Dominators of the Air: the Royal Aircraft Factory S.E. 5a & the Fokker D.VII, by Javier Arango

In the history of aviation, our sources are already almost exclusively held statically in books. They are plentiful, but we can no longer ask a pilot or an aircraft designer what things were really like. Worst of all, aviation has changed so significantly that much of what those historical documents presume to be common sense no longer makes sense to us at all. Understanding the flight characteristics of a WWI aircraft from just reading about it is very hard. We no longer share a common language of flying with the writer. Our experience flying modern aircraft is so vastly different that when a WWI pilot describes his airplane as a good flying airplane, we cannot truly understand his perspective, as that same airplane to us would most likely be a menacing, unstable and dangerous machine.

But in aviation, unlike many other fields of historical study, we have a slight advantage. Even though the human participants may have died, some of the technology they used still survives and functions in one form or another. Very few original WWI aircraft do actually exist in flying condition, but accurate reproductions with original engines can be created. I have been fortunate enough to have flown such reproductions of two of the most famous fighter planes of WWI: the Fokker D.VII and the Royal Aircraft Factory's SE5. My experience flying those aircraft, as well as many other WWI airplanes, has given me a "hands-on" insight into the nature of their flight, and, in a limited way, they have helped me supplement what the written record says about them. I have piloted two different Fokker D.VIIs and three SE5s, all of which were reproduced from good, diverse, sources of information and by separate groups in different countries from the 1960s through the 1990s. I found no significant differences in flight characteristics among both Fokker D.VIIs and the SE5s. This, in a way, validates that the aircraft are truly representative of the originals.  ~ Javier Arango

SE5a from the Aeroplane Collection. Note the top-mounted Lewis gun. (Photo courtesy of Phil Makanna of Ghosts)

SE5a Scouts of 85 Squadron,
St. Omer Aerodrome, 21 June 1918

SE5a, 1917

 

Armament: 1 Lewis & 1 Vickers
 

Ceiling: 19, 500 ft., maximum
 

Endurance: 3 hrs.
 

Engine: 180-hp Hispano-Suiza V-8
 

Height: 9 ft. 6 in.
 

Span: 26 ft. 7 3/8 in.
 

Speed: 120 mph
 

Weight: 2000 lbs., loaded

 

 

 

An SE5 Ace Looks Back

 
Just before my nineteenth birthday I was posted to London Colney to join No. 56 Squadron, which was then forming to go overseas. The squadron was to be equipped with the SE 5, the last word in fighting-scouts, turned out by the Royal Aircraft Factory. It was fitted with a 140-h.p. Hispano Suiza engine Constantinesco gear; and one Lewis gun,clamped on to the top plane firing over the propeller. To change the drums, the Lewis could be pulled down on a quadrant mounting, and in this position it could, if necessary, be fired straight upwards. 

The machine (for 1917) was quite fast. It would do about a hundred and twenty on the level and climb ten thousand feet in twelve minutes. It could be looped and rolled and dived vertically without breaking up. Altogether it was a first-class fighting-scout (probably the most successful designed during the war), and was relied upon to re-establish the Allied air supremacy lost during the winter.

[Later back on the Western Front] Offensive Patrols were carried out daily, and, unfortunately, it soon became clear that, good as the SE 5 was, it was still not equal to the enemy...Later, when the SE 5 got a larger motor [SE 5a, ed.] things looked up.  

                                                                                                ~ Cecil Lewis, Sagittarius Rising

 

 

 

 

           Fokker D.VII from the Aeroplane Collection (Photo courtesy of Phil Makanna of Ghosts)

 

 

  

 

Armament: twin 7.92 mm Spandaus 

Ceiling: 19,685 ft., maximum 

Endurance: 1.5 hrs.; Engine: 160-hp Mercedes in-line 

Height: 9 ft. ¼ in. 

Span: 29 ft. 2 1/3 in.  

Speed: 117.4 mph   

Weight: 1984 lbs, loaded  

 

 A D.VII Ace Looks Back    
        
"Every evening between eight and nine, two Sopwith Camels come over to drop leaflets. Somebody shows me one of these things. It has a black-red-yellow border. Supposed deserters are prompting the soldiers in the trenches to do likewise."Between eight and nine, you say?"

I scrape together some gas from among my buddies and take off. The sun is already low in the west, framing the clouds in a pale golden color.

South of Foucaucourt I meet the two. One immediately takes off westward; the other remains. He rains leaflets on me from above. We begin to maneuver. With his smaller, lighter aircraft, he can make tighter circles than I with my heavy Fokker D VII. But I stay behind him. He tries to shake me and starts a loop from barely one hundred meters altitude. I follow on his heels, and at the apex I flash on underneath him. My turning radius is larger than his. I feel a slight blow, and when I look down again, I see him creeping laboriously from the wreckage of his aircraft. German soldiers are picking him up. I don't know what happened. The only thing I can figure is that I must have rammed him as I flew past. It was my third fight today. The clock shows eight-forty.

 

Three days later I visit him in the hospital in Foucaucourt. As a return favor for his leaflets, I bring him a box of cigars made from beech leaves. My surmise was correct. At the apex of the loop, my undercarriage rammed his upper wing plane, which cracked out beyond the struts. "I wasn't prepared for this kind of clinch fighting," he said laughingly. He is a nice fellow, a student from Ontario.

Fifteen years later, at a flying meet in Los Angeles, I hear from him again. Roscoe Turner brings me a leaflet on his nonstop cross-continent flight. It has a black-red-yellow border, coming from supposed deserters, addressed to the soldiers in the trenches. It is the last of his supply, and he forgot to throw it at me in 1918.    ~ Ernst Udet, Ace of the Iron Cross

 

 

 

Drawn to Strife: Masters of American Literature and the Great War

 

By the Editors

Many of the outstanding literary figures of the United States were drawn to the war. Some found inspiration on the battlefield, some were repelled by the slaughter, a few experienced the worst of it, yet emerged—apparently—without any affect on their future work. Here are a few details about the most notable of them with some of their war-related titles:

 

 

                                                                  In Uniform: Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Hall

 

Hervey Allen, poet and novelist of historical fiction, was a lieutenant with the 28th Pennsylvania Division of the AEF and was gassed and wounded, subsequently suffering shell shock.
Toward the Flame, It Was Like This: Two Stories of the Great War.

James M. Cain, with other WWI vets Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Hemingway, a founding member of the "hard-boiled" school of fiction, served with the headquarters company of the 79th Division, AEF, and fought in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. His WWI story "The Taking of Montfaucon" appeared in the September 2007 issue of Over the Top.

Willa Cather, novelist, was inspired by reading her cousin G.P. Cather's wartime letters home to his mother. He was the first officer from Nebraska killed in World War I. Those letters are now held in the George Cather Ray Collection at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.
Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for the war novel One of Ours, published in 1922.

e.e. cummings, novelist and poet, was a volunteer ambulance driver in France, and was later drafted into the U.S. Army. The Enormous Room, a modernist account of his internment on suspicion of espionage in France, is an enduring classic of war literature.

 John Dos Passos, novelist, was a volunteer & U.S. Army ambulance driver on the Western and Italian Fronts. One Man's Initiation, Three Soldiers, U.S.A. Trilogy, Mr. Wilson's War.

 William Faulkner, novelist, trained in Canada as an aviation cadet for the Royal Air Force.
His brief service in the RAF inspired his first published novel, Soldiers' Pay.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, novelist, commissioned in the 67th Infantry, but war ended before he shipped over. The exemplary author of the Lost Generation,  Fitzgerald continually returns to the war in his work. This Side of Paradise, Tender is the Night, The Great Gatsby.

James Norman Hall, prolific author in many genres who is best known for The Bounty Trilogy written with Charles Nordhoff, was a veteran of the British Army, in which he served as a machine gunner, the Lafayette Escadrille, and the U.S. Air Service. He finished the war as a POW.
Wrote three semi-autobiographical works covering his war experiences, Kitchener's Mob, High Adventure, and Flying with Chaucer. His history The Lafayette Flying Corps is one of twelve books he co-authored with Nordhoff.

Ernest Hemingway, novelist, Red Cross Volunteer on Italian Front. A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, many short stories. 

Archibald MacLeish, poet, served with the Yale Mobile Hospital Unit, shifted to U.S. Field Artillery and commanded a battery in the Second Battle of the Marne and then became an instructor ordered stateside. Tower of Ivory, MacLeish's first collection, assembled while the poet was serving in the army, registers the disillusioning impact of World War I. "Memorial Rain" is a tribute to his brother Kenneth, who was killed in the war.

Carl Sandburg, poet and biographer, covered the war in neutral Sweden for the Newspaper Enterprise Association in 1918. Notable war poems—anti-war: "Iron" (1916), "Grass" (1918), "Planked Whitefish" (1919); pro-war: "The Four Brothers."

Gertrude Stein, poet, essayist and playwright, drove supply truck "Auntie" to supply French hospitals with partner Alice B. Toklas. Later said to Hemingway: "You are all a lost generation."
 

 

Gertrude Stein at the wheel of "Auntie," Alice standing alongside. The Ford Model T had been adapted into a supply van with an ambulance body. 

 

Edmund Wilson, critic and journalist, served in U.S. Army Intelligence. To the Finland Station, a study of revolutions from the French to the Russian.

 

Edith Wharton, novelist and correspondent, recipient of the French Legion of Honor for her philanthropic work during WWI. Wrote memoir, Fighting France (1916), and a novella, The Marne (1918), critical of U.S. slowness to enter the war.  

 

 

Thomas Wolfe, novelist, student at the University of North Carolina during the war. 

The low, grey clouds are drifting ‘cross the sky,
While here and there the little smoke puffs break,
And now and then the shrapnel bursts on high,
And growling guns their mighty thunder make.
A war-ripped field, with what a tale to tell
A tale to cause the souls of kings to quake,
For here, within a smoking, bloody Hell,
Ten million risk their lives for Freedom’s sake.
And to the right a ruined village burns,
And to the left a wood its secrets hold,
But in the gutted field the plowshare turns
A grinning skull which sneers its message bold. 
                                                                         November 1917

  

College student Thomas Wolfe, too young to take part in the war. 

An Extraordinary Historic Russian Coat from the Great War Era

This coat, in laudable condition, has survived since c. 1918/19 and now is preserved in the National WWI Museum and Memorial, Kansas City, MO. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to view and photograph it behind the scenes thanks to the graciousness of Doran Cart, former Senior Curator at the museum. 

It is purported to be a female machine gunner's coat, in service, given the insignia, of the Reds during the Russian Civil War.  It is smallish, which makes sense, and clearly made at least partly by hand. The gathered full lower skirt provides ample necessary room for movement. 

 

I have yet to understand the two yellow horizontal stripes' significance. Rank, correct? I welcome any insights or information. 

                                                                                Asst. Editor Kimball Worcester

 

 

Please visit and support the museum and memorial. It is an exceptional experience and a valuable historical resource. https://www.theworldwar.org/

The Battle of Charleroi, 1914

The Battle of the Frontiers in August and early September 1914 that witnessed the lightning advance of the German Army into Belgium and France culminated in the First Battle of the Marne (5–12 September), which ultimately prevented a German occupation of Paris. Under this wide strategic umbrella, the Battle of Charleroi—actually a series of separate engagements just east of Charleroi (22–23 August)—was foreordained by the fall of the Liège forts (5–16 August). Just to the east of Mons, where the BEF made a heroic if doomed stand, the French Fifth at Charleroi made a similar effort. However, these attempts to some degree held up the German juggernaut, buying time for what was to become the First Battle of the Marne. 

General Charles Lanrezac's Fifth Army retreat from the Charleroi zone on 23 August, after great losses on 22 August, can be seen as saving the French Fifth Army from encirclement. Joffre, however, saw it differently as a too cautious retreat and after the Battle of St. Quentin (29–30 August) chose to sack Lanrezac on 3 September. Joffre replaced him in command with General Franchet d'Espèrey for what was to become the First Battle of the Marne, wherein d'Espèrey's boldness exploited a gap between von Bülow's and von Kluck's armies and forced their retreat, for a second time saving the French Fifth Army, as well as Paris.  

                                                                                                                                            KW 

 

The Battles at Charleroi are known in Belgium as the Battles Entre-Sambre-et-Meuse

 

        Note here that the BEF is facing Mons and the Lanrezac's Fifth Army is at Charleroi.

 

 

            A confident and elegant General Louis Félix Marie François Franchet d'Espèrey

 

Sources: International Encyclopedia of the First World War; Wikipedia; Roads to the Great War

An Esoteric Collection of Great War Memorabilia: Pt. II—In and About the Trenches and Beyond

Welcome back to the Esoteric Collection. 

*An update from the front: Hanlon is pinned down at an undisclosed CCS by heavy artillery fire. Accordingly, we expect a delay in his return to editorial duty. His spirits are high, to be expected from the Good Soldier. When the barrage lifts, we will post further information. Thank you for bearing up under these wartime conditions at Roads to the Great War.*

 

 

Set of identification discs for U.S. soldier Robert Nichols. The term "dog tags" didn't enter common parlance until WWII, with the re-designed rectangular style. 

 

The classic French 75mm shell, re-fashioned as trench art commemorating battles at Rosières on the Somme ~ 

Note the aeroplane on the left. The outline appears to indicate a Taube design. 

 

The Very Special Princess Mary Box, Christmas 1914 ~

 

Paid for by public donations, these gifts from the Princess Royal, George V's only daughter, to the empire's servicemen and women contained a photo of the princess (as above), tobacco (for soldiers), chocolate (for nurses), and sweets and spices for colonial subjects who did not smoke. There was also a Christmas card, which has gone astray from my PM Box. The perimeter of the box reads, from top left clockwise: Belgium, Imperium Britannicum, Japan, Russia, Montenegro, Christmas 1914, Servia, France. 

 

 Blue Star family cards for prominent display in a  front window ~

 

 

 

    Two war medals from Spink & Son, Piccadilly.

    L: the Victory Medal, awarded to U.S. forces. Nike Athena on one side and "The Great War for Civilisation 1914–1919" on the other. 

 

    R: British War Medal, Silver or bronze medal awarded for 28 days of service between 1914 and 1920; features St. George on horseback trampling the Central Powers,  and on the other side King George V in profile.

 

The discharge document of my grandfather, Capt. Benjamin L. Agler, 4th Division ~

 

 

 

An Esoteric Collection of Great War Memorabilia: Pt. I—Souvenirs

Over the decades one tends to collect, or be given (even inherit), a variety of curiosities from the Great War. This Roads post visits some oddments I've come to enjoy, especially as I revisit them for this post. I look forward to your comments and hope you have your own oddments to share. 

                                                                                                        Asst. Editor Kimball Worcester 

 

 

 

 

 Liberty & Civilisation—Opposed to—Aggression & Barbarism

                                                                  In Freedom's Cause

 

                                                                         And Italy

 

                                Field Marshal The Right Honourable The Earl Kitchener, 

                                     KG, KP, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, PC

 

French Nursing Sister

5 mm high 

 

 

                                  Noteworthy carved commemorative frame with poppies and                                                            two photos of the Leaning Virgin of Albert that I inserted.                                                  Perhaps in France there would have been a photo of a son, brother, or husband                                             in 1914 and one from 1919 when he mercifully returned. 

 

 Two Tommies, Battle-Worn, Who Now Stand-to on My Staircase

8 mm high 

Memories from Ypres

 

Mechanical Pencil, 10.5 mm extended, 6.5 mm retracted 

This brooch comprises the coats of arms of the French Royal family (three fleur-de-lis topped by a crown) and that of Ypres (Cross of Lorraine above the Cross of Bailleul), separated by the British Royal Coat of Arms. (Interesting given that France was no longer a monarchy.) 

                                                                        3.5 x 3.5 mm 

 

Two examples of exquisite needlework on linen bags, made by Frenchwomen to raise money in America for the war effort. See https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object-groups/women-in-wwi/french-stitchery

 

 

Tomorrow, look for Pt. II—In and About the Trenches and Beyond