Albert Ball VC: The Fighter Pilot Hero of World War I

by Colin Pengelly

Albert Ball's individuality and his insistence on fighting alone set him apart from other fighter pilots during World War One. His invincible courage and utter determination made him a legend not only in Britain but also amongst his enemies, to whom the sight of his lone Nieuport Scout brought fear.

In 1914 he enlisted in the British army with the 2/7th Battalion (Robin Hoods), of the Sherwood Foresters, Notts and Derby Regiment. By the October of 1914 he had reached the rank of Sergeant and then in the same month was made a Second-Lieutenant to his own battalion.

In June 1915 he paid for private tuition and trained as a pilot at Hendon. In October 1915 he obtained Royal Aero Club Certificate and requested transfer to the Royal Flying Corps. The transfer granted, he further trained at Norwich and Upavon, being awarded the pilot's brevet on 22 January 1916. On 16 May 1916 - flying Bristol Scout 5512 - he opened his score, shooting down an Albatros C-type over Beaumont. On 29 May 1916 he shot down two LVG C-types, whilst flying his Nieuport 5173. Captain Albert Ball made his final flight on 7 May 1917 when he flew SE5 A4850 as part of an eleven-strong hunting patrol into action against Jagdstaffel 11, led by Lothar Von Richthofen. It was a very cloudy day. Albert was pursuing Lothar's Albatros Scout who crash-landed, wounded. Then Albert was seen by many observers to dive out of a cloud and crash. He died minutes later in the arms of a French girl, Madame Cecille Deloffre. He rose from obscurity to the top rank of contemporary fighter pilots in only 15 months. In that period he had been awarded the MC, DSO and two Bars and was credited with at least 44 victories.

Genres: Aviation

327 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2010

Reviews

[Soozee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure why the author wrote this book - apparently many of the original sources (Ball's diary, letters) have gone missing - ostensibly with previous researchers, so he had nothing new to offer and had to use other publications for much of his sources.
Also, his style of writing was cumbersome. Many sentence were poorly structured, requiring me to re-read them to get the sense, which interrupted the flow.
That said, it was an interesting read, if heavy on aircraft information. It was interesting that Ball kept asking for time at home and to be repatriated to fly at home. Whilst I would not want to detract from the very dangerous work the RFC were doing in WW1, one has to keep the perspective that at least they had some respite, they had showers and clean places to live (he even kept a garden), and fairly frequent leave back home. Many of the troops in the trenches lived in mud and were shot at daily for months with little or no respite.
I would be interested to read the other biographies written nearer to the time of Ball's death, using the original information for comparison.

[Chris]

I enjoy reading about fighter aces from the First World War. The skill, determination and courage with which these daring men took to the skies to fight in primitive, largely unreliable flying machines is a great source of inspiration to me. Therefore you can imagine my disappointment when I found this book to be less than I was expecting.

Albert Ball was a young English pilot from Nottingham who was eventually awarded the Victoria Cross for his courage. Like so many Royal Flying Corps pilots before him he began his illustrious (if short lived) career in the British army before moving onto aircraft. Ball was killed in combat with Lothar Von Richthofen (brother of Manfred Von Richthofen, the famous 'Red Baron') which resulted in Lothar being, controversially, given credit for shooting down the British ace when evidence suggests Ball became disorientated in cloud and crashed his own aircraft rather than being shot down by enemy fire.

Sadly the book suffered from a crippling lack of evidential material. The author really had his work cut out with this ambitious project and it's such a shame that he didn't, in my opinion, do the great man justice. Whereas Manfred Von Richthofen made detailed diary and report entries regarding his many combat victories and personal feelings towards the war sadly we have no such luxury with Ball. Ball was an insular man and therefore all the author had to go on were letters sent from Ball to his family at the time. These themselves were poorly written and very sparse in detail and since Ball largely disliked the company of fellow pilots there are very few testimonies from anyone outside of his family. Even the replies sent by his family were not saved so we can only guess at what they said.

All of these problems contributed to a book full of assumptions (albeit educated ones) which left me dissatisfied overall.

Sadly I do not believe any author will make a better effort at this subject unless a cache of previously unread material suddenly appears.

All I will say is that I am not left in any doubt that Albert Ball was a great man and I guess that was the entire point of the book.