Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 Read Online Free PDF Page A

refused he’d be drafted and sent to the trenches. His mind made up for him, Fokker was forcibly dressed in an oberleutnant ’s uniform, with the proper ID in his pocket, and sent up over Douai to shoot something down. Like many savants, he’d never really considered the practical consequences of his inventions, and was now face-to-face with a very real problem. Despite putting himself in a perfect position to kill a vulnerable Farman two-seater, Fokker just couldn’t pull the trigger.
    Who actually did score the first shoot-down with this new weapon system is debatable. Max Immelmann, Kurt Wintgens, and Oswald Boelcke have all been credited, but the records are ambiguous. On July 1, 1915, the fifth production Fokker E-1, flown by Lieutenant Wintgens, engaged a Moraine-Saulnier L near Luneville. Wintgens claimed a kill, but the enemy aircraft disappeared too far behind French lines for verification. A French squadron, MS 48, subsequently reported that one of their aircraft had been forced down. * Immelmann, who’d only managed to pass his last set of flying tests in March, didn’t score his first victory until the first of August. When Anthony Fokker departed from the Douai aerodrome in May he left his Eindecker behind. Oswald Boelcke was there and took a keen interest in the test work, so he might have been the first line pilot to fly the monoplane yet he was still officially listed as a two-seater pilot until July 4, three days after Wintgens’s victory.
    In the end, it doesn’t really matter who was first. With the combination of a maneuverable aircraft, a lethal machine gun, and aggressive flyers, the age of the fighter pilot had begun in earnest. As Boelcke himself wrote, “I believe in the saying that ‘the strong man is mightiest alone.’ I have attained my ideal with this single-seater; now I can be pilot, observer and fighter all in one.”
    So who were these men who weren’t content to be just aviators and scouts, these men who made themselves into fighter pilots? What did they have in common beyond the very high likelihood of dying young and dying soon? The stereotypical World War I flyer cut a dashing, heroic figure, and he was viewed as honorable and brave; a knight of the air, and the last of a chivalric breed of gentleman warriors. For men caught in the transition between the old ways and modern, industrialized mass warfare, there was some truth in this perception. Remember, once the armies dug into their trenches, aircraft took over from cavalry and in any army, the cavalry was an elite force of fast-moving shock troops. As such, it attracted many adventorous young men from the upper classes and nobility.
    Transitioning to their various air services was a logical move for hundreds of these officers once the need for cavalry faded. Flying was a new profession, inspiring awe and admiration among a public that really didn’t understand it. So the attraction for these men was the danger, the unique skill involved, and the chance for inclusion in a very selective brotherhood. They also shared a love of flying and a genuine desire to serve their country. As flyers, they were generally free of the hidebound traditions permeating their respective militaries, and being pilots, they had unique control over their fate, unlike the “poor bloody infantry,” as the Brits called foot soldiers.
    In 1914, Britain placed most of the responsibility for her security on the Royal Navy and maintained only a small volunteer army. Before the war, officers in all branches were overwhelmingly from the upper classes. A career as an officer was an honorable and acceptable profession for such men, many of them younger sons who would not inherit family estates. They possessed important family connections, often came from military families, and were graduates of the public school system (roughly equivalent to American prep schools). Through a classical education, sports, and an emphasis on proper conduct this produced