The war experiences of 2nd Lt. C. E. Gregory RFC/RAF in 1918
Andrew Sheard will be giving a talk on ‘Greg’s War: an RFC/RAF Pilot’s Life 100 Years Ago’ at The Gaddesden Society on Thursday 26 April 2018 at 8:15pm.
The Village Hall, Little Gaddesden, Hertfordshire HP4 1NX
Everyone welcome. Entrance £1 on the door.
More details on the News page.
After three days of no flying, Greg had three flights in three different RE8s today with Lt Thomas as instructor, and a taste of aerial combat training in a DH.6:
Date: 12.4.18 Hour: 2.0 Instructor: Lt Thomas Machine type and No.: RE4462 Passenger: Self Time: 15 min Height: 1000 Course: Aerodrome Remarks: Dual. 1 landing.
Date: 12.4.18 Hour: 2.25 Instructor: – Machine type and No.: RE6632 Passenger: – Time: 40 min Height: 2000 Course: [Aerodrome] Remarks: Practice turns. 2 landings.
Date: 12.4.18 Hour: 3.35 Instructor: – Machine type and No.: DH7672 Passenger: – Time: 1 hr 30 min Height: 2000 Course: [Aerodrome] Remarks: Fighting (Offence solo)
Date: 12.4.18 Hour: 6.30 Instructor: – Machine type and No.: RE4968 Passenger: – Time: 35 min Height: 1000 Course: [Aerodrome] Remarks: Landings (five).
The outlook is grim. Operation Georgette progresses apace, as the header image shows, and the front line reached the middle of Merville by nightfall as German forces advance west.
In fact, the outlook is so grim, that on this day General Haig issued his famous ‘backs to the wall’ order:
SPECIAL ORDER OF THE DAY
By FIELD-MARSHAL SIR DOUGLAS HAIG
K.T., G.C.B., G.C.V.O., K.C.I.E.
Commander-in-Chief, British Armies in FranceTo ALL RANKS OF THE BRITISH ARMY IN FRANCE AND FLANDERS.
Three weeks ago to-day the enemy began his terrific attacks against us on a fifty-mile front. His objects are to separate us from the French, to take the Channel Ports and destroy the British Army.
In spite of throwing already 106 Divisions into the battle and enduring the most reckless sacrifice of human life, he has as yet made little progress towards his goals.
We owe this to the determined fighting and self-sacrifice of our troops. Words fail me to express the admiration which I feel for the splendid resistance offered by all ranks of our Army under the most trying circumstances.
Many amongst us now are tired. To those I would say that Victory will belong to the side which holds out the longest. The French Army is moving rapidly and in great force to our support.
There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man : there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end. The safety of our homes and the Freedom of mankind alike depend upon the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment.
(Signed) D. Haig. F.M.
Commander-in-Chief,
British Armies in FranceGeneral Headquarters
Thursday, April 11th, 1918
More background and detail in The Spring Offensives by Michael Seymour.
An RE8 of 42 Squadron RAF, Greg’s future squadron, saw aerial combat around Béthune:
Time: 2.42 p.m. Locality: BETHUNE
Pilot: 2/Lieut B. Martin; Observer: 2/Lieut J. R. Bono
Five hostile scouts. All were of same type, single seaters, believed to be Albatross Scouts, biplanes and no extensions, with Spad tails, marked black and white
Upon getting above clouds, Observer drew Pilot’s attention to 5 planes coming from North East. Upon reaching 3000 feet the E.A. formation was seen to swerve round and try to drive us over the line. Pilot turned slightly to West and by this time two of the leading E.A. dived on us, one diving directly on our nose which was engaged by the Pilot’s gun, nose to nose, and the other on the right wing was engaged by the Observer’s gun. The machine engaged by Pilot gave way and went under the machine and was not seen again and is believed to have been hit. Meanwhile the E.A. attacking on the right and engaged by Observer was seen to glide down and disappear in cloud, the Observer having fired one magazine into it. One of the other hostile planes was seen to fly towards and parallel to ours and Observer emptied another drum into it. Pilot was then entering clouds and E.A. went away. Ten minutes later 4 machines were seen approaching from enemy line from further North than place where last 5 E.A. were seen. They approached and Pilot disappeared under the clouds.
Header Image: Adapted from Map 7 of Haig’s Despatches ‘The German Offensive on the Lys, April 1918’. Credit: Imperial War Museum and Great War Digital
Operation Georgette – the Battle of the Lys – began at dawn, following a long artillery bombardment.
Michael Seymour writes:
On 9 April, the Germans opened their second phase of the offensive, code-named ‘Georgette’. From the vicinity of Passchendaele (with its higher ground) in the north of the sector, to Neuve-Chapelle in the south, the attacks replicated the experiences of ‘Michael’ – almost.
Read more here.
On the same day, 42 Squadron RAF, Greg’s future squadron in France, moves 9 miles (14 km) northwest from Chocques to Trezennes, near Aire-sur-la-Lys:
Although 42 Squadron would have moved from Trezennes by the time Greg joined it in early June, he would get to know Trezennes rather better than he would wish…
Despite the somewhat nondescript weather, another significant day dawned for Greg on Monday 8 April 1918:
Log book entry
Date: 8.4.18 Hour: 5.55 Instructor: Lt Thomas Machine type and No.: RE4462 Passenger: Self Time: 45 min Height: 1000 Course: [Aerodrome] Remarks: Dual. Six landings.
Date: 8.4.18 Hour: 3.35 Instructor: – Machine type and No.: BE 1358 Passenger: – Time: 55 min Height: 3000 Course: Bombs. Successful.
Date: 8.4.18 Hour: 3.00 Instructor: – Machine type and No.: DH6 7226 Passenger: – Time: 15 min Height: 1500 Course: [Aerodrome] Remarks: Turns
Date: 8.4.18 Hour: 6.45 Instructor: – Machine type and No.: RE6632 Passenger: – Time: 35 min Height: 2000 Course: [Aerodrome] Remarks: First solo. Two landings
Greg dropped his first bombs (probably 20lb Coopers) during the flight at 3:35 pm from BE2e 1358, a photograph of which featured in an earlier post on 14 March and is reproduced again here:
Greg’s first solo in an RE8 was significant enough for him to note in his log book. Possibly it was on this occasion that the following somewhat blurry photograph of him standing in front of an RE8 was taken:
Greg’s RAF graduation certificate – a fairly crudely adapted RFC graduation certificate – was issued this day by the Central Flying School in Upavon (some 11 miles/18 km to the SSE of Yatesbury):
In Wiltshire the weather was overcast in the morning and mostly cloudy in the afternoon. Back home in Holyhead, by contrast, Greg’s parents would have enjoyed not only a little over four hours of sunshine, but also, according to the Met Office records, a solar halo:
In earlier times, one can imagine that this would have been seen as an omen.
On a day of intense flying in two aeroplanes, BE2e 8646 and RE8 3551, Greg spends almost 5 hours in the air over the course of five flights and 25 take offs and landings, three of which were in his first cross country flight:
Log book entry
Date: 7.4.18 Hour: 7.50 Instructor: Lt Thomas Machine type and No.: BE2E 8646 Passenger: Self Time: 35 min Height: 1000 Course: [Aerodrome] Remarks: Dual. Six landings.
Date: 7.4.18 Hour: 8.35 Instructor: – Machine type and No.: BE2E 8646 Passenger: – Time: 25 min Height: 1500 Course: [Aerodrome] Remarks: Solo. Two landings.
Date: 7.4.18 Hour: 11.15 Instructor: Lt Thomas Machine type and No.: RE3551 Passenger: Self Time: 1 hr Height: 1000 Course: [Aerodrome] Remarks: 12 take off and landings.
Date: 7.4.18 Hour: 2.35 Instructor: – Machine type and No.: BE2E 8646 Passenger: – Time: 1 hr 50 min Height: 3000 Course: Cross Country Remarks: Landed at Andover & Netheravon
Date: 7.4.18 Hour: 6.45 Instructor: – Machine type and No.: BE2E 8646 Passenger: – Time: 1 hr 5 min Height: 2500 Course: Aerodrome Remarks: Practice turns & landings (2)
The single flight in the RE8 at 11:15 am was real ‘circuits and bumps’ practice: 12 times around in one hour.
The cross country solo flight from 2:35 to 3:35 pm reached 3,000 ft and covered a course of almost 50 miles: 24 miles to Andover, another 10 miles to Netheravon, and then back home to Yatesbury:
First take-off at 7:50 am and last landing at 7:50 pm: a long day.
The first of Ludendorff’s Spring Offensives, Operation Michael, is brought to a halt along a line that ran near Villers-Brettoneux, some 10 miles/16 km east of the important railway junction of Amiens.
Read more on the Spring Offensives here:
Villers-Bretonneux has not seen the last of the fighting. More action was to follow later in the month…
Header image credit: Mjchesnel
Another day of work in both an RE8 (dual control, with Lt Thomas) and a DH.6 (solo). Plenty of landings in the RE8, and a somewhat hard to decipher log book entry for the DH.6:
Log book entry
Date: 5.4.18 Hour: 6.45 Instructor: Lt Thomas Machine type and No.: RE3551 Passenger: Self Time: 45 min Height: 1500 Course: Aerodrome Remarks: Landings (9). Dual.
Date: 5.4.18 Hour: 3.25 Instructor: – Machine type and No.: DH2130 Passenger: – Time: 1 hr 20 min Height: 2000 Course: [Aerodrome] Remarks: Ground stps & Pann: Successful
So, what is “Ground stps & Pann” all about – if that is indeed what it says?
My best guess is that it is referring to artillery cooperation work and, specifically, to the use of ground strips and panels.
Although by 1918 the reconnaissance aircraft of the RFC and RAF were equipped with radios, and although those radios were by then small enough so that they did not take the place of the observer – who by this stage was principally responsible for the defence of the aircraft in flight – there was still a problem. That was that radio communication was one way only: from air to ground. Signals from the aircraft were received by RFC/RAF wireless operators attached to artillery units, which in Greg’s case were typically Royal Garrison Artillery Siege Batteries.
So how did the ground wireless operator communicate back to the aircraft? Various methods were tried during the course of the war. Signalling lamps were not an enduring success, not least because of the need for the pilot to be actually looking in the direction of the lamp at the moment of signalling, which was not always feasible. A better solution proved to be the more primitive sounding strips of cloth laid our on the ground: ground strips. These were typically 12 ft x 1 ft (3.7 m x 0.3 m) strips of white cloth, which could be arranged into pre-designated code symbols or letters. Here are some examples, taken from The Illustrated London News of 23 January 1915 p107, which were stated to be “merely typical signals, and do not represent any actually in use” – just in case it should fall into the wrong hands:
¦ Direction of Target L Observe for line X Observe for range Z Observe for fuze V Observe for effect of fire N Repeat last signal T Land F Fresh target (additional letters are used with this signal)
And if there was snow on the ground, then dark coloured strips were used instead.
So much for “Ground stps”. What about “& Pann”?
I have hazarded above that “Pann” refers to panels. An apparent difficulty with this theory is the rather imperfect abbreviation: too many ‘n’s. But although current dictionaries spell the word with one ‘n’, the Oxford English Dictionary (completed in 1933) lists “pannel” as a variant of “panel”, as does the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary. So that objection does not seem to be fatal. Furthermore, the meaning is a good contextual fit.
The Popham or T-signalling panel was an alternative means of ground-to-air communication introduced towards the end of the war, in use by the infantry in particular. In the official pamphlet SS135 “The Division in Attack” (available for download here) issued by the General Staff in November 1918 it is described as consisting of:
…a black or dark blue cloth to which are sewn strips of white Americal cloth in the shape of the letter “T”.
From this “T” project nine arms of white American cloth. These arms are provided with flaps of black or dark blue cloth, so that any or all of them can be covered or exposed to view from the air at will.
These arms are numbered consecutively from 1 to 9, as shown in the following diagram, and are always known by these numbers:
Then by covering and exposing appropriate arms, a large number of combinations of numerals may be set out, of which the following are three examples:-
… A simple figure code is used with the panel, each group of numerals representing a phase or sentence which the infantry are likely to wish to send to the aeroplane.
It niggles me that this was principally an infantry means of communication, rather than artillery, and Greg’s future role was in artillery cooperation. But maybe his speciality hadn’t yet been decided upon. And the question remains: if “Pann” doesn’t refer to Popham T panels, what does it mean?
A low over the Bay of Biscay meant another day of no flying:
Log book entry
Date: 4.4.18 Remarks: Weather unfavourable.
The culprit was a low over the Bay of Biscay, giving rise to overcast and rainy skies:
Nothing doing today, as it was a holiday:
Log book entry
Date: 3.4.18 Remarks: Holiday. No flying.