Marked for Death (43 page)

7. The king lies dead. Pégoud was shot down in late August 1915 by one of his ex-students, Walter Kandulski. When he learned who his victim was, Kandulski reportedly burst into tears.

8. An RNAS Sopwith 1½-Strutter taking off from a platform built over the forward turret of a battle cruiser, probably in 1917. This was the first British aircraft with a synchronised machine gun, although the aircraft on test here is plainly unarmed.

9. German aces Max Immelmann (l.) and Oswald Boelcke (r.), arguably the joint founders of aerial combat as combining technique in the air with organisation on the ground. Both were killed in 1916 leaving a legacy that long outlived them.

10. French ace Georges Guynemer pictured days before he went missing in September 1917 with 54 victories. His body was never found. The stick-thin legs and thousand-yard stare betray the true cost of becoming a national hero. He was 22.

11. A recruitment poster of 1915 in response to the early Zeppelin air raids on London. The admonishing, homiletic tone cloaked the reality that the military authorities were utterly unable to protect the capital or organise its citizens’ defence.

12. Women workers applying dope to aircraft wings. The complete absence of protective clothing
– not even gloves - is striking. Such workers were frequently overcome by toxic fumes. Chronic poisoning and even death were not uncommon.

13. A downed German aircraft near Verdun in 1916. French soldiers shield their faces from the intense heat while one appears to be going through the airman’s papers to identify him. Such papers in a wallet often miraculously survived.

14. Curious German soldiers contemplate their fallen enemy. From the proximity to his body of the barbette ring it is possible the dead British airman was the observer/gunner. He is wearing the thigh-length sheepskin-lined boots known as ‘fugs’.

15. This famous image of a falling German airman was revealed as a hoax in the early 1980s. Wesley D. Archer, an American pilot who had served in the RFC, faked this and sundry images of dogfights in a studio and published them anonymously in 1933.

16. An RNAS Sopwith Pup armed with Le Prieur incendiary rockets for attacking observation balloons. The much-loved Pup charmed all who flew it. The notoriously inaccurate rockets were much less popular, needing to be fired in a steep dive at a maximum range of 100 yards through a barrage of defensive fire.

17. The Siemens-Schuckert R.VIII was the last of the ‘Giant’ series of German bombers. Designed in 1916, it was the world’s largest bomber by far, with six engines and a wingspan of 157 feet: greater than that of the Second World War’s Boeing B-29 Superfortress.

18. Manfred von Richthofen wearing his ‘Blue Max’ in Cologne on 17th June 1917. Fresh from the recent ‘Bloody April’ he now had nearly 60 Entente victories. The Albatros C.III behind him was not his: he was probably ferrying it back to Jasta 11 in Courtrai.