Barefoot Pilot: Freedom on the Wings of Guardian Angels

By Clark Harrison

World War I air warfare as told by a 20th century paraplegic pilot and the two guardian angels that protect him in flight. One angel is German and the other American.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 20, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462835355

Clark Harrison

Clark Harrison was a lifelong resident of DeKalb County, Georgia. In spite of an injury from a enemy snipers bullet in World War II that left him paralyzed from the waist down he lived a full and productive life. After he finished college he battled physical problems and misunderstandings about the physically challenged. Surviving these problems made him stronger and more determined to do something worthwhile. He opened his own real estate business, made a successful run for Chairman of the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners, was founder of Fidelity National Bank and along with James Shepherd was founder of Shepherd Spinal Center. Along with these business ventures, he wanted to prove that a paraplegic could accomplish physical activities also. All he ever had to hear was You cant do that, youre in a wheelchair. He began to prove them wrong starting by swimming a mile a day. Then he began whitewater canoeing, hot air ballooning, scuba diving, hunting and fishing, horseback riding, and finally learned to fly his own plane. He was and is a hero to many. After completing his autobiography Long Way Home he began work on his second book Barefoot Pilot. He tells the tale of Barefoot and his guardian angels and their adventures in the air and on the ground. The book was completed just days before his death in 1989. The story has been revived as a tribute to his memory.

Book preview

CHAPTER I

A large, strange looking insect was beating its wings futilely gainst the outside of the Plexiglas in the corner of the windshield trying to gain entry to the cockpit and the blood that dripped with regular cadence from the wounded pilot’s face. The pilot, an old man, was pitched forward against the yoke of the small plane. He was still, unconscious. Then the snow white short cropped hair of his head moved as the pilot stirred and tried to focus on the moving insect and on the peaceful scene before him.

It was a beautiful, sunlit day. Time seemed to stand motionless as the old man focused his eyes on the level green field, the mountains in the near distance in every seen direction, the blue of the clear sky marked with scattered clouds that moved white and soft in a benign sky.

A gentle breeze could be felt through the partially open cockpit door, a spring like warmth that brought the newly awakened man a deep feeling of contentment.

Where am I? What am I doing here? For the moment, no memory would come. Then, glancing back at the bent cowling, the curled propeller that lodged in a shallow ditch or hole, watching the thick, dark blood drip steadily and in cadence from his face, he tried to regain his thoughts.

The loud, strident noise that filled the cockpit, repeating endlessly a series of staccato hammering sounds not unlike the blast of a horn on the 1920’s autos of his boyhood, seemed natural in this time and place, although he could not understand why this should be so.

Whatever it is, I have been in a plane crash, he finally decided. But I seem to be all right. He looked down at his inert legs. He felt no pain from the bruised right shin, but this seemed natural also. Glancing down, he noticed that the master switch controlling the airplane’s electrical system was on. He flipped the red rocker type switch off and immediately the noise stopped. He switched the control back on, somehow getting comfort from the loud noise. The sound, broadcast over the radio emergency frequency had a purpose, he knew that much.

It would bring help whether the switch was on and he heard it or not. But, it was comforting to know the signal was going out.

Looking to his right, the pilot studied the baggage and the disassembled red and black wheelchair that had come forward against the back of the right seat, canting it forward. Coming to a final rest, the airplane had nosed over into the hole causing the contents on the floor in the back to move forward. After pushing tentatively against the mass of weight, the old man relaxed again. Finding he could not easily dislodge the canted load, he made no further attempt to move but sat quietly trying to remember as the blood steadily dripped and the raucous horn of the Emergency Landing Transmitter continued to sound.

Airplanes, having gotten warm and quiet, the old man was beginning to doze, I’ve been fascinated with them since I was a kid building models of World War I fighter planes, the Spads, Fokkers, DH4s, Nieuports. Those were neat planes, a lot more advanced than most people realize and we built them to scale from plans taken off the originals.

CHAPTER II

The young boy sat before the card table. Behind him in the bedroom of the old house was a large single pane window that was raised and lowered by counterweights on clothes line rope concealed in the window framing. An open gas heater stood against the far wall, a single bed, one chair, a hand painted chest of drawers that held his knickers, cotton underwear, long johns for winter that he hated. On the back of the chair hung the heavy black leather sheepskin lined jacket that became furnace hot on the walk to school but that was required wear on even a cool winter day.

On the table were the plans, printed on cheap white paper marked with blue lines of the Fokker VII pursuit plane. The plans had been opened and lay flat, straight pins fastening the corners to the cardboard card tabletop. Arranged along the side of the plans were the wooden propeller, the heavy single rubber band, the sheets of balsa with the outline of the required ribs printed directly on the light, thin wooden sheets, a bundle of balsa longerons and a used blade borrowed from his Dad’s two edged safety razor. A pot of glue and one of dope sat alongside the colored paper that would, when glued and layered with dope, stretch tight over the ribs and longerons to form the skin that had been linen on the original fighters.

The boy looked down at the tips of his second and third fingers on both hands covered with hardened glue and the nicks from the held side of the double-edged razor blades. The nicks and hardened glue were the marks of the modeling trade, fingers numb at the tips from the razor cuts.

Modeling was inexpensive. A kit could be bought for two bits—a quarter—or so, a bottle of glue lasted for several models if you remembered to keep the lid tightly on while you worked, the dope, which smelled of tart bananas had to be applied evenly in layers or it would harden in spots and splotches.

With care, the skilled modeler could have a plane for less than a dollar with controls that moved like the real thing.

The models, authentic as they were, were good mainly for looking at. If you got one to fly, it was unlikely to survive its first landing without requiring some patching and repair—which come to think of it was true of many of the real airplanes of that era.

The Army Signal Corps, where military flying originated in the U. S., reported after the pre-World War I Mexican campaign that the average peacetime life of the handmade craft was ten months, while when on a campaign the life span dropped to three months.

Of course, as World War I progressed the planes got sturdier, but still, the pilots often survived their awkward landings in better shape than the airplane. In those days, there were two brands of mechanics. One worked on the engines while the other ground crewmen were called ‘riggers’ because a major chore was adjusting the wires that held the fragile craft together. They worked only on the airframe, patching holes and adjusting wires.

It was a good thing the models were cheap. The year was 1932 and the world in general and the southern U. S. in particular were in the depths of the Great Depression. With a weekly allowance of ten dollars to feed and clothe a family that included five children, toys were far down and usually off the list. The kid who could scrounge the cost of a Fokker or Spad could stimulate potent imaginings.

Aviation might be in its infancy, but it was a lusty infant indeed that occupied the thoughts and dreams of most of the male population. It was just five years since Lindberg’s solo flight from New York to Paris had emblazoned the reliability of piston driven engines on the public consciousness. And it was only fourteen short years since the Spandau and Vickers machine guns fired their last rounds through the propellers of German and Allied planes over the Western Front. With their imaginations fired by the models and by the five-cent pulp magazines, boys of all ages relived that romanticized era. G-8 and His Battle Aces still roamed the skies that filled the heads of young boys like our subject.

The boy cut and pinned several longerons in place for the Fokker VII fuselage, then glanced over to where the completed Sopwith Camel rested above his chest of drawers.

These were two of the greatest fighters ever built. There had been thousands assembled and sent to the Western Front in the closing year of the war. The Fokker was named for the Hollander who never became a German citizen but who had designed and built their finest fighters. In the beginning, the faster, more ma-neuverable Fokkers drove the Allied planes from the air, becoming known as the Fokker Scourge during the months of dominance. With twin synchronizing machine guns that fired straight ahead through the revolving propeller, the ship became a deadly gun platform. All the pilot had to do was aim the entire plane, wait until his opponent filled the round, cross marked sights, and he had a kill.

The Fokker VII, produced in volume in the final year of combat, became the weapon of choice of the German aces. In 1918 with its 185 horsepower BMW engine, carrying a useful load of less than 400 pounds—gas, a man, his guns and ammunition, the VII could cruise at 120 mph, could climb at 3280 feet in four minutes and had a ceiling of 18,000 feet that made an attack from altitude, diving out of the sun, its most deadly combat maneuver.

But by 1918, the British had the Camel. The ultimate weapon of the Sopwith factory trumped the German ace with its 150 hp Bentley that would do 121 mph at 6500 feet and could climb to 19,000 feet at a rate of 890 feet per minute fully loaded. The eight cylinder Bentley was a rotary—over 200 pounds of hardened steel cylinders revolving with the propeller at 1200 rpm. The torque yanked like a government mule trying to twist the airframe into a spin in the opposite direction. It took a strong right leg on the rudder to control it, but the pilots liked it. With only one valve per cylinder serving for the four-cycle series, it was reliable like the simple jet of later years. It started with the first kick of the prop and ran past the hell freezing time.

Staring at the miniature Camel on the chest of drawers, the young boy lost grip on time and place. He was in the Camel, it was climbing, climbing, the roar of the rotary drowning sound as the blazing sun wiped away vision. Today, he would climb to 19,000 feet, where oxygen starvation made the head light, the breathing rapid—and he would go hunting for the dreaded Fokker that had taken out two of his mess mates yesterday.

CHAPTER III

At age 26, Baron von Roemer was an old man. Old in terms of service as a German ace. He had flown since, at the age of 20 he participated in the earliest uses of the airplane—just eleven years after the Wright brothers made their first manned, powered flight.

In the beginning, he had in the typical German way been selected by his elders because of his superior I. Q., lightening reflexes and astounding eyesight. Sent to the flying school at Metzburg-Aachen near the Belgian border, he had trained in the 1913 Rumpler-Tauber first learning to taxi it on the ground—no mean feat for a plane with no ground steering mechanism other than propeller blasts against the oversized rudder and with no wheel brakes at all.

No fighter aircraft were being manufactured in the U. S., the first airplane having been purchased by the Army Signal Corp in 1911, a Wright flyer. And no American fighter would reach combat in World War I. Americans might have made the first manned, powered flight, but it would be up to the Germans and their enemies to develop the war potential of the airplane.

Rumbling through the sky in the aptly named trainer, von

Roemer nursed the 1323 pound monoplane to the top speed its 100 hp Daimler engine would allow and dreamed of greater things.

At the beginning, pilots thought of themselves as the last noble fighting service. High above the roaring cannon and chattering machine guns that had turned earth into a hell where the Armageddon blows of steel and explosive technology had progressed beyond human ability to absorb. The front lines became static partly because cannon so destroyed the earth the cannons trying to advance became bogged down in their own slippery, grasping mud. From altitude, the pilots looked down in disgust and amazement at the brutalization below.

In the beginning, high in the dawn lit sky men fought by the rules of fair play and gave quarter and even sanctuary to the fallen foe. Occasional rifle or pistol shots were exchanged between aircraft designed primarily to see and report enemy troop movements and to provide information for the more advantageous placement of the cannon shells.

Gradually that changed until death avenging death removed the finer aspects of chivalrous conduct and planes begin to appear that could not only lift the heavy machine gun with its ammunition, but fire straight ahead through the whirling propeller.

The Baron had graduated through the various levels of combat ferocity as they developed. In 1915, he was flying a two seated Albatross with a 150 hp Mercedes that buzzed along at eighty two and a half mph and that could climb to the astounding altitude of 10,000 feet. From that modest beginning, the Germans began to build machines that were a little sturdier and a little faster than their opponents only to see their ante raised both in speed and maneuverability in a spiraling perfection of the art that in 1918 saw powerful, heavily armored machines undreamed of in the early days.

Because of his record—the Baron had downed 57 planes as of this late autumn day—he always was one of the first to receive the newest, deadliest, most maneuverable planes. For a brief time, he had flown the tri-plane Fokker DrI then reverted to his beloved

Fokker VII with the powerful 230 hp BMW engine. Painted blue below and dark green and brown above and with the Baron’s skill at utilizing the sun, the plane was as invisible as any aircraft flying at 20,000 feet could be. Many a young Allied pilot had seen the Baron only at the instant his twin Spandau machine guns began to rattle and he appeared life size less than 150 feet behind his startled opponent.

Allied pilots, most of them prior to the entrance of the Americans the sons of the wealthy and powerful university elite were enthralled by the high adventure and chivalrous code of the early fighter pilot. From the beginning, being more ‘sporting’, they brought the war to the Germans fighting most of their engagements well behind the German lines.

Which suited the practical, methodical, scientific Germans just fine. With less concern about aircraft range, they could invest more of their limited useful load into heavy machine guns and ammunition. And, when the Allied pilot was forced by gunfire or mechanical mishap to land—having no parachute landing was the only alternative available to the pilot of a disabled aircraft—he was captured and lost to his unit for the duration.

Provided the German survived his crash landing, and in those days of light aircraft most did, he almost always came down in friendly territory and was soon back with his outfit.

The Baron himself had survived half a dozen such successful emergency landings. As the years passed, the Germans had more veterans and, as every pilot knows, there is no substitute for experience in the air.

The only flaw in this scenario that seemed so favorable to the German was the wear and tear of flying routinely to kill or be killed. Contrary to popular conception, the typical ace—one who had downed five or more of the enemy—was no longer the stalwart, untouched youth who had volunteered for the service. These men were old beyond their years. Dose after dose after dose of fear induced adrenalin had robbed them of the comfortable flesh of safety at home, their eyes were bright and piercing, and a slight tremor could be detected when these heroic men lit the cigarette that became a part of their mystic. In his fifth year in the service, Baron von Roemer displayed all of these classic symptoms.

But the Baron had learned from experts and he was good at his trade. It was a new kind of warfare. Fought in three dimensions it was like nothing that had come before. In the ocean called air, the Germans had learned from their more experienced fighters to concentrate their forces at points where the enemy could be expected to appear rather than to patrol the entire front. When an advance or retreat was anticipated, the fighters were sent to the area to circle high and with the sun behind them to await the expected Allied planes. Should disaster strike, even the prevailing winds favored the return of the German planes to behind their lines.

Von Roemer had learned well. He would climb to 20,000 feet in an open cockpit without oxygen and with only the heavy leather jacket wool lined as were the leather trousers that fastened to straps about his neck to protect him. A fur lined leather helmet encased his head and heavy shatterproof goggles protected him from the below zero temperatures.

The Baron never participated in a typical ‘dog fight’ circling with the enemy until the more maneuverable plane finally got into position behind his enemy for a fatal blow. Instead, he waited patiently at altitude, the sun to his back, until spotting his victim far below. Then, pushing over into the long accelerating dive that would take him unseen within close proximity of the unsuspecting enemy plane. Only when the enemy plane filled his view and the enemy pilot assumed life size within his circular, cross marked sight would he fire the twin Spandaus. Making his pass, he used the extra air speed to regain altitude, then waited patiently to take another calculated dive, the computer of his mind judging everything just right to arrive at that brief moment when his enemy filled his sights.

For the Baron, most air combat lasted one to three minutes maximum.

At age twenty six, the Baron was old in another way. He had seen too many of his friends die. No matter how skillfully they planned and trained there was always the unexpected turn of luck that would send an expert fighter pilot spinning down in that graveyard spiral that told that the pilot was dead, unconscious or unable to function.

The great fear of every pilot was fire. Even at this late date in the war, parachutes were reserved for balloonists, who dove over the side of their elevated basket at the first sight of an attacking enemy. Such grace was not allowed the fighter pilot, it being considered cowardly for the fighter to have such an option. The attitude died with World War I along with the stupidity of trench warfare but it lasted to the very end of the hostilities.

Metal tanks without the self sealing that later became standard would spew gas out over hot engines with fire the likely result. The worst of the lot of early fighters was the DeHaviland 4 which earned the name ‘flaming coffin’ because of the number of burnings resulting from unfortunate placement of the gas tanks and the observer’s cockpit.

Once afire the wood and fabric burned without cessation, wind sending the flames sweeping back as the plane descended. It could take five, ten, fifteen minutes or more for the plane to strike the earth and few pilots survived a fire at altitude. Like his fellow fighter pilots, von Roemer showed the inevitable signs of adrenalin over saturation. He had seen too many of his young friends die—more that a dozen consumed by flame. At age 26, he had lost the extra flesh of youth, his face had narrowed and his eyes were bright and piercing. His body bone was covered by tightly drawn skin, his right hand shook slightly as he lit a cigarette or held his glass of schnapps.

As the war progressed and Allied might was augmented by the arrival of the Americans, veterans like the Baron were called on to fly more and more missions, concentrating their strength and leaving long stretches of the Western Front unpatrolled.

At three a. m. on this beautiful October day of 1918, the orderly tapped the Baron lightly on the shoulder bringing him fully awake.

Breakfast in fifteen minutes, Baron, he said respectfully.

After a quick shower and shave, the Baron pulled on his heavy leather flying gear, reached for his leather helmet, goggles and wool scarf and strode from the wooden barracks across the grass field to the tent where he and the other pilots would be briefed.

Men, the Oberst was a man in his thirties who had risen to his present position as the only pilot on the field of this advanced age, "we have disturbing reports around the St. Michael salient. Our intelligence reports an assembling of planes from distant air fields over the last two days. We know the Americans plan their initial assault as an American army against the salient. Knowing this our ground troops began withdrawal two days ago to shorter and more defensible lines.

What we think may happen is a concentrated air attack in support of the advance by ground troops. They will be harassing our infantry and we must rise to meet them. The only defense against fighters is fighters. Everything we have learned about their commanding air officer, Col. Billy Mitchell, indicates this may be a unique coordination of ground and air attack.

Von Roemer stood at the rear of the assembled pilots in the briefing tent sipping a glass of milk and nibbling on his ration of chocolate. At his own request, he had been temporarily relieved from his duties as Staffel commander and would fly solo today. He had been especially shaken the week before when his wingman, a boy of eighteen, had been taken by an American flying one of the newest versions of the British Sopwith Camel. One moment Eric had been riding below and just to his right. He had heard the roar of the big rotary engine, glanced over his shoulder to see the enemy plane with a single Lewis gun banking off in a climbing turn to the right. The single gun had puzzled him, all other Camel he had engaged had twin machine guns. His instinctive left slipping turn, executed with a sudden jamming of the rudder with the joy stick remaining neutral carried him out of range but not before he saw Eric slump forward as his plane began its death spiral.

When he returned to the field, he asked to be relieved of his command temporarily. It was the first time he had lost a wingman. He had felt a special attraction to Eric because of his youth and the enthusiastic way he attacked flying—he was reminded of his own awkward but game attempts in the earliest observation plane some five years previous. Because of his record and the Oberst’s confidence in his continued solo competence, he was given this brief respite from command.

The pilots walked slowly toward their Fokker VlI’s to await the order to take to the air. As usual, they would conserve fuel and personal energy until word came from the front that the enemy’s dawn patrol was crossing over.

The Baron sat in his plane watching the eastern sky slowly brighten. His mechanic, Henri, stood patiently by the prop. Henri, an older man close to 40 who had come to the field as a representative of Fokker had been pressed into service when the Oberst, a distant relative of Kaiser Wilhelm, observed how skillfully he patched up and returned to service damaged aircraft. Shortly thereafter, Henri found himself in uniform.

Henri usually walked with a cane, but the Baron noted, apparently he had laid it down somewhere this morning while he propped the plane.

There was a chill in the air, but the sky was clear, stars still sparkling in the jet black sky. The first of three green flares exploded high in the air at the far end of the air field.

Switch off, Henri and mechanics from planes lined up to the Baron’s left sang out.

Switch off, the Baron responded as he checked the ignition and hand pumped air into his gas tank forcing a mixture of air and gas into the cylinders of the big 230 hp BMW

Henri swung the prop through for the third time.

Switch on.

Switch on.

Contact.

Henri stood to the side and gave a final flip to the prop which caught immediately and, after the first tentative pops roared into full power. After the first burst of power, the engine was throttled back and von Roemer sat quietly watching the other planes taxi into position for takeoff.

He would be the last off, would climb to altitude following the three Staffels and would stay at altitude watching any developing action. As the plane to his left roared down the field, von Roemer pushed the stick forward, stepped on the left rudder side of the rudder bar and gave the engine a burst of power. The prop wash lifted the tail, swung the airplane left in line for takeoff. Holding the stick forward and the nose steady with gentle pressures on the rudder bar, the Baron raced down the grass field, slowly easing the stick back and making a clean break from the ground.

Climbing initially at 2,000 feet per minute, then more slowly as the air thinned, it would take the Baron close to fifteen minutes to reach the twenty thousand feet that would give him a clear view of the battle array that would unfold beneath him. Without oxygen, his stay at this altitude would be limited but he was well acquainted with these limitations. Knowing the Americans had already passed into German air space, he felt sure of action before scarcity of oxygen would effect his performance.

The German air base was located on what had been French soil only thirty miles behind the Western Front and now the first Americans could be seen. The Baron blinked his eyes once, twice—he had never seen such a concentration. Colonel Billy Mitchell would send over a thousand four hundred American and French planes over the lines on this day in the first large scale combined air and ground offensive. Designed to break through the deadly stalemate of trench warfare with planes massed in the air, tanks massed on the ground it would be the first ‘blitzkrieg’ in history. On the receiving end of the massive assault, the Germans would learn the lesson more thoroughly than the Allies and would use the psychologically devastating concept to accomplish its greatest victories some twenty odd years later.

First came the low flying bombers. The DeHavilland 4, known as the ‘flying coffin’ because of an unfortunate design that trapped the crew between deadly gas tanks, came first. Then, looking west, he saw the first specks that were the defending fighters.

For the moment, von Roemer knew he and his comrades would be invisible flying with the sun at their backs at altitude. Once the battle started, the American and French fighters would be clawing for altitude and to get above and behind the Germans, but for now the Fokkers had the clear advantage. His eyes narrowing, the Baron planned his attack, waiting for the exact moment to start the long, shallow dive that would end as the pilot and observer of the lumbering bomber filled his sights for the short and deadly burst that would send the flaming crate of wood and linen plunging toward the mud of the trenches. The long glide down had to be timed exactly right as did the positioning of the twin Sandau machine guns for the brief instant when bullet and target were in alignment.

For most pilots it was an impossibility. Those few, like the Baron, whose lightening reflexes were guided by the world’s most efficient computer—their remarkable brain—became the top aces and it was the way most kills were made. The aces had one other distinction that set them apart. Their keen eyesight could spot the specks of enemy planes long moments before less gifted pilots had been alerted. The average deadly encounter lasted from one the three minutes.

Staffels ahead had begun their attacks, were diving, guns chattering and the first American was falling off, smoke trailing from his slug infested engine.

A Fokker overshot and was caught in the tracer stream of his intended victim. The German nosed over and headed for the ground. Attempting to escape low over the front lines, he was met by a curtain of small arms fire and crashed and exploded among the shell holes and trenches.

Two of the DH-4’s broke free of the general melee and began diving toward the retreating German infantry, machine guns strafing and bombs dropping among the scattering troops. These two belonged to von Roemer.

Clearing his guns with a short burst, he pushed the joy stick forward, made adjustments to the nose direction with precise and gentle pressure to the rudder bar. Now he was diving at over two hundred miles an hour, out of the sun, invisible to the pilot and observer who were concentrating on the ground attack until the blue and green Fokker, twin Spandaus blazing, was on top of them. Hearing the sound of the powerful engine, both men in the trailing bomber glanced up to see the Fokker disappear over the flames just sprouting from the engine of the big bomber ahead of them.

The observer and pilot of the second bomber watched with horror as their fellow Americans disappeared in flame. Turning to his front, the observer saw the Fokker head for the sky, using accumulated power of