Fighter Pilot's Handbook--Magic, Death and Glory in the Golden Age of Flight by Gordon Thorburn

Author:Gordon Thorburn [Gordon Thorburn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784189129
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

ROSENCRANTZ AND FAHLBUSCH ARE DEAD

By the late summer of 1916, the Fokker Scourge was deemed to be over although Germans aces such as Wintgens and Boelcke were still flying the Eindecker Mark 3. Partly responsible for that change in the balance of air power had been the Sopwith Strutter, the first Entente aircraft with guns firing forward through the prop, although not entirely reliably. The observer had a machine gun too; with a top speed of 100mph, it was a formidable machine.

Similarly armed, slightly faster but looking completely different was the LFG Roland C2, known as the whale (Walfisch). It had a tubby fuselage of novel plywood construction that filled all the space between the two wings, so the pilot and observer sat on top, above it all. This was excellent for sighting bandits twelve o’clock high, but not so good for spotting Albert Ball (q.v.) coming at you from below. Although he did say it was the best German aircraft at the time.

The first pilot to reach ace status in a whale was Leutnant Wilhelm Fahlbusch who, in one photograph, looks a little like Ardal O’Hanlon in Father Ted. He was twenty-four years old while totting up his five victories, all of which are also credited to his observer, Leutnant Hans Rosencrantz, probably because the early examples of the whale did not have the forward-firing gun fitted and so Hans did all the shooting.

Hans Rosencrantz (left) and Wilhelm Fahlbusch pose, not with a whale but with an Albatros.

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