122 AWARDED FOR VALOUR
reconnaissance so denigrated by Wells. The ability to range far over enemy
lines, photograph trench systems, spot troop concentrations and supply
buildups, and later accurately spot for the artillery, proved invaluable during
the course of the war, and observer aircraft consistently outnumbered all
other types for the duration of the conflict. It was not, however, duty as
glamorous as the fighter pilot’s.^53
Wells’s statement captures another aspect of the popular conception of
the heroic flier. It was appropriate for Wells to mention a knighthood for
the successful air warrior, for in the eyes of many the aviator was a modern
incarnation of the age of chivalry or the dashing cavalryman of the Victorian
era.^54 The mechanics of flight dictated that the fighter pilot, the lone warrior,
was to be the hero of the skies. The pilot had to be an individual, fighting an
individual duel with another individual. Here was the opportunity for both
style and sportsmanship, far above the anonymous squalor of the trench
troglodytes.^55 As Billy Bishop observed:
It was the mud, I think, that made me take to flying. I had fully expected
that going into battle would mean for me the saddle of a galloping
charger, instead of the snug little cock-pit of a modern aeroplane. The
mud, on a certain day in July 1915, changed my whole career in the
war.^56
The Crosses conferred on airmen reflect this attitude. Despite the over-
whelming usefulness of observation missions, only one VC went solely for
reconnaissance The rest went to fighter pilots for showing good form. Some
were direct holdovers from the Victorian era:
On 20 March 1917 in Egypt, during an aerial bomb attack, a pilot was
forced to land behind enemy lines, with hostile cavalry approaching.
Lieutenant [Frank Hubert] McNamara, seeing the situation, came down
through heavy fire to the rescue, despite the fact that he himself was
wounded. He landed about 200 yards from the damaged plane, and the
pilot climbed into his machine, but owing to his injury he did not keep
it straight and it turned over. The two officers extricated themselves, set
fire to the machine and made their way back to the damaged one, which
they succeeded in starting. Finally, Lieutenant McNamara, although weak
from loss of blood, flew the machine back to the aerodrome 70 miles
away.^57
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