the Fokker scourge: tales from the Great War
In which other pilots, Allied and German, tell about their experiences with certain Fokker planes during the war.

   new ideas in aerial warfare
Stunting as a part of air-fighting was only just beginning to be thought of. We young pilots could still improve our art by discussing all that we had seen and heard, by evolving our own theories, and by practising in the air manoeuvres that were neither taught nor encouraged. What, for example, of looping? Would it help us fight?

The Germans had brought out a new fighting craft: a Fokker monoplane with rotary engine. It was fast, very manoeuvrable, with a gun firing through the propeller by means of a mechanism captured, it was said, from the French. For these good reason the machine was proving almost certain death to our BE's, particularly when it was flown by a German pilot named Immelman. Very vaguely it was being rumoured that this young officer (who had already brought down the incredible number of six machines) had invented a new method of turning.

As a matter of fact I believe he never did any such thing, but he certainly had a remarkably clever way of throwing his machine around so as to appear suddenly, almost sitting on his enemy's tail, with his machine-gun banging away straight through the propeller. The 'Immelmann Turn' it was beginning to be called, and it opened up a new set of problems in aerial fighting.

The Fokker announced the first phase of a new era. Through-propeller firing was an accomplished fact and coupled with the type of aeroplane in which it was being used, was forcing upon us new ideas, new tactics. To bring down an enemy machine of any type required luck, persistence, a fast aeroplane, and a well-aimed machine-gun; but to bring down a Fokker or even to defend oneself succesfully against it required something much more. It required from the scientist a better war machine. It demanded a skill in swift manoeuvring that went far beyond the aerobatics put up by even the most famous stunt pilots of the past...

Sometimes we would talk far into the night, waiting hopefully for the fine morning when we might start practising these new ideas that were to guard us against the menace of the Fokker.

Duncan Grinnel-Milne, Wind in the Wires (1926)

the Fokker scourge

   Boelcke's christmas present
The Fokker is the best christmas present ever, one I enjoy almost like a child.

Oswald Boelcke (december 1914)

and his M-5 was only an unarmed version...

the Fokker scourge

   august 1, 1915: first air victory with the synchronizer
While I was loading with new cartridges down below, I saw Lt. Immelmann attack an Englishman in grand style and send him bolting. I climbed up again quickly to help Immelmann against the others. But they cleared off again and I had only disappointment for my trouble. Meanwhile Immelmann had forced his Englishman to land; he put a bullet through his elbow, so he had to come down as quickly as he could.

Immelmann was extraordinarily lucky over the whole business; I only gave him his first lesson on a Fokker three days before, i.e, I went up with him in his machine and let him help handle the controls. The day before he did his first solo and had great difficulty in pulling off his landing. He had never flown against the enemy in a Fokker and had never fired his machine gun before - and then he had the luck to catch a defenceless biplane over our airfield. All the same, Immelmann did his job beautifully, and I congratulate him sincerely on his success. But I am really annoyed at my own bad luck.

Oswald Boelcke (1915)

the Fokker scourge

   the mystery plane is captured
Great exitement in the Depot! A Fokker had been captured undamaged. Early in 1916 the Fokker was the menace of the RFC. Hearsay and a few lucky encounters had made the machine respected, not to say dreaded.
A sort of a mystery surrounded the Fokker. Nobody knew whether it had a rotary or a stationary engine. Few having been attacked by it had come back to tell the tale. Today I cannot see why this should have been so important to us. At the time it was. Rumour credited it with the most fantastic performance! It could outclimb, outpace, and outmanoeuvre anything in the RFC. You were as good as dead if you as much as saw one... and so on. In short, our morale wanted bucking up.

All we knew was that it was an evil-looking monoplane scout, connected with the already famous name of Richthofen. So anxious were HQ to have some details of the machine that one BE 2C pilot, just about to be attacked, deliberately let the machine come within range, took out his Kodak and made a snapshot of it. I have always regarded this as one of the minor heroisms of the war. Unfortunately the snap was out of focus.

And now a Fokker had delivered itself into British hands! An enemy ferry pilot, bringing a new machine from the base in Germany, had flown right over the lines without knowing it, and made a perfect landing on an Allied aerodrome to ask where he was! He was told. I must record that about the same time a British ferry pilot, taking the latest FE 2B to France, did exactly the same thing and landed perfectly in Germany, so we were quits.

It turned out that the Fokker had a rotary engine (the long black block of cylinder heads was the air-cooling barrel of the machine gun). Otherwise it was perfectly orthodox and there remained only to put it up against a British scout to judge its performance. Both machines took off together, and it was immediately clear that the Morane was all over the Fokker. A cheer went up from the crowd. A description of the machine, its size, power, capabilities, was circulated at once to every one in the Corps. I did a great deal to raise the morale.

Cecil Lewis, Sagittarius Rising (1936)

Stephen Longstreet, in 'The Canvas Falcons': What happened was one of those military blunders that baffle historians. A German pilot caught in a thick fog landed at a French airfield. He, his plane, and the secret of the Fokker gun invention were all captured. The firing gear was looked over, tested, drawings made of it, reports drawn up. Then all was solemnly filed away. Not one member of the military personnel did anything about getting the invention to the Allied fliers! Certain civilians nonetheless saw to it that the information and drawings of the gear were leaked to French magazines, which printed them. The War Ministry was not very impressed, and nothing much was done to arm the French fighter planes with the new synchronizer.

the Fokker scourge

   the sixtieth victory
Flying my triplane for the first time, I and four of my gentlemen attacked a very courageously flown English artillery plane. It is most probable that the English pilot mistook me for an English triplane, because the observer was standing upright in his plane and watched me approach without making use of his gun.

Manfred, Baron von Richthofen (sept. 2, 1917)

the Fokker scourge

   tactics: short battles with fast maneouvres
I had been keeping my eyes on the three enemy planes below me. But no sooner had the action signal been given than we were pounced on from above by various types of Hun machines, numbering about twenty. I could tell from the red undercarriages that they were members of Richthofens's circus.

It seemed that is didn't matter which way my pilot turned, an iron-cross plane would appear. Clutterbuck immediately spun down. The last thing I noticed before he went into the spin was the flight commander's plane bursting into flames and the occupants falling out.

My pilot was busy placing me in position to fire, but is was difficult to take accurate aim, as new machines were always appearing above us. During those attacks, we came into very close contact, and eventually I managed to get a good burst ino a machine that was painted with black and white squares. I saw it go down entirely out of control.

I was just getting into position to try my luck with the all-red machine which I presume was Richthofen's, but the baron got me before I got him. His first stream of lead went through my left shoulder and arm, rendering me quite useless. The shock knocked me down into the cockpit. The time of the combat was about fifteen minutes, which is a very long time for actually every minute fighting in the air. It seemed like fifteen weeks.

Lt. Sparks (december, 1917)

flying as observer in a Bristol fighter plane

the Fokker scourge

   Kurvenkampf (twister-battle)
Flying at an altitude of about ten thousand feet, I observed three English planes. I saw that they saw me, and from their maneouvres I gathered that our hopes for the day's fun were mutual.

Soon he started down in a steep gliding dive, trying to catch me from behind. He opens fire with his machine gun. Five shots rip out, and I change course quickly by a sharp turn to the left. He follows and the mad circle starts. He is trying to get behind me, and I am trying to get behind him. Round and round we go in circles, like two madmen playing ring-o-roses almost two miles above the earth. Both our motors are speeded to the utmost; still neither seems to gain on the other.

First, we would go twenty times around to the right, and then swing into another circle going around twenty times to the left. We continued the mad race, neither gaining an advantage. I knew at once I was dealing with no beginner, because he didn't dream of trying to break off the fight and get out of the cricling. His plane was excellent for maneuvring and speed, but my machine gave me an advantage by being able to climb better and faster. This enabled me at last to break the circle and maneuver into a position behind and above him.

But he was a plucky devil. With me behind and above, he even turned and waved his arm at me, as though to say how do you do! We went into circles again - fast and furious and as small as we could make them. sometimes I estimated the diameter of the circles as being eighty and a hundred yards. But always I kept above him and at times could look down vertically into his cockpit and watch every movement of his head.

Suddenly he revealed his plans of escape by going into several loops and other maneuvres of equal folly. As he came out of them, heading for his own lines, my first bullets began whistling around his ears, for up to now, with the exception of the opening shots, neither one of us had been able to range on the other... Our speed is terrific. He starts to zigzag, making sudden darts right and left, confusing my aim, but the moment is coming. I am fifty yards behind him. My machine gun is firing incessantly; we are hardly fifty yards from the ground - just skimming it.

Now I am within thirty yards of him. He must fall. The gun pours out its stream of lead. Then it jams. Then it reopens fire. One bullet goes home. He is struck through the back of the head. His plane jumps and turns somersaults, crashes. His machine gun rammed itself into the earth, and now it decorates the entrance over my door. He was a brave man, a sportsman and a fighter. It was a matter of great pride to me to learn that the Englishman I shot down was the British equivalent to our great Immelmann.

Manfred, Baron von Richthofen (nov. 23, 1917)

the Englishman was Major L.C. Hawker, VC - also known as the designer of 1st standard issue fleece-lined flying boots

the Fokker scourge

   a flier's war, 1917
I was sure I would be dead in four to six weeks.

That winter we were flying over the front from the Wing HQ aerodrome behind Amiens. It was a bloody, blue-cold winter; the squadron was using Sopwith Camels nearly as bad as DH-4's, the goddam notorious Flaming Coffins. We pilots lived on milk and brandy, stinking of tension turned to sweat in our black flying breeks, going over the Hun lines, escorting the reconnaissaance camera planes with the enemy's Archie exploding high up, bursting in our faces.

In the British Sixth Wing, actually by count, we lost a third of our flyers, and it got worse before Cambrai fell, when the Boche began mounting heavier Spandau machine guns in their goddamn Jagdstaffel - 'hunting packs'. They had replaced their older planes with the Fokker triplane, and we were still in the flypaper and canvas and wood Sopwith F.I. Camels. We all took to carrying bottles of brandy in our coverall leg pockets.

Flying on patrol, the long-toothed major with the trick pipe got his, trying out over the lines a new Nieuport (as expected, the air valve jammed and the engine conked). He tried to climb vertically, went into a slow roll and a loop. A Hun dipped down out of the sun and begun to pour it into him, and I saw the major's face, the Sandhurst moustache standing out. I was flying on his left tip, trying to come up to protect him. He just looked disappointed, mouthed the word 'merde' and the crate began to smoke and flame and slide down discarding wings and parts. He waved.

I didn't follow him because I was trying to get the sun between me and the red-streaked Fokker, and when I had him in the sights, I prayed that the rotten mechanical device that synchronized my two Lewis guns to fire through the propeller would work. A week before I had shot off my own prop and landed in the middle of an Anzac battalion in the lines. I had been sweating it out, for the wind was always blowing to the east and there was the danger of coming down behind the German lines.

I fired a burst to clear the barrels and the blur of the spinning prop was all right. Oh, the Hun was good. He tried to keep the sun behind him, but my petrol was clean that morning in my tanks and I circled and got on his tail, he twisting, me after him, the Teutonic crosses on his wings black against the dark canvas. I pressed off half a drum right into him, and the sonofabitch didn't seem to hurt at all. I could see wood and canvas splintering off and falling away.

He lifted away to climb and I throttled back and thought fuckyoukraut, when I sensed something on my right, and there I was jumped by a staffel of Albatros who were laying for me. My pigeon had been a decoy.
I kicked the stick over and went into a long fast dive, wires screaming, did an evation spin that began to strain the wings, and I cursed the profiteers who cheated on aeroplane specifications. There was a wisp of cloud nearby, looking no bigger than a bathtowel, and I started for that and it was bigger than it looked. I was very young and I didn't want to die. Not before I sent my grandmother a picture of myself in my London-tailored uniform.

I went through the cloud and found myself with just one Hun. He had a skull and bones painted on his canvas side and I automatically pressed the Lewis button and a staccato burst caught him in the belly. I was just under him - his blind spot - and he fell, all black smoke, flames redder than any paint job. I could see the flier's protuberant bloodshot eyes as he screamed. Nobody carried parachutes in those days, and his right wing just touched mine - a kiss - as he fell away in a big gray world.

I scooted for our lines, sticky with fear. I vomited brandy and milk all over my instrument panel. Yes, it was very romantic, flying, like a knight errant in the clean blue sky of personal combat, in whipcord breeches and a British tunic with long Bond Street cut tails. So romantic... oh shit and piss. I was sobbing and set the plane down with a hard bounce - a bad show of nerves.

'W.W. Windstaff', a Flier's War (1930) ??

WWW: the alledged pseudonym of an American pilot flying with the British RFC. The style is suspiciously modern - can this be a true bio and was he an amazing writer, ahead of his time? I doubt it. Who was Windstaff?
The skull and crossbones device was the identifier of Voss - shot down by a pack of seven English machines, one of them McCudden. The pilot who tended an upset stomach with milk and brandy was Roy Brown, the one that shot down von Richthofen. The resemblance with famous stories is too much of a coincidence for me.
Stephen Longstreet 'worked on his memoirs with him and is full of hope to get some publisher to issue the book, of which only twenty-five copies were privately printed in 1930; 'Windstaff' was killed in an auto accident in 1931.' (The Canvas Falcons, 1970)
'A Flier's War' was published in 1993 as 'Lower than Angels - A Memoir of War & Peace' by W.W. Windstaff with Longstreet as illustrator.

the Fokker scourge

 

special Fokker feature

early years: from
"the Flying Dutchman"
the Fokker scourge:
WW I stories
feeding the tale:
rumour around Fokker


Your comments or suggestions are greatly appreciated: e-mail Hanneke Hoogstrate!
or, for the JavaScript-disabled: blagoAntiRobot@xs4all.nl, please remember to remove [AntiRobot].

This page is from Plane Writing: quotes from early pilots' biographies; please use a JavaScript-enabled browser for best results.