THE FIRST AIR WAR 1914-1918 by Lee Kennett

Author:Lee Kennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 1991-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

A New Breed of Heroes

“S outh of Dixude, aviator Lieutenant Garros brought down an Aviatik with shots from a machine gun.” This brief notice in the French Army’s morning communiqué for April 2, 1915, picked up and amplified by the Paris press, had considerable repercussions on French aeronautical circles and among the public as well. Roland Garros was a well-known aviator before the war and the first to fly across the Mediterranean in 1913. Now, having mounted a machine gun on his Morane monoplane, Garros was one of the pioneers in the art of aerial combat. His name came to public attention again and again as he shot down a second and a third German plane, and then was himself forced down and taken prisoner—all in the month of April, 1915.

Roland Garros was one of an initial group of aerial “heroes” produced in the first months of the war. Most of them, like Garros, had names already familiar to the public because of their prewar exploits. There was Garros’ fellow-countryman Adolphe Pégoud, who had been the first man to loop the loop and the first to parachute from an airplane, and who became newsworthy again when he too began destroying German planes in the air. Then, late in August, 1914, newspapers all over Europe noted the death of the well-known Russian aviator P. N. Nesterov. On August 26, near the Polish town of Lvov, Nesterov brought about his own death and that of an Austrian pilot named Baron Rosenthal when he deliberately rammed the Austrian’s plane. Shortly thereafter the German public learned that Lieutenant von Hiddessen, a well-known Friedensflieger and the first German pilot to transport air mail, had again distinguished himself with a daring flight across Paris.

Despite these highly publicized accomplishments, there was much complaint in the early months of the war over the dearth of information on aerial activity, and particularly on the achievements of individual aviators. Much of the complaining was from the editors of aeronautical journals, but the press generally sought more news as well, claiming the public wanted it. In September the editor of The Aeroplane protested: “We have been told absolutely nothing about the doings of the Royal Flying Corps, or of the Royal Naval Air Service” In France, too, there were complaints, for the journal Flight noted in November: “A considerable amount of criticism having been levelled at the lack of news from the aviation branch of the French Army, an official note was issued in Paris on November 8th.” And in Russia an aviation enthusiast named P. Kritskii lamented the fact that “little is said and little is heard about military aviators.” To remedy this lack of information, Kritskii published brief sketches of Nesterov and other Russian airmen of note.

What angered the partisans of aeronautics, and eventually the press and public as well, was the policy followed by most belligerents of not identifying individual combatants by anything more than their last initial—consequently, combat accounts were filled with references to “Lieutenant M.” and “Corporal E.

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