Lost History – the incongruous chivalry of First World War pilots

The First World War of 1914-18 was an abrupt and violent end to the Romantic Age. The advent of vicious and devastating mechanised weaponry and the willingness of countries to mobilise all their available resources resulted in unprecedented casualties and extraordinary traumas.

The traditional soldierly urge for chivalry vanished under the rolling thunder of relentless shelling and in a haze of lethal gas. But high above the incredible carnage of trench warfare, young men climbed the skies, wielding the latest weapons to be added to the warring nations’ already considerable arsenals.

Despite operating in the most modern theatre of that egregious conflict, the combatants who drove those soaring vehicles observed an outdated code of conduct, a code more akin to medieval knights than tin-hatted Tommys.

The first recorded plane v plane fight in a time of war was during the Mexican Revolution in 1913. The Minister for War, General Manuel Mondragón, created the Army’s Auxiliary Aerial Militia Squadron (Escuadrilla Aérea de la Milicia Auxiliar del Ejército) to bomb targeted locations in Mexico City.

The revolutionaries soon employed a similar tactic and commissioned their own planes for reconnaissance and sabotage. On the afternoon of 30th November 1913, two American soldiers of fortune fighting for different sides encountered each other in the state of Sonora.

According to one of the pilots, they fired pistols at each other but purposefully missed, before disengaging. Once in range, they realised that they knew and liked one another and were naturally reluctant to attack.

The dramatic unfolding of the First World War instigated the high-pace evolution of military aviation. At first, planes were solely deployed on reconnaissance missions, but the general staff on either side quickly learned that pilots could exact enormous damage on vulnerable positions behind enemy lines.

Their initial photographic excursions turned into bombing raids, and when fliers began brandishing pistols and started taking pot-shots at each other, their engineers awkwardly hoisted machine guns aloft those rickety crafts. This amendment marked the dawn of dogfighting and turned the atmosphere of aerial warfare into a duellist’s paradise.

It became common for fliers to count the number of crafts they had downed. Though this is obviously a natural means of measuring their professional competency and gauging the strength and effectiveness of their enemy, the habit developed into a matter of pride. The idea of the flying ace was formed in the imaginations of the soldiers on the ground and the people back home, all of whom wanted heroes to toast in the midst of that mind-bogglingly calamitous war.

The promotion and branding of these dashing daredevils improved morale and inspired resilience. The most famous of these wartime celebrities is Manfred Von Richtofen, known today as the Red Baron. Von Richtofen epitomised the attitude of the World War One ace. Aloof, honourable, quiet and courageous, the acutely urbane young man nursed a death wish, believing it his destiny to fall in battle.

After issuing orders, he declared to a squadron under his command “Gentlemen we are sportsmen, not butchers.” He was referring to the code of conduct that was widely, though unofficially, acknowledged by fighters on both sides of the war.

In those days, the main aim of pilots was not to kill their airmen adversaries. It was to destroy the planes they flew. Having endured and pioneered the horrors of this new kind of war, perhaps the uniqueness of the experience produced a kind of kinship among foes.

When the Red Baron was downed at the regrettably young age of twenty-five, after having decommissioned approximately eighty planes, members of the Royal Flying Corps commented that they would have much preferred to have caught him alive, so that they might have had a chance to speak to their valorous opponent.

When Von Richtofen’s mentor, Oswald Boelcke, crashed and died in October, 1916, a wreath was airdropped at his funeral by the Royal Flying Corps that read: “To the memory of Captain Boelcke, our brave and chivalrous opponent.”

These numerous examples of these acts of empathy among enemy fighters reveal a strange respect, one you might encounter between athletes at a tournament. To many, they were the envy of the world – celebrated heroes who did not have to undergo the filthy torment of fighting on the ground.

But the regularity of their casualties and the feeling of their own inevitable annihilation (this was long before the introduction of parachutes for pilots) made their sphere of battle inimitably gruelling. Some of the most effective fliers of the first world war truly harboured classical notions of honour and saw their confrontations as elevated jousts or exalted contests.

Yeats in his poem “A Irishman Airman Foresees His Death” beautifully explains the mentality of that generation, with their Icarian aspirations and sporting ethics: “Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,/Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,/A lonely impulse of delight/Drove to this tumult in the clouds.”