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Post by evolution on Jun 18, 2007 10:31:09 GMT -5
on the 23 sept 17 Capt James McCudden and B flight of the elite 56 SQN RFC were patrolling in the SE5s in the early evening over the Ypres battle field. Banks of cloud obstucted any clear view but it was soon apparent the sky was full of aircraft. We went north, climbing to about 6000ft. a heavy layer of grey clouds hung at 9000ft, and although visability was poor for observation, the atmosphere was fairly clear in a horizontal direction. Away to the east one could see little clusters of little black specks, all moving swiftly, first in 1 direction then in another. farther south we could see formations of our own machines, camals pups se5s spads and bristols and lower down in the haze our artillary re8s.
As his flt passed over poelcapple the experanced McCudden spotted a SE5 of 60SQN in distress being pursued by a silver blue german fokker triplane and led his flight to the recue. There intervention allowed the SE5 to escape, and to there surprise the German although out numbered 6-1 turned and attacked them, the first passes made it ovious this was no ordinary adversary.
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Post by evolution on Jun 18, 2007 10:42:33 GMT -5
The Hun triplane was practicly underneath our formation now, and so we dived at a colosal speed, I went tyo the right, Rhys davids left, and we got behind the triplane together. The German pilot saw us and turned in a most disconcertingly quick manner, not a climbing or immelmann turn, but a sort of flat half spin. By now the German triplane was in the middle of our formation and its handling was wonderfull to behold. The pilot seemed to be firing at all of us simutaneously, and althoug I got behind him a second time, I could hardly stay there for a second. His movements were so quick and uncertain that none of us could hold him in sight at all for any desiseve time. McCudden The mystery pilot was Leutmant Werner Voss who, having shot down 49 aircraft was second only to Richthofen. Voss was soon handing out punishment to those who stayed into his sights.
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evolution
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Post by evolution on Jun 18, 2007 10:56:13 GMT -5
I attempted to follow the example ot the others in so much as to zoom away so as to get a better position and await my turn todive in a second time. As had happened in my first dive my pressure hafd gone FUT and in consuqence my zoom was a feeble climb. I take my hat of to that Hun, as he was a most skilful pilot, but he gave me a rough passage. In seeing my feeble attempt he whipped around in an extraordinary way, using no bank at all, but just throwing his tail behind him. He attacked me from the side and I had the oppertunity to see the triplane was was one of the very latest designs. He was at very close quarters and could not miss me. The bullets ripped all around me, I did not stick my machine down in an attempt to run, trusting to my dodging ability, but dived just enough to give me speed toprevent him getting on my tail. The others were above and I knew sooner or later they would drive him away and the longer I stayed the better there chance to nail him. Of coarse I did not think this out it was just there, and at the same time more bullets came ripping in, while I worked away at the office trying to rectify my pressure. I dont know how many times i turned under him, but it seemed an eternity. He finaly got to close to me and I resorted in desparation to the old method of shaking a pursuing machine. On the second revolution of my spin I flattend out, and he was gone. leutenant Verscoyle cronyn 56SQN RFC
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Post by evolution on Jun 18, 2007 11:08:44 GMT -5
As cronyn nursed his crippled machine away, Voss also succeded in forcing another SE5 flowen by Leutenant Muspratt to abandon the fight. A red nosed Albatross joined Voss in the dogfight but like stewards around a prize fight ring other formations of British aircraft held further reinforcements at bay in the crowded sky. Everytime the SE5 pilots thought they had him, voss eluded them. I dropped my nose, got him well in my sight and pressed both triggers. As soon as i fired up came his nose at me, and I heared clack clack clack clack as his bullets passed close to me and through my wings, I distinctly noticed the red yelloow flashes from his paralled spandau guns.(McCudden) After fighting bravely the albatross disappeared, but Voss faught on as the circling swirling planes lost altitude. At that altitude he had a better climb rate, or zoom than we had, and frequently he was the highest of the 7 machines, and could have turned east and got away had he wished to but he was not the type to run and always came attacking down.
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evolution
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Post by evolution on Jun 18, 2007 11:18:09 GMT -5
{Leut G H Bowman) It could not go on, Voss may have been brilliant but B Flt had some of the best scout pilots in the RFC, they could not be held of for ever! I myself had only 1 crack at him, he was about to pass broadside on across my bows and slightly lower, I put my nose down to give him a burst and opened fire, perhaps to soon, to my amazement he kicked on full rudder, without bank, pulled his nose up slightly and gave me a burst while he was skidding sideways and then kicked opposite rudder before the results of this amazing stunt had ant affect on the contolability of his machine. Rhys Davids was then on his tail. Weather or not to have a crack at me this flat turn of Voss enabled rhys Davids to get there I cannt say, but I should think so, as I doubt any SE5 couls get on the tail of the fokker if Voss had not his attention distracted, but Davids was there, with his prop boss almost on Voss's rudder.
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Post by evolution on Jun 18, 2007 11:28:46 GMT -5
Davids made no mistake, Voss who had gratuitously defied death and the odds stacked against him in a manner that epitomized aerial warfare was doomed.
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Post by evolution on Jun 18, 2007 11:32:10 GMT -5
I got east and slightly above him and made for it, getting in a whole lewis drum and the same with vickers into him. He made no attempt to turn, untill I was so close it seemed we would collide. He passed my right wing by inches and went down, I zoomed. I saw him next with apparently his engine off, gliding west. I dived againand got 1 shot out of my vickers
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Post by evolution on Jun 18, 2007 11:35:37 GMT -5
however I reloaded and kept in the dive. I got in another good burst of vickers, and the triplane did a slight right hand turn still going down. I had over shot him, it was about a 1000ft, I never saw him again. McCudden saw the final moments. I noticed the triplanes movements were very eratic and then I saw him go into a steep dive he hit the grond and disappear into thousands of fragments.
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Post by evolution on Jun 18, 2007 11:40:27 GMT -5
however exciting a specticule, in reality this unequal contest was just one of thousands of small battles that made up the the campain to control the skys above the Ypres battlefield. Arthur Rhys Davids died a month later 27 Oct, McCudden died in july 18, a oldman before his time a vetern awarder the VC, DSO+Bar, MC+Bar and MM and just 23 years old.
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Post by evolution on Aug 19, 2008 7:47:58 GMT -5
George Vaughn Seibold was born in Washington DC on the 6/2/1894, son of George Gordon and Grace Darling Seibold, the house they lived still stands in rock creek road. politics were beconing if war had not been declared on the 2/4/17. he had already trained at a officers training camp at plattsburg new york. the first draft for the army was due on the 20/7/17 but he did not wait, he volenteered for the aviation section of the signal corps, and was accepted. he and his girlfreand accelarated there wedding plans as he was expecting to be called up for overseas duty at any moment and he and Kathryn Irene Benson got married on the 21/7/17, he immediatly recieved orders to report for military training in Canada, it was arranged at such short notice that his parents did not attened the wedding, but it could also have been a distinct disarroval of the marrage by his parents that they did not attened(his mother places a big part in his story is why I am inserting these facts). george and kathryn had 1 night together before he was posted to Long Branch in Canada, where many of his countrymen, and a lot of pseudo-canadians who had joined the RFC before war was declared, were based.
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Post by evolution on Aug 19, 2008 8:15:02 GMT -5
Here he under went ground school training in engines, airframes, navigation, Morse code and primary flight-training, progressing from the basics of feeling controls and dual-control landings and take offs. he then began solo flying, learning the handling, spirals, figures of 8,and touching down in 50 foot circle, before moving on to more difficult maneuvers like steep banks, glides, vertical turns, loops, immelmanns, chandelles, formation flying and stalls. he also began to acquire the military skills like bomb drooping, machine gunning and aerial photography. When the US entered the war the aviation section had 13 officers and 1000 enlisted men. After completing his primary training he was posted to Taliaferro field, Fort Worth, Texas, the RFC used this base when there Canadian airfields were buried under snow. George completed his flight training here and became an instructor, flying the Curtis Jenny which was the standard training plane for the US AS through out the war. In Nov 17 he almost died when 1 he was flying fell from 1500 ft during a training flight. On the 1/12 he was promoted 1st Lieutenant, and early 18 he was sent over seas, sailing from Hoboken New Jersey on the 24/1/18. There were no fanfares no bands, family or Friends to wave them off, on a cold misty winter morning, with not even a blast of her foghorns the great grey ship slipped her moorings . Two days later of Halifax, Nova Scotia she joined up with convoy HX_20 and sent sail for Great Britain. Georges unit disembarked At Liverpool and then entrained for Oxford. Form here the American pilots were dispersed to different airfields to learn to fly Avros, Sopwith Pups and Camels, George was to join the 22nd Aero Squadron in flight training on Salisbury Plain.
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Post by evolution on Aug 19, 2008 8:37:18 GMT -5
British flight training had improved a little since the black days of 1914-15, when pilots were sent over seas with 5 hours flying time, a policy that a future air matshall Sholto Douglas described sheer murder. However training remained quite in adequate, desighned by senior officers concerned with producing the numbers needed to replace those pilots being lost every day in france and Belguim. Even in April 1917,Bloody April as it was knowen, in reflection of British aircrew losses, large numbers of raw and barely trained novice pilots were being sent to to almost inevitable death at the front, and fatal crash'es during training were averaging 100 a month! In 1918 despite some improvements in both the quality and the duration of pilot training, it remained very spotty. The huge losses during the great German offensives of spring 1918, 1032 of the 1232 on the strengh of the frontline British squadrons were lost in 4 weeks from the 21st March when the Germans opened there attack, meant that even the most inexpereanced pilots were rushed to the front! Instuction was little more than a set of rules. Even advanced instuction tended to be crude, and even as an instucter George was already a experenced pilot, as 1 english aviator remarked, most new pilots had only 15 hours flying time, and cant even fly let alone fight!!! Regulations laid down stated, 1/ Undergone instruction at a school of military aeronautics, 2/had 20 hours sols in the air, 3/flowen a service aeroplane satisfactorily, 4/carried out cross country flight of at least 60 miles successfuly during which he must have landed at 2 outside landing places under supervision of an RFC officer, 5/climed to 8000ft and remained there for at least 15mins, after which he will land with his engine stopped, the aeroplane first touching the ground within a circular mark of 50ft in diameter, 6/made to landings in the dark assisted by flares.
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Post by evolution on Aug 20, 2008 11:08:10 GMT -5
On the 30/6/18, George Seibold, flew to France, to join a new squadron, 148th Aero ( also known as 148th pursuit SQN), based at Cappelle on the outskirts of Dunkirk, it was exclusively an American sqn, ground as well as air crews! Here george and his fellow pilots were to fly Sopwith F1 Camels, nicknamed for the humped fairing in front of the cockpit, housing the breeches of twin vickers machine guns syncronized to fire through the prop, ammo consisted of 750 rounds .303. like all mechanisms of those days, it was subject to fits of illness, precise adjustment was needed, or the shooting pilot would blow his prop full of holes, or even shoot the bleeding prop right off! "U" camel of "C" flight went the longest with out putting a round through her prop, firing 6700 before duing so. The camel had a top speed of 115 mph in lvl flight and could also carry 4 20lb cooper bombs. There was aluminium cladding on the fuselage around the engine, but to save weight the cockpit was clad in plywood and the rest in canvas!. The engine, prop, fuel tank, guns and ammo and cockpit were inthe 1st 7feet of the 19ft length, that and the torque from its 9 cyl rotary engine, the whole engine spun with the prop around a fixed crank shaft gave the camel its extraordinary manoeuvrability, but also led to its unforging handling characteristics. new pilots to the camel were given instructions on flying and fighting with a camel, here are a few,aleays were a belt or haness, as there is a tendency to leave the seat when diving vertically, do not turn right under 1000 ft untill you know the machine throughly as the nose has a tendancy to go down and lead you into a spin, do not buzz the engine whilst doind s bends near the ground. If you put your engine on whilst doing a right turn you are liable to sideslip and nosedive to the earth, or to stll on a left turn. Some US pilots were not given these extra instructions, dont get into a right hand climbing turn was all they were told. The camel had a number of defects, the engine always ran on full throttle, rrequiring constant blipping with the cut out button, on the control stickto regulate the power. The position of the top wing and the cockpit gave the pilot a bad fighting view, and both pilot and guns suffered from the cold. the camel was also unstable prone to savage vibration, making accurate shooting difficult. It was so tiring to fly, and the cockpit inexcusably drafty and the guns often frooze. The ave interval between engine overhauls was only 20 flying hours, and castor oil rather than the usual engine oil was used in the rotary engines, this had a side effect on the pilots, since castor oil fumes had a similar laxative impact on the pilots digestive system as a sthingyfull taken orally!!! Despite these drawbacks many pilots loved the camel, it could turn with so much speed it could bite its own tail, and aided by the torque pilots would prefere to turn 270 degrees right rather than 90 left, not only did they believe this to be faster, it also confused a chasing enemy aircraft. 1 British pilot declared the camel the greatest aircraft on the front, includind fritz's planes, and they were responsible for shooting down more enemy planes than any other, 1694 more than the closest. George Seibold reported to his new sqn on 4/7/18, a grainy black and white film taken at the time shows his plane D9516 drawn up at the heafd of a line of sqn camels, the pilot glimpsed for a few tantalising seconds strolling around the tail plane and looking into the cockpit his George, he was asdsigned to A flight under the command of Field Kindley fron Pea Ridge, Arkansas.
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Post by evolution on Aug 25, 2008 7:02:27 GMT -5
British regulations stated that no pilot was to cross the lines untill he had been 3 weeks in France, and had showen a proficiency in flying and manoeuvring, and had flowen a certian number of hours patroling the frontline and had fired a certain number of rounds at fixed ground targets. At 4am on the 10/7/18, George and 14 other pilots of there sqn flew there 1st line patrol. there was no enemy activity and the patrol leaders took them up to the line so that they could look inti Hun land. Georges jubilation on his 1st combat patrol might have been tempered by a better knowledge of the odds against his survival. The majority of US pilots began flying flying combat missions only in the summer of 1918, just a handful of months before the war ended, yet of 210 Americans who trained with the RFC/RAF in UK, 51 were killed, 30 badly wounded, 14 POWs, and 20 cracked up, the average life expectancy of a scout (fighter) pilot on the somme was 3 weeks, and even if he survived, 6 months was as much as the average man could stand. A British medical research committee reported in 1918 that war flying exposes the human to a greater strain than it has probablyever been exposed to before, and noted a disturbing number of cases of fainting, falling asleep in the air and hallucinatioms. Some pilots became ill with ulcers, insomnia and mental problems, others responded to the stresses with cynicism or black humour and many showen advanced signs of mental illness, or found solace in heavy drinking, 1 pilot in the 148th remarked that a lot of fellowsin our SQN cound'nt fly unless they were at least half drunk, but what ever there private thoughts most pilots attempted to appear calm and in control among there peers and treated air combat as 1 wonderful game! just like rurrer (rugby), which continued regardless of injuries. This was particularly true of teh British, steeped in in the public school's etho's, for many of whom, it seemed, war was the continuation of sport by other means.(see my earlier bits about the British Infantry kicking footballs towards the German lines as they attacked "still playing the game"there is a article i must remember and a poem about this i have some where i must find it and stick it on ere) In wartime Britain, school boys had it drummed into them that playing for 1s school is much the same thing as fighting for the Empire! The line patrols continued over the next few days, with no attempt at offensive work, but on the 11th George and his mates wxperenced the 1st "archie" AAA. Two days later the sqn recorded its 1st kill, when Georges flt leader shot down a German Albertross D-3 at 12,000 ft between POP and WIPERS (Poperinghe and Ypres). Thi blooding of an all American SQN was duly celebrated in a congratulatory message from British Brigadier-GENERAL Ludlow Hewitt, chief staff officer at the RAF's French HQ(the RFC by now became the RAF!) for marking up the 1st point scored against the enemy by the American Air Service.
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Post by evolution on Aug 25, 2008 7:23:13 GMT -5
For much of the remainder of the month the 148thSQN were night flying, providing fighter protection for British DH-9 and DH 4 aircraft carring out bombing raids on German occupied Belguim. once free of there bombloads the DH 9s were faster than there escorts and streaked for home, leaving the Camels to bring up the rear. They also flew offensive patrols behind enemw lines to protect the British BE2C artillary observation planes, a pretty sorry lot, slow unwieldy and practically helpless, (most of Richthofens victorys were over this aircraft!) Some said that using the BE2C's was a simple and reckless waste of human life!!! On the last day of the month a patrol of the 148th was attacked by enemy Fokkers, but although badly shot up all made it back to there base. On the 3rd Aug the A and B flts returned from there morning patrols claiming 4 victorys between them, but only 2 were confermed and formaly credited to the pilots. Pilots serving in the French sector operated under looser rules and could claim a victory if the enemy was last seen sppining out of control, even if there was no confermation that it had hit the ground, but the British SQNs, including those staffed exclusiverly by Americans, had a stricter criteria. A victory would be confermed ONLY if there WAs confermation that the enemy aircraft had crashed. If the battle reports were inconclusive or un confermed, the claims were always rejected. On the same patrol, George Seibolds aircraft was ether hit or suffered engine failure and crashed, but he escaoed with nothing more that slight injuries. It may have been his 1st experence of being under fire from an enemy aircraft, a terrifying rite of passage for every pilot. If you heared reports you could be sure you were being shot at it sounded like a wood fire crackling, only more so!
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