Georges Guynemer: France’s World War I Ace Pilot

By Jon Guttman | Aviation History  | one comment  | Print This Post  | Email This Post

By November 1, N.3 had been credited with 65 enemy aircraft shot down, for the loss of three pilots, two observers and one gunner killed in action, and two pilots and two observers missing. Guynemer had 18 victories to his credit, and five of his squadron mates — René Dorme, André Chainat, Alfred Heurteaux, Albert Deullin and Mathieu Tenant de la Tour — were also aces of considerable renown.

As famous as its pilots were the markings of N.3’s aircraft. Its squadron insignia was a stork, a bird known to nest annually in the chimneys of Alsace-Lorraine, which had been in German hands since the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. N.3’s stork symbolized France’s determination to return and retake those provinces. Within the squadron, pilots had become associated with the numbers that identified their planes — 1 was Brocard’s, 2 adorned nearly all of Guynemer’s aircraft, 3 was Deullin’s, 6 was Chainat’s, 7 was Alfred Auger’s, 8 was Joseph-Henri Guiguet’s, 9 was Georges Raymond’s, 11 was Heurteaux’s and 12 was Dorme’s. Personal touches included Guynemer’s famous legend Le Vieux Charles beneath his cockpit, as well as Chainat’s l’Oiseau Bleu, Guiguet’s P’tit Jo, Raymond’s Ma Ninon and Pére Dorme (Father Dorme), which alluded to the maturity rather than the age of the coolly vindictive Dorme, who was then 22.

Guynemer also applied some creative flair to the sound of his Hispano-Suiza engine. Whenever he returned to the aerodrome after downing an enemy, he would open and close the throttle to produce a punctuated sound that resembled the words “J’en ai en” — “I got one of them.”

On October 16, N.3 became the nucleus of a new concept in aerial warfare. During the Verdun and Somme campaigns, the French had collected fighter squadrons into temporary groups to achieve local air superiority. Now they would form permanent groupes de combat, one of the first being GC.12. Commanded by Brocard, GC.12 combined his old escadrille, N.3, now under Lieutenant Heurteaux, with N.26, N.73 and N.103. The group officially commenced operations from Cachy aerodrome on November 1. In the months that followed, its other escadrilles would adopt variations on N.3’s stork as a common emblem for all their aircraft.

When he was not hunting enemy planes, Guynemer used his fame — and influence — to advocate advances in the tools of his trade. In December 1916, he wrote a letter to Béchereau: “The 150-hp Spad is not a match for the Halberstadt. Although the Halberstadt is probably no faster, it climbs better, consequently it has the overall advantage. More speed is needed; possibly the airscrew could be improved.”

As one response, Hispano-Suiza increased the compression ratio of its original engine to produce the 180-hp 8Ab. The first Spad VII to use it, S254, was presented to Guynemer in mid-December 1916. He went on to score 19 victories in that plane and never changed its engine — a remarkable indication of both the motor’s reliability and that of the ground crewmen who maintained it, often joined by former mechanic Guynemer himself. Fortunately for posterity, the doubly historic S254 survived combat and decades of retirement, eventually to be restored and displayed at the Musée de l’Air et l’Espace at Le Bourget. The 180-hp Hispano 8Ab, combined with improved cooling systems and other refinements, allowed the Spad VII to hold its own practically to the end of the war.

The groundwork for a successor to the Spad VII was laid on June 11, 1916, when Hispano-Suiza successfully bench-tested a new geared V-8 engine, the 8B, which could produce 208 hp at 2,000 rpm at ground level. After testing it in the Spad VII, Béchereau decided that a somewhat larger, more robust airframe would be necessary to accommodate it. The Spad 13.C1 or XIII, which was ordered into production in February 1917, featured twin .30-caliber Vickers machine guns. In spite of an impressive maximum speed of 124 mph and a climb rate of 13,000 feet in 11 minutes, problems with the Hispano-Suiza 8B’s spur reduction gear would delay the Spad XIII’s frontline debut and would handicap it for months thereafter.

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Tags: Aces, Aerial Combat, Aviation History, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, World War I