The Two-Headed Eagle

In the event though it looked as if the wretched Schwarzlose might not be needed that morning, there in the summer sky above the Friulian Plain. I pulled the lever to expose plate number thirty, heard it clack into the box and then turned thankfully to Toth to tap him on the shoulder and signal “Finished—head for home.” I was glad of this, because cloud was coming in fast from the west: white cauliflowers of cumulus which were for the moment above us, but which seemed to be coming down to our altitude. I looked up and saw Schraffl’s aeroplane disappear into the cloud above us, reappear for a moment and then vanish again as we turned for home. He had seen us I was sure, but to make certain that he knew we were finished I fired a white flare just before we lost sight of one another.

When I next caught sight of an aeroplane, about three kilometres astern and slightly above us, it took me some moments to realise that I was not looking at Schraffl and Jahudka’s machine. I could not see exactly what it was, but head-on it was most certainly not a Brandenburger, whose inward-sloping struts gave it an unmistakable appearance when viewed from the front. It was a biplane, but of what kind I could not say except that it appeared to be somewhat smaller than ours—though still too large for a Nieuport—and that it was most certainly closing with us at speed. Then I saw another one, at the same altitude but about two kilometres astern of the first. Whoever they were, they had seen us and were gain­ing on us fast. Heart pounding, I turned around and seized Toth by the shoulder. He looked around to where I was pointing, and nodded casually. I signalled for “Full throttle” by thrusting my fist forward. He nodded, and eased the throttle lever forward a little. Meanwhile I had turned to fumble desperately with the machine gun, releasing the clamp which held it still on its mounting-rails and jerking back the cocking lever. Damn them, where were Schraffl and Jahudka? They were supposed to be escort­ing us and ought to be manoeuvring now to drop down on the Italians as they came in astern of us. And why were we moving so slowly? Surely a Brandenburger could travel faster than this at full throttle.

The leading aeroplane was close enough behind us now for me to get a good look at it. It was most definitely an Italian two-seater. Of what make though I have no idea at all, except that it had a rotary engine and a gun mounted on the top wing to fire over the propeller. They were still out of range, but weaving about slightly in our wake in an effort (I suppose) to confuse us before they moved in for the kill. The Italian was smaller and evidently rather more manoeuvrable than our Zoska, and also looked as if it might be slightly faster. Although I had no way of knowing it at the time, he was about to use what would become the standard technique for shooting down a reco

In the event though, both the Italian pilot and I had reckoned with­out Zugsfuhrer Toth. He banked us a little to starboard as expected. I caught a glimpse of the Italian machine—a mottled greenish-buff colour I remember—under our tail and was just about to loose off a few shots at him when he disappeared back under it. In panic I turned to Toth—and felt my stomach and liver hit the top of my skull as Toth suddenly gave full throttle and dropped into a power dive. Then I was squeezed to the floor as the whole airframe squealed in protest about me: Toth had wrenched the control column back to take us up in a tight loop! I was not strapped in of course: the observer’s folding seat had shoulder-belts, but to fire the machine gun I had to stand up with nothing but gravity to hold me into the aeroplane. I still shudder to remember the sudden, stark terror of find­ing myself upside-down, three thousand metres above the meadows and woodlands of Friuli, clutching convulsively at the cockpit coaming as the engine coughed and faltered at the top of the loop. Then, just as I felt sure that I must let go and fall to my death—I was already hanging in mid-air like a gymnast performing a somersault between parallel bars—the nose dipped down as we dived out of the loop. As we did so I saw ahead of us the Italian, taken by surprise, trying to execute the same manoeuvre.

I see it now as vividly as in that split second one summer morning seventy years ago: the perfect plan view fifty metres ahead; the black V-marking on the centre section of the upper wing; the red-white-green Italian colours on the wingtips and tailplane; the observer swinging his machine gun up in a desperate attempt to get a burst at us as we passed. In the event though it was Toth who fired first. Given the extreme crude­ness of our gunsights and the primitive firing system I think that it must still be one of the finest pieces of aerial marksmanship on record. Our forward-firing Schwarzlose clattered, and the hot cartridge cases show­ered back over us. The burst of ten or so shots hit the Italian just as he was into the tightest part of his loop, and therefore when the airframe was under maximum stress. I think that our bullets must have smashed the main wingspar, but I ca

That left us to face the other Italian aeroplane, which was now upon us, apparently undeterred by the fate of its companion. Toth had put us into a shallow, banking dive and I was just swinging the gun around to port to bear on the Italian—who was some way above us still and about seventy metres astern—when I suddenly realised that things were dread­fully amiss. It was a curiously unpleasant sensation; the queasy realisa­tion that something had gone terribly, unaccountably wrong: the way in which all the normal noises of flight except for the engine—the hum of the wind in the wires, the rushing slipsteam—suddenly ceased as we be­gan to fall out of the sky. The patchwork fields and woods below started to whirl crazily before my eyes as the ghastly truth dawned upon me. We had gone into a spin.

I suppose that in those early days of flying there was no condition, except death by burning, that was quite so dreaded as a spin. But even a petrol fire was susceptible to rational explanation: the peculiar horror of the spin was that it happened for no apparent reason. One moment the aeroplane would be flying along without a care in the world, the next it would be spiralling down to destruction, falling like a cardboard box and suddenly, bafflingly immune to whatever desperate measures the pilot might be taking to try and get it flying once more. Left aileron; right aile­ron; elevators up; elevators down; full throttle until the engine screamed itself to pieces—none of them were the slightest use. The only thing to do was to watch in horror as the ground came rushing up. Very few people had ever survived a spin, and those who had emerged from the wreckage alive usually found that their nerve had gone and never flew again. It was as if the gods of the upper air had condemned all of us fliers to death for our impudence in defying gravity, but were graciously pleased to keep to themselves the precise moment when they would execute sentence. All that I could do was to cling desperately to the cockpit edge as we fell and shut my eyes tight, waiting for the final smash.