ISSUE 3 : Mar/Apr - 1977 - Australian Defence Force Journal

42 DEFENCE FORCE JOURNALground. The numbers of foot soldiers weremeasured in millions, while the airmen wereby comparison a mere handful; the battles onthe ground were massive impersonal confrontations,while those in the air were fought byidentifiable individuals; battlefield casualtieswere so enormous that they became anonymouslists of statistics, while air losses were of acontrastingly conceivable order. In a way thewar in the air was a different war, allowingas it did scope for humour, chivalry and humanreactions which had not been crushed b\mechanised, mass human slaughter.One of our gallant officers who was flyingan FE2b flew over on the 1st April, over aGerman aerodrome, and over it he droppeda football. He just dropped it over andhared back to our lines. One can imaginethe terrible sight of this slow moving "bomb"coming down from about 5,000 feet, landingon the aerodrome, all the Boche runningfor cover, waiting for the explosion and thencomes the big bounce. When they pickedthe ball up on the football was printed Aprilthe 1st.There was a sort of code, I think, merelybetween flying people — whether they wereGerman or British. There was a great comradeship,if you can call it, between them.I had a flight commander who was namedMaxwell Pike and he went up and was shotdown in flames and that was the end ofMaxwell Pike. But two days afterwards aGerman aeroplane came over, dropped amessage bag and told us that "The gallantCaptain Pike was shot down in mortalcombat and has been buried behind ourlines with full military honours". That isthe sort of esprit d'aviator I suppose you'dsay. That spirit it held on, I think, to thevery end. 13Flying developed enormously in the fourhectic years of activity stimulated by WorldWar I. At the end of this period it was inmany ways no longer recognisable as the prewarhaven of a small group of eccentric sportsmen.Only four years had elapsed since theRoyal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval AirService could together muster only a little overa hundred operational machines at the outbreakof war. Yet by 1918 the two air serviceshad grown sufficiently to be constituted, asthe Royal Air Force, a new and independentservice with a strength of 22,647 aircraft and293,532 officers and men. But while a greatdeal had changed in terms of material andmanpower the essential character of flyingremained little altered. Thus it was that newgenerations of aviators remained in spirit motivatedby much the same impulse which was,for one pre-war pilot, crystallised in SamuelCody's injunction—Warp the wings. Warp the wings. Imitatethe birds, my boy, imitate the birds. 14Most of the characteristics and traditionsof the aviator which have been described inthis article are well known, even to those withno historical interest in flying. They are simphgeneral knowledge. But it is not so much inthe technical advances of aviation, its organisation,scale and rate of development that wecan find the origins of this image of flying. Itcan be traced more through the personalreactions of individuals to the kind of events,which have been described above, from whichthe traditions have grown. It is due to thefact that their reactions were so deeply andstrongly personal that they have been sustainedin what I describe as the folklore of aviation, yThe author wishes to thank the contributorsto the Imperial War Museum's aviation recordingproject, listed below, who have been quotedin this article.NOTES1C. G. E. Tye Esq. (RNAS) 1WM Reference00031004 02.» E. J. Furlong Esq. (RFC) IWM Reference000015,08,02.• Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard. KCB. CBE.MA (RNAS) IWM Reference 000303 16 14.' F. W. Verry (RNAS) IWM Reference 00031107 01.« C. J. Chabot Esq. (RFC) IWM Reference 00000814,01.'• C. R. King Esq. (RFC) IWM Reference 00002711 02.' G. Donald Esq. (RNAS) IWM Reference 00001811 04.» Wing Commander F. J. Powell. OBE. MC (RFC)IWM Reference 000086 08 04.• A. B. Yuille Esq.. DFC (RFC) IWM Reference000320 04 03.w F. D. H. Bremner (RNAS) IWM 000004 09 04and 06.« Sir Herbert Thompson. CIE (RNAS) IWM Reference000308 06/01.w J. C. F. Hopkins (RFC) IWM Reference 00002106 06.u Wing Commander F. J. Powell. OBE. MC (RFC)IWM Reference 000086 08 00.M G. Donald Esq. (RNAS) IWM Reference 000018iroi.