August 15, 2025 • 46 mins
In the final episode of our Air War series we travel across the landscape of the First World War and discover what we can find that connects us to the story of the Royal Flying Corps and RAF in WW1, from memorials to cemeteries and sites of former aerodromes.
Along the way we examine the stories of some of the Aces from James McCudden VC to Manfred Von Richthofen - The Red Baron - to Bob Little from Australia and Major Lanoe Hawker VC, before seeing the battlefields where Albert Ball VC's war ended and the fields where Mick Mannock VC crashed in 1918.
We end at the Air Services Memorial at Arras which commemorates nearly a thousand British and Commonwealth aviators of the First World War.
Mike O'Connor 'Airfields and Airmen' books published by Pen & Sword:
- Airfields & Airmen: Arras (2004)
- Airfields & Airmen: Cambrai (2007)
- Airfields & Airmen: Channel Coast (2007)
- Airfields & Airmen: Somme (2001)
- Airfields & Airmen: Ypres (2000)
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Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
To end our air war series, we travel across the
landscape of the Western Front,those battlefields of the First
World War, and find what we canof where those men flew and
where they fell.
In this fifth and final episodein our air war series, we look
(00:23):
at what we can find of the menof the Royal Flying Corps and
the Royal Air Force on thelandscape of the Western Front
today.
The very nature of looking ataspects of combat in the air
might suggest there is verylittle to find of what happened
above those trenches, but infact there are many places where
we can uncover aspects of thispart, this layer of the Great
(00:47):
War.
Back in the late 1980s, a videocame out, which I purchased from
an advert in Stand 2, thejournal of the Western Front
Association.
Back in those days, videos aboutthe First World War were pretty
unusual, and this one was calledWhere They Flew and Where They
Fell, and it was presented byactor John Graham Davis, who I
(01:12):
understand was deeply interestedin the subject matter of the war
in the air during the FirstWorld War.
War.
Now in that film he took ajourney across the landscape of
the old Western Front not fromthe perspective of the trenches
or the war undergrounds or tanksor anything like that but he
followed it from the perspectiveof the pilots and the observers
(01:35):
and the history of the RoyalFlying Corps, Royal Naval Air
Service and the RAF and thatinspired me to go and look into
that aspect of the Great War onthe next few trips that I I did
over onto those battlefields andwhat it made me realise that
there were so many more layersto this subject of the Great War
(01:59):
and that the landscape of theFirst World War extended way
beyond the area where the fiercefighting had been and it wasn't
just a case of looking around orlooking down.
It was a case of looking up aswell and thinking about those
events in that sky above thebattlefields of the Western
(02:19):
Front.
So when it came to drawing upthis air war series for the
podcast, I wanted to dosomething similar to that video
here and that's what thisepisode is all about.
And while that video is hard tofind, there is a really poor
quality upload of it on YouTube,which I'll put a link to on the
(02:41):
podcast website.
One thing that we do have tohelp us in our journeys looking
at this subject are thefantastic guidebooks by Mike
O'Connor.
Mike was a former Concorde pilotand he had an unrivaled
knowledge of researching thebattlefields from the point of
view of the war in the air.
And I had the pleasure ofworking with Mike on a BBC
(03:03):
documentary, Aces Falling, someyears ago where we looked at
that war in the air and webenefited from some of his great
knowledge.
Now his books, Airfields andAirmen, which were published by
Pen and Sword in the early2000s, cover Ypres, Arras, the
Somme, Combré and the ChannelCoast.
And they are easily availablefrom Pen and Sword direct or
(03:27):
widely across the internet andare extremely useful if you want
to delve deep into this subject.
He focuses on a specific area,he looks at aerodromes, he looks
at memorials, he looks at thestories of pilots and observers
and goes to some of theprincipal cemeteries where
you'll find significant burialsfrom the war in the air or large
(03:50):
numbers of men from the flyingservices.
So they're incredibly usefulbooks and I thoroughly recommend
them and I'll put a so you canseek them out.
But the one issue with making ajourney related to the air war
is that it potentially covers awide area from the UK itself,
(04:12):
and that's a part of it, to theChannel Coast region of northern
France and Flanders, to areasnot just where the fighting took
place, but well behind both setsof trenches.
So not just behind the Britishsector of the Western Front, but
behind the German sector aswell.
because that's where a lot ofthe air activity took place.
(04:34):
So it's a journey that will takeus far and wide and we can't
possibly cover all of the sitesconnected with the war in the
air.
And listening to this, you mightsay, well, why didn't you visit
this or that?
Well, I'm sure we will return tosome of those in future podcasts
and future journeys across thatlandscape of the First World War
(04:56):
in France and Flanders.
So with this episode...
where do we begin our journeystarts not across the channel
but actually in britain at doverhigh on the cliffs as part of
the white cliff national trustsite is a memorial easy to drive
(05:20):
by easy to miss but whichcommemorates that point where
the royal flying corps went towar in august 1914 and that too
will be our starting point forthis journey.
On a grass airstrip not far fromhere, the aircraft of four
squadrons took off between the13th and 15th of August 1914, so
(05:42):
just over a week or so after theoutbreak of war.
Among them, a plane piloted byHubert Dunstaville Harvey Kelly,
who became the first pilot toland on French soil when he
landed a BE-2A from No.
2 Squadron at Amiens, on 13thAugust 1914.
He would go on to become a pilotin No.
(06:02):
56 Squadron, one of the famousones, and be awarded the
Distinguished Service Order andwas sadly shot down near Arras
after a long war in May 1917,being buried today in Brown's
Copse Cemetery near Ruex.
Here, at this point, this verymodest memorial, the story of
British military aviation in theGreat War really begins with the
(06:25):
dispatch of those aircraft toFrance in August 1914.
And from here, we'll make ourown crossing now to one of the
main Royal Flying Corps and RAFbases used in northern France.
That journey takes us toSaint-Omer, to the troops.
In 1914, there were no major airbases across France.
(06:48):
And as the importance of theRoyal Flying Corps grew, it was
clear that it would need to be abase somewhere, a major base
from which they could operate.
operate.
Saint-Omer was selected as ithad a large flat area near a
racecourse where aircraft couldland and take off and there was
a chateau close by that could beused for pilots and personnel.
(07:10):
The Royal Flying Corpsheadquarters was established
here as early as October 1914and it rapidly became the point
of arrival of new squadrons asthey deployed to the Western
Front.
It was clear not all of themcould just stay here, that
further facilities would beneeded, But this became a major
staging point for the arrival ofsquadrons and aircraft.
(07:32):
One of the reasons it was souseful was its distance from
Britain.
It was a direct route, a shortdirect route of only 21 miles
that took aircraft from Kent viaCape Greene direct to Santo
Meir.
Gradually the site expanded withtemporary hangars, wooden huts
(07:53):
for the personnel, and the wholeestablishment gradually extended
into nearby Santa Maria itself.
As the size of the Royal FlyingCorps grew, and as we've
mentioned in previous podcasts,the size of the personnel that
was required to keep thoseaircraft in the sky, that grew
too.
and a huge establishment ofbuildings and structures.
(08:16):
An estate was really needed forthem as the war progressed.
Later in the conflict, it becamemore of an aircraft depot here
at Centermere to supply planesto squadrons in other locations
that were often now much nearerto the battlefield area.
And it was a place to carry outrepairs on aircraft.
(08:38):
And by March 1918, over 4,300ground crew worked at
Centermere.
So it became an active baseagain in 1918 as the war on the
front shifted and the frontmoved nearer to Saint-Omer.
Squadrons returned herefollowing the German spring
offensives and aces like BillyBishop and Mick Mannock also
(09:01):
flew with their squadrons fromSaint-Omer.
It remained open until 1919.
After the conflict, the aircrafthad to be moved around, returned
to Britain, but gradually theforces on the Western Front were
demobilised and including menfrom what was by then the Royal
Air Force, and Santa Mariabecame a civilian airfield after
(09:23):
the war.
It was used again in the SecondWorld War, and then made a
Luftwaffe airfield, and nothingchanged.
of the original First World Warairfield really remains.
Most of the structures that wesee on this site today relate to
the Second World War or the postSecond World War period.
It is the very nature of many ofthese RFC, RAF bases is that
(09:48):
they were temporary and theyincluded buildings that were
very temporary and were justdismantled or knocked down when
the war came to an end.
And here at Santa Mea, manypeople come because of its
significance, but there is verylittle to see.
However, the main focus when youcome here today is the Santa Mea
Air Services Memorial, whichstands on the edge of the modern
(10:11):
airfield, it's still used as anairfield today, close to the one
that was here in the First WorldWar.
And that memorial was unveiledon the 90th anniversary of the
First World War in 2004.
Just down the road is a militarycemetery and here you'll find
some of the casualties from theunits that served at Santa Maria
(10:32):
and from the airfield itself atLonganess Souvenir Cemetery,
which is quite a large one withover three and a half thousand
burials.
There were medical facilitieshere during the war and many of
these men died of woundsreceived at the front.
But amongst the men from the airservices that are buried here is
Sergeant John Cowell, DCM, MMand BAR.
(10:53):
Cal was an Irishman, an ordinarylad who joined the Royal
Engineers, was not educated atpublic school and got his first
military medal for bravery withthe Royal Engineers on the
battlefield and then transferredto the Royal Flying Corps.
And his DCM and his bar to hisMM was awarded with the Royal
Flying Corps and the RAF.
(11:14):
He served as an observer,gunner, machine gunner in the
back of the aircraft or thefront of the aircraft, depending
on what type of aircraft he wasin.
And later he trained as a pilot.
and he had 16 credited hits, 15of those as an observer gunner
and the final one as a pilot.
But he was killed on 30 July1918 when his aircraft was shot
(11:36):
down by German ace FriedrichRitter von Roth of JASTA-16.
So he's one of the many RFC-REFstories that you'll find in that
cemetery, which coupled with theSanta Maria Air Services
Memorial is a good startingplace for our journey across
this landscape of the FirstWorld War, looking at it from
the perspective of the war abovethe battlefield.
(12:00):
We'll move now down into theSomme region, and there'll be a
map of our journey on thepodcast website.
We're going to a little villagecalled Wava, and here on the
sloping ground above that, willfind quite a small British
cemetery from the First WorldWar.
It's up a track, it's surroundedby farmland.
(12:22):
In the summer, the swayingcornfields surround it with the
occasional poppy.
It's a very, very evocativeplace, I find, and despite its
small size, it's an importantcemetery from the First World
War and certainly an importantone from the perspective of the
war in the air.
It's quite a long way from wherethe front lines were but the
(12:43):
21st casualty clearing stationopened up here in May 1918 and
made burials in a cemetery thatremained open until September of
that year.
There's just 44 burials here atWawa, 41 British, two New
Zealand and one German and themain reason that many come here
(13:04):
is Jimmy McCudden.
James Thomas Byford McCudden,VC, DSO and Bar, MC and Bar MM,
is one of the great names of theaces of the First World War who
flew in the Royal Flying Corpsand the Royal Air Force.
He was one of three McCuddenbrothers who died in the war and
was born in Gillingham in Kent,the son of a regular soldier,
(13:25):
not an officer, not from anyexalted background, but just an
ordinary soldier in the RoyalEngineers.
And Jimmy McCudden, he toojoined the Royal Engineers like
his father before the Great Waras a sapper and then later
transferred into the RoyalFlying Corps as a mechanic.
And this route to flying,mechanical knowledge, was often
(13:47):
the only way for in of hisbackground working class
background to get to fly theydidn't have the advantage of a
public school or universityeducation so there was no direct
route to being commissioned intothe Royal Flying Corps but as
ordinary soldiers as other rankflyers with technical and
(14:07):
mechanical knowledge that wasoften the route for them and you
see this with so many likeMcCudden and Mannock going on to
fly because of their knowledgeand Initially, he served as an
observer before getting pilottraining in 1916.
And really, McCudden deserveshis own podcast episode.
(14:28):
And I think we'll return downthe line to some of these First
World War aces of all nationsbecause they are such
fascinating characters.
In many ways, it's hard toquantify his war and his time in
the air.
But part of his Victoria Crosscitation, his VC was awarded in
March 1918, I think gives us abit of an insight and it reads
(14:50):
as follows.
Captain McCudden has at thepresent time accounted for 54
enemy aeroplanes.
Of these, 42 have definitelybeen destroyed, 19 of them on
our side of the lines.
Only 12 out of the 54 have beendriven out of control.
On two occasions he has totallydestroyed four two-seater enemy
aeroplanes on the same day andon the last occasion all four
(15:14):
machines were destroyed in thespace of one hour and 30
minutes.
While in his present squadron,he's participated in 78
offensive patrols and in nearlyevery case has been the leader.
On at least 30 other occasions,whilst with the same squadron,
he's crossed the lines alone,either in pursuit or in quest of
enemy aeroplanes.
(15:35):
And it shows, I think, the kindof diverse nature of this
fighting in the air, the fiercenature of it with those
casualties and the fact thatmany pilots like McCudden were
kind of lone wolves, really.
After all that combat, after allthose victories in the air,
after all those decorations, itwas a sad irony that he died on
(15:56):
the 9th of July 1918 when hisaircraft seemingly stalled after
take-off and he crashed in atree line at a nearby aerodrome.
I mean, there are many storiesabout that incident which we
looked at when we made thedocumentary Aces Falling.
Was he drunk?
Was he at the end of his tether?
Or was it just a simplemechanical failure?
(16:18):
I mean, we'll never really know,but the stories still abound.
And one little footnote toMcCudden and his grave here is
that when we were making thatdocumentary, Ace is Falling, we
heard that a local farmer hadfound the original brass plaque
from the original wooden crossthat had marked McCudden's
grave.
So we went to Wava, pulled up atthe cemetery, And out in the
(16:42):
field was a farmer ploughing.
So I walked over to him, wavedat him, he stopped, he jumped
out of his cab, and he came overand I explained what we were
doing and that we were lookingfor someone who we believed had
found this plaque in the fields.
And he said, it's me.
So he went down to his farm andhe pulled the plaque out and
I'll put a picture of this ontothe podcast website.
(17:02):
It was about the size of a FirstWorld War memorial plaque in
brass with the badge of theRoyal Air Force and the details
of McCudden and it was obviouslya centrepiece possibly for a
Celtic style cross that had beenplaced on the grave and when the
Chinese Labour Corps and thegraves registration units had
come to make this a permanentcemetery after the war if no one
(17:25):
claimed the crosses they weresimply piled up close by and
burned so the wood had all gonebut this brass plaque had
survived until the farmer foundit and he was very desperate to
give it to the right custodianwhich he felt was the Royal
Engineers Museum as McCudden hadbeen a sapper and they had his
Victoria Cross and That's whereit went.
(17:47):
So as part of that programme, wewere very pleased to be able to
help the farmer in donating thatplaque to the Royal Engineers
Museum in Chatham, where Ibelieve it certainly once was on
display and possibly still is.
So that was a kind of nicefootnote really to my cousin's
story and his burial here.
But McCudden isn't the onlypilot buried in this cemetery,
(18:10):
the only ace.
Also here is Robert AlexanderLittle, DSO and Bar, DSC and
Bar, Croix de Guerre.
So that number of decorationskind of gives you a bit of an
insight into his war.
Bob Little was an Australian andhe flew with 203 Squadron RAF
and formerly with the RoyalNaval Air Service.
(18:30):
He came to Britain in 1915,passed his flying certificate at
Hendon and then joined the RNASand flew in France from the RNAS
base at Dunkirk on Sopwith 1.5Strutters, carrying out bombing
missions until the Naval 8Squadron was formed and he flew
with them in a fighter role onSopwith Pups and later Sopwith
(18:50):
Triplanes.
He scored a total of Thank youvery much.
(19:23):
a widow and a small child.
I mean, another incredible pilotof the First World War and part
of that famous Naval 8thSquadron, which is yet another
subject that I think we shouldreturn to in the podcast at some
point because we haven't givenas much attention to the Royal
Naval Air Service in this seriesas they deserve because they
were an essential part of it,but in some ways a different
(19:45):
part of it.
So, something to return to.
Our journey continues toVertgalen Farm.
So we're moving nearer to thefront line now and this became
typical as the way the RoyalFlying Corps and later the RAF
operated is having aerodromesthat were much nearer to the
front so that the flying timefrom takeoff to battlefield area
(20:08):
was much reduced.
And here we've got a classicFirst World War RFC RAF
aerodrome on the Somme front nowas we mentioned previously one
of the problems with visitingaerodrome sites from the first
world war is that there's almostnothing to see with wooden
buildings with fabric hangersand things like this I mean all
(20:28):
of that was removed destroyedburnt down whatever at the end
of the first world war and it'snot like world war ii airfields
where there's dispersal areasconcrete runways none of that
exists the airstrips were allgrass airstrips but here at Vert
Galant or Vert Galant Farm thereare buildings that do connect us
(20:51):
to the squadrons that servedhere and that appear on quite a
lot of wartime photographs takenfrom the air and also from the
ground.
Located on the Doulon-AmiensRoad these farm buildings date
back to the 18th-19th centuryand were very much at the heart
of the British aerodrome thatwas here.
(21:12):
Nearly 20 different squadronsoperated from Vert Galant at
different points during theconflict including the famous
number 56 squadron which hadmany of the best known pilots
serving with it.
Albert Ball VC and Major HarveyKelly both flew from Vert Galant
on their final flights over thebattlefield.
Albert Ball to be shot down andkilled behind enemy lines over
(21:36):
near Anna Luin and Major HarveyKelly shot down near Arras in
that terrible period when theRFC were suffering such
crippling damage.
losses.
The aerodrome here was opened inJuly 1915 serving that kind of
northern area of northern Franceand also supporting some of the
first British troops who came tothe Somme front in that summer
(21:59):
of 1915.
It was a grass strip with lotsof wooden huts and the
photographs show canvas hangerslater more kind of
semi-permanent structures but ofcourse none of those survive and
it became really one of the bestknown aerodromes in northern
France and one of the mostimportant Now many years ago,
and here's a little story toconnect to Vert Ganon, many
(22:20):
years ago when I first lived inFrance and we first had the
house at Courcelette, we ran itas a bed and breakfast and we
had a lot of really interestingpeople who came to stay and one
of the guests, his father hadserved in the First World War as
an ordinary soldier in the 9thLondon Regiment, the Queen
Victoria Rifles and then he'dbeen commissioned into the Royal
Flying Corps and his father hadcome back to the battlefields in
(22:43):
the inter-war period to visitthe graves of some of his mates
and see some of the places wherehe flew from, which included
Vert Galant Farm.
And this chap told the story ofhow his father went there on a
foggy day sometime in the 1920s.
And he walked across where thegrass strip had been.
He thought about the pilots thathe'd known who'd never come
(23:03):
back.
And in the fog, he could seesome figures walking towards
him.
And he thought, oh, I'veobviously been spotted by the
farmer.
He's a bit upset about mewalking on his land.
I'll go over and apologise tohim.
So he walked towards thesefigures.
And as he looked, as he gotcloser to the those figures he
suddenly realized they werewearing what looked like flying
(23:27):
uniforms of the first world warleathers and helmets and goggles
but he thought it can't be itcan't be so he walked closer to
the figures again and hecouldn't quite hear what they
were saying but when he gotcloser he realized that they
were calling out his oldnickname from when he'd flown
with the squadron here in theFirst World War, which totally
(23:48):
freaked him out.
He ran back to his car, jumpedin the car, drove straight to
the coast, took the first ferryhome, and never returned to
France.
So make what you will of thatstory.
It's certainly one that I thinkof every time I come here to
Vert Ganon Farm.
(24:12):
We're staying in the Sommeregion and again moving nearer
and nearer towards where thebattlefield was and we're going
across to some sites connectedto the Red Baron.
Manfred von Richthofen, the RedBaron, made famous by his Red
Fokker triplane, needs littleintroduction here, but his life
(24:32):
and death connects us to twoSomme locations, well, three in
some ways.
Originally a cavalry officer, hetransferred to the German air
services in 1915, aged 22.
and he arguably became the mostfamous pilot of the First World
War.
Within three years, he wasdecorated with everything from
(24:53):
the Iron Cross to the Blue Maxand had 80 aerial victories.
Our first location connected tohim is on the high ground of the
Corby Ridge.
We've got the town of Corbybehind us.
We've got in the distance abrickworks with the remains of a
chimney.
Over to our right is the SommeRiver Valley, and across we can
(25:13):
see the Australian CorpsMemorial Park.
and we're looking down thevalley roughly in the direction
that the Red Baron made thatlast flight of his and he was
shot down on this ground on the21st of April 1918 just across
the roads from where thebrickworks were located for some
years it was thought that it wason the other side of the road
(25:33):
but when you go over to wherethe German positions were they
claim in their records that theycould see the crashed aircraft
which you wouldn't have beenable to see if it was north of
the road that we're standing onnow.
He crashed here close to theAustralian lines, there were
Australian field artillery unitshere and while there's been much
debate over the death of the RedBaron von Richthofen, I think
(25:57):
it's pretty much accepted thatAustralian ground fire brought
him down the aircraft crashed,the pilot was recovered from the
aircraft dead and they realisedthat this was not just any
ordinary pilot this was vonRichthofen the Red Baron and he
was taken away for burial Theaircraft was stripped clean of
(26:18):
souvenirs.
Over the years of beinginterested in collecting
artefacts connected to the FirstWorld War, I've seen lots of
bits of the Red Baron'saircraft.
Whether they're all original, Idon't know, but certainly it was
stripped clean.
But he was given a properhonoured funeral.
He was taken, his body was takenback to the airbase at
(26:39):
Bertangles, where the aerodromewas, a little tiny village
behind the lines on the Somme.
And he was buried in thecommunal cemetery there.
But this wasn't just a quickfuneral.
It was quite a big affair.
Pilots and observers from theRAF were there to honour him.
They lined the route.
(26:59):
The Australians provided thefiring party.
And it was filmed.
There's a sequence of film ofthe burial of the Red Baron.
And when that was shown inBritain, it caused quite a fuss
because people at home couldn'tunderstand why we were honouring
a enemy pilot celebrating almostan enemy pilot and then filming
(27:19):
it so that I think shows the gapbetween soldier and civilian how
Both sides saw each other, howthat couldn't be comprehended by
those back at home, but I'm surenot every pilot on the Western
Front was really that pleasedabout it either, because at the
end of the day, the Red Baronand those like him were there to
kill and shoot down pilots ofthe RFC and the Royal Air Force.
(27:42):
So while there was this conceptof the Knights of the Air,
perhaps in some ways that fadedin 1918 with the death of von
Richthofen and the death ofMcCudden and the death of
Mannock and so many othersbesides.
Our second location connected tohim is Bertangles Communal
Cemetery where he was originallyburied.
(28:03):
He's no longer buried there now.
There is an air services gravestill there, a single war grave
but the plot where he was buriedis still untouched from what I
remember.
It certainly wasn't touched thelast time I went there and I
read some years ago that in the70s a big von Richthofen
collector from America wentthere and dug up the grave site
(28:24):
because he believed that theoriginal brass plaque from the
coffin was still in the grave.
It wasn't.
And that kind of activity is notsomething I would condone in any
kind of way.
Totally unacceptable, but Ithink it shows the fanaticism
behind some people when it comesto aces from the First World War
and collecting artifactsconnected to them.
(28:46):
Post-war, von Richthofen wasmoved to Free Corps German
Cemetery.
Then he was moved againsubsequently and reburied in
Berlin at the InvalidenstrasseCemetery, which was an old
military burial ground.
There is still a plaque wherehis grave was there, which is
very close to the site of whatbecame the Berlin Wall.
(29:06):
And then eventually he was movedagain, this time for good, to
the family grave in Wiesbaden.
But today on the Sommebattlefields, when you go to the
crash site, there's aninformation panel, and then you
can follow these other locationsin pursuit of the history and
the story of the Red Baron.
As I say, probably the mostfamous pilot of the First World
(29:29):
War.
Connected to him, not far up theroad on the Somme battlefields,
is a memorial to one of hisvictims, and a pilot who had
achieved great records in hisown right, And this is an area
where the fighting hadintensified by the autumn of
1916, just as the war in the airabove it did as well.
(29:52):
So we're on a spot betweenFactory Corner of Fleurs and the
village of Ligny-Tilloy wherevon Richthofen fought one of the
best pilots in the Royal FlyingCorps in 1916, Major Lanno
Hawker VC of No.
24 Squadron.
Now, if you're interested in vonRichthofen and the men that he
(30:12):
flew against, there's a reallygood book called Under the Guns
of the Red Baron, which is achronological history of his air
combats and the men he foughtagainst, who they were and what
happened to them.
And it's a really good insightinto the kind of men that were
in the Royal Flying Corps andthe RAF and also how some of
(30:32):
these dogfights unfolded.
And this one between Hawker andvon Richthofen says, was
certainly a classic First WorldWar dogfight.
Hawker had been the first RFCpilot to get the Victoria Cross
for shooting down an enemyaircraft near Ypres at Sanctuary
Wood in 1915.
But in this encounter, his lastcombat patrol, Hawker was in an
(30:54):
Airco DH2 and von Richthofen wasflying an Albatross D2.
Hawker's attack on Richthofen'spatrol scattered the German
formation that was flying overthis part of the battlefield,
but Richthofen latched onto him,possibly seeing that he was a
skilful pilot.
The two engaged in a veryprolonged aerial dogfight,
(31:15):
estimated to have lasted wellover 30 minutes.
Now this was extraordinarilylong for dogfights at this time,
as most First World War aerialcombats lasted just a few
minutes.
Hawker's DH-2 was slower andless heavy heavily armed than
Richthofen's Albatross, but itcould turn more tightly, so gave
it a bit of an advantage.
(31:36):
Both pilots repeatedly tried togain the advantage, Hawker using
his superior turning radius toevade Richthofen's firing from
his machine guns, and thenRichthofen stayed patient, using
the Albatross's speed to climband dive and gradually herding,
pushing Hawker westward, deeperinto German-held territory.
(31:59):
then was running low on fuel andalso ammunition that's the
problem with a prolongeddogfight you can easily run out
of ammo he tried to break awayand head for home but that
exposed him to Richthofen's lineof fire and as Hawker zigzagged
towards the British linesRichthofen closed in from behind
and fired a short burst ataround 60 yards Hawker was
(32:21):
struck in the head and killedinstantly and the aircraft
crashed the crash site wasvisited by von Richthofen who as
as he often did, took awaysouvenirs from an aircraft that
he'd shot down, but he made surethat Hawker was properly buried.
However, shellfire later on inthe Battle of the Somme and
possibly in the battles here in1918 destroyed the grave, and
(32:45):
Hawker today is commemorated atArras, which we'll visit at the
end of our journey.
There's a new memorial to him.
I say it's new, but this is onethat perhaps is lesser known on
the Somme battlefields.
It's not on the gravesite orwhere he crashed, but in Ligny
Village, and it was a localinitiative, the memorial being
unveiled in 2011.
(33:07):
It looks a little bit like aheadstone embedded in a wall,
with the badge of the RoyalFlying Corps and the details of
Hawke are on there.
but it's an important onebecause it remembers perhaps the
most classic dogfight of theGreat War, which took place in
the skies just beyond thisvillage in 1916.
Continuing our journey, we'regoing to move up into northern
(33:29):
France now, away from the Sommearea, and we're going to a small
village called Anneleuyn.
Here we'll find the story ofAlbert Ball V.C., He was perhaps
one of the most celebratedfighter aces of the First World
War, known for his daring solotactics and relentless pursuit
of enemy aircraft and incrediblebravery and for his penchant for
(33:51):
being a lone wolf to go off andfight the enemy on his own.
Born in 1896 in Nottingham, hegrew up mechanically minded and
quite adventurous with an earlylove for engines, another one of
those roots to being involved inthe flying services, but
initially he joined theinfantry, the Sherwood
Foresters, in 1914 and thentransferred to the Royal Flying
(34:12):
Corps the following year,earning his wings by January
1916.
Ball quickly gained a reputationfor preferring to fly and hunt,
as I've said, alone often flyingbeneath enemy formations to
ambush them from below all thesekind of tactics were really
developed in the first world warand would go on to be hugely
(34:34):
influential to the later fightergeneration of a second world war
as we mentioned a couple oftimes in this series about the
war in the air Initially he flewNewport 11s and later SE5s and
achieved a remarkable tally ofvictories 44 confirmed by the
time of his death making himBritain's top ace in early 1917
(34:56):
and his bravery earned him themilitary cross the service order
with two bars and he wasposthumously awarded the
Victoria Cross.
On the 7th of May 1917 duringthe height of that bloody April
period which extended beyondApril 1917 as the Germans
continued to inflict heavylosses on the Royal Flying
Corps, and for him, just weeksafter joining the elite No.
(35:19):
56 Squadron, Bull took off fromVertgalant Farm and engaged a
formation of German enemyaircraft over the village of
Anneleuyn in northern France,where we are now.
In this chaos, his plane wentinto a steep dive in the midst
of that aerial combat andcrashed nearby in a field.
The exact cause of the crashremains heavily debated.
(35:43):
Was it enemy fire?
Did he get disorientated in theclouds?
Or was there mechanical failureas there often was with these
First World War aircraft?
But at the time, it was creditedto German ace Lothar von
Richthofen, Manfred vonRichthofen, the Red Baron's
brother, though later researchinto this incident has brought
(36:03):
all that into question.
Incredibly, Albert Ball, when hedied, was only 20 years old.
Now, the aircraft had crashedwell behind the German lines and
his body was recovered by theGermans and was taken for a
proper burial in the nearbyGerman cemetery, at Annelewyn
itself.
And this was common practice.
(36:23):
The Germans buried British andFrench, American, all kinds of
Allied dead in their cemeteries,just as the Allies buried German
dead in theirs.
And you see this in many burialgrounds of the First World War.
So it wasn't uncommon forBritish soldiers to be buried
like this during the war.
Now, post-war, they were usuallyconcentrated to British
(36:45):
cemeteries.
In theory, his grave should havebeen taken from Annelewyn and
probably moved to Cabaret RougeCemetery at Suchet, which was a
large concentration cemetery fornorthern France and contained
many RFC, RAF pilots andobservers who were shot down
behind German lines and onceburied in German cemeteries.
(37:06):
But that didn't happen here.
His father wanted him to staywhere he was originally buried.
Having been properly buried andhonoured by the Germans, he
wanted that grave to remain inthe German cemetery.
It also gave him theopportunity, because this was
not a Commonwealth cemetery, itwas a German war cemetery, it
gave him the opportunity toplace his own memorial monument
(37:30):
on his son's grave.
If it had been moved to CabaretRouge, for example, or any
British cemetery, that would nothave been possible so the father
Albert Ball's father pushed forhim to stay here because he
didn't want the grave disturbedbut more than that he saw it as
an opportunity to properlymemorialize his son so when you
(37:51):
visit today there is noCommonwealth headstone there
it's quite an ornate Celticcross standing on that grave,
the only British grave in thecemetery now, amongst all those
German burials.
But the memorialisation didn'tstop there.
Albert Ball's father went out towhere the aircraft had actually
crashed and he placed twomemorial stones on the spot
(38:14):
where the aircraft came to rest,one at each end of where the
aircraft had been.
Only one of these stonessurvives today and it reads, In
loving memory of Captain AlbertBall On the back of the column
(38:39):
is a rather curious inscriptionwhich reads...
This plot of land is given forthe free use of French soldiers
by Sir Albert Ball on conditionthat this stone is protected.
Now one of them survives, theother one disappeared many, many
(39:03):
years ago.
I remember talking to RoseCoombs about this and she tried
to investigate as to what hadhappened to it.
but no one seemed to know.
Whether it was a casualty of theSecond World War, probably we
will never know.
But here at Annelewyn, AlbertBall, that famous ace of the
First World War, is commemoratedwith the unusual memorial on his
(39:23):
grave, by this monument in thefield, and also by the locals.
The French people of Annelewyncelebrated, commemorated this
young man by naming their localschool after him back in the
90s, early 2000s, which I thinkshows how often these
communities can get connected tothe story of the First World
(39:44):
War.
We'll continue travelling upthrough northern France and
we're heading into the top endof France now where the Western
Front moved into Flanders,crossed the border into Belgium
and in an area that for most ofthe war was behind the British
front lines.
So we're not on the front lineof 1914 to early 1918, but we
(40:08):
are on a front line that becamethe forward positions, the
battlefield itself, after theBattle of the Least, the big
German offensive in this area inApril 1918.
And we've come to a place markedon the British trench maps as La
Pierre-Aubeur, often BusserLane, at a place called
Bois-Paco, just south ofCalan-sur-Alice, a village in
(40:32):
this area where the front linestabilised in that April-May
1918 period.
It was here in July 1918 thatMick Mannock crashed, the
subject of an earlier podcast wedid with Andy Saunders in this
Air War series.
Edward McMannock, Britain'stop-scoring ace of the First
(40:53):
World War, with over 60confirmed victories, was a
cautious and methodicaltactician who drilled into his
pilots the rules of survival.
Never fly alone, never chase anenemy too far over the lines,
and never go down, never descendafter a kill.
Despite this, on 26 July 1918,he broke some of his own rules.
(41:18):
Leading a patrol for No.
85 Squadron in his SE-5A,Mannach downed a Fokker D-7 near
Lestrum, close to the frontlines.
He was flying with a relativelynew pilot, Lt.
Donald Inglis, and decided tofollow the stricken German plane
as it fell.
They crossed low over enemytrenches and Mannach's SE-5A was
(41:39):
hit by intensive ground fire.
Inglis, who'd pulled up to avoidthe danger, avoid the fire,
later reported seeing Mannock'smachine burst into flames almost
instantly.
Still burning, the SE-5Aspiralled down and crashed.
Malik's death was a heavy blowto the RAF not just for the loss
of a brilliant ace but of amentor who had saved probably
(42:01):
countless young airmen's livesthrough his training and
leadership.
The Germans buried him, buriedthe pilot who crashed there in a
field grave which was recoveredpost-war and moved to Levante
British Cemetery where he wasburied as an unknown aviator
because nothing found with thebody to identify the casualty
(42:21):
except that he was an airmen ofthe First World War who'd flown
with the RFC or the RAF but thelink with Mannock when that
grave was moved and recoveredand reburied was never realised
or accepted or was just nevermade and it still hasn't been
now despite many peoplesubmitting cases and despite
Andy's book and I hope as hementioned in the podcast
(42:45):
interview that this is a subjecthe might return to to submit a
new case to see if thecommission have a different view
of this.
For now this location and thatgrave of an unknown aviator in
Levante Cemetery remain poignantvery powerful memories of that
great pilot of the First WorldWar.
(43:05):
So we're going to move on to ourfinal location that will visit
connecting us to the story ofthe RFC and the RAF in the Great
War and that's in the centre ofthe city of Arras in northern
France.
The Arras Flying ServicesMemorial is located within the
wider Arras Memorial to themissing itself and for us this
(43:26):
is our journey's end on thistrail of following the airmen of
the Great War across thatlandscape of the Western Front.
The memorial was designed byEdwin Lutyens, one of the
principal architects of theCommonwealth Imperial War Graves
Commission, and was unveiled byLord Trenchard, who commanded
the air services on the 31st ofJuly 1932.
It commemorates 991 officers andmen from the Royal Flying Corps,
(43:52):
the Royal Naval Air Service, andlatterly the Royal Air Force,
including many from Commonwealthnations like Australia, Canada,
New Zealand and India.
Many of these men were lost inaerial combat, they crashed
behind enemy lines, theiraircraft completely destroyed,
they disappeared over thebattlefields, never to be seen
(44:12):
again, or were lost incircumstances where the recovery
of remains was impossible.
There are nearly a thousanddifferent stories of bravery and
heroism and the terrible, brutalnature of air combat in the
First World War commemorated onthe panels of this separate part
(44:33):
of the Arras Memorial.
Atop the monument, with thepanels, four panels, listing the
RFC, the RNES and the RAF,there's a globe.
And that globe is said to depictthe position of the Earth at 11
o'clock on the 11th of November1918 when the war came to an
end.
And it symbolises the worldwidereach of the air war and the
(44:56):
fact that the men commemoratedhere came from across the
British Empire too.
The band around it of the zodiacwhich encircles the globe
represents the sky itself, thesphere in which these aviators
fought and died and battledabove that battlefield.
And when you stand here and castyour name across the lists, we
(45:20):
find Major Lanno Hawker, we findMick Mannock, and we find so
many other aces and pilots ofthe First World War who we can
research and understand anddiscover their stories.
It's a unique memorial in somany ways to a unique layer of
our understanding of the GreatWar.
And here at Arras, at ourjourney's end, those criss-cross
(45:44):
paths that stretched across theskies of Belgium and France
somehow meet and show us thatthe landscape of the sky as well
as the landscape of the groundis just as much a part of the
old front line.
(46:05):
www.oldfrontline.co.ukpatreon.com slash old front line
(46:32):
or support us on buy me a coffeeat buymeacoffee.com slash old
front line links to all of theseare on our website thanks for
listening and we'll see youagain soon
To end our air war series, we travel across the
landscape of the Western Front,those battlefields of the First
World War, and find what we canof where those men flew and
where they fell.
In this fifth and final episodein our air war series, we look
(00:23):
at what we can find of the menof the Royal Flying Corps and
the Royal Air Force on thelandscape of the Western Front
today.
The very nature of looking ataspects of combat in the air
might suggest there is verylittle to find of what happened
above those trenches, but infact there are many places where
we can uncover aspects of thispart, this layer of the Great
(00:47):
War.
Back in the late 1980s, a videocame out, which I purchased from
an advert in Stand 2, thejournal of the Western Front
Association.
Back in those days, videos aboutthe First World War were pretty
unusual, and this one was calledWhere They Flew and Where They
Fell, and it was presented byactor John Graham Davis, who I
(01:12):
understand was deeply interestedin the subject matter of the war
in the air during the FirstWorld War.
War.
Now in that film he took ajourney across the landscape of
the old Western Front not fromthe perspective of the trenches
or the war undergrounds or tanksor anything like that but he
followed it from the perspectiveof the pilots and the observers
(01:35):
and the history of the RoyalFlying Corps, Royal Naval Air
Service and the RAF and thatinspired me to go and look into
that aspect of the Great War onthe next few trips that I I did
over onto those battlefields andwhat it made me realise that
there were so many more layersto this subject of the Great War
(01:59):
and that the landscape of theFirst World War extended way
beyond the area where the fiercefighting had been and it wasn't
just a case of looking around orlooking down.
It was a case of looking up aswell and thinking about those
events in that sky above thebattlefields of the Western
(02:19):
Front.
So when it came to drawing upthis air war series for the
podcast, I wanted to dosomething similar to that video
here and that's what thisepisode is all about.
And while that video is hard tofind, there is a really poor
quality upload of it on YouTube,which I'll put a link to on the
(02:41):
podcast website.
One thing that we do have tohelp us in our journeys looking
at this subject are thefantastic guidebooks by Mike
O'Connor.
Mike was a former Concorde pilotand he had an unrivaled
knowledge of researching thebattlefields from the point of
view of the war in the air.
And I had the pleasure ofworking with Mike on a BBC
(03:03):
documentary, Aces Falling, someyears ago where we looked at
that war in the air and webenefited from some of his great
knowledge.
Now his books, Airfields andAirmen, which were published by
Pen and Sword in the early2000s, cover Ypres, Arras, the
Somme, Combré and the ChannelCoast.
And they are easily availablefrom Pen and Sword direct or
(03:27):
widely across the internet andare extremely useful if you want
to delve deep into this subject.
He focuses on a specific area,he looks at aerodromes, he looks
at memorials, he looks at thestories of pilots and observers
and goes to some of theprincipal cemeteries where
you'll find significant burialsfrom the war in the air or large
(03:50):
numbers of men from the flyingservices.
So they're incredibly usefulbooks and I thoroughly recommend
them and I'll put a so you canseek them out.
But the one issue with making ajourney related to the air war
is that it potentially covers awide area from the UK itself,
(04:12):
and that's a part of it, to theChannel Coast region of northern
France and Flanders, to areasnot just where the fighting took
place, but well behind both setsof trenches.
So not just behind the Britishsector of the Western Front, but
behind the German sector aswell.
because that's where a lot ofthe air activity took place.
(04:34):
So it's a journey that will takeus far and wide and we can't
possibly cover all of the sitesconnected with the war in the
air.
And listening to this, you mightsay, well, why didn't you visit
this or that?
Well, I'm sure we will return tosome of those in future podcasts
and future journeys across thatlandscape of the First World War
(04:56):
in France and Flanders.
So with this episode...
where do we begin our journeystarts not across the channel
but actually in britain at doverhigh on the cliffs as part of
the white cliff national trustsite is a memorial easy to drive
(05:20):
by easy to miss but whichcommemorates that point where
the royal flying corps went towar in august 1914 and that too
will be our starting point forthis journey.
On a grass airstrip not far fromhere, the aircraft of four
squadrons took off between the13th and 15th of August 1914, so
(05:42):
just over a week or so after theoutbreak of war.
Among them, a plane piloted byHubert Dunstaville Harvey Kelly,
who became the first pilot toland on French soil when he
landed a BE-2A from No.
2 Squadron at Amiens, on 13thAugust 1914.
He would go on to become a pilotin No.
(06:02):
56 Squadron, one of the famousones, and be awarded the
Distinguished Service Order andwas sadly shot down near Arras
after a long war in May 1917,being buried today in Brown's
Copse Cemetery near Ruex.
Here, at this point, this verymodest memorial, the story of
British military aviation in theGreat War really begins with the
(06:25):
dispatch of those aircraft toFrance in August 1914.
And from here, we'll make ourown crossing now to one of the
main Royal Flying Corps and RAFbases used in northern France.
That journey takes us toSaint-Omer, to the troops.
In 1914, there were no major airbases across France.
(06:48):
And as the importance of theRoyal Flying Corps grew, it was
clear that it would need to be abase somewhere, a major base
from which they could operate.
operate.
Saint-Omer was selected as ithad a large flat area near a
racecourse where aircraft couldland and take off and there was
a chateau close by that could beused for pilots and personnel.
(07:10):
The Royal Flying Corpsheadquarters was established
here as early as October 1914and it rapidly became the point
of arrival of new squadrons asthey deployed to the Western
Front.
It was clear not all of themcould just stay here, that
further facilities would beneeded, But this became a major
staging point for the arrival ofsquadrons and aircraft.
(07:32):
One of the reasons it was souseful was its distance from
Britain.
It was a direct route, a shortdirect route of only 21 miles
that took aircraft from Kent viaCape Greene direct to Santo
Meir.
Gradually the site expanded withtemporary hangars, wooden huts
(07:53):
for the personnel, and the wholeestablishment gradually extended
into nearby Santa Maria itself.
As the size of the Royal FlyingCorps grew, and as we've
mentioned in previous podcasts,the size of the personnel that
was required to keep thoseaircraft in the sky, that grew
too.
and a huge establishment ofbuildings and structures.
(08:16):
An estate was really needed forthem as the war progressed.
Later in the conflict, it becamemore of an aircraft depot here
at Centermere to supply planesto squadrons in other locations
that were often now much nearerto the battlefield area.
And it was a place to carry outrepairs on aircraft.
(08:38):
And by March 1918, over 4,300ground crew worked at
Centermere.
So it became an active baseagain in 1918 as the war on the
front shifted and the frontmoved nearer to Saint-Omer.
Squadrons returned herefollowing the German spring
offensives and aces like BillyBishop and Mick Mannock also
(09:01):
flew with their squadrons fromSaint-Omer.
It remained open until 1919.
After the conflict, the aircrafthad to be moved around, returned
to Britain, but gradually theforces on the Western Front were
demobilised and including menfrom what was by then the Royal
Air Force, and Santa Mariabecame a civilian airfield after
(09:23):
the war.
It was used again in the SecondWorld War, and then made a
Luftwaffe airfield, and nothingchanged.
of the original First World Warairfield really remains.
Most of the structures that wesee on this site today relate to
the Second World War or the postSecond World War period.
It is the very nature of many ofthese RFC, RAF bases is that
(09:48):
they were temporary and theyincluded buildings that were
very temporary and were justdismantled or knocked down when
the war came to an end.
And here at Santa Mea, manypeople come because of its
significance, but there is verylittle to see.
However, the main focus when youcome here today is the Santa Mea
Air Services Memorial, whichstands on the edge of the modern
(10:11):
airfield, it's still used as anairfield today, close to the one
that was here in the First WorldWar.
And that memorial was unveiledon the 90th anniversary of the
First World War in 2004.
Just down the road is a militarycemetery and here you'll find
some of the casualties from theunits that served at Santa Maria
(10:32):
and from the airfield itself atLonganess Souvenir Cemetery,
which is quite a large one withover three and a half thousand
burials.
There were medical facilitieshere during the war and many of
these men died of woundsreceived at the front.
But amongst the men from the airservices that are buried here is
Sergeant John Cowell, DCM, MMand BAR.
(10:53):
Cal was an Irishman, an ordinarylad who joined the Royal
Engineers, was not educated atpublic school and got his first
military medal for bravery withthe Royal Engineers on the
battlefield and then transferredto the Royal Flying Corps.
And his DCM and his bar to hisMM was awarded with the Royal
Flying Corps and the RAF.
(11:14):
He served as an observer,gunner, machine gunner in the
back of the aircraft or thefront of the aircraft, depending
on what type of aircraft he wasin.
And later he trained as a pilot.
and he had 16 credited hits, 15of those as an observer gunner
and the final one as a pilot.
But he was killed on 30 July1918 when his aircraft was shot
(11:36):
down by German ace FriedrichRitter von Roth of JASTA-16.
So he's one of the many RFC-REFstories that you'll find in that
cemetery, which coupled with theSanta Maria Air Services
Memorial is a good startingplace for our journey across
this landscape of the FirstWorld War, looking at it from
the perspective of the war abovethe battlefield.
(12:00):
We'll move now down into theSomme region, and there'll be a
map of our journey on thepodcast website.
We're going to a little villagecalled Wava, and here on the
sloping ground above that, willfind quite a small British
cemetery from the First WorldWar.
It's up a track, it's surroundedby farmland.
(12:22):
In the summer, the swayingcornfields surround it with the
occasional poppy.
It's a very, very evocativeplace, I find, and despite its
small size, it's an importantcemetery from the First World
War and certainly an importantone from the perspective of the
war in the air.
It's quite a long way from wherethe front lines were but the
(12:43):
21st casualty clearing stationopened up here in May 1918 and
made burials in a cemetery thatremained open until September of
that year.
There's just 44 burials here atWawa, 41 British, two New
Zealand and one German and themain reason that many come here
(13:04):
is Jimmy McCudden.
James Thomas Byford McCudden,VC, DSO and Bar, MC and Bar MM,
is one of the great names of theaces of the First World War who
flew in the Royal Flying Corpsand the Royal Air Force.
He was one of three McCuddenbrothers who died in the war and
was born in Gillingham in Kent,the son of a regular soldier,
(13:25):
not an officer, not from anyexalted background, but just an
ordinary soldier in the RoyalEngineers.
And Jimmy McCudden, he toojoined the Royal Engineers like
his father before the Great Waras a sapper and then later
transferred into the RoyalFlying Corps as a mechanic.
And this route to flying,mechanical knowledge, was often
(13:47):
the only way for in of hisbackground working class
background to get to fly theydidn't have the advantage of a
public school or universityeducation so there was no direct
route to being commissioned intothe Royal Flying Corps but as
ordinary soldiers as other rankflyers with technical and
(14:07):
mechanical knowledge that wasoften the route for them and you
see this with so many likeMcCudden and Mannock going on to
fly because of their knowledgeand Initially, he served as an
observer before getting pilottraining in 1916.
And really, McCudden deserveshis own podcast episode.
(14:28):
And I think we'll return downthe line to some of these First
World War aces of all nationsbecause they are such
fascinating characters.
In many ways, it's hard toquantify his war and his time in
the air.
But part of his Victoria Crosscitation, his VC was awarded in
March 1918, I think gives us abit of an insight and it reads
(14:50):
as follows.
Captain McCudden has at thepresent time accounted for 54
enemy aeroplanes.
Of these, 42 have definitelybeen destroyed, 19 of them on
our side of the lines.
Only 12 out of the 54 have beendriven out of control.
On two occasions he has totallydestroyed four two-seater enemy
aeroplanes on the same day andon the last occasion all four
(15:14):
machines were destroyed in thespace of one hour and 30
minutes.
While in his present squadron,he's participated in 78
offensive patrols and in nearlyevery case has been the leader.
On at least 30 other occasions,whilst with the same squadron,
he's crossed the lines alone,either in pursuit or in quest of
enemy aeroplanes.
(15:35):
And it shows, I think, the kindof diverse nature of this
fighting in the air, the fiercenature of it with those
casualties and the fact thatmany pilots like McCudden were
kind of lone wolves, really.
After all that combat, after allthose victories in the air,
after all those decorations, itwas a sad irony that he died on
(15:56):
the 9th of July 1918 when hisaircraft seemingly stalled after
take-off and he crashed in atree line at a nearby aerodrome.
I mean, there are many storiesabout that incident which we
looked at when we made thedocumentary Aces Falling.
Was he drunk?
Was he at the end of his tether?
Or was it just a simplemechanical failure?
(16:18):
I mean, we'll never really know,but the stories still abound.
And one little footnote toMcCudden and his grave here is
that when we were making thatdocumentary, Ace is Falling, we
heard that a local farmer hadfound the original brass plaque
from the original wooden crossthat had marked McCudden's
grave.
So we went to Wava, pulled up atthe cemetery, And out in the
(16:42):
field was a farmer ploughing.
So I walked over to him, wavedat him, he stopped, he jumped
out of his cab, and he came overand I explained what we were
doing and that we were lookingfor someone who we believed had
found this plaque in the fields.
And he said, it's me.
So he went down to his farm andhe pulled the plaque out and
I'll put a picture of this ontothe podcast website.
(17:02):
It was about the size of a FirstWorld War memorial plaque in
brass with the badge of theRoyal Air Force and the details
of McCudden and it was obviouslya centrepiece possibly for a
Celtic style cross that had beenplaced on the grave and when the
Chinese Labour Corps and thegraves registration units had
come to make this a permanentcemetery after the war if no one
(17:25):
claimed the crosses they weresimply piled up close by and
burned so the wood had all gonebut this brass plaque had
survived until the farmer foundit and he was very desperate to
give it to the right custodianwhich he felt was the Royal
Engineers Museum as McCudden hadbeen a sapper and they had his
Victoria Cross and That's whereit went.
(17:47):
So as part of that programme, wewere very pleased to be able to
help the farmer in donating thatplaque to the Royal Engineers
Museum in Chatham, where Ibelieve it certainly once was on
display and possibly still is.
So that was a kind of nicefootnote really to my cousin's
story and his burial here.
But McCudden isn't the onlypilot buried in this cemetery,
(18:10):
the only ace.
Also here is Robert AlexanderLittle, DSO and Bar, DSC and
Bar, Croix de Guerre.
So that number of decorationskind of gives you a bit of an
insight into his war.
Bob Little was an Australian andhe flew with 203 Squadron RAF
and formerly with the RoyalNaval Air Service.
(18:30):
He came to Britain in 1915,passed his flying certificate at
Hendon and then joined the RNASand flew in France from the RNAS
base at Dunkirk on Sopwith 1.5Strutters, carrying out bombing
missions until the Naval 8Squadron was formed and he flew
with them in a fighter role onSopwith Pups and later Sopwith
(18:50):
Triplanes.
He scored a total of Thank youvery much.
(19:23):
a widow and a small child.
I mean, another incredible pilotof the First World War and part
of that famous Naval 8thSquadron, which is yet another
subject that I think we shouldreturn to in the podcast at some
point because we haven't givenas much attention to the Royal
Naval Air Service in this seriesas they deserve because they
were an essential part of it,but in some ways a different
(19:45):
part of it.
So, something to return to.
Our journey continues toVertgalen Farm.
So we're moving nearer to thefront line now and this became
typical as the way the RoyalFlying Corps and later the RAF
operated is having aerodromesthat were much nearer to the
front so that the flying timefrom takeoff to battlefield area
(20:08):
was much reduced.
And here we've got a classicFirst World War RFC RAF
aerodrome on the Somme front nowas we mentioned previously one
of the problems with visitingaerodrome sites from the first
world war is that there's almostnothing to see with wooden
buildings with fabric hangersand things like this I mean all
(20:28):
of that was removed destroyedburnt down whatever at the end
of the first world war and it'snot like world war ii airfields
where there's dispersal areasconcrete runways none of that
exists the airstrips were allgrass airstrips but here at Vert
Galant or Vert Galant Farm thereare buildings that do connect us
(20:51):
to the squadrons that servedhere and that appear on quite a
lot of wartime photographs takenfrom the air and also from the
ground.
Located on the Doulon-AmiensRoad these farm buildings date
back to the 18th-19th centuryand were very much at the heart
of the British aerodrome thatwas here.
(21:12):
Nearly 20 different squadronsoperated from Vert Galant at
different points during theconflict including the famous
number 56 squadron which hadmany of the best known pilots
serving with it.
Albert Ball VC and Major HarveyKelly both flew from Vert Galant
on their final flights over thebattlefield.
Albert Ball to be shot down andkilled behind enemy lines over
(21:36):
near Anna Luin and Major HarveyKelly shot down near Arras in
that terrible period when theRFC were suffering such
crippling damage.
losses.
The aerodrome here was opened inJuly 1915 serving that kind of
northern area of northern Franceand also supporting some of the
first British troops who came tothe Somme front in that summer
(21:59):
of 1915.
It was a grass strip with lotsof wooden huts and the
photographs show canvas hangerslater more kind of
semi-permanent structures but ofcourse none of those survive and
it became really one of the bestknown aerodromes in northern
France and one of the mostimportant Now many years ago,
and here's a little story toconnect to Vert Ganon, many
(22:20):
years ago when I first lived inFrance and we first had the
house at Courcelette, we ran itas a bed and breakfast and we
had a lot of really interestingpeople who came to stay and one
of the guests, his father hadserved in the First World War as
an ordinary soldier in the 9thLondon Regiment, the Queen
Victoria Rifles and then he'dbeen commissioned into the Royal
Flying Corps and his father hadcome back to the battlefields in
(22:43):
the inter-war period to visitthe graves of some of his mates
and see some of the places wherehe flew from, which included
Vert Galant Farm.
And this chap told the story ofhow his father went there on a
foggy day sometime in the 1920s.
And he walked across where thegrass strip had been.
He thought about the pilots thathe'd known who'd never come
(23:03):
back.
And in the fog, he could seesome figures walking towards
him.
And he thought, oh, I'veobviously been spotted by the
farmer.
He's a bit upset about mewalking on his land.
I'll go over and apologise tohim.
So he walked towards thesefigures.
And as he looked, as he gotcloser to the those figures he
suddenly realized they werewearing what looked like flying
(23:27):
uniforms of the first world warleathers and helmets and goggles
but he thought it can't be itcan't be so he walked closer to
the figures again and hecouldn't quite hear what they
were saying but when he gotcloser he realized that they
were calling out his oldnickname from when he'd flown
with the squadron here in theFirst World War, which totally
(23:48):
freaked him out.
He ran back to his car, jumpedin the car, drove straight to
the coast, took the first ferryhome, and never returned to
France.
So make what you will of thatstory.
It's certainly one that I thinkof every time I come here to
Vert Ganon Farm.
(24:12):
We're staying in the Sommeregion and again moving nearer
and nearer towards where thebattlefield was and we're going
across to some sites connectedto the Red Baron.
Manfred von Richthofen, the RedBaron, made famous by his Red
Fokker triplane, needs littleintroduction here, but his life
(24:32):
and death connects us to twoSomme locations, well, three in
some ways.
Originally a cavalry officer, hetransferred to the German air
services in 1915, aged 22.
and he arguably became the mostfamous pilot of the First World
War.
Within three years, he wasdecorated with everything from
(24:53):
the Iron Cross to the Blue Maxand had 80 aerial victories.
Our first location connected tohim is on the high ground of the
Corby Ridge.
We've got the town of Corbybehind us.
We've got in the distance abrickworks with the remains of a
chimney.
Over to our right is the SommeRiver Valley, and across we can
(25:13):
see the Australian CorpsMemorial Park.
and we're looking down thevalley roughly in the direction
that the Red Baron made thatlast flight of his and he was
shot down on this ground on the21st of April 1918 just across
the roads from where thebrickworks were located for some
years it was thought that it wason the other side of the road
(25:33):
but when you go over to wherethe German positions were they
claim in their records that theycould see the crashed aircraft
which you wouldn't have beenable to see if it was north of
the road that we're standing onnow.
He crashed here close to theAustralian lines, there were
Australian field artillery unitshere and while there's been much
debate over the death of the RedBaron von Richthofen, I think
(25:57):
it's pretty much accepted thatAustralian ground fire brought
him down the aircraft crashed,the pilot was recovered from the
aircraft dead and they realisedthat this was not just any
ordinary pilot this was vonRichthofen the Red Baron and he
was taken away for burial Theaircraft was stripped clean of
(26:18):
souvenirs.
Over the years of beinginterested in collecting
artefacts connected to the FirstWorld War, I've seen lots of
bits of the Red Baron'saircraft.
Whether they're all original, Idon't know, but certainly it was
stripped clean.
But he was given a properhonoured funeral.
He was taken, his body was takenback to the airbase at
(26:39):
Bertangles, where the aerodromewas, a little tiny village
behind the lines on the Somme.
And he was buried in thecommunal cemetery there.
But this wasn't just a quickfuneral.
It was quite a big affair.
Pilots and observers from theRAF were there to honour him.
They lined the route.
(26:59):
The Australians provided thefiring party.
And it was filmed.
There's a sequence of film ofthe burial of the Red Baron.
And when that was shown inBritain, it caused quite a fuss
because people at home couldn'tunderstand why we were honouring
a enemy pilot celebrating almostan enemy pilot and then filming
(27:19):
it so that I think shows the gapbetween soldier and civilian how
Both sides saw each other, howthat couldn't be comprehended by
those back at home, but I'm surenot every pilot on the Western
Front was really that pleasedabout it either, because at the
end of the day, the Red Baronand those like him were there to
kill and shoot down pilots ofthe RFC and the Royal Air Force.
(27:42):
So while there was this conceptof the Knights of the Air,
perhaps in some ways that fadedin 1918 with the death of von
Richthofen and the death ofMcCudden and the death of
Mannock and so many othersbesides.
Our second location connected tohim is Bertangles Communal
Cemetery where he was originallyburied.
(28:03):
He's no longer buried there now.
There is an air services gravestill there, a single war grave
but the plot where he was buriedis still untouched from what I
remember.
It certainly wasn't touched thelast time I went there and I
read some years ago that in the70s a big von Richthofen
collector from America wentthere and dug up the grave site
(28:24):
because he believed that theoriginal brass plaque from the
coffin was still in the grave.
It wasn't.
And that kind of activity is notsomething I would condone in any
kind of way.
Totally unacceptable, but Ithink it shows the fanaticism
behind some people when it comesto aces from the First World War
and collecting artifactsconnected to them.
(28:46):
Post-war, von Richthofen wasmoved to Free Corps German
Cemetery.
Then he was moved againsubsequently and reburied in
Berlin at the InvalidenstrasseCemetery, which was an old
military burial ground.
There is still a plaque wherehis grave was there, which is
very close to the site of whatbecame the Berlin Wall.
(29:06):
And then eventually he was movedagain, this time for good, to
the family grave in Wiesbaden.
But today on the Sommebattlefields, when you go to the
crash site, there's aninformation panel, and then you
can follow these other locationsin pursuit of the history and
the story of the Red Baron.
As I say, probably the mostfamous pilot of the First World
(29:29):
War.
Connected to him, not far up theroad on the Somme battlefields,
is a memorial to one of hisvictims, and a pilot who had
achieved great records in hisown right, And this is an area
where the fighting hadintensified by the autumn of
1916, just as the war in the airabove it did as well.
(29:52):
So we're on a spot betweenFactory Corner of Fleurs and the
village of Ligny-Tilloy wherevon Richthofen fought one of the
best pilots in the Royal FlyingCorps in 1916, Major Lanno
Hawker VC of No.
24 Squadron.
Now, if you're interested in vonRichthofen and the men that he
(30:12):
flew against, there's a reallygood book called Under the Guns
of the Red Baron, which is achronological history of his air
combats and the men he foughtagainst, who they were and what
happened to them.
And it's a really good insightinto the kind of men that were
in the Royal Flying Corps andthe RAF and also how some of
(30:32):
these dogfights unfolded.
And this one between Hawker andvon Richthofen says, was
certainly a classic First WorldWar dogfight.
Hawker had been the first RFCpilot to get the Victoria Cross
for shooting down an enemyaircraft near Ypres at Sanctuary
Wood in 1915.
But in this encounter, his lastcombat patrol, Hawker was in an
(30:54):
Airco DH2 and von Richthofen wasflying an Albatross D2.
Hawker's attack on Richthofen'spatrol scattered the German
formation that was flying overthis part of the battlefield,
but Richthofen latched onto him,possibly seeing that he was a
skilful pilot.
The two engaged in a veryprolonged aerial dogfight,
(31:15):
estimated to have lasted wellover 30 minutes.
Now this was extraordinarilylong for dogfights at this time,
as most First World War aerialcombats lasted just a few
minutes.
Hawker's DH-2 was slower andless heavy heavily armed than
Richthofen's Albatross, but itcould turn more tightly, so gave
it a bit of an advantage.
(31:36):
Both pilots repeatedly tried togain the advantage, Hawker using
his superior turning radius toevade Richthofen's firing from
his machine guns, and thenRichthofen stayed patient, using
the Albatross's speed to climband dive and gradually herding,
pushing Hawker westward, deeperinto German-held territory.
(31:59):
then was running low on fuel andalso ammunition that's the
problem with a prolongeddogfight you can easily run out
of ammo he tried to break awayand head for home but that
exposed him to Richthofen's lineof fire and as Hawker zigzagged
towards the British linesRichthofen closed in from behind
and fired a short burst ataround 60 yards Hawker was
(32:21):
struck in the head and killedinstantly and the aircraft
crashed the crash site wasvisited by von Richthofen who as
as he often did, took awaysouvenirs from an aircraft that
he'd shot down, but he made surethat Hawker was properly buried.
However, shellfire later on inthe Battle of the Somme and
possibly in the battles here in1918 destroyed the grave, and
(32:45):
Hawker today is commemorated atArras, which we'll visit at the
end of our journey.
There's a new memorial to him.
I say it's new, but this is onethat perhaps is lesser known on
the Somme battlefields.
It's not on the gravesite orwhere he crashed, but in Ligny
Village, and it was a localinitiative, the memorial being
unveiled in 2011.
(33:07):
It looks a little bit like aheadstone embedded in a wall,
with the badge of the RoyalFlying Corps and the details of
Hawke are on there.
but it's an important onebecause it remembers perhaps the
most classic dogfight of theGreat War, which took place in
the skies just beyond thisvillage in 1916.
Continuing our journey, we'regoing to move up into northern
(33:29):
France now, away from the Sommearea, and we're going to a small
village called Anneleuyn.
Here we'll find the story ofAlbert Ball V.C., He was perhaps
one of the most celebratedfighter aces of the First World
War, known for his daring solotactics and relentless pursuit
of enemy aircraft and incrediblebravery and for his penchant for
(33:51):
being a lone wolf to go off andfight the enemy on his own.
Born in 1896 in Nottingham, hegrew up mechanically minded and
quite adventurous with an earlylove for engines, another one of
those roots to being involved inthe flying services, but
initially he joined theinfantry, the Sherwood
Foresters, in 1914 and thentransferred to the Royal Flying
(34:12):
Corps the following year,earning his wings by January
1916.
Ball quickly gained a reputationfor preferring to fly and hunt,
as I've said, alone often flyingbeneath enemy formations to
ambush them from below all thesekind of tactics were really
developed in the first world warand would go on to be hugely
(34:34):
influential to the later fightergeneration of a second world war
as we mentioned a couple oftimes in this series about the
war in the air Initially he flewNewport 11s and later SE5s and
achieved a remarkable tally ofvictories 44 confirmed by the
time of his death making himBritain's top ace in early 1917
(34:56):
and his bravery earned him themilitary cross the service order
with two bars and he wasposthumously awarded the
Victoria Cross.
On the 7th of May 1917 duringthe height of that bloody April
period which extended beyondApril 1917 as the Germans
continued to inflict heavylosses on the Royal Flying
Corps, and for him, just weeksafter joining the elite No.
(35:19):
56 Squadron, Bull took off fromVertgalant Farm and engaged a
formation of German enemyaircraft over the village of
Anneleuyn in northern France,where we are now.
In this chaos, his plane wentinto a steep dive in the midst
of that aerial combat andcrashed nearby in a field.
The exact cause of the crashremains heavily debated.
(35:43):
Was it enemy fire?
Did he get disorientated in theclouds?
Or was there mechanical failureas there often was with these
First World War aircraft?
But at the time, it was creditedto German ace Lothar von
Richthofen, Manfred vonRichthofen, the Red Baron's
brother, though later researchinto this incident has brought
(36:03):
all that into question.
Incredibly, Albert Ball, when hedied, was only 20 years old.
Now, the aircraft had crashedwell behind the German lines and
his body was recovered by theGermans and was taken for a
proper burial in the nearbyGerman cemetery, at Annelewyn
itself.
And this was common practice.
(36:23):
The Germans buried British andFrench, American, all kinds of
Allied dead in their cemeteries,just as the Allies buried German
dead in theirs.
And you see this in many burialgrounds of the First World War.
So it wasn't uncommon forBritish soldiers to be buried
like this during the war.
Now, post-war, they were usuallyconcentrated to British
(36:45):
cemeteries.
In theory, his grave should havebeen taken from Annelewyn and
probably moved to Cabaret RougeCemetery at Suchet, which was a
large concentration cemetery fornorthern France and contained
many RFC, RAF pilots andobservers who were shot down
behind German lines and onceburied in German cemeteries.
(37:06):
But that didn't happen here.
His father wanted him to staywhere he was originally buried.
Having been properly buried andhonoured by the Germans, he
wanted that grave to remain inthe German cemetery.
It also gave him theopportunity, because this was
not a Commonwealth cemetery, itwas a German war cemetery, it
gave him the opportunity toplace his own memorial monument
(37:30):
on his son's grave.
If it had been moved to CabaretRouge, for example, or any
British cemetery, that would nothave been possible so the father
Albert Ball's father pushed forhim to stay here because he
didn't want the grave disturbedbut more than that he saw it as
an opportunity to properlymemorialize his son so when you
(37:51):
visit today there is noCommonwealth headstone there
it's quite an ornate Celticcross standing on that grave,
the only British grave in thecemetery now, amongst all those
German burials.
But the memorialisation didn'tstop there.
Albert Ball's father went out towhere the aircraft had actually
crashed and he placed twomemorial stones on the spot
(38:14):
where the aircraft came to rest,one at each end of where the
aircraft had been.
Only one of these stonessurvives today and it reads, In
loving memory of Captain AlbertBall On the back of the column
(38:39):
is a rather curious inscriptionwhich reads...
This plot of land is given forthe free use of French soldiers
by Sir Albert Ball on conditionthat this stone is protected.
Now one of them survives, theother one disappeared many, many
(39:03):
years ago.
I remember talking to RoseCoombs about this and she tried
to investigate as to what hadhappened to it.
but no one seemed to know.
Whether it was a casualty of theSecond World War, probably we
will never know.
But here at Annelewyn, AlbertBall, that famous ace of the
First World War, is commemoratedwith the unusual memorial on his
(39:23):
grave, by this monument in thefield, and also by the locals.
The French people of Annelewyncelebrated, commemorated this
young man by naming their localschool after him back in the
90s, early 2000s, which I thinkshows how often these
communities can get connected tothe story of the First World
(39:44):
War.
We'll continue travelling upthrough northern France and
we're heading into the top endof France now where the Western
Front moved into Flanders,crossed the border into Belgium
and in an area that for most ofthe war was behind the British
front lines.
So we're not on the front lineof 1914 to early 1918, but we
(40:08):
are on a front line that becamethe forward positions, the
battlefield itself, after theBattle of the Least, the big
German offensive in this area inApril 1918.
And we've come to a place markedon the British trench maps as La
Pierre-Aubeur, often BusserLane, at a place called
Bois-Paco, just south ofCalan-sur-Alice, a village in
(40:32):
this area where the front linestabilised in that April-May
1918 period.
It was here in July 1918 thatMick Mannock crashed, the
subject of an earlier podcast wedid with Andy Saunders in this
Air War series.
Edward McMannock, Britain'stop-scoring ace of the First
(40:53):
World War, with over 60confirmed victories, was a
cautious and methodicaltactician who drilled into his
pilots the rules of survival.
Never fly alone, never chase anenemy too far over the lines,
and never go down, never descendafter a kill.
Despite this, on 26 July 1918,he broke some of his own rules.
(41:18):
Leading a patrol for No.
85 Squadron in his SE-5A,Mannach downed a Fokker D-7 near
Lestrum, close to the frontlines.
He was flying with a relativelynew pilot, Lt.
Donald Inglis, and decided tofollow the stricken German plane
as it fell.
They crossed low over enemytrenches and Mannach's SE-5A was
(41:39):
hit by intensive ground fire.
Inglis, who'd pulled up to avoidthe danger, avoid the fire,
later reported seeing Mannock'smachine burst into flames almost
instantly.
Still burning, the SE-5Aspiralled down and crashed.
Malik's death was a heavy blowto the RAF not just for the loss
of a brilliant ace but of amentor who had saved probably
(42:01):
countless young airmen's livesthrough his training and
leadership.
The Germans buried him, buriedthe pilot who crashed there in a
field grave which was recoveredpost-war and moved to Levante
British Cemetery where he wasburied as an unknown aviator
because nothing found with thebody to identify the casualty
(42:21):
except that he was an airmen ofthe First World War who'd flown
with the RFC or the RAF but thelink with Mannock when that
grave was moved and recoveredand reburied was never realised
or accepted or was just nevermade and it still hasn't been
now despite many peoplesubmitting cases and despite
Andy's book and I hope as hementioned in the podcast
(42:45):
interview that this is a subjecthe might return to to submit a
new case to see if thecommission have a different view
of this.
For now this location and thatgrave of an unknown aviator in
Levante Cemetery remain poignantvery powerful memories of that
great pilot of the First WorldWar.
(43:05):
So we're going to move on to ourfinal location that will visit
connecting us to the story ofthe RFC and the RAF in the Great
War and that's in the centre ofthe city of Arras in northern
France.
The Arras Flying ServicesMemorial is located within the
wider Arras Memorial to themissing itself and for us this
(43:26):
is our journey's end on thistrail of following the airmen of
the Great War across thatlandscape of the Western Front.
The memorial was designed byEdwin Lutyens, one of the
principal architects of theCommonwealth Imperial War Graves
Commission, and was unveiled byLord Trenchard, who commanded
the air services on the 31st ofJuly 1932.
It commemorates 991 officers andmen from the Royal Flying Corps,
(43:52):
the Royal Naval Air Service, andlatterly the Royal Air Force,
including many from Commonwealthnations like Australia, Canada,
New Zealand and India.
Many of these men were lost inaerial combat, they crashed
behind enemy lines, theiraircraft completely destroyed,
they disappeared over thebattlefields, never to be seen
(44:12):
again, or were lost incircumstances where the recovery
of remains was impossible.
There are nearly a thousanddifferent stories of bravery and
heroism and the terrible, brutalnature of air combat in the
First World War commemorated onthe panels of this separate part
(44:33):
of the Arras Memorial.
Atop the monument, with thepanels, four panels, listing the
RFC, the RNES and the RAF,there's a globe.
And that globe is said to depictthe position of the Earth at 11
o'clock on the 11th of November1918 when the war came to an
end.
And it symbolises the worldwidereach of the air war and the
(44:56):
fact that the men commemoratedhere came from across the
British Empire too.
The band around it of the zodiacwhich encircles the globe
represents the sky itself, thesphere in which these aviators
fought and died and battledabove that battlefield.
And when you stand here and castyour name across the lists, we
(45:20):
find Major Lanno Hawker, we findMick Mannock, and we find so
many other aces and pilots ofthe First World War who we can
research and understand anddiscover their stories.
It's a unique memorial in somany ways to a unique layer of
our understanding of the GreatWar.
And here at Arras, at ourjourney's end, those criss-cross
(45:44):
paths that stretched across theskies of Belgium and France
somehow meet and show us thatthe landscape of the sky as well
as the landscape of the groundis just as much a part of the
old front line.
(46:05):
www.oldfrontline.co.ukpatreon.com slash old front line
(46:32):
or support us on buy me a coffeeat buymeacoffee.com slash old
front line links to all of theseare on our website thanks for
listening and we'll see youagain soon
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