Fighter Heroes of WWI. Joshua Levine

Bennett Cup was an international affair. Pilots represented their countries. I saw not only my first flying, but also my first crash.

      It appears that Gustav Hamel, a famous British pilot, was flying practice laps in a Blériot, but found that his time was slightly slower than that of a rival Nieuport machine. Blériot himself was present, and he decided to cut about a foot off of each wing. This went well. Hamel was faster in his next practice circuit. But in the actual race, he got to the first pylon, overbanked and flew straight into the ground, with the engine running full on. He was thrown twenty-five or thirty yards, rolling over and over. The machine was a total wreck, but Hamel was only badly bruised, and didn’t even break a bone.

      It was as big a crash as one could ever wish to see – yet he got up almost unhurt. That made me think that aviation was not quite as dangerous as I had believed. However, everyone thought I was quite mad to want to learn to fly. In fact, so much so, that I hardly told anyone of my interest – not even my own parents. That’s why I started off by getting myself apprenticed to the Chanter School of Flying at Hendon, just as a start. They had an advertisement in one of the aviation journals.

      The Chanter School was rather a ropey concern. It had two Blériots and a machine which they were building themselves. They ceased to exist in October or November 1911, by which time I’d learnt to sweep the floor and push the machines about. I then got in touch with the Blériot Aviation Company, also at Hendon, and asked if I could join them as an apprentice, with a view to becoming a flying pupil at a later date.

      I joined Blériot in November 1911, and I was just a general dogsbody at first, but I was allowed to fly. Learning was entirely a solo effort. There were no dual-control machines, nor were there any machines that could take up a passenger. At first, the aircraft was raised onto a pedestal, showing what it was like, and the view one would get as a pilot in the flying position. Then one was put into the machine, told to keep straight ahead, towards a tree or something like that on the other side of the aerodrome. One learnt to roll across the ground. From thence, one started by doing short hops, followed by longer hops, until one could fly straight across the other side of the aerodrome. After that, one was able to do half circuits, one to the left and then to the right, and so forth, until one was able to fly in a complete circuit around the aerodrome.

      The first time I flew was quite by accident. I was in a machine which was not supposed to fly. It had been detuned. I was rolling across the ground, doing a straight, as I thought, when suddenly I found the ground receding under me. Of course, this was so unexpected that I pushed my stick down and landed with a bit of a crash and found myself with the undercarriage spread all around me and the prop broken. My instructor – Monsieur Salmet – came rushing up to me, ‘Why you fly? Why you fly?’ I had no answer. I didn’t know.

      What had happened was that a gust of wind had caught my plane and it had taken off without my expecting it to. In those days, no one ever flew unless it was dead calm. My punishment was that I was not allowed to practise on an aircraft until I had participated in the repair of the machine, which took some months. That put me back quite a lot, but I still qualified for my pilot’s certificate when I turned eighteen. After that, I was made a sort of assistant instructor, but I was also expected to do absolutely everything connected with the running, repairing and mending of the aircraft, tuning up of the engines. I did everything concerned with the maintenance of the machines.

      In general, the majority of pupils were army officers, who were learning to fly with a view to joining the Royal Flying Corps, which had started in 1912. There were a few others – some rich people who went on to buy their own aircraft. And most weekends, at Hendon, there were competitions and flying displays. It was quite a fashionable affair, almost like Ascot, with people flocking down to see the flying.

      I was assistant instructor until April 1914, but then Blériot moved to Brooklands, and I became an instructor at the Hall School of Flying at Hendon, which consisted of two Blériots, a Deperdussin, a Caudron and an Avro. I received a pound a week, and we taught a few pupils.

      I was on holiday in Scotland when the war broke out. It didn’t upset my holiday. I was thinking this war would be of the nature of the Boer War. But when I got back to Hendon, I found that the cry had gone out for pilots for the Flying Corps, and that a few of the instructors had actually become sergeant pilots. So I promptly put my name down. I signed the papers and waited. I continued instructing with the Hall School – but nothing happened. A lot of my friends were joining up, anxious to get into the war as quickly as possible, as everyone thought the war would be finished by Christmas. I found they were joining the London Scottish, so I spent all day queuing and found myself a perfectly good private in the London Scottish territorial battalion.

      By April 1915, I was looking up with great envy from the trenches at the aircraft flying above, so I put in another application to join the Royal Flying Corps. I said that I’d already applied, but had had no reply. My colonel was not very keen because he was losing a lot of his personnel. So he instructed that he would pass on any application if the applicant could get somebody to apply for him from whatever regiment he wished to join. In my case, I knew nobody in the Royal Flying Corps.

      Just a week before the Battle of Loos – we were resting behind the trenches – I went up to Auchel where I was watching the aircraft with envy. As I stood, watching the machines landing, a general emerged from the office. As he stepped into his car, acting on the spur of the moment, I said, ‘Please sir, may I speak?’ He looked round, astonished, and didn’t say anything. I pulled out my application papers and told him my story, the fact that I was a qualified pilot, that I wanted to join the Royal Flying Corps but had some difficulty getting anyone to apply for me, that I had replied and had heard nothing more about it. In a very deep voice, he told another officer, also a brass hat, ‘Make a note of that; make a note of that’ … and so on. He said, ‘I’ll see what we can do.’ In the meantime, he called to an airman and said ‘Is there a transport going back towards the trenches, to Béthune? If so, make sure this soldier gets a lift back.’ With that I saluted smartly and off he went. In the tender which took me back to Béthune, I asked the driver, ‘Who was I speaking to?’ ‘Blimey,’ he said, ‘You’ve got a nerve! That was General Trenchard. He’s in charge of the Royal Flying Corps!’

      After that, I went through the Battle of Loos, twice over the top. We had a pretty bad time. Each time, I was lucky to get away with it. At one point, there was only one other fellow left in my section. On 9 October, as I was coming out of the trenches, I was greeted by a telegram which said, ‘Report at once to the War Office.’ That night, not having slept for days, dirty and filthy, I was given a first-class warrant and I found myself back in London on a Sunday morning. I wasn’t feeling too good, and I was sent to a specialist, who pronounced that I needed three weeks’ rest. After that, I was in the Royal Flying Corps.

      Cecil King was a working-class boy who joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1913. He was to become a rigger and, ultimately, a flight sergeant:

      Originally, I was an apprentice to a wheelwright and coach builder in the country, but after I’d come through my apprenticeship, I came to London. I did roughly a year’s work in a London workshop, which was partially underground, and very depressing, and I wanted to get into a more open-air life. I cast about to see what I would do and one day, when I was walking in Kingston, I met two soldiers. They had an unusual badge, with the letters RFC, on their shoulders. I got into a conversation with them and they told me they were members of a new unit called the Royal Flying Corps, which had just started – and why didn’t I join?

      I’d never heard of the Royal Flying Corps, and I didn’t know there was a military regiment concerned with flying. Actually, I wasn’t bothered about that – I just knew it would be out in the open air and on big open fields. That’s what I wanted. I was interested in flying, though. In 1911, I’d seen Gustav Hamel flying at Hendon. I remember the announcer said, ‘This is Gustav Hamel on an aeroplane with a Gnome engine.’ The crowd thought he’d said, ‘No engine’ and there was quite a stir.

      But after I’d met these two members of the Royal Flying Corps, I went to a recruiting sergeant and asked him about it, and he said, ‘Yes, I think something like that has started, and if you’d like to join, I’ll find out for you.’ I decided