The biplane was in level flight a little over a mile above the ground. A single 90-h.p. engine pulled it through the air at about 50 miles an hour. Two bags of flour lay on top of the lower wing, one on each side of the fuselage, secured to the rear strut with a length of cord. Underneath the machine, two smaller bags dangled from an iron bar just aft of the landing gear.
The pilot, 21-year-old John R. McCrindle, a future director of the British Overseas Airways Corporation, had entered flight training after the outbreak of World War I. Now, in mid-April of 1916, he was a second lieutenant in Britain’s Royal Flying Corps. He scanned the sky for hostile aircraft; seeing none, he looked down at the target just coming into view behind the trailing edge of his lower wing. When his experience and judgment told him the time was right, Lieutenant McCrindle steadied the control stick between his knees, cut the retaining cords on either side, and pulled the two bags of flour off the top of the wing. Then, quickly reaching back in the cockpit, he tripped a lever to release the ones hanging underneath. Relieved of the weight and especially the wind resistance of its bulky cargo, his machine surged ahead. He banked into a shallow turn to keep the tumbling bags in view while resuming his vigil for enemy planes.
McCrindle’s precise aiming point had been a large chalk mark laid out on an open plot of ground just north of the town of Kut al Amara, Mesopotamia. Situated about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad on a finger of land resulting from a hairpin bend in the Tigris River, Kut (pronounced coot) was entirely surrounded by the Turkish Sixth Army of Halil Pasha. Locked within the perimeter defenses of the town, along with its 5-6,000 native inhabitants, were nearly 14,000 British and Indian troops under the command of Major-General Charles V. F. Townshend. Besieged for more than four months, their food supplies were virtually exhausted. Already, 15 to 20 people were reported dying of starvation each day.
If they could hold out just a little longer, however, the siege might yet be broken. Such was the hope, at least, of Townshend’s superior, Lieutenant-General Sir Percy Lake, commander of all British forces in Mesopotamia. A hastily organized relief column, called the Tigris Corps, had driven to within 15 miles of Kut. So near it seemed, and yet so far.
Since the beginning of the siege on 7 December 1915, the Tigris Corps had gained ground in a series of bloody battles, but never quite achieved a decisive breakthrough. By early April of 1916, the situation had become critical. Townshend’s men were on the verge of collapse. The Tigris Corps, now 30,000 strong, doggedly continuing its offensive but with uncertain prospects. Before it stood 20,000 Turks, redoubtable fighters and recent victors at Gallipoli, deployed in depth and well-entrenched along both banks of the river. Spring floods had inundated most of the surrounding country. Flanking maneuvers were out of the question. The British had no alternative but to attack frontally along narrow corridors where their numeric superiority availed them little, and progress was agonizingly slow. Hoping to gain precious time, they established an airlift to Kut. However, there were few planes available and it takes a great deal of food to sustain 19,000 people.
As Lieutenant McCrindle circled overhead while his own modest contribution fell toward the town, he may have wondered whether the efforts of less than a dozen pilots could really affect the final outcome. So also perhaps, did the hungry soldiers below. Nonetheless, they made an appreciative audience.
“Watching food dropping became a popular amusement,” said Major Charles H. Barber, a medical officer in Kut during the siege. “A plane would be heard approaching; spectators would rush out and stand gaping, laughing, and chattering about it like children . . . A wee speck could be seen leaving the ‘bus’; over and over it turned, larger and larger—generally two of them—faster and faster, till it whizzed down behind a house, and one imagined the ‘wump’ with which it landed.”
Having seen his own flour bags “wump” down in the target area, McCrindle leveled off on a northeasterly heading, crossed the Turkish lines near Bait Isa, and began a gradual descent toward Ora airfield, 23½ miles from Kut. Ora was a tiny unimproved landing ground marked off within the defensive perimeter of the Tigris Corps’ forward staging base at Wadi Camp. There he was to land, refuel, and pick up another load of flour. This assumed, of course, that the weather would remain flyable and his machine operable. Neither could be taken for granted in view of the capriciousness of rainy-season storms in the Tigris valley and the newness of aviation technology in the twelfth year of powered flight.
The airdrop of supplies was then a novel conception. It is true that Tigris Corps airmen on their regular missions had often detoured over Kut to drop small parcels for the beleaguered garrison—mail, medical dressings, newspapers, money, spare parts for machinery, once even a 70-pound millstone needed for grinding corn. It was, however, an entirely different matter to deliver large quantities of supplies on a sustained basis. We do not know who first suggested the idea but General Lake, as theater commander, was the man who had to accept or reject it. This was a difficult decision.
The fate of the men in Kut depended ultimately on whether the Tigris Corps, under the immediate command of Major-General George F. Gorringe, could reach them before they were forced to surrender. A substantial airlift would extend their limit of endurance; this would help Gorringe by giving him additional time, which he sorely needed. On the other hand, such an airlift would absorb nearly all the available air effort; this would handicap Gorringe by leaving him little a no air support for his final offensive.
It has been said that a warplane can do only three things: look, lift, and shoot. Planes on the Tigris front had not yet begun, on any significant scale, to shoot—which is to say, to drop bombs or fire guns and rockets. For all practical purposes, they supported the army only by looking. Mere looking, however, was not as unimportant as it sounds.
In this desert-like country, where troops had almost no cover and could not exist without tents, the moments and dispositions of the opposing ground forces were laid bare to observers flying above them. This kind of intelligent, purposeful looking—now called aerial reconnaissance—soon became an indispensable adjunct of all ground operations.
There was also a more specialized form of looking Observers, using the few aircraft radios available, helped the artillery locate and score hits on distant targets visible from the surface. These “artillery cooperation” missions were especially important in Mesopotamia, where the combination of heat, humidity, and flat terrain gave rise to frequent mirages.
Gorringe considered adequate air support so vital that he had more than once postponed a major ground offensive because of poor flying weather, or to await the arrival of additional airplanes at the front. Even so, in any battle to date, he had never had enough reconnaissance and artillery cooperation missions to satisfy all his needs.
In the present crisis, was it better for the airplane to look or to lift? Facing an ineluctable choice, Lake compromised. He exhorted the flyers to deliver all possible food to Townshend and, at the same time, continue “minimum essential” air support for Gorringe. In trying to do enough of both, he ran the risk of doing too little of either.
At this time the British air establishment in Mesopotamia consisted of No. 30 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and two flights, amounting to a squadron, of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). In March 1916, these army and navy units had been combined in a composite organization under Wing Commander (later Air Commodore) Robert Gordon, RNAS, the senior flying officer in the country. As “Aircraft Commander, Tigris Column,” he controlled all theater aviation activities including those in the rear area depots at Amara and Basra as well as those at the front.
Born in Burma in 1882, Gordon had joined the Royal Marines in 1900 and transferred to the RNAS in 1911 upon completion of flying training. Bringing a seaplane flight from East Africa in September 1915, he had participated in General Townshend’s victorious drive up the Tigris to within 30 miles of Baghdad. When the tide of battle turned, forcing Townshend to fall back on Kut, Gordon managed to get his men and equipment out of the town just before the Turks sealed it off. Thus, he was an experienced campaigner, well-known to General Lake’s staff and it does not appear that he had any problems, as a naval officer, either in serving the army or in commanding one of its units. His problems stemmed rather from an acute shortage of both airplanes and pilots.
Aviation resources were large only in comparison with what they had been before. At the end of January 1916, there had been a total of two airplanes at the front. By 10 April, the day General Lake authorized the airlift, the number had grown to 11 with three more due in shortly by barge. In reserve status at the depots downriver were another dozen or so planes in varying degrees of readiness—some flyable, some undergoing repair, and some still in their shipping crates awaiting assembly. Altogether there were about 25 machines. However, it is not to be supposed that these could, under any circumstances, all be usable at the same time.
For one thing, there were no more than 20 active pilots in the entire country. For another, there were insufficient airplane mechanics, due in part to the fact that some 40 experienced technicians of No. 30 Squadron’s original ground echelon were operating the flour mill in Kut instead of maintaining aircraft at Ora. Since Townshend’s own planes were useless once he came under siege, it was unfortunate that he could not have evacuated these key people beforehand. Personnel shortages were further aggravated by sickness. In this hot, damp, enervating climate, dysentery, malaria, cholera, and bubonic plague were endemic.
At any time and place, the number of flyable aircraft invariably limited by accidents, malfunctions, parts-out-of-stock, maintenance inspections, engine overhauls, and the like. These routine problems of an air commander were inordinately difficult for Gordon because of the hodgepodge of equipment on hand. His air force, small as it was, included not one, but five, types of aircraft. All were two-place biplanes but they differed widely in other respects: four of the five types were land planes, the other a seaplane; three were built of wood, two of steel; two were “tractors,” with the engine and propeller unit in front, three “pushers” with the power plant in the rear; only two of the five used the same make and model of engine. Today this heterogeneous collection is merely interesting. But in 1916, in the rain, mud, wind, and heat of a primitive country 9,000 miles from the source of supply—it was a maintenance nightmare.
But, whatever the problems, the feasibility of an airlift depends in the first instance on what has to be lifted. Asked to state his minimum daily requirements for food, General Townshend radioed that he could probably get by with as little as 5,000 pounds a day—a minimum estimate, surely, for it meant a daily ration of only five ounces of food per person.
Gordon believed that with favorable weather the air force could drop this amount of food into Kut. Apparently he assumed that six airplanes could each make three trips a day, delivering 300 pounds per trip. On the face of it, this would have seemed a reasonable assumption. Surely, between sunrise and sunset, an airplane could complete at least three 80-minute missions despite the severe midday turbulence that often made flying hazardous. And one would suppose that a two-place machine could lift as much as 300 pounds deadweight if the observer with his machine gun, ammunition, etc., was left behind.
Townshend had asked for a certain amount of sugar, chocolate, salt, and ghi (a form of butter), but the principal commodity he wanted was flour. This posed a difficult technical problem, i.e., how to package and load a heavy cargo of flour so the pilot could drop it intact with reasonable accuracy from a high altitude. British aircraft were required to maintain 6,000 or 7,000 feet over Kut because of the heavy Turkish antiaircraft fire at lower levels. Therefore, since there were no parachutes for airmen, much less for cargo, the flour containers would have to survive a free fall of more than a mile.
The five-gallon metal cans first tried usually broke open when they hit the ground. However, a system of double bagging with heavy canvas sacks proved satisfactory. A smaller bag, filled with flour, was sewed inside a larger one. Upon impact, the inner bag would burst and the outer one catch the spillage. Captain E. M. Murray, RFC, commander of “B” Flight, No. 30 Squadron, invented a device for attaching these bags to the aircraft. According to Gordon’s description, “It consisted of a long bar attached to a bomb frame from which the bomb guides and fittings were stripped. This bar was pivoted at one end and the other end made fast by means of a quick release which could be released from the pilot’s seat. The tops of two 50-pound bags were then sewn together and the bags hung down on each side of the bar. When the rod was released the bags slid off.”
At first only the naval aircraft were fitted up for the airlift operation since Gordon hoped to be able to use them exclusively, leaving No. 30 Squadron, RFC, free to carry out the army support missions. The RNAS had two land planes and three seaplanes already at the front, with two more seaplanes due in shortly. Captain Murray’s device worked perfectly on the land planes—a Voisin 3 and a Henri Farman F.27. These French-built pusher aircraft, sitting high off the ground on their four-wheel undercarriages, could carry the entire load slung on the bar without difficulty. The seaplanes, however, presented complications.
This probably came as no surprise to Squadron Commander (later Air Chief Marshal) Frederick W. Bowhill, RNAS, who was having more than his share of troubles. In World War II, as head of the Royal Air Force Transport Command, he would have vast airlift resources at his disposal; but in the present war, as head of a seaplane flight on the Tigris, Bowhill was not finding it an easy matter to airlift anything.
The Short 184 seaplanes he had brought from England in February were simply unsuited for use in Mesopotamia. In the hot climate their engines overheated. On the winding, shifting channels of the river, take-offs were difficult; indeed, without favorable winds and a calm surface, they were impossible. Once off, the Shorts climbed slowly and could barely reach a safe altitude for flight behind enemy lines. To make matters worse, the three machines at the front were badly out of rig after a recent windstorm. And now came a new problem: flour bags that hung down in the water on takeoff. Bowhill’s men solved this one with a broad canvas band pulled up tightly around the bags secured to a quick-release device in the pilot’s cockpit.
One more unwelcome discovery awaited the flyers. On land and seaplanes alike, the bulging, shaped cargo offered excessive wind resistance. Its size had to be reduced and, unfortunately, this could only mean reducing its weight. The maximum payloads, determined by flight testing, were 200-250 pounds for the Shorts, 200 for the Henri Farman, and 150 for the Voisin—all well below the 300 pounds per aircraft originally assumed.
By the morning of 14 April, the naval machines loaded with food and ready to begin operations, but high winds and stormy weather kept them grounded throughout the day. The 15th brought clearing conditions and the airlift began. Despite many successful drops, the first day’s results were disappointing in that the total weight of food delivered to Kut was far below the 5,000 pounds required. The next morning, as Navy flyers resumed deliveries, General Lake radioed Townshend to reduce his daily ration from five to four ounces per man as it now appeared that the air force would be unable to deliver more than 3,350 pounds of food a day.
At this time new orders went also to No. 30 Squadron, RFC, commanded by Major S. D. Massy, one of the British Empire’s first military aviators, commandant before the war of the Indian Flying School at Sitapur, and decorated veteran of a year’s service on the Egyptian front before coming to Mesopotamia in November 1915. Massy was directed to equip his machines immediately for food-dropping and to fly as many such missions as possible while continuing to meet the essential air support requirement of the army. He had a full squadron of three flights, but one—"C” Flight—was at Basra being re-equipped with Maurice Farman “Shorthorns.” “A” and “B” Flights, equipped with B.E.2Cs, were at the front and between them had 11 active machines plus about five more in reserve status downriver.
To officialdom, a “B.E.2C” airplane was a British Experimental Model 2c, but to most flyers of the time it was a “Betuci.” Designed in 1914 by the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough, England, this conventional-looking tractor biplane was produced in quantity and used throughout World War I. It was noted both for an exceptional stability in the air, which made it easy to fly, and for a resultant lack of maneuverability, which made it a sitting duck in combat. But in the absence of enemy fighters, it was comparatively safe and reliable—"as docile and dull as a motorbus,” said one pilot, “and about as heavy to handle.”
Flight tests at Ora now revealed, surprisingly, that the Betuci lost its inherent stability when a bulky cargo of flour was put aboard. After attempts to lift heavier loads finally resulted in a crash, the weight was reduced to 150 pounds and spread around as much as possible—specifically, by slinging two 25-pound bags on Captain Murray’s device underneath and tying two 50-pound bags on top of the lower wing to be released in the manner already described on Lieutenant McCrindle’s illustrative mission. This arrangement made the aircraft controllable, but it was still difficult and dangerous to fly and, said Gordon in his final report, only skilled pilots could have done so.
On 17 April, No. 30 Squadron commenced airlift operations with Murray, McCrindle, and Second Lieutenant D. A. L. Davidson each making one food-dropping flight to Kut in Betuci No. 4323. Most of the day’s missions, however, were reserved for the ground forces. After failing in two successive assaults on Sannaiyat, Gorringe had transferred the bulk of his forces across the Tigris where, on the morning of the 17th, he launched an all-out attack on Bait Isa. His troops took the position in a day of hard fighting only to see most of their gains wiped out that evening by a powerful Turkish counterattack. Undaunted by this latest setback, Lake and Gorringe decided to shift back to the left bank of the river for a third try at Sannaiyat. In the meanwhile the airlift of food was to continue.
Bad weather and mechanical failures plagued the flyers. In the first three days, they had managed to drop only a little more than 5,000 pounds. The additional aircraft ordered up by Gordon would help when, or if, they arrived. One of the two reserve seaplanes flew in to Ora on the 16th, but the other was wrecked near Amara when a fuel system failure forced the pilot to put down in a grove of date palms.
Meanwhile, the depot at Basra was hastily preparing three Maurice Farmans for the flight to Ora. These outmoded pusher aircraft had already seen much service in other areas. Under ordinary circumstances, they would have received a complete overhaul and gone upriver on board the “C” Flight workshop and supply barges then being fitted out. But so great was the present emergency that spare parts, tools, and mechanics had to be left behind and the planes themselves rushed to the front without overhaul and with minimum maintenance. To the pilots this meant a hazardous 200-mile ferry flight over desert terrain where a forced landing could mean certain death at the hands of marauding Arabs.
At 1305 on 18 April, the first Farman aircraft, piloted by Captain L. Wanless O’Gowan, RFC, lifted off the airfield at Basra. Unfortunately, the second Farman, taxiing from the flight line, collided with third, and both machines were disabled. O’Gowan flew on to Amara, refueled, and continued to Ora, landing there at 1830. His flying time was four hours and minutes; average ground speed, 40 miles an hour. He carried an urgent dispatch for General Lake—a fact cited afterwards to illustrate the value of airplanes for rapid courier service.
The two damaged Maurice Farmans were hastily repaired and in due course joined the other one at Ora. They proved of little use without their logistic backup and, between them, made only one operational flight during the period of the airlift. The squadron historian records, with some evident satisfaction, that shortly thereafter all three “were destroyed by a gale . . . thus probably saving several flying officers to the Service.”
On the day after O’Gowan’s flight, Second Lieutenant G. Merton, RFC, bettered his time considerably in a reserve Betuci, flying nonstop from Basra to Ora in two hours and 35 minutes at an average speed of 72 miles an hour. Merton’s appearance on the scene was brief but active. Arriving by ship from England on the 17th, he made a familiarization flight on the 18th, ferried a plane to the front on the 19th, flew eight food-dropping missions to Kut on the 20th and 21st, fell ill on the 22nd, and was “invalided” to India. Eventually he returned to No. 30 Squadron and served with distinction in later campaigns.
On the morning of 22 April, as the airlift went into its second week, the first two planes over Kut dropped their cargoes in the river even though, as General Townshend had earlier pointed out, “there was an enormous mark chalked out on the ground as a guide.” Townshend evidently attributed the occasional misses to carelessness or incompetence on the part of the flyers. “I had to report the air service several times,” he tells us in his memoirs, “for dropping bags of parcels and letters into the river.”
The problem of hitting the two-square-mile area of the Kut peninsula was not as simple as Townshend imagined. The pilots had little or no experience in bombing. There were no aiming devices, no winds aloft data, and no ballistic tables on bombs, much less on tumbling bags of flour. Even so, there were relatively few misses and Squadron Commander Bowhill’s seaplanes, for understandable reasons, were responsible for most of those.
Pilots of the Short 184 sat in the front cockpit where their view downward was entirely blocked by a very broad lower wing. This was of no consequence in launching a torpedo at minimum altitude. In fact, a few months earlier, the Short had become the first aircraft in the world to sink an enemy ship at sea by this means. But, in dropping food from 6,000 feet, it was obviously a severe handicap not to be able to see the aiming point. Contrasted with the Short, the pusher-type aircraft that the navy customarily used for bombing gave the pilot at the front of the nacelle an unobstructed view forward as well as down. We do not know whether the two RNAS pushers at Ora ever missed the mark, but Wing Commander Gordon implies they did not in reporting that the best machine for the airlift “was undoubtedly the Henri Farman . . . which put by far the largest amount of food into the town.”
The 22nd was also the day of the next major ground effort. General Gorringe’s forces, now back on the left bank, advanced against Sannaiyat where the Turks were dug in on a narrow front with their flanks secured by the river on one side and an impassable marsh on the other. It was a futile assault that cost another 1,300 casualties. In three weeks of fighting, the Tigris Corps had lost 10,000 men. That night, General Lake wired London that his troops were exhausted and incapable of further offensive action without a few days’ rest. In Kut, Townshend’s men still had their two days’ emergency rations, but beyond that they were now wholly dependent upon air resupply.
The 23rd was Easter Sunday. In clearing weather, the planes dropped more than 2,000 pounds of food. “We felt as Elijah must have done,” said Major Barber, “when he had to depend on the ravens.” It was one of the best days thus far and on Monday, 24 April, the airmen followed with another ton of food but deliveries were still running far below the minimum needs of the men in Kut. Barber gives a tragicomic account of how their scanty rations were apportioned: “Our bread came to us in eight ounce loaves for two people. So fearful were we of not getting our full half that it became an invariable rule that one cut the loaf and the other chose his half. This method ensures the maximum amount of care and accuracy on the part of the cutter.”
One other scheme remained to be tried for getting food into Kut. General Lake had requested that a navy supply ship try to run the gauntlet of Turkish defenses. Naval authorities, convinced that there was little chance of getting through, had agreed to send her only as a last resort. For this venture they selected the Julnar, a twin-screw river steamer. She was stripped of all surplus woodwork, fitted with steel plates around her engines and steering positions, and further protected with sandbags piled high around her bridge.
At 2000 on 24 April, manned with a volunteer crew of three officers and 12 men and loaded with 250 tons of provisions, the Julnar headed upstream from Fallahiya on the 25-mile run to Kut. It was a moonless overcast night and her skipper, Lieutenant H. O. B. Firman, Royal Navy, hoped to go at least part of the way unnoticed. The Turks, however, had learned he was coming and greeted him with a storm of rifle and machine gun fire as he slowly drew abreast of the front lines at Sannaiyat, making good only six knots against a strong current.
Despite continuing small arms and occasional artillery fire, Firman and his men valiantly held to their course for more than three hours. Then, rounding the bend at Magasis, with success almost in sight, they hit a cable stretched diagonally across the river, lost steerage way, and drifted onto the right bank. A Turkish boarding party seized the ship along with her few surviving crew members, Firman himself having been killed in the action. Shortly before midnight, an abrupt cessation of firing signalled the bad news to Kut. As the sun came up the next morning, observers atop General Townshend’s headquarters could see the Julnar stuck in the mud barely five miles away.
No. 30 Squadron now discontinued further army support missions to concentrate all efforts on carrying food, but the squadron was feeling the pinch of accumulating maintenance problems and continuing stormy weather. “Never before in my experience,” wrote its commander, Major Massy, “have pilots been called upon to fly machines in a less airworthy condition.” On 25 April, only 1,700 pounds were delivered, and very little more the day after. It was all the flyers could do and clearly it was not enough. Any lingering hopes that they might do more were laid to rest on the 26th when they encountered a formidable new adversary in the skies over Kut.
Since January, a small detachment of three or four planes and pilots furnished by Turkey’s ally, Germany, had been operating from an airfield at Shumran Bend, six miles northwest of Kut. Initially the German flyers had limited themselves to an occasional reconnaissance flight, probably because their aviation fuel—floated downstream from Baghdad in inflated goat skins—was in short supply. As their logistic support improved, however, they began bombing Kut fairly regularly and, on one or two occasions, even attacked Gorringe’s Tigris Corps headquarters. These raids, usually by a single aircraft dropping four or five 20-pound bombs, were irksome but seldom caused much damage.
At first the planes from Shumran had made no effort to interfere with the airlift, but, on 24 April, a single-seater Fokker monoplane flew alongside a food-carrying Betuci and the two pilots exchanged revolver fire. There was no apparent injury or damage on either side in this encounter but the next one was a different story.
Flying a Short seaplane on the morning of the 26th, Flight Sub-Lieutenant C. B. Gasson, RNAS, noticed an enemy aircraft coming up behind him. From its position astern, to his surprise, it suddenly opened fire with a machine gun. His observer in the rear cockpit was killed and he was forced to land, wounded, behind the Turkish lines. That evening, Lieutenant Davidson was attacked in similar fashion while returning solo in a Betuci from a food-dropping mission to Kut. As reported in the War Diary of No. 30 Squadron: “His machine was hit over Bait Isa in 32 places and his right aileron controls shot away. He himself was shot in the left shoulder and left arm yet he skillfully and gallantly managed to fly his machine back to the airdrome actually waiting for a few minutes to allow another machine ahead of him to land first. He gave in his report before being lifted out of his machine and put on a stretcher and taken to the hospital.”
The loss of two machines and their crews was a serious setback in itself, but of greater import for the future was the fact that the enemy had gained mastery of the air. Actually the Fokker monoplane was not an outstanding aircraft. What now gave it the decisive edge in Mesopotamia was the same simple device that had made it the scourge of the skies in Western Europe during the preceding winter—an interrupter gear on the engine that allowed a fixed machine gun to be fired straight ahead through the arc of the propeller. To aim his gun, the pilot had only to aim his airplane which, in aerial combat, gave him an overwhelming advantage. A few more food-dropping missions were flown but, for all practical purposes, the airlift was ended.
On the afternoon of the 26th, General Lake, with London’s approval, sent orders to Townshend to open negotiations with the Turks. The next morning brought a cessation of hostilities as Townshend left in a motor boat to confer with Halil Pasha in the cabin of a Turkish launch anchored about a mile and a half upstream. The two commanders took another day to consult their governments and to exchange further offers and counteroffers. Then, on the morning of 29 April, Townshend destroyed his guns and ammunition and sent word to Halil that he was ready to surrender—in effect, unconditionally. At 1300, his wireless operator signed off with a “Good-bye!” His troops marched out of the town to become, in the words of Turkey’s poetical but unscrupulous minister of war, Enver Pasha, “the honoured guests of the Turkish Government.” Many did not survive the experience.
Lake and Gorringe were soon called to testify before a board of inquiry. In June, the RNAS withdrew its men and seaplanes from Mesopotamia. During the summer and fall, No. 30 Squadron, RFC, with an infusion of new blood and more machines, regained command of the air. In January 1917, the British ground forces, vastly reinforced and with a new commanding general, resumed the offensive. They quickly overran Kut and pushed on to Baghdad and beyond.
In his memoirs, published after the war, Townshend says rather uncharitably that the airlift to Kut was “a complete failure.” Actually it did provide the garrison an additional three or four days of rations. Flying 140 missions during the period 15-29 April, the air services dropped over 19,000 pounds of which Townshend’s headquarters acknowledged receipt of 16,800. Admittedly, by present-day standards, this is not much to show for the two weeks of strenuous effort. However, to dismiss the airlift as unimportant because it delivered so little food, would be to miss the point of the story.
Today, it is easier to fly huge cargoes thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean than it was in 1916 to fly a few 50-pound bags of flour 23½ miles up the Tigris River. But, a half century from now, the 50-pound bag of rocks the astronauts brought back from man’s first visit to the moon will seem to be a rather small load. Progress requires precedents and we learn from our failures as well as our successes. Whether the flyers on the Kut airlift succeeded or failed is less important than the fact that they responded with courage and resourcefulness to a new challenge.
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A graduate of the U. S. Military Academy with the Class of 1938 and a rated pilot since 1939, Colonel Sights served during World War II in flying and aerial gunnery training programs and subsequently in a B-29 bomber unit in the Marianas. Postwar assignments included duty as politico-military affairs staff officer at Headquarters U. S. Air Force, faculty group director at the Armed Forces Staff College and, prior to his retirement in 1965, research associate at the Aerospace Studies Institute, Air University. Now residing in Arlington, Virginia, he has contributed articles on military history and strategy to various professional journals including Air University Review, Naval Review, and Air Force and Space Digest.