WAR

The results were uniformly nil, but it was nice to know that one could take a
shot at an enemy aeroplane.
The squadron finally set up a "permanent" station at Bailleul late in the year
and received some new machines—B.E.2c's—in which Hawker perfected his skill
as a pilot. In March the squadron moved back to Poperinghe in accordance
with an ancient army tradition which inflexibly decrees that a unit must move
to some dingy, foul and depressing spot as soon as the spot at which it is stationed
has been made comfortable.
Hawker flew constantly—even after having received a painful wound in the
leg from ground fire. (For a time he had to be lifted into the cockpit.) He was
sent on sick leave during May 1915. When he returned to the squadron he was
delighted to learn that he was to be issued "a beautiful little toy," a Bristol Scout.
The Bristol Baby Biplane was a pre-war sport design of which grand things
had been expected in the racing season of the summer of 1914. The war intervened
and the Bristol Baby went to war as a fast single-seater scout. No squadron
was equipped with more than one or two at a time, but nearly every squadron
in the RFC had one. It was a handy and manoeuvrable aeroplane and fairly
advanced for its time.
Hawker designed a machine gun mounting for his Scout within a few days
of having flown it to the aerodrome. (The squadron had been moved to Abeele.)
He had been flying all manner of army co-operation missions—observation,
photography, artillery spotting—and now he was going to fight. The Scout was
not a bad aeroplane to fight with. Fast, manoeuvrable, with a good rate of climb,
it was a fine machine by the standards of 1915. All it needed was a gun. He
considered the qualities of the aeroplane. It was responsive and light on the
controls. He considered his own qualities. He was a first-rate pilot and a good
shot. Very well, the obvious thing to do was to fix a Lewis gun to the left side
of the aeroplane just ahead of the cockpit pointing down a few degrees and out
to the side to clear the propeller. The Lewis gun was light and would not
seriously affect the machine's performance, and it would be within easy reach of
his left hand (he would be holding the stick with his right) for firing and reloading.
It would be no great trick for a pilot like himself to slip or crab into
position to fire a burst from the diagonally aligned gun.
On July 25, 1915, Hawker was flying a high evening patrol between Passchendaele
and Ypres. At about six o'clock he spotted a German two-seater just
the other side of the German lines at Passchendaele. He dived on the machine
and fired off a drum at it while its pilot turned and dived away. Hawker broke
off and resumed patrolling. Twenty minutes later the show was repeated over
Houthulst Forest, but this time a British antiaircraft section reported that the
German aeroplane was forced down by Hawker's fire. Hawker resumed his patrol
at 11,000 feet and toward seven o'clock spotted a third machine. His combat
report (quoted in a new biography*) reads in part: "The Bristol climbed to
* Hawker, V. C, by Lieut. Col. Tyrrel Mann Hawker, The Mitre Press, London, 1965.
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