Antrim's heroic WWI airmen - and the death of the Red Baron

WHEN aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully achieved the historic first sustained airplane flight in 1903, few in the world would have fathomed that, just over a decade later, aircraft not dissimilar to the new-fangled, rickety wooden biplane they piloted would be engaged in life-or-death duels in skies high above European battlefields.

Nonetheless, the First World War would provide the staging ground for, if not necessarily the very first, then certainly the most revolutionary and massed use of military aircraft yet witnessed in warfare – and a small host of men from Antrim and its immediate surroundings were in the thick of the strange, ever-evolving and extremely dangerous new theatre of battle up in the air.

In fact, one local veteran would even play an unlikely role in one of the most fabled episodes of the air war, the death of German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, the legendary ‘Red Baron’.

As a brand-new technology with untapped killing potential, it was only a matter of time before the novel innovation of the airplane was weaponised. In 1909, the U.S. Army Signal Corps purchased a Wright Model A which had the distinction of being the first military aircraft in history, whilst the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-12 saw use of airplanes on the Italian side, who were the first to use one to drop a bomb on a ground target.

Conversely, their Turkish opponents, despite possessing no anti-aircraft weapons with which to defend themselves against aerial threats, were the first to shoot one down, with volleys of rifle shots aimed fired by infantrymen down below.

As tensions escalated across the continent in the early 1910s, concerns mounted over the extra dimension opened by the invention of the airplane, particularly in how their use would shape the conduct of warfare in the future.

In a grim foreshadowing of the destruction wrought upon the likes of Guernica, Coventry, and Dresden from the air later in the 20th century, legislation was proposed in 1911 to limit their use so as to protect civilians in undefended cities, but, when the Balkans erupted in 1914 and Europe mobilised her sons for the War to End All Wars, the conflict in the air took on a very different tenor to that on the ground – and what it itself would eventually metamorphose into.

Indeed, in the early, mobile stages of the war, airplanes were utilised primarily as a reconnaissance tool, scouting out enemy troop formations and spotting targets for friendly big guns to shell – a role carried out with great finesse by Allied flyers at the critical Battle of the Marne.

But, whilst their countrymen on the ground experienced bloodbath after bloodbath at the hands of machine guns and artillery when advancing over or defending the rolling open fields of Belgium and France, the pilots of 1914 experienced a curious sort of camaraderie with their airborne foes. It wasn’t uncommon for passing pilots of opposing nations to greet each other with a smile and a wave even as murderous fighting raged below.

That was soon to change.

Before long, with the war on the ground stagnating and the first of the infamous trenches beginning to make their mark on the pock-marked soil below, pilots on both sides started to attempt to engage the planes of the enemy – the true birth of aerial warfare.

Given that, initially, aircraft were fitted (if at all) only with weapons to attack ground targets, this required some imagination on the part of the flyers. Pilots threw grenades and other projectiles at enemy aircraft, fired pistols and rifles at one another, and, in the case of the first aircraft downed by another (an Austrian plane downed by a Russian one in Galicia), used their machines to ram their rivals with mutually deadly outcome.

The deadliest innovation came in October 1914, when a French airman named Louis Quenault used a machine gun he’d brought aboard his mount to down a German scout plane. Soon, all major combatant nations were rushing to equip their aircraft with machine guns - none so effectively as Germany, who, with their Fokker E.I plane, pioneered the use of a propellor that span in synchronisation with a mounted gun in 1915. Further innovations continued throughout the war as both sides vied desperately for air superiority, an arms race that saw great leaps in aircraft design and killing efficiency alike.

Given aircraft technology was still in its comparative infancy and pilots were just as likely to die in accidental crashes whilst in training or on patrol as they were in combat, the mortality rate of airmen skyrocketed with the dawn of the era of the ‘dogfight’.

By April 1917 – or ‘Bloody April’ as it came to be known - the average life expectancy of a British Royal Flying Corps (RFC) pilot declined to just 69 in-flight hours.

In that month alone, the RFC lost 275 aircraft, not to mention the 207 men who died flying them.

Even so, as Alvin McCaig observes in his book ‘Antrim in the Trenches,’ the excitement offered by this modern branch of the military proved ‘irresistible’ to thousands of young men.

One such man was Market Square student Lieutenant William McKeown who, after a stint in the trenches as an infantryman, moved to the Royal Flying Corps in July 1917 to serve as an observer in what was most likely a two-seater Bristol F.2 biplane.

As an observer, the local man’s role was twofold. On the one hand, McKeown had orders to photograph the enemy lines and map out strong points such as machine gun nests or pillboxes.

Furthermore, in the event of interception by enemy aircraft, McKeown would be required to act as rear gunner, standing on his seat sometimes at an altitude of 5,000 feet to man the mounted Lewis machine gun.

This was an unbelievably hazardous manoeuvre to undertake even without the prospect of being shot at by the Germans – who tended to prioritise targeting observers first so as to silence their return fire.

As historian Del Kostka noted: “The observer had no advance notice or indication of the evasive manoeuvres taken by the pilot. At 100 miles per hour, with the plane twisting, turning and diving, the observer’s only hold on life was the suspect mount of his Lewis machine gun.”

In addition, First World War RFC pilots were not issued parachutes. The high command believed their distribution would negatively impact the performance of airmen, who might be inclined to bail out of their machines at the first sign of danger rather than carry on with their allotted mission.

There was no feasible means of escape from the flimsy and highly flammable wooden craft if they were set alight by enemy gunfire and, as such, a number of pilots developed the habit of bringing a loaded pistol with them on their person in the event they should want a quick death rather than face the torment of burning alive or plummeting to the earth in a disabled plane.

Lieutenant William McKeown flew with the 62nd and 55th Squadrons until, after only three months in the RFC, the overwhelming stress of the air war incapacitated him.

He was diagnosed with neurasthenia, a condition characterised by fatigue, tremors and emotional disturbance. After a number of medical assessments – one of which was held at Shane’s Castle – he was deemed unable to serve any longer.

However, McKeown was not the only local man to volunteer for action in the fledgling RFC.

Robert Kissick, a rifleman of the 36th Ulster Division nicknamed ‘Wirecutter Kissick’ by his fellow soldiers, also signed up at a time when the role of pilot couldn’t have been more perilous. A German pilot known as the ‘Red Baron’ ruled the skies, and his name was spoken on Allied airfields with a hushed mixture of awe and dread.

Manfred von Richthofen was the most successful fighter ace of the war, eventually being officially credited with 80 aerial victories.

The former cavalryman came to be something of a celebrity in Germany, personally leading a squadron known as the ‘Flying Circus’ in his distinctive aircraft, a Fokker Dr. I triplane he had flamboyantly painted bright red.

Feared and respected in equal manner by Allied flyers, the Red Baron was known not only for his effective tactics and extraordinary skill, but also for the chivalry with which he entreated his foes - when he shot down his first British plane over Cambrai in 1916, he wrote of paying his respects to his ‘fallen enemy’ by ‘placing a stone on his beautiful grave’ and, in another instance, the Baron allegedly escorted a British plane he had damaged to land so as to spare the wounded pilot, having deemed him no longer a threat.

He was not an opponent to be underestimated, though.

The German aristocrat had a flair for hunting, and it is said that his bedroom was decorated with the serial numbers of the Allied planes he’d shot down, complete with a chandelier built from the rotary engine of a British aircraft.

If the Allies were to achieve air superiority, the Baron had to be defeated...