(If you missed the first episode, scroll down to find it before this one)
It was on 12 June 1915 – almost the height of summer – that 2nd Lieutenant Leonard Learmount joined his first operational unit – No 7 Squadron – at Saint Omer aerodrome, north-eastern France. His flying log book records the weather as almost perfect for flying a wood-and-fabric aeroplane: clear with a 10mph easterly breeze.
Four short trips out of Saint Omer aerodrome on a new aircraft type were deemed sufficient for Learmount to master its peculiarities and to complete local area familiarisation sorties. The machine he was learning to control was the French-built two-seater Voisin “pusher” biplane [engine and propeller behind the cockpit].
His first sortie consisted of 20min flying circuits, but the second trip was a brief affair lasting 10min. His log book explains: “During spirals, five ribs collapsed. Landed safely.” The instructor had taken control and put the aircraft down without delay.
“Spirals” were climbing or descending turns, and if the aircraft was not kept in balance by a careful combination of aileron, rudder and elevator, a spin could develop. The Voisin had a level airspeed of about 65mph, but that was only about 40mph above its stalling speed.
After his final familiarisation sortie, Learmount wrote in his log book: “Above clouds, steered by compass.” He had clearly experienced neither of those things before.
In Learmount’s early operational flying with 7 Sqn, he flew the painfully slow Voisin first out of Saint Omer, and then from other aerodromes further east in the “Ypres Salient” region of Flanders, among them Droglandt. At first, he was purely carrying out reconnaissance and artillery spotting for the army, but aviation’s roles quickly developed to include bombing and photography.
Flying with Learmount on his first operational sortie on 19 June 1915, was his observer/gunner 2nd Lieutenant R. Peck. Peck’s handwritten reconnaissance report records take-off from St Omer at dawn (04:30), and describes observed activity behind enemy lines between Courtrai and Ghent, Flanders. The pencilled words, inscribed carefully by cold hands, provide details of train and other surface transport movements, assemblies of troops and equipment and estimated numbers. The aircraft landed at 07:45am, so they had been airborne for 3h 15min.
In a 31 July 1915 combat report filed by Learmount describing an inconclusive encounter with an enemy biplane, the Voisin crew’s armament was recorded as: “Lewis gun, rifle and pistol”. The Voisin gunner, 2nd Lieutenant HH Watkins, initiated the hostile exchange with his Lewis gun, but the German machine positioned itself behind the RFC aircraft. Watkins reports: “I fired over the top plane with the pistol, and the enemy immediately turned and disappeared to the east.” The German aircraft was not identified by type, but was described thus: “Tractor biplane with covered-in fuselage. Machine gun firing to rear. Speed about 85mph.” This kind of encounter was common at that stage of the war, but exchanges soon became more dramatic as Germany started to field armed fighters.
By early autumn, bombing sorties were more regularly executed – including against German aerodromes. For example a handwritten, undated operation order tasked five 7 Sqn pilots – including Learmount – with carrying out two bombing raids on Gits aerodrome in Flanders, near the Gits railway station just east of the Torhout-Roulers road. The first was to be at 7am, the second at 2pm to disrupt attempts at repair. Each aircraft normally carried two or three 20-pound bombs.
There was a difference between the general aviation strategies of the Allies and Germany. Germany frequently had technology and performance advantages, but they had a significantly smaller aircraft fleet and knew it. The Allies wanted to press their numerical advantage by venturing every mission into airspace over German lines to gain intelligence and disrupt operations, whereas the Germans would work to limit their own losses by staying defensively over their lines, except for making brief, organised formation attacks to the west of the Front.
When the Battle of Loos began on 25 September 1915, No. 7 Sqn was heavily involved in providing air support, bombing and reconnaissance for the allied troops, flying a mix of BE2c and RE5 aircraft. This was a British offensive on the Western Front close to Lille, not far north of Arras which included the first use of chlorine gas on the ground. By 8 October the push came to a standstill against staunch German defences.
Learmount was now mostly flying the BE2c out of Droglandt, 20km west of Ypres, Flanders. The BE2 series had originally been designed – in 1912 – as a very stable, unarmed reconnaissance machine, and that was fine until the Germans introduced well-armed aircraft like the Fokker Eindecker, the first aircraft in the war to have a machine gun firing forward through the propeller. The interrupter gear enabling this armament was put into service in July 1915, and the Allies did not have an answer to it until early 1916. So the BE2c’s previously desirable characteristics made it a sitting duck (more about this in future episodes). Many were shot down but – fortunately – because they were such stable machines to handle, the crews were often able to control the machine to a forced landing.
So many BE2cs had been built, however, that they continued to be used for reconnaissance and bombing into 1917, and crews dreaded them.
Meanwhile Learmount was recommended for a Military Cross, the citation lauding his general performance since joining 7 Sqn in June, but describing a specific action on the second day of the Battle of Loos: “Consistent good work, done most gallantly and conscientiously from 13.6.15 to present time. This Officer bombed and hit one half of a train on 26.9.15, coming down to 500ft immediately after Lieut DAC Symington had bombed the other half.” The train was on the Lille-Valencienne line, and Symington had achieved a direct hit on it close to its front, bringing the whole train to a halt. Just after that, Learmount dropped a 100lb bomb that made a direct hit on one of the coaches in the train’s centre.
The point about coming down to 500ft is that it puts the aircraft within easy range of machine gun fire, and trains were almost always defended.
Tomorrow: Episode 3, Learmount is seconded to the French Armée de l’Aire to report on their development of night bombing techniques
Learmount.com 