Heroes of the Victoria Cross
New to flying and shunned for his working-class roots, this young Irishman nonetheless mastered his craft to become the RAF’s first VC recipient
The afternoon of 7 May 1917 would prove to be a fateful date for the Royal Flying Corps (RFC).
Edward ‘Mick’ Mannock, a rookie pilot, was rocketing along in his Nieuport 23 plane a handful of feet from the ground, racing towards the enemy obser vation balloons that No 40 Squadron had been harassing for weeks. Simultaneously, No 56 Squadron was attacking the balloons from above, navigating blasts from the German flak cannons below. The squadron’s aerial dynamo Albert Ball, Mannock’s greatest inspiration with 44 confirmed victories, was engaged in a heated dogfight with enemy fighters, darting among the thick cumulonimbus giants. As the aircraft separated, Ball peeled off into a black, brooding thundercloud. The next time he was seen, the young man was flying upside down with a dead propeller and descending fast, having gotten disoriented in the clouds.
Ball’s plane dropped like a stone and crashed into the earth, killing him instantly. Meanwhile, the balloon in Mannock’s sights was also dropping rapidly to evade the attack from above. The trap closed as Mannock’s target came within range of his Vickers gun. After a few short bursts the balloon fell rapidly, its pilot parachuting out in the nick of time before his craft burst into flames and plummeted to the ground. This was the first of Mannock’s 61 aerial victories amassed during the First World War, a tally that would make him the first Victoria Cross recipient of the new Royal Air Force (RAF).
Misfit in the mess and the skies
Great War airmen respected any victory against an obser vation balloon as the pilot would have to navigate fighter patrols, anti-aircraft artillery, smoke screens and more to get a clean shot. Yet Mannock’s reputation as a “boorish knowit-all”, as one lieutenant described him, stuck in a mess hall filled with upper- class gentlemen barely out of public school. As a working- class Irish nationalist and socialist, Mannock could not have been more out of place.
A late entry into the war after being interned in Turkey, Mannock was so ill from mistreatment that the Ottomans had judged him unfit for military service and suitable for repatriation. This assessment was misguided, and Mannock was soon well enough to join the RFC by 1916, which became the RAF in April 1918. Here, he learned to fly and was assigned to No 40 Squadron on the Western Front. From the first night he set foot in the mess, Mannock made a terrible impression, accidentally sitting in the chair of a recently killed pilot before lecturing his fellow pilots on ae
