The war experiences of 2nd Lt. C. E. Gregory RFC/RAF in 1918
Today was the turn of the turns to be practised, in two different DH.6s:
Date: 3.5.18 Hour: 3.50 Machine type and No.: DH 7670 Passenger: – Time: 15 m Height: 1000 Course: Aerodrome Remarks: Turns etc.
Date: 3.5.18 Hour: 6.25 Machine type and No.: DH 9762 Passenger: – Time: 15 m Height: 1000 Course: [Aerodrome] Remarks: [Turns etc.]
Greg’s time at Yatesbury was coming to an end, and on this windy and probably frustrating day he practised landings and tried to practice aerial firing – but he had trouble with the gun.
Date: 2.5.18 Hour: 8.5 Machine type and No.: RE 5146 Passenger: – Time: 30 m Height: 2000 Course: [Aerodrome] Remarks: Very windy. Practice 1 landing
Date: 2.5.18 Hour: 10.30 Machine type and No.: RE 5146 Passenger: – Time: 25 m Height: 2000 Course: [Aerodrome] Remarks: Practice 1 landing
Date: 2.5.18 Hour: 1.25, 2.10 & 2.25 Machine type and No.: RE 6647 Passenger: – Time: 35 m, 15 m & 10m Height: 1500 Course: Aerial firing Remarks: Gun jambed [sic].
Interesting spelling of “jambed”, which is regarded as incorrect today. It clearly wasn’t some idiosyncrasy of Greg’s, as the Aerial Combat reports of the time used the same spelling, as in this blog entry for 27 March 1918:
Whether or not the spelling was common, the problem certainly was evidently more common than it should have been – both for guns and camera jambing, or, as we would say, jamming.
Although there was no flying for Greg today, it could well have been sometime around now that he got his first glimpse of an enemy aircraft, in form of a Fokker Eindecker E.III.
One of these aircraft was known to be at nearby Upavon for part of the war, and it is quite plausible that trainee pilots from Yatesbury would have been shown what a real German aircraft looked like, if only as part of their necessary instruction on enemy aircraft types.
According to Wikipedia:
Only one original Eindecker remains. On 8 April 1916, a novice German pilot took off from Valenciennes with a new E.III (IdFlieg serial number 210/16) bound for Wasquehal but became lost in haze and landed at a British aerodrome east of St. Omer. He was forced to surrender before he realised his error and could destroy the aircraft. The E.III was test-flown against the Morane-Saulnier N and other Allied types at St. Omer before going to Upavon in Wiltshire for evaluation and finally going on museum display. It now resides at the Science Museum in London. Immelmann’s original E.I, with IdFlieg-issued serial E.13/15, also survived the war and went on display in Dresden, where it was destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II.