An Airman's Outings with the RFC, June to December 1916

by Alan Bott

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349 pages, Paperback

First published July 10, 2014

About the author

Captain Alan John Bott, MC (14 January 1893 – 17 September 1952) was a World War I flying ace who was credited with five aerial victories. He later became a journalist, editor and publisher who founded Pan Books.

Bott worked as journalist before and just after the outbreak of the war, serving as "special correspondent" of the Daily Chronicle, based in Basle, Switzerland. He reported on the British air raid on the Zeppelin factory at Friedrichshafen on 21 November 1914, and travelled to the Swiss town of Romanshorn, on the opposite side of Lake Constance, to observe the German response, on one occasion going out into the middle of the lake on a boat to gain a closer look.

Bott returned to England in early 1915, and after training in the Inns of Court Officers' Training Corps he was commissioned as a second lieutenant (on probation) in the Royal Garrison Artillery on 22 July 1915. He was transferred to the Royal Flying Corps with the rank of lieutenant on 1 September 1916, being appointed a flying officer (observer) on 26 September.

He was posted to No. 70 Squadron RFC, flying as observer/gunner in a Sopwith 1½ Strutter with pilot Second Lieutenant Awdry Vaucour. On 24 August 1916 Bott and Vaucour were shot up and forced to land by Leopold Reimann of Jasta 1, but went on to claim three Fokker E fighter aircraft in September. On one flight, he put out an in-flight fire with his gloves; he was awarded his first Military Cross partly for this action.

Bott then trained as a pilot, being appointed a flying officer on 1 June 1917. Posted to No. 111 Squadron RFC stationed in the Sinai Desert, he was appointed a flight commander with the acting rank of captain on 22 December. Flying the Nieuport 23 bis No. B3995 he destroyed two enemy reconnaissance aircraft on 14 and 15 April 1918, but on 22 April he was shot down and taken prisoner by the Turks. Taken to Constantinople by train, Bott, accompanied by Captain Thomas W. White of the Australian Flying Corps, who had been captured in November 1915, escaped and travelled by ship to Odessa, Ukraine, then to Varna, Bulgaria, and overland to Salonika, Greece, arriving there just as the armistice was declared. He was later awarded a Bar to his Military Cross "in recognition of gallantry in escaping from captivity". Bott left the RAF after the war, being transferred to the unemployed list on 18 February 1919.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the revolutionary aspects of combat during World War I was the new battlefield in the skies. At the start of the conflict the Wright brothers' flight was barely a decade in the past, yet by the fall both sides contested for position in the skies of the Western Front. Some of the novelty of this is captured in Alan Bott's account of service in the Royal Flying Corps. Published under the pseudonym "Contact", it is a collection of his experiences as an observer in 1916 , recounting stories of his service in the skies of Belgium and northern France.

Written in an enjoyably accessible style, Bott's memoir is an interesting account of the air war on the Western Front. Published in the midst of the war, it lacks perspective and is annoyingly vague on some of the details (such as in what planes he flew), but his stories convey something of what it was like to fight and serve in this new branch of warfare. This sense of novelty is reinforced by W. S. Brancker, the deputy director-general of military aeronautics, whose introduction to the book reflects just how unusual Bott's experiences were at the time. Taken together, they make for a valuable record of the early years of flight, one that captures the experience of aerial combat in the First World War.