Aces Read online

As usual, it was the Herr Rittmeister who first spotted the enemy. He waggled his wings to signal the rest of the formation, dipping his Fokker’s nose to indicate the enemy’s position below. Once Goldstein knew where to look, the rows of black dots flying in the opposite direction against the cloud-swept, variegated groundscape leapt out at him. The formation of ten speedy Sopwiths was flying forward of the five more cumbersome Bristol F. 2b two-seaters.

  As was prearranged, the German formation wheeled around and broke up into two ketten of ten and four. The flight of ten, led by Herr Rittmeister Richthofen, would go after the ten fast and vicious Sopwith Camels. Goldstein’s flight of four, led by Herr Lieutenant Dorn in his yellow and black bumblebee-striped Fokker, would concentrate on chewing up the five Bristol F. 2b two-seaters.

  Neither group would be an easy target. The Camels were single-seat biplanes, as fast and maneuverable as the Fokker “tripes.” The Bristols, while not nearly as agile, were fierce battle machines in their own right. Its pilot had a machine gun fixed forward to fire through the prop, but it was the rear gunner’s twin Lewis machine guns that gave the Bristol its real sting.

  The Rittmeister commenced the attack, diving down with his nine followers arrayed in a mini Vee. The Bristols’ rear gunners spotted the attack and began firing, more in the hopes of alerting the Camels’ formation rather than hitting anything, but they were too late. The attacking German formation slid by the Bristols and closed on the Camels. At what looked like point blank range, Richthofen and his flight began firing. Members of the Camel formation scattered like a flock of frightened pigeons—some right into the Germans’ concentrated field of tracer fire. Goldstein saw three Sopwiths fall, and then he had no more time to watch because his flight leader was signaling to commence their own attack.

  Goldstein saw that the Bristols, all painted a mottled green and tan, had formed a closed circle, flying nose to tail around and around so that their rear gunners could ward off the diving German attack. It was a standard defense tactic for two-seater machines, and reasonably effective, but it took experience on the part of the British pilots to have the nerve not to cut and run when the shooting started. It was time to find out just what sorts were crewing these Bristols.

  As flight leader, Herr Lieutenant Dorn would be the first to dive through the hoop formed by the circling Bristols in an attempt to break them up. If that didn’t work, he would attack from behind and below, where the Bristols’ guns couldn’t reach, and then rise up to take his place at the end of the line formed by his three wingmates. Goldstein would attack second, following Dorn’s pattern, and so on. If, or when, the Bristols finally did scatter, the Fokkers would split into pairs, with one flier watching the other’s back as they went after their targets.

  Goldstein watched the Lieutenant make his dive: the bumblebee plane flew unscathed through the crisscrossing streams of tracers coming from the Bristols’ rear guns, and right through the hoop, but the Bristols held fast.

  Goldstein, high above the enemy, his concentration focused, signaled his two wingmates, and went to work.

  He rolled the Fokker upside down and pulled the stick into his belly to execute a split-S power dive toward the Bristols. He felt the giddy thrill in the pit of his stomach as he was rocked by the centrifugal force. Immediately the Bristols’ five sets of twin Lewis guns swiveled toward him and began winking orange, but his angle of attack was too steep for him to be an easy target. The enemy gunners’ tracers arced wildly as they tried to zero in.

  The Fokker’s engine roared and the wind screamed through its wing struts as the blue, white, and red bull’s-eye roundels on the Bristols’ wings loomed larger. Now the British gunners were finding their aim, and Goldstein was diving into a fiery orange-red tunnel formed by the whizzing tracers, but he held his own fire until he was close enough to almost touch his targets—

  Forty meters above the circling planes Goldstein aligned his fixed gunsight on a Bristol’s engine and pressed the firing button mounted on his control stick. He couldn’t hear his gun above his own engine’s racket, but he felt the plane shuttering with the recoil and tasted the bitter gunsmoke blowing back into his face as the orange tracers raced ahead of him like a stream of water coming out of a hose. He fired a three-second burst; approximately twenty-seven rounds; the LMG .08/15 Spandau gun spitting 7.92-millimeter bullets at the rate of 550 a minute; and glimpsed the smoking holes he’d punched in his target’s engine cowling.

  He knew what he was supposed to do next, but he had an idea. He decided to try it, even if it meant that he would later catch hell from Dorn for breaking the formation.

  As he pulled up into what he hoped his British adversaries would think was the beginning of a loop, Goldstein glimpsed Dorn and the others hanging in the air above him, likely wondering what was going on. As Goldstein reached a vertical position above and forward of the circling Bristols he kicked his rudder hard, causing his plane to sideslip to the left on its tail, and then he dropped its nose, into another attack dive at his previous target. This time he encountered no answering fire. As he’d hoped, the Bristols’ rear gunners had anticipated firing at him while he was upside down, above and a little behind them, finishing his loop. By the time the rear gunners had wrestled their twin mounted guns around to face him, Goldstein was firing another burst into his adversary’s engine.

  He saw the Bristol’s prop waver, then stop, as its engine began leaking smoke. The crippled plane drifted out of its place in the battle circle and glided toward the ground. Now that the circle had been broken the four other Bristols lost their nerve and scattered like leaves caught in a gust of wind. Dorn and the other two pilots were on them at once, but weren’t having much luck. The Bristols were heading home, and their rear gunners were doing a good job of holding the Fokkers off.

  Goldstein knew it was high time for him to rejoin the formation, but he followed his own kill down, watching as it pancaked on a stretch of pasture bordered by forest. The pilot and gunner seemed unharmed as they quit their plane. They didn’t try to run for the trees, but merely stood with their hands upraised as German troops rushed toward them.

  Fifteen kills. Just one more…

  By the time that Goldstein had gotten back up to battle ceiling the Bristols were long gone. Herr Lieutenant Dorn and the other two Fokkers were distant specks headed back. The Herr Rittmeister’s flight and the Sopwith Camels were nowhere about. Probably homeward bound, as well.

  Goldstein was all alone in the sky, but he wasn’t concerned. There was no need to maintain formation once an attack was over. Many pilots chose to, in order to guard against an ambush on their way home, but the decision was personal preference. Goldstein had confidence in his own ability to get himself out of any situation. He liked to proceed home at his own pace.

  Now he reluctantly put his Fokker into a gentle, banking turn toward Cappy. He was resigned to the fact that he was not going to further increase his score, and that his Blue Max would have to wait for another day, but he was still emotionally keyed up. His engagement with the enemy had lasted less than a minute. Dogfights rarely lasted longer before ending in someone’s victory or inconclusively breaking off—

  Goldstein saw the dot when it was about a quarter of a meter away, coming at him head on, an instant before it began firing at him. The attacking machine was small and fast. It had to be one of the Camels, Goldstein decided as he banked to the right, out of the path of the lazily oncoming tracers.

  The plane flashed past him on the left. It was a Sopwith Camel, all right. Its distinctive humped engine cowling was red. Its fuselage was painted tan with white vertical stripings. Its rudder was British-striped red, white, and blue.

  The Camel had escaped the Herr Rittmeister’s attentions and was now running for home. The pilot was definitely a neophyte. No experienced battle flier would waste ammunition firing at a target a quarter of a mile away. His lack of experience would also explain why he had survived the dogfight. Flight leaders on both sides often ordered
their green fliers to hang back and merely watch and learn during their first couple of engagements…

  The Camel was well past Goldstein as he zoomed upward, banked sharply left, and kicked his tail around to the rear to give pursuit.

  Goldstein knew that the Camel was faster than the Fokker, even a lean, mean “tripe” like his own. The Camel had about a half kilometer lead, and the British lines were now only a couple of kilometers away, so it was clear to Goldstein that he wasn’t going to get his all-important sixteenth kill by letting the British pilot turn this into a horse race. Once again, everything would hinge on experience, but Goldstein already had indications that his opponent was new at this game.

  The Fokker’s hard-pressed rotary engine screamed in protest as Goldstein pushed his throttle full-open. He checked his fuel gauge. He was low, but that was good. The less fuel in the tank, the lighter the weight and the faster he could go.

  He’d not very much closed the gap between himself and the Camel when Goldstein played his trump card: without even aiming he pressed his firing button. His gun made the Fokker shudder, and the recoil actually slowed his forward speed, but his ploy worked: the Camel’s pilot, seeing those chasing tracers in his rearview mirror, had begun evasive maneuvers, not realizing that Goldstein didn’t have a prayer of hitting him. Every zigzag meant to throw off Goldstein’s nonexistent aim cost the Camel’s pilot forward speed. Goldstein, sporadically firing short bursts while flying true as an arrow, was gradually closing on his quarry.

  They were now close to the German front lines, but Goldstein had cut the Camel’s lead by a quarter of a kilometer. The Camel’s evasive maneuvers had also cost it altitude: it was now less than a hundred meters above the ground. Goldstein had ignored the lunatic howl of his own engine as he’d power-dived in pursuit, and that had further increased his own speed, helping to close the gap.

  The terrain rushed past in a blur, as Goldstein followed the Camel down to what would have been treetop level, if the war had seen fit to leave trees standing in this part of the world. He could imagine the troops in their trenches on both sides of the line stopping what they were doing in order to crane their necks, shield their eyes from the sun, and watch the show. It made him feel good to be the center of attention. It made him feel like he belonged; it made him feel alive.

  The Camel had passed over the German front lines and was just entering into no-man’s-land when Goldstein, about seventy meters behind, decided that it was now or never. He centered his sight on the Camel’s tail and fired. He kept up a steady stream of bullets—he might as well empty his magazine—while delicately adjusting the angle of his Fokker’s nose to try to put the orange tracers on target.

  He managed to zero in by sheer dumb luck. For an instant the Camel’s tail and the Fokker’s chattering Spandau were linked by an amber strand of gunfire.

  Then the Camel abruptly dived.

  Goldstein guessed that his bullets had either chewed up the Camel’s rudder or cut a control wire. Whatever, at the Camel’s low altitude it was only an instant before it was leapfrogging along the uneven ground. It bounced out of control amidst the shell-torn craters of no-man’s-land for about two hundred meters before its prop caught in a tangle of barbed wire, stopping it dead. The Camel’s forward momentum caused its ruined tail to flip up and over. The plane came to rest, wings crumpled, belly up toward the sky.

  Goldstein made a pass over the downed Camel, anxious to spot the pilot. The Camel had not caught fire, which was promising, but no-man’s-land was a bad spot in which to crash. If the pilot was hurt a local truce would have to be worked out to allow a medical party to get to him. It could be done, but it took time, and time was something injured men didn’t always have—

  There he was! Goldstein was elated as he watched the pilot scurry from the wreckage and run for all he was worth toward his own lines. This British pilot would fly again. He’d crashed well out of German rifle range.

  Goldstein banked toward his own lines, watching the first explosions blossom around the Camel as the German mortars lobbed shells at the downed plane. It was just for fun. The Camel’s flying days were over, mortar-hit or not.

  He put the Fokker into a slow climb, nursing it upward while gingerly working the throttle and fuel-tank air pressure pump. He was pretty much flying on fumes now. He needed to nurse the last bit of time out of the engine.

  The sun was beginning to set, a ball of molten fire, as he headed for home.

  Goldstein was at three thousand meters and about three kilometers from Cappy aerodrome, when his fuel ran out. The engine coughed and died, but that was fine. He’d learned long ago that his machine could glide about a kilometer per three hundred meters of altitude, provided there was no headwind, and tonight the breeze was at his tail. He often cut his engine on the way home in order to enjoy a glide. It was wonderful to fly with no engine noise to punish one’s ears; with no sound at all but the rush of wind making the wing struts sing.

  It was wonderful to be alive—

  In full view of the German lines he had made his fifteenth and sixteenth kills! He would be getting his Blue Max!

  Goldstein wondered if life could get any better than this. There was sex, of course… He’d overheard some of the other pilots boasting about their sexual exploits…

  Goldstein had never been with a woman, so he couldn’t know for sure, but he doubted that even sex could compare with how it felt to own the sky.

  (Two)

  As Cappy airfield came into view Goldstein felt the depression that always came with the end of a flight. Below was nothing but mud and mildew and loneliness.

  He still had enough altitude to make several circles of the field. He did so, like a bird reluctant to return to its cage. As he spiraled down, the drab features of the place loomed up at him. The buildings and tents were all clustered at one end of the field. There was the ready-room hut, beside the big tents that sheltered the planes, and next to the tents, the rows of fuel tank lorries. Next came the operations hut; the long, single story wooden barracks; and the mess for the support personnel. Behind that was the stables tent, and the parked transport lorries. Next was the pilots’ mess hall and administrative offices, and, finally, the rows of pilots’ huts.

  Goldstein could see that things had been happening here while he was gone. There were the smoking wrecks of two airplanes smack in the middle of the field, and a bomb crater nearby the hangar tent. Work crews were busy disposing of the debris and repairing the damage to the field.

  Goldstein also noticed an unfamiliar-looking airplane parked near the hangar tents. It didn’t seem to have a triplane’s shape, and its colors were wrong for J.G. 1: gleaming white all over, with the exception of its tail fin, which was raven black. It couldn’t be a captured Allied machine, because it carried Iron Crosses on its top wings and fuselage.

  It was getting too dark to fly, so Goldstein landed, knowing from experience just where to touch down in order for his machine to lose enough momentum to come to a stop in front of the hangar tents. His ground crew was waiting.

  “Your fifteenth and sixteenth, Herr Sergeant. Congratulations!” Corporal Froehlig exclaimed as he helped Goldstein extricate himself from the cockpit.

  “You’ve already heard, Herr Corporal?” Goldstein asked as he pulled off his goggles and helmet.

  “The Air Warning Service boys telephoned in both confirmations fifteen minutes ago.” Froehlig’s smile was wide beneath his walrus moustache. He almost bodily lifted Goldstein to the ground in his exuberance.

  “That’s a relief,” Goldstein said. The last obstacle in his path to the Blue Max had been removed. A kill had to be officially confirmed to count in a pilot’s record. He gestured toward the wrecks and the bomb craters. “What happened here?”

  Froehlig shrugged. “A couple of Frenchies came in at us low, from the southwest. They carried the markings of the No. 30 Spad Squadron, based at Matigny. They dropped a bomb and strafed the field, but nobody was hurt and nothing was r
eally damaged. Some of the fellows in Jasta 6 were about to take off and chase them away when that pale beauty popped out of nowhere to come to the rescue.” He indicated the gleaming white airplane parked nearby. “Her pilot is no slouch, either. He shot both those Spads down before they knew what was happening. Both Frenchie pilots were killed.”

  The white machine was a biplane, of a sort that Goldstein had never seen. It carried the markings of Jasta 27, a squad based to the northeast of Cappy, at Erchin.

  Froehlig saw him looking. “A beauty, isn’t she, Sir?” Froehlig said.

  Goldstein nodded. “What is she, Herr Corporal?”

  “That’s one of the first of the Fokker D VII series.”

  “I heard about them!” Goldstein nodded. “But if they’ve been built, then why don’t we have any?”

  “We will, Herr Sergeant. That one’s a prototype,” Froehlig replied. “They’re still gearing up for quantity production, and I heard that J.G. 1 is first on the list to get them. Go have yourself a look at her, why don’t you.”

  Goldstein hurried over to the airplane. It was magnificent. Much longer and leaner than his own “tripe,” the D VII’s low profile looked fast just sitting on the ground. This new machine made his own triplane look as outmoded as a horse and buggy.

  “Word has it that she can do one hundred twenty-five kilometers per hour,” Froehlig said, coming up behind him.

  “That’s faster than anything else in the air!” Goldstein exclaimed.

  The mechanic chuckled knowingly. “She’s got a one hundred sixty horsepower Mercedes engine—”

  “You don’t say! Christ! I’m in love! What I wouldn’t give to take her up.” He smiled. “Or take her apart, to see what makes her tick…”

  “You’ll have to wait for your own to do that, Herr Sergeant.”

  “Why is she here?”

  “She belongs to the C.O. of Jasta 27. He flew in to meet with Herr Rittmeister, why, I couldn’t say, and ended up arriving in time to score himself two kills. Two more kills than he already has, I should say. He’s got to have at least sixteen. He was wearing the Blue Max.” Froehlig paused. “Herr Sergeant? A question, if I may?”