Mannock's Nieuport composition

[Chock]

This kind of follows on from a couple of points brought up in art threads recently, and I thought you might be interested to see this, as it shows the process of sorting out composition and perspective and choosing what to portray. Below is a photograph showing how I've gone about planning all that for a painting I'll be starting this weekend:



It will depict an incident from late August 1917 when Edward Mannock was flying Nieuport scouts with 40 Squadron. I wanted to paint Mannock in a Nieuport particularly, as there seem to be a dearth of paintings of him in SE5as and few of him in the little French scout on which he learned his craft. I also wanted to have his face in the picture, as a lot of paintings depict this or that pilot in action, but it is only really the aircraft markings which convey that normally. Because of this, I chose an incident where Mannock's good friend 'Mac' Maclanahan, a fellow 40 Squadron pilot, related actually seeing Mannock's face during a dogfight, which he wrote about in the 1930s in Popular Flying magazine. The incident itself is also significant for the way it coloured Mannock's later preference for removing the Aldis sight, so it is biographically interesting in nature too.

40 Squadron had been ordered to reconnoiter a German airfield, much to the Squadron Commander's annoyance, as it was merely to confirm that it appeared unoccupied, based on a report from an earlier recce flight. So two flights from 40 Squadron set off in the early evening sunlight to make the recce, one flying high and one flying low, and they pretty much knew they were flying into trouble. They indeed confirmed that the airfield was unoccupied, but predictably, being over the German lines, a dogfight ensued against several Albatros fighters. During the fight, Mac relates that he passed within a few feet of Mannock's tail, who was pursuing an Albatros and aiming at it with the Aldis, but something made him turn around when he sensed the presence of Mac's aircraft, and for a second he thought it might have been a German, Mac remarking that he remembers the split second look of shock on Mannock's face before it registered with him that it was an ally. Mannock and Mac both claimed Albatros fighters during this fight, but neither was confirmed, however, they were more concerned with the fact that one of their fellow pilots, Canadian, Harry Kennedy, or 'Ken' as they called him was shot down in the fight, Mannock and Mac seeing the Nieuport fall in the swirling dogfight, but being unsure until they landed who it was, as the RFC flights involved were widely separated. This led to a few arguments upon the ground after the fight, but Mannock countered with a good explanation of why he had placed himself where he did as the fight commenced, indicating his early leanings toward the tactical thinking for which he would become famous.

Because of the moment I have portrayed, and the oft quoted remarkable ability and situational awareness some flyers displayed, I shall be titling the picture, The Sixth Sense.

As to the composition, the fact that I needed to have Mannock looking around toward the viewer has dictated the limited possible viewpoints I could portray his Nieuport from, but as it turns out this is quite fortuitous in some ways, as there is some debate as to the serial number of the Nieuport Mannock was flying on this occasion, so having the rudder end on, osbscuring the serial solves that problem, and it will be Mannock's face and not the markings on the aircraft which show it to be him.

I wanted to also convey the speed and proximity of the incident, so decided to use Maclanahan's viewpoint as an L shape to frame the composition, since there is no other way to do it without Mac's aircraft obscuring Mannock's to a large degree, which would prevent it from being the focus of the event. Doing it the way I have presented the opportunity to have Mac's scarf flying in the turbulence as he crosses Mannock's slipstream, and I shall be dirtying up his face a little to depict the cordite residue from his guns, which although mounted above his wing, would probably have been fairly thick as he actually had twin Lewis guns mounted in that position and the airflow downspill would likely have swept a fair bit of smoke into his face.

A problem with choosing to do that, is that Mac's wings could have obscured Mannock's aircraft too, so to work out the composition, I did several drawings which I was able to shift around until I came up with a satisfactory solution, which is an oblique view across Mac's Nieuport cockpit, with his head turned looking at Mannock's aircraft, so the only bit of Mac's craft that will be seen - the cockpit coaming - will serve as the bottom part of the L which frames the composition, his head being the other part of it. Also depicted, to accentuate the proximity of the two Nieuports, is the more distant Albatros that Mannock was closing on, but I have deliberately put Mannock's controls the opposite way to that which the Albatros is turning, to help convey Mannock's shock and possibly his instinct to turn away from the target if he though an enemy was lining him up for a shot.

The horizon is deliberately shifted to an angle to add to the feeling of it being a busy turning fight. The time of the incident and the fact that Mac wrote that he saw Kennedy's Nieuport glinting in the sun as it went down trailing smoke is also useful, as it means the lighting can be made interesting too, especially falling on silver doped aircraft.

All these elements should make for an interesting painting.

Al

[Terrencejones]

Hi Chock,
You just know I will watching this with great interest Love the whole concept of it and if the sketch is anything to go by it should prove to be a great piece of work. Looking forward to seeing this progress.

Cheers Terry

PS. What part of the Grim oop North are you from?

[Chock]

I am from Stockport, home of an awful footy team and the dirty great big Victorian viaduct you see in many LS Lowry paintings - the one you go over which crosses the Mersey ten mins south of arriving in Manchester if you come up north from the bright lights of wicked Londinium on the choo choo train. I live quite near to Woodford Aerodrome (EGCD) if you happen to know where that is.

Al

[PeterL]

Me too!!!!!

[totalspoon]

I didn't know that Mannock liked to remove his Aldis. What did he use instead? Did he have a standard ring & bead in its place or did he have a custom sight like William Barker.

Did any other top allied aces not use the Aldis?

Thanks

Spoon

[Chock]

Most SE5as that had the Aldis sight removed, had the back up iron ring and bead site relocated to a central location on the cowling, which could of course be done with the Aldis sight out of the way. The Aldis sight was a good piece of equipment, as evidenced by the fact that a few Germans placed recovered ones on their aircraft. You could of course have both too.

But the Aldis was better suited to the lone hunters than the dogfighters, so if you were more like McCudden and inclined to go after two seaters alone, sneaking up on them and firing a good sustained burst from underneath their tails, then the Aldis, if properly harmonised, would have been a real advantage, especially since it had a slight magnification factor. And on something relatively stable like the SE5a, which was pretty able to be trimmed to fly hands off, you'd be in with a good chance of nailing the rear gunner through the floor at a fairly safe range. To then take the thing out at a big advantage in maneuverability. Such an approach also probably being psychologically damaging the enemy pilot in the ensuing fight, from the undoubtedly traumatic situation of having a dead or dying comrade sat just behind him, possibly someone who is his best friend. McCudden did this sort of thing fairly regularly, and in fact he actually ended up with an enemy's blood all over the front of his SE5a when doing that once. That sort of stalking approach on a lone aircraft is however, not really the way the tactical flight leaders like Mannock and mix it up dogfighting types like Voss did things.

Mannock's strength was as a flight leader and tactician against multiple targets, so he was a strong advocate of getting in a good tactical position, often using the sun and unusual cardinal points, then having his flight make a diving pass on the enemy formation, to hopefully take something out quick, followed by coming up using the speed off the initial dive for a chandelle to turn back toward the enemy, thus having more energy than the enemy flight for the ensuing dogfight, which would also hopefully be against reduced numbers from the initial firing pass. Which if not having destroyed an enemy, would certainly put the wind up them. These days that does not seem that innovative, and a rather obvious thing to do, but of course someone had to think of it first, and at the time it was just as creative and pioneering as Boelcke's vanguard approach to combat, or Richthofen's calculating methodology of hovering on the periphery of a melee, awaiting a suitable advantageous chance.

Thus Mannock would want a good initial shot, but after that, he regarded the Aldis, which required you to put your eye up close to it, much like using a telescope, as too time consuming to use in a swirling dogfight, and also likely to make life riskier, since you had to narrow your field of view and fly steadily, to make use of it. If you've ever waved a telescope or telephoto camera lens about whilst looking through it, you will well appreciate how it would be hard to shoot a moving target through such a device. So the lack of an Aldis was a trade off between slightly less accuracy for the initial shot on the first firing pass, but much more practical combat utility from an open iron sight when in a turning fight, where often a quick deflection snapshot would be all you could expect to get, and the risk of collision was high, so keeping a good watch was fairly crucial too. An Aldis sight is not conducive to that.

Of course that favoured the people who were decent deflection shooters, which is where you need good spatial 3D perception to judge things, but Mannock was apparently an unbelievably good shot, so it is understandable that he would be an advocate of such practice. Nevertheless, he was also noted for mentoring new guys, and he would doubtless have preferred them to be looking about in a dogfight, rather than have an eye clamped to an Aldis sight, flying straight and level whilst there were canny German dogfighters all over the sky. So you can see that he had more than one reason to advocate such a preference, and it was not entirely selfish in its motivation.

Mannock is unusual in that he often preferred going for a head on diving firing pass on enemy craft at the merge, and often took aircraft out with just one pass, which is indicative of what a good deflection shooter he was. The target with such an approach, is dropping away below the nose, requiring fairly high speed to negate that effect as much as possible, a steep diving angle helps, occasionally also requiring a negative G pitch down to keep the target in sight, not to mention leading a target at a closure rate of probably well over 200 mph. But for pilots who could manage that, it does make sense, since after the initial pass, it puts you on the enemy's tail, usually with more energy for the turn after the merge. Useful too, is the fact that firing at the front of fighters and two seaters gives you a chance to hit the engine, the radiator, the propeller, the guns, the sight, the pilot, the wing rigging and the windscreen, any one of which could be a killer hit. So a slightly less accurate grouping from ring sight can 'spread the hate' over a large selection of crucial parts.

Al

[Chock]

After a bit of playing about, I finally got the composition to how I was happy with it and roughed it onto the canvas. This is 24x18 inches and will be done in oils, commencing later this week after I've got a couple of training courses I have to do out of the way.

The flash on my camera is crap, but you can see enough of it. You can also see I have sketched the airfield they were doing a recce of when the dogfight kicked off in there, and added some poplar-lined roads to give it that French feeling. The Albatros DV Mannock was after is in there too, which will be one from Jasta 30:



Al

[Russell Smith]

Looks like its coming along nicely, Chock. One little thing - check the lower wing of the Nieuport. It had both a dihedral and a backward sweep, neither of which are terribly evident in this shot.

[Chock]

Yup, you know what that is? it's an optical illusion from the left aileron being up, as it makes the gap look bigger at the wingtip. But you are right, it does look like there is none from that angle.

So, I am weighing up whether or not to 'draw it wrong to make it look right'.

The other thing of course is that the rearward sweep of the wing and the upward tilt of the dihedral cancel one another out visually from that viewpoint, which doesn't help either LOL

Al

[totalspoon]

This isn’t aimed at anyone… just a rant

The Aldis sight has got to be the most miss understood piece of flying equipment in WWI (just like the Bf-109 slats in WW2).

The Aldis is a 1:1 (no magnification) collimated sight fitted with an aiming ring. It was not a telescope. It didn’t magnify the image. You didn’t need to put your eye right up against it but hold your head roughly behind, with one eye roughly lined up but with BOTH eyes open.

I’ve never used an Aldis sight but I have extensively used an almost perfect modern equivalent. It’s the standard sight on the Steyr AUG rifle used by the Australian army, a 1.5:1 collimated sight with aiming ring. The whole idea of this sight is it’s faster and easier to snap shoot with, not slower and harder like most people believe. With normal iron sights, when you have a target, you raise your rifle up that last little bit, align your head so that the front and back sights line up (this is called a sight picture) and then move the sight picture over the target. Old hands bring up the rifle so that the sights are almost perfectly aligned every time and then it only takes the slightest unconscious movement for them to get the perfect sight picture. New shooters or even old hands under pressure, often take the shot without getting the correct sight picture meaning a miss no matter how well aimed the shot. With the low magnification collimated sight of the Steyr, you spot your target, raise your rifle, roughly align your head with the sight and with both eyes still open (Huge difference from a telescope) align your sight on the target and fire. There’s no need to worry about sight pictures. If you can see the ring, that’s were the bullet will go. And as you keep both eyes open, situation awareness doesn’t drop and lining up the target is easy. When you’re rushing to get that shot, the low/zero magnification collimated sight is the way to go. The Australian army was so impressed with the Steyr sight, it is now fitted to all our Minimi LSW’s (Australian version of M249 SAW) instead of the original iron sights.

Since the Steyr was designed in the eary 1970’s, a newer generation of zero magnification collimated sights has been developed featuring a lighted aiming dot for better targeting in low light conditions. Called the red dot sight, it’s the ultimate snap shooting sight today.

What I don’t understand is why everyone keeps stating that Aldis was no good for dogfighting compared to the ring and bead. As a zero magnification collimated sight with a HUGE 5cm wide lens, it should have been kick arse in an environment where your head is being thrown around by g forces and turbulence. The fact that every airforce adopted a version of it after the war until it was replaces by the reflector sight (another zero magnification collimated sight) shows that it was.

I must admit though that it I did feel uncomfortable with the Steyr sight initially, having grown up with iron sights. I had no issues with the iron sights of the SLR and would have preferred an iron sighted Steyr but I had no choice. It didn’t take long to warm to the Steyr sight and discover how good it is. I wonder if that’s the reason some aces removed their Aldis sights on their new machines. Why change something that’s working for something new and ‘uncomfortable’, especially in a situation where losing means death…