The Unsubstantial Air by Samuel Hynes

Author:Samuel Hynes
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374712259
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

In spite of all that wool and fur, they froze. I don’t simply mean they were chilly; they froze. In a March letter Waldo Heinrichs writes an apologetic letter to his mother, explaining why he isn’t keeping up with his piano playing: “I have been unable to continue my practicing because I froze the fingers on my left hand. I was up about 20,000 feet, and it was cold. I also froze my cheeks and nose, and I’m a great looking sight now. My face is peeling and I look as though I’ve been in an awful fight.”

Dick Blodgett, who brought his violin to the front with him, complains (also in March, also to his mother) that he can’t play it because he’s frozen the fingertips of his right hand. A month later, Kenneth MacLeish, flying with the Royal Navy at Dunkerque, goes to twenty thousand feet and freezes three fingers and the thumb of his right hand. “These high patrols are torture,” he tells his aunt Mary, “torture of the worst kind.”

And yet, for all the discomfort, what they feel most is the exhilaration of being there. MacLeish, having told Aunt Mary how cold he is, goes on: “Oh, it’s a wonderful, wonderful game, in spite of all the uncomfortable high patrols. A man can use his skill and his brain, and once in a while his nerve, if he has any. It’s glorious. I wouldn’t trade my experience for any other in the world.”

* * *

In Fred Ordway’s list of the pursuit pilot’s work, fighting is only one job among many, but it’s there; they did fight, plane against plane. Sometimes a fight occurred on a protection patrol; you’re flying cover for an observation plane when Fokkers dive down on the slower, clumsier two-seater, and you dive, too, to protect it, or you’re on a combat offensive patrol, sent out over the lines to attack any German plane you can find, and one turns up. Or you’re sent up in a hasty takeoff from your airfield to intercept Germans who have appeared where they shouldn’t be—right over your head.

One of the most told stories of the American air war concerns events in the sky above Toul on April 14, 1918—the first day on which an American squadron (it was the Ninety-Fourth) began regular patrols over the front. For the basic facts of the action, the squadron’s daily operations report, written the same day, is the place to go:

Two planes sent out on alert at 8:44, brought down two German Albatrosses D.A.5, one about 100 meters away from the Gengoult flying field by Lieutenant A. F. Winslow, the other was brought down in flames about 200 meters from the same field by Lieutenant Douglas Campbell at 8:50. The German pilots were made prisoners. One of them being wounded, and the other one uninjured.

These took place at 500 meters altitude.

All the details of the action are there—the time, the place, the altitudes, the pilots, the planes, the prisoners. But it

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.