On a Wing and a Prayer

[Dolphin]

A kind pal in the UK sent me a copy of this new book which, as far as I know, hasn't been released in Australia yet. It's a good collection of mainly first hand accounts of aspects of Great War flying, including some stories from the often forgotten ground staff. Some of the accounts are familiar, but most are not, and they make fascinating reading. The author has covered the pioneering days of the air war especially well, and the book is well worth reading.

There are some minor matters that might irritate some readers, including the almost exclusive focus on the RFC/RNAS/RAF and their German foes on the Western Front. Austro-Hungarian, Belgian, French, Italian, Russian and US airmen aren't mentioned, though there's a photo of Camels from the 148th Aero Sqn USAS on the cover. Empire airmen in the British services are covered, and there's one anecdote from an AFC man (Lt George Jones from No 4 Sqn, though the book indicates that he was in No 2 Sqn). As is often the case, the Independent Force RAF is called the Independent Air Force.

Despite the above quibbles, the book is a good coverage of the aerial war, with some new information, and will be enjoyed by those with an interest in the topic.

Gareth

[IanA]

Thanks for that Gareth. I will certainly look out for it.

[Halder]

This review will be appearing in the August edition of Navy News. A very good book – and refreshingly it covers the RNAS, so often overlooked in WW1 aviation books. It would have been nice to have references to the sources, and the naval air war is pretty much overlooked, but nevertheless I'm happy to recommend it to anyone interested in the field.

THERE is just one living link with the pioneering days of naval and military aviation.

Henry Allingham, veteran of Jutland, the Royal Naval Air Service and the RAF, is rightly honoured by today’s generations who strive to leave the earth beneath them.

Soon, all our tangible links with the Great War will be gone. But their deeds will at least live on in their own words.

No conflict in history was as chronicled as the 1914-1918 conflagration was: documents, newspapers, photographs, films and, in its aftermath, a clutch of memoirs.

There is, however, another Great War, one recorded in letters, in diaries, in typescripts and handwritten scrawl, recordings on long-since defunct cassette players, kept in attics or garages.

Many of these unpublished accounts eventually found their way to museums, and in the past decade or so historians have begun to tap this vast archive of first-hand accounts which are as rich as they are varied.

The latest author to weave a story from the ‘bottom up’ rather than relying on gods and generals is Joshua Levine who grapples with the knights of the sky, the Great War aviators, in On A Wing And A Prayer (Harper Collins, £18.99 ISBN 978-0-007-269457).

The ‘aces’ of World War I would be celebrated, the ordinary aviator would be mourned as a lamb to the slaughter. Truth, as ever, lies somewhere in between.

Typically, though not exclusively, accounts of Britain’s Great War in the air focus on the Royal Flying Corps and RAF; the naval contribution to military aviation is often overlooked.

Not so Levine. The emphasis, to be sure, is on the RFC and RAF, but the men, machines and ethos of the RNAS – forerunner of the Fleet Air Arm – also come alive in this excellent popular history.

Men such as Charles Rumney Samson, arguably the father of naval aviation and certainly its leading light in the opening weeks of the war.

The RNAS had been charged with defending Britain’s skies at the outbreak of war – and above all countering the Zeppelin threat.

But rather than wait for the German airships to bomb Blighty, Samson took the fight to the enemy and headed to France.

Samson was not content with grappling with airships; a true innovator (and a bit of a renegade) he created a unit of armoured cars (the armour courtesy of boilers from a shipyard) and began roving around the French countryside.

His aircraft scouted for the Hun and ‘Sammy’, as his men knew him, “chased them with his car and gun” – a sort of blitzkrieg 25 years before the real thing.

Samson and his men collected a fine collection of helmets and lances from German Uhlan cavalry, liberated Lille briefly, and held off the Hun at Douai allowing 2,500 French soldiers to escape.

The actions of Samson’s squadron and his armoured cars are, however, little more than a footnote in the Great War in the air.

Rightly, the bulk of Levine’s book is devoted to the skies of France and Belgium, but rather than simply focus on the aces, or even merely the fighters, the author also devotes time to bombers and ground crews – the latter have often been sorely neglected in WW1 literature.

If not in as much danger as their flying comrades, engineers and mechanics were nevertheless in the front line – airfields were frequent targets.

The RNAS station at Felixstowe regularly received the attention of German bombers. There were no air raid shelters as such. When the Hun approached, the men were told to head to the beach and lie on the sand, extending their arms and legs “so that we wouldn’t all get blown up together”.

The mechanics were almost to a man drawn from Britain’s working classes – few from the ‘lower echelons’ of society were permitted to pilot naval aircraft.

No, the working man was “filtered out” long before he reached the RNAS board which, as selector Donald Bremner readily admitted, looked for horse riders and rowers. “Social class counted because we were choosing officer pilots.” Officers first, warriors second…

Despite this “bit of snobbishness”, take nothing away from the first generation of naval aviators. They were brave men who sat in open cockpits in fragile machines and grappled with an equally brave – and determined – foe.

The cold at altitude was as much a threat as the Hun. William Wardrop of No.7 Sqn RNAS removed his gloves to drop bombs on a German target – then found he couldn’t put them back on once the payload had fallen. The result was frostbite from his elbow to his wrist.

“Frostbite feels as though you had put your hand in a furnace,” he recalled. “You just blistered up.”

Medical officers knew what they could – or could not – do with frostbite victims; men with broken minds proved more challenging.

One 22-year-old junior officer was sent to Craiglockhart in Edinburgh – where Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon were treated – after lasting just a month at the front. Doctors noted that “any sudden bang makes him jump and he feels sick after it”.

Some were discharged, some returned to light duties, most returned to the front. All were changed by the experience.

One anonymous flier returned home on a cross-Channel steamer at the end of January 1919. The sight of the white cliffs of Dover should have stirred the soul, but didn’t.

“All is over,” he recorded in his diary. “I am untouched by scratch or bruise, the mind unable to grasp all this, and around me, not these, but the many, so many who were never able to return.”

By the time the RNAS merged with the Royal Flying Corps to form the RAF it was 67,000 personnel strong… and almost all were reluctant to join the new force and relinquish their cherished naval traditions.

“They were trying to join two disparate services,” fumed Thomas Thomson. “It was absolutely terrible – the biggest pot mess I ever came across.”

Like the Royal Navy before it, the Royal Air Force would in time become a national institution and the role of the Royal Naval Air Service would be eclipsed.

It and the men who served it deserve to be remembered.

[Grace Talbot]

The hardcover version of this book is currently priced £5.69 at Amazon.co.uk

On a Wing and a Prayer

Absolute bargain at that price (RRP £18.99) !