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Taken at the Central Flying School, Upavon, UK, this rare photograph records Cobby's first encounter with the renowned and sometimes reviled Sopwith Camel F.1. (Kookaburra)
First Combat
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An extract from the newly released illustrated autobiography HIGH ADVENTURE, by special permission of Kookaburra Technical Publications Pty. Ltd., the Publishers.
In No. 4 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps, we were gradually developing pride in our formation flying, its excellence partially induced by the biting remarks of our pals if a mistake was made, but mainly by reason of the fact that we were learning in the strictest of all schools – that of necessity. The casual remarks of pilots of other squadrons “that you ruddy Australians can formate” (a word coined in the Flying Corps to embrace all types of formation flying) made pleasant hearing. In those days, units of quite considerable experience were not particularly exacting in their air drill, but from the first it was insisted upon in No. 4. Perhaps it was so by reason of the fact that we were all so new to the game, and close herded instinctively for safety, that we regarded it with so much importance. Whatever the underlying cause, it imbued us with a sense of added security to be able to take off and land again with the wingtip tucked in behind wingtip.
Our evenings, when not on late flying, were full of the gossip of outstanding fighters of both sides. The manner in which Ball, Bishop, McCudden and Mannock (who was then receiving notice as a destroyer of enemy machines) staged their attacks, their favorite positions for opening fire, the tactics they employed if surprised, and so on, were never ending subjects of argument and sometimes acrimonious discussion. Many were the theories as to what we would do under different circumstances, and many were the viewpoints for and against them all. The notorious Baron Von Richthofen was our principal bogey. He seemed to be unassailable. His victims were already numbered in the sixties, and there seemed to be no way in which to stop him. Evidently, he was a dead shot, an excellent pilot and a man of superb courage and still in his early twenties. The combination seemed too much for us lesser mortals. It made us even more determined not to lag behind when on patrol, but other than that we could only leave it to chance, or whatever might be in charge of our destinies at the moment. We had become fatalists and what was going to happen would happen, but we had no intention of throwing in our hands and we would take things as they came. We had learned something more, that the favorite direction of attack by all leading scrappers was from the sun. This gave the advantage of surprise and height to the attacker, and henceforth we included the luminary orb as one of the things to bear in mind. It was Richthofen’s favorite method. He would wait up above a dogfight until one of the enemy pilots became separated from his comrades, and he would dive onto the unfortunate straggler. His celebrated boast that everything below him in the air was as good as finished, was well known to us. He always patrolled in company with a number of other crack German pilots and they all had crimson coloured machines and were known as the “Circus”.
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