BTM TALK –ALBERT BALLWORLDWAR ONE FLYING ACE
ot many Brooklands Trust Members’ talks have an interval but, in the middle of the August talk about World War One flying ace Albert Ball, a sample of his favourite plum cake was offered to the audience. As presenter Clare Paul, World War One Education Officer at the Royal Air Force Museum, explained, Albert’s correspondence from the front to his mother in Nottingham included requests for cake. This might seem mundane today but it was a home comfort desperately missing for those involved at the sharp end of the war. That cake might seem a bit bland for our modern palettes but it perhaps illustrates to us how war alters our perspective and throughout the evening’s talk Clare revealed how the fighter pilot was increasingly affected by the horrors of the conflict he saw at first hand. So, who was Albert Ball and how did he rise
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from a modest background to become Britain’s premier World War One fighter pilot, described by the legendary Baron von Richthofen as ‘by far the best English flying man’? Albert was born in August 1896 in Nottingham to businessman Albert Ball and his wife Harriett Mary. Young Albert had a happy and loving childhood and although no academic he had a keen interest in things mechanical and started collecting pistols from the age of nine. In 1913 he left Trent College where he had learnt technical skills that were to help him in later life and his father helped him set up an engineering business, Universal Engineering Works.
Albert was convinced of his responsibility to do his duty for his country and signed up soon after World War One started. It is clear from his letters home that he had great sensitivity about what he was doing, writing to his girlfriend in 1917, ‘I hate this game but it is the only thing we must do just now’. He bore no malice to the enemy, telling his father ‘I’m beginning to feel like a murderer’.
In June 1915 he attended a flying display at Hendon and this fired his ambition to become a pilot. It is a mark of his ambition that he rose at 3.00am to motorcycle from Luton to Hendon for flying lessons, returning by 6.45am for parade. He joined the Royal Flying Corps (precursor to the RAF) and eventually got his wings in January 1916. A month later he was sent to France for his first tour of duty with 11th Squadron, starting by
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Gordon and Vander Day, Clare Paul (Gareth Tarr).
flying reconnaissance aeroplanes. Reconnaissance was the primary purpose of the RFC, fighters were there to protect their own aeroplanes and shoot down enemy aircraft.
Albert had joined the field of battle at the end of the ‘Fokker Scourge’, a period that winter during which German aircraft enjoyed superiority due to their ability to fire machine guns through their propellers without causing damage. He flew Bristol Scouts or French Nieuport 16 and 17s, his preference being for the latter. By May he had graduated to fighters and had his first victory on the 16th of the month, although this was somewhat tempered by learning of the death of one of his closest friends that same day. Combat was beginning to place a strain on his nerves and an example of the demands on him took place during the Battle of the Somme when on one day he took off 17 times. In early July, he saw eight of his comrades killed and on 16th July he requested leave. Instead, he was transferred to 8th Squadron but soon returned to 11th Squadron. On 1st September he received the Distinguished Service Order and was later to get two bars, the first ever triple winner. Shortly after he finally got leave and returned to Nottingham.
In the latter part of the evening talk two of Albert’s surviving relatives, Vander and Gordon Day, talked about him, and they were able to discuss this period from his letters and diaries. During his six months at home he owned a series of vehicles, the most popular being a Morgan. Despite being a quiet character, he was quite a
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