Read Online Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men by Peter Fitzsimons - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Peter Fitzsimons
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Belgian border in early August 1914 and, following their plan, were soon well on the road to Paris. Then, however, a combined British and French force had stopped them, in part because of the superb defensive capabilities of the newly invented machine gun together with the overwhelming power of modern artillery. It had been discovered that machine guns particularly, set up in well-defended positions and covering open ground, could halt even the most ferocious army, and that is exactly what had happened. Of course, the Germans had discovered the same thing when it came to stopping the Allied counterattack. The only way for both sides was to dig in to hold the positions they had, then try to outflank the other, whereupon the other would dig in some more to hold what they had and…
And within bare months, a 500-mile-long system of trenches had been dug by both sides, stretching from France’s border with Switzerland near Basel in the south all the way up across northern France to the Belgian coast, with a million soldiers manning the barricades and 100 yards or so of vicious no-man’s-land between them—the whole muddy mess, replete with minefields, barbed wire, machine-gun nests and pillboxes, being pounded by some 10,000 artillery guns. It was warfare on a scale unseen before, and the way forward was not apparent to either side, other than to keep pouring in fresh recruits to replace the tens of thousands of soldiers killed or wounded every month the bloody war blazed on. Every yard gained was paid for with blood.
One bold proposal to break the impasse emerged in late November 1914, from the First Lord of the Admiralty, a man by the name of Winston Churchill. Frustrated that, to this point, Britain’s previously supreme naval power was having little sway on the conflict, he had come up with a plan for the navy to help strike a massive blow. Why not, he put to the War Council, have a powerful squadron steam up through the narrow straits of the Dardanelles and strike at Constantinople, which lay at the heart of Germany’s new ally, Turkey?
If done on a large enough scale, it would mean the Germans would have to bleed soldiers from both the Western Front in France and the Eastern Front in Russia to fight on a third front in Turkey.
In the meantime, as the whole war effort became bigger by the week, with more and more resources pouring in, and more soldiers from both sides killed, it had become ever more obvious that Baden-Powell’s observation of six years earlier that Wilbur Wright was ‘in possession of a machine that could alter the destiny of nations’ was being proven correct. This was apparent even in those early days of the war when the primary use of aeroplanes was to dissipate the fog of war, by acting as far forward scouts, with planes carrying pilots and observers over the enemy to report on upcoming terrain and enemy troop movements and positions. They could also occasionally report on how well targeted their own artillery was. But it would not be long before the nature of the struggle for air supremacy was moved up several notches.
One day shortly after the war began, a young French flyer by the name of Roland Garros—who was already famous in France as the first man to fly across the Mediterranean in 1913—was cruising with an observer at 5500 feet above the town of Saarbrücken, on the German side of the French–German border, when suddenly he saw it. A German plane! Complete with its own observer, the plane marked with large black crosses on its wing was clearly heading towards French lines to do its own bit of spying. What to do?
The obvious—take a shot. While Garros manoeuvred his plane on a close parallel course to the German, his observer took out the carbine he had with him and did his best to draw a bead on the target, just 300 feet away. To Garros’s frustration, this was not a ‘shot that rang around the world’. In fact, in all likelihood not even the German pilot who was the target
And within bare months, a 500-mile-long system of trenches had been dug by both sides, stretching from France’s border with Switzerland near Basel in the south all the way up across northern France to the Belgian coast, with a million soldiers manning the barricades and 100 yards or so of vicious no-man’s-land between them—the whole muddy mess, replete with minefields, barbed wire, machine-gun nests and pillboxes, being pounded by some 10,000 artillery guns. It was warfare on a scale unseen before, and the way forward was not apparent to either side, other than to keep pouring in fresh recruits to replace the tens of thousands of soldiers killed or wounded every month the bloody war blazed on. Every yard gained was paid for with blood.
One bold proposal to break the impasse emerged in late November 1914, from the First Lord of the Admiralty, a man by the name of Winston Churchill. Frustrated that, to this point, Britain’s previously supreme naval power was having little sway on the conflict, he had come up with a plan for the navy to help strike a massive blow. Why not, he put to the War Council, have a powerful squadron steam up through the narrow straits of the Dardanelles and strike at Constantinople, which lay at the heart of Germany’s new ally, Turkey?
If done on a large enough scale, it would mean the Germans would have to bleed soldiers from both the Western Front in France and the Eastern Front in Russia to fight on a third front in Turkey.
In the meantime, as the whole war effort became bigger by the week, with more and more resources pouring in, and more soldiers from both sides killed, it had become ever more obvious that Baden-Powell’s observation of six years earlier that Wilbur Wright was ‘in possession of a machine that could alter the destiny of nations’ was being proven correct. This was apparent even in those early days of the war when the primary use of aeroplanes was to dissipate the fog of war, by acting as far forward scouts, with planes carrying pilots and observers over the enemy to report on upcoming terrain and enemy troop movements and positions. They could also occasionally report on how well targeted their own artillery was. But it would not be long before the nature of the struggle for air supremacy was moved up several notches.
One day shortly after the war began, a young French flyer by the name of Roland Garros—who was already famous in France as the first man to fly across the Mediterranean in 1913—was cruising with an observer at 5500 feet above the town of Saarbrücken, on the German side of the French–German border, when suddenly he saw it. A German plane! Complete with its own observer, the plane marked with large black crosses on its wing was clearly heading towards French lines to do its own bit of spying. What to do?
The obvious—take a shot. While Garros manoeuvred his plane on a close parallel course to the German, his observer took out the carbine he had with him and did his best to draw a bead on the target, just 300 feet away. To Garros’s frustration, this was not a ‘shot that rang around the world’. In fact, in all likelihood not even the German pilot who was the target
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