CHAPTER 16
Le Croisic, November 1917
Game to the End
THE NAVY ESTABLISHED THE FIRST OF ITS EIGHT AIR PATROL STATIONS manned by Americans on the French coast at Le Croisic. The ancient fishing village sat on a rugged point near the mouth of the Loire River on the Atlantic and about eighteen miles from Saint-Nazaire. Coombe, Landon, Smith, and Walker formed the officer corps for the rapidly growing installation—built by German prison labor—with a contingent of 330 enlisted men. The base’s patrols were expected to cover out along 75 miles of coast. On November 17, Landon and Coombe left the station on a sub patrol in two French Tellier single-engine pusher flying boats. They were the first American pilots to operate officially in European waters. It was a toothless effort. They could do little more than mark the position of any enemy vessel they might have spotted. They had no weapons to carry. Eight months after the United States entered the war, increasing numbers of aviation personnel were finally starting to arrive, but their nation still could not provide them with any aircraft or ordnance. A few days later, the French installed bombs under the wings of the four French-supplied flying boats at the station.
Those aircraft were typical of the equipment provided to the Americans as they took over the coastal bases: obsolete, rickety, hazardous on the water, and reluctant to get off it and, when they did finally take to the air, likely to break down. “That was the way the whole coast went,” said Smith. “With all the machines [the French] didn’t want they said, ‘Send them up to the Americans and let them go ahead and kill themselves if they want to, but we will use the best machines.’”
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As much as the mechanics were able, they kept the cranky flying boats in round-the-clock readiness to respond immediately to radioed U-boat alerts and to escort the transport convoys steaming through the treacherous U-boat hunting zone into and out of Saint-Nazaire. The station also provided a link in the relay of aerial guardians accompanying coastal convoys running to Spain and the Mediterranean. Coombe, Landon, and Walker had rowed crew at Yale. Now far from the Long Island Sound, they would fly over the Harrimans’
Sultana, the same yacht that had carried them a year and a half ago from New Haven to New London for the Harvard Regatta in what seemed like a previous lifetime. Scores of private yachts, including Henry Davison’s
Shuttle, Jack Morgan’s
Corsair and the Whitneys’
Aphrodite, had been loaned to the government for military duty. Lightly armed and manned by college boys from the reserves, they formed the so-called Suicide Fleet that sailed overseas to protect convoys against U-boat attacks.
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At Thursday, noontime, five days after Landon’s and Coombe’s historic first patrol, the radio shack received an alert announcing the location of a schooner under attack by a U-boat. Five minutes after the message arrived, Ken Smith scrambled in search of the sub. It was the first armed American war flight. As in too many other American aerial firsts, it would end badly.
His flying boat carried a two-man crew up with him, Frank Brady, his observer, and mechanic W. M. Wilkinson. They flew off alone—with no food, water, or signaling equipment other than a pair of homing pigeons on board. The flying boat carried about four hours of fuel. As they flew over the breakwater protecting the Le Croisic harbor, spray from big waves slapping the rocks whipped up at them. The flying boat vanished into a heavy fog bank.
As Smith piloted blind through the dense fog, he glanced down frequently at the map, which was not in a windproof case and flapped around in the cockpit. The heavy air kept bouncing the aircraft about and he continually had to right it. Neither Brady nor Wilkinson knew how to navigate by map. With no visibility, just a compass, spirit level, windspeed indicator, and altimeter for instruments, he flew as he had learned, by the seat of the pants. He charted a course for Île d’Yeu, a craggy island with a small fishing harbor about twenty-five miles out to sea near where the sub was reported to be operating. After about thirty minutes, they dropped below the fog and caught sight of the island. Smith circled it and then headed due west to pick up the course of the sailing ship. In twenty minutes they sighted the four-masted bark. They kept close to the water and flew wider and wider circles around the ship in search of the sub.
Spotting nothing, Smith flew on a due west heading for an hour and then turned back toward shore. He continued to fly low to the water and could see the white caps tossing about on its surface. The wind blew hard and the fog had begun to lift. Smith suddenly had a queer sensation. Something did not feel right. Then his motor started to sputter and miss. Too low to the water to turn to the wind and land, he kept going, trying not to lose any more height as he flew toward the coast. Then the engine died.
He glided down for a landing in the churning ocean. Suddenly the airplane shot forward. He had forgotten to turn off the switch and the motor snapped back alive full throttle. The suddenly racing plane drove hard into the crest of a swell, bouncing high into the air. Smith cut the engine. The flying boat flopped with a great splash and crunch into the sea.
The wood and canvas craft bobbed about like an unmoored float, up-anddown and side-to-side, on the twelve-foot rollers. As the biplanes crested each wave, they caught the strong wind. The flying boat lifted briefly and then pitched down into the succeeding trough. The three men in the cockpit looked at each other without speaking. They could not. Overcome by seasickness, they turned white. Each began retching. Eventually they gathered strength to crank the engine. To Smith’s surprise, it started. Brady climbed over the side to defuse and drop their bombs to lighten the load. Smith tried to open the throttle, but each time the motor sputtered and nearly died. Water washed over the bow into the cockpit and splashed the engine. He shut it down.
He studied the map. Uncertain about his exact position, he jotted out a message estimating their location about twenty miles west of Île d’Yeu. “Big sea running,” he noted. “Send all aid.” He tied the message to the first of his two pigeons and released it. Drifting up roller and down trough, despite excruciating seasickness, they set to searching for the cause of their engine woes. Wilkinson eventually figured out that the second gas tank had a clog and was not feeding. They would need to transfer the fuel to the other tank. The late autumn sun had already started to set. The seas were now too rough to risk trying to siphon the gas in the darkness.
They began shipping seawater. Throughout the night, they alternated watches; while one man bailed the other two slept. Smith made notes in his logbook as the derelict craft pitched in the open sea. With his Yale colleagues back at the station, “We know they would do all possible things to help us,” he wrote confidently, if only they could locate them. This thought alone kept their hopes up, which were otherwise, he admitted, “none too bright.” Big waves rolled up and poured over the wings.
At Le Croisic, four o’clock came and went without Smith’s return. A worried Coombe prepared to fly off in search of his missing friend. The others convinced him to wait for morning rather than risk losing another machine. They lit flares along the seawall to guide the lost airplane in from the sea in the dark. An alarm was sent to Saint-Nazaire, from where patrol boats were dispatched in search of the missing airplane. No word of the crew’s fate arrived. Before dawn, Coombe took off and flew north. Walker and Landon in the base’s other aircraft searched southward. They flew miles and miles over the churning, wintry sea. Holding their breath, they swooped down low to scrutinize the numerous collections of debris floating amid the froth. After three and a half hours of fruitless searching, all three aircraft returned to base. When they arrived, they found the homing pigeon had returned with Smith’s message.
Huddled over charts, they tried to calculate how far the strong northeast wind and southerly sea currents had carried the disabled flying boat during the twenty hours since Smith had sent the pigeon off. By their reckoning, they now had to scour more than two thousand square miles of the Bay of Biscay. They refused to acknowledge the dimming chances of ever finding them.
The three rescue planes refueled and took off again. Coombe flew off toward the position Smith gave in his message. Walker and Landon ranged further south.
The wind continued to blow hard all night, clearing the skies on Friday morning. Smith sent out his last pigeon with a note about a lighthouse beacon they had seen flash in the night. “Have no food,” he wrote. “We are taking in water, we are not positive of our location but are going to sea. Send help.” Their hope of rescue waning, Smith and his crew decided to let the others know they had accepted their fate as part of war’s chances. He wrote last words to his unit mates in the spirit they would understand, “Please tell friends that we died game to the end.”
Far off in the distance, they could see a dirigible, perhaps searching for them. They had no way of signaling to it, and soon it veered away and flew out of sight.
They started to work on the motor again. Late in the morning, they got a steady fuel flow and started the engine. They tried taxiing in the direction of Île d’Yeu. But the strong seas and head wind kept pushing them back. They had to risk taking off. They powered up, but the left pontoon had filled with water. Tipping over, the wing slammed into a wave, smashing the two left planes. The men were knocked about the cockpit. As the wing tore away, it opened seams in the hull, broke the three seats loose and knocked the motor off its struts. They were stranded in the water and now completely at the mercy of the rolling waves.
They bailed steadily as the sea seeped in and slopped over the cockpit. As they bailed, taunting gulls swooped down on the castaways. Most of the oily water in the radiators had boiled off. They drank the little that remained. In the sun, their thirst grew. Swallowing became so painful that Smith’s throat felt as if “I had had my tonsils removed.” Salt caked on their faces and lips from the sea spray. The left wing, hanging on by the sinews of its dislodged frame, began to crack and twist apart in the pounding sea.
As night fell, the sea rose up and grew “bitter” again. Water poured into the cockpit. Each time the flying boat rolled, the wing that had broken loose swung about, scraping and pounding against the hull, grinding a hole through the planking. They alternated short watches. One slept while another lay out on the right wingtip to keep the boat from tipping down further into the waves. The third man bailed. “Growing weak,” noted Smith. They were at the start of a “very long night. Our hopes ... very low.”
Following receipt of the first homing pigeon message, Coombe and his observer took off again to scour the sea. Desperate to find Smith and his crew, he flew out too far into the Bay of Biscay and did not have enough fuel left for the return flight to Le Croisic. He headed directly for the nearest station, La Pallice, a French base seventy-five miles south. However, losing his way in the dark and uncertain about the rocky coastline, he beached at the first possible safe location. Several miles from the nearest village, they stumbled upon a fisherman in a donkey cart who invited them to spend the night in his waterside stone cottage. Back at Le Croisic, his mates now feared they, too, were lost.
The next morning Coombe returned to his aircraft that had been battered by the surf. He managed to fly the fifteen remaining miles south to La Pallice. As soon as he arrived, he contacted Le Croisic. They were delighted to hear from him, but had no further word of Smith’s fate. Despondent, Coombe left his damaged aircraft for repairs at the French station and took the tram to the large nearby port of La Rochelle. He went to a harborside hotel to wait for his aircraft to be made ready. The once awe-inspiring Wags looked to be anything but supermen.
Saturday morning dawned with Smith’s crumpled left wing, swinging in like an unfastened boom, slamming the hull with each roller. It threatened to crush the boat and swamp them entirely. They finally cut the wing loose. In doing so, though, the right wing became an anchor and swung them immediately broadside to the swell. Water poured in faster than they could bail. They struggled to detach the remaining wing, but their wrench did not fit the nuts holding it on, and they were too weak to break it free. They sat together in the slopping seawater in the bottom of the rocking cockpit, bailing with their little remaining strength, trying to stay afloat as long as possible. After more than fifty hours without food, a few sips of radiator water, and little sleep in the bouncing sea, they “had just about given up everything.” Dusk was gathering. The remains of their bobbing vessel would not last the night. Suddenly Wilkinson gasped through his parched throat and pointed at an object he could see moving toward them from the south. They thought it was a submarine periscope. “We did not care,” shrugged Smith, whether an enemy found them and, as was likely, fired on them. If it was a German vessel, “we hoped it would blow us up and end it all.”
A French torpedo boat pulled up. “You can imagine our joy,” said Smith. The French crew hauled the three men on board and took them below for a hot meal and drinks. The French crew tried to salvage the engine from the remains of the flying boat, but fifteen minutes after rescuing the Americans, the wreckage sank. They steamed toward La Rochelle.
Coombe had remained in his hotel in La Rochelle waiting for his flying boat to be made ready for his return flight to Le Croisic. He sat alone in the dining room staring out at the harbor. He had just about given up any remaining hope that his friend and the other members of the missing crew would be found. It suddenly occurred to him that today was his twenty-second birthday.
A waiter approached him. Another American officer wished to see him in the lobby. He walked over. He could scarcely believe his eyes. There stood Ken Smith, exhausted, disheveled, unshaven and still wearing his salt-encrusted flying suit, a birthday present Coombe would never forget.
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Like many aviation firsts, the first armed American patrol in European waters ended in disaster. Many men were not so lucky as Smith and his crew. As happened so often, the navy learned the hard way. But it learned. From then on, all naval aircraft in France flew in pairs, carrying a sea anchor, Véry pistol, and emergency rations of hardtack and canned tomatoes as a thirst quencher. Crews were reduced to two to lighten the underpowered flying boats’ load. With aircraft frequently brought down by mechanical problems and in combat over water, the lessons from Smith’s first patrol proved a lifesaver for countless other men.
Shortly after returning to Le Croisic, the navy reassigned Smith. He eventually took charge of flying at another important American naval air station, Île Tudy, near the largest American port, Brest, at the westernmost point of France in Brittany. Here was the famous “Neck of the Bottle,” the sea passage taken by nearly all ships in and out of France and south- or northbound merchantmen, tens of thousands of tons steaming through daily. The ships carried cargo between ports along the French coast and on to Spain and the Mediterranean. Transports from England and the United States finished their sea cruises by passing between the French headlands and the scattered islands offshore. The Neck was already the graveyard for hundreds of ships sunk by German subs prowling the coastal shelf. By far the largest organized transfer of humanity in history to that point, shipping traffic through the Neck was increasing daily as the transports arrived with more than one million American fighters and their supplies to France—with another two million anticipated within a year. The German admiralty, desperate to hold back the tidal wave of fresh troops, drove its submarine fleet relentlessly to increase that tally of Allied shipping losses.
Almost six months to the day after nearly being lost at sea, Smith was on patrol near Pointe de Penmarch, a rocky cape at the southwestern tip of Brittany. A notoriously predatory German sub dubbed “Penmarch Pete” often lurked in the darkness at night beneath the beacon of the Penmarch lighthouse. From there, the U-boat could spy the silhouettes of convoys passing in the night. Over the years of war, Penmarch Pete—in reality several different subs stationed in the area—had sent scores of ships and hundreds of men to watery graves.
Eight miles off shore, trailing along a couple miles behind a twenty-ship convoy, Smith and his observer, O. E. Williams, spotted a fast-moving chalky furrow on a course parallel to the ships. Small bubbles of air and oil rose to the surface within the eddy. Certain it was a sub, they dropped two depth charges ahead of the wake. The eddy disappeared and a shower of oil burst across the surface. The oil continued to bubble up over the next several days, and Penmarch Pete was not heard from again. The French government awarded Smith and his observer the Croix de Guerre with Palm, equivalent to the Medal of Honor.
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Smith’s medal also indirectly honored the work of the unit, which in its first summer had shown an ignorant navy the value of aircraft in protecting its seagoing fleets. Prior to the arrival of the American-manned stations, the Allies lost ships at the rate of one per day along the French coast. Once the American stations became fully active, only three more ships in total were lost. Several individual American ships sailing into France were sunk, but not a single convoy vessel. The combination of convoy tactics and sea and air patrols drove the U-boats further and further into open waters where they were far less effective. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt commented a few months after the war ended, “Not only was the ‘Neck of the Bottle’ made safe for our troops and supply ships, but the operations were extended from the defensive type to the offensive, and the very existence of enemy submarines was rendered extremely unhealthy long before the Armistice came.” For that success, he credited not only the “extraordinary physical endurance” of the men at war, but those who had possessed “imagination and a genius to meet new conditions with untried weapons.” The precocious work of a bunch of kids learning to fly was helping to win a war.
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