In a morning fight against the Circus we always tried to get to eastward so that we had the advantage of the sun; in the afternoon of course we had this advantage, as it was in the west, and our attack was usually a surprise. This was very necessary as the odds were two to one against us, for if one sailed in on a level with the enemy there was little hope of all pilots coming back; better to take a little longer over the job, pick off one or two of the enemy and live to fight again. You will see how very
important it was in such fighting for each pilot to select a machine to dive at and withhold his fire until the last possible moment, for to fire at considerable range seldom damages the enemy but gives him excellent warning of the attack. Possibly over an hour has been spent getting into the right position for the attack and this would be entirely wasted by premature firing.
Of course, conditions were not always ideal enough to allow one to obtain the most favourable position, clouds often screened the sun and often one had to use them as cover, but, as the enemy were doing the same thing, surprise was always likely on both sides.
The enemy had their own methods of defence and were the first to use decoy tactics. These were introduced comparatively early in the war with no little measure of success. A favourite method of decoy practice with them was to have a slow two-seater machine flying at a fairly low altitude, say 8,000 feet, while above it at about 12,000 feet would be a formidable array of fighting scouts, and no sooner had an enemy pilot commenced to attack what he thought was “easy meat” when down would come the scouts, with every chance of wiping out the whole English flight. Baron von Richtofen employed a very good plan to catch the unwary Flight Commander; he arranged for four of his machines out of fifteen to detach themselves from the main body as soon as hostile aircraft were sighted. These four machines would appear to fly off as if falling out of the patrol to go home, but in reality they climbed up into the sun, and when the English formation was busy scrapping with the main body of ten to twelve machines down would come the four with every hope of wiping off most of the British patrol. Not a few British pilots lost their lives in this fashion.
For successful fighting it was necessary to know on what work the enemy was engaged and experience gradually taught one to distinguish - for example, there were two-seaters which spotted for enemy artillery, and these would not fly much above 4-6,000 feet; these machines were protected by their own anti-aircraft guns on the ground which, if they saw any hostile aircraft approaching, would put up a warning shot somewhere near the machine.
