Chapter 5

SOME EPICS OF NIGHT BOMBING

I

In the summer of 1917 the Germans were rushing troops up to the Ypres front, where the activities of the British threatened them at this point in their line. This movement of troops was made at night, as usual, _because_ if made in daylight they would have been plainly visible to our reconnaissance and artillery observation squadrons. These troops were detrained at Menin and were transported by motor lorry along the Menin-Gelevelt road. On a certain evening the first night-bombing squadron of the Royal Flying Corps, then situated west of Nieppe Forest, was ordered to delay in every possible way this movement of enemy troops. The result must have been satisfactory, for the General in command of the British Army on that front sent us, a few days later, the glad tidings that no German reinforcements arrived at the critical moment and all the British objectives had been captured and held. Whether or not the only night-bombing squadron engaged in that action was responsible for the tie-up of the Hun transportation system is problematical, but all the members of the squadron remember that night and hope that their efforts were of value.

The only thing out of the ordinary that evening in the squadron's routine was the mounting of double guns in the aeroplanes and an earlier dinner hour; the dinner, possibly, was gayer than usual. The machines left the ground in daylight, gained their height over Nieppe Forest and crossed the lines at dusk, swooped down over Menin Station and dropped their bombs at an altitude of one thousand to five hundred feet. Then, nose down, engine "full out," they raced away from Menin and followed, in the brilliant moonlight, the road to Gelevelt, flying within one hundred feet of the ground.

A heavy fire at close range at the transports on the road and at the shadows of the trees cast by the moon, as the case might be, soon exhausted the drums of ammunition. Each aviator did his level best to get results, all the time trying to avoid landing on the tree-tops; some of them did so land; they were shot down by the Huns. As soon as their ammunition was gone they headed for home and, crossing the lines at a low altitude, were shot at by anti-aircraft batteries and machine guns from the ground and "bumped" here and there by the air displacement of passing shells from the steadily flashing guns of both their own and the enemy's artillery.

When they arrived at their aerodrome there was a breathing-spell for the aviators while the bomb-racks were being refilled with bombs, the empty ammunition drums replaced with full ones, and the engines replenished with petrol, oil, and water. The planes then roared into the air again, climbed for a short time, and then headed for Menin, where railway communications were again bombed and the Menin-Gelevelt road was again raked with machine-gun fire.

After a brief respite on the return from this second raid, the machines again took off and raided the Huns for the third time that night. All that were left of this weary group of aviators returned from this third raid in broad daylight, with nerves strained to the verge of a breakdown; some were in tears, some striving to be gay, and some were very quiet, but all were happy in knowing that they had "done their damndest."

When afterward they learned that the "push" had been successful and that the Hun reserves had failed to appear, their grief for the "missing" was softened by the thought that _their_ sacrifice had not been in vain; it had brought about the full accomplishment of the purpose of the raids--C'est la Guerre--

II

Probably the first time that a Rhine town was bombed on a densely cloudy night was in the spring of 1918 and it was bombed by a small Scotchman called "Jock."

The wind that night was from the northeast, a favorable wind from the aviators' point of view because it was against them on the outward voyage. Shortly after crossing the lines, however, dense clouds coming up with the wind obliterated the earth, and all the aviators except Jock turned back hoping to find their aerodrome before it was also blotted out by the low-lying clouds.

Jock, however, was "keen" on bombing Hun factories, and the objective that night was the Badische Works situated on the river Rhine; so Jock held to his compass course and flew for over four hours without once seeing the ground. When a sufficient time had elapsed to bring him over his target, if his previous reckoning, of course, of ground speed and drift was correct, and if the wind had not varied in velocity or strength, Jock "spiralled" down through the clouds and, finding the ground beneath him nothing but dense blackness, glided lower and lower until eventually a large town directly beneath him became visible and then the river Rhine, passing between Ludwigshafen on the west and Mannheim on the east, was lit up by the rays of the moon coming through a sudden rift in the clouds. Jock by now was only eight hundred feet above Mannheim; he opened up his throttle and circled around the city while his navigation officer on his large-scale chart compared the landmarks momentarily made visible by the rift in the clouds. At last, thoroughly satisfied as to their position, fourteen one-hundred-and-twelve-pound bombs were dropped as near the factory as possible. If some of these bombs dropped in the town itself, it was not due to intention on the part of the aviators, who, blinded by searchlights, could not be sure of sending all the bombs with accuracy. With over one hundred and sixty miles to travel in a plane riddled with shrapnel from the bursting shells, the prominent thought in the minds of the aviators was, that their work being accomplished, their next move was to "beat it" in the direction where lay friendly country.

After the release of the bombs, Jock climbed up through the clouds and steered a direct course for home. Since the ground could not be studied because of the intervening clouds, the aviators devoted their entire attention to compass, time, and the stars. During this flight above the clouds the efficiency of the Hun's sound instruments was thoroughly demonstrated, for, although the clouds were too dense for any searchlight to penetrate and this effectually screened the machine from observation from below, again and again Jock's plane was surrounded by the black puffs of bursting anti-aircraft shells.

After flying for a sufficient number of hours to bring them above their aerodrome, if their calculations were correct, Jock and his companion discussed the advisability of coming down through the clouds; the unanimous decision, however, was to continue on until a lack of petrol would force them to land, for changes in wind might have created a considerable error in their calculations, unchecked as they were by observations of landmarks; so after flying for another hour they came down through the clouds and succeeded in making a safe landing near a small French village just before their supply of petrol was exhausted.

III

One evening in August, 1918, there was a strong southwest wind blowing across the eastern part of France and severe thunderstorms were reported to be approaching. Nevertheless, certain Bedouins were selected to raid the railway station and sidings at Frankfort; "intelligence" having reported important rail movements in that vicinity. The Bedouins were ordered to return if they found, after testing the air, the weather conditions unfavorable for a flight of such long distance. As an alternative target to Frankfort they were given the Burbach Hutte Works at Saarbrucken.

After gaining their height above the aerodrome, Jock and his navigation officer steered a direct course for "D" lighthouse, situated north of Barcarat and but a few miles from the front-line trenches. Having accurately figured their drift and ground speed on this course, Jock and his companion calculated that, by steering a straight course to Frankfort, spending five minutes over the target, and steering a straight course back to their aerodrome, they could make sufficient headway against the wind on the return voyage to bring them safely home with a ten minutes' supply of petrol left in their tanks; any error in course necessitating a deviation, or any increase in the velocity of the wind, might mean a prolonged sojourn in a German prison camp if not subjection to the well-known tortures of a German hospital.

After an accurate calculation of direction and velocity of wind, a course of thirty-nine degrees was steered from "D" lighthouse; the river Saar was crossed north of Saarburg; Bitsch and Pirmasens were passed to the north and Kaiserlautern to the south and then, the Vosges Mountains having been crossed, Jock and his companion looked down on the Rhine valley. The Rhine River was crossed north of Oppenheim, and from an elevation of six thousand feet, Mainz, at the juncture of the rivers Main and Rhine, showed clearly in the moonlight. Still holding their course, the aviators looked out to the left, followed up the river Main to Frankfort, here they throttled back the engines, glided swiftly down through the anti-aircraft barrage and searchlights and released their bombs as accurately as possible. Then, after an almost vertical "bank" so sudden was the turn, Jock steered a straight course for the nearest point in the lines, which was considerably over one hundred miles away. Now the aviators had to face a strong head wind and steer straight into a rapidly approaching storm. The time taken to fly from Frankfort to the Rhine River, together with a change in drift, proved to the aviators that the wind had varied slightly in direction and had increased somewhat in velocity. They immediately decided not to lose time by climbing above the approaching storm, but to pass beneath it. This they did, and those aviators never went through a nastier experience than this homeward journey. Blinded and stung as they were by the downpour of rain, while their aeroplane was hurled about by the wind to such an extent that it appeared to be completely out of control, the voyage seemed interminable. The clouds above belched flashes of lightning in apparent unison with the Hun anti-aircraft batteries below. Held in the beams of the enemy's searchlights and plainly visible against the dark clouds above, Jock's plane was an easy target for the Hun gunners.

But who can account for the fortunes of war? Jock brought his plane, riddled with shrapnel, into the moonlight beyond, showing up Kaiserlautern directly below, with its searchlights sweeping the sky while its anti-aircraft batteries filled the air with bursting shells; but in spite of this "hate" it was a pleasant sight to the aviators, for it showed them that their course was correct and that there was still time to gain the lines unless the wind increased. Again they passed below another dense bank of clouds, to experience again being blinded with the rain and shaken by the violence of the wind by which their plane was tossed about, all the while subjected to an attack by lightning from above and by anti-aircraft guns from below. It is a little trying to the nerves to fly for an hour without being able to see the earth beneath, and surrounded by the incessant flashings of lightning and the "whonkings" of bursting shells, but when homeward bound these little incidents are of minor import.

For the second time Jock brought the plane, tossing about like a cork on a mountainous sea, out into comparative light. As landmarks were recognized, the course was checked and changed, when a third storm was encountered. This last storm was furious, and it was impossible to hold the plane on a compass course; fortunately, however, the storm lasted but a short time, and when Jock brought his plane out into the breaking dawn, the Marne-Rhine Canal was visible to the south. A few moments later the lines were crossed and a direct course was steered to the nearest aerodrome. Just then the engines spluttered, then stopped, the petrol was exhausted, and Jock was forced to land in a field near Luneville after a sustained flight of eight hours and fifty minutes.