War in the air: everything you wanted to know | HistoryExtra
"'The Royal Flying Corps flying to France in August 1914 took gin with them. London gin. When they got to France, they expected the French to have tonic. They didn't. They needed something fizzy. So they added champagne to the gin. That created one of the first cocktails. Probably the first cocktail ever made in war, the French 75. And they called it that because all the time their sleep was being disturbed by the French 75 millimeter artillery pieces that were firing near the airfield.'...
‘There's often the common perception of aviation being quite chivalric, the gentlemen of the sky, how true is this perception?’
‘I think initially, there was very much knights of the air. They're very much, there will be combat over the trenches. British officers taking out their Webley pistol, taking shots at a German because the main aim was to stop the Germans spotting aircraft reporting for their guns, the fall of shots so they could correct their aim and hit the targets. So you've got the spotting war… there was certainly a lot of, and it happened again, the Second World War. Basically there are very few people out there who will want to kill when there is no advantage in killing. So, there were times when when pilots would see the other guy was either wounded or out of ammunition. He wasn't going to affect anything. Let him go home and live another day. And that I think, became a very public perception of aero, aerial era warfare in 1914, 15. And then the Germans started to take it seriously. A guy called Baron von Richthofen, we all know as the Red Baron made famous, of course, by the brilliant Snoopy cartoons, he takes it dead seriously. He's out there to kill enemy pilots and observers in their aeroplanes and bring them down both for personal glory, and also for the war effort for Imperial Germany. So he wants Imperial Germany to win.
And we start to find, remembering then that pilots and aircrew in flying machines in the First World War had no parachutes. You are either condemning somebody to about five minutes of knowing they're going to die because the aircraft is falling from the sky, or the aircraft is consumed with fire. I mean, my great uncle flew in the end of the First World War, and carried a pistol with him not to shoot anyone but to shoot himself should the aircraft catch on fire. He would rather he said have had a bullet through the head than to have burned to death. So it's a nasty business. We shouldn't get too carried away with knights of the air. There is no doubt there is glory’...
‘When did women start to play a role in air combat?’...
‘If you're talking about military operations from the air, I think probably it's the black witches of the of Soviet frontal aviation in 1943, 44, the sort of Stalingrad, Kursk sort of time. So the black witches are flying training biplanes, and they're carrying bombs, and their job is to keep the Germans awake at night. So they're flying quietly, slowly, and they're just dropping bombs. And they're making a noise and they’re keeping the Germans awake, particularly German aviators, because when you're flying, you need every part of your resource. The Soviets realized that this was a good use of people. They had lots of volunteers, the aircraft they were using were very simple to fly. It didn't take very long to train these, these women to fly the aircraft. But it isn't really until you get much later into, even into the 1990s that you get women learning to fly, flying fast jets, being operationally qualified to fly them’...
‘Dogfights grab the public imagination, don't they? Very Hollywood… Some of the most successful pilots didn't dogfight. They just went in, chose a target, fired, flew out again, regrouped, came back and did passing shoots. If you start to get into a dogfight, it's gonna use up your fuel and your ammunition. It's going to make a, take a huge strain on you because you're pulling four or five G's, five times the weight of gravity as you come round. So if you're 100 kilos, you're weighing 500 kilos. The aeroplane isn't necessarily stressed for it. And what people I think don't understand is in the Second World War for example, we hear and think a lot about Battle of Britain dogfights and there's a dogfi-, you see wonderful pictures of contrails at 20,000 feet of aircraft in dogfights. Yes, that did happen a lot of the time, but actually, the aircraft that were being used, both the Messerschmitts on the German side and the Spitfires and Hurricanes in the Royal Air Force actually weren't designed for dogfighting. They were designed as bomber destroyers. So if you think back to 1934, when the Spitfire is specified, the main enemy has stopped being France and is now Nazi Germany… German fighters will not reach Britain. Our fighters will not reach Germany. So what we're after are bomber destroyers, which is why Spitfires and Hurricanes have eight machine guns in order to shoot down bomber aircraft... So the dog fight in the First World War is a lot more common...
Most of the air fighting that would be done today, and as we've seen in places like Syria, we've seen with the Israelis who are active a lot of the time, it’s missile engagement and it’s at range. Rarely do close to eus guns. There probably hasn't been a gun versus gun engagement since, Yom Kippur war in 1973. Or the War of the Football Players in Central America. That was two World War Two types of fighter, the Corsair versus the Mustang in in dogfights because one side accused the other side of cheating in a football match, which is a really interesting way of settling that, you know, so dogfighting. Yeah, First World War, a bit in the Second World War. In Korea, jets, MIG vs vs. Saber, but actually not as widespread as people might think...
[On friendly fire] Day three of the Second World War… the Brits have got radar for the first time. Picks up an aeroplane that's coming in from the direction of Germany. So they scramble, not a section of fighters - four - but a squadron of fighters - 12 - to intercept. Everybody wants to be the first person to shoot down a German aeroplane in the second World War. As they get close they discover it's a British aircraft that's lost… they recover as it's called the Intercepting Squadron, they, they come to turn around and land. Radar then sees these aircraft returning and thinks it's a massive raid. So then they scramble lots of aeroplanes… all these fighter bases around London believe the first raid is coming from Germany. Everybody expected Germany to bomb London on day one of the war because that's the popular myth of aerial bombardment. And as a result, there's a dogfight between Spitfires and Hurricanes, it isn't much of a dogfight, actually, because the Hurricanes realize that they're Spitfires. The two Spitfire pilots involved don't realize that they're Hurricanes, and they shoot down sadly, kill one aircraft. So RAF Fighter Command step, starts the war with a negative score sheet, having shot down one of its own aeroplanes... In both Gulf Wars, the first British casualties are caused by American aircraft, shooting up British convoys. Because the Americans are badly trained in recognition of friendly vehicles...
We've got parachutes for people who are in in balloons to jump out should their balloon be attacked because balloons filled with hydrogen catch fire. So, but what about putting them into, giving them to pilots? Oh, can't give them to pilots because pilots won't press home their attack. They'll they'll bail out rather than, lack of moral fiber"
If you believe in burning the boats to motivate your troops, not giving pilots parachutes makes sense