THE WAR IN THE AIR

THE FOKKER SCOURGE:  AUGUST 1915 – APRIL 1916

TACTICAL SUPPORT

Acknowledgements

Fokker D1: facebook.com Garros: sciencephoto.com Red Baron: youtube.com Nieuport 11: oldrhinebeck.org Airco DH2: markkarvon.com Gotha: steamcommunity.com

     At the beginning of the war the aircraft then in operation, as we have seen, were almost totally confined to the roles of reconnaissance and surveillance. Keeping for the most part above enemy fire, the task of the aircrew was to report back to commanders in the field information concerning the layout of the enemy’s defences and the position and strength of their forces – highly valuable information, for example, on the eve of an attack. Early on, therefore, combat in the air was infrequent and, when it did occur, it was confined to the rifle and the handgun, and seldom led to the downing of an aircraft. But this was destined to change dramatically with the growing number of aircraft filling the skies, and the increasing importance of this gathering of information. It was quickly becoming realised that command of the skies was a vital need, and a specialised aircraft was required – a “fighter” – to achieve this task. And this need became even more pressing, as we shall see, with the increasing use of aircraft in the tactical role – i.e. taking an active part in the battle at ground level. By June 1915, for example, the British Royal Flying Corps, in its operational orders, was emphasising the need “to contest airspace”.

    In fact, the first country to attempt and – for a time – virtually achieve the conquest of airspace, was Germany. In this, the Germans had a certain amount of good fortune, but they certainly made good use of it. InxApril 1915 the French aviation pioneer and fighter pilot, Roland Garros, was forced to land in German-held territory east of Ypres. He had been working on a synchronizing device to improve the efficiency of his machine gun, and his refinement – a very significant one – was seized on by his captors. Since its installation in an aircraft, the machine gun had been severely handicapped by the fact that it was often liable to hit the plane’s propeller, with inevitable consequences. By the end of 1914, with the assistance of his mechanic, Jules Hue, he had developed a mechanism which enabled the gun to fire through the propeller arc without hitting the blades. For the past six months, the aeronautical company Fokker had been working along similar lines. Without delay they produced a highly manouvrable aircraft, fitted with an improved version of Garros’s “interrupter gear”: The Fokker D1. For a time, the Allies had no equivalent, and they paid the price in planes and men.

    Incidentally, after three years of captivity, Garros managed to escape and return to France. There he rejoined the French army, but on the 5th October 1918, he was shot down and killed near Vouziers in Ardennes, a month before the end of the war, and one day short of his 30th birthday. The Stade Roland Garros tennis centre (constructed in 1920 and home to the “French Open”), is named after him.

    The result of Fokker’s initiative was the so-called “Fokker Scourge”, a period close to nine months (August 1915 to April 1916), during which a series of Fokker aircraft virtually dominated the skies over the Western Front. In the dogfights that ensued during this period, the British alone lost 120 aircraft, and were forced to reduce their number of reconnaissance sorties. It was not until mid-1916 that Allied technology began to catch up. `Inxthe meantime, the members of Germany’s fighter wing, the so-called “Flying Circus” – led by the glamorous “ace” of all the pilots, Manfred von Richthofen – became household names, famed for their skill and their daring. Richthofen himself, named the Red Baron because of the colour of his plane, shot down no less than 80 Allied aircraft during his career before he himself was killed in action in 1918. And, of course, a number of “aces” (those pilots shooting down five or more enemy aircraft), also emerged on the Allied side.

    Asxfar as the Allies were concerned, the turning point came with the introduction of the French Nieuport 11 (illustrated here). This aircraft – dubbed “bébé” because of its small size – is credited for ending the German air supremacy at this period of the war, mainly by the use of combat air patrols. And, in addition, during the long Battle of Verdun, beginning in February 1916, it not only proved more than a match for the German Fokker, but, by gaining control of the skies, it also made possible the large-scale use of air power against ground targets in the land battle itself – known as “Tactical Support”.

     Therexhad, of course, been a measure of tactical support from the very beginning of the war. Quite a few aircraft on both sides (and airships in the case of the Germans), had flown over enemy territory and dropped bombs and grenades by hand, but at that stage it was a hazardous operation and of limited value. With the drawing up of static battle lines, however, matters changed. There was now an abundance of targets. The use of offensive airpower to support ground forces was employed as a tactic at the First Battle of Ypres in October 1914, and it was to become a major feature in the battles ahead. It was used to good purpose, for example, at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, an encounter in which the RFC dropped 13,000 bombs within the first four days of the attack! Inxso doing, it was greatly assisted by the performance of the British Airco DH2 (illustrated here), a single seater biplane fighter which destroyed close on fifty enemy aircraft over a period of three months, thereby providing time and air space for the giving of tactical support. For their part, equally anxious to take the fight to the enemy, the Germans developed a series of aircraft – known as “infantry planes” – that could be used at low levels in order to give close support to their ground forces. These early encounters provide but a glimpse of the highly successful air-land co-operation that marked the final battles of 1917 and 1918, including, by then, of course, support for the British new weapon, the tank. By that stage hundreds of aircraft were involved in the closing offensives.

     Given the ever increasing number of aircraft becoming available, and the advances being constantly made in the size of the bomb load and the means of its delivery, tactical support was clearly destined to become a vital and developing component of the battlefield, be it straffing targets of opportunity, such as supply convoys or troop movements, or the direct bombing of specific tactical targets within the enemy lines.

    However, the period of Allied air superiority that put an end to the Fokker Scourge was in itself limited. By September 1916, as we shall see, the German Albatros D.1 fighters again challenged the Allied airforces for a while (notably in “Bloody April” of 1917), and another Fokker Scourge emerged in the summer of 1918. In general, however, during the last two years of the war the Allies gradually overwhelmed the German airforce – the Luftstreitkrafte – in quantity and, to a large extent, quality. However, it was during this same period that the Germans, following their series of Zeppelin raids (begun in January 1915), launched another bombing offensive against the Allied Powers. Conducted this time by dedicated aircraft – notably the Gotha – it was mainly aimed at strategic targets, but it was also intended to cause panic and, hopefully, political unrest amongst the general public. It was to provide a modest preview of both the strategic and indiscriminate bombing campaigns carried out by both sides during the Second World War.

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