August 1, 2025 • 58 mins
In the second of our special interviews for the War in the Air series, we are joined by historian and broadcaster Josh Levine to discuss the war in the air in WW1, based on his best-selling book On A Wing and A Prayer.
Josh's book 'On A Wing and A Prayer' is now published in paperback at Fighter Heroes of WW1 ( Harper Collins 2011)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:07):
Welcome to the podcast, Josh.
SPEAKER_01 (00:34):
Thank you, Paul.
It's really, really lovely to betalking to you.
SPEAKER_02 (00:38):
So, the air war was a massive subject, and in a
short kind of chat, we can't doit entire justice, but we can
give a bit of a go.
And the world was beginning tochange in 1914 in all kinds of
ways, wasn't it?
And especially in terms of howwarfare would change, and
aircraft became part of thecutting edge of that change.
(00:59):
So what was the situation interms of aerial warfare at the
very beginning of the FirstWorld War?
SPEAKER_01 (01:04):
So you have a situation where airplanes exist.
They've not existed for long.
You know, the Wright brothersfirst flew at the end of 1903.
So this is a very, very newtechnology.
And, you know, it's been causinga certain amount of worry to the
(01:26):
British.
The first person to cross theChannel in an airplane was a
Frenchman, Blériot, in 1909.
And that very much worried thenewspapers, the British
newspapers, because the idea wasBritain isn't an island anymore.
It can be reached by means otherthan the sea.
And, you know, a reward wasoffered to cross the Channel,
(01:51):
and it was not intended that itwould be a Frenchman who would
achieve it.
So the aeroplane...
was this extraordinary newtechnology.
I mean, I think initially it wasthought that the future would be
more in airships because theycould, you know, they were more
reliable, they could carrygreater weights.
(02:12):
but it was the aeroplanes thatstarted to come to the fore.
So you had all kinds of, you hadmilitary trials, for example,
before the war.
The military took up aeroplanesbefore the war in Britain, but
you had these two rivalbranches.
You had the Royal Flying Corps,which was the army branch.
(02:32):
You had the Royal Naval AirService, which was the navy
branch.
And as is the way with thesethings, they weren't working
together.
They were kind of incompetition, but they were
given...
The idea was they would haveslightly different roles.
The Flying Corps would assistthe Army, the Royal Naval Air
Service would assist the Navy,but also would be responsible
(02:52):
for the defence of Britain.
So you had these twoorganisations.
And at the beginning of the war,there was a sense, an idea, that
the aeroplane would be usefulfor reconnaissance.
That was kind of understoodinitially.
Was it useful?
It could be used forreconnaissance.
How useful it would be was notcertain.
(03:14):
And certainly the upper echelonsof the army...
really didn't trust it at all.
Because if you think about it, Imean, reconnaissance had been
really the, you know, the, well,the job of the cavalry really
beforehand.
And, you know, the war office, alot of the war office was
dominated by the cavalry andthey had absolutely no desire to
(03:35):
lose that role, that domination.
So, and it was very muchmistrusted, the aeroplane.
I mean, it was, you know, it wasnew.
It was the sort of people whowere flying also were
mistrusted.
Because before the war, flyerswere kind of adventurers.
They were individualists, peoplewho took up this new craze
(04:00):
almost.
Not at all the sort of peoplewho would be relied on in a
military situation.
And a lot of these people werepeople who then came on board at
the beginning of the war asmilitary pilots.
So for a lot of these reasons,these people weren't trusted.
And actually, a good example ofthis There's a man called Gordon
Shepard.
(04:21):
I'm sure you've come across him.
And he was...
He was a Royal Flying Corpsofficer.
And the month before the war, inJuly 1914, this man who was an
Irish Republican had travelledto Ireland, to Hoth near Dublin,
with a consignment of Germanweapons.
(04:44):
And these were the weapons thatwould be used in the Easter
Rising.
So you had a serving member ofthe Royal Flying Corps who was
actually, you know, who providedthe means for the 1916 Easter
Rising and who then thefollowing month was flying
operationally for the RoyalFlying Corps.
These flyers were unusualpeople.
(05:06):
They weren't regulation militarypeople and this is one reason
why they were mistrusted and theother was that the aeroplanes
were this new almost fad thatthe military didn't trust.
So that kind of was thebackground, I suppose.
And you had, at the verybeginning of the war, you had,
(05:26):
you know, alongside the BritishExpeditionary Force, you had a
little over 60 aeroplanes of theRoyal Flying Corps who flew
across to France with the sortof vague idea that they would be
involved in reconnaissance.
And, you know, they had to getto 3,000 feet before they
crossed the Channel because theThe engines were so unreliable.
(05:47):
There was no guarantee that theywould, you know, would make it
across if they weren't able to.
They didn't start with someheight.
Anyway, they made it across.
And so then, OK, what what arewe going to do?
And within days they were flyingthe first reconnaissance and it
was hopeless.
It was, I mean, a total waste oftime.
Total failure.
(06:09):
You had two men going up.
One was in a Blerio.
One was in a B2.
And they both got lost.
One was following the other.
They both got hopelessly lost.
And, you know, one of themapparently landed in, I forget
which town, a town in Belgium,where he was thought to be a
German.
So he was arrested.
(06:30):
But he was overheard swearing inEnglish by an Irishman who was
living there.
So he was released.
I mean, the whole thing was justa, you know, total total fiasco
but it didn't take long beforethese aeroplanes carrying out
this reconnaissance actuallystarted to deliver results and
of course it was a mobile war atthis point still.
(06:51):
So, you know, they were goingup.
There were no cameras yet on theplanes.
They were flying up and theywere taking notes and they were
making sketches and then comingback.
And at first, so you had SirJohn French, who was chief of
the Expeditionary Force, and hedidn't put a lot of store in
them.
So he called up, what's a oneman?
I mean, it was, the Britishthought they understood what was
(07:14):
going on.
One man up in his aircraft sawsomething you know, saw a huge
accumulation of German soldiersin a particular area.
He flew straight down.
He was taken from the FlyingCorps immediately to see John
French and a bunch of otherpeople in gold braid.
And he reported what he'd seenand French basically patronised
(07:37):
him and said to him, well,that's very interesting, but you
can't possibly have seen whatyou...
We know from other sources thatyou can't possibly have seen it,
but what is it like up there?
Is it very cold?
And he had seen that.
And so he was, you know,patronized it within an inch of
his life.
But very soon, I mean, verysoon, within days, it was shown
(07:57):
that actually these aircraftwere bringing down accurate
reports.
And that man I just spoke about,Gordon Shepard, brought back an
accurate report that allowed theBEF to react and led to the
Battle of Mons.
And so you had this situationwhere, you know, within a very
short time, French wasdelivering a communique saying,
(08:18):
thanking the Royal Cycle for theincredible work it was doing.
And this all turned around very,very quickly.
And so clearly, the Flying Corpsdid have a role to play.
And they were working...
One really interesting thingabout this is that any
development that was made wasn'tmade by...
(08:40):
those at the top.
It wasn't really being made evenby the scientists.
It was being made by the peoplewho were doing it.
It was all so new that the youngmen who were flying, who were
observing, the riggers, thefitters, the people who were
mending the aircraft, they werethe ones who were working out
(09:01):
what could and couldn't be done.
So if something could be done,then they honed it, they
developed it, they took itfurther.
If they decided it couldn't,they discarded it.
But everything that was takingplace, and it was going at an
astonishing pace, because in thebeginning, we tend to associate
the...
the first war in the air with,you know, Rukatov and the
(09:24):
fighter pilots.
But of course, that's not whatthey were there to do at all.
You know, what would be thepoint of just sending planes up
to attack each other?
No one's going to win the warthat way.
So the jobs, starting withreconnaissance, the sort of
office jobs, these were thethings they had to do.
And these were all being workedout by the men themselves.
So it was a kind of different,it was a different structure to
(09:45):
the way war had been run before,I suppose.
This new technology Nobodyunderstood it, but the people
who were doing it.
So you had at the beginning, youhad the reconnaissance.
And then we can talk about this.
It sort of developed, itwidened.
So artillery observation,guiding the guns onto their
targets.
And that became a very, youknow, absolutely crucial thing.
(10:07):
Bombing.
I mean, how to bomb?
You know, they started offliterally dropping darts.
flechettes.
In fact, at the beginning, theplanes, and I mean very
beginning, the planes weren'tarmed at all.
You know, the people, the oldcliche, they really did wave at
each other, the different, youknow, the British and the German
pilots at the very beginning.
(10:28):
And then they realized, well, weshould try and stop the others
doing what they're doing andwe've got to defend ourselves.
So they started taking outpistols and revolvers and And
that developed.
Someone took up a machine gun.
It didn't work at first.
Then, you know, it all developedthis way.
And in the same way, bombing,they started with darts,
grenades, bombs.
(10:48):
How do we attach them?
You know, great story of anofficer called Rabiati, who was
he was the observer.
His pilot was a man called LouisStrange.
And they decided, well, whatwe'll do is we'll take bombs up
with us.
But on the squadron, theycreated a sort of tin tube,
which they stuck through thebottom of their aircraft.
(11:11):
The idea was that they would,you know, shove the bombs down.
One bomb, you know, it was allmakeshift.
A bomb got stuck in the tubewith its detonator poking out
below the wheels.
And Rabliati tried everything,even tried climbing over the
side to dislodge it.
Couldn't.
Came back to their airfield.
He wrote out a note saying we'regoing to blow up.
(11:32):
So everyone stay out the way.
Dropped it.
Landed at the far end of theairfield and, you know, fully
prepared for the explosion anddeath.
But they landed quickly.
And where they landed, there wassome tall corn and the detonator
was pulled out of the bomb asthey landed.
by the corn.
So he gave this account manyyears later to the Imperial War
(11:55):
Museum.
He said, you know, we werewaiting to die.
And then we bounced and webounced again.
And he said that, you know, thelack of anything was absolutely
extraordinary.
And he said, we both just ran asfast as we could.
So this was all, it was allbeing made up as it went along.
I was going to say, they're kindof
SPEAKER_02 (12:13):
making it up as they're going along, aren't
they?
And I guess from what you'vesaid, that those early pilots
and air crew were different kindof men, not the kind of normal
individual that would be asubaltern in the British Army.
Probably The army thought theywere dreamers, you know,
curiosities almost.
But yet the war pretty quicklyproves that these men have a
(12:35):
value.
SPEAKER_01 (12:35):
Absolutely.
And, you know, I think that'sabsolutely right.
Dreamers, curiosity, evendangerous, you know, because
they weren't disciplined in thetraditional military style of
discipline.
I mean, they were disciplined inthe sense that they were devoted
to what they were doing, but notnecessarily in taking orders.
And that's one thing about, youknow, the Flying Corps, you
know, when it began, it was, youknow, it was actually the guards
(13:01):
who were instilling thediscipline.
And a lot of these men, this wasa you know, the ordinary men.
And, you know, they reallyobjected to that.
You know, they were alltradesmen.
You know, the riggers andfitters were people with trades.
They didn't consider themselvessoldiers.
They didn't want to be marchedaround the square by guardsmen.
And they complained.
(13:21):
And actually, you know, theregime was softened because they
simply refused to put up withit.
So, you know, even at thatlevel, it wasn't just the pilots
and the observers who were, youknow, who were different.
It was the men as well.
So, yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_02 (13:37):
So those men on the ground, which are often the kind
of forgotten aspects of the warin the air, because no plane can
be in the air without those menwho are preparing it, repairing
it, arming it and all the otherthings.
Those are kind of specialists,see themselves as specialists.
And like you say, they're justas kind of unique as the men who
actually flew these aircraft,but don't get so much of the
(13:58):
glory.
SPEAKER_01 (13:59):
Well, they don't.
And I think the point is thatthey were just as responsible
for the developments as thepilots.
They weren't working absolutelyhand in glove with the pilots
and observers.
It was a team effort.
I mean, absolutely, you know...
it was a more hierarchical worldthen so you know they had their
(14:20):
own mess they you know they theylived totally separate lives but
at the same time they had a kindof the the office of the men
kind of relied on each other ina way that in other branches
perhaps there was more a greaterdistinction i mean there's a
there's a brilliant i'm sure youknow it there's a brilliant
1970s series called wings whichis now on youtube i thoroughly
(14:43):
recommend people watch it whichgives I think an incredible
sense of you know the of thelife on the squadrons and it
shows you know you see the menand you see the riggers and
fitters and they did live a veryvery different life and they
were told what to do but at thesame time they were integral
(15:06):
absolutely integral because youcame down oh I mean it's an
amazing story of a man who he'dbeen on a patrol he landed and
at his airfield, and everybodylooked at his plane and said,
you know, why are you alive?
All your flying wires have beenshot away.
And he looked at it and said hecouldn't understand it.
And he went to his rigger andsaid, I don't understand.
(15:31):
I don't know why I'm alive.
And he was told, well, I'd seenwhat was happening, and I rigged
up a second set of of flyingwires because I knew, you know,
this was likely to happen.
And the pilot just said, I justdidn't know what to say to him.
In the end, I just looked at himand said, thank you, Ellens,
(15:55):
because what else could I say?
You know, and so, you know,that's the kind of, I don't know
what the word is, the kind of,you know, mutual reliance and a
closeness that, you know, livesdepended on it.
SPEAKER_02 (16:07):
So with the mobile war, the value of the RFC is
beginning to be seen, and thenthe war changes dramatically,
doesn't it?
It becomes this vast, staticwar, and I guess in that,
aircraft take on another,different kind of importance.
SPEAKER_01 (16:24):
Absolutely.
So, oh gosh, in a thousand ways.
I mean, to begin with, it's theaircraft that first spots the
trenches, right?
on the Aisne, you know, I foundin the National Archives, I
found a report filed by a pilotwhich says trenches spotted.
You know, there it is.
(16:44):
There's the start of the war aswe know it.
And then, so yes, so if youthink about it, I mean, how else
can reconnaissance be carriedout now?
I mean, you're not going to getforward of the lines.
And the only thing is aerialreconnaissance.
And that quickly developsbecause you have cameras being
(17:06):
taken up, you know, the end of1914, beginning of 1915.
You've got this photographicunit.
being set up.
So at the beginning, you've gotthe A-type cameras, which just
sort of dangled over the side,and then they're attached to the
side, and then they're placed inthe, you know, again, it's all
this development very, veryquickly.
(17:27):
And so these mosaic maps arecreated, not just at the front
line, but, you know, going backmiles.
You know, so you see the reservelines, you see, you know,
everything building up to it,the train lines, the junctions,
everything.
So, you know, so you're lookingfor any kind of action,
movement, digging, you know, andthey started to learn.
(17:49):
The intelligence officersstarted to learn to read these
mosaic maps to the point where Iremember talking to a modern RAF
intelligence officer, showinghim one of these, you know,
Great War mosaics.
And he said, our job hasn'tchanged.
And he started to read it.
He started to say, well, that'srecent digging.
Well, that's a gun emplacementthere, and it's pointing this
way, so it's probably trainingor whatever it was.
(18:12):
And I found that utterlyfascinating.
And you could read it.
So, you know, smoke was anaccumulation of troops, if you
saw...
Lots of troops in a particulararea at night.
It meant that they were goingaway in the morning.
It meant they were arriving.
They learned to read it as as asas though it was a language.
(18:34):
And so and that, you know, to dothat, you had to be in a very
stable aircraft, which the B2Cwas kind of the the flying
course workhorse.
You know, stable is great fortaking pictures at regular
intervals.
It's not great for avoidingattack.
So it was a very, very dangerousjob.
Then you had artilleryobservation.
Because artillery became, Idon't think I'm telling Paul
(18:58):
Reid anything he doesn't know,artillery became very important,
Paul, whether you know that ornot, I'm not sure.
Son of a gunner.
So you had the aeroplanes beingthe perfect spotters for...
for the guns.
And again, you see, you've gotthe problem, you've got, you
(19:18):
know, the artillery, which ofcourse has a centuries-old
tradition of independence andglory, and suddenly it's being
told what to do, potentially,you know, by an NCO flying in an
aircraft.
They didn't like that, you know,they really didn't like that,
but You know, they had toswallow it.
(19:39):
And so you had the aircraft, youknow, doing a kind of figure of
eight between their own guns andthe target.
They had a map.
So sometimes the pilot,sometimes the observer doing the
actual spotting.
He had a map with a piece ofcelluloid, transparent celluloid
over it.
And then you had a clock code,so concentric circles over the
(20:04):
target with the target at thecenter.
One o'clock, two o'clock, threeo'clock, four o'clock going
around.
And letters A, B, C, D, E.
And so the gun would fire.
And the spotter would, up in hisplane, would see where the shell
landed and would then equate itto a particular spot on the map
(20:25):
with a celluloid over the map.
So, you know, three would be dueeast and, sorry, three o'clock
would be due east and, you know,ABC would be however far away.
from the target.
And so that way, by trial anderror, you know, they would
guide the guns finally,hopefully, onto the target and
(20:45):
then they'd use Morse code.
You know, they had transmittersand they'd use Morse code to
send back okay or, you know, thetarget's been hit.
So, and again, this wasbrilliant.
I mean, it was absolute, youknow, this had been developed
by, I think they were calledBaron and James, two particular,
two pilots who'd worked out thiswas the best way of doing
(21:07):
things.
And even though they didactually work out a system of
voice transmission, You know,they didn't use it because it
was more, you know, it was muchbetter to use the Morse code
system.
It was more accurate.
It was more precise.
And so that worked very well.
You had things called contactpatrols where during an attack
(21:31):
you would, well, the idea was itdidn't always work very well,
but the idea was the troops,once they got through, would
send up a flare and show theattacking aircraft, show the
aircraft, you know, how far theygot, which then report that
back.
bombing, obviously.
And bombing, you know, the RoyalNaval Air Service took a big
part in the bombing.
(21:51):
You know, at the end of 1914,the Royal Naval Air Service,
which was very much going off onits own trajectory, you know,
seaplanes doing submarinepatrols and all kinds of things.
But, you know, they werecarrying out basically strategic
bombing of Zeppelin sites,Zeppelin sheds in Germany.
(22:13):
which was you know the flyingcorps was doing nothing of that
kind I mean their bombing wasall very strictly tactical you
know localized bombing of youknow railway positions or
whatever and so you know you hadlots of bombing going on and you
know towards the end of the waryou had low level strafing which
(22:33):
was an absolute terror to thepeople who were carrying it out
and also to the people who wereon the ground so you had all of
these different roles and alldeveloping and that's where
fighter aircraft came in becauseyou know these people doing
these incredibly important jobsyou know in support of the army
then had to be protected and theenemy doing the same thing in
(22:56):
support of their army had to beattacked so that's where the
fighter planes and the fighteraces and the story we all know
or think we know that's wherethat came in.
SPEAKER_02 (23:07):
So I mean I guess all this intelligence gathering
must have felt almost likescience fiction to some senior
of commanders the ability to flyover and create these mosaics
and see where enemy troopmovements were and everything
else and then like you say bothsides are doing it and suddenly
the skies are full of theseaircraft gathering intel and
(23:27):
they need to be knocked outbecause you want your own eyes
to be over the battlefield butnot the enemy's eyes and that
segues us straight into fighterpilots like you say the whole
ethos of knights of the air thatphrase that was used a lot then
wasn't it and a differentculture than i guess that
followed in what the raw flyingcorps and the other air services
(23:48):
came to stand for
SPEAKER_01 (23:50):
yeah i mean that's absolutely right and and i mean
if you think about it i mean theknights of the air thing you
know obviously it's a it's acliche and you know these
gladiatorial battles what youknow all kinds of sort of
epithets used not entirelyuntrue in the sense that Well,
first of all, there was, youknow, even though they were
trying to kill each other, theyoften said, we're going for the
(24:12):
machine.
We're not going for the man.
You know, we don't have any anyquarrel with the man in the
machine.
Our quarrel, you know, we'retrying to get the the aircraft.
And there was, you know, you didhave, you know, when when.
For example, when an enemy wasshot down and wasn't badly
wounded, he would often beentertained on a squadron for
(24:34):
one night before being takenoff.
I mean, that really did happen.
And there was a sense sometimesthat we have more in common,
actually, with the people on theother side doing what we're
doing than with people on ourside who are doing something
completely different.
So it's not untrue.
SPEAKER_02 (24:51):
So with these men being up there, Josh, kind of
facing each other, respectingeach other sometimes as you've
said even entertaining eachother when they one of them gets
shot down i i guess there isanother reality to that which is
that there is chivalry perhapsbut it's still a brutal war up
there it's still pretty raw kindof combat that combat in the air
SPEAKER_01 (25:13):
absolutely and and you know they were they were
these people were sharing youknow a new experience um it was
and also you know you've got thepoint that they're you know most
of the war is now...
Modern warfare at this point wasvery impersonal.
Naval battles used to be aboutgetting close and boarding the
enemy ships.
(25:34):
And, you know, battles on landused to be about two armies, you
know, coming together.
And absolutely still, you know,during advances and trench
raids, it was still that.
But these were, you know,relatively few and far between
compared to how it had been inthe past.
But one area where, you know,the combatants still absolutely
(25:57):
came together was during thesefighter confrontations.
Because the airplanes were verysimilar.
You know, they had very similarspeeds.
So, you know, the quicker onetended, you know, maybe only a
few miles per hour quicker thanthe slower one.
So you ended up with these sortof genuinely gladiatorial,
(26:17):
contests where each pilot couldsee the other one's head you
know they could actually seeeach other you know the the sort
of classic first world warcombat is between a british
pilot called lano hawker and thered baron baron manfred von
richthofen and it's it's kind ofthe classic partly because
Richton wrote about it in hisdiary.
(26:38):
But the way he talks about it,he was a hunter.
That was his passion back athome.
And that was the way he viewedthese combats.
But he talks about his LanoHawker when he writes about this
with huge respect.
He says, I could see his head.
At one point, Hawker waved athim.
They're trying to get insideeach other.
(27:01):
They're concentric circles asthey're flying.
Hawking is DH2.
the Red Baron in his albatrossesbefore he had his Fokker
tripling and they're tryingthey're getting in tighter and
tighter and tighter circles youknow together right together
they can see each other reallyclosely they're almost dancing
(27:21):
and so this is an area I meanHawker was shot down and killed
and now there's a memorial tohim where he where he where he
died he's an interestingcharacter you know don't have
time for it really but he's avery interesting character
himself and so So, you know,this appeals to people at home.
You know, there aren't many sortof stories of sort of direct
(27:46):
confrontations.
But here you have this, youknow, these people, they're
dueling, basically.
It's like an 18th century duel.
And they're facing each otherand it's strange.
Up to a point, it's chivalrous.
And so this captured the publicimagination.
And, you know, you had a lot ofthe German pilots becoming
well-known aces, Richthofen andothers, Bolk and other people.
(28:10):
The British initially didn'twant to turn their fighter
pilots into well-known aces.
uh figures because you know itwas considered i think one
reason was it was consideredquite insulting really to the
people who were doing the thebulk of the work and equally
dangerous if not well yeahequally dangerous jobs but these
people you know the the the thebig ones um you know the albert
(28:34):
balls the mcmannocks andmccuddens you know these people
you know did become even leerobinson who shot down the uh
the the first man to shoot downa zeppelin and these people
became faces on cigarette cards.
You know, they became heroes andit kind of served its purpose.
(28:54):
And that was because theyweren't faceless.
You know, they were known andthey were known to each other,
the two sides.
So again, very different to whatwas happening elsewhere.
To what reason?
I mean, it's such a fascinatingsubject, this, which doesn't
always get its due.
You know, every now and again,Blackadder's got a nice, you
(29:16):
know, nod to it and whatever.
But I'm quite passionate aboutit.
It's an incredible human andtechnological story.
And it's the beginning of, youknow, modern...
I think it's the beginning ofmodern warfare.
I mean, it's...
Absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (29:32):
But I think, you know, the kind of public...
bought into the idea of theseaces and knights and all the
other kind of phrases that wasused and they collected the
cigarette cards and they hadpostcards and there were
illustrations of them in justabout every magazine that was
being published at that timebecause I guess it kind of
contrasted that what was alreadyprobably being seen as the
(29:54):
hellish nature of what washappening on the ground with
gas, flamethrowers, artillery,mud and everything else.
But there was a brutal side tothe war in the air as well,
wasn't there?
SPEAKER_01 (30:05):
Yes, there was.
I mean, it's so interestingbecause in some ways they were
living a much better life.
You know, they were behind thelines.
They were, you know, theaccommodation, you know, varied
wildly.
Sometimes it was, you know,pretty rough tents.
Sometimes they were in shadows.
And they ate incredibly well.
(30:28):
not only better than the men inthe trenches, but better than
people back in England.
And they had the opportunity togo into the towns.
I mean, if you read SagittariusRising, another fantastic book,
Cecil Lewis's account of thetime, he talks about the social
life that the men had at thistime, which was quite
(30:51):
remarkable.
And you do, I mean, you findthese incredible stories of the
way they lived, which was sodifferent to others there was
one officer who brought umhounds back from england not
much of a i don't know a greatdeal about hunting but anyway he
bought hounds and hunted umhares and they you know they
(31:11):
used to have a proper hunt withthe horn and the you know going
around in the red coats and youknow this was just behind the
lines and there was another uhsquadron where they built a
roller skating rink You know,they sort of commandeered
concrete that was quite usefulelsewhere, and built a roller
(31:31):
skating rink, and they hadroller badminton, and they, you
know, all this kind of stuff.
And another brilliant one, therewas a squadron whose commander
was a very well-known West Endactor called Robert Lorraine,
and he had two theatre groups,basically, on the squadron.
One was made up of officers, onewas made up of men, and they did
(31:54):
regular...
I often wonder, if you'd spentthe day in the air, how much
stage fright could you possiblyhave going on that night?
And he was great friends withGeorge Bernard Shaw.
And so he invited Shaw back tothe aerodrome.
where Shaw watched a performanceof one of his own plays by the
men.
And an officer was sittingbehind him and said, you know, I
(32:18):
watched Shaw all the waythrough.
And his shoulders were heavingall the way through and his
beard was bobbling around.
And he said he was laughing.
He laughed all the way through.
It's a very serious play.
And this officer went up to Shawafterwards and said, you know,
thank you very much for coming.
I hope you enjoyed it.
And Shaw said, well, if I'dknown it was going to be like
that, I wouldn't have written itin the first place.
So it was just incredible.
(32:39):
incredibly ungracious.
But the point being that thesewere not ordinary soldiers.
They had this extraordinaryother life.
But at the same time, to balancethat, they were also doing
something incredibly dangerous,arduous, mentally tortuous.
(33:01):
And they were going up severaltimes a day.
to do this incredibly dangerousjob.
So, you know, I'm certainly notgonna disparage the courage of
the people, the men in thetrenches who, you know, were
doing something astonishinglydangerous, astonishingly
arduous, the conditions wereappalling, you know, regularly
your life was absolutely on theline, but the men in the air
(33:25):
were also risking their livesseveral times a day and losing
comrades, at an extraordinaryrate.
You know, there's a period, thetime of the Battle of Arras in
1917, which is known as BloodyApril, because people would
be...
I think there are varyingfigures, but, I mean, basically,
(33:46):
the life expectancy of a newpilot arriving at that point in
that time was about two weeks.
So, I mean, what can I say?
I mean, it was...
Actually, I've got...
It just so happens that I havean account...
because they're written in ahospital because the stress It
(34:07):
was called flying sickness.
Pilots and observers tended tobe treated more gently by the
authorities when they sufferedfrom neurasthenia or had mental
breakdowns.
And in part because there wereso many of them who suffered.
And in part also because thosehigher up the hierarchy, many of
(34:28):
them had been flying themselvesand knew precisely what the
stresses were and were not keento punish people for what they'd
gone through.
And this is...
This is a hospital casualtyreport.
It's called neurasthenia is thetitle of it.
There's a name there, but Iwon't give it.
It said, joined Royal FlyingCorps in August 17, crashed in
(34:51):
November 18.
He was not in charge of themachine, not physically injured.
About a week later, he developedfear symptoms and became
fatigued.
The nervous symptoms becameaggravated with depression,
memory defects and lack of powerof mental application,
irritability of temper wasmarked, war dreams, insomnia,
developed with headaches andnausea.
(35:13):
He spent three months inhospital but did not improve.
His legs became so shaky that hehad to use two sticks.
He harbors mistrust andsuspicions of everybody around
him, is easily upset.
There are no physical signs oforganic disease.
And he was dealt with leniently.
He wasn't considered a coward.
(35:33):
And he was sort of quietly...
sent back.
And this was a very commonthing.
I mean, going through thecasualty records are remarkable,
absolutely remarkable.
So many themes are coming up.
People who, you know, memoryloss.
But, you know, a man who, anofficer who came back on leave
and simply remembers none of hisleave.
(35:54):
And he was spotted on LondonBridge throwing his uniform into
the river.
And he had no memory of itwhatsoever.
SPEAKER_02 (36:03):
I guess with a new way of warfare that is so
far-fetched to most people ofthat time, that it brought with
it these new conditions andoutcomes of those conditions,
which we see in thepsychological effect that it has
on pilots.
And there were these greatfears.
I mean, I interviewed three guysthat were in the RFC or RAF, one
(36:24):
trained as an observer and thena pilot, and he spoke about how
they feared falling out of theaircraft, being in combat, back
being jerked out as an observerhe wasn't entirely always sure
what the pilot was doing and youknow was he going to be although
they had the ability toobviously strap themselves in
occasionally said he had tomaneuver himself and unstrap
(36:46):
himself to be able to take aphotograph or operate a machine
gun or whatever it was and thenwill he be thrown out 10,000
feet and then fire that was thething that he said haunted them
all all the time and he saidthat you know in those last few
months of his service on thewestern front they drank very
very heavily to try and get ridof that fear.
SPEAKER_01 (37:07):
I'd say two things there.
One, so far as the last fewmonths on the Western Front,
you've got an extraordinary bookcalled Winged Victory, which is
a novel, but it's very tightlybased on the experience of a
pilot.
And it's so beautifully writtenbecause he drinks himself, you
(37:28):
know, absolutely unconsciousvirtually every night.
And he explains the situation.
He talks through the life thathe's living.
And he's doing it just to youknow, get rid of his depression,
get rid of his fears, to forgetfor a little while what it is
he's doing.
And, you know, these are the lowstrafing runs, which are so, so
(37:49):
dangerous.
And so, you know, I recommend,it's a man called Yeats who
wrote it, and I fully recommendpeople to buy that book and read
it.
It's an astonishing book.
It's so vivid, so modern, youknow.
It's over 100 years old, andit's absolutely, the emotions
he's going through, the attemptssurvive to stay alive to stay
(38:12):
sane it's absolutely you know Ialways think it's it's dangerous
to say people are always thesame you know through history
they're not actually because ourattitudes change our
expectations out of life changeyou know but in terms of
emotions we are all the same andthat book brings it home just
hammers you in the gut with itso that you know that's one
(38:33):
thing another thing to talkingabout the fire the fear of fire
I mean I know you have AndySaunders is on who's talking
about mcmannock but it wasmcmannock this extraordinary man
my god he's a fascinating man imean there needs to be a film
about about mcmannock and hisgreat fear of course was was
fire was was burning to death sohe took a revolver with him uh
(38:57):
in in the cockpit with him to umwell to use it rather than burn
and he did you know, maybe wecan come on to this, but he did
crash breaking one of his ownrules of combat.
But we don't know whether he...
whether he used the gun onhimself or not.
SPEAKER_02 (39:18):
Yeah, I mean, both those guys that I interviewed,
all three of them, in fact, theytook various methods up with
them in case that they caughtfire or there was a situation,
either a revolver, a servicerevolver or poison.
SPEAKER_01 (39:34):
What a situation to be in, that you have to take a
means of suicide with you to doyour job.
I mean, that's so vivid.
I mean, in some ways, that's allyou need to know.
SPEAKER_02 (39:44):
Yeah, I mean, it's extraordinary, really.
So with the kind of, I mean, theKnights of the Air fighter
pilots don't go away, but thewar changes.
The war becomes moreindustrialized on the ground,
and the Royal Flying Corps haveto kind of find their way within
that war.
And I guess perhaps the RFC, asit moves into becoming the RNAS
(40:06):
into the RAF, becomes a moretechnical service in some ways
in the way that it approachesfighting and the importance of
those famous pilots fades awayto an extent.
SPEAKER_01 (40:20):
I think that's right.
I think in so many differentways, because technology
advances, but also in termsof...
tactics, fighting tactics.
So you have some of the earlyaces, like Albert Ball, or the
German Bolker, the way they wentabout things was You know,
basically there were no tactics.
(40:40):
You sort of throw yourself intothe melee and because they were
both, you know, they would bevery good video game players
nowadays.
You know, they had extraordinaryreactions.
They could see what washappening around them.
They could take stock of whatwas happening instantly.
And they could, you know, itwas...
fighting air fighting was alanguage that they both spoke
(41:03):
brilliantly um and uh so theythey sort of got by for a long
time um i'll say long time it'sall relative but for you know
for a while on just their theirflying ability and their
fighting ability and they wereboth killed and and then it
became you know rules started toto play a bigger a bigger part
(41:23):
in things and so for examplewe've just talked about
mcmannock mcmannock wrote out uha a Actually, Bolger did as
well.
He had a series of dicta.
But Manick had a series ofrules.
Richthofen, in his will, I'venever quite understood this, his
will contained a series of rulesfor young pilots.
But I suppose that gives you asense of how transient these
(41:45):
lives were and how they expectedto die.
His actual will was speaking topeople who would be left after
him.
And Manick's interesting becausehe was an older man And at the
beginning, people thought he waswindy.
People thought he lackedcourage.
(42:06):
But actually, he was an olderman who'd seen a bit of life and
didn't want to lose his.
And so he approached it moreconservatively and worked out
the best ways of staying alive.
And Richthofen did too.
So this was a set.
Also, you know, the fightingtended to move on.
So that sort of, you know,Lanner-Hawker-Richthofen duel, I
(42:27):
mean, they still existed towardsthe end.
But as the aircraft became morefaster and better, it became a
bit more like, you know, SecondWorld War flying where they only
saw each other for seconds at atime.
Sometimes they didn't.
Sometimes they really did chaseeach other and stay together for
a long time.
But it became less duel-like anda bit more chaotic, I think, as
(42:47):
it went on.
But you had, yeah, I mean, youhad the fact that it became a
bit more, a bit more tacticscame into it and a bit more
thought went into how they weredoing it was a sign of the fact
that it was developing.
developing.
But then, you know, it retainedthe element of chaos, the
element of stress andinevitability in the way that
(43:09):
you know, both Richthofen andManick and others as well, died
eventually.
These were the best pilotsaround, even though they'd only
been flying for a relativelyshort time.
You know, Manick, I think it was13 months coming to the Western
Front and dying as one of the,you know, the greatest
potential, arguably the greatestpilot who'd had the greatest
experience.
It's 13 months, for goodnesssake, you know.
(43:30):
I mean, what do I do in 13months?
You know, and, but they bothdied breaking their own rules,
which I find utterly fascinatingas a sort of very much an
amateur psychologist but youknow what there absolutely is a
sense that you know these peoplehad been raised to a to a uh you
(43:50):
know a level of they are thethey are the greats so they
weren't given much leave theywere looked up to by all the
others um and you know perhapsthey started to take chances in
the sense you know perhaps i therules don't apply to me you
know, in the way that they do toothers, even though I write
them, but I can maybe get awaywith it.
So Mann followed, shot someoneand followed him down, which is
(44:14):
absolutely not meant to do.
Richthofen flew low over enemyterritory, chasing someone.
That was his second rule, don'tdo that.
So perhaps it was that, orperhaps it was an element that,
you know, it's inevitable, I'mgoing to die.
So all that's kind of left tome, my only choice left is how
and when I do it.
You know, so there may be a sortof element of, you know,
(44:35):
fatalism that, you know, I'm adead man walking or a dead man
flying.
So here I go.
I don't know.
I mean, obviously, that's all,you know, pop psychology, but
it's utterly fascinating.
As is, you know, the death ofRichthofen.
That's a whole other story.
SPEAKER_02 (44:52):
Yeah, I mean, you kind of feel that with some of
them there is an inevitabilityabout it in their mind and they
kind of see them quite literallykind of flying in one direction
and that direction isn't beyondthe end of the war.
And that year in 1918 sees thedeath of so many of these famous
pilots from Mannach to McCuddento Richthofen and perhaps, you
(45:13):
know, lesser known names thatflew over the Western Front
there The Australian Bob Littleis kind of another example of
that as well.
But, you know, I kind of feelthat as the war's coming to an
end, aircraft now are very muchpart of the battlefield.
They're part of that kind oforchestra of weaponry that's
(45:34):
being implemented by battlefieldcommanders from the troops to
the tanks to the artillery tothe gas to whatever, plus the
aircraft in the sky stillperforming the original purpose,
which is observation with airfoand relay back to guns but also
attacking things whether that'sfighters or bombing but there's
(45:55):
a huge cost and Royal FlyingCorps and the Royal Naval Air
Service coming into being theRAF there is this huge role of
honour by the end of theconflict and you know with
nearly a thousand of them on theArras Memorial with no known
grave as well as all those thatare buried in cemeteries kind of
all over the place and you kindof wonder what the pilots as
(46:18):
armistice day approaches theones the air crew and the ground
crew that have survived what dothey make of it all
SPEAKER_01 (46:24):
uh well you know if you if you take the accounts of
you know many of them they saywe were lost you know we we came
out of the war not expecting tolive or some of them say that uh
we were children you knowthey're incredibly young these
people you know albert ball was20 when he died he was a child i
mean you read his diary it's allabout you know, public school
(46:46):
hijinks in the mess, you know,throwing water over each other
at night and, you know, plantingseeds that'll grow quickly
outside his hut.
So they're basically children.
They've experienced, not all ofthem, but I mean a lot of them,
they've experienced the mostterrifying thing imaginable, but
(47:10):
they haven't actually livedin...
They don't know life.
You know, they haven't had jobs.
They haven't had girlfriends.
They haven't had...
You know, a lot of these menhad...
You know, they'd been frequentlyto brothels, but they'd never
had a girlfriend.
You know, everything was out ofwhack in terms of, you know,
being...
being a person, being an averageEnglish or French or German or
(47:32):
American person.
And so you had a lot of peoplejust completely lost when they
came out and suddenly having tostart lives.
They had no idea.
They hadn't even expected to beliving.
And you had lots of stories, avery touching one I found about
two men who came out of theFlying Corps and thought, well,
we're going to be pilots.
(47:53):
We're going to carry on becausethis is what we know.
And they both bought...
a sop with pup for five poundsat the end of the war.
They went to wherever it wasthey were being sold.
And they thought, right, we'regoing to carry on with this.
Flying is brilliant.
We're going to do it.
And then it was sort ofexplained to them how much it
(48:14):
was going to cost to maintainthis, and how much it was going
to cost to do it.
And they realized there's no waywe can afford, actually.
You know, we paid for the plane,that's ours, but there's no way
we can keep it running.
And so they sold it back.
You know, they'd lost a fewshillings on it.
And they realized we don't knowhow life works.
(48:34):
We don't know what we're goingto do.
And look at some of these peoplewho made it through.
I mean, you know, the ones whodidn't make it through had all
the potential.
But the people who did make itthrough, I mean, someone like
Cecil Lewis is, you know,completely fascinating.
I mean, whether he would havebeen quite as off the wall had
he not been in the Flying Corps,who knows?
But, you know, he became one ofthe founder members of the BBC.
(48:56):
He became a devotee of science.
Gurdjieff, who was a sort ofspiritual leader who, I think, I
could be libeling him here, butI think advocated free love or
something like it.
You know, a lot of these peoplebecame also, and this is not
often said, a lot of them becamefascists, which I find very
(49:18):
interesting.
I mean, Oswald Mosley is theobvious one, but lots of others.
Victor Yeats, who wrote He was afascist.
And a lot of them were.
And again, that's a reallyinteresting subject of, you
know, first of all, they were,you know, I suppose it makes
sense in that they were involvedin this incredible new
technology that was, you know,that sort of mirrored the idea,
(49:40):
the idea of strength throughfascism.
And a
SPEAKER_02 (49:44):
new world as well, I
SPEAKER_01 (49:51):
guess, that kind of new world concept that you often
see associated with extremepolitics.
(50:13):
and sort of different kinds ofbreakthroughs.
And then there were people whowere just so psychologically
damaged that you can see itrunning through their entire
lives.
And then there were people whoended up addicted to flying,
went back to...
Louis Strange, I mentioned himin passing before.
He was the first man to mount amachine gun on an aircraft and
(50:35):
was always there at theforefront.
He actually flew again duringthe Second World War.
He took up a...
a hurricane, despite neverhaving flown one before.
You know, and a lot of thembecame, you know, senior in the
Air Force and, you know, they'dbeen there before.
And, yeah, I mean, a lot of themhad difficulties.
(50:58):
A lot of them thrived and a lotof them went down some pretty
dubious paths.
SPEAKER_02 (51:03):
And kind of to end with a kind of sense of legacy
of the experience of the war inthe air in the First World War
we can look back and see theincredible achievements that
were made through theadvancement of technology and
air fighting in all kinds ofdifferent ways and also the kind
of experience of the men whoflew and the ones on the ground
(51:24):
but I guess there's, I mean Iknow like me that you've always
been interested in the SecondWorld War as well and there's a
kind of between that wholeculture of air fighters in the
First World War and then ageneration of a second wave of
those air fighters in World WarII?
SPEAKER_01 (51:40):
Well, I mean, you know, we've forgotten now,
culturally, most of the FirstWorld War pilots, who they were,
what they did.
It's kind of a real footnotenow, which is a big shame, but
they weren't to the Battle ofBritain pilots.
The Battle of Britain pilotslooked at these men as heroes to
(52:01):
be emulated and in fact you knowyou have william rhodes
morehouse you know the the sonof the first air vc who died
carrying out his vc action uhthere's a real continuity here
and they were you know they wereled by people who had fought in
the first world war and if youthink about it you know they've
i mean it is astonishing i irealized i should have worked
(52:22):
this out before i came on but ifyou look at the the lapse in
time between dropping darts anddropping an atom bomb.
It's a flash of...
You know, it's nothing,absolutely nothing.
And it's, what is it, 14 to 45,whatever that is, 30 years.
(52:42):
You know, again, what have Idone in 30 years?
I mean, it's astonishing.
So the development, and also,you know, First World War in the
air, I can't say everything, butalmost everything that was
tried, you know, has been triedsince, was tried in some, you
know, rudimentary or not even sorudimentary fashion, whether
we're talking about aircraftcarriers or seaplanes or rockets
(53:04):
being launched from aircraft ortorpedoes being launched from
aircraft or whatever.
I mean, you name it.
It was probably done in somefashion in the First World War
in that incredibly short periodof time.
So while it is astonishing thatthe atom bomb was so soon after
the dart, in some ways it's notsurprising because, I mean, the
cliche that war is a mother ofinvention.
(53:26):
Well, my God, this was goinglike nobody's business.
And so there's an absolutedirect consequence correlation
in terms of technology.
Yes, actually, you couldpossibly say this as well.
The First World War, the startof it anyway, is a much more
gung-ho experience than thestart of the Second World War.
(53:48):
You've got the whole idea ofpeople queuing to do their bit
with that sort of fervor and toget their revenge on the Germans
for their inhumanity andwhatever else.
Whereas the Second World War wasmuch more entered into by
British people.
Well, it's an existential fight.
(54:10):
We go into this withresignation, but we have to do
it.
Which is why I often say, peoplesay, oh, people wouldn't fight
nowadays the way they used to.
I say, well, if it wasexistential, they probably
would.
But I often look at the Battleof Britain pilots as a sort of
different breed.
These are people who did havethat same sort of ethos of going
(54:32):
into it with this sort ofincredible enthusiasm that
people went into the First WorldWar.
I wonder, I'm thinking aloudnow, but I wonder if there is
again that kind of continuitythat the air is something apart
and, you know, whereas mostpeople went off to fight the
Second World War with a senseof, well, I don't want to do
this, but I have to.
(54:52):
The fighter pilots didn't, youknow, didn't have that attitude.
They were very much more of theFirst World War mindset.
Anyway, get ready for the peoplewriting in to say that's a load
of rubbish.
But anyway, that's, you know,that's off the top of my
SPEAKER_02 (55:04):
head.
Well, I mean, I think it'salways interesting perspectives
and I kind of think that, youknow, when any study of warfare
you kind of hear people in amodern era talk about how
something is over tanks willnever be used again aircraft are
redundant and yet we're seeing aconflict a modern conflict as we
speak now which has so manysimilarities with what was
happening on the ground in thefirst world war with trench
(55:25):
warfare and you know the hugekind of cost of operations but
also the importance of aircraftbecause if you look at the kind
of Ukrainian appeal over thelast couple of years it's always
been for aircraft to counterRussian aircraft over the
battlefield so that kind of airwar and the drones
SPEAKER_01 (55:48):
you can just imagine drones being introduced in the
first world war and againchanging the sort of basis and
the psychology and the way it'sbeing fought it's just coming
round and round and round andround I sometimes think it's a
bit naive to say oh well we canlearn from history you know just
(56:09):
in that sort of bald that baldstatement but my goodness me
there are a lot of parallelsthat we have to pay very close
attention to because otherwisewe're we're we're we don't know
who we are
SPEAKER_02 (56:21):
no and i think even if we don't end up learning from
history it's having that nod tohistory and an appreciation of
history which i guess is whatyou know you and i have done a
lot in our in our careers inhistory is to ensure that the
the lives of men like mannockand albert ball and and all of
the others plus the ground crewkept them there, and men on both
sides fighting these incrediblebattles in the skies over the
(56:44):
Western Front.
it's important that that isnever forgotten.
SPEAKER_01 (56:48):
I mean, yes, is all I can say to that.
SPEAKER_02 (56:52):
Well, Josh, I mean, as always, I could talk to you
all day because you're alwaysabsolutely fascinating to
discuss any aspect of militaryhistory with, and it's always a
pleasure to see
SPEAKER_01 (57:02):
you.
Completely mutual, Paul.
It's been a pleasure.
SPEAKER_02 (57:05):
So thank you for that, and we'll put links to
your book, and I think you saidthere's a new edition of it as
well, so we'll make sure that'skind of
SPEAKER_01 (57:13):
on there.
It's a paperback.
basically um and uh we'lldescribe it as a
SPEAKER_02 (57:18):
classic i think that's the best thing for for
books that have been in been inprint for a while yeah
SPEAKER_01 (57:23):
yes absolutely i mean it's um you know a lot of
the stuff i've talked abouttoday i mean you'll you know
it's it's i talk about it morelength in the book so um
SPEAKER_02 (57:32):
no fantastic so thanks josh thanks for joining
us and i'm sure this won't bethe last time we discuss some
aspect of the great war here onthe old front line thank you
mate
SPEAKER_01 (57:40):
thank you paul thank you very much
SPEAKER_02 (57:48):
You've been listening to an episode of The
Old Frontline with me, militaryhistorian Paul Reid.
You can follow me on Twitter atSomcor.
You can follow the podcast atoldfrontlinepod.
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.
(58:09):
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Welcome to the podcast, Josh.
SPEAKER_01 (00:34):
Thank you, Paul.
It's really, really lovely to betalking to you.
SPEAKER_02 (00:38):
So, the air war was a massive subject, and in a
short kind of chat, we can't doit entire justice, but we can
give a bit of a go.
And the world was beginning tochange in 1914 in all kinds of
ways, wasn't it?
And especially in terms of howwarfare would change, and
aircraft became part of thecutting edge of that change.
(00:59):
So what was the situation interms of aerial warfare at the
very beginning of the FirstWorld War?
SPEAKER_01 (01:04):
So you have a situation where airplanes exist.
They've not existed for long.
You know, the Wright brothersfirst flew at the end of 1903.
So this is a very, very newtechnology.
And, you know, it's been causinga certain amount of worry to the
(01:26):
British.
The first person to cross theChannel in an airplane was a
Frenchman, Blériot, in 1909.
And that very much worried thenewspapers, the British
newspapers, because the idea wasBritain isn't an island anymore.
It can be reached by means otherthan the sea.
And, you know, a reward wasoffered to cross the Channel,
(01:51):
and it was not intended that itwould be a Frenchman who would
achieve it.
So the aeroplane...
was this extraordinary newtechnology.
I mean, I think initially it wasthought that the future would be
more in airships because theycould, you know, they were more
reliable, they could carrygreater weights.
(02:12):
but it was the aeroplanes thatstarted to come to the fore.
So you had all kinds of, you hadmilitary trials, for example,
before the war.
The military took up aeroplanesbefore the war in Britain, but
you had these two rivalbranches.
You had the Royal Flying Corps,which was the army branch.
(02:32):
You had the Royal Naval AirService, which was the navy
branch.
And as is the way with thesethings, they weren't working
together.
They were kind of incompetition, but they were
given...
The idea was they would haveslightly different roles.
The Flying Corps would assistthe Army, the Royal Naval Air
Service would assist the Navy,but also would be responsible
(02:52):
for the defence of Britain.
So you had these twoorganisations.
And at the beginning of the war,there was a sense, an idea, that
the aeroplane would be usefulfor reconnaissance.
That was kind of understoodinitially.
Was it useful?
It could be used forreconnaissance.
How useful it would be was notcertain.
(03:14):
And certainly the upper echelonsof the army...
really didn't trust it at all.
Because if you think about it, Imean, reconnaissance had been
really the, you know, the, well,the job of the cavalry really
beforehand.
And, you know, the war office, alot of the war office was
dominated by the cavalry andthey had absolutely no desire to
(03:35):
lose that role, that domination.
So, and it was very muchmistrusted, the aeroplane.
I mean, it was, you know, it wasnew.
It was the sort of people whowere flying also were
mistrusted.
Because before the war, flyerswere kind of adventurers.
They were individualists, peoplewho took up this new craze
(04:00):
almost.
Not at all the sort of peoplewho would be relied on in a
military situation.
And a lot of these people werepeople who then came on board at
the beginning of the war asmilitary pilots.
So for a lot of these reasons,these people weren't trusted.
And actually, a good example ofthis There's a man called Gordon
Shepard.
(04:21):
I'm sure you've come across him.
And he was...
He was a Royal Flying Corpsofficer.
And the month before the war, inJuly 1914, this man who was an
Irish Republican had travelledto Ireland, to Hoth near Dublin,
with a consignment of Germanweapons.
(04:44):
And these were the weapons thatwould be used in the Easter
Rising.
So you had a serving member ofthe Royal Flying Corps who was
actually, you know, who providedthe means for the 1916 Easter
Rising and who then thefollowing month was flying
operationally for the RoyalFlying Corps.
These flyers were unusualpeople.
(05:06):
They weren't regulation militarypeople and this is one reason
why they were mistrusted and theother was that the aeroplanes
were this new almost fad thatthe military didn't trust.
So that kind of was thebackground, I suppose.
And you had, at the verybeginning of the war, you had,
(05:26):
you know, alongside the BritishExpeditionary Force, you had a
little over 60 aeroplanes of theRoyal Flying Corps who flew
across to France with the sortof vague idea that they would be
involved in reconnaissance.
And, you know, they had to getto 3,000 feet before they
crossed the Channel because theThe engines were so unreliable.
(05:47):
There was no guarantee that theywould, you know, would make it
across if they weren't able to.
They didn't start with someheight.
Anyway, they made it across.
And so then, OK, what what arewe going to do?
And within days they were flyingthe first reconnaissance and it
was hopeless.
It was, I mean, a total waste oftime.
Total failure.
(06:09):
You had two men going up.
One was in a Blerio.
One was in a B2.
And they both got lost.
One was following the other.
They both got hopelessly lost.
And, you know, one of themapparently landed in, I forget
which town, a town in Belgium,where he was thought to be a
German.
So he was arrested.
(06:30):
But he was overheard swearing inEnglish by an Irishman who was
living there.
So he was released.
I mean, the whole thing was justa, you know, total total fiasco
but it didn't take long beforethese aeroplanes carrying out
this reconnaissance actuallystarted to deliver results and
of course it was a mobile war atthis point still.
(06:51):
So, you know, they were goingup.
There were no cameras yet on theplanes.
They were flying up and theywere taking notes and they were
making sketches and then comingback.
And at first, so you had SirJohn French, who was chief of
the Expeditionary Force, and hedidn't put a lot of store in
them.
So he called up, what's a oneman?
I mean, it was, the Britishthought they understood what was
(07:14):
going on.
One man up in his aircraft sawsomething you know, saw a huge
accumulation of German soldiersin a particular area.
He flew straight down.
He was taken from the FlyingCorps immediately to see John
French and a bunch of otherpeople in gold braid.
And he reported what he'd seenand French basically patronised
(07:37):
him and said to him, well,that's very interesting, but you
can't possibly have seen whatyou...
We know from other sources thatyou can't possibly have seen it,
but what is it like up there?
Is it very cold?
And he had seen that.
And so he was, you know,patronized it within an inch of
his life.
But very soon, I mean, verysoon, within days, it was shown
(07:57):
that actually these aircraftwere bringing down accurate
reports.
And that man I just spoke about,Gordon Shepard, brought back an
accurate report that allowed theBEF to react and led to the
Battle of Mons.
And so you had this situationwhere, you know, within a very
short time, French wasdelivering a communique saying,
(08:18):
thanking the Royal Cycle for theincredible work it was doing.
And this all turned around very,very quickly.
And so clearly, the Flying Corpsdid have a role to play.
And they were working...
One really interesting thingabout this is that any
development that was made wasn'tmade by...
(08:40):
those at the top.
It wasn't really being made evenby the scientists.
It was being made by the peoplewho were doing it.
It was all so new that the youngmen who were flying, who were
observing, the riggers, thefitters, the people who were
mending the aircraft, they werethe ones who were working out
(09:01):
what could and couldn't be done.
So if something could be done,then they honed it, they
developed it, they took itfurther.
If they decided it couldn't,they discarded it.
But everything that was takingplace, and it was going at an
astonishing pace, because in thebeginning, we tend to associate
the...
the first war in the air with,you know, Rukatov and the
(09:24):
fighter pilots.
But of course, that's not whatthey were there to do at all.
You know, what would be thepoint of just sending planes up
to attack each other?
No one's going to win the warthat way.
So the jobs, starting withreconnaissance, the sort of
office jobs, these were thethings they had to do.
And these were all being workedout by the men themselves.
So it was a kind of different,it was a different structure to
(09:45):
the way war had been run before,I suppose.
This new technology Nobodyunderstood it, but the people
who were doing it.
So you had at the beginning, youhad the reconnaissance.
And then we can talk about this.
It sort of developed, itwidened.
So artillery observation,guiding the guns onto their
targets.
And that became a very, youknow, absolutely crucial thing.
(10:07):
Bombing.
I mean, how to bomb?
You know, they started offliterally dropping darts.
flechettes.
In fact, at the beginning, theplanes, and I mean very
beginning, the planes weren'tarmed at all.
You know, the people, the oldcliche, they really did wave at
each other, the different, youknow, the British and the German
pilots at the very beginning.
(10:28):
And then they realized, well, weshould try and stop the others
doing what they're doing andwe've got to defend ourselves.
So they started taking outpistols and revolvers and And
that developed.
Someone took up a machine gun.
It didn't work at first.
Then, you know, it all developedthis way.
And in the same way, bombing,they started with darts,
grenades, bombs.
(10:48):
How do we attach them?
You know, great story of anofficer called Rabiati, who was
he was the observer.
His pilot was a man called LouisStrange.
And they decided, well, whatwe'll do is we'll take bombs up
with us.
But on the squadron, theycreated a sort of tin tube,
which they stuck through thebottom of their aircraft.
(11:11):
The idea was that they would,you know, shove the bombs down.
One bomb, you know, it was allmakeshift.
A bomb got stuck in the tubewith its detonator poking out
below the wheels.
And Rabliati tried everything,even tried climbing over the
side to dislodge it.
Couldn't.
Came back to their airfield.
He wrote out a note saying we'regoing to blow up.
(11:32):
So everyone stay out the way.
Dropped it.
Landed at the far end of theairfield and, you know, fully
prepared for the explosion anddeath.
But they landed quickly.
And where they landed, there wassome tall corn and the detonator
was pulled out of the bomb asthey landed.
by the corn.
So he gave this account manyyears later to the Imperial War
(11:55):
Museum.
He said, you know, we werewaiting to die.
And then we bounced and webounced again.
And he said that, you know, thelack of anything was absolutely
extraordinary.
And he said, we both just ran asfast as we could.
So this was all, it was allbeing made up as it went along.
I was going to say, they're kindof
SPEAKER_02 (12:13):
making it up as they're going along, aren't
they?
And I guess from what you'vesaid, that those early pilots
and air crew were different kindof men, not the kind of normal
individual that would be asubaltern in the British Army.
Probably The army thought theywere dreamers, you know,
curiosities almost.
But yet the war pretty quicklyproves that these men have a
(12:35):
value.
SPEAKER_01 (12:35):
Absolutely.
And, you know, I think that'sabsolutely right.
Dreamers, curiosity, evendangerous, you know, because
they weren't disciplined in thetraditional military style of
discipline.
I mean, they were disciplined inthe sense that they were devoted
to what they were doing, but notnecessarily in taking orders.
And that's one thing about, youknow, the Flying Corps, you
know, when it began, it was, youknow, it was actually the guards
(13:01):
who were instilling thediscipline.
And a lot of these men, this wasa you know, the ordinary men.
And, you know, they reallyobjected to that.
You know, they were alltradesmen.
You know, the riggers andfitters were people with trades.
They didn't consider themselvessoldiers.
They didn't want to be marchedaround the square by guardsmen.
And they complained.
(13:21):
And actually, you know, theregime was softened because they
simply refused to put up withit.
So, you know, even at thatlevel, it wasn't just the pilots
and the observers who were, youknow, who were different.
It was the men as well.
So, yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_02 (13:37):
So those men on the ground, which are often the kind
of forgotten aspects of the warin the air, because no plane can
be in the air without those menwho are preparing it, repairing
it, arming it and all the otherthings.
Those are kind of specialists,see themselves as specialists.
And like you say, they're justas kind of unique as the men who
actually flew these aircraft,but don't get so much of the
(13:58):
glory.
SPEAKER_01 (13:59):
Well, they don't.
And I think the point is thatthey were just as responsible
for the developments as thepilots.
They weren't working absolutelyhand in glove with the pilots
and observers.
It was a team effort.
I mean, absolutely, you know...
it was a more hierarchical worldthen so you know they had their
(14:20):
own mess they you know they theylived totally separate lives but
at the same time they had a kindof the the office of the men
kind of relied on each other ina way that in other branches
perhaps there was more a greaterdistinction i mean there's a
there's a brilliant i'm sure youknow it there's a brilliant
1970s series called wings whichis now on youtube i thoroughly
(14:43):
recommend people watch it whichgives I think an incredible
sense of you know the of thelife on the squadrons and it
shows you know you see the menand you see the riggers and
fitters and they did live a veryvery different life and they
were told what to do but at thesame time they were integral
(15:06):
absolutely integral because youcame down oh I mean it's an
amazing story of a man who he'dbeen on a patrol he landed and
at his airfield, and everybodylooked at his plane and said,
you know, why are you alive?
All your flying wires have beenshot away.
And he looked at it and said hecouldn't understand it.
And he went to his rigger andsaid, I don't understand.
(15:31):
I don't know why I'm alive.
And he was told, well, I'd seenwhat was happening, and I rigged
up a second set of of flyingwires because I knew, you know,
this was likely to happen.
And the pilot just said, I justdidn't know what to say to him.
In the end, I just looked at himand said, thank you, Ellens,
(15:55):
because what else could I say?
You know, and so, you know,that's the kind of, I don't know
what the word is, the kind of,you know, mutual reliance and a
closeness that, you know, livesdepended on it.
SPEAKER_02 (16:07):
So with the mobile war, the value of the RFC is
beginning to be seen, and thenthe war changes dramatically,
doesn't it?
It becomes this vast, staticwar, and I guess in that,
aircraft take on another,different kind of importance.
SPEAKER_01 (16:24):
Absolutely.
So, oh gosh, in a thousand ways.
I mean, to begin with, it's theaircraft that first spots the
trenches, right?
on the Aisne, you know, I foundin the National Archives, I
found a report filed by a pilotwhich says trenches spotted.
You know, there it is.
(16:44):
There's the start of the war aswe know it.
And then, so yes, so if youthink about it, I mean, how else
can reconnaissance be carriedout now?
I mean, you're not going to getforward of the lines.
And the only thing is aerialreconnaissance.
And that quickly developsbecause you have cameras being
(17:06):
taken up, you know, the end of1914, beginning of 1915.
You've got this photographicunit.
being set up.
So at the beginning, you've gotthe A-type cameras, which just
sort of dangled over the side,and then they're attached to the
side, and then they're placed inthe, you know, again, it's all
this development very, veryquickly.
(17:27):
And so these mosaic maps arecreated, not just at the front
line, but, you know, going backmiles.
You know, so you see the reservelines, you see, you know,
everything building up to it,the train lines, the junctions,
everything.
So, you know, so you're lookingfor any kind of action,
movement, digging, you know, andthey started to learn.
(17:49):
The intelligence officersstarted to learn to read these
mosaic maps to the point where Iremember talking to a modern RAF
intelligence officer, showinghim one of these, you know,
Great War mosaics.
And he said, our job hasn'tchanged.
And he started to read it.
He started to say, well, that'srecent digging.
Well, that's a gun emplacementthere, and it's pointing this
way, so it's probably trainingor whatever it was.
(18:12):
And I found that utterlyfascinating.
And you could read it.
So, you know, smoke was anaccumulation of troops, if you
saw...
Lots of troops in a particulararea at night.
It meant that they were goingaway in the morning.
It meant they were arriving.
They learned to read it as as asas though it was a language.
(18:34):
And so and that, you know, to dothat, you had to be in a very
stable aircraft, which the B2Cwas kind of the the flying
course workhorse.
You know, stable is great fortaking pictures at regular
intervals.
It's not great for avoidingattack.
So it was a very, very dangerousjob.
Then you had artilleryobservation.
Because artillery became, Idon't think I'm telling Paul
(18:58):
Reid anything he doesn't know,artillery became very important,
Paul, whether you know that ornot, I'm not sure.
Son of a gunner.
So you had the aeroplanes beingthe perfect spotters for...
for the guns.
And again, you see, you've gotthe problem, you've got, you
(19:18):
know, the artillery, which ofcourse has a centuries-old
tradition of independence andglory, and suddenly it's being
told what to do, potentially,you know, by an NCO flying in an
aircraft.
They didn't like that, you know,they really didn't like that,
but You know, they had toswallow it.
(19:39):
And so you had the aircraft, youknow, doing a kind of figure of
eight between their own guns andthe target.
They had a map.
So sometimes the pilot,sometimes the observer doing the
actual spotting.
He had a map with a piece ofcelluloid, transparent celluloid
over it.
And then you had a clock code,so concentric circles over the
(20:04):
target with the target at thecenter.
One o'clock, two o'clock, threeo'clock, four o'clock going
around.
And letters A, B, C, D, E.
And so the gun would fire.
And the spotter would, up in hisplane, would see where the shell
landed and would then equate itto a particular spot on the map
(20:25):
with a celluloid over the map.
So, you know, three would be dueeast and, sorry, three o'clock
would be due east and, you know,ABC would be however far away.
from the target.
And so that way, by trial anderror, you know, they would
guide the guns finally,hopefully, onto the target and
(20:45):
then they'd use Morse code.
You know, they had transmittersand they'd use Morse code to
send back okay or, you know, thetarget's been hit.
So, and again, this wasbrilliant.
I mean, it was absolute, youknow, this had been developed
by, I think they were calledBaron and James, two particular,
two pilots who'd worked out thiswas the best way of doing
(21:07):
things.
And even though they didactually work out a system of
voice transmission, You know,they didn't use it because it
was more, you know, it was muchbetter to use the Morse code
system.
It was more accurate.
It was more precise.
And so that worked very well.
You had things called contactpatrols where during an attack
(21:31):
you would, well, the idea was itdidn't always work very well,
but the idea was the troops,once they got through, would
send up a flare and show theattacking aircraft, show the
aircraft, you know, how far theygot, which then report that
back.
bombing, obviously.
And bombing, you know, the RoyalNaval Air Service took a big
part in the bombing.
(21:51):
You know, at the end of 1914,the Royal Naval Air Service,
which was very much going off onits own trajectory, you know,
seaplanes doing submarinepatrols and all kinds of things.
But, you know, they werecarrying out basically strategic
bombing of Zeppelin sites,Zeppelin sheds in Germany.
(22:13):
which was you know the flyingcorps was doing nothing of that
kind I mean their bombing wasall very strictly tactical you
know localized bombing of youknow railway positions or
whatever and so you know you hadlots of bombing going on and you
know towards the end of the waryou had low level strafing which
(22:33):
was an absolute terror to thepeople who were carrying it out
and also to the people who wereon the ground so you had all of
these different roles and alldeveloping and that's where
fighter aircraft came in becauseyou know these people doing
these incredibly important jobsyou know in support of the army
then had to be protected and theenemy doing the same thing in
(22:56):
support of their army had to beattacked so that's where the
fighter planes and the fighteraces and the story we all know
or think we know that's wherethat came in.
SPEAKER_02 (23:07):
So I mean I guess all this intelligence gathering
must have felt almost likescience fiction to some senior
of commanders the ability to flyover and create these mosaics
and see where enemy troopmovements were and everything
else and then like you say bothsides are doing it and suddenly
the skies are full of theseaircraft gathering intel and
(23:27):
they need to be knocked outbecause you want your own eyes
to be over the battlefield butnot the enemy's eyes and that
segues us straight into fighterpilots like you say the whole
ethos of knights of the air thatphrase that was used a lot then
wasn't it and a differentculture than i guess that
followed in what the raw flyingcorps and the other air services
(23:48):
came to stand for
SPEAKER_01 (23:50):
yeah i mean that's absolutely right and and i mean
if you think about it i mean theknights of the air thing you
know obviously it's a it's acliche and you know these
gladiatorial battles what youknow all kinds of sort of
epithets used not entirelyuntrue in the sense that Well,
first of all, there was, youknow, even though they were
trying to kill each other, theyoften said, we're going for the
(24:12):
machine.
We're not going for the man.
You know, we don't have any anyquarrel with the man in the
machine.
Our quarrel, you know, we'retrying to get the the aircraft.
And there was, you know, you didhave, you know, when when.
For example, when an enemy wasshot down and wasn't badly
wounded, he would often beentertained on a squadron for
(24:34):
one night before being takenoff.
I mean, that really did happen.
And there was a sense sometimesthat we have more in common,
actually, with the people on theother side doing what we're
doing than with people on ourside who are doing something
completely different.
So it's not untrue.
SPEAKER_02 (24:51):
So with these men being up there, Josh, kind of
facing each other, respectingeach other sometimes as you've
said even entertaining eachother when they one of them gets
shot down i i guess there isanother reality to that which is
that there is chivalry perhapsbut it's still a brutal war up
there it's still pretty raw kindof combat that combat in the air
SPEAKER_01 (25:13):
absolutely and and you know they were they were
these people were sharing youknow a new experience um it was
and also you know you've got thepoint that they're you know most
of the war is now...
Modern warfare at this point wasvery impersonal.
Naval battles used to be aboutgetting close and boarding the
enemy ships.
(25:34):
And, you know, battles on landused to be about two armies, you
know, coming together.
And absolutely still, you know,during advances and trench
raids, it was still that.
But these were, you know,relatively few and far between
compared to how it had been inthe past.
But one area where, you know,the combatants still absolutely
(25:57):
came together was during thesefighter confrontations.
Because the airplanes were verysimilar.
You know, they had very similarspeeds.
So, you know, the quicker onetended, you know, maybe only a
few miles per hour quicker thanthe slower one.
So you ended up with these sortof genuinely gladiatorial,
(26:17):
contests where each pilot couldsee the other one's head you
know they could actually seeeach other you know the the sort
of classic first world warcombat is between a british
pilot called lano hawker and thered baron baron manfred von
richthofen and it's it's kind ofthe classic partly because
Richton wrote about it in hisdiary.
(26:38):
But the way he talks about it,he was a hunter.
That was his passion back athome.
And that was the way he viewedthese combats.
But he talks about his LanoHawker when he writes about this
with huge respect.
He says, I could see his head.
At one point, Hawker waved athim.
They're trying to get insideeach other.
(27:01):
They're concentric circles asthey're flying.
Hawking is DH2.
the Red Baron in his albatrossesbefore he had his Fokker
tripling and they're tryingthey're getting in tighter and
tighter and tighter circles youknow together right together
they can see each other reallyclosely they're almost dancing
(27:21):
and so this is an area I meanHawker was shot down and killed
and now there's a memorial tohim where he where he where he
died he's an interestingcharacter you know don't have
time for it really but he's avery interesting character
himself and so So, you know,this appeals to people at home.
You know, there aren't many sortof stories of sort of direct
(27:46):
confrontations.
But here you have this, youknow, these people, they're
dueling, basically.
It's like an 18th century duel.
And they're facing each otherand it's strange.
Up to a point, it's chivalrous.
And so this captured the publicimagination.
And, you know, you had a lot ofthe German pilots becoming
well-known aces, Richthofen andothers, Bolk and other people.
(28:10):
The British initially didn'twant to turn their fighter
pilots into well-known aces.
uh figures because you know itwas considered i think one
reason was it was consideredquite insulting really to the
people who were doing the thebulk of the work and equally
dangerous if not well yeahequally dangerous jobs but these
people you know the the the thebig ones um you know the albert
(28:34):
balls the mcmannocks andmccuddens you know these people
you know did become even leerobinson who shot down the uh
the the first man to shoot downa zeppelin and these people
became faces on cigarette cards.
You know, they became heroes andit kind of served its purpose.
(28:54):
And that was because theyweren't faceless.
You know, they were known andthey were known to each other,
the two sides.
So again, very different to whatwas happening elsewhere.
To what reason?
I mean, it's such a fascinatingsubject, this, which doesn't
always get its due.
You know, every now and again,Blackadder's got a nice, you
(29:16):
know, nod to it and whatever.
But I'm quite passionate aboutit.
It's an incredible human andtechnological story.
And it's the beginning of, youknow, modern...
I think it's the beginning ofmodern warfare.
I mean, it's...
Absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (29:32):
But I think, you know, the kind of public...
bought into the idea of theseaces and knights and all the
other kind of phrases that wasused and they collected the
cigarette cards and they hadpostcards and there were
illustrations of them in justabout every magazine that was
being published at that timebecause I guess it kind of
contrasted that what was alreadyprobably being seen as the
(29:54):
hellish nature of what washappening on the ground with
gas, flamethrowers, artillery,mud and everything else.
But there was a brutal side tothe war in the air as well,
wasn't there?
SPEAKER_01 (30:05):
Yes, there was.
I mean, it's so interestingbecause in some ways they were
living a much better life.
You know, they were behind thelines.
They were, you know, theaccommodation, you know, varied
wildly.
Sometimes it was, you know,pretty rough tents.
Sometimes they were in shadows.
And they ate incredibly well.
(30:28):
not only better than the men inthe trenches, but better than
people back in England.
And they had the opportunity togo into the towns.
I mean, if you read SagittariusRising, another fantastic book,
Cecil Lewis's account of thetime, he talks about the social
life that the men had at thistime, which was quite
(30:51):
remarkable.
And you do, I mean, you findthese incredible stories of the
way they lived, which was sodifferent to others there was
one officer who brought umhounds back from england not
much of a i don't know a greatdeal about hunting but anyway he
bought hounds and hunted umhares and they you know they
(31:11):
used to have a proper hunt withthe horn and the you know going
around in the red coats and youknow this was just behind the
lines and there was another uhsquadron where they built a
roller skating rink You know,they sort of commandeered
concrete that was quite usefulelsewhere, and built a roller
(31:31):
skating rink, and they hadroller badminton, and they, you
know, all this kind of stuff.
And another brilliant one, therewas a squadron whose commander
was a very well-known West Endactor called Robert Lorraine,
and he had two theatre groups,basically, on the squadron.
One was made up of officers, onewas made up of men, and they did
(31:54):
regular...
I often wonder, if you'd spentthe day in the air, how much
stage fright could you possiblyhave going on that night?
And he was great friends withGeorge Bernard Shaw.
And so he invited Shaw back tothe aerodrome.
where Shaw watched a performanceof one of his own plays by the
men.
And an officer was sittingbehind him and said, you know, I
(32:18):
watched Shaw all the waythrough.
And his shoulders were heavingall the way through and his
beard was bobbling around.
And he said he was laughing.
He laughed all the way through.
It's a very serious play.
And this officer went up to Shawafterwards and said, you know,
thank you very much for coming.
I hope you enjoyed it.
And Shaw said, well, if I'dknown it was going to be like
that, I wouldn't have written itin the first place.
So it was just incredible.
(32:39):
incredibly ungracious.
But the point being that thesewere not ordinary soldiers.
They had this extraordinaryother life.
But at the same time, to balancethat, they were also doing
something incredibly dangerous,arduous, mentally tortuous.
(33:01):
And they were going up severaltimes a day.
to do this incredibly dangerousjob.
So, you know, I'm certainly notgonna disparage the courage of
the people, the men in thetrenches who, you know, were
doing something astonishinglydangerous, astonishingly
arduous, the conditions wereappalling, you know, regularly
your life was absolutely on theline, but the men in the air
(33:25):
were also risking their livesseveral times a day and losing
comrades, at an extraordinaryrate.
You know, there's a period, thetime of the Battle of Arras in
1917, which is known as BloodyApril, because people would
be...
I think there are varyingfigures, but, I mean, basically,
(33:46):
the life expectancy of a newpilot arriving at that point in
that time was about two weeks.
So, I mean, what can I say?
I mean, it was...
Actually, I've got...
It just so happens that I havean account...
because they're written in ahospital because the stress It
(34:07):
was called flying sickness.
Pilots and observers tended tobe treated more gently by the
authorities when they sufferedfrom neurasthenia or had mental
breakdowns.
And in part because there wereso many of them who suffered.
And in part also because thosehigher up the hierarchy, many of
(34:28):
them had been flying themselvesand knew precisely what the
stresses were and were not keento punish people for what they'd
gone through.
And this is...
This is a hospital casualtyreport.
It's called neurasthenia is thetitle of it.
There's a name there, but Iwon't give it.
It said, joined Royal FlyingCorps in August 17, crashed in
(34:51):
November 18.
He was not in charge of themachine, not physically injured.
About a week later, he developedfear symptoms and became
fatigued.
The nervous symptoms becameaggravated with depression,
memory defects and lack of powerof mental application,
irritability of temper wasmarked, war dreams, insomnia,
developed with headaches andnausea.
(35:13):
He spent three months inhospital but did not improve.
His legs became so shaky that hehad to use two sticks.
He harbors mistrust andsuspicions of everybody around
him, is easily upset.
There are no physical signs oforganic disease.
And he was dealt with leniently.
He wasn't considered a coward.
(35:33):
And he was sort of quietly...
sent back.
And this was a very commonthing.
I mean, going through thecasualty records are remarkable,
absolutely remarkable.
So many themes are coming up.
People who, you know, memoryloss.
But, you know, a man who, anofficer who came back on leave
and simply remembers none of hisleave.
(35:54):
And he was spotted on LondonBridge throwing his uniform into
the river.
And he had no memory of itwhatsoever.
SPEAKER_02 (36:03):
I guess with a new way of warfare that is so
far-fetched to most people ofthat time, that it brought with
it these new conditions andoutcomes of those conditions,
which we see in thepsychological effect that it has
on pilots.
And there were these greatfears.
I mean, I interviewed three guysthat were in the RFC or RAF, one
(36:24):
trained as an observer and thena pilot, and he spoke about how
they feared falling out of theaircraft, being in combat, back
being jerked out as an observerhe wasn't entirely always sure
what the pilot was doing and youknow was he going to be although
they had the ability toobviously strap themselves in
occasionally said he had tomaneuver himself and unstrap
(36:46):
himself to be able to take aphotograph or operate a machine
gun or whatever it was and thenwill he be thrown out 10,000
feet and then fire that was thething that he said haunted them
all all the time and he saidthat you know in those last few
months of his service on thewestern front they drank very
very heavily to try and get ridof that fear.
SPEAKER_01 (37:07):
I'd say two things there.
One, so far as the last fewmonths on the Western Front,
you've got an extraordinary bookcalled Winged Victory, which is
a novel, but it's very tightlybased on the experience of a
pilot.
And it's so beautifully writtenbecause he drinks himself, you
(37:28):
know, absolutely unconsciousvirtually every night.
And he explains the situation.
He talks through the life thathe's living.
And he's doing it just to youknow, get rid of his depression,
get rid of his fears, to forgetfor a little while what it is
he's doing.
And, you know, these are the lowstrafing runs, which are so, so
(37:49):
dangerous.
And so, you know, I recommend,it's a man called Yeats who
wrote it, and I fully recommendpeople to buy that book and read
it.
It's an astonishing book.
It's so vivid, so modern, youknow.
It's over 100 years old, andit's absolutely, the emotions
he's going through, the attemptssurvive to stay alive to stay
(38:12):
sane it's absolutely you know Ialways think it's it's dangerous
to say people are always thesame you know through history
they're not actually because ourattitudes change our
expectations out of life changeyou know but in terms of
emotions we are all the same andthat book brings it home just
hammers you in the gut with itso that you know that's one
(38:33):
thing another thing to talkingabout the fire the fear of fire
I mean I know you have AndySaunders is on who's talking
about mcmannock but it wasmcmannock this extraordinary man
my god he's a fascinating man imean there needs to be a film
about about mcmannock and hisgreat fear of course was was
fire was was burning to death sohe took a revolver with him uh
(38:57):
in in the cockpit with him to umwell to use it rather than burn
and he did you know, maybe wecan come on to this, but he did
crash breaking one of his ownrules of combat.
But we don't know whether he...
whether he used the gun onhimself or not.
SPEAKER_02 (39:18):
Yeah, I mean, both those guys that I interviewed,
all three of them, in fact, theytook various methods up with
them in case that they caughtfire or there was a situation,
either a revolver, a servicerevolver or poison.
SPEAKER_01 (39:34):
What a situation to be in, that you have to take a
means of suicide with you to doyour job.
I mean, that's so vivid.
I mean, in some ways, that's allyou need to know.
SPEAKER_02 (39:44):
Yeah, I mean, it's extraordinary, really.
So with the kind of, I mean, theKnights of the Air fighter
pilots don't go away, but thewar changes.
The war becomes moreindustrialized on the ground,
and the Royal Flying Corps haveto kind of find their way within
that war.
And I guess perhaps the RFC, asit moves into becoming the RNAS
(40:06):
into the RAF, becomes a moretechnical service in some ways
in the way that it approachesfighting and the importance of
those famous pilots fades awayto an extent.
SPEAKER_01 (40:20):
I think that's right.
I think in so many differentways, because technology
advances, but also in termsof...
tactics, fighting tactics.
So you have some of the earlyaces, like Albert Ball, or the
German Bolker, the way they wentabout things was You know,
basically there were no tactics.
(40:40):
You sort of throw yourself intothe melee and because they were
both, you know, they would bevery good video game players
nowadays.
You know, they had extraordinaryreactions.
They could see what washappening around them.
They could take stock of whatwas happening instantly.
And they could, you know, itwas...
fighting air fighting was alanguage that they both spoke
(41:03):
brilliantly um and uh so theythey sort of got by for a long
time um i'll say long time it'sall relative but for you know
for a while on just their theirflying ability and their
fighting ability and they wereboth killed and and then it
became you know rules started toto play a bigger a bigger part
(41:23):
in things and so for examplewe've just talked about
mcmannock mcmannock wrote out uha a Actually, Bolger did as
well.
He had a series of dicta.
But Manick had a series ofrules.
Richthofen, in his will, I'venever quite understood this, his
will contained a series of rulesfor young pilots.
But I suppose that gives you asense of how transient these
(41:45):
lives were and how they expectedto die.
His actual will was speaking topeople who would be left after
him.
And Manick's interesting becausehe was an older man And at the
beginning, people thought he waswindy.
People thought he lackedcourage.
(42:06):
But actually, he was an olderman who'd seen a bit of life and
didn't want to lose his.
And so he approached it moreconservatively and worked out
the best ways of staying alive.
And Richthofen did too.
So this was a set.
Also, you know, the fightingtended to move on.
So that sort of, you know,Lanner-Hawker-Richthofen duel, I
(42:27):
mean, they still existed towardsthe end.
But as the aircraft became morefaster and better, it became a
bit more like, you know, SecondWorld War flying where they only
saw each other for seconds at atime.
Sometimes they didn't.
Sometimes they really did chaseeach other and stay together for
a long time.
But it became less duel-like anda bit more chaotic, I think, as
(42:47):
it went on.
But you had, yeah, I mean, youhad the fact that it became a
bit more, a bit more tacticscame into it and a bit more
thought went into how they weredoing it was a sign of the fact
that it was developing.
developing.
But then, you know, it retainedthe element of chaos, the
element of stress andinevitability in the way that
(43:09):
you know, both Richthofen andManick and others as well, died
eventually.
These were the best pilotsaround, even though they'd only
been flying for a relativelyshort time.
You know, Manick, I think it was13 months coming to the Western
Front and dying as one of the,you know, the greatest
potential, arguably the greatestpilot who'd had the greatest
experience.
It's 13 months, for goodnesssake, you know.
(43:30):
I mean, what do I do in 13months?
You know, and, but they bothdied breaking their own rules,
which I find utterly fascinatingas a sort of very much an
amateur psychologist but youknow what there absolutely is a
sense that you know these peoplehad been raised to a to a uh you
(43:50):
know a level of they are thethey are the greats so they
weren't given much leave theywere looked up to by all the
others um and you know perhapsthey started to take chances in
the sense you know perhaps i therules don't apply to me you
know, in the way that they do toothers, even though I write
them, but I can maybe get awaywith it.
So Mann followed, shot someoneand followed him down, which is
(44:14):
absolutely not meant to do.
Richthofen flew low over enemyterritory, chasing someone.
That was his second rule, don'tdo that.
So perhaps it was that, orperhaps it was an element that,
you know, it's inevitable, I'mgoing to die.
So all that's kind of left tome, my only choice left is how
and when I do it.
You know, so there may be a sortof element of, you know,
(44:35):
fatalism that, you know, I'm adead man walking or a dead man
flying.
So here I go.
I don't know.
I mean, obviously, that's all,you know, pop psychology, but
it's utterly fascinating.
As is, you know, the death ofRichthofen.
That's a whole other story.
SPEAKER_02 (44:52):
Yeah, I mean, you kind of feel that with some of
them there is an inevitabilityabout it in their mind and they
kind of see them quite literallykind of flying in one direction
and that direction isn't beyondthe end of the war.
And that year in 1918 sees thedeath of so many of these famous
pilots from Mannach to McCuddento Richthofen and perhaps, you
(45:13):
know, lesser known names thatflew over the Western Front
there The Australian Bob Littleis kind of another example of
that as well.
But, you know, I kind of feelthat as the war's coming to an
end, aircraft now are very muchpart of the battlefield.
They're part of that kind oforchestra of weaponry that's
(45:34):
being implemented by battlefieldcommanders from the troops to
the tanks to the artillery tothe gas to whatever, plus the
aircraft in the sky stillperforming the original purpose,
which is observation with airfoand relay back to guns but also
attacking things whether that'sfighters or bombing but there's
(45:55):
a huge cost and Royal FlyingCorps and the Royal Naval Air
Service coming into being theRAF there is this huge role of
honour by the end of theconflict and you know with
nearly a thousand of them on theArras Memorial with no known
grave as well as all those thatare buried in cemeteries kind of
all over the place and you kindof wonder what the pilots as
(46:18):
armistice day approaches theones the air crew and the ground
crew that have survived what dothey make of it all
SPEAKER_01 (46:24):
uh well you know if you if you take the accounts of
you know many of them they saywe were lost you know we we came
out of the war not expecting tolive or some of them say that uh
we were children you knowthey're incredibly young these
people you know albert ball was20 when he died he was a child i
mean you read his diary it's allabout you know, public school
(46:46):
hijinks in the mess, you know,throwing water over each other
at night and, you know, plantingseeds that'll grow quickly
outside his hut.
So they're basically children.
They've experienced, not all ofthem, but I mean a lot of them,
they've experienced the mostterrifying thing imaginable, but
(47:10):
they haven't actually livedin...
They don't know life.
You know, they haven't had jobs.
They haven't had girlfriends.
They haven't had...
You know, a lot of these menhad...
You know, they'd been frequentlyto brothels, but they'd never
had a girlfriend.
You know, everything was out ofwhack in terms of, you know,
being...
being a person, being an averageEnglish or French or German or
(47:32):
American person.
And so you had a lot of peoplejust completely lost when they
came out and suddenly having tostart lives.
They had no idea.
They hadn't even expected to beliving.
And you had lots of stories, avery touching one I found about
two men who came out of theFlying Corps and thought, well,
we're going to be pilots.
(47:53):
We're going to carry on becausethis is what we know.
And they both bought...
a sop with pup for five poundsat the end of the war.
They went to wherever it wasthey were being sold.
And they thought, right, we'regoing to carry on with this.
Flying is brilliant.
We're going to do it.
And then it was sort ofexplained to them how much it
(48:14):
was going to cost to maintainthis, and how much it was going
to cost to do it.
And they realized there's no waywe can afford, actually.
You know, we paid for the plane,that's ours, but there's no way
we can keep it running.
And so they sold it back.
You know, they'd lost a fewshillings on it.
And they realized we don't knowhow life works.
(48:34):
We don't know what we're goingto do.
And look at some of these peoplewho made it through.
I mean, you know, the ones whodidn't make it through had all
the potential.
But the people who did make itthrough, I mean, someone like
Cecil Lewis is, you know,completely fascinating.
I mean, whether he would havebeen quite as off the wall had
he not been in the Flying Corps,who knows?
But, you know, he became one ofthe founder members of the BBC.
(48:56):
He became a devotee of science.
Gurdjieff, who was a sort ofspiritual leader who, I think, I
could be libeling him here, butI think advocated free love or
something like it.
You know, a lot of these peoplebecame also, and this is not
often said, a lot of them becamefascists, which I find very
(49:18):
interesting.
I mean, Oswald Mosley is theobvious one, but lots of others.
Victor Yeats, who wrote He was afascist.
And a lot of them were.
And again, that's a reallyinteresting subject of, you
know, first of all, they were,you know, I suppose it makes
sense in that they were involvedin this incredible new
technology that was, you know,that sort of mirrored the idea,
(49:40):
the idea of strength throughfascism.
And a
SPEAKER_02 (49:44):
new world as well, I
SPEAKER_01 (49:51):
guess, that kind of new world concept that you often
see associated with extremepolitics.
(50:13):
and sort of different kinds ofbreakthroughs.
And then there were people whowere just so psychologically
damaged that you can see itrunning through their entire
lives.
And then there were people whoended up addicted to flying,
went back to...
Louis Strange, I mentioned himin passing before.
He was the first man to mount amachine gun on an aircraft and
(50:35):
was always there at theforefront.
He actually flew again duringthe Second World War.
He took up a...
a hurricane, despite neverhaving flown one before.
You know, and a lot of thembecame, you know, senior in the
Air Force and, you know, they'dbeen there before.
And, yeah, I mean, a lot of themhad difficulties.
(50:58):
A lot of them thrived and a lotof them went down some pretty
dubious paths.
SPEAKER_02 (51:03):
And kind of to end with a kind of sense of legacy
of the experience of the war inthe air in the First World War
we can look back and see theincredible achievements that
were made through theadvancement of technology and
air fighting in all kinds ofdifferent ways and also the kind
of experience of the men whoflew and the ones on the ground
(51:24):
but I guess there's, I mean Iknow like me that you've always
been interested in the SecondWorld War as well and there's a
kind of between that wholeculture of air fighters in the
First World War and then ageneration of a second wave of
those air fighters in World WarII?
SPEAKER_01 (51:40):
Well, I mean, you know, we've forgotten now,
culturally, most of the FirstWorld War pilots, who they were,
what they did.
It's kind of a real footnotenow, which is a big shame, but
they weren't to the Battle ofBritain pilots.
The Battle of Britain pilotslooked at these men as heroes to
(52:01):
be emulated and in fact you knowyou have william rhodes
morehouse you know the the sonof the first air vc who died
carrying out his vc action uhthere's a real continuity here
and they were you know they wereled by people who had fought in
the first world war and if youthink about it you know they've
i mean it is astonishing i irealized i should have worked
(52:22):
this out before i came on but ifyou look at the the lapse in
time between dropping darts anddropping an atom bomb.
It's a flash of...
You know, it's nothing,absolutely nothing.
And it's, what is it, 14 to 45,whatever that is, 30 years.
(52:42):
You know, again, what have Idone in 30 years?
I mean, it's astonishing.
So the development, and also,you know, First World War in the
air, I can't say everything, butalmost everything that was
tried, you know, has been triedsince, was tried in some, you
know, rudimentary or not even sorudimentary fashion, whether
we're talking about aircraftcarriers or seaplanes or rockets
(53:04):
being launched from aircraft ortorpedoes being launched from
aircraft or whatever.
I mean, you name it.
It was probably done in somefashion in the First World War
in that incredibly short periodof time.
So while it is astonishing thatthe atom bomb was so soon after
the dart, in some ways it's notsurprising because, I mean, the
cliche that war is a mother ofinvention.
(53:26):
Well, my God, this was goinglike nobody's business.
And so there's an absolutedirect consequence correlation
in terms of technology.
Yes, actually, you couldpossibly say this as well.
The First World War, the startof it anyway, is a much more
gung-ho experience than thestart of the Second World War.
(53:48):
You've got the whole idea ofpeople queuing to do their bit
with that sort of fervor and toget their revenge on the Germans
for their inhumanity andwhatever else.
Whereas the Second World War wasmuch more entered into by
British people.
Well, it's an existential fight.
(54:10):
We go into this withresignation, but we have to do
it.
Which is why I often say, peoplesay, oh, people wouldn't fight
nowadays the way they used to.
I say, well, if it wasexistential, they probably
would.
But I often look at the Battleof Britain pilots as a sort of
different breed.
These are people who did havethat same sort of ethos of going
(54:32):
into it with this sort ofincredible enthusiasm that
people went into the First WorldWar.
I wonder, I'm thinking aloudnow, but I wonder if there is
again that kind of continuitythat the air is something apart
and, you know, whereas mostpeople went off to fight the
Second World War with a senseof, well, I don't want to do
this, but I have to.
(54:52):
The fighter pilots didn't, youknow, didn't have that attitude.
They were very much more of theFirst World War mindset.
Anyway, get ready for the peoplewriting in to say that's a load
of rubbish.
But anyway, that's, you know,that's off the top of my
SPEAKER_02 (55:04):
head.
Well, I mean, I think it'salways interesting perspectives
and I kind of think that, youknow, when any study of warfare
you kind of hear people in amodern era talk about how
something is over tanks willnever be used again aircraft are
redundant and yet we're seeing aconflict a modern conflict as we
speak now which has so manysimilarities with what was
happening on the ground in thefirst world war with trench
(55:25):
warfare and you know the hugekind of cost of operations but
also the importance of aircraftbecause if you look at the kind
of Ukrainian appeal over thelast couple of years it's always
been for aircraft to counterRussian aircraft over the
battlefield so that kind of airwar and the drones
SPEAKER_01 (55:48):
you can just imagine drones being introduced in the
first world war and againchanging the sort of basis and
the psychology and the way it'sbeing fought it's just coming
round and round and round andround I sometimes think it's a
bit naive to say oh well we canlearn from history you know just
(56:09):
in that sort of bald that baldstatement but my goodness me
there are a lot of parallelsthat we have to pay very close
attention to because otherwisewe're we're we're we don't know
who we are
SPEAKER_02 (56:21):
no and i think even if we don't end up learning from
history it's having that nod tohistory and an appreciation of
history which i guess is whatyou know you and i have done a
lot in our in our careers inhistory is to ensure that the
the lives of men like mannockand albert ball and and all of
the others plus the ground crewkept them there, and men on both
sides fighting these incrediblebattles in the skies over the
(56:44):
Western Front.
it's important that that isnever forgotten.
SPEAKER_01 (56:48):
I mean, yes, is all I can say to that.
SPEAKER_02 (56:52):
Well, Josh, I mean, as always, I could talk to you
all day because you're alwaysabsolutely fascinating to
discuss any aspect of militaryhistory with, and it's always a
pleasure to see
SPEAKER_01 (57:02):
you.
Completely mutual, Paul.
It's been a pleasure.
SPEAKER_02 (57:05):
So thank you for that, and we'll put links to
your book, and I think you saidthere's a new edition of it as
well, so we'll make sure that'skind of
SPEAKER_01 (57:13):
on there.
It's a paperback.
basically um and uh we'lldescribe it as a
SPEAKER_02 (57:18):
classic i think that's the best thing for for
books that have been in been inprint for a while yeah
SPEAKER_01 (57:23):
yes absolutely i mean it's um you know a lot of
the stuff i've talked abouttoday i mean you'll you know
it's it's i talk about it morelength in the book so um
SPEAKER_02 (57:32):
no fantastic so thanks josh thanks for joining
us and i'm sure this won't bethe last time we discuss some
aspect of the great war here onthe old front line thank you
mate
SPEAKER_01 (57:40):
thank you paul thank you very much
SPEAKER_02 (57:48):
You've been listening to an episode of The
Old Frontline with me, militaryhistorian Paul Reid.
You can follow me on Twitter atSomcor.
You can follow the podcast atoldfrontlinepod.
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.
(58:09):
And if you feel like supportingus, you can go to our Patreon
page at patreon.com slash oldfront line or support us on buy
me a coffee at buymeacoffee.comslash old front line links to
all of these are on our websitethanks for listening and we'll
see you again soon
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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.