Джон Биггинс - The Two-Headed Eagle

I see it now as vividly as in that split second one summer morning seventy years ago: the perfect plan view fifty metres ahead; the black V-marking on the centre section of the upper wing; the red-white-green Italian colours on the wingtips and tailplane; the observer swinging his machine gun up in a desperate attempt to get a burst at us as we passed. In the event though it was Toth who fired first. Given the extreme crude­ness of our gunsights and the primitive firing system I think that it must still be one of the finest pieces of aerial marksmanship on record. Our forward-firing Schwarzlose clattered, and the hot cartridge cases show­ered back over us. The burst of ten or so shots hit the Italian just as he was into the tightest part of his loop, and therefore when the airframe was under maximum stress. I think that our bullets must have smashed the main wingspar, but I cannot say for sure: all I know is that as we hurtled past, swerving to avoid him, the Italian aeroplane seemed to pause in its abrupt climb and hang motionless for a moment as though undecided whether or not to go any further. Then it began to fall backwards as its wings crumpled like those of a shot partridge, dropped back out of its loop, then nosed over and began to spiral down, transformed in a couple of seconds from a neat, fast, fighting biplane into a confused jumble of fabric and snapping wood. As we lost sight of him plunging down into a cloud he was already breaking up, leaving sections of wing and strut drifting behind him.

That left us to face the other Italian aeroplane, which was now upon us, apparently undeterred by the fate of its companion. Toth had put us into a shallow, banking dive and I was just swinging the gun around to port to bear on the Italian—who was some way above us still and about seventy metres astern—when I suddenly realised that things were dread­fully amiss. It was a curiously unpleasant sensation; the queasy realisa­tion that something had gone terribly, unaccountably wrong: the way in which all the normal noises of flight except for the engine—the hum of the wind in the wires, the rushing slipsteam—suddenly ceased as we be­gan to fall out of the sky. The patchwork fields and woods below started to whirl crazily before my eyes as the ghastly truth dawned upon me. We had gone into a spin.

I suppose that in those early days of flying there was no condition, except death by burning, that was quite so dreaded as a spin. But even a petrol fire was susceptible to rational explanation: the peculiar horror of the spin was that it happened for no apparent reason. One moment the aeroplane would be flying along without a care in the world, the next it would be spiralling down to destruction, falling like a cardboard box and suddenly, bafflingly immune to whatever desperate measures the pilot might be taking to try and get it flying once more. Left aileron; right aile­ron; elevators up; elevators down; full throttle until the engine screamed itself to pieces—none of them were the slightest use. The only thing to do was to watch in horror as the ground came rushing up. Very few people had ever survived a spin, and those who had emerged from the wreckage alive usually found that their nerve had gone and never flew again. It was as if the gods of the upper air had condemned all of us fliers to death for our impudence in defying gravity, but were graciously pleased to keep to themselves the precise moment when they would execute sentence. All that I could do was to cling desperately to the cockpit edge as we fell and shut my eyes tight, waiting for the final smash.

I think that we must have fallen a good thousand metres. Then, as suddenly as it had stopped flying, the Brandenburger groaned and creaked a little then began to fly once more, straight and even in a shallow dive be­low the clouds. As for our Italian attacker, there was no sign of him. Toth scanned the sky above us as I picked myself up, white-faced and trembling, from the floor of the cockpit. He seemed not to be unduly bothered by our terrifying experience, and certainly showed no particular gratitude for an escape so miraculous that even I was tempted to think—for a while at least—that there might be a god after all.

As for the two men in the Italian aeroplane we shot down that morn­ing, I can hardly think that they could have survived such a fall. I was sad afterwards for them and their families, once I had leisure to think about the morning’s events. But there: what would you? It was kill or be killed in those days before parachutes, and I suppose that the Fliegertod was at least preferable to choking with gas in some stinking dug-out or being casually blown to bits by a chance artillery shell. It is a noble and glorious thing, the Latin poet observes, to die for one’s country. But given the choice I think that I would still prefer to make the other fellow die for his.

We landed safely at Caprovizza about 0800; much to my relief, since our poor Zoska’s racked frame was creaking and sagging in a most alarm­ing fashion as a result of the brutal strains imposed upon it by Toth’s aero­batics. From the observer’s seat alone I could count a good half-dozen snapped bracing-wires. We had come out of it alive—even contrived somehow to escape from a spin. But having had a taste of Toth’s flying I could now quite understand how Leutnant Rosenbaum had met his end over Gorz. If I had been a fraction slower about letting go of the gun and seizing the cockpit coaming when we reached the top of the loop I would now be embedded half a metre deep in some Friulian cow pasture.

I saw as we came in to land that a motor-cyclist was standing by, waiting for the camera to be unloaded so that he could collect the box of photographs for the dark-room in Haidenschaft. We taxied to a halt and Toth switched off the engine as the ground crew came running across the field towards us. The sudden silence was stunning after nearly two hours of engine drone and roaring wind. As Toth lifted up his goggles I saw that his eyes too were bloodshot from the strain placed on our circulations by our violent manoeuvres over Palmanova. We were both pale and tired from a combination of excitement, altitude, exertion and inhaling petrol fumes in the freezing cold. As I climbed down to the field I noticed that my knees were unsteady and my heart still fluttering from the after-effects of the brief dog-fight and the spin that had followed it. Franz Meyerhofer was the first to reach me, clapping me on the shoulder.

“Well Prohaska old man, back in one piece I see. Did you get your holiday snaps?”

I smiled. “Yes, thank you very much,” I said, signing the motor­cyclist’s receipt for the photographs against the side of the fuselage. “Mission accomplished exactly as per orders. But that wasn’t all: Toth here shot down an Italian two-seater on the way home.” A cheer went up from the ground crew and, smiling self-deprecatingly, Toth was hoisted on to their shoulders to be carried across the field in triumph. They would have done the same to me, but the gulf between officers and rankers in the k.u.k. Armee was too great for them to feel confident about such horseplay, so I followed behind the triumphal progress.

“But what’s happened to Schraffl and Jahudka?” I asked. “Are they back yet? We saw them go into a cloud somewhere this side of Palmanova, but then the Italians came after us and we had other things to think about. I’d have expected them to have got home ahead of us.”

“Don’t worry about it: they’ve probably had an engine failure or got lost or something and landed at another field. It happens all the time. Bad pennies always turn up somehow. Anyway, you’d better go and get a bite to eat. Kraliczek’s working on his monthly returns, so he can’t see you just yet.”

“Can Toth come with us for a drink in the mess?”