Chapter 10

I got a new airplane and a promotion. I was now Captain John Edwards, and I was happy to see that small increase in pay. What I didn't like was that I was now made a flight leader of my own flight. That meant that I had to sort of part with my old friends and develop a relationship with three new pilots. It just dawned on me: was I promoted and given the new flight because I was the one with a car, Connie's old one, so that I could provide transportation into town? I asked Col. Handly, and he assured that I was promoted on merit, but I couldn't help that nagging thought in the back of my mind.

I did manage a couple of semi-training flights with my new group, and we got to shoot at some D. VIIs and observation planes, but I knew that we were not really a cohesive group yet. Oh, well, we would become that if we survived long enough. I was mainly worried because all three of my pilots were new to combat, and most pilot fatalities due to combat came within the first few missions. I knew that I would not relax until we had at least three missions under our belts.

I broke us up into pairs with a new man working as my wingman on each mission. I wanted to get a personal assessment of each man's abilities and short comings before I trusted him completely. The first test came against a group of four D. VIIs. Oh, shit, I could tell from the way they acted that this was a bunch of combat veterans, and we were in for a real test. Thank God, the level of training had improved considerably before the new pilots were shipped to France, and we might survive.

Bud Watson was my wingman for this flight, and I had instructed him to hang as close to me as he could. His job was to keep me from being killed when I did something foolish, and I insisted that I was counting on him to do that. He promised to do his best, and I just hoped that was good enough.

Jim O'Neal and Harry Copeland were the other two pilots, and I assigned the lead to Jim. I don't know why I picked him to lead, maybe it was because he was taller than Harry. I warned them not to forget their training and let them climb into their SPADs.

We were flying over the German lines looking for trouble. Hell, we had to do it, so I decided not to pussyfoot around. We were flying at 4,000 feet in hopes that none of my men would get lost and land at a German airfield by mistake. I spotted the Germans in D. VIIs at about 7,000 feet and about to dive on us out of the sun. Uh-oh, there was my first mistake, we were just too damned low!

I gave directions with hand signals while wishing that we had radios so that we could talk to each other. Voice radio was just coming on line, but none of the sets were small enough yet to fit in a fighter, so the hand signals had to do.

I had us do a sweeping climb to keep the Germans from diving straight on us out of the sun and to try to conserve as much fuel as possible. I had a feeling that we were going to need that fuel before the day was over. It was at about 5,500 feet that the D. VIIs came roaring in at us. At the last moment, we dove at full power and escaped that round of bullets.

Our dive built up enough momentum that we were able to swoop around and come in on the German's tails. No fighter pilot wants an enemy on his tail, his "six o'clock," so the Germans did the worst possible thing from their point of view: they split up so it was every man for himself. That told me that their flight leader must have been the one with the experience and the other three pilots were not much more experienced than my men. I heaved a mighty sigh of relief and took off after their flight leader.

I didn't recognize their markings, but they must have belonged to a Jasta that still put a lot of emphasis on individual skill and bravery. That just made it a little bit easier for us. Each D. VII was painted in distinctive markings that made it easy to mark the individual airplanes. Therefore, I had no trouble in identifying the flight leader.

Bud was right where he was supposed to be when I followed the German. He was really too far away for me to get in an aimed shot, but I remembered the trick that I had used in my first air battle in a SPAD. I pointed my ship at where I expected him to be and aimed a little higher. I fired a longer burst than normal from both machine guns and I got very lucky. I didn't knock him down, but I did manage to chew a large chunk out of his vertical fin and rudder.

That hit made it very difficult for the pilot to control his direction of flight without making use of his ailerons. The upshot was that he had to spend too much time on flying and not enough time of fighting. He also had to slow down to maintain control, and that gave our SPADs a significant advantage. He looked to me to be a relatively easy kill, so I waved Bud on to do the honors. Bud was so surprised that I would do it that I had to wave a second time before he believed me.

Bud pulled up close behind the D. VII and blasted away. He spent a lot more ammunition than I would have, but he turned that D. VII into a simulated Swiss Cheese. He must have killed the pilot because the D. VII went into a spin and powered into the ground. The result was a massive ball of smoke and then nothing. Bud did a victory roll and came back into position as my wing man. I was going to speak to him sharply about that victory roll because it could get him killed, but that could wait until we returned to base.

Meanwhile, Jim and Harry had caught up to another D. VII and were trying to shoot it down. Jim was firing a lot of bullets and hitting nothing but air. The D. VII pilot was jukeing and jerking around all over the sky doing an excellent job of not giving Jim a steady target. On the other hand, they were heading more and more toward Allied territory, so the story was not all bad for Jim and Harry. I was close enough to see what was going on, but I wanted to see how Jim was going to handle the chase, so Bud and I hung back a little. I was turning this into a training exercise for my new pilots. The other two D. VIIs had disappeared, probably running for home because of their orders to stay behind the German trench line.

Well, as expected, Jim ran out of ammunition and he had to wave Harry on to take the lead position. This gave the German a short respite, and the pilot took advantage of his good luck. He clawed for altitude in an effort to get above the two chasing SPADs. That was not going to do him much good because the SPADs were better at climbing. Harry saw what was happening and also started to climb.