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For a baby boomer brought up on the Biggles stories of Captain W E Johns, the opening pages of this classic memoir of World War aviation seem eerily familiar. Cecil Lewis and his schoolfriend decide to enlist in the RFC at the age of 16. ‘Wouldn’t it be ripping!’ they cry as they abandon their studies, and ‘Hurrah!’ as they are invited for interview with a genial officer who happily accepts the lie that they are 17, and bases his judgements on their public school sporting record.
This truly was the heroic age of flight, and Lewis went on to be a fighter ace and flight commander, leaving the RFC at just 20 years old. He also served with distinction in World War II, and later piloted a Tiger Moth biplane for the last time at the age of 94. A bald account of his exploits would be fascinating enough, but Sagittarius Rising is a beautifully written book, at times rising to a poetic level in its depictions of the perils, joys, and beauty of early flight and aerial combat.
Hazardous missions
The primitive nature of the early RFC planes and the rushed programmes of training make flying extremely hazardous, even before combat is attempted. Lewis is clearly a natural flyer, but he is deployed to France with just 14 hours flying experience. ‘My God, it’s murder!’ his officer cries, and he ensures Lewis gets to 50 hours before he is deployed to an active squadron.
It is difficult for modern readers to understand the perilous nature of flight at this time, suspended thousands of feet above ground in a flimsy wooden framework covered in thin fabric and braced with piano wire, with limited instrumentation, and no parachute. Navigation consists chiefly of staring at the ground looking for landmarks, with the dubious aid of a compass that frequently spins alarmingly. Lewis points out the inevitable fear: ‘Once lost, there was a tendency to panic. One or two sharp turns to try to pick up a landmark, and you lost all sense of direction. North, south, east or west might be anywhere.’ Still, the early pilots had an option largely denied to their successors – these tiny, slow machines could be landed in a handy field and the pilot could stop someone and ask the way!
With instruments limited to an airspeed indicator and a lateral bubble (supposedly indicating if he is level) even seasoned pilots can get disorientated, and flying into a cloud can be a death sentence. Lewis describes the dangers: ‘It’s apt to make you panic after a while, and many a man has fallen out of the clouds in a spin through losing his head and, without knowing it, standing his machine on its ear.’
Even seasoned pilots can get disorientated, and flying into a cloud can be a death sentence.
Of course, it is the aerial combat that will interest most readers. Rather than a detailed account of his missions, Lewis describes key moments, a number of which were used for the 1976 film Aces High. Lewis began his combat career as a pilot of a two-seater, doing reconnaissance and directing artillery fire at the Battle of the Somme. The more popular accounts tend to focus on the fighter aces, which makes this episode all the more fascinating, because we soon learn that these aircrew are undertaking the most hazardous missions of all: flying slow and dead straight while artillery zeroes in on them and enemy fighters wait to pounce. An additional hazard is the British heavy artillery: Lewis describes seeing the shells reach the peak of their arc in the sky, passing close to his plane, before tumbling earthwards. His close friend Pip is one of many consequent casualties: ‘One morning, on the dawn patrol, they, flying low in the arc of our own gunfire, intercepted a passing shell. The machine and both the boys were blown to bits.’
Mortal combat
The book’s title refers to the astrological event, which is associated with optimism and high spirits, and it is true that Lewis is sometimes accused of giving an overly positive view of air combat. In places, he does foster the ‘knights of the air’ image:
To be alone, to have your life in your own hands, to use your own skill, single-handed, against the enemy. It was like the lists of the Middle Ages, the only sphere in modern warfare where a man saw his adversary and faced him in mortal combat, the only sphere where there was still chivalry and honour. If you won, it was your own bravery and skill; if you lost, it was because you had met a better man. You did not sit in a muddy trench while someone who had no personal enmity against you loosed off a gun, five miles away, and blew you to smithereens.
This has become something of a cliché of World War I air fighting, but Lewis does a lot to temper it with realism. He is unsparing in his descriptions of the terrible losses, the empty chairs at the mess in the evening, the incredibly short life-span of pilots, and the men who take enormous strain over sustained periods only to lose their nerve suddenly. Transferred to a scout (fighter) squadron, Lewis is in his element, and soon notches up the kills. His descriptions of fighter tactics not only give us valuable contemporary testimony but also undermine the myth of chivalry:
With the exception of Ball, most crack fighters did not get their Huns in dogfights. They preferred safer means. They would spend hours synchronising their guns and telescopic sights so that they could do accurate shooting at, say, two or three hundred yards. They would then set out on patrol, alone, spot their quarry… and carefully manoeuvre for position, taking great pains to remain where they could not be seen, i.e. below and behind the tail of the enemy… He would gradually draw nearer, always in the blind spot, sight his guns very carefully, and then one long deadly burst would do the trick.
Following his service on the Western Front, Lewis is reassigned to home defence against Gotha bombers. He is based on one of a chain of airfields protecting the approaches to London (readers wanting an authentic flavour of such a base should visit the lovingly preserved Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome, near Chelmsford in Essex). He reflects presciently on an age in which the bomber will always get through and terrorise the civilian population. He even anticipates drone warfare: ‘there need be no men in those machines, they can be controlled by wireless; their destruction will mean nothing; they will go on coming day and night.’
The final part of the book switches to Lewis’s post-war assignment, teaching young men to fly in China – it’s often described as an anti-climax but it has a humour and cultural depth all of its own. However, it is the courage and pioneering spirit of those early aviators that leaves the lasting impression:
As the months went by it seemed only a matter of time until your turn came. You sat down to dinner faced by the empty chairs of men you had laughed and joked with at lunch. They were gone. The next day new men would laugh and joke from those chairs. Some might be lucky and stick it for a bit, some chairs would be empty again very soon. And so it would go on. And always, miraculously, you were still there.
Cecil Arthur Lewis
Died: 27 January 1997
Nationality: British
Cecil Lewis was born in Birkenhead, in north-west England, and educated at Dulwich College, University College School, and Oundle, before joining the Royal Flying Corps at the age of 16. He served on the Western Front from 1916, earning the Military Cross for his actions during the Battle of the Somme. Lewis later joined No.56 Squadron RAF and is credited with destroying eight enemy aircraft. After WWI, he was hired by the Vickers company to teach Chinese pilots to fly. Lewis went on to become one of the founding executives of the BBC and had a long career in TV and film, as well as writing a number of books, including the 1936 aviation classic Sagittarius Rising. He returned to service with the RAF during WWII, and rose to the rank of squadron leader.
