One-Legged Lord LostAuberon Thomas Herbert, 9th Baron Lucas joined England's House of Lords in 1907. Herbert resigned his government cabinet post to join the Royal Flying Corps in May 1915. Despite having lost a leg during the Boer War, Herbert was cleared to fly.
In November 1916, the forty-year-old Captain was piloting a Beardmore-powered (see yesterday's post) Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2b in formation with No. 22 Squadron when he and his observer ran into trouble. "
Importantly this was a day when a very strong south-westerly was blowing (65 mph).... Evidently 22 Sqn was tasked to carry out an urgent photo-recon of new diggings which had been observed north-east and east of Bapaume – these would appear to be the RII & R III lines, being dug on account that German 1 ARMEE had been prized off the heights of Picardy. Lord Lucas & Lt. A. Anderson were on a 160hp Beardmore FE2b, but the three escort look to have been 120hp machines. The other escort mention were DH2s from 24 Sqn."
In the normal course of things, if the FEs kept a close formation they were unlikely to have been attacked. One would suspect they adopted a ‘diamond formation, with 7026/photo machine leading with the others layered above and behind, thus allowing the gunners to cover the blind spots of the machines above and behind them. But clearly the very strong wind and horse-power disparity played havoc and the formation lost close cohesion, whereupon and on que, between 8 & 9 HA scouts dived down out of the clouds with three of the FEs each attracting three assailants. The three of course were brought down piecemeal between Etricourt and Bancourt. However, the Jasta Boelcke abschusse listing pulled together by Karl Bolle in 1919, which evidently leaned upon the then existent KTB, tells us that Ltn E Koenig garnered credit for ‘FE-DD 7026’ with one dead and one wounded crewman [Lord Lucas & Anderson], whilst Offz.St. Muller was awarded credit for the ‘FE-DD’ of ‘Capt Pemberton & Lt Cook’ (FE2b 6374 – Capt AJ Pemberton MC kia & 2Lt LC Cooke pow) whilst Ltn R Theiller from Jasta 5 evidently received credit for the third missing FE (FE2b 6374 2Lt WE Knowlden pow wia & 2Lt BA Ordish pow).. (via R. Gannon, theaerodrome.com)
Herbert died of his wounds the same day. His body was buried in a war grave at the village of Ecoust-Saint-Mein.
(from the Cambria Daily Leader, 4 December 1916).
(image: this well-known picture illustrates the defensive action taken during this dogfight, via wikipedia)
Anderson penned a recollection of the incident while a prisoner of war:
“
We left the aerodrome a second time and reached a certain height we could see no sign of the formation, so we made for the lines and picked up three of our escorts... We went in over St Pierre Vaast Wood and started taking our photos with two of our machines sitting on our tail and the third a little under us. It was then I noticed how strong the wind was which was blowing approx from the SW and kept blowing us further over. After taking our third photo I saw we had drawn rather far away from our escorting machines and so I signaled to Lucas to turn around and we turned into the wind. It was then as we were half way around that one EA came out of the clouds for our tail. We had to turn to meet him but as we were firing at him two more machines dropped out of the clouds on to our tail firing steadily. The first burst blew half of our service tank away, so Lucas swung her around and put her nose down for the lines. I fired away over the top plane but they did very good shooting and our machine was simply riddled with bullets. Suddenly the machine started side slipping violently and at the same time the engine stopped dead. Looking down I saw that Lucas was bending down in his seat and thinking he was working the switches, I put out my hand to shake him, but then I discovered he was hit through the back of the head and was unconscious.
At this time me must have been at 6000 ft, and so I set to work on trying to get his left foot off the rudder bar, as she was still side slipping. This I eventually managed to do but at this time we were only at about 3000 ft and the German machines were still on our tail firing away. I saw that with a head wind and no engine we could not hope to reach the line as we were then about over Haplincourt, so to avoid the machine guns (we were also being fired on from the ground) I put her down very steeply. Unfortunately Lucas half slipped from his seat and when I tried to land I found I could not flatten out enough, the under carriage was swept off and she crashed on the wing. I was thrown clear and Lucas was brought in a few minutes later but never regained consciousness and died about 4pm. He had been hit through the back of the head and also the left leg." {presumably his one good leg}
Interesting side notes:
- "
The rest of 22 Squadron took a bit of a beating as well, and two others were lost. Captain Alan John Macdonald Pemberton and 2nd Lieutenant Leslie Clude Leech Cook were attacked by enemy aircraft in 5250 and shot down. On landing they crashed into an enemy kite balloon on the ground which burst into flames."
- While in Herbert was in service his country estate, Wrest Park, was converted to military hospital. It is now a a Grade I listed country house
- Lord Lucas' F.E.2b (#7026) happened to be one the presentation aircraft (Presented by the Government of Johore No.2), which were featured in an article here two weeks back:
https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?action=search2Paired with yesterday's post, here's another great 1/32 scalebuild of a Beardmore motor mounted in an F.E.2b by forum member Kong:
https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=12329.msg230566#msg230566
