WAR

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since the Germans held the upper hand, the French were obliged to
send workmachines
out with an escort. A half-dozen or a dozen aeroplanes would sometimes
escort one photography or observation machine. The Germans would send
up an entire Eindecker section of six machines to attack in unison, trying to
down one two-seater in the middle of a gaggle of escorts. In this way the earliest
"dogfights" came about. Since the aeroplanes still moved at a fairly slow turn
of speed, a shade under 100 miles an hour, these fights occupied a relatively
small piece of sky. In these crowded engagements the machines got in each other's
way
sous-Lieutenant Guignand was astounded to see one Eindecker shoot another
down in flames when the second blundered into the line of fire of the first.
Navarre was transferred to N 67 at Verdun at the beginning of the Battle.
On February 26, he took off before dawn to patrol the lines alone. He spotted
three German two-seaters and dived on them. All three broke for home. As he
closed on the nearest one the gunner stood up in the seat and raised his hands.
Navarre escorted the captive machine to Fort Rozieres and flew home to breakfast.
The telephone wire to the Front was temporarily out,
so no immediate confirmation
was forthcoming nor were any reports of spottings. The latter proved unnecessary
when nine enemy aeroplanes appeared over the field.
Navarre had had
his Nieuport gassed up, and he promptly took off again. He approached the formation
near Ancemont and the nearest machine accepted combat, turning hard
to give the observer a clear shot. Navarre rolled away, came in again and fired
a short burst. The two-seater turned on its back and started down, going steeper,
tumbling wildly,
crashing in a wood.
This was the first French double of the war, and it was the first time that the
name of a chasseur—fighter pilot—was cited in an army communique.
The same day the squadron commander was transferred out of the unit
Navarre claimed a triple.
The new squadron commander, the Marquis de Saint-Sauveur, was an accomplished
sportsman and a competent officer. He appreciated Navarre's qualities
(as well as his spectacular inability to conform to discipline) and indulged him
much as had Capitaine de Bernis—even to the extent of allowing him to paint
his
Nieuport red.
The Nieuport Bebe (Baby) that Navarre was flying at Verdun was the best
single-seater of its time. It had been introduced in ones and twos to squadrons
along the Front and was now being exploited in homogeneous squadrons by
Commandant de Rose. It was far superior in speed, climb, ceiling, strength and
manoeuvrability to the Fokker Eindecker. The Bebe had a distinctive wing plan:
the top wing was swept-back and the bottom wing was so narrow it was called
a half-wing. From this layout derived both strong points of performance and
structural weakness. The sweepback of the top wing and the narrowness of the
bottom wing were chiefly responsible for the manoeuvrability of the Bebe; the
weakness arose from the fact that the narrow bottom wing was built around a
single spar and was insufficiently rigid, so that it sometimes flexed and collapsed
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