Free Wings by Patrick Bishop

take command of 3 Squadron.
    ‘They bombed the château with great success from a height of a few feet,’ McCudden recorded. ‘Captain Conran’s description when he returned of some fat old
Landsturmers [reservists] running up a road, firing rifles without taking aim, was very funny, but the Morane was badly shot about, and a bullet had passed exactly between the pilot and the
passenger at right angles to the line of flight.’ It was, he reflected ‘hard to decide who was more lucky.’ 8
    In fact, Salmond had the closer shave. He had felt a blow to his stomach and imagined himself shot. On landing he discovered the bullet had passed through his clothing. When
Trenchard heard about the escapade he wrote to Salmond: ‘You are splendid, but don’t do it again; I can’t afford to lose you.’ 9
    Conran was unperturbed by this or any other escapade. He seemed to be nerveless and to have an insatiable appetite for adventure. It could only end one way. McCudden remembered how, less than a
week after the raid on the château, Conran and a Lieutenant Woodiwiss ‘went out to drop some bombs [just south-west of Lille] . . . they arrived back in forty minutes and as they were
landing I noticed some flying wires dangling and a stream of petrol running from the machine. I ran to the Morane and found Captain Conran badly wounded in the back and the arm . . . one shrapnel
ball had embedded itself in his right arm and the other had gone in at his side and come out very near his spine. The machine . . . was literally riddled with shrapnel and how the observer escaped
unhurt I do not know.’ 10 Conran survived, but it was the end of his combat flying career. The luck of Woodiwiss did not hold. In May,
together with Lieutenant Denys Corbett Wilson, a prewar playboy who had been the first man to fly the Irish Sea, he was shot down in flames over Fournes.
    The second raid was launched in the afternoon, by two veterans – Louis Strange of 6 Squadron and George Carmichael of 5 Squadron. Strange was in a BE2c loaded with three bombs weighing
less than 25 lbs hanging under thewings on racks, which he was to drop on Courtrai railway station. Carmichael piloted a Martinsyde biplane, carrying a single 100 lb bomb and
his target was a railway junction at Menin. Strange came in low, below 200 feet, and was peppered by ground fire as he closed on the station. A troop train was waiting at the platform and his stick
of bombs landed around it, killing, an agent reported later, seventy-five soldiers. Carmichael also managed to land his bomb on target, but with less effect.
    Strange’s success perhaps reinforced exaggerated notions of what bombing could achieve, for six weeks later a single aeroplane was once again sent to bomb the Courtrai rail junction, to
disrupt the movement of tens of thousands of troops who were believed to be about to arrive there prior to an offensive to drive the British out of the Ypres salient. The pilot was Will
Rhodes-Moorhouse of 2 Squadron, who, on the afternoon of 24 April, set off from Merville aerodrome in a BE, flying solo to make room for the single 112 lb bomb he was carrying. He flew in and
dropped his bomb at 300 feet, but was caught in a blizzard of small-arms fire. Although wounded badly, he nursed his bullet-riddled machine back to Merville to gasp out his report to Trenchard. A
few hours later he died. Rhodes-Moorhouse’s heroism won him the Victoria Cross, the first of eleven won by RFC personnel during the war. He left behind a fifteen-month-old son, also William,
who earned his pilot’s licence while still at Eton, joined 601 Auxiliary Squadron, flew from Merville aerodrome during the Battle of France in 1940 and, like his father, died in combat,shot down over Kent during the Battle of Britain with eight ‘kills’ to his credit.
    Aviators reacted differently to the perpetual risk and danger. An airman could sink into introspection or assume a mask of manly indifference to death. Some