Night Raiders of the Air (Vintage Aviation Series) by A.R. Kingsford

Author:A.R. Kingsford [Kingsford, A.R.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: World War I, aviation
ISBN: 9781612001487
Publisher: Casemate / Greenhill
Published: 2013-12-19T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VII

REPRISALS

FOR some time now the weather was good, and raids were numerous. Often we would make two journeys a night into Hunland, perhaps crawling home just at dawn, pretty fatigued. We felt the cold terribly, especially on the long shows. 1917-18 was a severe winter in the Vosges.

Metz was often raided, a short show, only twenty-five miles over the lines, but a hot shop nevertheless. There were plenty of aircraft batteries, machine guns, balloon barrage. The last-named were rotten things, forming a circle round the town with balloons and suspending nets between them. You never knew what height you were safe to fly at. There were flaming onions too, coming up at us by the dozen, and consisting of a sort of fire-ball, specially designed to ignite anything they came in contact with, particularly benzine and aeroplanes. They were slow travelling, however, and we usually managed to dodge them.

Metz was a very important enemy position, the whole of the Verdun front being fed by the railways passing through this junction. Many a time we disorganised things and did tremendous damage by consistently bombing this stronghold. The enemy cursed us, not only for the damage and disorganisation, but for the moral effect that was telling on their troops.

Diedenhofen was a favourite target of ours and was situated some twenty-five miles further on from Metz. Like the latter, it was a hard show, plenty of defence and containing another important railway junction. There were also important steel works, and we let go numbers of bombs on them. Our planes only averaged sixty miles an hour and it often meant a very uncomfortable two hour trip to Diedenhofen.

Treves (Trier) was our longest show, forty odd miles beyond Diedenhofen, and roughly ninety miles over the lines. We could only carry a light load of bombs for this trip, owing to the quantity of benzine necessary. The journey took roughly four and a half to five hours, and extra tanks had to be added. Even then, we could only just get back with sufficient, provided there were no contrary head winds. Treves had large army barracks, which was our objective, and we carried out more than one raid on these. Considering the old type of machine and the distance covered, it was a great demonstration of what could be done.

Conflans, Courcelles, Hagending, Mazieres, all were raided in turn, in addition to the electric power stations at Kreuzwald, which supplied the famous forts at Metz with electricity, light and power. This was a particularly hard place to find, being right among the forests of Alsace Lorraine and surrounded by hilly country. Even in moonlight, when raids here had to be carried out, it could easily be missed.

We had casualties of course; Taylor, Le Feurve, Reid, Fielding-Clarke, Jackson, went missing. Albu, Lindsay, Parnell and Tatham crashed. Poor old Tat was pretty badly knocked out, chest crushed. Albu got nervy and didn’t fly again.

On the night of February 26-27, we raided Fres-caty aerodrome, just south of Metz. We left the ground at six twenty p.

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