100 YEARS ON...OUR The day
EARLY mist was clearing over an airfield in wartorn France when eight throaty aircraft engines coughed and clattered into life, heralding a new dawn for British aviation.
At 8.30am on April 1, 1918, two Bristol Fighter biplanes took off. Six more followed 10 minutes later.
Among the young officers was Lt George Hayward – my grandfather and one of World War One’s leading air aces, who would later receive the Military Cross for bravery.
And there to record the historic scene at Vert Galant airfield near Amiens, northern France, was Mirror snapper David McLellan, then a Second Lieutenant serving as a Forces photographer.
The sortie was believed to be the first official combat mission of the Royal Air Force which was formed exactly 100 years ago today.
Safely back at base, 17 men from the crack 22 Squadron posed for a photo – again, the first taken of RAF servicemen.
DOGFIGHTS
My grandfather was an observer and rear gunner and made a name for himself in a series of dogfights over the battlefields of Flanders.
He recorded 24 official “victories” – third highest among Allied fliers.
Mirror man David, meanwhile, was armed only with his camera as he joined air crews in the skies and troops in the trenches.
By 1918, the 32-year-old was already one of the Mirror’s most experienced war photographers. He covered the second Balkan war in Macedonia in 1912 before joining the Royal Flying Corps, forerunner of the RAF, as an official photographer in 1915. He took thousands of pictures for the War Office.
The RFC, then part of the Army, flew reconnaissance operations behind enemy lines, strafing infantry and bombing airfields. Soon, a desperate conflict in the skies saw George’s battle-hardened squadron in the thick of it, downing nearly 390 planes.
Airmen were not allowed to carry parachutes as top brass believed that would dampen their fighting instincts, while cockpits were too cramped for extra kit.
The life expec- tancy of crews was often measured in days or weeks, with more dying in training than in combat. By the end of the war, the casualty rate was one in four, with more than 9,000 lost in action and 7,000 wounded. Cattle dealer’s son George, one of three brothers and six sisters from Lewisham, South London, served in the Royal West Kent Regiment before joining 22 Squadron in 1917 at the age of 22.
Their two-seater Bristol Fighters, with a top speed of 123mph, gained a fearsome reputation as a fighting machine with a “sting in the tail” in the form of a rear gunner with a swivelling Lewis machine gun.
George received the MC for displaying “consistent skill, courage and determination in dealing with hostile aircraft”.
The RAF – the world’s first specialist air force – was formed when the RFC merged with the Royal Naval Air Service.
But aviation historian Norman Franks said the inaugural flight would have been despatched with
Battle of Britain, led by Hurricane and Spitfire pilots. Winston Churchill says: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” In 1943 Wing Commander Guy Gibson leads The Dambusters in blitz of