On July 30, squadron members participated in what the unit history later referred to, with masterly understatement, as a “very gallant piece of work.” That afternoon three D.H.9s took off from Beketova to bomb and strafe river barges and cavalry concentrations at Tcherni-Yar on the Volga. Their objective accomplished, the aircraft piloted by Lieutenant Walter F. Anderson, with Lieutenant John Mitchell as observer, started photographing the area. Escorting them was a D.H.9 crewed by Captain William Elliot and Lieutenant H.S. Laidlaw. Both planes soon encountered heavy machine gun fire from the ground. Anderson’s machine sustained several hits in the starboard fuel tank, which began to leak. Mitchell clambered out onto the wing and, while holding on with one hand, plugged the leaks with the fingers of the other. Just as they were setting course for home Anderson saw that Elliot’s machine had also taken hits and was going down with a dead engine. Worse, Red cavalrymen had seen the D.H.9’s descent and were spurring toward it.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Aviation History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Mindful of Bolshevik threats to crucify, castrate or disembowel all captured foreign aviators, and with Mitchell still out on the wing, Anderson set his D.H.9 down close to Elliot’s crippled machine. Then, while the two observers held off the cavalry, Elliot set fire to his damaged aircraft. Seconds later he and Laidlaw sprinted over to Anderson’s machine, cramming themselves into the observer’s cockpit just vacated by Mitchell, who returned to the perforated wing. An agonizingly slow takeoff across rutted ground was accomplished in true Hollywood style just ahead of the flashing sabers of the Red cavalry.

The return flight took 50 minutes. If this seemed long to Anderson, struggling with his unwieldy plane, it must have been an eternity to poor Mitchell as he rode the wing with the fingers of one hand wedged in the fuel tank bullet holes. Worse, because he was wearing shorts, he suffered serious burns to his legs from the engine exhaust gases. Anderson and Mitchell both received DSOs, although Collishaw felt they deserved Victoria Crosses.

A confirmed believer in leading from the front, Collishaw was soon in action himself, bombing a Red gunboat on the Volga and literally blowing it out of the water. Shortly after, two of the squadron’s D.H.9s, one flown by Anderson, caused havoc during a raid on the Red seaplane base and airfield at Dubovka. Having bombed a barge carrying eight F.B.A. (Franco-British Aviation) flying boats, they attacked a Nieuport parked on the airfield. Finally, they went in low to rake the area with machine gun fire, leaving behind, as Collishaw noted approvingly, a scene of flames and destruction.

Marion Aten disembarked in south Russia on August 18, 1919, one of the last 47 Squadron pilots to arrive. He joined the squadron just as it received its first Camels, hard-used examples from the former RNAS base at Mudros in the Aegean. The need to overhaul the scouts meant that it was not until September 27 that B (Camel) Flight set out in its special train for Beketova and the Volga front.

Two days later, while escorting some D.H.9s, Kinkead scored B Flight’s first victory by shooting down a Red Nieuport into the Volga. Combat with the Red air force, however, was not a primary objective for Kinkead’s pilots. The squadron’s official history relates: “This flight operated with great success in direct contact with the front-line troops and in attacking formations along and behind the enemy front. Perhaps the most significant work done by the flight was the cooperation with General [Piotr N.] Wrangel’s cavalry corps, led by the big-hearted Cossack General Ulayai. Flight Lieu­tenant Kinkead and his companions would descend and bomb and machine-gun the enemy, causing great disorder amounting sometimes to panic. Then General Ulayai would attack with his cavalry, to complete the confusion.” The bombing method perfected by the Camel pilots was to dive until the target was framed in the Aldis sight and then release their bombs—a technique that culminated in the massacre of Dumenko’s column outside Tsaritsyn.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to