August 8, 2025 • 49 mins
In this special and extended QnA Episode we look at Parachutes in the Air Services in WW1, the Ground Crew who kept the planes in the air, what are the best RFC/RAF memoirs of WW1, how the filming of the Red Baron's funeral was received, and how men applied for transfers to the Air Services and what was the selection process for Pilots and Observers.
Sign up for the free podcast newsletter here: Old Front Line Bulletin.
Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.
We now have a shop for Old Front Line Merch: Old Front Line shop.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:02):
Welcome to some more questions and answers here on
the old front line.
These are questions submitted byyou, the podcast listeners, and
each month we select some of thebest questions that have been
submitted via email and theDiscord server to answer here
and hopefully give us all freshperspectives and new knowledge
(00:26):
of this vast subject of theGreat War.
So let's begin.
Welcome to this special editionof our regular Q&A episodes, and
as part of Air War Month, inthis extended Q&A, we'll look at
some of the questions, yourquestions, about the Royal
Flying Corps and the Royal AirForce that you've submitted.
(00:46):
Now I've received an awful lotof questions for this one, some
of them will have been answeredin the main episodes we've
already put out, but here I'vechosen five of the best of them,
in fact some of these questionsfeatured here were suggested by
more than one person.
So thanks to all of you who'vesent these questions in.
(01:08):
And there's one or two that Ihaven't been able to feature in
this, but I'm going to keep themback for future Q&A episodes.
So the flying core aspect, theair war aspect hasn't quite gone
away.
And I hope that Thank you forwatching.
(01:42):
And this whole thing really hasbeen an experiment to feature
one subject over the course ofmultiple episodes.
And it's something that I hopeto repeat again down the line in
the next season of the podcast,perhaps focusing on a particular
army or a particular battle.
Let's see.
Anyway, let's get down to thesespecial Q&As that have been
(02:04):
submitted by you, the listeners,for this special episode on the
Royal Flying Corps and the RoyalAir Force.
So question number one comesfrom Mike Roberts and Andrew
Warren and indeed quite a fewother people as well.
And this question asks, has itever been proven that a decision
was made not to provideparachutes to British aircrew in
(02:26):
the First World War as it wouldlessen the fighting spirit of
the pilots?
Why did First World War pilotsnot get provided with these
parachutes?
and lots of variations of thatquestion.
So let's begin with some facts.
First of all, parachutes didexist as technology on the
outbreak of the war in 1914.
(02:48):
And parachutes had been used bydifferent militaries because
many of them had balloons forobservation.
And if a balloon is up thereabove a battlefield and it gets
shot down or it collapses duringtraining, it doesn't even have
to be at war.
How do the men in the basketbeneath it get out?
parachutes had been developed sothey could get out of those
(03:09):
baskets and come down safely orrelatively safely because this
is fairly early parachutetechnology it's not like the
parachutes even of the secondworld war let alone parachutes
that exist today and when thewar began from a raw flying
corps point of view the rawflying corps did have parachutes
(03:30):
and these parachutes were issuedto the balloonatics the men who
were in these balloon companiesof the rf spotting from the
baskets often at quite highaltitudes and once the enemy
armed their aircraft they beganto attack these balloons to try
and shoot them down so the menin the baskets had to have some
(03:52):
possibility of getting out ofthem and this was via a
parachute now these were staticline parachutes so that meant
that the parachute would deployas the airmen As the balloonatic
jumped out of the balloon, therewas a cord connecting the
parachute to the balloon, sothere was something to pull
(04:14):
against.
And as the soldier jumped out ofthe basket, that cord would pull
against it, pull open theparachute, and as he dropped,
the parachute would deploy.
Now, it was not a perfect pieceof technology, and if you read
any accounts of theBalloonetics, then you'll come
across accidents and incidentswhere the parachutes did not
(04:37):
deploy.
One of their famous officers wasBasil Hallam Radford.
He'd been a music hall starbefore the war, and his stage
name was Gilbert the Filbert,the Nut with a K, and that kind
of had overtones withKitchener's Army.
K of K Kitchener of Khartoumformation of Kitchener's Army it
all got kind of embroiled in theculture of that early
(05:00):
Kitchener's Army anyway that'sprobably a Q&A for another day
but Gilbert the Filbert BasilHelen Radford was spotting over
the Somme in 1916 when hisballoon got attacked he bailed
out with his static lineparachute and it failed to
deploy properly and he came downin what was known as a Roman
candle where the parachute didnot operate correctly and he hit
(05:21):
the ground at high speed and waskilled instantly so this was by
no means any kind of perfecttechnology the parachutes were
bulky they were heavy andbecause of this there was
difficulty in getting them intofirst world war cockpits and
also they added a considerableamount of weight to the aircraft
(05:43):
which was a big consideration inaircraft of that period so the
static line as well that didn'thelp because if you could jump
out of a first World Waraircraft going at speed it's not
like a balloon and a basket froma balloon which is kind of
suspended there for a while andyou've got a moment where you
can pull against it with anaircraft at high speed, possibly
(06:06):
the amount of force needed toactually deploy the parachute
just wouldn't be there and theparachute could get tangled up
in the aircraft and the pilotwould be dragged down with it.
So there was all kinds of issuesin deploying those kind of
parachutes.
So there was no way and therewas no technology to issue these
(06:28):
pilots with the type ofparachute where they could jump
and then free fall and then opentheir parachute like that that
just did not exist at the timeof the first world war so there
were practical considerationshow the parachutes worked and
the weight of the parachutes inthese early aircraft and how
they would fit into the cockpitsof the aircraft as well the idea
(06:53):
however which you see in quite alot of accounts of the flying
services in the first world warthat they were not issued as
they were bad for morale orencouraged coward us I mean I've
seen all kinds of phrases likethat I think that's a bit
overstated but it is said thatHugh Trenchard the so-called
father of the RAF thought theymight undermine offensive spirit
(07:16):
with pilots which is a kind ofcrazy idea really because you
could be the best pilot on theWestern Front and some aircraft
could easily get intouncontrollable nose dives and
spins and you had no way ofgetting out so it meant that
very experienced pilots could beessentially wasted their
(07:37):
experience and their liveswasted because they had no means
of getting out the aircraft.
Now there were those practicalconsiderations with the
technology but there was also noeffort to improve upon that
technology except on the part ofthe Germans.
So the Germans in 1918 diddevelop a parachute that could
be used by pilots in theaircraft that existed at that
(07:59):
time.
This was a parachute that couldbe deployed as you exited the
aircraft and it was known as theHeinicke system developed by
Unteroffizier Otto Heinicke whohad served in the ground crew of
a German squadron on the westernfront and this was a parachute
in a backpack fairly smallishsized backpack that formed part
(08:21):
of a wider waistcoat harnesssystem that the pilot put on war
as he got into the cockpit withthe parachute flush with the
kind of upper level of theaircraft so it protruded and he
he had to bail out he couldunbuckle himself from the seat
he was in and from the cockpitarea and then get out the
aircraft and deploy hisparachute now it did operate
(08:42):
with a static line but testsshowed that it did operate
reasonably successfully not ahundred percent successfully
because again this was newtechnology so it did have some
success but it wasn'tuniversally issued in the German
flying services and on theBritish and Commonwealth side
that kind of thing was neverissued to their pilots and the
(09:06):
Germans found as well that itdidn't work at low level so
there wasn't literally enoughtime with a fast moving aircraft
at low level for a pilot to getout and the parachute deploy and
then he safely hits the groundso with the exception of balloon
personnel parachutes reallyremained elusive until they were
(09:27):
widely issued to air forces bythe 1930s which also went in
tandem with the development ofparachute forces military forces
using parachutes by the Germansfor example at that time as well
but all of that of course wastoo late for the Great War and
too late for those pilots thatflew over the battlefields in
(09:49):
the First World War so whilethere's a bit of mythology about
this generally speaking thetechnology to give pilots
parachutes didn't exist for thatgeneration of the Great War so
great question one notinfrequently asked about the air
war and thank you Mike andAndrew and all the others who
sent that one in So on toquestion number two, and this
(10:13):
one comes from David Keeley.
(10:41):
Well David, this is somethingwe've hinted on on and off
throughout this Air War month,in the introductory episode and
also in some of the chats withour experts, because it is a
really important part of ourunderstanding how the Air War
operated from the perspective ofthe RFC and the RAF.
It wasn't just the pilots.
(11:02):
Even from the very beginning,the bulk of the personnel in the
RFC that went to war in August1914 were ground crew, not
pilots.
people in the air and when theRoyal Flying Corps together with
the RNS became the RAF on the1st of April 1918 they did a big
survey of the personnel thatworked for those institutions
(11:24):
that became this big nominalrole effectively of the RAF on
formation that is now part ofthe archives of the National
Archives and I'm pretty sureit's been digitised it doesn't
tell you any more than it's intheir service records but it's a
useful document and from that wediscover that there was a About
150,000 men serving in the RoyalFlying Corps.
(11:45):
but 10% of them, less than 10%of them, were actually air crew,
were pilots or observers.
So what that meant was that thevast majority of those who wore
raw flying core and then went onto wear RAF uniform were not in
the air, not carrying out aircombat, they were on the ground.
(12:06):
And to keep one pilot and hismachine in the air, it needed 15
to 20 personnel working on itfull-time, on the ground to make
that possible.
So their role was absolutelyvital.
The pilots couldn't take themachine up.
They couldn't get it to where itneeded to be if it didn't have
(12:26):
enough fuel in it.
They couldn't fight their airbattles if it had not been
rearmed and machine gunammunition added to the weapons
on it and bombs added to thosethat were being sent forward to
drop bombs on targets.
So the role of the ground crewwas absolutely pivotal.
And the pilots, of course, arethe ones that...
get all the glory they're theones that come back to the mess
(12:49):
and tell the stories they're theones that are picked on by the
newspapers and become heroes ofthat generation and then the
kind of backroom boys the groundcrew don't get that level of
fame but pilots within thosesquadrons of course knew that
they couldn't do anythingwithout those men and if you
were a wise pilot a clever pilotthen obviously you'd cultivate a
(13:12):
good ground crew team to makesure that your aircraft was in
tip-top shape and you could gooff and do all the things that
you wanted to do and indeed wererequired to do as part of that
air war strategy, whether it wasattacking enemy aircraft in the
skies or taking the war over thebattlefield to gather
intelligence, drop bombs,whatever.
(13:35):
So the Royal Flying Corps groundcrew, they were really this
essential force pivot in howthis whole thing worked and
there were aircraft mechanicsdoing general repairs to the
aircraft riggers and fittersworking on the airframe and the
mechanics of the engine to makesure that functioned properly
(13:58):
because you didn't want to takean aircraft up and then the
engine stopped in mid-air giventhe fact as we've already
mentioned there were noparachutes to get out you had to
have armourers who werespecialists in the weapons that
would eventually be added tothese aircraft machine guns and
and special machine guns thatoperated with the turn of the
propeller, synchronised machineguns, so you needed specialists
(14:18):
to do that kind of work.
You had wireless operators thatworked on the eventual
small-scale radio sets thatcould transmit morse that were
put into the cockpits of some ofthe later aircraft.
You had signalers that were allpart of that as well, plus
clerks, drivers, logisticalsupport, and then, of course,
medical staff, cooks, and allkinds of other ancillary staff
(14:42):
that was essential to thefunctioning of a squadron
wherever that was based behindthe Western Front.
So it was a big team and anessential team to make sure that
squadron functioned, the wingswithin that squadron functioned,
and the individual pilots hadeverything that they needed to
get up into the air.
(15:04):
Now back in the 80s and 90s whenI interviewed Great War
veterans, I interviewed threemen that flew in the First World
War, but one of the very firstveterans I interviewed was a
chap who lived in my hometown ofCrawley and he'd served on the
RFC ground crew.
He was an aircraft mechanic,second class.
And he'd originally beenemployed to work on the engines
(15:26):
of different aircraft within hissquadron because he'd done work
like that in civilian lifebefore the war on motor cars and
then buses.
And he also got a transferwithin the squadron at one point
because he kind of found thatkind of work monotonous to a
certain degree.
It was his speciality.
But he got into a team that wentout to recover crashed aircraft.
(15:49):
So what would happen is pilotswould go up over the battlefield
they'd have mechanical problemsengines would cut out they'd be
hit by enemy fire and theaircraft would crash now they
wouldn't be necessarily killedor wounded but the aircraft
wreck would be there and youdidn't want to leave it on the
battlefield you wanted torecover it probably it would
never fly again but you couldrecover it for spare parts
(16:10):
because i'm sure any mechanicwill tell you the more spare
parts you've got the morelikelihood you've got of
repairing any kind of equipmentso they would go out and do that
and he found himself acrossthese kind of moonscapes of the
Somme and Passchendaele goingout to recover aircraft.
The Royal Flying Corps alsotrained quite a lot of
(16:31):
signalers.
I mentioned wireless operatorsand signalers who were trained
up to do that kind of work, toreceive signals from the
aircraft, transmit signals, andwere generally signalers,
specialists and the Royal FlyingCorps found at one stage in
1916-17 that it had a surplus ofthem now the Royal Artillery
(16:51):
Royal Garrison Artillery, RoyalField Artillery probably the
Royal Horse Artillery as wellthey didn't have enough because
casualties among signalers waspretty high in the gunners so
the Royal Flying Corpstransferred a lot of men who had
trained as signalers in the RFCto the gunners to work in
artillery units.
So across the battlefieldstoday, you will find the graves
(17:14):
of RFC men who never flew, werenot in aircraft, but were
serving with artillery units onthe battlefield.
And again, one of the veteranswho lived near me in Sussex,
that's exactly what he'd done.
He trained as a signaller, neverthought he would go into the
trenches, and then found himselftransferred to a raw field
artillery brigade, and he servedwith them at Arras, and during
(17:37):
the third battle of it, beforehe was eventually sent back to
an RFC squadron and what itmeant was that these men those
who worked in these ground crewsthey were highly skilled they
didn't just take anyone forthese jobs it's not like the
infantry whereas if you had twoarms two legs two eyes and a
(17:58):
trigger finger you were kind ofin I mean that's a bit unkind to
the infantry but you get what Imean with these men you had to
be skilled you had to alreadyhave these skills so they were
much more independent thinkerstechnically adept and they came
with existing skills and tradesthat were applicable to the work
(18:20):
that they would do in the RoyalFlying Corps and then eventually
the Royal Air Force and thatprobably made them a cut above
those who were in other parts ofthe army in terms of training in
terms of skill because there'sfar more skilled than the
average soldier and that alsowent with pay they got paid more
(18:41):
because of this skill and Ithink that probably behind the
lines You occasionally read of abit of friction between the
army, the men, the PBI, theinfantry in the trenches, and
the Royal Flying Corps guyswho've got much more money, and
possibly the prices in theestaminets and all kinds of
other institutions might go upas a consequence of that.
(19:02):
But what it meant was that thesemen who had...
tough jobs.
They weren't in combat.
They were sometimes quite nearthe front.
If you look at the aerodrome atMont Sainte-Loire near Arras,
which is in sight of Vimy Ridge,you can see there that they were
not thousands of miles behindthe front.
And they had long days, long,long days keeping these aircraft
(19:25):
in the skies.
But it wasn't as romantic, itwasn't as poetical and all the
other things that the kind ofwar, the experience that the
pilots had.
And it's easy to forget theirwork.
And it's something that I wasvery keen to make reference to
in this series.
So thank you, David.
(19:45):
And thanks for the others whowrote in about your relatives
who did exactly this kind ofwork behind the lines at these
Royal Flying Corps aerodromesduring the Great War.
So we move on to question numberthree, and this one comes from
Tim Osborne, who asks, with thespecial series on the air war, I
wonder if you could mention afew published memoirs relating
(20:07):
to this subject.
There is Winged Victory, ofcourse, but many of your
listeners may not know it.
I've just read War Story byDerek Robinson, published in
1987, which is good fiction.
I expect you know it.
But what else is there?
Well, this is a great question,Tim.
And as all of you know wholisten to this podcast, memoirs
of the First World War, fictionof the First World War is
(20:29):
something that really interestsme.
And I think it's really a kindof gateway to understanding so
many aspects of the experienceof the First World War by
looking at these memoirs.
And there's a whole load for thewar in the air, far too many for
one question, which is part of ageneral Q&A episode.
But these that I'm going to talkabout now are some of my
(20:52):
favourites and top of that listis the book that you already
mentioned which is WingedVictory by Victor Yeats Now,
this is a great classic to startwith.
Yeats flew with 46 Squadron,Royal Flying Corps, and the
novel is based on hisexperiences.
It was first published in 1934.
Unfortunately, Yeats didn't livevery long after that.
(21:13):
He never really kind of lived tosee the fame and success of the
book.
And it follows the fictionalcharacter, Tom Cundall, through
an often difficult war.
It's a very honest book.
It's an incredible read.
It is fascinating.
fiction but it's based on reallife situations that Yeats went
through and I think it reallygives you a sense of the mental
(21:36):
strain the psychological issuesthat pilots had and air crew had
during the First World War.
The book has an introduction byHenry Williamson and of course
that is one of the things thatfirst brought me to this book.
Williamson and Yeats were atschool together before the Great
(21:56):
War and Williamson by thenfamous novelist the winner of
the Hawthornden Prize for hisbook Tarker the Otter 1928 was
asked to write the introductionto this book to kind of give it
a push forward I mean it didn'treally need one it's fantastic
literature but Williamson'sintroduction is also worth
reading as well so I would saystart with this I mean there's
(22:19):
many many editions of this firsteditions are obviously going to
be expensive but there's recentpaperbacks of it and cheap
paperbacks and have a goodsearch on the internet with this
and all the ones I'm going tomention here and you'll find
them without having to spend alot of money.
So that's fictionalised memoirswhich have an important place in
(22:40):
our canon if you like of GreatWar literature but in terms of
actual memoirs the next few arewritten in that style and the
top of that list is SagittariusRising by Cecil Lewis.
Now this is probably one of thebest known and indeed one of the
best actual memoirs of pilots inthe First World War.
(23:01):
Cecil Lewis joined the RoyalFlying Corps underage and he
flew over the Somme, Arras andYpres until he was wounded,
burned and forced down in 1917.
The book was also from thatsimilar kind of period to Wing
Victory.
It was first published in 1936but Lewis lived to a ripe old
age, dying in 1997 and Iattended an Imperial War Museum
(23:26):
event that he did in the early90s when I worked in London he
was quite a well known characterand the book itself is
beautifully written it readslike a novel in places so many
of these men they were able toconfront their memoirs their
memories by semi-fictionalisingthem whether he had a bit of
(23:48):
that approach I don't know butcertainly his description of air
combat of being in that war inthe air and if nothing else his
description of seeing the LochNaga mine go up at La Boiselle
on the first day of the Sommeit's worth reading Sagittarius
Rising just for that alone sothat's a fantastic memoir to
(24:09):
start with there's a book calledCombat Report by Bill Lambert,
DFC Lambert was an American whojoined the Royal Flying Corps in
Canada in 1917 and he flew inthe final year of the Great War
with 24 squadron and during histime in the air he had an
incredible 22 victory making himthe second highest scoring
(24:31):
American born ace of the FirstWorld War.
So a really important pilot.
Published after his death in the1970s, it's a great account of
aerial warfare by a decoratedveteran, but less literary than
the previous two books that I'vementioned.
But he does not ignore theterrible stress placed on
(24:52):
pilots.
I mean, that is a common themethrough all of these books.
The next one I'd recommend is NoParachute by Arthur Gould Lee.
This was one of the very firstRoyal Flying Corps memoirs that
I ever read when I picked up asecond-hand copy many, many
years ago in one of those Sussexbookshops.
And he flew with 46 Squadron,the same as Yeats, but the book
(25:16):
is made up of his letters andpersonal photographs, so a very
different kind of book.
It's more of a chronicle than amemoir, but it gives great
insight into the life of a pilotand what comrades meant to
pilots and the loss of thosecomrades when they got shot
down.
So a really important memoir inour understanding of RFC
(25:38):
experience.
And the last one I mentioned isFighter Pilot on the Western
Front by Wing Commander E.D.
Crundall, DFC, AFC.
Now this is another 1970spublished memoir by a pilot who
in this case flew with the RoyalNaval Air Service with the Naval
8th Squadron.
We haven't mentioned enoughabout the RNAS in this
(25:58):
mini-series because I decided toconcentrate on the RFC-REF
experience and we will return tothose naval aviators in a
separate episode down the line.
That's one we will definitelycome back to.
And the 70s was a kind of goldenperiod for the publication of
First World War memoirs and thiskind of very much fits into
(26:18):
that.
Dudley Crum gives a detailedoften quite technical account of
his experiences as a pilot whichis good for those who are
interested in the technicalaspects of the aircraft that
flew in the First World War andhis account takes him to that
point where he shot down nearArras flying out of the
aerodrome at Mont Saint-Éloiwhere Naval 8th was for quite
(26:40):
some time and he then went afterrecovering from that episode
went on to fly with 210 SquadronRoyal Air Force in France and
Flanders in the final phase ofthe Great War.
And again, it's a book that'sgot a lot of personal
photographs in it.
Most of these do, which kind ofadds another layer, I think, to
(27:00):
what we get from accounts likethat.
Now, I don't know War Story,which you mentioned, but I see
it's been compared to Catch-22.
So that's another one for me toadd to my list.
But these few that I mentionedare just the tip of the iceberg
when it comes to memoirs andaccounts by those who were in
the flying services in the FirstWorld War.
(27:22):
And we haven't mentionedAmerican flyers, and we haven't
mentioned the German side ofthings.
So there is this mass ofmaterial out there.
If this is something thatinterests you, you're not going
to find it difficult to find allkinds of accounts.
And I looked through specialistbooksellers like Tom Donovan,
and there's many others besides,and reprints by Naval and
(27:43):
Military Press, then you couldeasily build up quite a good
Royal Flying Corps library,really.
So I hope, Tim, that that kindof gives you a bit of an
indication, a path to followwith these.
And I'm sure in our manyepisodes looking at books on the
First World War, then we'llprobably mention some others
(28:04):
down the line.
Question number four comes fromJohn Thompson.
John asks, I watched thedocumentary Aces Falling again,
featuring your good self andPeter Hart.
This prompted me to ask, whenManfred von Richthofen, the Red
Baron, was shot down and killed,he was given full military
honours at his burial and it wasfilmed, which was great to
watch.
(28:24):
Did this sit well with youraverage pilot and Tommy due to
the amount of kills that Manfredhad?
On the British side...
with the greats like JamesMcCudden and Mick Mannock giving
the same pomp and ceremony attheir burials.
Well, good question, John.
And Aces Falling was a BBC TimeWatch documentary that we did in
(28:45):
2008, which featured quite a fewaviation historians.
And I'm pretty sure it'savailable on YouTube.
It's certainly no longer oniPlayer.
But coming back to the RedBaron, when he was shot down on
the Somme on the 21st of April1918, he was buried at
Bertangles, which was a verysmall communal cemetery close to
(29:07):
a squadron aerodrome.
and a lot of pilots because ofwho he was because of his fame
because of his reputation cameto attend that funeral and you
rightly say it was filmed one ofthe cinematographers was there
and he filmed the coffin beingbrought in and then the Red
Baron being laid to rest nowthat was eventually sent home it
(29:30):
wasn't censored it was put outand it appeared in cinemas
across Britain and at home itcaused a lot of upset they
didn't think it was right thatan enemy who as you say had been
responsible for the deaths of somany pilots over the battlefield
they didn't think civilians whohad no sense of what the war was
all about in many ways didn'tthink it was right that the
(29:54):
enemy should be honoured in thisway so that kind of thing was
never really done again and Ithink it kind of all adds we
talk about layers but there'slayers of mythology as well and
there's so much reputation andmyth and so many other layers to
the history of the Red Baron thefact that his funeral was
(30:15):
actually filmed and that he washonoured more by his enemy the
pilots of the RAF than by hisown side at that particular
point in that moment of deaththen I think this all kind of
adds to that great historian andthere's certainly a part on the
story of the Red Baron.
(31:02):
And that would also haveincluded men in the trenches as
well who would have read thosepopular magazines where there
were stories of him.
But I'm not sure that their ideaof honouring the enemy in 1918
after four long years of war,I'm not sure that that would
have been well received.
And when, as you rightly pointto, when we contrast that to the
(31:24):
funerals of Jimmy McCudden andMick Manick, there is a big
contrast.
I mean, Jimmy McCudden crashedon an aerodrome so it wasn't on
a battlefield his body could berecovered from the wreckage and
he was buried in a militarycemetery on the slopes of a
valley in a very picturesquelocation fairly small cemetery
(31:45):
at Wawa which we're going totalk about when we take that
journey across the landscape ofthe western front today and see
what we can find of the flyingservices on that landscape but
he was buried there with fullmilitary honours there's quite a
few other pilots buried in thereas well it wasn't on the skyline
of the Red Baron, I have to say,and it wasn't filmed.
(32:06):
There's photographs of thecemetery, of his cross, but I
don't think, unless there'sprivate photographs out there, I
don't think there's any officialphotographs of the burial of
Jimmy McCudden.
Mick Mannock, which by the timethis goes out we'll have talked
to Andy Saunders about, is acompletely different prospect
and typical of so many pilotsand observers who were shot down
(32:28):
over the Western Front in thathe does not have a known grade
he has a potential grave in hisbody was recovered from the
wreckage of the aircraft buriedby the Germans on the
battlefield and an unknownaviator was recovered from that
area and then placed in aBritish cemetery after the war
but his name is listed on theArras memorial to the missing
(32:50):
the special flying servicessection of that that remembers
nearly a thousand air crew whowere shot down over the
battlefields and do not have aknown grave that was the sad
reality of aerial combat thegrim reality of aerial death
being in aircraft that couldcatch fire very quickly descend
(33:12):
from a great height hit theground with a massive explosion
so many of those men who diedunder those circumstances their
bodies were completelyunidentifiable and unrecoverable
really from the wreckage thatwas left when that aircraft hit
the ground I mean it's aterrible stark element of the
(33:34):
war in the air in aerial combat.
(34:03):
But just to end on this subject,John, I think it's also worth
saying that the Germans affordeda lot of respect to British and
Allied pilots when they crashedbehind German lines and were
killed.
They buried them with fullmilitary honours as well.
I visited quite a few scatteredgraves of RFC pilots that are in
(34:25):
communal cemeteries acrossnorthern France and I know that
they were recovered from theiraircraft and the local Germans
brought them into a plot oftheir own cemetery and they
buried them with full militaryhonours with respect and put up
often quite elaborate gravemarkers on their grave with
details of who they were AlbertBall VC who crashed behind
(34:48):
German lines in 1917 is stillburied in a German military
cemetery at Anneluin he is avery good example of that and
there are some photographs thatdo purport to show Germans
attending the ceremony of theburial of Albert Ball and I've
seen in quite a few German photobooks and postcard albums
(35:10):
similar kinds of ceremoniestaking place for far lesser
known pilots so I think thatrespect that chivalry that was
spoken about in this series onthe air war it did exist on one
level and I think with theburial of the dead both sides
did show respect for thosepilots and observers of the
great war so a great questionJohn and I I think highlights
(35:32):
yet another fascinating elementof this war in the air.
Our fifth and final question iskind of a two-parter, but
talking about very similarsubjects.
And these come from Ian Reekieand Nick Jenkins.
So the first one of these reads,I have a question relating to
the air war.
At the start of the movie, TheBlue Max, George Pepard's
(35:55):
character is seen runningbetween the trenches in no man's
land under fire.
It's hell on earth, but he makesit to the relative safety of a
deep trench where he turns onhis back and looks longingly up
to the sky where a dogfight istaking place.
He obviously then realises thatfighting in the air is where he
wants to be, away from the hellof trench warfare.
(36:18):
I just wondered then how bothsides viewed soldiers wishing to
transfer to air combat.
I guess there must have beenmany soldiers who thought a life
with the German air services orthe Royal Flying Corps RAF with
all the so-called attractionsoffered an enviable alternative
to trench warfare.
Was it encouraged or frownedupon when soldiers requested
(36:41):
that transfer?
Well, the film that youmentioned, The Blue Max, is
about a fictionalised kind ofversion, I guess, of...
Red Baron von Richthofen, BlueMax is the Paul and Marie, the
German highest decoration forgallantry in the First World
War, and Pepard plays a Germanaviator who flies over the
Western Front.
It's a great film, one of manyfilms looking at air combat in
(37:03):
the First World War, and therewas almost an episode on films
about that for this series, butmaybe again it's one we'll come
back to.
So in terms of men transferringfrom the infantry or from ground
forces into an air service, nomatter what that air service
would be whether they're Germanwhether they're American whether
they're British and CommonwealthFrench whatever now certainly in
(37:24):
the British Army men wereencouraged to join the Royal
Flying Corps because there wereheavy losses and pilots needed
to be replaced but it took timeto train a pilot and you
couldn't just get in a simulatorlearn all about it and then
safely learn how to fly it That,as we've said in some previous
(37:46):
episodes of this air war series,that was dangerous in its own
right.
And in terms of who applied, Imean, I think it depended on
which period of the war.
At the beginning, the RFC waspretty much an unknown entity
within the army and probablyseen as a bit odd.
So men were not queuing up tojoin it.
(38:07):
But as the war went static andthey could see dogfights in the
air and the whole kind of ideaof knights of the air and the
chivalrous activity I'm surethose of that kind of
inclination were drawn into itand wanted to volunteer.
And it wasn't difficult torequest a transfer to the Royal
Flying Corps.
But unlike certain parts of thearmy, you had to come with some
(38:30):
degree of skill and aptitude forwhat you were being asked to do.
And I think as well, it alsokind of depended on the unit you
were in.
The 46th North Midland Division,which fought at Luz in 1915,
suffered heavy losses, was atGomercourt on the 1st of July,
suffered very heavy losses.
After those two, which were seenby many senior officers as
(38:53):
failed battles, it wasconsidered a failed division and
was sidelined and just held theline for a very, very long time.
From the end of the Battle ofthe Somme right through to the
battles on the Hindenburg Linein September 1918, it was
shuffled around bits of theWestern Front, not really taking
part in major operations againand men within that division
(39:13):
tried to get out of it becausethey didn't want to be
associated with that invertedcommas failed formation failed
division so there were quite afew in some units quite a few
transfers to the Royal FlyingCorps men ordinary soldiers if
they had the skills they couldtransfer to the ground crews and
officers put in for transfers tosquadrons where they could
(39:34):
become pilots or observers so Ithink it again depends on a
period of the war I Andcertainly over Arras in 1917
where British aircraft werebeing shot out of the sky left,
right and centre, did thataffect the number of men
stepping forward to join theRFC?
I'm sure there's a fascinatingstudy in that.
(39:55):
So I'm not sure that there wasnecessarily a sense that it was
kind of a cushy number that wesee in Blackadder.
I referenced that right at thebeginning of this air war month,
the 20 Minuters when Blackadderand his chums go off to join the
Royal Flying Corps.
I don't think that men at thetime saw the RFC as any easy
route out of the trenchesbecause each element of combat,
(40:19):
whether it was in the air,whether it was on the ground,
whether it was under the WesternFront, whether it was at sea, it
all came with its own problemsand challenges.
And I think anyone who'd spentany time anywhere near any of
those battlefields wouldprobably have at least some
understanding and awareness ofthat.
(40:40):
But I think to many it appealedbecause it was different to that
war on the ground.
Malcolm Vivian, who I've spokenabout many times on this
podcast, was a gunner officer,commissioned in the Royal
Garrison Artillery in 1914,served on the Somme at Arras and
up in the northern part ofFlanders around Pervis.
And then in 1918, hetransferred, put in for a
(41:03):
transfer to the Royal FlyingCorps.
Then that became the RAF.
He trained as an observerbecause he'd done a lot of
cooperation as a forwardobserver with aircraft in the
sky.
He went through that prettyquickly.
That wasn't good enough.
He wanted to actually fly andpilot an aircraft.
So he put in an application forthat and was accepted.
But the war was over before heever flew in combat.
(41:26):
So I think that all of this, itdepends on the individual.
not every soldier in thetrenches is going to want to be
up there in an aircraft therealities of their war their
known war on the ground perhapsthey feel safer there than in
those skies but there wereothers with adventurous spirits
determination and a flair forsomething different who this
(41:49):
would appeal to and I'm surethat was a route to it and I'm
sure as well that there weresome pilots just like the
fictional George Peppercharacter who laid back on a
battlefield somewhere and sawaircraft buzzing around in the
sky above them and thoughtthat's me that's where I want to
be so that's part one of thisquestion part two is kind of
(42:09):
linked to it and this one readsmy paternal grandfather joined
the RAF in 1918 and no doubtlike most 18 year olds applied
to be a pilot he was turned downfor that but was accepted as an
observer given that I suspectmost RAF recruits wanted to be
pilots how were they selectedwould my grandfather have been
(42:30):
rejected on any particulargrounds or was it that too many
men wanted to be pilots and notenough wanted to be observers
was it just a lottery and wasthere any difference in casualty
numbers between pilots andobservers both look pretty
dangerous to me Well, you'reabsolutely right.
Both are very, very dangerousfor all the reasons we have
(42:51):
discussed in this series.
These were aircraft that werefragile, could catch fire easily
and death was brutal andterrible in the air services of
all nations over thosebattlefields in the Great War.
But in terms of men putting infor a transfer, being successful
in that transfer, in terms ofthe Royal Flying Corps and the
(43:13):
RAF, pilots needed to have goodeyesight so their eyes were
tested if you didn't have verygood eyesight and you're flying
a fast moving aircraft then yourchances of not surviving your
first mission I would guess arepretty high there was also quite
a high level of physical fitnessrequired because this was raw
(43:36):
flying and you needed strengthoften to control the aircraft
that you were flying so fitnesswas an element in it but I don't
don't get the sense that therewas very little screening, not
like a generation later when allkinds of tests were put in place
to choose the best people tobecome pilots and bomber crews
(43:57):
and all the other aspects of theWorld War II side of the RAF.
But in the First World War,there were kind of essential
things that were needed and alsoa desire to fly.
Now, I don't think everyonewanted to fly.
Some thought that it was beyondthem.
perhaps and observers was thekind of easy element of getting
(44:18):
into the rfc because you didn'thave to fly the aircraft you
didn't have to have any of thatkind of knowledge you got into
the observer seat and you'reobserving taking photographs
operating a machine gun droppingbombs making notes drawing maps
kind of whatever it was but ofcourse it didn't come with the
romance of being a pilot andagain looking at the kind of men
(44:43):
that applied to join the flyservices the ones that are going
to be pilots are going to be onetype of man and possibly the
ones that want to be observersare another type perhaps those
who trained as observers likeMalcolm Vivian it wasn't enough
and they wanted to get behindthe control stick of that
aircraft and actually fly it sowhy your grandfather was turned
(45:05):
down I don't know it could beall kinds of reasons something
as simple as eyesight butobservers their role was
incredibly important because andthe skill sets that they needed
were incredibly important aswell because they were doing the
more technical side of it theflying was one element but they
were operating cameras takingaerial photographs using maps
(45:28):
understanding maps orientatingmaps they were doing observation
they were doing groundcooperation with the infantry on
the battlefield and they weregathering all kinds of
intelligence as well that had tobe made sense of so theirs was a
kind of broader kind of jobreally when it came to being in
(45:48):
that aircraft and in terms ofcasualties I don't think there's
ever been any kind of real studylooking at those two roles and
which had the higher casualtyrate but certainly for observers
by 1917-18 where in mostaircraft they were behind the
pilot and in most cases whenthere was aerial combat the
(46:09):
enemy aircraft came from behindthe allied aircraft and opened
up on it then the observer wasthe one that was in the direct
line of immediate fire and thatmust have meant that their
potentially their casualty rateswere a lot higher than the
pilots but it's clear thatneither of these roles were safe
(46:29):
in any kind of way that theselection process often
particularly in the early yearsof the war was based on where an
airman where an officer in theRFC had been educated either at
public school or university wasnot related to his ability to
fly or understand aircraft inany kinds of way that changed as
(46:50):
the war went on as more ordinarymen went on to become pilots and
McCudden and Mannock are twoexamples of that but the
casualty rates amongst all ofthese men were high and in terms
of actual flying hours when youread stories of the battle of
britain and new pilots turningup and they've only got a few
hours of flying experience inthe great war i suspect that was
(47:14):
no different and perhaps evenless that inability to train
pilots without putting themputting their lives at risk and
those thousands of pilots andair crew who were killed or
injured before their aircrafthad even left great britain
killed in train Then I think wecan see how early and embryonic
(47:36):
in many ways the whole aspectsof the utilisation, pilots,
observers and the aircraftthemselves are.
how that was still very much inits early stages throughout the
war.
This was the first proper airwar, the first great air war in
which aircraft had played suchan important role above and
(48:00):
beyond the battlefield and soessential to our understanding
of the Great War.
So thanks for all theseexcellent questions about the
war in the air.
Thanks too for the ones that wehaven't featured in this special
episode episode I'll save someof those for another day keep
your general questions coming infor the Q&A episodes that we
(48:23):
have on a regular basis and asalways you can send those in via
email via the discord server andalso via fan mail as well and if
you do it via that routeremember to put your name at the
end of the message otherwise Iwon't know who's sending it in
so thanks and see you again soonfor some more questions and
(48:54):
answers on the Old Front Line.
Check out the website atoldfrontline.co.uk where you'll
find lots of podcast extras andphotographs and links to books
that are mentioned in thepodcast.
(49:14):
And if you feel like supportingus, you can go to our Patreon
page, patreon.com slasholdfrontline or support us on
Buy Me A Coffee atbuymeacoffee.com slash
oldfrontline.
Links to all of these are on ourwebsite.
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you again soon.
Welcome to some more questions and answers here on
the old front line.
These are questions submitted byyou, the podcast listeners, and
each month we select some of thebest questions that have been
submitted via email and theDiscord server to answer here
and hopefully give us all freshperspectives and new knowledge
(00:26):
of this vast subject of theGreat War.
So let's begin.
Welcome to this special editionof our regular Q&A episodes, and
as part of Air War Month, inthis extended Q&A, we'll look at
some of the questions, yourquestions, about the Royal
Flying Corps and the Royal AirForce that you've submitted.
(00:46):
Now I've received an awful lotof questions for this one, some
of them will have been answeredin the main episodes we've
already put out, but here I'vechosen five of the best of them,
in fact some of these questionsfeatured here were suggested by
more than one person.
So thanks to all of you who'vesent these questions in.
(01:08):
And there's one or two that Ihaven't been able to feature in
this, but I'm going to keep themback for future Q&A episodes.
So the flying core aspect, theair war aspect hasn't quite gone
away.
And I hope that Thank you forwatching.
(01:42):
And this whole thing really hasbeen an experiment to feature
one subject over the course ofmultiple episodes.
And it's something that I hopeto repeat again down the line in
the next season of the podcast,perhaps focusing on a particular
army or a particular battle.
Let's see.
Anyway, let's get down to thesespecial Q&As that have been
(02:04):
submitted by you, the listeners,for this special episode on the
Royal Flying Corps and the RoyalAir Force.
So question number one comesfrom Mike Roberts and Andrew
Warren and indeed quite a fewother people as well.
And this question asks, has itever been proven that a decision
was made not to provideparachutes to British aircrew in
(02:26):
the First World War as it wouldlessen the fighting spirit of
the pilots?
Why did First World War pilotsnot get provided with these
parachutes?
and lots of variations of thatquestion.
So let's begin with some facts.
First of all, parachutes didexist as technology on the
outbreak of the war in 1914.
(02:48):
And parachutes had been used bydifferent militaries because
many of them had balloons forobservation.
And if a balloon is up thereabove a battlefield and it gets
shot down or it collapses duringtraining, it doesn't even have
to be at war.
How do the men in the basketbeneath it get out?
parachutes had been developed sothey could get out of those
(03:09):
baskets and come down safely orrelatively safely because this
is fairly early parachutetechnology it's not like the
parachutes even of the secondworld war let alone parachutes
that exist today and when thewar began from a raw flying
corps point of view the rawflying corps did have parachutes
(03:30):
and these parachutes were issuedto the balloonatics the men who
were in these balloon companiesof the rf spotting from the
baskets often at quite highaltitudes and once the enemy
armed their aircraft they beganto attack these balloons to try
and shoot them down so the menin the baskets had to have some
(03:52):
possibility of getting out ofthem and this was via a
parachute now these were staticline parachutes so that meant
that the parachute would deployas the airmen As the balloonatic
jumped out of the balloon, therewas a cord connecting the
parachute to the balloon, sothere was something to pull
(04:14):
against.
And as the soldier jumped out ofthe basket, that cord would pull
against it, pull open theparachute, and as he dropped,
the parachute would deploy.
Now, it was not a perfect pieceof technology, and if you read
any accounts of theBalloonetics, then you'll come
across accidents and incidentswhere the parachutes did not
(04:37):
deploy.
One of their famous officers wasBasil Hallam Radford.
He'd been a music hall starbefore the war, and his stage
name was Gilbert the Filbert,the Nut with a K, and that kind
of had overtones withKitchener's Army.
K of K Kitchener of Khartoumformation of Kitchener's Army it
all got kind of embroiled in theculture of that early
(05:00):
Kitchener's Army anyway that'sprobably a Q&A for another day
but Gilbert the Filbert BasilHelen Radford was spotting over
the Somme in 1916 when hisballoon got attacked he bailed
out with his static lineparachute and it failed to
deploy properly and he came downin what was known as a Roman
candle where the parachute didnot operate correctly and he hit
(05:21):
the ground at high speed and waskilled instantly so this was by
no means any kind of perfecttechnology the parachutes were
bulky they were heavy andbecause of this there was
difficulty in getting them intofirst world war cockpits and
also they added a considerableamount of weight to the aircraft
(05:43):
which was a big consideration inaircraft of that period so the
static line as well that didn'thelp because if you could jump
out of a first World Waraircraft going at speed it's not
like a balloon and a basket froma balloon which is kind of
suspended there for a while andyou've got a moment where you
can pull against it with anaircraft at high speed, possibly
(06:06):
the amount of force needed toactually deploy the parachute
just wouldn't be there and theparachute could get tangled up
in the aircraft and the pilotwould be dragged down with it.
So there was all kinds of issuesin deploying those kind of
parachutes.
So there was no way and therewas no technology to issue these
(06:28):
pilots with the type ofparachute where they could jump
and then free fall and then opentheir parachute like that that
just did not exist at the timeof the first world war so there
were practical considerationshow the parachutes worked and
the weight of the parachutes inthese early aircraft and how
they would fit into the cockpitsof the aircraft as well the idea
(06:53):
however which you see in quite alot of accounts of the flying
services in the first world warthat they were not issued as
they were bad for morale orencouraged coward us I mean I've
seen all kinds of phrases likethat I think that's a bit
overstated but it is said thatHugh Trenchard the so-called
father of the RAF thought theymight undermine offensive spirit
(07:16):
with pilots which is a kind ofcrazy idea really because you
could be the best pilot on theWestern Front and some aircraft
could easily get intouncontrollable nose dives and
spins and you had no way ofgetting out so it meant that
very experienced pilots could beessentially wasted their
(07:37):
experience and their liveswasted because they had no means
of getting out the aircraft.
Now there were those practicalconsiderations with the
technology but there was also noeffort to improve upon that
technology except on the part ofthe Germans.
So the Germans in 1918 diddevelop a parachute that could
be used by pilots in theaircraft that existed at that
(07:59):
time.
This was a parachute that couldbe deployed as you exited the
aircraft and it was known as theHeinicke system developed by
Unteroffizier Otto Heinicke whohad served in the ground crew of
a German squadron on the westernfront and this was a parachute
in a backpack fairly smallishsized backpack that formed part
(08:21):
of a wider waistcoat harnesssystem that the pilot put on war
as he got into the cockpit withthe parachute flush with the
kind of upper level of theaircraft so it protruded and he
he had to bail out he couldunbuckle himself from the seat
he was in and from the cockpitarea and then get out the
aircraft and deploy hisparachute now it did operate
(08:42):
with a static line but testsshowed that it did operate
reasonably successfully not ahundred percent successfully
because again this was newtechnology so it did have some
success but it wasn'tuniversally issued in the German
flying services and on theBritish and Commonwealth side
that kind of thing was neverissued to their pilots and the
(09:06):
Germans found as well that itdidn't work at low level so
there wasn't literally enoughtime with a fast moving aircraft
at low level for a pilot to getout and the parachute deploy and
then he safely hits the groundso with the exception of balloon
personnel parachutes reallyremained elusive until they were
(09:27):
widely issued to air forces bythe 1930s which also went in
tandem with the development ofparachute forces military forces
using parachutes by the Germansfor example at that time as well
but all of that of course wastoo late for the Great War and
too late for those pilots thatflew over the battlefields in
(09:49):
the First World War so whilethere's a bit of mythology about
this generally speaking thetechnology to give pilots
parachutes didn't exist for thatgeneration of the Great War so
great question one notinfrequently asked about the air
war and thank you Mike andAndrew and all the others who
sent that one in So on toquestion number two, and this
(10:13):
one comes from David Keeley.
(10:41):
Well David, this is somethingwe've hinted on on and off
throughout this Air War month,in the introductory episode and
also in some of the chats withour experts, because it is a
really important part of ourunderstanding how the Air War
operated from the perspective ofthe RFC and the RAF.
It wasn't just the pilots.
(11:02):
Even from the very beginning,the bulk of the personnel in the
RFC that went to war in August1914 were ground crew, not
pilots.
people in the air and when theRoyal Flying Corps together with
the RNS became the RAF on the1st of April 1918 they did a big
survey of the personnel thatworked for those institutions
(11:24):
that became this big nominalrole effectively of the RAF on
formation that is now part ofthe archives of the National
Archives and I'm pretty sureit's been digitised it doesn't
tell you any more than it's intheir service records but it's a
useful document and from that wediscover that there was a About
150,000 men serving in the RoyalFlying Corps.
(11:45):
but 10% of them, less than 10%of them, were actually air crew,
were pilots or observers.
So what that meant was that thevast majority of those who wore
raw flying core and then went onto wear RAF uniform were not in
the air, not carrying out aircombat, they were on the ground.
(12:06):
And to keep one pilot and hismachine in the air, it needed 15
to 20 personnel working on itfull-time, on the ground to make
that possible.
So their role was absolutelyvital.
The pilots couldn't take themachine up.
They couldn't get it to where itneeded to be if it didn't have
(12:26):
enough fuel in it.
They couldn't fight their airbattles if it had not been
rearmed and machine gunammunition added to the weapons
on it and bombs added to thosethat were being sent forward to
drop bombs on targets.
So the role of the ground crewwas absolutely pivotal.
And the pilots, of course, arethe ones that...
get all the glory they're theones that come back to the mess
(12:49):
and tell the stories they're theones that are picked on by the
newspapers and become heroes ofthat generation and then the
kind of backroom boys the groundcrew don't get that level of
fame but pilots within thosesquadrons of course knew that
they couldn't do anythingwithout those men and if you
were a wise pilot a clever pilotthen obviously you'd cultivate a
(13:12):
good ground crew team to makesure that your aircraft was in
tip-top shape and you could gooff and do all the things that
you wanted to do and indeed wererequired to do as part of that
air war strategy, whether it wasattacking enemy aircraft in the
skies or taking the war over thebattlefield to gather
intelligence, drop bombs,whatever.
(13:35):
So the Royal Flying Corps groundcrew, they were really this
essential force pivot in howthis whole thing worked and
there were aircraft mechanicsdoing general repairs to the
aircraft riggers and fittersworking on the airframe and the
mechanics of the engine to makesure that functioned properly
(13:58):
because you didn't want to takean aircraft up and then the
engine stopped in mid-air giventhe fact as we've already
mentioned there were noparachutes to get out you had to
have armourers who werespecialists in the weapons that
would eventually be added tothese aircraft machine guns and
and special machine guns thatoperated with the turn of the
propeller, synchronised machineguns, so you needed specialists
(14:18):
to do that kind of work.
You had wireless operators thatworked on the eventual
small-scale radio sets thatcould transmit morse that were
put into the cockpits of some ofthe later aircraft.
You had signalers that were allpart of that as well, plus
clerks, drivers, logisticalsupport, and then, of course,
medical staff, cooks, and allkinds of other ancillary staff
(14:42):
that was essential to thefunctioning of a squadron
wherever that was based behindthe Western Front.
So it was a big team and anessential team to make sure that
squadron functioned, the wingswithin that squadron functioned,
and the individual pilots hadeverything that they needed to
get up into the air.
(15:04):
Now back in the 80s and 90s whenI interviewed Great War
veterans, I interviewed threemen that flew in the First World
War, but one of the very firstveterans I interviewed was a
chap who lived in my hometown ofCrawley and he'd served on the
RFC ground crew.
He was an aircraft mechanic,second class.
And he'd originally beenemployed to work on the engines
(15:26):
of different aircraft within hissquadron because he'd done work
like that in civilian lifebefore the war on motor cars and
then buses.
And he also got a transferwithin the squadron at one point
because he kind of found thatkind of work monotonous to a
certain degree.
It was his speciality.
But he got into a team that wentout to recover crashed aircraft.
(15:49):
So what would happen is pilotswould go up over the battlefield
they'd have mechanical problemsengines would cut out they'd be
hit by enemy fire and theaircraft would crash now they
wouldn't be necessarily killedor wounded but the aircraft
wreck would be there and youdidn't want to leave it on the
battlefield you wanted torecover it probably it would
never fly again but you couldrecover it for spare parts
(16:10):
because i'm sure any mechanicwill tell you the more spare
parts you've got the morelikelihood you've got of
repairing any kind of equipmentso they would go out and do that
and he found himself acrossthese kind of moonscapes of the
Somme and Passchendaele goingout to recover aircraft.
The Royal Flying Corps alsotrained quite a lot of
(16:31):
signalers.
I mentioned wireless operatorsand signalers who were trained
up to do that kind of work, toreceive signals from the
aircraft, transmit signals, andwere generally signalers,
specialists and the Royal FlyingCorps found at one stage in
1916-17 that it had a surplus ofthem now the Royal Artillery
(16:51):
Royal Garrison Artillery, RoyalField Artillery probably the
Royal Horse Artillery as wellthey didn't have enough because
casualties among signalers waspretty high in the gunners so
the Royal Flying Corpstransferred a lot of men who had
trained as signalers in the RFCto the gunners to work in
artillery units.
So across the battlefieldstoday, you will find the graves
(17:14):
of RFC men who never flew, werenot in aircraft, but were
serving with artillery units onthe battlefield.
And again, one of the veteranswho lived near me in Sussex,
that's exactly what he'd done.
He trained as a signaller, neverthought he would go into the
trenches, and then found himselftransferred to a raw field
artillery brigade, and he servedwith them at Arras, and during
(17:37):
the third battle of it, beforehe was eventually sent back to
an RFC squadron and what itmeant was that these men those
who worked in these ground crewsthey were highly skilled they
didn't just take anyone forthese jobs it's not like the
infantry whereas if you had twoarms two legs two eyes and a
(17:58):
trigger finger you were kind ofin I mean that's a bit unkind to
the infantry but you get what Imean with these men you had to
be skilled you had to alreadyhave these skills so they were
much more independent thinkerstechnically adept and they came
with existing skills and tradesthat were applicable to the work
(18:20):
that they would do in the RoyalFlying Corps and then eventually
the Royal Air Force and thatprobably made them a cut above
those who were in other parts ofthe army in terms of training in
terms of skill because there'sfar more skilled than the
average soldier and that alsowent with pay they got paid more
(18:41):
because of this skill and Ithink that probably behind the
lines You occasionally read of abit of friction between the
army, the men, the PBI, theinfantry in the trenches, and
the Royal Flying Corps guyswho've got much more money, and
possibly the prices in theestaminets and all kinds of
other institutions might go upas a consequence of that.
(19:02):
But what it meant was that thesemen who had...
tough jobs.
They weren't in combat.
They were sometimes quite nearthe front.
If you look at the aerodrome atMont Sainte-Loire near Arras,
which is in sight of Vimy Ridge,you can see there that they were
not thousands of miles behindthe front.
And they had long days, long,long days keeping these aircraft
(19:25):
in the skies.
But it wasn't as romantic, itwasn't as poetical and all the
other things that the kind ofwar, the experience that the
pilots had.
And it's easy to forget theirwork.
And it's something that I wasvery keen to make reference to
in this series.
So thank you, David.
(19:45):
And thanks for the others whowrote in about your relatives
who did exactly this kind ofwork behind the lines at these
Royal Flying Corps aerodromesduring the Great War.
So we move on to question numberthree, and this one comes from
Tim Osborne, who asks, with thespecial series on the air war, I
wonder if you could mention afew published memoirs relating
(20:07):
to this subject.
There is Winged Victory, ofcourse, but many of your
listeners may not know it.
I've just read War Story byDerek Robinson, published in
1987, which is good fiction.
I expect you know it.
But what else is there?
Well, this is a great question,Tim.
And as all of you know wholisten to this podcast, memoirs
of the First World War, fictionof the First World War is
(20:29):
something that really interestsme.
And I think it's really a kindof gateway to understanding so
many aspects of the experienceof the First World War by
looking at these memoirs.
And there's a whole load for thewar in the air, far too many for
one question, which is part of ageneral Q&A episode.
But these that I'm going to talkabout now are some of my
(20:52):
favourites and top of that listis the book that you already
mentioned which is WingedVictory by Victor Yeats Now,
this is a great classic to startwith.
Yeats flew with 46 Squadron,Royal Flying Corps, and the
novel is based on hisexperiences.
It was first published in 1934.
Unfortunately, Yeats didn't livevery long after that.
(21:13):
He never really kind of lived tosee the fame and success of the
book.
And it follows the fictionalcharacter, Tom Cundall, through
an often difficult war.
It's a very honest book.
It's an incredible read.
It is fascinating.
fiction but it's based on reallife situations that Yeats went
through and I think it reallygives you a sense of the mental
(21:36):
strain the psychological issuesthat pilots had and air crew had
during the First World War.
The book has an introduction byHenry Williamson and of course
that is one of the things thatfirst brought me to this book.
Williamson and Yeats were atschool together before the Great
(21:56):
War and Williamson by thenfamous novelist the winner of
the Hawthornden Prize for hisbook Tarker the Otter 1928 was
asked to write the introductionto this book to kind of give it
a push forward I mean it didn'treally need one it's fantastic
literature but Williamson'sintroduction is also worth
reading as well so I would saystart with this I mean there's
(22:19):
many many editions of this firsteditions are obviously going to
be expensive but there's recentpaperbacks of it and cheap
paperbacks and have a goodsearch on the internet with this
and all the ones I'm going tomention here and you'll find
them without having to spend alot of money.
So that's fictionalised memoirswhich have an important place in
(22:40):
our canon if you like of GreatWar literature but in terms of
actual memoirs the next few arewritten in that style and the
top of that list is SagittariusRising by Cecil Lewis.
Now this is probably one of thebest known and indeed one of the
best actual memoirs of pilots inthe First World War.
(23:01):
Cecil Lewis joined the RoyalFlying Corps underage and he
flew over the Somme, Arras andYpres until he was wounded,
burned and forced down in 1917.
The book was also from thatsimilar kind of period to Wing
Victory.
It was first published in 1936but Lewis lived to a ripe old
age, dying in 1997 and Iattended an Imperial War Museum
(23:26):
event that he did in the early90s when I worked in London he
was quite a well known characterand the book itself is
beautifully written it readslike a novel in places so many
of these men they were able toconfront their memoirs their
memories by semi-fictionalisingthem whether he had a bit of
(23:48):
that approach I don't know butcertainly his description of air
combat of being in that war inthe air and if nothing else his
description of seeing the LochNaga mine go up at La Boiselle
on the first day of the Sommeit's worth reading Sagittarius
Rising just for that alone sothat's a fantastic memoir to
(24:09):
start with there's a book calledCombat Report by Bill Lambert,
DFC Lambert was an American whojoined the Royal Flying Corps in
Canada in 1917 and he flew inthe final year of the Great War
with 24 squadron and during histime in the air he had an
incredible 22 victory making himthe second highest scoring
(24:31):
American born ace of the FirstWorld War.
So a really important pilot.
Published after his death in the1970s, it's a great account of
aerial warfare by a decoratedveteran, but less literary than
the previous two books that I'vementioned.
But he does not ignore theterrible stress placed on
(24:52):
pilots.
I mean, that is a common themethrough all of these books.
The next one I'd recommend is NoParachute by Arthur Gould Lee.
This was one of the very firstRoyal Flying Corps memoirs that
I ever read when I picked up asecond-hand copy many, many
years ago in one of those Sussexbookshops.
And he flew with 46 Squadron,the same as Yeats, but the book
(25:16):
is made up of his letters andpersonal photographs, so a very
different kind of book.
It's more of a chronicle than amemoir, but it gives great
insight into the life of a pilotand what comrades meant to
pilots and the loss of thosecomrades when they got shot
down.
So a really important memoir inour understanding of RFC
(25:38):
experience.
And the last one I mentioned isFighter Pilot on the Western
Front by Wing Commander E.D.
Crundall, DFC, AFC.
Now this is another 1970spublished memoir by a pilot who
in this case flew with the RoyalNaval Air Service with the Naval
8th Squadron.
We haven't mentioned enoughabout the RNAS in this
(25:58):
mini-series because I decided toconcentrate on the RFC-REF
experience and we will return tothose naval aviators in a
separate episode down the line.
That's one we will definitelycome back to.
And the 70s was a kind of goldenperiod for the publication of
First World War memoirs and thiskind of very much fits into
(26:18):
that.
Dudley Crum gives a detailedoften quite technical account of
his experiences as a pilot whichis good for those who are
interested in the technicalaspects of the aircraft that
flew in the First World War andhis account takes him to that
point where he shot down nearArras flying out of the
aerodrome at Mont Saint-Éloiwhere Naval 8th was for quite
(26:40):
some time and he then went afterrecovering from that episode
went on to fly with 210 SquadronRoyal Air Force in France and
Flanders in the final phase ofthe Great War.
And again, it's a book that'sgot a lot of personal
photographs in it.
Most of these do, which kind ofadds another layer, I think, to
(27:00):
what we get from accounts likethat.
Now, I don't know War Story,which you mentioned, but I see
it's been compared to Catch-22.
So that's another one for me toadd to my list.
But these few that I mentionedare just the tip of the iceberg
when it comes to memoirs andaccounts by those who were in
the flying services in the FirstWorld War.
(27:22):
And we haven't mentionedAmerican flyers, and we haven't
mentioned the German side ofthings.
So there is this mass ofmaterial out there.
If this is something thatinterests you, you're not going
to find it difficult to find allkinds of accounts.
And I looked through specialistbooksellers like Tom Donovan,
and there's many others besides,and reprints by Naval and
(27:43):
Military Press, then you couldeasily build up quite a good
Royal Flying Corps library,really.
So I hope, Tim, that that kindof gives you a bit of an
indication, a path to followwith these.
And I'm sure in our manyepisodes looking at books on the
First World War, then we'llprobably mention some others
(28:04):
down the line.
Question number four comes fromJohn Thompson.
John asks, I watched thedocumentary Aces Falling again,
featuring your good self andPeter Hart.
This prompted me to ask, whenManfred von Richthofen, the Red
Baron, was shot down and killed,he was given full military
honours at his burial and it wasfilmed, which was great to
watch.
(28:24):
Did this sit well with youraverage pilot and Tommy due to
the amount of kills that Manfredhad?
On the British side...
with the greats like JamesMcCudden and Mick Mannock giving
the same pomp and ceremony attheir burials.
Well, good question, John.
And Aces Falling was a BBC TimeWatch documentary that we did in
(28:45):
2008, which featured quite a fewaviation historians.
And I'm pretty sure it'savailable on YouTube.
It's certainly no longer oniPlayer.
But coming back to the RedBaron, when he was shot down on
the Somme on the 21st of April1918, he was buried at
Bertangles, which was a verysmall communal cemetery close to
(29:07):
a squadron aerodrome.
and a lot of pilots because ofwho he was because of his fame
because of his reputation cameto attend that funeral and you
rightly say it was filmed one ofthe cinematographers was there
and he filmed the coffin beingbrought in and then the Red
Baron being laid to rest nowthat was eventually sent home it
(29:30):
wasn't censored it was put outand it appeared in cinemas
across Britain and at home itcaused a lot of upset they
didn't think it was right thatan enemy who as you say had been
responsible for the deaths of somany pilots over the battlefield
they didn't think civilians whohad no sense of what the war was
all about in many ways didn'tthink it was right that the
(29:54):
enemy should be honoured in thisway so that kind of thing was
never really done again and Ithink it kind of all adds we
talk about layers but there'slayers of mythology as well and
there's so much reputation andmyth and so many other layers to
the history of the Red Baron thefact that his funeral was
(30:15):
actually filmed and that he washonoured more by his enemy the
pilots of the RAF than by hisown side at that particular
point in that moment of deaththen I think this all kind of
adds to that great historian andthere's certainly a part on the
story of the Red Baron.
(31:02):
And that would also haveincluded men in the trenches as
well who would have read thosepopular magazines where there
were stories of him.
But I'm not sure that their ideaof honouring the enemy in 1918
after four long years of war,I'm not sure that that would
have been well received.
And when, as you rightly pointto, when we contrast that to the
(31:24):
funerals of Jimmy McCudden andMick Manick, there is a big
contrast.
I mean, Jimmy McCudden crashedon an aerodrome so it wasn't on
a battlefield his body could berecovered from the wreckage and
he was buried in a militarycemetery on the slopes of a
valley in a very picturesquelocation fairly small cemetery
(31:45):
at Wawa which we're going totalk about when we take that
journey across the landscape ofthe western front today and see
what we can find of the flyingservices on that landscape but
he was buried there with fullmilitary honours there's quite a
few other pilots buried in thereas well it wasn't on the skyline
of the Red Baron, I have to say,and it wasn't filmed.
(32:06):
There's photographs of thecemetery, of his cross, but I
don't think, unless there'sprivate photographs out there, I
don't think there's any officialphotographs of the burial of
Jimmy McCudden.
Mick Mannock, which by the timethis goes out we'll have talked
to Andy Saunders about, is acompletely different prospect
and typical of so many pilotsand observers who were shot down
(32:28):
over the Western Front in thathe does not have a known grade
he has a potential grave in hisbody was recovered from the
wreckage of the aircraft buriedby the Germans on the
battlefield and an unknownaviator was recovered from that
area and then placed in aBritish cemetery after the war
but his name is listed on theArras memorial to the missing
(32:50):
the special flying servicessection of that that remembers
nearly a thousand air crew whowere shot down over the
battlefields and do not have aknown grave that was the sad
reality of aerial combat thegrim reality of aerial death
being in aircraft that couldcatch fire very quickly descend
(33:12):
from a great height hit theground with a massive explosion
so many of those men who diedunder those circumstances their
bodies were completelyunidentifiable and unrecoverable
really from the wreckage thatwas left when that aircraft hit
the ground I mean it's aterrible stark element of the
(33:34):
war in the air in aerial combat.
(34:03):
But just to end on this subject,John, I think it's also worth
saying that the Germans affordeda lot of respect to British and
Allied pilots when they crashedbehind German lines and were
killed.
They buried them with fullmilitary honours as well.
I visited quite a few scatteredgraves of RFC pilots that are in
(34:25):
communal cemeteries acrossnorthern France and I know that
they were recovered from theiraircraft and the local Germans
brought them into a plot oftheir own cemetery and they
buried them with full militaryhonours with respect and put up
often quite elaborate gravemarkers on their grave with
details of who they were AlbertBall VC who crashed behind
(34:48):
German lines in 1917 is stillburied in a German military
cemetery at Anneluin he is avery good example of that and
there are some photographs thatdo purport to show Germans
attending the ceremony of theburial of Albert Ball and I've
seen in quite a few German photobooks and postcard albums
(35:10):
similar kinds of ceremoniestaking place for far lesser
known pilots so I think thatrespect that chivalry that was
spoken about in this series onthe air war it did exist on one
level and I think with theburial of the dead both sides
did show respect for thosepilots and observers of the
great war so a great questionJohn and I I think highlights
(35:32):
yet another fascinating elementof this war in the air.
Our fifth and final question iskind of a two-parter, but
talking about very similarsubjects.
And these come from Ian Reekieand Nick Jenkins.
So the first one of these reads,I have a question relating to
the air war.
At the start of the movie, TheBlue Max, George Pepard's
(35:55):
character is seen runningbetween the trenches in no man's
land under fire.
It's hell on earth, but he makesit to the relative safety of a
deep trench where he turns onhis back and looks longingly up
to the sky where a dogfight istaking place.
He obviously then realises thatfighting in the air is where he
wants to be, away from the hellof trench warfare.
(36:18):
I just wondered then how bothsides viewed soldiers wishing to
transfer to air combat.
I guess there must have beenmany soldiers who thought a life
with the German air services orthe Royal Flying Corps RAF with
all the so-called attractionsoffered an enviable alternative
to trench warfare.
Was it encouraged or frownedupon when soldiers requested
(36:41):
that transfer?
Well, the film that youmentioned, The Blue Max, is
about a fictionalised kind ofversion, I guess, of...
Red Baron von Richthofen, BlueMax is the Paul and Marie, the
German highest decoration forgallantry in the First World
War, and Pepard plays a Germanaviator who flies over the
Western Front.
It's a great film, one of manyfilms looking at air combat in
(37:03):
the First World War, and therewas almost an episode on films
about that for this series, butmaybe again it's one we'll come
back to.
So in terms of men transferringfrom the infantry or from ground
forces into an air service, nomatter what that air service
would be whether they're Germanwhether they're American whether
they're British and CommonwealthFrench whatever now certainly in
(37:24):
the British Army men wereencouraged to join the Royal
Flying Corps because there wereheavy losses and pilots needed
to be replaced but it took timeto train a pilot and you
couldn't just get in a simulatorlearn all about it and then
safely learn how to fly it That,as we've said in some previous
(37:46):
episodes of this air war series,that was dangerous in its own
right.
And in terms of who applied, Imean, I think it depended on
which period of the war.
At the beginning, the RFC waspretty much an unknown entity
within the army and probablyseen as a bit odd.
So men were not queuing up tojoin it.
(38:07):
But as the war went static andthey could see dogfights in the
air and the whole kind of ideaof knights of the air and the
chivalrous activity I'm surethose of that kind of
inclination were drawn into itand wanted to volunteer.
And it wasn't difficult torequest a transfer to the Royal
Flying Corps.
But unlike certain parts of thearmy, you had to come with some
(38:30):
degree of skill and aptitude forwhat you were being asked to do.
And I think as well, it alsokind of depended on the unit you
were in.
The 46th North Midland Division,which fought at Luz in 1915,
suffered heavy losses, was atGomercourt on the 1st of July,
suffered very heavy losses.
After those two, which were seenby many senior officers as
(38:53):
failed battles, it wasconsidered a failed division and
was sidelined and just held theline for a very, very long time.
From the end of the Battle ofthe Somme right through to the
battles on the Hindenburg Linein September 1918, it was
shuffled around bits of theWestern Front, not really taking
part in major operations againand men within that division
(39:13):
tried to get out of it becausethey didn't want to be
associated with that invertedcommas failed formation failed
division so there were quite afew in some units quite a few
transfers to the Royal FlyingCorps men ordinary soldiers if
they had the skills they couldtransfer to the ground crews and
officers put in for transfers tosquadrons where they could
(39:34):
become pilots or observers so Ithink it again depends on a
period of the war I Andcertainly over Arras in 1917
where British aircraft werebeing shot out of the sky left,
right and centre, did thataffect the number of men
stepping forward to join theRFC?
I'm sure there's a fascinatingstudy in that.
(39:55):
So I'm not sure that there wasnecessarily a sense that it was
kind of a cushy number that wesee in Blackadder.
I referenced that right at thebeginning of this air war month,
the 20 Minuters when Blackadderand his chums go off to join the
Royal Flying Corps.
I don't think that men at thetime saw the RFC as any easy
route out of the trenchesbecause each element of combat,
(40:19):
whether it was in the air,whether it was on the ground,
whether it was under the WesternFront, whether it was at sea, it
all came with its own problemsand challenges.
And I think anyone who'd spentany time anywhere near any of
those battlefields wouldprobably have at least some
understanding and awareness ofthat.
(40:40):
But I think to many it appealedbecause it was different to that
war on the ground.
Malcolm Vivian, who I've spokenabout many times on this
podcast, was a gunner officer,commissioned in the Royal
Garrison Artillery in 1914,served on the Somme at Arras and
up in the northern part ofFlanders around Pervis.
And then in 1918, hetransferred, put in for a
(41:03):
transfer to the Royal FlyingCorps.
Then that became the RAF.
He trained as an observerbecause he'd done a lot of
cooperation as a forwardobserver with aircraft in the
sky.
He went through that prettyquickly.
That wasn't good enough.
He wanted to actually fly andpilot an aircraft.
So he put in an application forthat and was accepted.
But the war was over before heever flew in combat.
(41:26):
So I think that all of this, itdepends on the individual.
not every soldier in thetrenches is going to want to be
up there in an aircraft therealities of their war their
known war on the ground perhapsthey feel safer there than in
those skies but there wereothers with adventurous spirits
determination and a flair forsomething different who this
(41:49):
would appeal to and I'm surethat was a route to it and I'm
sure as well that there weresome pilots just like the
fictional George Peppercharacter who laid back on a
battlefield somewhere and sawaircraft buzzing around in the
sky above them and thoughtthat's me that's where I want to
be so that's part one of thisquestion part two is kind of
(42:09):
linked to it and this one readsmy paternal grandfather joined
the RAF in 1918 and no doubtlike most 18 year olds applied
to be a pilot he was turned downfor that but was accepted as an
observer given that I suspectmost RAF recruits wanted to be
pilots how were they selectedwould my grandfather have been
(42:30):
rejected on any particulargrounds or was it that too many
men wanted to be pilots and notenough wanted to be observers
was it just a lottery and wasthere any difference in casualty
numbers between pilots andobservers both look pretty
dangerous to me Well, you'reabsolutely right.
Both are very, very dangerousfor all the reasons we have
(42:51):
discussed in this series.
These were aircraft that werefragile, could catch fire easily
and death was brutal andterrible in the air services of
all nations over thosebattlefields in the Great War.
But in terms of men putting infor a transfer, being successful
in that transfer, in terms ofthe Royal Flying Corps and the
(43:13):
RAF, pilots needed to have goodeyesight so their eyes were
tested if you didn't have verygood eyesight and you're flying
a fast moving aircraft then yourchances of not surviving your
first mission I would guess arepretty high there was also quite
a high level of physical fitnessrequired because this was raw
(43:36):
flying and you needed strengthoften to control the aircraft
that you were flying so fitnesswas an element in it but I don't
don't get the sense that therewas very little screening, not
like a generation later when allkinds of tests were put in place
to choose the best people tobecome pilots and bomber crews
(43:57):
and all the other aspects of theWorld War II side of the RAF.
But in the First World War,there were kind of essential
things that were needed and alsoa desire to fly.
Now, I don't think everyonewanted to fly.
Some thought that it was beyondthem.
perhaps and observers was thekind of easy element of getting
(44:18):
into the rfc because you didn'thave to fly the aircraft you
didn't have to have any of thatkind of knowledge you got into
the observer seat and you'reobserving taking photographs
operating a machine gun droppingbombs making notes drawing maps
kind of whatever it was but ofcourse it didn't come with the
romance of being a pilot andagain looking at the kind of men
(44:43):
that applied to join the flyservices the ones that are going
to be pilots are going to be onetype of man and possibly the
ones that want to be observersare another type perhaps those
who trained as observers likeMalcolm Vivian it wasn't enough
and they wanted to get behindthe control stick of that
aircraft and actually fly it sowhy your grandfather was turned
(45:05):
down I don't know it could beall kinds of reasons something
as simple as eyesight butobservers their role was
incredibly important because andthe skill sets that they needed
were incredibly important aswell because they were doing the
more technical side of it theflying was one element but they
were operating cameras takingaerial photographs using maps
(45:28):
understanding maps orientatingmaps they were doing observation
they were doing groundcooperation with the infantry on
the battlefield and they weregathering all kinds of
intelligence as well that had tobe made sense of so theirs was a
kind of broader kind of jobreally when it came to being in
(45:48):
that aircraft and in terms ofcasualties I don't think there's
ever been any kind of real studylooking at those two roles and
which had the higher casualtyrate but certainly for observers
by 1917-18 where in mostaircraft they were behind the
pilot and in most cases whenthere was aerial combat the
(46:09):
enemy aircraft came from behindthe allied aircraft and opened
up on it then the observer wasthe one that was in the direct
line of immediate fire and thatmust have meant that their
potentially their casualty rateswere a lot higher than the
pilots but it's clear thatneither of these roles were safe
(46:29):
in any kind of way that theselection process often
particularly in the early yearsof the war was based on where an
airman where an officer in theRFC had been educated either at
public school or university wasnot related to his ability to
fly or understand aircraft inany kinds of way that changed as
(46:50):
the war went on as more ordinarymen went on to become pilots and
McCudden and Mannock are twoexamples of that but the
casualty rates amongst all ofthese men were high and in terms
of actual flying hours when youread stories of the battle of
britain and new pilots turningup and they've only got a few
hours of flying experience inthe great war i suspect that was
(47:14):
no different and perhaps evenless that inability to train
pilots without putting themputting their lives at risk and
those thousands of pilots andair crew who were killed or
injured before their aircrafthad even left great britain
killed in train Then I think wecan see how early and embryonic
(47:36):
in many ways the whole aspectsof the utilisation, pilots,
observers and the aircraftthemselves are.
how that was still very much inits early stages throughout the
war.
This was the first proper airwar, the first great air war in
which aircraft had played suchan important role above and
(48:00):
beyond the battlefield and soessential to our understanding
of the Great War.
So thanks for all theseexcellent questions about the
war in the air.
Thanks too for the ones that wehaven't featured in this special
episode episode I'll save someof those for another day keep
your general questions coming infor the Q&A episodes that we
(48:23):
have on a regular basis and asalways you can send those in via
email via the discord server andalso via fan mail as well and if
you do it via that routeremember to put your name at the
end of the message otherwise Iwon't know who's sending it in
so thanks and see you again soonfor some more questions and
(48:54):
answers on the Old Front Line.
Check out the website atoldfrontline.co.uk where you'll
find lots of podcast extras andphotographs and links to books
that are mentioned in thepodcast.
(49:14):
And if you feel like supportingus, you can go to our Patreon
page, patreon.com slasholdfrontline or support us on
Buy Me A Coffee atbuymeacoffee.com slash
oldfrontline.
Links to all of these are on ourwebsite.
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you again soon.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.