homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Wings: Over Flanders Fields DiD Centenary Challenge

FalkeEins, send me what you've done so far and I'm sure I can look the other way regarding the rules. It's always nice to have new people join us.

FalkeEins -- suggestion: finish your training and record the number of hours flown. Then generate a new pilot for the correct date and with the same name, deleting your old one. When you report your new man's missions, victories, claims, and hours flown, simply add the hours from the old training campaign to the new fellow's hours.

Welcome aboard!

Yes, well said Raine. That is how I did it for Albert Earl Godfrey. It's a great way to include your training period into the DiD campaign and some interesting stories to boot.

Let's be honest, a good great war aviator wouldn't let such a silly thing like rules stand in his way!

I'm a bit confused by the start date instructions... If I were to start on 28/09/17 what would the equivalent date be in February 1915? The 28th?

I'll definitely consider restarting Abelhard or potentially beginning another pilot who is compliant with the rules from the beginning.

Thanks guys.

Welcome FalkeEins, I'm sure Banjoman will be here soon to explain everything, but the two dates available to fly are both in 1917. First, mirrors today's date, but 100 years back, so 28 September, 1917. That's the Warbirds Rising group. The other group - Intrepid Fliers flies 4 months earlier, but they synchronize with the day of the week. So, if it's Thursday, it must be 31 May, 1917. I suggest just creating a new pilot. Good luck. I'm starting a new pilot today as well.

31 May, 1917.

The life at La Bellevue aerodrome continues. The new arrival at RFC 48 is Sergeant Dick Grayson. A young tightrope walker willing to test his mettle in the unfriendly skies. Together with his mentor The Man-Bat and his lady friend The Pussywoman, they’ve been running the circus in Durham for a number of years now. The Man-Bat was so called due to a peculiar membrane growing from his armpits. The Pussywoman’s characteristic facial hair features were the reason for her sobriquet. This, and the uncanny ability to attract other weirdos, such as The Japer, The Spheniscus-man or The Quizzler. These, in turn, would introduce such characters as The Stay-frosty-man, a local brewery spokesman who had one too many. He would oversee the circus concessions. And the Ivy-league-girl, an upper crust brat, that will do anything to defy her upbringing. Anything. Even joining a circus.
Due to his experience with working at heights he excelled at his aircraft-handling studies. He would have been a perfect candidate for scouts, but his lack of independent thinking and dependency on a teammate had only warranted a posting to a two-seater squadron. He was paired with Captain Oliver Glasgow as his gunner/observer. An easy going fellow, who already garnered a nickname of “Glasgow in Bristol”. And so, their adventure together begins...

Welcome to the MeatGrinder Falke Eins.

Fullofit, all I can say is oh my goodness! FalkeEins, Fullofit is correct. The date for the Warbirds group is September 28, 1917, and the Intrepid group is May 31, 1917.

To: Commander
Jasta 4, JG 1
Macrke , France.
Sep 28, 1917.

I have been advise to inform you that We have one of your pilots. He managed to come over to our side of the lines at night without getting shot from the enemy or us , after being shot down. We are turning over Helmute von Hammer to the 14th Company of the 2nd Guards Uhlans to convey him to the rear areas to be transported back to your unit.

Bingo Schmitt
Oberst, Staff Admin
HQ, II Corps

Banjoman, don’t you mean: “HOLLY BRISFIT, MAN-BAT!”?
Carrick, glad Helmut escaped capture. One captured flieger per week is quite enough. Besides, the Countess would be inconsolable.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm The Countess Inconsolable ? https://giphy.com/gifs/right-dr-evil-jeXiz1RAvzX44/fullscreen

That's quite a dynamic duo in that Brisfit, Fullofit!

Now, let's try this again, shall we? Introducing my new pilot, Geoffrey Corderoy...

Background

Second Lieutenant Geoffrey Corderoy was born on 4 April 1894 in the village of South Moreton, Berkshire, the son of Lieutenant Colonel John Corderoy and Ann Brown Corderoy. He grew up with two younger brothers on a sprawling sheep farm at the edge of the village, a place that had been in the family for at least three hundred years. The farm was operated by Geoffrey’s uncle Thomas while his father was on active service.[1]

Geoffrey was educated at Wellington College, after which he attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. Commissioned in May 1915, he was posted shortly afterwards to the 1st Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment (Princess Charlotte of Wales's). He saw limited action in France that summer while his battalion was rebuilt after the severe losses of the 1914 campaign. In September 1915, Lieut. Corderoy was wounded during the Battle of Loos. A piece of shrapnel from a grenade shattered his left knee, leaving him with a noticeable limp. In the same action, another subaltern, Second Lieutenant Alexander Buller Turner won a posthumous VC when he stepped past Corderoy with a satchel of bombs to clear a German trench line.[2]

Corderoy’s recovery was slow. Still in England and deemed unfit for front line infantry service, in July 1916 Corderoy requested transfer to the RFC. His request was granted and he progressed through flying training with distinction, being held until early May of 1917 as an instructor. Finally, in late May he was dispatched to the pilot pool at No 1 AD in St-Omer, from whence on 29 May 1917 he was at last posted to a front-line squadron, No 46 Squadron RFC.

This is his story, told in his own words
.
[FYI: As per the campaign rules, Corderoy is a Sergeant in-game and in my stat reports, but in the stories he is a 2Lt, because there were so few NCO scout pilots in France at this time.]

Diary of 2/Lieut. Geoffrey Corderoy, RFC
Part 1: 29-31 May 1917

29 May 1917

The Crossley tender pulled off the cobbled road from Merville onto a dirt track ridged with deep ruts and foul brown puddles. In the distance stood a red brick farm house and a line of wooden sheds lining the road. As we bumped along closer, I noticed a row of large wooden hangars across – what, not an airfield certainly, for it appeared overgrown with potato plants. The tender squealed to a halt next to the wooden sheds.

“That there be the squadron office, sorr,” he said. A West Country man, he was one peg short of a successful audition for the part of Long John Silver. He pointed to a wooden building along from the sheds with the RFC ensign flapped disconsolately from a pole. I heard a Le Rhône rotary being run up and saw several Ack Emmas outside a hangar with a Pup up on trestles. With my kit bag over my shoulder I climbed the wooden stairs outside the office, used the iron boot scraper someone had affixed there, and stepped inside to find a bespectacled lance corporal eying me as though I were about to ask tuppence for a bit of bread.


The Squadron tender with "Long John."

“Sir?” he said. He sat to attention in a somewhat slovenly manner.

“Lieutenant Corderoy, Lance Corporal. Reporting from 1 AD for duty.” I passed him the manila envelope with my travel and transfer papers.

“Major Babington will be with you in a few minutes,” he said. He returned to his typewriter and finished nearly a page before he got up and brought my paperwork to a fellow in shirt sleeves at another desk. The fellow nodded, got up, and approached me with his hand out.

“Major Babington," the man announced. "And you are Mr. Corderoy. Get quite a ribbing about that, what? Welcome to 46. How much time on Pups?”

I saluted awkwardly and shook his hand. “Five and a half hours, sir.”

“Bloody murder. Ah well, can’t be helped. Let me show you about.” The Major gathered his tunic and walking stick. I could hear the crump of shellfire distinctly. We were surprisingly close to the front.

He beckoned me to bring my kit. We crossed a cinder path to a duckboard walkway that fronted a row of wooden huts. I had seen photographs of fishing villages in Newfoundland. This place had the same ramshackle charm. The windows of the huts were open and the oilcloth curtains flapped in the slight breeze. There was a copse of trees and a pond close behind the huts. I was shown to number 3, where I dropped my kit on a vacant bed. Most of the serviceable aircraft were up as there was an impending push, so my first introductions were with the mechanics. Sergeant Purchase was my lead mechanic, a bright fellow who was just respectful enough, but not enough to lose status in the eyes of the others. He’d been with the squadron since Wyton.[3] I was new and not worth knowing until I proved I could stay around a while.

The field, such as it was, was a St. Andrew’s cross of cinder in the midst of the potatoes. It sloped down towards the River Lys at one end and featured some convenient drainage ditches to keep life interesting. And it was miniscule. We crossed the field to the farm house and the mess, a large wooden building divided into two rooms. The anteroom offered several battered armchairs, a stove and fireplace, a bar, several tables littered with magazines both educational and profane, and the requisite framed filthy prints on the walls. Here and there, bits of enemy aircraft boasted of past successes. I enjoyed a cup of tea with the Major. I hadn’t noticed before, but he wore the ribbon of the MC on his tunic.

Raucous laughter and loud voices announced the return of a flight. It was a defensive patrol, well behind our lines, so the Major didn’t meet them on the field. Everyone was back and introductions began. I struggled to remember the names. One that stood out was Heath, an Australian tennis player who’d won the Australasian Championships five times. Another was a captain named Caldwell, a Canadian. [4]

30 May 1917

On this day I flew against the enemy for the first time, a gentle introduction. Six Pups led by Captain Heath headed north to patrol over our aerodromes along the Channel coast. We climbed atop a blanket of crisp white cumulus into bright sunshine and I nearly died from the cold. I was unused to flying above 10,000 feet. Back on the ground, I looked out every sweater I had and wrote home for a sheepskin jacket.

After lunch we had a visit from the GOC of the RFC in the field, General Trenchard. A powerful barrel-chested man, he gave us a brisk monosyllabic talk in his best parade-square voice (for which he is known as “Boom” Trenchard) and inspected the sheds. His ADC, Captain Baring, heard me answer the General during inspection when he asked me where I was from. I’d said South Moreton, a village too small for anyone to have heard of it, yet Captain Baring approached me afterwards to ask if I knew the writer Hilaire Belloc, who had lived in the village. I did indeed, or more correctly I knew his son Louis as we had both attended the same school as children. Louis was now in the RFC, Captain Baring told me. Baring and I chatted about some of the local places in Berkshire, for he had once visited the Belloc home. He told me that Belloc had just visited him and the General in France just a week ago.[5]
I flew again in the afternoon, and this time I saw the front. My strict orders were to avoid a scrap if we ran into Huns. There was no need to worry, for the Huns were sleeping off their lunch, it seemed.

31 May 1917

Again I flew twice, led by Captain Pratt. We stayed on our side of the lines and toured the flooded land near the coast to the north, seeing nothing. In the afternoon we flew a “Close Offensive Patrol” near Arras, to the south. At the extreme end of our patrol I noted several specks in the distance and signalled to Captain Kay, the flight commander, as I had been instructed. He shook his head and we turned back. After we reported to Lieut. Thompson, the Recording Officer, Captain Kay explained that one ought not to attack a large group of Huns when low on fuel and when there is a strong westerly wind. Besides that, he noted that there were seven Huns and only five of us and we were not at our best altitude. Apparently a Pup is not a match for an Albatros below ten or twelve thousand feet.


Returning to La Gorgue -- the approach over the Lys

Notes

[1] Corderoy / Cordery is an old family name in North Berkshire (now South Oxfordshire). It is recorded that in 1688, a John Corderoy owned the two mills in Geoffrey's home village of South Moreton.

[2] 2Lt Alexander Buller Turner a fellow Wellingtonian, was part of a remarkable family. His father had been a major in the Royal Berkshire Regiment, and his mother's father was an admiral. Alexander's brother, a LCol in the Rifle Brigade, won a VC at El Alamein in 1942. Winning VCs ran in the family. They were related to General Sir Redvers Buller, who won a VC at Inhlobana in the Zulu War.

[3] No 46 Squadron was formed a Wyton in Cambridgeshire in April 1916. It flew two-seater Nieuports and had converted to Pups only shortly before Corderoy's arrival.

[4] Corderoy got the name wrong. He is referring to Captain Caudwell.

[5] Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) was a noted poet, historian, and all-round man of letters and a close friend of Maurice Baring. His father was French, his mother English. Belloc was a staunch Catholic as was Baring. He lived briefly in South Moreton, but his son Louis settled there. Louis was killed in action with the RAF in 1918. Hilaire Belloc was a frequent visitor at RFC HQ. He had had dinner there on the evening of 20 May 1917, according to Baring.

Raine, another masterpiece in the making my friend!

Fullofit, good luck with the Brisfit, she is a wonderful bird.

Carrick, glad you made it back over the lines.

After seeing how others treat people in the SimHQ community I've decided to avoid browsing here going forward. I may stop by and read some of the reports every now and again. You're a nice bunch of guys though - nothing personal towards any of you! Seems this subforum somewhat exemplifies how everybody on SimHQ should elect to interact.

Thanks for the help and good luck making it through late 2017/1917 and 2018/1918!

Wow! I don't know what happened but we are sorry to see you go.

Raine: Luv the sq Tender what a ride.

Helmute von Hammer
Jasta 4, JG 1
Macrke , France.
Sep 29, 1917.


Reporting in, I was told to ride in the company Hack down to the Central Air Depot and bring back a new ship after a Test Hop. The C.O. didn't mention that it was a new Type and would require a full days testing. With that said I planed on picking up a few cans of paint.

FalkeEins, I'm so sorry to hear that, I sure wish you would reconsider and stay. This is a good group of guys and I know that you would definitely feel welcome here. I certainly can understand how nobody wants to be treated with any disrespect, but if you should decide to come back, just know that you are most welcome here with us.

Raine, has brought the starting rank up before so do you guys think we should just change the rules to let you start with a rank that makes more sense. I really don't mind and it probably makes more sense to do it like Raine.