A History of the R.A.F.

FROM BIRD CAGE TO BATTLE PLANE--Ralph Michaelis--CrowelI ($2.75).

One fall day in 1911 "the entire military air force of the British Empire" was assembled in southern England, took off in a body for a destination no miles away. In that one brief flight, when two planes crashed, the Empire lost half its air power.

Of the British air force's four planes, one (a Farman biplane) belonged to the officer who flew it. The other three were Government-owned Bristol Box Kites, contraptions of ash, spruce, cotton fabric, weighing half a ton and held together with "a tangle of piano wire." Pilots who wanted to test the rigging were said to place a bird in the pilot's seat. "If the bird managed to get out, they knew that there must be a wire missing."

Such "bird cages" were the cradle of Ralph Michaelis' career as a fighter pilot in World War I. His "continuous story of [the R.A.F.] from its beginnings to the present day" is a fine blend of solid history and excellent narrative.

"At such times as they could be persuaded to leave the ground," says Author Michaelis, Britain's early planes could range for 50 miles at a flat-out speed of 37 m.p.h. The cylinders of "this phenomenon of motor engineering" were attached to the propeller, whirled around with it, spewing a castor-oil lubricant through their aching joints. Rotary engines of this type were used on the lighter machines right up to the end of World War I and the castor-oil fumes were said to have produced "the most stimulating results to the health of ... pilots."

Spare the Horses. Building the air force was a slow business. Seven years after the Wright brothers' first flight, a daring young British captain shocked the military by turning up for army maneuvers in a biplane. "The cavalry in particular were unfriendly. They said the airplane would frighten their horses." Britain entered World War I with 113 air and sea planes. Over the Turks in North Africa she had "complete air supremacy" --three planes to none. In the rarefied desert air the "bird tages . . . would often have to run for a couple of miles before becoming airborne."

Purpose of World War I's early planes was observation, not attack. In a daring experiment, two planes on the French front were armed with machine guns, given the name "gun machines." One took off after a German plane, assisted by other British bird cages carrying "a stock of hand grenades, the idea being to bring down the enemy by dropping the grenades on him from above." The German set off for home, "vibrating violently in every wire at a sizzling 45 miles an hour." "Weighed down by its armament," the gun machine failed to match the German's altitude of 5,000 feet. The authorities removed the gun.

Soon duels were being fought in the air with rifles and pistols. With some awe, the B.E.F. Commander wrote home: "By actually fighting in the air, they have succeeded in destroying five of the enemy machines." Thereafter, fighter pilots spent most of their spare time cleaning, readying their rifles and newly installed machine guns. They tied steel helmets over vulnerable parts of the aircraft--scanty protection when, in 1915, German Fokkers sprang a surprise with machine guns designed to fire through the propeller blades. As their planes grew sturdier, British pilots not only filled their pockets with grenades but also carried bombs in slings on their bodies. Bomb sights they made with a length of wire stretched between two nails.

How to Fly Backward. By August 1918 a mixed collection of 200 planes was able to launch a mass bombing attack on a German advanced airfield. Unorthodox were the tactics of two pilots who landed on the field, fired machine guns into the officers' mess, took off again safely. Unwritten laws, such as wining & dining captured pilots and never shooting up an enemy plane that had been forced to land, were usually observed by both sides. Flowers floated down after an enemy pilot had been killed. Messages were sometimes dropped by German pilots, requesting clothes for some fallen Britisher who had crashed with nothing but pajamas under his flying suit.

Worst off, perhaps, were the pilots who patrolled Britain's coastal waters and hunted U-boats in ancient de Haviland training planes. They felt safer in the daylight, because when they flew home at dusk they could clearly see their eight-cylinder engine becoming red hot. When flown into a wind of more than 50 m.p.h. velocity, the de Haviland "would float sedately backward, its propeller thrashing the air with undiminished enthusiasm." Conveniently, the de Haviland not only landed as gently as "an old hen settling on her eggs," but also floated "like a balloon" on the surface of the water.

Mr. Roe Keeps Going. Britain emerged from World War I with the world's largest air force--22,171 planes. Within a few weeks of the Armistice, says Author Michaelis, she destroyed "more than 20,000." Between 1919 and 1939, R.A.F. chiefs labored to make the best available force with the minimum material. They based their force on the earliest foundations of British planecraft. The company founded by the first man to fly a plane in England (1908), A. V. Roe, is today the builder of Avro Anson, Manchester and Lancaster bombers. From the Bristol Box Kite descends today's Bristol Blenheims, Beauforts, Beaufighters.

This continuity of development, says Michaelis, was Britain's salvation. Germany, disarmed for ten years after World War I, suffered a vital loss in experience. And when General Goering took over the Luftwaffe in 1933 he kept bomber models of that year in mass production "in order to build up a big air force at once." Armor and armament were sacrificed for the sake of speed.

The test was the Battle of Britain, and Britain's Fighter Command "had been training for this event for years."*Consequently, Author Michaelis modestly denies the contention that if Hitler had attacked directly after Dunkirk "he could have walked [into Britain] and helped himself." His vital air power, thinks Michaelis, would simply have been defeated "two months sooner." The German bombers, "with their oldfashioned, manhandled gun mountings, were insufficiently armed to protect themselves." Their escorting Messerschmitts, designed according to German fighter tradition for "a very fast dive, snap shoot, and away," were not built to "stay and fight a delaying action while the bombers got through." The price paid by the Germans in the decisive 84 days of the Battle of Britain was 2,375 aircraft definitely destroyed, and the loss of 7,000 trained pilots and air crew. Britain's price: 700 aircraft, and 375 fighter pilots killed, 358 wounded.

* Total British fighter strength at that time was estimated at 2,500 planes.

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