A century ago this week, an Irish pilot named Leslie Porter was shot down over France and in dying may have earned a dubious honour.
By some accounts, he had just been on the losing side of the last of 40 aerial victories by the great German aviator, Oswald Boelcke, now considered the father of his country’s fighting airforce.
Boelcke’s fame was in time exceeded by one of his protégés, Manfred von Richtoven, the “Red Baron”. But the latter was part of a generation that idolised Boelcke.
Remembering him after his death, Von Richtoven said he had always felt invincible when fighting alongside “the one and only”.
Had Porter been able to comment posthumously, he might well have appreciated his distinction.
Another pilot who was shot down by Boelcke, but survived, recalled their encounter as “the greatest memory of my life”.
After they met on the ground, the chivalrous German had made him coffee and given him a tour of his quarters.
Downed pilot
This was in keeping with Boelcke’s general behaviour to the enemy – when it lived to tell the tale. Having visited another of his conquests in hospital once, he risked his life by flying behind British lines to air-drop a letter from the downed pilot to his family.
As for Porter, like many of those madly courageous young men on both sides, he may been prone to see the air war as a game, however deadly. He had been a sporting hero at ground level, for over a decade. And even there, his passion was for flying machines, of a kind.
Born near Derry in 1881, Porter grew up to become the first known Irish car racer.
In 1903, he was one of 300 drivers in the notorious Paris-Madrid race, which in the event didn't get farther than Bordeaux.
By then, the combination of speed, blinding road dust, and public ignorance had resulted in half the cars crashing or pulling out, with at least eight deaths.
The race was thought to have killed its sport at birth, and it did discourage similar events for several years – although only weeks later Ireland hosted the Gordon Bennett rally, which famously wound through Athy, Stradbally, as well as Joyce's Dubliners.
Even Porter was discouraged for a while but returned to racing a few years later with great success.
He was a relatively old 34 when joining the Royal Flying Corps in 1915. And he was 35 at the time of his fatal rendezvous with Boelcke, on October 22nd, 1916.
He wasn’t the only Irishman downed by the German. A week earlier, Clogherhead-born Patrick Anthony Langan-Byrne, himself a veteran of 10 aerial victories, had suffered the same fate. He was 34th on the list.
For all his brilliance in battle, however, Boelcke was probably more influential as a tactician. He organised the German airforce around rules that stressed the importance of formation and the supremacy of the team over individuals.
Prolific
Indeed, when another prolific pilot was killed in June 1916, Boelcke was grounded for a period because his superiors couldn’t risk the double morale blow of losing him too.
As we have seen, he was soon back in the air and to devastating effect. But the careers of first World War pilots, even the greatest ones, tended to be fleeting. So it was with Boelcke, who did not long outlive Langan-Byrne and Porter.
It was said of him by Von Richtoven that his charisma derived from a unique talent for connecting with people, so that the Red Baron could count at least 40 (including himself) who thought they were Boelcke's closest friend.
In fact, Von Richtoven admitted, the real best friend was another pilot, Erwin Böhme. And in a bitter irony, Böhme was the catalyst of Boelcke’s death.
On their last day together, they played each other at chess before being called to action. Air-borne, they also targeted the same British plane in a close-up dogfight.
Then, after evasive action, their wingtips touched, very slightly, but enough to send them into a spin. Bohme recovered to land safely but Boelcke’s biplane lost an upper wing, making it impossible to control.
Despite this, he seemed to have a relatively soft landing, one he should have survived. But the great air ace was known never to wear a helmet and had failed to strap in fully too.
The landing had not been quite soft enough in these circumstances. They found him dead in the cockpit, 100 years ago today.