Convinced
that the war would only last a few months, on the outbreak of
hostilities General
Bernard, the Director
of Aviation, decided to close all the aviation schools. He was
sacked on 10th October and replaced by General Edouard Hirschauer,
who had been the Inspector of Aviation 1912-13. Hirschauer
immediately reversed Bernard's decision. The school at Avord reopened
in September, followed in December by the one in Pau. Further
military schools followed
in
Chartres and Ambérieu. From February 1915,
military pilots were also trained at schools run by aircraft
manufacturers - at Etampes (Farman), Le Crotoy (Caudron) and Buc
(Blériot). All these three schools taken over by
the military in September, and further specialist schools were opened for air
gunnery (Cazaux), for fighter pilots (Pau), artillery spotters
(Châteauroux) and bomber crews (Avord). This growth was all rather
ad hoc, and was only rationalised in September 1915 with the
appointment of Major Adolphe Girod as Inspector of Schools.
Girod
ensured that all aircrew
candidates would undergo basic military training at the depot at
Dijon, before moving to a basic flying training school (Avord, Buc,
Pau, Tours, Ambérieu, Le Crotoy, Juvisy, Chartres and Etampes).
Pilots who gained their wings were then sent for further training on
the specific types of aircraft they would be flying at the Front. Men
destined for army corps squadrons or fighter squadrons, who had
trained on Caudrons or Voisins, were sent to Avord to also
familiarise themselves with Sopwiths and Nieuports. The same location
also contained a night-flying school. Fighter pilots were sent on to
Pau to develop their aerobatic skills and then to Cazaux for further
gunnery training. Army corps squadron pilots went on to Chartres,
while observers and gunners went to Cazaux.
Only
then would qualified aircrew be sent to the pool at
Plessis-Belleville, outside Paris, to await a posting to a front-line
squadron. In 1918, under normal circumstances, the whole process
would take six months. In 1914, some 134 trainees passed through the
system; by 1918, this had risen to 6,909. The
last man to qualify as a pilot during the war was Adrien Valière, on
11 November. Altogether,
some 16,546 pilots were produced during the war. Of those who
qualified in 1918, 40% went to fighter squadrons, 33% to army corps
squadrons, and 15% to bombers.
Flying
schools were distant from the Front, and were often in less-populated
regions. 'At the end of the sandy road,' ran a description of Le
Crotoy on the Somme estuary, 'the beach seemed vast and grey. Planes
flew back and forth, motors whined … pot-bellied Bessonneaux
hangars crouched sleepily in the dunes. It's the School. Over there,
on the horizon, something which could quite well be the sea … it
has gone out so far that you wonder if it will ever return. A plane
spirals down. Our future ace looks on, wide eyed. This evening,
tomorrow perhaps, he'll be flying too. Can it [really] be possible?'
Arriving
at Avord, Marcel Jeanjean was unimpressed by what he
found: 'everywhere a shambles. Revolting huts. Rotting mattresses on
the ground, and the CO meeting the latest batch of trainees and
shouting, “What do you want me to do with this lot?”'
Training
consisted of a mixture of theoretical lectures and practical work.
Raymond Berthelot arrived at Ambérieu on 29 June 1917 and attended
lectures on: 'cross-country flying, navigation, brakes and landing,
mechanics, intelligence gathering, aerodynamics, the Voisin aircraft,
stability, accidents, the engines, the carburettor, lubrication,
magnetos, flight safety, faults, the airfield, topography, compass
work and meteorology', before
making his first flight, on dual control, on 24 August.
The
instructors were experienced pilots from the Front, posted there as
much to give them a rest as to provide good trainers. Yet at least
one man was posted to a school because he was a poor
pilot: 'During his time with the squadron, from 3 August to 1 October
1916, pilot X was unable to render any effective service as a pilot,
either through want of self-confidence, or because he lacked the
physical qualities necessary to make a good pilot. I hope he'll be
able to make himself useful at the school where he has been sent as a
instructor, and that he will try hard to dispel the unfortunate
impression he made with the squadron.'
The
first practical stage for the novice pilot was with the 'penguins',
Blériot monoplanes fitted with small 20hp engines, whose wings were
cut down so they were unable to take off (there you are, you were wondering when penguins were going to come into it, weren't you?). 'They are rather difficult
to handle,' confessed Charles Biddrich, 'and are designed to teach the men to
steer straight. At first you go sideways and twist around in each
direction except the one in which you wish to go. After you catch on
to them however you go tripping along over the ground at some 35 or
40 miles an hour.' The Theory lectures at Le Crotoy took place in a
hangar: 'an instructor, in a front of a plane
prepared by
the mechanics, picks apart his dream: a bit of steel, wood, canvas
etc. – nothing very solid. … "Calm yourself my friend.
Nothing like this has ever stayed up." Comforted by these wise
words, [the typical student] waits for his first 24-hour leave.'
After
the penguins came the 'rouleurs'.
These were Blériots that were capable of flight, but the pilots had
to remain on the ground. Their object was 'to teach the pupil to
steer a straight course.' From here, the student moved on to the
'décolleur'
class,
in which he was allowed to leave the ground to a height of a metre or
so, before cutting the engine and returning to the ground. The height
and length of flight was slowly increased with every successful
attempt, all done under the eye of an instructor.
Jeanjean
described the momentous event of a first solo: 'The trainee, rather
pale, listens to the final words of advice from his instructor.
“Listen! You don't have the penguin in your hands any more, but a
racehorse. Don't push too hard on the joystick, the plane will dive
nose first into the ground. Above all don't pull back too hard,
otherwise you'll go into a steep climb that will end in a fatal loss
of air speed … Take care too never to cross control or you'll end
up in a spin. Be very, very careful when you're banking, feel very
gently for the controls or you'll end up doing a barrel roll.'
Pupils
were able to progress at their own speed, in a series of machines
with ever larger, more powerful engines: 'Since Saturday,' said
Biddle, 'I have passed through four classes so you can see that we
are moving right along.'
Marcel Thavet described these classes as follows: 'The 50s class, the
first step to the stars. Then the 80s, cross-country flying and the
pilot's licence. At Le Crotoy it was christened the 'clown flight'
because of the trainees' involuntary acrobatics the day they first
flew solo.'
The
final stage consisted of a 'serpentine' and a 'spiral'. 'Both,'
explained Biddle, 'were methods of losing height without gaining
distance, ie to land on a spot under you.' The final test consisted
firstly of two flights to a given location and back, staying aloft
for a specified time, and then two triangular routes of 225km.
Raymond Berthelot received his wings after a total of thirty-nine
hours flight time (10 hours solo), and a total of 139 landings.
At
Pau, pilots were taught simple aerobatic manoeuvres - loops, spins
and rolls. As in earlier stages of their training, pilots were
instructed on the ground, but they had to learn to control the plane
on their own. One pilot recalled, 'In the hangar, there was a plane
stripped of its fabric called “Cowkiller”, upon which [Sergeant]
Fronval made us go through the manoeuvres we had to perform. From the
landing strip, Lieutenant Simon [the commander of the school], with
his monocle, followed the progress of the pilots who normally passed
over at 1500ft. His eyes were always glued to the skies and he would
cry: 'I knew it, I knew it! That one's going to crash
."
And without fail, the poor sod smashed into the ground … what you
have to remember about the school at Pau is that there were lots of
fatal accidents, a guard of honour was permanently mustered for
burial duty.'
'Finally'
said Jim McConnell, 'the pilot is considered well enough trained to
be sent to the reserve, where he waits his call to the front. At the
reserve he flies to keep his hand in, practices on any new make of
machine that happens to come out or that he may be put on in place of
the Nieuport, and receives information regarding old and new makes of
enemy airplanes.' The 'reserve' was the pool of qualified pilots, the
Groupes
de Division d'Entraînement, located in and around Plessis-Belleville (Oise), north of
Paris. Carroll Winslow was billeted in nearby
Ermenonville, while the CO had his headquarters in the chateau of
Prince Radzivill. Winslow found, 'There
were four separate camps, one for each branch of aviation, and there
are over one hundred machines in each camp. We were practically our
own masters, and could make flights whenever we wished. The idea is
that the pilots here have an opportunity of perfecting themselves and
that, if they do not fly, why, then it is their loss.'
Adjudant
Jean Carayon found it an 'extraordinary, colourful shambles …
accidents on a daily basis, a crazy carnival of a place, spahis
mingling with colonial troops, everyone making fun of the uniform
with your
jumper
almost up to your ears, but a very pleasant atmosphere.' William
Wellman was less impressed: 'It
was in reality a good deal of a dump.'
Pictures: Hirschauer before the war (what a magnificent moustache!); Girod (whose moustache is not quite as magnificent); a pre-war postcard of the flying school at Le Crotoy, on the Somme estuary; a theory lecture by pilot and professional illustrator Marcel Jeanjean; 'a penguin' by Marcel Jeanjean; 'double command' by Marcel Jeanjean; 'a first solo' by Marcel Jeanjean; 'a photo for the marraine' by Jeanjean.
