Fokker Fodder

By Kent Hugus

Young Sam was caught in France by the start of WW-I. Fortunately, he had been taught to fly by
Glenn Curtiss in 1913. At first rejected by the French air force, he drives ambulances until finally accepted by the French. He flies combat in Nieuports and SPADs, joins the US volunteers making up the Lafayette Escadrille. Before war's end, he scores seven kills.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kent Hugus
• Release date: Jul 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301191758

Kent Hugus

Graduated Cal at Berkeley and have the sandals to prove it. Served as a Naval Aviator. Joined IBM as a software engineer, and then resigned to form my own software company. Sold that and retired to Park City, UT, until illness forced me down to sea level. I moved to Escondido, CA, and commenced writing novels. I am divorced, but have two sons, a daughter, and several grandchildren.

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Fokker Fodder

Kent Hugus

Copyright 2008 Kent Hugus

Published by Kent Hugus at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.Acknowledgement

Ambulance driving is most lividly described by the late Leslie Buswell’s unpublished letters home written during his service at the Front during World War One.

A feel for squadron life at the Front was found in High Adventure by James Norman Hall, The Canvas Falcons by Stephan Longstreet, and Warbirds: The Diary of an Unknown Aviator by Elliot White Springs.

Details about the Lafayette Escadrille were found in the excellent Lafayette Escadrille Pilot Biographies by Dennis Gordon.

Historical liberties were taken for the sake of the story. There was no Sam Hebert in the Escadrille and Sam was not patterned after any specific member of any squadron, he being a figment of my imagination.

Foreword

Early in WW1, Germany saw the need for a hunting aircraft capable of destroying enemy reconnaissance and bombing aircraft. Anthony Fokker designed a monoplane to fill this need: the Fokker Eindecker. It was equipped with a machine gun capable of firing through the propeller; this allowed the pilot to aim the aircraft much as one aimed a pistol. The aircraft was so successful; its victims called themselves Fokker Fodder.

Oswald Boelcke became an early German ace while flying the Eindecker. He codified a set of rules for successful aerial combat; they were called the Dicta Boelcke and have been drilled into the heads of budding fighter pilots ever since. Here they are:

1. Try to secure the upper hand before attacking. If possible, keep the sun behind you.

2. Always continue with an attack you have begun.

3. Only fire at close range, and then only when the opponent is properly in your sights.

4. You should always try to keep your eye on your opponent, and never let yourself be deceived by ruses.

5. In any type of attack, it is essential to assail your opponent from behind.

6. If your opponent dives on you, do not try to get around his attack, but fly to meet it.

7. When over the enemy's lines, never forget your own line of retreat.

8. In principle, it is better to attack in groups of four or six. Avoid two aircraft attacking the same opponent.

Boelcke was killed after his 40th victory when he violated his own Rule 8. Trying to avoid von Richthofen, he collided with squadron mate Irwin Böhme while all three were jointly attacking a DH.2.

With the Fokker Eindecker, the measure countermeasure of hunter (fighter) design began. France introduced an Eindecker killer, the Nieuport. Germany copied the Nieuport, gave it more horsepower, and called it the Albatross. The French introduced the SPAD, Germany the Fokker Triplane, and the race for technical supremacy continued throughout that war and after.

A machine gun suddenly rattled behind me, stitching my right wing with a scattered row of holes in the fabric marching inboard toward my cockpit. Surprised and horrified, I sucked the stick into my gut as I rolled into a hard left turn, glancing over my shoulder to see the four Albatross DVs that had attacked me in my moment of inattention and caught me unawares. The larger wing area of my Nieuport 17 allowed tighter turns; I pulled harder and felt the edge of buffet, pulling any tighter would cause a stall and give that eager beaver behind me a chance to take my scalp.

While I and my assailant continued our lethal dance around the maypole, his three wingmen pulled above our Lufberry circle using their 180 hp Mercedes engines to the max. They had hopes of picking me off while their leader kept me on the defensive, rending my Nieuport with his twin Spandaus; my craft was being shot to pieces around me and I was lucky to be missed. Suddenly, four Nieuports from our high flight surprised the overhead Albatross, thank the Lord, and I was left with only one adversary, giving me a chance. I chopped my throttle and quickly reversed in a tight barrel roll, causing him to overshoot me. As he shot past, I saw a bright red dragon painted on the side of his fuselage.

I fired several rounds into that dragon, watching the plywood of his fuselage splinter and blow past my nose; revenge was never sweeter, but I was jerked back to reality when my engine suddenly quit cold. Sometime during the action, my fuel tank had been holed, and I was out of gas. I was poorly placed, now at 6,000 feet, several miles on the German side of the lines, my propeller wind milling. The Albatross was somewhat below me now, noted my slowed propeller, and saw me as dead meat. He zoomed up under me and drilled several shots into my underbelly, again missing me but allowing me to see daylight through the holes around my feet. I thought he was getting careless and would overshoot, so I prepared to spray him as he passed ahead. He was aware of my intentions, throttled back, and sat just below and slightly ahead of me, yawing his Albatross in order to drift back and get a shot at me from the rear. I shoved the stick forward in order to get my nose on him and take a shot, but instead struck his upper wing squarely with my landing gear.

Simultaneous with the collision, his propeller struck mine and both propellers shattered into a thousand pieces. His finely tuned engine screamed in over speed, over heated, and, before he could cut the ignition, seized with an ear rending screech. The sudden lack of sound was deafening. By now at 5,000 feet and some 3 miles behind the German lines, my Nieuport was stuck firmly to the Albatross, and I was deathly afraid to move the controls.

A voice shouted in French, Can your controls move? Mine are frozen.

My wheels stuck in his upper wing must have restricted his aileron cables. I moved my stick side to side cautiously and the joined pair of aircraft responded slowly, rocking side to side. The Hun must have been as happy as I was to have this modicum of control. I knew we had flying speed but we were losing altitude at a great rate, so I decided to push the control envelope a little further, easing the stick back to slow our descent. I was rewarded by a slight buffet that warned of an approaching loss of flying speed, that would result in a stall and fatal spin with the two interlocked aircraft.

Can you move? Are you hurt? I shouted.

I’m alright. he responded.

We were now at 2,000 feet, and I thought we could make the French lines. Down, down, down we went as I watched the altitude spin off until, at 700 feet or so, I could make out gray Boche helmets. Archie left us alone, never having seen an aircraft quite like the pair of us, interlocked like a pair of mating dragonflies. Five hundred feet and I turned into the wind that paralleled the lines, hoping to be nearer the French side of no man’s land. As we approached the earth, I could not resist attempting to flare and ease the touchdown; succeeding, we touched down lightly, caught some barbed wire, and turned tail up, nose down. As we went over I was thrown clear and landed face down in a muddy shell hole.

Chapter 1

We lived in a small farming community about 8 miles east of Dayton, Ohio. I those days, it may as well have been eighty; the roads were packed earth and gravel, and the only mode of travel besides shank’s mare was the horse and buggy or the train. The village was fortunate in that it was on an electric interurban line, making a trip into Dayton a matter of a few cents and half an hour. Dad spent his days working his nearby farm of some 200 acres, where I was assigned farm chores to be completed at dawn and after school, for chores took precedence over schoolwork; animals had to be fed, cows milked and horses bedded down. Only then we had supper; after supper it was on to my homework by the light of a kerosene lantern.

Dawn to dusk in the long days of summer, Dad and I worked very hard on the farm; Dad completed the milking at sunrise, while I fed the livestock and gathered the eggs. I then took a short nap on the living room rug until Grandma Hebert called to us breakfast. It was then on to the major jobs dictated by the calendar, plowing, planting, cutting and threshing grain, the endless repetition required to make a farm a success. I looked forward to dinner time at noon when Grandma Hebert set a great table for the three of us. That great table of food lasted my growing frame until the middle of the afternoon, when I opened the sugar sack hanging from my belt and found a sandwich and some cookies to carry me until supper at dusk.

As summer wore on, I looked forward to attending the one room schoolhouse in the village because it gave me a respite from the hard work of the farm. That was until schoolhouse boredom in the dark days of January, when the hard work of summer was more attractive than doing sums, parsing sentences, and clapping erasers. But all that was to change this year, I was thirteen, more than ready for high school and out from under the hard work and immediate supervision.

I never knew my mother; she passed away when I was born, and was buried in the family plot adjacent to the village church. Dad’s mother, Grandma Hebert, raised me with a firm and loving hand; I saw her as my Mother and loved her dearly. She often reminisced about her childhood and told me stories about her village home in France, a place called Terrieux. We spoke French at home and English elsewhere; I was bilingual, and it was so natural, I didn’t even realize it. Our cottage in the village was Grandma’s pride along with her gladiolas, her cat and her kitchen garden. It’s going to be a lonely house, she said. What with Sam living in Dayton all week going to high school.

The boy is going to get more of an education than I had, Dad said. He can catch up on his chores come the weekend.

I thought you’d let me forget about that, I said. We high-school men are above and beyond manual labor

Not ‘above and beyond’ eating though, are you? Dad asked with a laugh.

Our small family working a 200-acre spread was unusual; large families worked most farms of this size. Before the advent of modern machinery, farming was even more labor intensive, and the cheapest labor was sons, many sons; I had to do the work of many sons.

Wrench in hand and a mechanical problem before me, I was happy to spend hours solving it and making it right, showing scarred and busted knuckles to prove it. A farm has many now archaic machines requiring constant attention, and that was where I excelled. I had hopes of obtaining a mechanical engineering degree in the far future, and Dad wanted that for me, his only offspring. Meanwhile, I was starting high school this fall in Dayton where I would live with Dad’s brother, my Uncle Claude and his family, returning home on weekends on the electric interurban train. This rite of passage had me feeling quite grown up, and I looked forward to the weekday freedom from the heavy work of farming and getting out from under the watchful eye of Grandma Hebert.

Cousin Leon and I were the same age and challenged one another both in sports and in the classroom. Leon is darker than me with brown hair and brown eyes, while I am Norman French with the blond hair and blue eyes inherited from the Vikings via my late mother. I have the height and brains on Leon, but he is more muscular and a natural athlete. We both played the newly popular game of high school football, me at quarterback and Leon running interference at the right end soon brought us letters to wear on our jackets.

One day, after several weeks in Dayton, Leon and I were walking home after football practice. There were sidewalks in those days, kept spic and span as a matter of homeowner pride. Ford Model Ts were now chugging down the streets intermingled with electric streetcars and horse drawn vehicles; however Dayton was still small enough that we young folks could walk to any destination in town in just a few minutes.

The Wrights are flying their machine out at Huffman Prairie. I said. I saw them Friday evening on the ride home. I was out there watching most of the day Saturday. Man, that machine is a sight to see.

Don’t know what they’ll do with the contraption. Leon said. Seems like a lot of time and trouble to just fly around a field a couple of times. They can’t go far from that launching tower.

The Wrights initially used a wooden tower with a suspended weight to get their aircraft up to flying speed. A rope attached to the weight was routed through pulleys to the far end of a monorail, and then back to a small launching car that straddled the monorail. The aircraft sat astride the car, and when the weight was dropped, the rope pulled the car with the aircraft along the rail and, as flying speed was attained, the aircraft became airborne and continued on engine power alone.

They don’t need the launching tower any more, you know? The new machine has skids so it can take off and land wherever there’s a level field, I said. I still don’t know what it’s good for, he said.

I think the Army will buy it to replace the cavalry, I said. One job of the cavalry is to scout out the enemy, you know, like Jeb Stewart did during the Civil War. We were studying the Civil War in history class. An airplane could do that from the air easy.

Okay, General, Leon said. You’re Dayton’s military genius now?

Wait and see, I said. There are probably lots of uses for airplanes we haven’t even thought of. You know, like Cal Rodgers and that airplane he bought.

But he killed himself doing it, Leon said.

Cal Rodgers bought a Wright Flyer, Model B,

Reviews for Fokker Fodder

[Christine Hughes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A thoroughly enjoyable yarn, realistic characters and convincing stories of areal combat