Question about Jasta 11 on April 13, 1917

[firblatz]

This was the day they moved from la Brayelle to Roucourt.

Just before 9AM, MvR, LvR, Wolff and Festner all had victories.
Around 1240 MvR and Wolff scored again.
At 430, Wolff scored again.
Wolff and Simon scored another pair near 645.
Finally, at 730, MvR and Festner got another pair.

That seems to be a pretty full and busy day, especially if they moved as well.

My question is: what are the logistics of moving all the personal stuff, ancillary equipment, vehicles, tents, spare parts, pets (Moritz et al?), ammo, kitchen, etc, while still servicing multiple combat flights of multiple aircraft? At some point in the day, there won't be service available at la Brayelle anymore, and they may not yet be at Roucourt either.

[Chock]

There would be around about four big motor trucks available to move the heavy stuff, plus no doubt some cars and horse drawn transport. Pilots generally flew the aircraft from the old base to the new base of operations, when everything was in good shape at their new base.

So you'd almost certainly get some pioneering servicing personnel moving to the new location early, and everyone else following along to provide an overlap of servicing (albeit reduced) at both the old and new base of operations. Notwithstanding the distance of a move, this is most likely why it is often reported that a move for a Jasta from one field to another could take up to four days. Furthermore, Jastas were not always completely autonomously self contained, most of them relying on other nearby army units for some of the mundane ancillary services a military outfit needs (i.e admin, policing and things like that), so a few services did not actually have to be moved at all.

In addition to this, there was very often more than one flying unit operating from an airfield, quite often as many as four squadrons (perhaps one located on each corner or side of an airfield), which of course means that a newly arrived unit could borrow services and material, such as fuel, mess facilities or armorers, in an interim period when they were not yet fully set up themselves.

The only unit that would have a real problem when making a move, would be the first one to take up occupancy of a completely new airfield, and even then, it might be somewhere that has one or two buildings already available. For example, if personnel had made a very nice hut for themselves on a base, and they were moving on to somewhere else, they would sometimes sell their hut, or its contents to some new arrivals! There is an example of this kind of thing in Bill Lambert's Combat Report, where he and a few other pilots actually dismantled and moved a hut they 'found', onto their new base to have for themselves. That hut probably belonged to some French guy, who would doubtless not have been able to do much about it, even if he was there and had not evacuated the area or been told to clear off the land.

Al

[firblatz]

Thanks for that, it makes sense. But it begs the question - were there other units sharing those fields at that time?

[Dan_San_Abbott]

Hi firblatz;
Chock If I may add to what have said. Each Jasta had motor vehicles, which were, 1 motorcycle, 2 staff cars, 2 personnel trucks, 1 maintenance truck, a lighting truck to provide electrical power for the hangar lighting, etc., water truck, a fuel truck, and shop truck with lathe, drill press other shop equipment, and a tent truck and several trailers, one for hangar tents. Each truck would tow a trailer on the move.
When a move was to be made within an Army, such as moving forward to an advance airfield or in retreat to a rear airfield, additional trucks (lorries) would be provided by the Army Transport Park to complete the move. The Adjutant would generally command the advance ground party, which would take down the hangar tents, if they were being used, and load the on the tent trailers, along with all their spares and parts on the transport trucks. The rear party would be under the command of one of the officers who functioned as an Armament officer, Technical Officer, or whatever. Half of the aircraft ground crew would go with the advance party to set up operations at the new field. The remaining ground crew would stay to service the aircraft until they move to the forward or rear airfield was made. the rear party, would then move to the next airfield under the command of another officer, such as the Paymaster.
If the move was to be made by railway transport, this was the usual case when to move was made to a different Army. All the aircraft would have the wings removed and loaded on flatbed railway cars along with all their trucks, shop truck, fuel truck, motorcycle, staff cars and trailers. In some cases personnel were provided with coaches for all the personnel. If not they road the on the flat beds with the equipment. The rolling field kitchen would provide meals for all personnel.
Blue skies,
Dan-San

[Chock]

Good info there Dan. Cheers for that.

Worth noting too is that the DVII was apparently designed to be easily transportable by rail, something Anthony Fokker made use of when he did a runner with a lot of them at the end of the war by all accounts.

Al