Bloody April

30 April 1917 brought to an end the hardest month in the history of British military aviation. During the battle of Arras German fighter squadrons shot down, according to various tallies, between 245 and 275 aircraft of the Royal Flying Corps. Some 211 British airmen were killed or missing, and 108 were taken prisoner. The Germans lost about 66 aircraft in the same period. The British official history of the air war, The War in the Air, states that in no other month of the war was the RFC so hard pressed, nor were its casualties so heavy. The airmen themselves called the month “Bloody April”. The date of 30 April closes this period only by convention, but on that day the Germans tried out over Arras a new way of fighting that heralded the next stage of the war in the air.

German ascendancy

The British had numerical superiority. According to the official history, on the front of the First and Third Armies, which were to attack at Arras, the RFC had 25 squadrons and 365 serviceable aircraft, a third of them fighters. Facing them was the German Sixth Army with 195 aircraft, roughly half of which were equipped for fighting. The qualitative advantage, however, lay with the Germans. After the reform of the German air service in the autumn of 1916, the fighters had been gathered into separate squadrons (Jagdstaffeln), and their pilots, trained according to the rules of Oswald Boelcke, flew Albatros D.III biplanes, faster and better armed than most British machines. The Albatros had two machine guns firing through the propeller, most Allied aircraft one. Obsolete British pusher fighters such as the Airco DH.2 no longer stood a chance against it.

Moreover, the British air service could not stay on the defensive. Its main task was reconnaissance, photographing German positions and directing artillery fire, which meant flights over the enemy lines, where the Germans could wait for them at leisure over their own territory. The commander of the RFC in France, General Hugh Trenchard, also demanded a relentless offensive from his airmen: even the fighters were to fight on the German side of the front. On top of this there was a shortage of pilots, and the training of new ones in England had been speeded up, as the official history admits, “to danger point”.

April over Arras

According to the official history, the air offensive began on 4 April, five days before the infantry attack. Its aim was to drive the German aircraft away from the battlefield. In the first five days the British lost 75 aircraft and 105 airmen in action, and a further 56 machines were wrecked in accidents. On 5 April six new two-seat Bristol F.2 fighters of No. 48 Squadron took off on their first combat patrol, led by Captain William Leefe Robinson, the hero who in September 1916 had shot down an airship over England. Near Douai they met five Albatroses of Jagdstaffel 11 led by Manfred von Richthofen. Only two returned. Richthofen himself shot down two, and Leefe Robinson was taken prisoner. The next day five F.E.2d aircraft of No. 57 Squadron were shot down on a single patrol.

From 9 April, when the infantry attack began and the Canadians took Vimy Ridge, the weather often prevented flying, but whenever it cleared, losses rose again. On 13 April Richthofen’s squadron claimed 13 victories, including six R.E.8 reconnaissance aircraft from a single formation. That day Richthofen scored his 41st victory and overtook his master, Boelcke, who had been killed in the autumn of 1916 with 40 victories. A few days earlier he had been promoted to Rittmeister. His red Albatros became the terror of British airmen, and the squadron, in which his brother Lothar also flew, shot down 89 aircraft in April according to the tallies, more than a third of all British losses. On 29 April Richthofen himself claimed four victories in a single day, bringing his total to 52.

New tactics

On 30 April the Germans for the first time combined four fighter squadrons from the aerodromes near Douai, including Jasta 11, into a single group, which flew out over the front in the morning some twenty machines strong. It fought several long engagements with British formations and shot down, among others, two F.E.2ds and two F.E.2bs, also forcing a patrol of Bristols to abandon its reconnaissance. The British at once named the group “Richthofen’s Circus”, although, as the official history notes, the real fighter wing under his command was formed only in June. The RFC responded by strengthening its patrols and flying in larger formations.

Despite its losses, the British air service carried out its tasks in April: the artillery received photographs and reports, and the first days of the offensive were among the greatest successes of the British army. From May the situation began to change. On 1 May Richthofen went home to Germany on leave, and more and more new British aircraft were appearing at the front: the S.E.5, the Bristol Fighter, whose crews had by now learnt how to fight in it, and the naval Sopwith Triplane. The British official history judged that the RFC airmen, who had fought on throughout April regardless of the odds, were ready to profit from any slackening of the German effort.