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GC19’s newly assigned and promoted commander was Capt Deullin, who continued to fly combat missions and downed an Albatros east of Montdidier on 19 May for his 20th, and final, confirmed victory. On 23 June he was made an Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, in addition to which he held the Croix de Guerre with 14 palmes. Although Deullin survived the war, he was killed on 29 May 1923 while test flying an aeroplane prototype at Villacoublay airfield. com 45 45 Although this aeroplane looks like a Nieuport 11, 3956 was in fact one of ten Nieuport 17Bs ordered by the RNAS in August 1916 that were equipped with lighter-weight 80hp Le Rhône 9C engines for greater range, as well as overwing Lewis mountings and no headrests.

The success of the German combination of Sperre flights and Boelcke’s alert system for interfering with French reconnaissance missions caught the attention of Gen Pétain. Summoning his chief of air operations, Cmdt Jean Baptiste Marie Charles, Baron de Tricornot, Marquis de Rose, to his headquarters on 28 February, he issued an order that virtually defined the air war for the next two and a half years – ‘De Rose, I am blind! ’ Pétain certainly did not have to tell de Rose twice. One of the first French officers to embrace the aeroplane as a weapon, he had trained on Caudrons at Pau to qualify for his civilian licence on 12 December 1910.

Com As the early fighters’ numbers and their importance in establishing control of airspace above the frontlines grew, lone hunting expeditions began to give way to small patrols of two, three or more aeroplanes. These flights were still at an embryonic stage, as evinced by two Fokkers encountered by Sgt Jean Chaput on 30 April 1916, which he described as being too far apart – 500m – for mutual support. Tacticians like Oswald Boelcke and Antonin Brocard soon began to formulate efficient ways to operate in twos or more, even while egotists like Jean Navarre, Albert Ball and Charles Nungesser continued to favour a lone wolf approach.