38 AH march 2016
“
The day began well.We had scarcely flown
to an altitude of six
thousand feet when
an English squadron of
five machines was seen
coming our way.
to give the hostile machines a
drum from my side gun, on
which they went away. My
engine started spluttering,
and I saw a hole in my petrol
tank. My engine then stopped
and I started gliding down,
thinking I should have to land.
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my left leg, but I managed to
put my left knee over the hole
in the petrol tank. It occurred
to me that by pumping I might
be able to get a little pressure.
When I was only 200 ft up
my engine started. I was then
about 15 miles from my lines.
I kept pumping hard and just
managed to keep enough
engine to keep going, though
I thought I should have to
land three or four times....
[I] eventually landed, crash-
ing the machine in doing so.
I was feeling very weak, as
I had lost a lot of blood, and
was exhausted by having to
pump for so long. During the
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Such feats of courage and
endurance thrilled Britons,
but the military was adamant
that the spotlight should not
be shone on these men. “I feel
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are proud of being anony-
mous like their comrades in
other branches of the British
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Douglas Haig, commander
in chief of British forces, in
September 1916.
The British considered it
counterproductive to sin-
gle out individual pilots for
praise. The prevailing atti-
tude was that a squadron ran
on its esprit de corps, ironic
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found little favor in their own
air force.
In the summer of 1915, the
.ZMVKPXZM[[MVKW]ZIOMLJaWe attacked them by a rush as if we were cavalry and the hostile
squadron lay destroyed on the ground. None of our men was
even wounded. Of our enemies three had plunged to the ground
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of his memoirs, ,MZ:W\M3IUXټQMOMZ, it was written in the late
summer of 1917 as he recovered from wounds sustained in a
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Paris, lavishly described by<PM6M_AWZS<QUM[ in its July 15,
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young captain was greeted with especial outbursts of cheering.
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The third major air power of World War I also had its share of
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They learned about the exploits of Lanoe Hawker—considered
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they were described anonymously, as when the London <QUM[
carried an account of aerial combat on September 2, 1916.
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him and he passed underneath me. I saw one of our machines
engage him, and, while changing drums, I was attacked in front
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on my tail. I was hit in the leg almost immediately, but managedpour le mérite Germany
idolized the “Red Baron,”
Manfred von Richthofen.