Sopwith Ace

Air Classics, Mar 2004 by Pahl, Gerard

THE CAREER OF GREAT WAR ACE WILLIAM BARKER AND THE SOPWITH CAMEL BEING BUILT BY THE KALAMAZOO AIR ZOO

When possible, William Barker would expend his ammunition on Hun troops the end of a mission, but he particularly hated strafing horses. He favored attacking enemy scouts more than anything else. In a letter to his mother, Barker claimed his first victory was when his Lewis guns destroyed the engine of a Fokker that went down behind its own lines, but squadron records show no victories for the time in question. In Wayne Ralph's masterful book Barker VC, he quotes the letter from Bill to his mother: "I am nearly dizzy from flying & work for we are awfully busy. Yesterday went over the lines at 9000-ft I saw a Fokker coming over and straightaway attacked him in the rear. He gave flight & the duel lasted about five minutes, we circled round & round & once I was within 80 yards of him. all the time I worked my m. gun like a demon, remedying jams & putting on new drums, suddenly he turned & planed away to his lines with a dead engine which I must have hit. Our plane was hit in many places & I had the arm pit of my leather coat shot away but was not touched. It was a fight I will never forget but am sorry to say that I could (not) bring him down in flames or meet [sic] him out some such fate." (Author's Note: The letters are reproduced as they were written, without editing or correcting typos).

Some historians do list a possible Fokker shot down in March 1917 and two Rolands falling to Barker's .303-cal guns in July and August. Indeed, Miles Constable in his biography of Barker says that Barker shot down a Roland scout (possibly diving out of the sun onto Barker and his pilot's six, anticipating an easy kill). Constable wrote that Barker shot the German pilot in the forehead, killing him. "Two weeks later he downed a second Roland scout in flames and was Mentioned in Dispatches." Ralph states that none of these claims were credited to Barker's official record of 50 aircraft destroyed by the end of the war.

Though Barker did not receive credit for his possible victories as an aerial gunner, he was awarded the Military Cross for protecting his pilot and plane during a critical mission. Towards the end of the Somme campaign he and Capt. W.G. Pender were sent to reconnoiter the area around the village of Beaumont Hamel. Constable stated that while proceeding to the enemy's defensive works, "They were attacked by a pair of German scouts. Most B.E.2c pilots would have turned tail and trundled off home, but not Barker's pilot. They fought off the two Albatros D.IIs, doing such damage to one that they both fled." After the two stubborn B.E.2c crewmembers completed their photographic run they proceeded home when "they were intercepted by four more Germans. Again, turning into them with such skill that they drove them off" and made it back to their lines safely.

The great fighter pilot Raoul Lufbery said: "There won't be any 'after the war (talk)' for a fighter pilot," suggesting that he and his fellow pilots would stay in French soil (Lufbery did die in France, jumping from his burning plane). Quentin Reynolds in his book They Fought for the Sky wrote, "You either accepted the spurious but comforting belief that you were invulnerable, or the alternative - that it was merely a matter of time before your time came. If you accepted the latter, you were passing a death sentence on yourself, for such an attitude slowed your reflexes in combat and clouded your judgment." He continued: "They were fighting the cruelest foe in the world, 'time' and the intelligent among them knew that life was merely lending them a few more casual days or weeks."

Though it would appear that Barker and his pilot, though vulnerable, were nonetheless fearless. This was not so. They took what they did seriously, and knew that from the altitude at which they had to perform their missions they were extremely susceptible to ground fire, both small arms and enemy "Archie" (anti-aircraft artillery). The innovative Boche had begun to mount elevated 3-inch guns on trucks which, when used in concentration, were particularly devastating.

In his book Reynolds continued, "A pilot from No. 4 Squadron (whose name unhappily is lost to history) seemed to attract anti-aircraft fire every time he flew. he would laugh uproariously at bursting shells and start singing a popular and slightly ribald song of the day, 'Archibald, Certainly Not!' His squadron mates would greet him when he returned from a flight with 'Archibald give you any trouble today?' Eventually the long name was shortened to 'Archie' and to the end of the war, German anti-aircraft fire was known as such."

Bill seemed to be always exposed to the black flak of Archie and it was particularly terrifying as, unlike fire from an enemy aeroplane, there was nothing you could do about flak. In his book Barker VC, Ralph quotes a letter from Bill to his mother: "A mighty battle is coming off to-morrow. The enormous guns are now cannonading & preparing the way for our infantry. I have a rather serious job on. My job is to fly at 500 ft to 1000 feet & keep the Generals of the divisions informed of enemy movements, counter attacks, etc. also to let them know where our own infantry are so our barrage can conform. It is mighty serious work to go up there & send down reports which mean so much. Consequently I fly so low that I almost touch the ground for no report that I send in is any other than what I see with my own eyes."