Australian airmen played an important part in the British offensive that won the war in Palestine in September 1918. Their actions provided a foretaste of things to come in aerial warfare. This feature by Michael Molkentin is an edited extract from his exciting and comprehensive book Fire in the Sky: the Australian Flying Corps in the First World War.
“Not a single enemy machine got over our line”
In May 1918, General Edmund Allenby (commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force) began preparations to bring the war in Palestine to a decisive close.
By late summer, the Germans were fading from skies. They had crossed the lines 100 times per week in June, but by the last week of August this had decreased to eighteen. No. 1 Squadron AFC’s commanding officer, Major Sydney Addison, proudly noted that during the week before Allenby’s offensive, “not a single enemy machine got over our line”.
In eight weeks the Australian squadron had shot down 38 enemy aircraft, in addition to flying 68 long distance reconnaissances and photographing almost 1,400 square kilometers of enemy territory.
‘Fairly knocked by the audacity of it’
Allenby’s plan was a bold proposal designed to exploit the Turks’ thinly held front line and acute lack of reserves. He intended to attack at dawn on 19 September in a 13 kilometre wide corridor between the main Turkish railway and the Mediterranean coast. The infantry would break through the Turkish trenches and, like a gate, swing north eastwards towards Tul Keram.
The cavalry would then charge up the coast through the ‘open gate’, and swing inland across the heights of Samaria and out onto the Plain of Esdraelon at Megiddo. From there, the cavalry could paralyse the Turkish command and control system by capturing the key transport and communication centres at El Afule, Nazareth, Jenin and Beisan.
If this could be achieved quickly enough, the cavalry would be in a position to completely cut off the retreat of the two Turkish armies (8th and 7th) between the Jordan and the coast.
Allenby gave the new Royal Air Force a crucial role to play. When the squadrons were briefed on the afternoon of 18 September, Australian pilot Stan Nunan was “fairly knocked” by the “audacity” of Allenby’s plan. Each squadron, it was revealed, had a specific role to play in the offensive - a sector to patrol or targets to bomb.
The Australians however, were to maintain their broad, strategic role and keep a general oversight over the entire battlefront. Crews were to report any Turkish retreats to RAF HQ via wireless, which would in turn, arrange raids to rout the enemy.
Two Australian airmen, Ross Smith and ‘Pard’ Mustard would undertake special bombing missions in a Handley Page bomber, which had recently arrived from England. With its twin engines and 33 metre wingspan, the ‘HP’ was a behemoth compared to the Bristol Fighter. It was the only one of its kind outside of Europe, and its assignment to No. 1 Squadron was a considerable accolade. “It seems,” noted observer Clive Conrick proudly, “that we are No.1 Squadron in fact as well as in name.”
Les Sutherland captured the tension and restlessness that beset the mess that night.
“At dinner that night... we talked of targets. Talked and talked. But not over drinks. Mustn’t be any thick heads or shaky hands next day. What the deuce was going to happen? Some brooded; some wrote letters - you could tell by their air that this might be the last words to their dear ones. Nearly everyone bought extra cigarettes and chocolate. Handy things, those, if one is forced down in the wrong place.”
‘Child’s play for those in the air’
The roar of two 375 horsepower Rolls Royce Eagle engines woke Sutherland at about 1 am on the 19 September. It was Ross Smith, his observer ‘Pard’ Mustard and two other crew in the Handley Page O/400 bomber, on their way to make the opening strike of what historians would dub the Battle of Megiddo.
Smith bombed the Turkish army group telephone exchange at El Afule. A few hours later, British DH9’s hit it again, and also raided the Turkish 7th and 8th Army telephone line junctions at Nablus and Tul Keram. According to the commander of the Turkish forces, by 7am “telephonic and telegraphic communication … ceased...” The enemy commanders were blind and deaf before the battle had even really started.
The British artillery barrage began at 4:30am. Fifteen minutes later, five British infantry divisions of left their trenches with the cavalry close behind. Sutherland and his pilot Harold Maughan were overhead at 6am to escort a large flight of British DH9’s to bomb the main Turkish railway junction at El Afule.
“Dawn was just showing in the east. The earth was a dim dark mass; not a light showing anywhere... Even from our height of 10,000 feet the sight was magnificent. We could not hear the guns but we could feel the percussions.”
The aircraft dropped their bombs with devastating effect but encountered heavy anti-aircraft fire. One DH9 was hit and came down within sight of the German aerodrome at Jenin. Maughan and Sutherland circled in their Bristol and landed nearby to rescue the two British airmen. Suddenly, as Sutherland put it, “Hundreds of natives seemed to appear from nowhere.” They were Bedouins from a nearby village, apparently interested in the £40 reward the Turks were offering for captured British airmen.
As the two British officers sprinted towards the Bristol, Sutherland swung his Lewis guns around and fired into the charging line of Bedouins. “Rat-a-tat-tat-tat. It was impossible to miss. Gaps appeared in the Bedouins ranks and down they went, wounded and unwounded to take cover.” Maughan meanwhile tossed out everything they didn’t need – spare ammunition, camera, photo plates, rations – to lighten the machine. He directed the British observer to crouch on the floor of Sutherland’s cockpit and the pilot to sit up on the Lewis gun mounting and hold onto the top wing struts.
“The Bristol with her double human load, moved slowly forward at full throttle. The machine rolled, staggered and lurched over the rough ground... up came the tail and the pace increased, up to flying speed. She was off! Cheers from all concerned!”
Maughan set a course for Ramleh and after barely clearing a 3,000 feet high mountain range, landed safely.
At 9:45am news arrived at the Australian aerodrome at Ramleh that 7,000 enemy troops were making a “general and disorganised retreat” north along the road from El Tireh towards Tul Keram. Sutherland and Maughan, with four other crews set off toward the road, by this time choked with enemy cavalry and transport.
In Sutherland’s words, “We gave the cavalry our bombs from a height of 1500 feet. We blew them to blazes. Then zoomed on the enemy and chopped them to ribbons with our guns. We couldn’t miss. Emptied our belts and drums... The Turkish survivors were in disorderly flight all over the countryside.”
The crews returned to Ramleh; refuelled, rearmed and set out again at 1230. “The ground staff,” noted Clive Conrick in his diary is “like a goanna at water, continually occupied with servicing and bombing-up returning aircraft.” By nightfall, No. 1 Squadron’s Bristol Fighters had dropped three tons of bombs and fired over 20,000 rounds of ammunition into the retreating Turkish 8th Army.
They left the roads leading north from the enemy front crammed with a tangled mess of shattered horses, men and transport. The German commander-in-chief reported, “the repeated attempts of officers to rally at least some of the men were made in vain as the men were entirely indifferent and were concerned only for their own salvation.” Meanwhile progress on the ground was outstanding. The British cavalry was fifty kilometres beyond the enemy’s front line by sunset.
The officer’s mess at Ramleh was lively that night as the pilots and observers celebrated and spun tales about the day’s events. Ross Smith and Mustard didn’t indulge in too much revelry though; they were scheduled for two night raids on Jenin in the Handley Page bomber before morning.
Two pairs of Bristols left Ramleh at dawn on the 20th and confirmed that the Turkish 7th Army was indeed retreating towards Nablus. Columns of troops and transport were crowding the road leading north from Jenin to El Afule.
For the rest of the day, the Australians worked back and forth along this crowded passage, alternating with the British squadrons. Sutherland described it as “sheer butchery”, claiming, “there was no need for pre-offensive heights. We flew just high enough to keep clear of our bomb splinters. That was about 150 feet. Child’s play for those in the air.” Altogether, the RAF dropped ten tons of bombs and fired 40,000 rounds of ammunition on the 21st, turning the Turkish retreat into a rout.
The British official historian wrote, “about 30 hours after the British offensive had been launched, aircraft of the Royal Air Force were operating from an aerodrome which was 40 miles inside the Turkish lines when the attack had begun.”
For Conrick, it all made “Gallipoli seem like a bad dream.” He wrote in his diary that it seemed “incredible that the Turco-German forces could sustain such casualties and such defeats in just two days.” Yet others were disturbed by the carnage they had left strewn along the Jenin-El Afule road.
According to Sutherland, “It was a gloomy night in the mess. Gone our excitement of a few days previously. Gone the elation of having Jacko where we wanted him. Targets? No one wished to discuss them. We were weary of the slaughter…Only the lucky ones slept that night.”
‘Nine miles of dead’
At 5am the following morning, Allan Brown and Garfield Finlay with Nunan and Conrick reconnoitred the enemy’s 7th Army sector (between Nablus and the Jordan). Finlay had a special wireless set to transmit significant targets to RAF headquarters.
As the sun rose, the pair of Bristols flew from Balata along the Wady Beidan and onto the Wady Fara, which led east to one of the few remaining Jordan River crossings available to the retreating 7th Army. Conrick found “the whole length of the road jammed tight with troops, motor transports, gun carriages and horse transports, all of which were moving at a snail’s pace towards Beisan.”
Following these were thousands more, pouring into Balata from the south. The road they clambered and lurched along was in fact, a 2,000-year-old Roman construction “built along the sides of steep hills rising out of the Wady (valley) with, on the eastern side, a sheer precipice from the edge of the road to the bottom of the Wady Beidan.”
Finlay transmitted an account of the situation and the two Bristols dropped their bombs on the narrowest sections of the road, creating in Sutherland’s words, “a traffic jam on a one way street”.
They then got to work on the trapped masses with their machine guns. The pilots roared in low, firing their forward Vickers before pulling up steeply to allow their observers to open up with the rear facing Lewis guns. Conrick described one pass in his diary: “They had little chance of escape from my guns as we were so close to them. As I fired I saw chips of rock fly off the cliff face and red splotches suddenly appear on the Turks who would stop climbing and fall and their bodies were strewn along the base of the cliff like a lot of dirty rags.”
With their ammunition belts empty, they headed for home, passing three Bristols already on their way in response to Finlay’s wireless message. The British squadrons joined in too and for the rest of the day there was hardly less than half a dozen aircraft above the crammed road at any time. Sutherland called it
“A bomber, a machine-gunner’s paradise. A giant, greyish-black snake, nine miles in length...I can think of no word to convey the dreadfulness of this action. As our bombs rained down scores, hundreds of motor lorries guns and wagons were literally lifted off the road and smashed to pieces...One could see the expressions on the faces of the poor devils below; could read the agony and the anguish in front of the gun-sights. One second it would be a team of horses; the next a bloody mass of shattered legs and carcasses.”
By mid afternoon, the Turks were totally demoralised. The pilots began reporting white flags and groups sitting with their heads bowed, totally resigned to their fate. Like Sutherland, Conrick was overwhelmed by the carnage he and his fellows were causing below. “While I kept firing my guns I had to close my mind to all that I could see, to the abject terror on the faces of the Turks, to the dead piling up on the road, to the burning transports, to the horses stampeding over the cliff edge…”.
The squadrons pursued the scattered groups of survivors on the following day. “The bombs continued to rain down,” wrote Sutherland. “Many of those poor devils were killed a dozen times over.”
By sunset on the 22nd, the Turkish 7th Army ceased to exist as a fighting formation. In two days, the RAF had dropped 13.5 tons of bombs and fired 86,000 rounds into the choked roads north east of Balata. It was a new thing in warfare, and it struck the pilots with an awesome sense of their destructive capability.
As Sutherland realised, “Alone we had to deal with a force that outnumbered us by thousands to one”. The demoralised state of the Turkish army, and the terrain had certainly contributed to creating this unprecedented situation, but the key ingredient was British air superiority. Here, in central Palestine on the 21 and 22 September 1918, was history’s first example of the calamity that could befall a retreating force without air cover.
Over the following week, No. 1 Squadron pursued the routed army – now disorganised mobs – further north. Some waved white flags. Others, dejected, just sat down as the Bristols roared overhead. Conrick explained that by this time “some of the blokes” had had enough of the massacre. As far as he was concerned though “one Turk left alive could mean another Australian light horse casualty” – so he, for one, kept on firing. On 30 October, Turkey signed an armistice bringing the war in the Middle East to a close.
H. S. Gullet, the campaign’s official historian, made the astute observation that “perhaps nowhere else in the war has the efficacy of the air force, as a sheer fighting agency against troops on the ground been so convincingly demonstrated”.
The “nine miles of dead” haunted Les Sutherland. “I feel sick even now when I think about it,” he wrote in 1935. With good reason, his forecast of things to come was grim and as it turned out, prescient: “We, who saw what could be done, what was done seventeen years ago, find our thinking caps weigh heavily when the subject is the war of the future”.
Michael Molkentin’s book, Fire in the Sky: the Australian Flying Corps in the First World War, is published by Allen & Unwin and available from September 2010.