World War I airmen from New Brunswick were pioneers of aerial warfare – New Brunswick
When pilots tried to fight during the First World War, it had not been 15 years since the Wright brothers first flew in 1903. something like a piano wire.
“They were underpowered. They were very fragile, and if you sat too low, sometimes they would get hurt,” said J. Brent Wilson, a historian who recently published “War Among the Clouds: New Brunswick Airmen in the Great War.”
Even training can kill pioneering pilots, he noted.
About 22,000 Canadians served in the British Air Force during the First World War, most of them from well-educated families in Ontario and Western Canada, Wilson said in a recent interview. But at least 252 were from New Brunswick, many from small farming communities.
They flew not only on the Western Front in France and Belgium, which was the main theater, but also around the Mediterranean and Italy, Russia, Macedonia, Egypt and Palestine, Wilson said.
Wilson's book draws on accounts of their service contained in household letters and other records. He said he wanted to document the lives of airmen from rural New Brunswick. “I think it's important for us to remember that they made an important contribution to the broader war effort in the defense of the country,” said Wilson.
Tim Cook, chief historian at the Canadian Military Museum, said that while flying was new and exciting at first, it evolved during the war to include large-scale battles involving dozens of airmen fighting for control of the air.
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Although the “knights of the sky,” as the aviators were sometimes called, grabbed the public's attention, he said, more important to the ground, mud-covered troops, were the slow-moving observation planes. They take pictures from the front, providing vital intelligence to commanders, artillery and infantry.
Wilson said one of the pilots he found most interesting was Maj. Albert Desbrisay Carter who graduated from Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB He was born in New Brunswick's Westmorland County near Nova Scotia on July 3, 1892, and went on to become a Grandfather. War ace, said Wilson.
On October 31, 1916, Carter shot down his first two planes, east of Ypres. In his combat report, which is detailed in the book, he describes the wedding.
“I dived for three enemy planes and chose one, dived towards it. “I got to a distance of 10 meters and I had to get out to avoid hitting each other,” said the report. “I shot a lot of bumps in the pilot's and observers' seats, from 150 yards until I had to bail out …. I did not see what happened to the enemy plane when it approached the ground; I mostly finished under 1,000 meters. “
During the war, Carter shot down 28 German planes before being captured on May 19, 1918. This book tells a story from one of Carter's friends from Saint John, NB, Capt. Stuart Bell, who recounted the conversation between the two. it was necessary. He described Carter as demanding that British officials receive better treatment in German prison camps.
“This time, the German replied, 'I will make you understand that you are in Germany and you will do as well as we have told you,'” the letter said.
“Maj. Carter's response to this was, 'Yes, and that's why the whole world is at war with you. You have no respect or reverence for large gatherings.' Because of this, he received bread for three days and water and stocks.
On May 22, 1919, 27-year-old Carter, who had survived an attack of Spanish flu, died during training when his plane crashed. He was buried in Old Shoreham Cemetery in England.
One of the men described in detail in the book is Lt. Alfred Belliveau of Fredericton. He began his pilot training in Shoreham, England in a two-seater Maurice Farman. His diary about the plane is written in a book, writing that it is “stable and easy to fly.” Belliveau went on to graduate from a high school for pilots in Turnberry, Scotland, where he practiced stunt flying, the publication said.
“We fought a lot of man-to-man combat again, but we used cameras instead of machine guns, cameras with propellers like machine guns, so we could take pictures. of our enemy, using rotating propellers, in the same way as real combat with machine guns,” said the text from the pilot, as written in the book.
Wilson said New Brunswickers were a minority among the air force, but they made a significant contribution.
“We had never had airplanes in combat before, so they were pioneers in this new type of warfare, and they were very advanced. … By the end of the war, from a technological point of view, airplanes and the role of the air force had greatly improved.”
© 2024 The Canadian Press
