My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleysquares or turning the nose of the machine a point or two off the wind to cause a driftwhich deceived the gunner. He would go straight across the middle of the square ofguns in case any evasive action impeded observation, and, worse still, if visibility wasnot clear, he would go down in the middle of the square to have a better look, thuspresenting a closer and better target. This was one of the most trying operations to hisobserver, for he would throttle back the engine to descend and in a careless momentwould sometimes lose it altogether. There was only one way to start these old enginesagain, which was to dive and thus make the air-rush swing the propeller. The mostlikely explanation of this sudden dive to the observer in front was that the pilot hadbeen hit and had fallen forward on the joystick, as we used to call it. The onlypossible course of action then was to unfasten the seat-belt, struggle round in thenarrow cockpit and try to lift the pilot in the rear seat off the stick. The reassuringclimax was the grinning face of Hawker as he pulled the machine out of the dive witha triumphant roar of an engine re-started.Fighting in the air was at that time not much developed because we had not yet gotmachine-guns and were simply supplied with the old short cavalry carbine. Thenightmare of the pilot was that the observer would accidentally shoot through thepropeller, so these rather ineffective combats were not very eagerly sought. ButHawker, even on a long reconnaissance, would turn round to engage several Germanmachines at once miles behind the lines, even if to the hazard of the combat wasadded the risk of running out of petrol on the way back. The bundle of nerves beforethe take-off became berserk in the air. This contrast between previous nerves andsubsequent action is a phenomenon to be observed in outstanding performance in verydiverse circumstances; for example, in Lloyd George before a speech.Hawker would take risks for fun, a rare characteristic in the middle of a war, and wasalways on the look-out for new sensations and experience of flying. Unfortunately Ihad spent some time as observer to an experienced pilot who was most expert in thetrick then called tail-sliding, to which the BE2C was particularly well adapted. Thepilot pulled back the stick as in the beginning of a loop until the machine was verticalwith the nose pointing upwards: the aircraft would then slide tail first towards theground, giving at any rate one occupant the sickening sensation of having left hisstomach behind him a long way up in the air. The pilot would then throttle back theengine and the nose would come down, taking the machine into a dive from which theBEaC recovered in 2,000 feet, but not before. My old pilot used occasionally toperform this akwward feat in sheer joie de vivre above the aerodrome to celebrate ourreturn from some trying mission. I always felt that these performances might or mightnot be all right for the pilot who controlled the situation and had his own life in hishands, but they were not so entertaining for the observer, who had no effective say inthe business.However, I was unwisely persuaded by Hawker one day to go up with him for his firstattempt at this trick in order to inform him if he did everything as correctly as theexpert had done. Arriving at the necessary altitude, he stood the machine on its tail inproper form and we started the slide, but in his forgetful fashion he omitted to throttlethe engine back at the right time. The consequence was that the nose of the BE2Cremained in the air and we fell in this way much farther than usual. Again I had tostruggle round in the narrow cockpit to indicate that the engine should be throttledback. When this was done we were unpleasantly near the ground, and the question50 of 424