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Clip description
Australian Flying Corps cadets learn the art of machine-gun shooting with model targets in a training camp in England, during or just after the First World War. They practise on a range at first, then seated in an aeroplane. Trainee ground crew practise the dangerous task of ‘swinging the prop’ on an SE5a at Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire.
Curator’s notes
Notice the title at the beginning. It’s a different style to the titles in clip one and clip three. There are, in fact, three separate styles of titles in this film, suggesting that it is a combination of materials from at least two films. The titles at the beginning of the film (clip one) have a square border with rounded corners; clip two has square borders and square corners; clip three has square borders and corners and the Australian rising sun military crest in the right corner. This is not unusual in many of these First World War films and suggests that they were combined and retitled after the war. This makes dating of sequences and places more difficult. Some titles in some of the films are clearly wrong, like the title in clip one which mislabels the Sopwith Camels. Just before the scenes in this clip, we see a title saying ‘General Birdwood at Australian Flying Corps Training Centre, England’. This title has the military crest in the right corner. This footage is believed to show Birdwood’s visit to Leighterton and Minchinhampton in March 1919.
The next title is the one we see at the beginning of clip two (no crest) followed by four titles without the crest, including one about Birdwood leaving for home. The film then cuts to images taken by Frank Hurley in Egypt and Palestine in February 1918 and the titles in this section have the crest in the right corner.
One possible explanation is that the film combines footage from two separate films. The sequences in France appear to have been titled in one style; those in England and Palestine in another style after the war (in fact, two styles but possibly at the same time). The question is important because we know from Charles Bean’s diaries that he and Hubert Wilkins collaborated during the war on the titling of films shot on the Western Front. The difference in styles might suggest that the titles in clip one were done earlier than those done in clips two and three, possibly by Bean and/or Wilkins, while on leave in London. The titles with the crest may have been done back in Australia. That might mean that the earlier titles are more accurate, because they were done at the time. Or it could mean the opposite – if the titles were added during wartime they would be more subject to censorship.
This sequence gives us interesting glimpses of training methods at the end of the war. The machine gunners use live ammunition and they appear to concentrate their fire just ahead of the model aeroplanes – otherwise the models wouldn’t have lasted long. These scenes might strike modern pilots as comical but aerial combat had come a long way in four years. Tactics were virtually non-existent in 1914, but by 1918 pilots on both sides were well versed in strategies for gaining an advantage.
Life expectancy for a new pilot was often measured in days, rather than weeks, during the most belligerent months of aerial combat, such as the spring of 1917. The British lost 211 aircrew, killed or missing, in one month – known now as ‘Bloody April’. In that year, the Royal Flying Corps lost 2094 men, killed or missing. Pilots fresh from training in England were especially vulnerable. They flew without parachutes, because their commanders thought parachutes might make them more inclined to jump out. The Australian units fared better than these appalling figures, partly because they did not arrive in France until September 1917, when the British were able to claim relative air supremacy on the Western Front. During 1918, the air war was in full swing, with about 8000 aircraft active throughout the year over France and Belgium. The AFC lost more than 300 men during the war. A significant number died in England in training accidents, before they could even reach the front.
The AWM holds a photograph (D00423) which shows men swinging a prop at Minchinhampton in March 1919, which exactly matches this footage.
