - 0684.PDF
fOe»i] A little pen-picture of the work of the kite-balloon at the Front was contained in the despatch of the Morning Post special correspondent with the British Army. Writing on August 3rd, he says :— " Yesterday and to-day our artillery has been pounding away at the enemy with extraordinarily results. We do not know as yet all that has been accomplished, but the trust worthy reports of our observers—whose work has been facili tated by a clearer atmosphere than we have had for some time past—make it clear that we have ' knocked out' several important Boche positions, and have reduced others to a state of temporary ineptitude. For a good many days now the Germans, having brought up portentous reinforcements of heavy guns, have been searching vainly for our artillery emplacements. They have ' chucked about' a great deal of ' heavy stuff'—mostly at random, and the effect has been almost nil. This is due to the utter lack of success which has attended their aerial observations. Everybody is asking what has gone wrong with the air service of the enemy. One does not wish to be unduly optimistic, but whatever the reason may be the Boche airmen have suddenly developed a caution and a timidity which have come with the shock of a surprise to our own airmen, who are constantly flying over the lines of the enemy and are really puzzled to account for his lack of activity. I only wish those people who speak and write in the language of a foolish and unworthy pessimism about the ' command of the air ' could see, as I do almost daily, our flying men careering across territory held by the enemy while hardly ever does a Boche 'plane dare show its nose across its own protected frontiers. " The aeroplane acts as the eyes of our artillery, and our artillerists recognise the obligations they owe to it. Another department also of our air service is deserving of the highest praise—the kite-balloon section. The kite-balloon, or ' sausage,' has a fixed post of observation in the air. In the Army it is known as ' Rupert.' Why ' Rupert' I do not know, any more than anybody knows why the anti-aircraft gun is called ' Archibald.' I have visited ' Rupert's Retreat' when he has been at home to his friends. He is rather an uncouth-looking object. He really does resemble a sausage in the air, with a caudal appendage, the utility of which may not be disclosed. But he has wonderful eyes in his head, and from his fixed position he is able to note the effects of long- range artillery fire in a fashion which is extremely useful to the men at the end of our guns. Precisely how ' Rupert ' does his work I may not disclose. But he is a wonderful creation. It is only within the past six months that he has been adopted definitely as a trustworthy adjunct of our military service. I have counted within the purview of vision as many as 26 of our ' Ruperts ' in the air at one time. Our French Allies, too. have recognised his worth and use him freely. The Germans, likewise, have sausage balloons, but we have succeeded in ' strafing ' a very large number of them, whereas ours are so well protected against enemy devices that the percentage of accidents is infinitesimal. All honour to ' Rupert' and the brave men who daily ascend with him into the skies. He is a terrible thorn in the flesh of the enemy." Mr. Stanley Washburn, the Times Special Correspondent with the Russian Forces, writing from the Stokhod Front on August 3rd, says :— " The German flyers have during the past week begun a campaign which can only be characterised as pure murder. Every day there are bomb raids here. The machines fly as low as possible, pouring machine gun fire into the panic- stricken populace, which bears the brunt of all these attacks. To-day's toll was 11 killed and 40 wounded. The latest form of bomb employed is one filled with fragments of broken glass, one of which killed a girl not far from my house. One bomb fell nearer still, a fragment striking the roof of my quarters. The hospitals here are also being bombed daily, the English hospital having suffered already twice from this atrocious practice. Many wounded have been killed by the bombs. " A still more atrocious practice has lately been adopted. The airmen sweep down and drop bombs on the high roads behind the lines. Two days ago a German airman on the stretch of road between here and Lutsk, which is open country, discovering an unprotected column of ambulances plodding through the dust, planed down just above it and opened fire with a machine gun, killing 20 wounded men within. These carts with their canvas covers are unmistakable, and this act can onlv be characterised as wanton and brutal murder. AUGUST 10, 1916. " It is unbelievable that the German higher authorities approve of these acts of aerial piracy. Certainly such atrocious deeds could be formally presented to the attention of the German Government through neutral channels. These daily scenes in the hospitals of little children with bandaged heads and dying women tend only to increase the moral of the Russians, while they have not the slightest military value." The Daily Telegraph correspondent in Petrograd, writing on August 6th, says :— " Two moving episodes of an intimate nature are reported from the Front. One is the death of the aviator Edward Pulpe, who, though born in Russia, and of Lett extraction, began his career in the French Army, and was only detailed to this front comparatively recently. While scouting on the Styr he was attacked by a Fokker, which was soon joined by two more apparatus of the same type. For an hour the un equal combat was watched with breathless excitement from the Russian lines, where the occasional rattle of flyers and machine guns was distinctly audible. " At last it appeared that Pulpe's machine had received a vital injury, for it descended in a spiral from a height of 2,000 to 1,000 yards, and then fell like a stone to the ground. " The aviator was still breathing when picked up, but expired shortly afterwards, without regaining consciousness." Mr. W. Beach Thomas, the Daily Mail correspondent with the British Army, writing on August 5th, gives the following snap of the quick work of the R.F.C. photographers :—• " Nor is this the full tale of the efforts of the co-operation of different arms. Before noon to-day the airmen had taken and delivered to headquarters photographs of the captured territory ; and these were already proving of service to the infantry in possession. So a complete circle of combined effort may be drawn. The artillery made possible the infantry attack. The airmen lent to the artillery the eyes that made their work effective ; and, finally, the association of airmen and infantry acclerated the work of infantry organisation. " When the airmen went out this morning at the favourite hour of all flying men in peace or war—-the hour before dawn —they could see the ruins of Martinpuich (where our guns the other day lit a great fire) and our shells bursting here and there and everywhere over the hill and down the wide glacis which leads to the valley by Bapaume, and they knew that for the first time the infantry as well as they themselves had some direct glimpse of the same attractive scene. They seldom, if ever, had a greater compliment to their own enter prise." The difficulties of air work in Egypt are well set forth in the following despatch from Mr. W. T. Massey to the Daily Telegraph. Writing from the General Headquarters in Egypt on July 18th, Mr. Massey says :— — " The brilliant work of a flight of the Royal Flying Corps during the operations in Darfur will rank as one of the finest efforts of our Army airmen in the war. The flight had some serious moments, when transport threatened to fail them, but energy, resource and the determination to succeed triumphed over all troubles, and the achievements are worthy of the page they will receive in- the history of military aviation. The airmen had to move south at very short notice, travel by sea, rail and desert track for 2,000 miles before they could reach the barren spot from which they were to operate, to face all the difficulties of flying under tropical conditions with an equipment not designed to meet such special circumstances, and to fly in a country absolutely unknown to them and where maps were of little use. They were of infinite service to Col. Kelly from a military point of view, and one may hazard a prophecy that their exploits in the air helped to make Ali Dinar's people realise the Sultan's game was up, for though the natives were not astonished to see machines in the air, they were surprised beyond expression when men alighted from them. One who found speech was heard to say, ' The Government was always great, but now it is greater than ever.' " In Darfur the weather breaks about May 25 th with un failing regularity, so that when it was decided on March 29th that a flight of the Royal Flying Corps should be detached from the Egyptian Expeditionary Force to take part in the operations there was very little time for preparation. On March 31st two officers left Suez for Port Soudan and Khartoum, and they were followed on April 7th by an advance party of a few officers and men with petrol, oil, bombs, 682
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