Fokker Scourge

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Kurt Wintgens' Fokker M.5K/MG "E.5/15" Fokker Eindecker, flown by him on 1 July 1915, in the first successful aerial engagement in an aircraft fitted with a synchronised machine gun

The Fokker Scourge (or Fokker Scare) was a period during the First World War from August 1915 to early 1916 when German aircraft gained an advantage over the Allies.

The Fokker Eindecker fighter was the first service aircraft to be fitted with a machine gun synchronised to fire past the propeller blades. The introduction of the Fokker into service with the Die Fliegertruppen (Imperial German Flying Corps) came as a surprise to Allied aviators and gained a measure of air superiority over the Western Front.[1][2]

This period of German air superiority ended with the arrival in numbers of the French Nieuport 11 and British Airco DH.2 fighters, which were capable of challenging the Fokkers, although some sources describe the "scourge" as the period from the arrival of the first two Fokker E.I fighters at Feldflieger Abteilung (FFA 62) in June 1915 to August–September 1916, when the last Eindeckers were replaced.[3][1]

The term "Fokker Scourge" was coined by the British press in mid-1916, after the Eindeckers had been outclassed by the new Allied types.[4] Use of the term coincided with a political campaign to end a perceived dominance of the Royal Aircraft Factory. in the supply of aircraft to the Royal Flying Corps, a campaign that was begun by the pioneering aviation journalist C. G. Grey and Noel Pemberton Billing M.P., founder of Pemberton-Billing Ltd (Supermarine from 1916) and a great enthusiast for aerial warfare.[5]

Background

Early air warfare

Diagram of Fokker's "Stangensteuerung" synchronisation mechanism

As aerial warfare developed, the Allies (especially the French) gained a lead over the Germans by fitting of machine-guns to aircraft in such types as the Vickers F.B.5 Gunbus and the Morane-Saulnier L.[6][7] By early 1915, the German Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL, Army High Command) had ordered the development of machine-gun-armed aircraft to counter those of the Allies. The new "C" class armed two-seaters and twin-engined "K" (later "G") class aircraft such as the AEG G.II were attached in ones and twos to Feldflieger Abteilungen (artillery-observation and reconnaissance detachments) for "fighter" sorties, mostly the escort of unarmed aircraft.[1][8][9]

On 18 April 1915, the Morane-Saulnier L of Roland Garros was captured after he was shot down behind the German lines.[10] From 1 April, Garros had destroyed three German aircraft in the Morane, which carried a machine-gun firing through the propeller arc. Bullets that hit the blades were deflected by small metal wedges.[11] Garros tried to burn his aircraft but this failed to conceal the nature of the device. The significance of the deflector blades was immediately apparent and the German authorities requested several aircraft manufacturers, including Anthony Fokker, to produce a copy.[10]

Synchronisation gear

Main article: Synchronization gear
Detail of an early Fokker Eindecker: the cowling is off, showing the Stangensteuerung gear, connected directly to the oil pump drive at the rear of the engine.

The Fokker company produced the [Stangensteuerung] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (push rod controller), a genuine synchronisation gear. The gear used impulses from a cam on the aircraft engine to control the firing of the machine-gun to prevent bullets from hitting the propeller.[12] Similar gears had been proposed but the [Stangensteuerung] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) was the first to be fitted to an aircraft and proved in flight. In a postwar biography, Fokker claimed that he designed and built the gear in 48 hours but this has been largely discounted. It is believed that the gear may have been based on a pre-war patent by Franz Schneider, a Swiss engineer who had worked for Nieuport and the German LVG company; the gear had probably been built by Heinrich Lübbe, a Fokker Flugzeugbau engineer.[12][13]

The device was fitted to the most suitable Fokker type, the Fokker M.5K (military designation Fokker A.III), of which A.16/15, assigned to Otto Parschau, became the prototype of the Fokker E.I.[14] Fokker demonstrated A.16/15 to German fighter pilots, including Kurt Wintgens, Oswald Boelcke and Max Immelmann, in May and June 1915.[15] The Fokker, with its "Morane" controls, including the over-sensitive balanced elevator and dubious lateral control, was difficult to fly; Parschau, who was experienced on Fokker A types, converted pilots to the new fighter.[16][17] The early Eindeckers were attached to the normal FFA in ones and twos, to protect reconnaissance machines from Allied machine-gun-armed aircraft.[14]

Operational service

Eindecker operations

Otto Parschau's second Eindecker, E.1/15, with experimental "mid-wing" modification which became standard on production E.Is

Fokker Eindecker E.5/15, the last of the pre-production series, is believed to have been first flown in action by Kurt Wintgens of FFA 6.[18] On 1 and 4 July 1915, he reported combats with French Morane-Saulnier L (Parasols), each time well over the French lines.[17] Wintgens' accounts of the fights were modestly equivocal about the destruction of the Moranes and the victories were never confirmed, although modern research has shown that the first claim matches French records of a Morane forced down on 1 July near Lunéville with a wounded crew and a damaged engine, followed by one more three days later.[19] By 15 July, Wintgens had moved to FFA 48 and scored his first recognised victory, another Morane L.[20] To replace the older machine, Otto Parschau had received E.1/15, which became the prototype for the Fokker Eindecker line of aircraft, when it was returned to the Fokker Flugzeugbau factory in Schwerin–Gorries, for further development of the design.[21]

By the end of July 1915, about fifteen Eindeckers were operational with various units, including the five M.5K/MGs and about ten early production E.I airframes.[21] At first, the pilots flew the new aircraft as a sideline, when not flying normal operations in two-seater reconnaissance aircraft.[21] Oswald Boelcke, in FFA 62, scored his first victory in an Albatros C.I on 4 July.[22] M.5K/MG prototype airframe E.3/15, the first Eindecker delivered to FFA 62, was armed with a Parabellum MG14 gun, synchronised by the troublesome first version of the Fokker gear. At first, E.3/15 was jointly allocated to him and Immelmann when their "official" duties permitted, allowing them to master the type's difficult handling characteristics and to practice shooting at ground targets.[23] Immelmann was soon allocated a very early production Fokker E.I, E.13/15, one of the first armed with an lMG 08 Spandau machine gun, using the more reliable production version of the Fokker gear.[24]

RFC

The first RFC sightings of the new Fokker aircraft were recorded at the end of July 1915 but large numbers of Fokkers were not encountered until October, towards the end of the Battle of Loos (25 September – 14 October).[25] These aircraft included the similar Pfalz E-type fighters (derived like the Fokker Eindeckers from the Morane-Saulnier H), which were also called "Fokkers" by French and British airmen.[26]

RFC pilots reported that the new fighter could make long, steep dives and that the fixed, synchronised machine gun was aimed by aiming the aircraft. The machine gun was belt-fed, unlike the drum-fed Lewis guns of their opponents. The Fokker pilots took to flying high and diving on their quarry, usually out of the sun, firing a long burst and continuing the dive until well out of range. If the British aircraft had not been shot down, the German pilot could climb again and repeat the process. Immelmann invented the Immelmann turn, a zoom after the dive, followed by a roll when vertical to face the opposite way, after which he could turn to attack again.[27]

The Fokker Scourge is usually considered to have begun on 1 August, when B.E.2c aircraft of No. 2 Squadron bombed the base of FFA 62 at 5:00 a.m., waking the German pilots.[23] Boelcke was quickly into the air after the raiders, in Fokker M.5K/MG E.3/15 and Immelmann followed in E.13/15. Boelcke suffered a gun jam but Immelmann caught up with one of the raiders and shot down a B.E.2c, flown as a bomber, without an observer or Lewis gun, the pilot armed only with an automatic pistol.[20] After about ten minutes of manoeuvring (giving the lie to exaggerated accounts of the stability of B.E.2 aircraft), Immelmann had fired 450 rounds, which riddled the B.E. and wounded the pilot in the arm.[28]

The mystique acquired by the Fokker was greater than its material effect, and was exacerbated by the hard winter of 1915–1916 and some aggressive flying by the new "C" type German two-seaters, which added to Allied losses.[29] Boelcke and Immelmann continued to score, as did Hans Joachim Buddecke, Ernst von Althaus and Rudolph Berthold from FFA 23 and Kurt von Crailshein of FFA 53. The "official" list of claims by Fokker pilots for the second half of 1915 was no more than 28 and many of these were over French aircraft. Thirteen aeroplanes had been shot down by Immelmann or Boelcke and the rest by seven other Fokker pilots.[8][30] January 1916 brought a further thirteen claims, most of them against the French and there were twenty more in February, the last month of the "scourge" proper. Most of the victories had been scored by aces rather than the newer pilots flying the increased number of Fokkers. Allied casualties were light by later standards but the loss of air superiority to the Germans, flying a new and supposedly invincible aircraft, caused dismay among the Allied commanders and lowered the morale of Allied airmen. In Sagittarius Rising (1936) Cecil Lewis wrote,

Hearsay and a few lucky encounters had made the machine respected, not to say dreaded by the slow, unwieldy machines then used by us for Artillery Observation and Offensive Patrols.

— Cecil Lewis[31]
Restored FE2b, Masterton, New Zealand, 2009

The RFC changed tactics for the sedate B.E. types and the newer F.E.2 pusher fighters. On 14 January, RFC HQ issued orders that until better aircraft arrived, long and short-range reconnaissance aircraft must have three escorts flying in close formation. If contact with the escorts was lost, the reconnaissance must be cancelled, as would photographic reconnaissance to any great distance beyond the front line. Sending the B.E.2c into action without an observer armed with a machine gun also became less prevalent.[32] The new tactic of concentrating aircraft in time and space had the effect of reducing the effective size of the RFC, when the demand for information by the army remained the same.[33]

Much effort went into devising formations; a II Wing RFC method was for the reconnaissance aircraft to lead, escorted on each side 500 feet (150 m) higher, with another escort 1,000 feet (300 m) behind and above.[34] On 7 February, on a II Wing long-range reconnaissance, the observation pilot flew at 7,500 feet (2,300 m); a German aircraft appeared over Roulers and seven more closed in behind the formation. West of Thourout, two Fokkers arrived and attacked at once, one diving on the reconnaissance machine and the other on an escort. Six more German aircraft appeared over Courtemarck and formed a procession of 14 aeroplanes stalking the British formation. None of the German pilots attacked and all the British aircraft returned, only to meet two German aircraft coming back from a bombing raid, which opened fire and mortally wounded the pilot of one the British escort aircraft. The British ascribed their immunity to attack during the 55-minute flight to the rigid formation, which the two Fokkers were unable to disrupt.[35] On 7 February, a No. 12 Squadron B.E.2c. was to be escorted by three B.E.2c, two F.E.2 aircraft and a Bristol Scout from 12 Sqn and two more F.E. and four R.E. aeroplanes from No. 21 Squadron. The flight was cancelled due to bad weather but twelve escorts for one reconnaissance aircraft demonstrated the effect of the Fokkers in drastically reducing the efficiency of RFC operations.[36]

The British and French had to accept that it had become much more hazardous to get aerial photographs for intelligence and ranging data for Allied artillery.[37] In an effort to keep the synchronisation gear secret German fighters were forbidden to fly over Allied lines, a policy that for various reasons persisted for most of the war. While there were a number of tactical advantages in this approach, the effect of German air superiority was limited by the rarity of German fighters appearing behind the Allied lines.[38][39]

End of the Scourge

Early D.H.2 taking off from airfield at Beauvel, France

The beginning of the end of the scourge came at the Battle of Verdun (21 February – 20 December). When the battle began, the air superiority created by the Fokkers meant that German preparations had mostly been concealed from French aerial reconnaissance. The German aircraft had established a [Luftsperre] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (air barrage), a systematic blockade of the French escadrilles, relying as much on chasing their opponents away as actually shooting them down. During the battle, the new French Nieuport 11 fighter arrived in increasing numbers. The Nieuports were superior to the Eindeckers in almost every respect and were organised in [escadrilles de chasse] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), specialist fighter squadrons that could operate in formations larger than the singletons or pairs normally flown by the Fokkers, quickly regaining air superiority.[40]

British F.E.2b pusher aircraft had been arriving in France from late 1915, and in the new year they began to replace the older F.B.5s. The F.E.2 had a good view from the pilot's and observer's cockpits and the observer could also fire backwards over the tail. No. 20 Squadron, the first full F.E. unit, arrived in France on 23 January 1916, for long-range reconnaissance and escort flying. The Fokker pilots attacked the F.E.s without hesitation but soon found that the new aircraft was a formidable opponent, particularly when flying in formation. What the F.E. lacked was sufficient speed and manoeuvrability to pursue and attack the Fokkers.[41]

Another pusher, the D.H.2 single-seat fighter, began to arrive at the front in February 1916. The aircraft had a modest performance but its superior manoeuvrability gave it an advantage over the Eindecker, especially once its flexibly-mounted, forward-firing Lewis gun was fixed. On 8 February, No. 24 Squadron (Major Lanoe Hawker) arrived with D.H.2s and began patrols north of the Somme; another six D.H.2 squadrons followed. On 25 April, two of the D.H. pilots were attacked and found that they could out-manoeuvre the Fokkers; a few days later, without opening fire, a D.H. pilot caused a Fokker to crash onto a roof at Bapaume.[42] The Nieuports proved even more effective, and the first Nieuport 16s in British service were issued to No. 1 and No. 11 Squadrons in April.[43]

The red Nieuport 11 of Jean Navarre, Guardian of Verdun

By March 1916, despite frequent encounters with Fokkers and the success of the German Eindecker aces, the scourge was over.[44] The bogey of the Fokker Eindecker as a fighter was finally laid in April, when an E.III landed by mistake on a British aerodrome and its performance was found to be much inferior than thought.[45] The first British aircraft with a synchronisation gear was a Bristol Scout, which arrived on 25 March 1916, and on 24 May the first Sopwith 1½ Strutter aircraft were flown to France by a flight of No. 70 Squadron.[46]

End of the Eindecker

The impact of the new Allied types, especially the Nieuport, was of considerable concern to the Fokker pilots.[47] Some pilots even took to flying captured Nieuports, and OHL was sufficiently desperate to order the building of Nieuport copies by German firms, such as the Siemens-Schuckert D.I.[48][49] New D type single-seat biplane fighters, particularly the Fokker D.II and Halberstadt D.II, had been under test since late 1915, and the replacement of the monoplanes with these types began in mid-1916.[50]

Halberstadt D.II, said to be one of Boelcke's aircraft

In February 1916, Inspektor-Major Friedrich Stempel began to assemble [Kampfeinsitzer Kommando] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (KEK, single-seat battle units). The KEK were small units, mostly of two to four fighters, equipped with Eindeckers and other types which had served with FFA units during the winter of 1915–1916. KEK were formed at Vaux, Avillers, Jametz, and Cunel near Verdun and other places on the Western Front, as [Luftwachtdienst] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (aerial guard service) units consisting only of fighters.[51] In the second half of May, German air activity on the British front decreased markedly, while the commander of the new [Luftstreitkräfte] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) Oberst Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen reorganised the German air service.[52] The fighters of the KEK were concentrated into Jagdstaffeln, true fighter squadrons, and replacement of Eindeckers with better aircraft had begun. By September, the last of the Eindeckers, by now long outmoded as front line fighters, had been retired.[53]

Aftermath

Analysis

Caricature of Fokker Eindecker published in Flight for 3 February 1916, satirising exaggerated accounts of its capabilities in other publications.[54]

Among British politicians and journalists who grossly exaggerated the material effects of the "Scourge" were the eminent pioneering aviation journalist C. G. Grey, founder of The Aeroplane, one of the first aviation magazines, and Noel Pemberton Billing M.P., a notably unsuccessful aircraft designer and manufacturer.[2] Their supposed object was the replacement of the B.E.2c with better aircraft, but it took the form of an attack on the RFC command and the Royal Aircraft Factory.[1] C. G. Grey had orchestrated a campaign against the Royal Aircraft Factory in the pages of The Aeroplane, going back to its period as the Balloon Factory, well before it had produced any heavier-than-air aircraft.[55]

Before the unsuitability of the B.E.2c for air combat was exposed by the first Fokker aces, criticism was not primarily aimed at the technical quality of Royal Aircraft Factory aircraft but because a government body was competing with private industry. When the news of the Fokker monoplane fighters reached him in late 1915, Grey was quick to blame the problem on past orders for equipment that the latest developments had rendered obsolete. Grey did not suggest what aircraft might have been ordered instead, even supposing that the rapid development of aviation technology during the war could have been foreseen. Pemberton Billing also blamed the initially poor performance of British aircraft manufacturers on what he saw as the favouritism shown by the RFC, an arm of the British Army, towards the Royal Aircraft Factory, which, while nominally civilian, was also part of the army. Pemberton Billing claimed that,

... hundreds, nay thousands of machines have been ordered which have been referred to by our pilots as "Fokker Fodder" ... I would suggest that quite a number of our gallant officers in the Royal Flying Corps have been rather murdered than killed.

— Pemberton Billing[56]

Even among writers who recognised the hysteria of this version of events, this picture of the Fokker scourge gained considerable currency during the war and afterwards. In 1996 Grosz wrote,

The epithet Fokker Fodder was coined by the British to describe the fate of their aircraft under the guns of the Fokker monoplanes, but given [its] acknowledged mediocrity, it comes as something of a shock to realise how abysmal the level of British aircraft performance, pilot training and aerial tactics must have been....

— P. M. Grosz[50]

Subsequent operations

The period of Allied air superiority that followed the Fokker Scourge was brief. By mid-September 1916, the first Albatros D.I fighters were coming into service. The new aircraft were again able to challenge Allied air superiority, culminating in "Bloody April" during the Battle of Arras (9 April – 16 May 1917).[57] In the next two years, the Allied air forces gradually overwhelmed the [Luftstreitkräfte] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in quality and quantity, until the Germans were only able to gain temporary control over small areas of the Western Front. When this tactic became untenable, development of new aircraft began, which led to the Fokker D.VII. The new aircraft created another "Fokker Scourge" in the summer of 1918 and as a condition of the Armistice, Germany was required to surrender all Fokker D.VII aircraft to the Allies.[58]

References

Citations

  1. ^ a b c d Franks 2001, p. 1.
  2. ^ a b Kennett 1991, p. 110.
  3. ^ Bruce 1968, v.2, p. 20.
  4. ^ Robertson 2003, p. 103.
  5. ^ Hare 1990, pp. 91–102.
  6. ^ Cheesman 1960, p. 177.
  7. ^ Bruce 1989, pp. 2–4.
  8. ^ a b Van Wyngarden 2006, p. 18.
  9. ^ Jones, 2002, p. 469
  10. ^ a b Bruce 1989, p. 3.
  11. ^ Cheesman 1960, p. 178.
  12. ^ a b Grosz 1989, p. 2.
  13. ^ Woodman 1989, pp. 180–183.
  14. ^ a b Gray and Thetford 1961, p. 83.
  15. ^ Van Wyngarden 2006, p. 9.
  16. ^ Immelmann 1934 (2009), p. 77.
  17. ^ a b Van Wyngarden 2006, p. 10.
  18. ^ Van Wyngarden 2006, p. 11–12.
  19. ^ Van Wyngarden 2006, pp. 10–12.
  20. ^ a b Franks 2001, pp. 10–11.
  21. ^ a b c Van Wyngarden 2006, p. 12.
  22. ^ Van Wyngarden 2006, p. 13.
  23. ^ a b Van Wyngarden 2006, p. 14.
  24. ^ Woodman 1989, pp. 180–183.
  25. ^ Jones, 2002, p. 144
  26. ^ Franks 2001, p. 59.
  27. ^ Jones, 2002, p. 150
  28. ^ Van Wyngarden 2006, p. 15.
  29. ^ Hoeppner, 1994, p. 38
  30. ^ Franks 2001, p. 41.
  31. ^ Lewis 1977, p. 51.
  32. ^ Terraine 1982, p. 199.
  33. ^ Jones, 2002, pp. 156–157
  34. ^ Jones, 2002, pp. 147–148
  35. ^ Jones, 2002, pp. 157–158
  36. ^ Jones, 2002, p. 158
  37. ^ Franks 2001, pp. 11–12.
  38. ^ Hoeppner, 1994, p. 41
  39. ^ Franks 2001, p. 6.
  40. ^ Herris and Pearson 2010, p. 29.
  41. ^ Hare 1990, p. 87.
  42. ^ Jones, 2002, pp. 158–159
  43. ^ Cheesman 1960, p. 92.
  44. ^ Franks 2001, pp. 59–60.
  45. ^ Lewis, 1977, p. 52
  46. ^ Bruce, 1968, v.2, p.119
  47. ^ Van Wyngarden 2006, p. 51.
  48. ^ Van Wyngarden 2006, p. 64.
  49. ^ Cheesman 1960, p. 166.
  50. ^ a b Grosz 1996, p. 5.
  51. ^ Guttman, 2009, p. 9
  52. ^ Jones, 2002, pp. 161–162, 160
  53. ^ Jones, 2002, p. 281
  54. ^ "Deadly Fokker", Flight, vol. VIII, no. 371, p. 103, 3 February 1916, retrieved 13 September 2014 – via Flightglobal Archive
  55. ^ Hare 1990, P. 29
  56. ^ Hare 1990, p. 91.
  57. ^ Cheesman 1960, p. 108.
  58. ^ "Armistice terms" firstworldwar.com

Bibliography

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  • Bruce, J. M. War Planes of the First World War. London: MacDonald, 1968. ISBN 978-0-356-01473-9.
  • Cheesman, E. F. (ed.) Fighter Aircraft of the 1914–1918 War. Letchworth, UK: Harleyford, 1960. OCLC 771602378
  • Franks, Norman. Sharks Among Minnows: Germany's First Fighter Pilots and the Fokker Eindecker Period, July 1915 to September 1916. London: Grub Street, 2001. ISBN 978-1-90230-492-2.
  • Gray, Peter and Owen Thetford. German Aircraft of the First World War. London: Putman, 1990, First edition 1962. ISBN 978-0-93385-271-6.
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  • Grosz, P. M. Halberstadt Fighters. Berkhamstead, UK: Albatros Productions, 1996. ISBN 978-0-948414-86-2.
  • Guttman, Jon (Summer 2009). "Verdun: The First Air Battle for the Fighter: Prelude and Opening" (PDF). World War I.com. Part 1. The Great War Society. Retrieved 26 May 2014.
  • Hare, Paul R. The Royal Aircraft Factory. London: Putnam, 1990. ISBN 978-0-85177-843-3.
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  • Immelmann, Franz (with an appendix by Norman Franks). Immelmann: The Eagle of Lille. Drexel Hill, UK: Casemate, 2009 (originally published in Germany, 1934). ISBN 978-1-932033-98-4.
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  • Lewis, Cecil. Sagittarius Rising. London: Penguin, 1977 (first published 1936). ISBN 978-0-14-004367-9.
  • Kennett, Lee The First Air War: 1914–1918 New York, Simon & Schuster, 1991. ISBN 978-0-02-917301-5.
  • Robertson, Linda R. The Dream of Civilized Warfare: World War I Flying Aces and the American Imagination Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-8166-4270-0.
  • Terraine, John. White Heat: The New Warfare 1914–1918. London: Book Club Associates, 1982. ISBN 978-0-85052-331-7.
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Further reading

External links

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