The Two-Headed Eagle

True, it was a conventional enough aircraft in layout: a small single- engined tractor biplane with a propeller at one end and a tailplane and rud­der at the other. It was just that compared with the pretty little Nieuport, which was as delightful to look at as it was dangerous to engage, some­thing seemed to have gone badly wrong with the Brandenburg KD’s proportions, as if we were looking at a normal aeroplane in a fairground distorting mirror. It seemed so inordinately high off the ground in relation to its length and wing span. The fuselage was a deep, narrow mahogany trunk of an affair with an Austro-Daimler engine completely blocking the forward vision, so that the pilot had to look along the recessed sides past the cylinder block (as with many of his other designs, Herr Heinkel seemed to consider forward view an u

And to crown all these eccentricities, making an already high aero­plane look higher still, like a dwarf wearing a top hat, was a curious wood- and-aluminium fairing structure atop the upper wing. This, we learnt, housed the aeroplane’s armament of a single Schwarzlose machine gun. It appeared that when he had designed the aeroplane for the k.u.k. Flieger­truppe Heinkel had assumed that he would be able to have a machine gun firing through the propeller arc as in all the latest German machines. Not a bit of it though: the German War Ministry had refused to sell Fokker interrupter gear to Austria and had in fact even refused to license the pat­ent to us. The machine gun on top of the wing was an afterthought, and the fairing—universally known as “the Baby’s Coffin”—was a desperate attempt to reduce the drag. Not only did it do next to nothing to help the aeroplane’s speed, it made it completely impossible—as we would soon find out—to clear a machine-gun stoppage in flight. In the years since, I have heard it said that we used to call the Brandenburg KD “the Flying Coffin.” I ca

We made our way back to the mess tent in silence. The two delivery pilots were already there, being plied with drinks by the orderlies like two unhurt but still intensely shocked survivors of a train crash. One was a Hungarian called Terszetanyi, if I remember rightly, the other a Pole called Romanowicz. The latter was still chalk-faced as he poured himself yet another schnapps with a trembling hand.

“Holy Mother of God,” he said, “I’m volunteering for the trenches tomorrow. Anything: storm-battalion, flame-thrower company, gas, bury­ing corpses—I don’t care.”

“Was it that bad? ”

“Bad? Jesus Christ I’ve never flown anything like it. Not even the Aviatik Rocking-Chair. The thing’s a disaster. The first time I took it up was yesterday afternoon, and it got me into a spin at two thousand me­tres. I managed to pull out just above the ground, God alone knows how. It wanders from side to side like a snake, while as for landing the thing, I don’t know how I managed not to tip over on my head like poor old Belounek. We took off from Marburg well enough—the pig climbs quite decently if nothing else—but we were hardly out of sight of the airfield when Metzger’s plane went into a spin for no reason at all.”

“I suppose that must have been Air Liaison’s ‘problems on take-off’?” Romanowicz smiled grimly and gulped his drink. “Yes, I suppose you could call it that. Only for Metzger it’s the end of his problems for ever. The poor bugger dived straight into the ground and went up like a fire­work: ‘strengthened the ranks of the angels,’ as we say back home.” “Why didn’t you turn back?”

“No choice, old man: orders and all that. Terszetanyi and I were with Flik 14 in the Ukraine, you see. We had some trouble there earlier this year over another flying abortion, the Aviatik BIII of blessed memory, commonly known as ‘the Rocking-Chair’ or ‘the Fairground Swingboat.’ The thing killed so many of our chaps that in the end we had a little mutiny—‘mass refusal of duty’ is the polite term among officers, I be­lieve—and said that we weren’t going to fly it any more. So they broke up the unit and moved us all to other Fliks. We were officers and not rankers so they couldn’t shoot us all or stick us into a penal battalion. But I tell you, we’re marked men. One more refusal of duty and we’re for the high jump and no mistake.”

“What do you think the KD will be like as a fighting machine?” asked Potocznik. Romanowicz found this immensely amusing.

“A machine that will rapidly carve for itself a lasting niche in the brief a

The mist was clearing from the valley the next morning as the remnants of Flik 19F took off from Caprovizza airfield, accompanied by their two ungainly escorts. I was in the leading aeroplane with Toth as pilot, while Potocznik and Leutnant Szuborits followed in the unit’s other service­able Brandenburger. Low cloud lay over the Vippaco Valley, but the Meteorological Officer had assured us by telephone that it was clearing rapidly west of the Isonzo and giving way to bright autumn sunshine: ideal conditions for photography. We droned around in circles to gain height, entering the cloud at about a thousand metres and emerging at two thou­sand to form up with our escorts. We watched the two KDs pop up from the fleecy white carpet, then got into line with them on either side of us and about fifty metres above. I watched them anxiously from my place be­hind the machine gun. They seemed a little unsteady to be sure. I supposed that Terszetanyi and Romanowicz were sitting in the cockpits, knuckles white with gripping the control column and waiting for the first tell-tale lurch that would presage the fatal spin down to disaster. Not for the first time I was glad that, whatever the hazards of front-line aviation, at least the Brandenburg two-seater was an easy and gentle old bus to fly, with no conspicuous vices; sturdily built and tolerant of wayward piloting.

I waved to them, but they did not wave back: mainly (I suppose) be­cause they were too frightened to take a hand off the controls. At least they seemed to be managing the aircraft a little better than on the previ­ous day. Perhaps it was just that the KD took some getting used to for pilots who had previously flown only two-seaters. It certainly seemed to have adequate speed. We were flying at seven-eighths throttle to gain height, but the two KDs seemed to be ambling along at only about three- quarters to judge by the exhaust smoke, which used to turn black at high revs. Perhaps things would not work out so badly after all.