#24130 Sergeant Cuthbert Godfrey Baldwin
18 SQUADRON, ROYAL FLYING CORPS
TWENTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD PILOT CUTHBERT BALDWIN HAD been flying on the Somme with 18 Squadron for a little over six weeks. Born in Byers Green, a village in County Durham some 4 miles north of Bishop Auckland, he was the son of a local clergyman with links to Berwick too. Educated in Shotley and at Newcastle Grammar School, Cuthbert had trained as a solicitor, passed his final exams in 1912 and moved to London. Originally enlisting as an air mechanic in the Royal Flying Corps, he then underwent a pilot’s course at Hendon and obtained his licence on a somewhat ancient biplane in February 1916.
Sergeant Cuthbert Baldwin. (Authors’ collection)
The German air services had, as the Battle of the Somme progressed, made wholesale changes to their operations to try to address their overall inferiority above the battlefield. One important introduction was that of the Jagdstafflen, nicknamed Jastas. Specifically, they were intended to be mobile units that were to spring up in key locations close to the fighting and hunt Allied airmen out of the sky. One particular German pilot was instrumental in bringing about the introduction of these groups of fighters. Oswald Boelcke was a national hero and instigator of a doctrine of how to fight in the air that dominated German thinking. His record was astounding. One of his charges pointed out that the rest of them were merely ‘satisfied when we did not get a hiding’. The young pilot in question was Manfred von Richthofen, a relative novice at the time by comparison who revelled in serving with his idol. ‘We had a delightful time with our chasing squadron. The spirit of our leader animated all his pupils.’
Boelcke was killed tragically in a mid-air collision with another German airman on 28th October. It was harrowing for his nation to lose this amiable young man, who had shaped the style of its air fighting and led by example. His ‘cubs’ in Jasta 2 were devastated. ‘We could scarcely realise it,’ wrote von Richthofen. ‘Nothing happens without God’s will. That is the only consolation which any of us can put to our souls during this war.’ On the day he died, Boelcke’s outfit had already amassed 40 victories, be it forcing an enemy aircraft to land, or shooting it down. This was no mean feat given that its first aeroplane had not arrived until the beginning of September. At the time, Manfred’s score was quite a good one: six since Jasta 2 began work on the Western Front, the first coming on the very first day that the new unit ran into Royal Flying Corps men in the air.
In the meantime, Cuthbert Baldwin and his squadron had been transferred with several others down to work in conjunction with Gough’s army in October, coming from further north in anticipation of his offensive. For weeks British airmen had continued battling the weather. ‘In the teeth of the westerly gales, they flew perilously low, registering the guns, reconnoitring the trenches and villages, and attacking infantry and transport with bombs and machine-gun fire, or calling up the guns to get on to them.’ It was unsurprising, then, when operations were rained off so often that when a fine day arrived pilots and observers on both sides of the lines ran for their machines.
Such a day dawned on 3rd November. Cuthbert’s flight took off from its aerodrome to the west of Albert at 11:35am to look for German aircraft on Gough’s front. Patrols generally lasted around two hours, and Cuthbert was nearing the end of his trip when he and the other pilots of 18 Squadron were set upon by Jasta 2. The patrol leader was led off to do battle to the north, twisting and turning to outmanoeuvre von Richthofen and his comrades. The British airmen counted as many as ten machines at varying heights gunning for them. Air battles were confusing. One moment a pilot would be chasing an enemy machine, then a few turns, a change in altitude and he may be dived upon by a German and find himself in mortal danger. As Cuthbert found himself looking down on Bapaume from the west, he was suddenly set upon by a number of enemy aircraft. Puffs of smoke about his plane revealed that he was also under anti-aircraft fire; their shells bursting close by. ‘Accompanied by two machines of the staffel,’ reported von Richthofen, ‘I attacked a low flying plane.’ Training his gun on Cuthbert’s machine, he fired 400 shots into it and then watched as it fell to ground. ‘The plane was smashed to pieces, inmates killed.’
Manfred von Richthofen – The Red Baron. (Authors’ collection)
Cuthbert had become the seventh of Manfred von Richthofen’s victims, the first shot down since the death of his mentor Boelcke. By the time he was killed in 1918, Manfred would have amassed eighty victories and earned a nickname: The Red Baron. Cuthbert’s death was not recorded immediately, for he had crashed in an area that was difficult to reach. At home the local community was hoping he was safe and a prisoner, but in September 1917 the War Office confirmed Cuthbert Baldwin as having been killed in action. His body, if recovered, was never identified and he is commemorated on the Arras Flying Services Memorial with 990 other airmen of the Royal Naval Air Service, the Royal Flying Corps and, afterwards, the Royal Air Force who were killed on the Western Front in the Great War and who have no known grave.
From above, the airmen had a unique view of the Battle of the Somme:
Pilots and observers flew without rest … From the air they saw the battlefield robbed of its hideous intimacy. Water-filled craters and trenches and shell-churned communications, stark realities to the man on the ground, added only a different shade of colour to the patchwork view outspread below the aeroplane.
In the last half of 1916, the Royal Flying Corps suffered 583 casualties on the Western Front, most of them over the Somme. It was a harrowing proportion of the men involved. Their success had not come easily; by November squadrons were depleted and exhausted. British airmen would claim victory on the Somme. Across the entire battle they had taken the fight over the enemy’s lines despite the reorganisation of the German air services and the reinforcement of their numbers. But already, in charge of the RFC, General Trenchard was anxious: ‘He knew, long before the battle ended, that the situation could not last.’ The Germans surely wouldn’t stand for it. The threat that the pendulum of aerial superiority would once again swing the other way was very real, but for now, the aerial battle on the Somme had been the most coherent air campaign ever seen, and the Allied squadrons had used all aspects of their developing role in warfare to come out on top.