Free Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men by Peter Fitzsimons

heard it. To the amazement of the Frenchman, after the carbine was fired there was no sign whatsoever of a hit having been registered and it was obvious that the observer had completely missed. Cursing wicked fate that had given him a flying companion so hopeless with a gun in his hand, Roland Garros returned to base and planned his next move. 12
    At much the same time, the German aristocrat and cavalry officer Manfred von Richthofen was concluding that the air war might be important, and in fact the best part of the war to be fighting in. No matter that in the first days of the war, on horseback with the rest of the Uhlan Regiment No. 1, he and his fellow officers had looked at the planes overhead with such complete contempt that they fired on them all , regardless of whether they were friend or foe—for who knew which was which?
    Then one day von Richthofen was on duty near Verdun when he saw an aerial battle between a German Taube and one of the new French Nieuport fighters. Actually, it was less a battle than a killing, as the Taube was only an observer plane while the Nieuport had a newly installed Hotchkiss machine gun firing 8-millimetre solid brass bullets. Though the Taube dived, darted and dipped to get away—as a sparrow might try to escape a hawk—in the end, the German plane was shot down, exploding into a ball of flame before it hit the ground, not 500 yards from where von Richthofen stood. Despite the death of his countryman, the sheer wonder of the chase took von Richthofen’s breath away. As a lad he had loved to hunt prey with his brothers on the family’s huge estate in Silesia. What must it be like to hunt men ?
    He decided on the spot to seek a transfer, to get away from trying to fight this war on horseback—a method that was obviously outmoded—and see if he, too, could not become a war pilot. 13 Perhaps then he could avenge the unfortunate German pilot who had died before his very eyes.
    Roland Garros was not the first pilot of either side to be frustrated by the lack of ability to do damage to the enemy. On one celebrated occasion an English pilot had been so angered that he had thrown his empty, impotent revolver at the propeller of a German plane in the hope that it would bring the bastard down. 14 But Garros was the first to take matters into his own hands by trying to invent something better.
    Voila! Within a week Garros had organised as his observer a man who was reported to be one of the best shots in the French Army. Maintenant they would see what they could do to a German plane! And sure enough, just an hour after taking off, as the French pilot and his observer were nearing the town of Lunéville, with the majestic Meurthe River ribboning away below to the far horizon through the quilted patchwork of farmlands, they spied a German reconnaissance plane, an Albatros BII. Aux armes , citoyens!
    Bringing his plane in much closer this time, Garros was able to provide an easier shot for his companion. And it might have worked, too. But after the observer had indeed fired two careful shots at the Albatros for no visible results—careful, because all observers with guns had to be very sure not to fire forward anywhere near the propellers of their own plane—suddenly the German observer pulled out a machine gun and started spraying them! Happy just to make an escape from the fusillade of bullets, Garros returned to base, his mind whirring with both frustration and an idea he was forming on the next leap forward in aerial warfare. Certainly, most, when they heard of his idea, would say it was completely crazy, but with the right mechanic helping him, Garros thought he just might be able to make it work. That mechanic, Jules Hue, was extremely capable and together they began to work on Garros’s plan.
    At last the day had come.
    On 9 February 1915 Charles Kingsford Smith turned eighteen, and—with the written consent of his parents in his pocket—his first act was to present himself at the