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00:00Powered flight was just 11 years old when the First World War began.
00:07But a dedicated group of men transformed the aeroplane into one of the most important weapons in helping to win that war.
00:20Some of the pilots who flew these incredible machines are remembered as glamorous heroes.
00:25Germany's highest-scoring ace was the aristocratic Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron.
00:32In contrast, the top British aces were two little-known working-class heroes, Edward Mannock and James McCudden.
00:41On two occasions, he shot down four aircraft in a day. On two more occasions, he shot down three on a day.
00:47They were called Knights of the Sky, but beyond the myth lay a brutal reality.
00:56There was no romance about this. The best way to kill someone is a bullet through the back of the head before they even knew you were coming.
01:03As the number of their victories grew relentlessly, the ace's reputations soared.
01:13But so did their chances of dying in flames.
01:16He feared it to the extent that he started taking a revolver up with him.
01:20The idea being that if fire broke out, he would take the revolver and blow his own head off.
01:24Time Watch tells the story of two unlikely heroes and their battle against the odds, and themselves, to survive.
01:37And of a 90-year-old mystery surrounding the death of one of them.
01:54Just over 90 years ago, machines like this, constructed mainly from wood and fabric,
02:22were one of the most feared weapons of war.
02:35Today, only a handful of these historic aircraft are still capable of flying.
02:41The largest number of which form the Shuttleworth Collection,
02:44based at the Old Warden Aerodrome in Bedfordshire.
02:47The collection provides a unique link with the earliest days of powered flight.
02:53This is a Bristol box kite from 1910, and it really is. It's a true flying machine. It's wonderfully basic.
03:14It's the kind of thing that our pilots, who went out to France in 1914, this is what they would have learned on.
03:23And in fact, this is what they would have flown before the First World War.
03:26They'd have been very used to this kind of thing.
03:28And it's beautiful. It's basic. It's got bicycle wheels.
03:32It's completely festooned with wires.
03:35And this is the reason why they called these early machines flying birdcages.
03:40You can see precisely why.
03:42And really, it's an astonishing thing.
03:44When you think about the sophisticated aircraft that were being produced in 1918,
03:50we're only talking a few years on from the manufacture of this sort of contraption.
03:56In 1914, just before the outbreak of war, this was Britain's entire air force.
04:06A disparate collection of only 33 aircraft.
04:09It was called the Royal Flying Corps.
04:13The aeroplanes at the time were looked after by a new breed of soldier, the air mechanic.
04:19Among them was 18-year-old James, or Jimmy, McCudden.
04:25During the course of the First World War, Jimmy McCudden would rise from humble origins
04:30to become one of the most distinguished and highly decorated fighter pilots of the war.
04:43Against military regulations, Jimmy McCudden kept a written account of his innermost thought
04:48and feelings.
04:51It's also a unique record of the history of aviation in World War I.
04:56And it's here, at the RAF Museum in London, where McCudden's writings are kept.
05:02Well, this is the first of four books which form the manuscript for Jimmy McCudden's book
05:09Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps.
05:11And it's written in pencil.
05:13It's an army exercise book, as are of the other three volumes.
05:16Ruled pages written in pencil by him in his own very neat handwriting.
05:20And he started writing,
05:22One lovely morning about the end of April 1913,
05:25found me very pleased with life in general.
05:29Jimmy McCudden came from a close working-class army family.
05:33In the phrase of the day, he was born in barracks.
05:37One of six children of a non-commissioned officer.
05:41Educated to the age of 14 in the army school, he became a bugler boy in the Royal Engineers,
05:48but soon followed his eldest brother Bill into the newly formed Royal Flying Corps.
05:53Bill was really in at the very beginning of aviation in this country, a real pioneer.
05:59He was only the fourth non-officer pilot to be trained as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps.
06:05Bill would frequently give his younger brother Jimmy unofficial flying lessons.
06:10It was his big brother. He was flying. He was doing what Jimmy wanted to do.
06:13So it's not surprising that it was the sort of motivation that would take him forward to fly himself.
06:18The archives of the Royal Air Force Museum in London also hold a number of other letters and papers from the McCudden family.
06:26Aviation historian Alexandra Churchill has uncovered one which predicted a glorious war for the young Jimmy.
06:34This is an extraordinary letter from James' older brother Bill.
06:38It's written the day before war is declared.
06:41And here on the back, he's almost prophetic.
06:43He says, I can see Jim coming back with a VC or something of the sort.
06:47And here at the bottom as well, he says,
06:49you can bet your boots that the McCudden syndicate will not be missing when there is something doing.
06:56Bill's letter would prove accurate on both points.
07:00The following day, war was declared,
07:02and the McCudden syndicate, Bill and Jimmy, were to be posted to France.
07:07But even before leaving England,
07:09Jimmy witnessed the very first fatal air crash of World War One,
07:13when his friend and fellow air mechanic Keith Barlow was killed in a flying accident.
07:20We then heard the engine stop.
07:22And following that, the awful crash, which once heard is never forgotten.
07:27I ran for half a mile and found the machine in a small copse of furs.
07:33So I got over the fence and pulled the wreckage away from the occupants, finding them both dead.
07:39I shall never forget that morning at about half past six,
07:43kneeling by poor Keith Barlow and looking up at the rising sun,
07:48then again at poor Barlow, who was killed purely by concussion,
07:52and wondering if war was going to be like this always.
08:00Flying these early aircraft was a shockingly dangerous profession.
08:04Of the 14,000 British pilots killed in World War One, over 8,000 died while training.
08:14And yet Jimmy McCudden was not put off by his early experience of death.
08:19By mid-1915, he had been promoted to a sergeant and an observer,
08:25one step closer to his dream of becoming a pilot.
08:29Jimmy would have flown as an observer in aircraft like these,
08:34flimsy two-seater machines not built for fighting.
08:39In fact, in the early days of the war, they were completely unarmed.
08:45The role of aviation at the start of World War One
08:48was seen both by the Army and the Navy as being one essentially of reconnaissance.
08:54Using ordinary plate glass cameras,
08:56the observers leaned out over the side of the aircraft
08:59to take photographs of the battlefield below.
09:03They are there for observation.
09:05They are there to locate the enemy, to pinpoint them,
09:08and then the second part of their job is that they will direct artillery fire
09:12to destroy that target.
09:19They also carried small bombs in the cockpit
09:21and dropped them over the side onto the enemy below.
09:26These were the first crude developments of the aircraft as a fighting machine.
09:31The problem was, of course, the other side was doing exactly the same thing.
09:36And before very long, the crews of opposing aircraft
09:40started taking along rifles, pistols, having a crack at each other.
09:45No army in the world could allow the artillery observation aircraft
09:50of their enemies to cross over the lines and photograph them,
09:54to bring down artillery fire right into the very midst of their trenches.
09:59They just couldn't let it happen, so they had to stop it.
10:03It rapidly became apparent that the aircraft needed more than just pistols and rifles
10:08to fight this new kind of war in the air.
10:14Guy Black restores vintage aircraft.
10:17He also has an extensive collection of aerial weaponry from the First World War.
10:25The easiest solution was to adapt a weapon that was already in use.
10:29The Lewis machine gun was standard issue for ground troops in World War One.
10:36It just needed a few alterations by the Royal Flying Corps.
10:40In order to convert it for aerial use,
10:44they removed the wooden stock off the back,
10:47replaced it with a spade grip.
10:49That reduces the length significantly.
10:51Initially, they started off with a 47-round standard infantry magazine,
10:56but that only gave you 10 seconds of use.
11:00So that was very soon doubled up to 97 rounds,
11:04and that's 20 seconds.
11:05It doesn't sound very much,
11:07but you would only fire it in one or two-second bursts,
11:10well-aimed bursts,
11:12and the notion of hosing around the sky with a machine gun
11:16is absolute nonsense.
11:17It wasn't used in that way at all.
11:19Here is one fully loaded,
11:22and, you know, this length I can barely lift it.
11:24And to change one in the heat of battle is really quite a task.
11:29Like all observers,
11:31the young Jimmy McCudden was responsible for operating the machine gun.
11:37But it was difficult for the observer to fire at the enemy aircraft
11:41without running the risk of hitting his own plane.
11:44The easiest way to mount a machine gun is to mount it pointing forwards,
11:48because then you could actually aim the machine gun simply by aiming the aircraft.
11:53But on the majority of planes,
11:55where the engine was at the front and the propeller was at the front,
11:58you simply couldn't do that,
12:00because the machine gun would shoot off the propeller.
12:02But it was the Germans who first adopted an ingenious device,
12:09which synchronized the machine guns so they could fire between the blades of the propeller while it rotated.
12:15It absolutely revolutionized air fighting and it turned the airplane into a genuine fighting machine.
12:25Not just a machine that could defend itself if it had to,
12:28but a machine that could actually go out and attack.
12:31The Germans were quick to capitalize upon their technological lead,
12:39tearing into the Allied observation aircraft.
12:44The German pilots would become aerial warriors.
12:48The first of note in 1915 was Max Immelmann,
12:52who developed the tactics which gave them the upper hand in dogfights.
12:55They'd dive out of the clouds, they'd come out of the sun,
13:02they always tried to surprise you.
13:04There was no romance about this.
13:06The best way to kill someone is a bullet through the back of the head
13:10before they even knew you were coming.
13:14It was in this mayhem that the young observer Jimmy McCutton
13:18started to make a name for himself,
13:20successfully defending his aircraft from an attack by the German ace Immelmann,
13:24who already had many kills to his name.
13:28Jimmy was credited with actually holding him off by accurate fire
13:32from his Lewis machine gun fired from the shoulder.
13:35It's not suggesting that he did any damage to him or shot him down,
13:38but actually just by holding him off and keeping him out of range.
13:47I stood up with my Lewis gun to the shoulder and fired as he passed over our right wing.
13:51He carried on flying in the opposite direction.
13:55After this, he climbed to about 300 feet above us and then put his nose down to fire.
14:01Having been waiting for him, I opened fire at once and he promptly withdrew to a distance of 500 yards.
14:07I was very thankful indeed to return from this outing.
14:11I'd imagine that once Immelmann and his Fokker saw us, there was not much chance for us.
14:17However, we live and learn.
14:20For his bravery in battle, Jimmy McCutton received the first of many decorations
14:25when, on the 29th of January 1916, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French General Joffre.
14:36Two days later, the newly promoted Flight Sergeant Jimmy McCutton was sent back to England
14:42to fulfil his ambition and train as a pilot.
14:45But Jimmy's dream of flying alongside his elder brother Bill would never be realised.
14:54Bill had been killed in a flying accident while training a new pilot.
14:59He was the first of the McCutton family to lose their lives in the Royal Flying Corps.
15:04He wouldn't be the last.
15:06In his memoirs, Jimmy recorded his brother's death with the bland words,
15:14I suppose it had to be.
15:17In reality, it was a devastating emotional blow.
15:21He was called into the orderly room and given a telegram informing him of Bill's death
15:27and the people that were there said that he didn't appear to take it in.
15:31He left with the telegram and he sort of stumbled out of the office
15:36and one of the NCO pilots found him just inconsolably sobbing his heart out in between two hangars.
15:42Whatever the emotional impact of his brother's death,
15:46it didn't slow Jimmy's rapid progress.
15:49He qualified as a pilot in April 1916
15:53and within a few months was in France flying DH-2 single-seater fighters.
15:58He recorded his first kill at the beginning of September
16:01and in October received the second of his gallantry awards, the Military Medal.
16:07McCudden was honing his skills developing a meticulous attention to detail which would mark him out as an exceptional pilot.
16:20When he came round to early 1917, he'd by then got five victories and he'd served overseas for several months.
16:29And he was posted back to the UK as a trainer.
16:33And he would travel around the country with other experienced pilots lecturing to various courses,
16:39lecturing to various training schools on air combat tactics.
16:42It was here that the new pilots would come to grips with the techniques of aerial warfare.
16:52One of those Jimmy was to train was his younger brother Jack,
16:56the third of the McCudden brothers to join the Royal Flying Corps.
16:59But he was also to instruct an extraordinary character called Edward Mannock,
17:08who, like Jimmy, was to become one of Britain's highest scoring and most decorated fighter pilots of World War One.
17:15Mannock and McCudden formed a close bond from the start.
17:20And Mannock credited McCudden with saving his life during training.
17:23He had just had his first spin and remembered my advice,
17:28which I think at the time was to put all the control central and offer up a very short and quick prayer.
17:33Mannock was a typical example of the impetuous young Irishman,
17:38and I always thought was of the type to do or die.
17:42Born in Ireland, Edward Mick Mannock, like Jimmy McCudden,
17:47came from a working class military family.
17:49But here the similarity ends.
17:53Mannock's father abandoned the family, taking their meagre savings and leaving them in poverty.
18:00Mannock left school at 14.
18:03He worked as a grocer's boy and then a variety of other jobs,
18:07before joining the National Telephone Company, where he began to travel.
18:13At the outbreak of war, the 26-year-old Mannock was in Istanbul,
18:17working as a telephone engineer.
18:20Turkey had sided with Germany and her allies,
18:23and Mannock was interned, where he suffered deprivation and serious ill health.
18:29In 1915, he was released back to Britain on medical grounds.
18:34He's released primarily because the Turkish authorities assume that he won't be a competent,
18:39that his health is too poor for him to recover and then to join the fight against the Germans and their allies.
18:48In fact, Mannock made a remarkable recovery and joined the Royal Army Medical Corps.
18:53But anxious to seek action, he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, where he qualified as a pilot and was posted to France.
19:04At 29, Mick Mannock was some ten years older than the typical RFC pilots he was joining.
19:13He was also more worldly wise, which initially caused friction with his fellow officers.
19:20When he arrived there, he got off to a bad start.
19:24He makes the fatal error on the first night of sitting in the favourite chair of the pilot who had died that day.
19:31He was a man who certainly wasn't the average airman of his time.
19:38He was a socialist. He was a supporter of Irish home rule.
19:41He came from a broken home.
19:43He was all these things that on the face of it you would think he wouldn't fit into the military.
19:48But the Royal Flying Corps was an organisation of slightly irreverent, questioning people who were trying a new activity.
19:56An activity that had never really been carried out before.
19:58And in a way it was ideal for somebody with Mannock's edgy character.
20:05If Mannock appeared overly confident amongst his fellow officers, the writings in his personal diary reveal a much more fragile character.
20:15And what's interesting about his diary is how frank he is in terms of recording his emotions.
20:21And it's quite clear that he is almost petrified by his initial experiences up in the air.
20:32Mannock was very different from McCudden. There's no two ways about it.
20:36He was a nervy individual.
20:37Business out here is still very chock full of excitement.
20:48I have an idea that my nerves won't take very much of it.
20:51Old Mackenzie goes away on leave today.
20:58Fourteen days. He is in need of it.
21:02If ever a lad was cracked up, Mac is.
21:05I wonder if ever I shall get like that.
21:08And what my friends will think of me if I do.
21:11Old Paddy, the devil may care, with nerves.
21:13I feel nervous about it already.
21:17Mannock's fear was justified.
21:20The life expectancy of a new pilot in 1917 was just 11 days.
21:26The aircraft they were flying were flimsy and dangerous and lacked basic safety equipment.
21:32Even parachutes were deemed surplus to requirements.
21:35The view of the powers that be in the United Kingdom was that they did not want to give parachutes to their pilots.
21:47Because it was felt that with a parachute they might be encouraged not to make it all the way back with a damaged aircraft.
21:58Without a parachute, being trapped in a burning aircraft was a constant fear amongst British airmen.
22:05And one that haunted Mick Mannock in particular.
22:08He feared it to the extent that he started taking a revolver up with him when he flew.
22:12He had it in a small pocket in the cockpit.
22:15The idea being that if fire broke out, he would take the revolver and blow his own head off.
22:35Mannock's friend, Jimmy McCudden, had been promoted to captain and sent back to the front.
22:41In August 1917, he was posted as a flight commander of the RFC's Elite 56 Squadron.
22:48He would be flying the new SE-5A, unglamorously named, but one of the most successful fighter aircraft of World War I.
22:57It might be described as the Spitfire of the First World War.
23:02It remained a predominant fighter capable of dealing with any opposition right through to the end of the war.
23:09It was in the SE-5A that McCudden and Mannock sealed their reputations as Britain's top fighter aces of the First World War.
23:27Wooden framed, fabric covered, able to survive being attacked by other aircraft.
23:34There's nothing much in here, so bullets were passed through.
23:37Jimmy McCudden himself talks about coming back from a dogfight.
23:40He was perfectly intact, the aircraft was flying, and he counted 120 bullet holes in the side of the aeroplane.
23:48Within three days of arriving back in France with his new squadron, Jimmy shot down a German aircraft.
23:54But he faced a challenge of a different nature from his fellow British officers.
24:01The entire squadron almost is comprised of ex-public school boys.
24:05Pretty much every major public school was represented.
24:08So, understandably, there are going to be times when, as a man who left school at 14,
24:14having been educated in an army setting,
24:17McCudden was not going to comprehend entirely what was going on in terms of conversation.
24:24I always wished I'd had the advantages of a public school.
24:29After I joined the officers' mess, I often felt ill at ease when the chaps were talking about things I didn't understand.
24:35But Jimmy's modest education didn't prevent him performing exceptionally well as a pilot.
24:41He started slowish, but steadily, and gradually that builds up.
24:48So over the next several months he was shooting down regularly.
24:51On two occasions he shot down four aircraft in a day.
24:54On two more occasions he shot down three on a day.
24:56In just five months to December 1917, McCudden shot down a staggering 52 enemy aircraft,
25:04accounting for 40% of the entire squadron's total and making him Britain's top-scoring pilot.
25:10Jimmy's tactics were one of patience, of stalking.
25:15There was absolutely no point, as far as he saw, in sort of pressing on, gung-ho,
25:19when your ammunition runs out, ram your aircraft into the opposition.
25:23You lose your aircraft and maybe your life, they lose theirs one for one, nobody's going to get an advantage.
25:28This is just not professional.
25:30But McCudden had another advantage.
25:31He was able to fly higher than his fellow pilots, and it was his training as a mechanic which gave him the edge.
25:40McCudden, using all his engineering experience, sort of supercharged his SE-5, his aircraft,
25:46so that it would go another three, four thousand feet higher.
25:50And then he would go up there flying long patrols.
25:53It's amazing, really, at that height, 20, 21,000 feet, no oxygen, freezing cold.
25:58And he'd be up there, waiting for them to come across, and he would just shoot them down.
26:02He'd shoot two, three, four down. It was fantastic.
26:10But there's a cost. There's always a cost. He was starting to suffer.
26:16You just can't fly up there at that height. You need oxygen.
26:23I felt very ill indeed.
26:24This was not due to the height or the rapidity of my descent, but was due to the intense cold that I experienced up high.
26:31So that when I got down to a lower altitude, I could breathe more oxygen,
26:35with the result that my heart beat more strongly and was trying to force my sluggish and cold blood around my veins too quickly.
26:44My word, I did feel ill.
26:47And when I got on the ground, the blood returning to my veins I cannot describe as anything but agony.
26:52While McCudden fought to overcome the physical difficulties of flying at high altitude, his friend Mick Mannock was winning his battles with his mental demons.
27:02And by the summer of 1917, Mannock had received the military cross for bravery.
27:08He had also become an ace.
27:11French journalists, I think, coined the phrase of the ace, the top of the pack.
27:18An ace was a pilot who had shot down more than five enemy aircraft.
27:23But Mannock's diary reveals that he was having difficulties facing up to the consequences of his actions.
27:32I had the good fortune to bring a Hun-2 seater down in our lines the other day.
27:38Luckily, my first few shots killed the pilot and wounded the Observer, besides breaking his gun.
27:42The bus crashed south of Avion.
27:46I hurried out at the first opportunity.
27:49The machine was completely smashed.
27:52And, rather interestingly, also was the little black and tan Terrier, dead, in the Observer's seat.
27:59I felt exactly like a murderer.
28:08Despite his, at times, contradictory emotions, Mannock was developing into a very effective fighter pilot.
28:16He's worked out the tactics.
28:19You know, he now knows the most effective way of shooting down German aircraft.
28:24Of flying from behind, flying from the east.
28:28Of flying out of the sun.
28:31And, crucially, flying extremely close to your target before you unleash a stream of machine gun bullets.
28:39And it wasn't long before Mannock's exploits were being recognised amongst his peers.
28:48Even the newspapers back home were writing about Mick Mannock.
28:51Although they had to refer to him as Captain X.
28:57The War Ministry refused to allow the press to name Britain's star pilots.
29:02Preferring the view that it was the team effort which was important, and not the individual.
29:07The authorities also became concerned that if a pilot had been raised to considerable public awareness, as a very leading exponent of his art, and was then killed in action, that this could be bad for public morale.
29:25Unlike the British, the German authorities positively encouraged public adulation of their aces.
29:32The most famous being Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron, seen here with the British pilot he had just shot down.
29:40In Germany, the aces were household names.
29:45They were known to every man, woman and child in Germany.
29:49They publicised them throughout the newspapers.
29:51They were the supreme embodiment of German manhood.
29:54They stood for everything that was brave and good about German men at battle.
29:58By January 1918, the British press had had enough. Hungry to personalise the exploits of our heroes, they began to put pressure on the War Ministry to change its rules on publicity.
30:12And so the Daily Mail wrote an article.
30:17This article is entitled, Our Unknown Air Heroes, Germany's Better Way.
30:22So, an inflammatory sort of headline in itself.
30:25And in the article, he actually says,
30:26What I want to know is why an Englishman whose hobby is bringing down Sky Huns in braces and trios between luncheon and tea and who can already claim a bag of 30 enemy aircraft should have to wait to be killed before a grateful nation waiting to acclaim him can even learn his name.
30:43That was on January the 3rd.
30:46Over the weekend, the War Ministry had obviously considered their position.
30:50So, by Monday, January the 7th, 1918, the Daily Mail again, were actually producing an article that says, Our Air Stars.
31:00And down here we have the story of Captain McCudden MC, born in barracks, as the heading says, and describes his early life and his achievements in the Royal Flying Corps.
31:11Not only does it name him and tell us something about him, but also on the back of the paper, there's a picture of him for the first time as well.
31:17So, people can now know his name, but also they can see what he looks like.
31:22For Jimmy McCudden, the publicity was not welcome.
31:26This is a letter that Jim writes home to his sister Kitty on the day that his name becomes public in the Daily Mail.
31:32And he says to her, Have you seen all of the bosh in the paper about me?
31:36And then he also says, On no account whatever any particulars or photos of me to be sent to the papers, as that sort of thing makes one very unpopular with one's comrades.
31:45McCudden's modesty was made all the more remarkable by the fact that when he left France for Britain in March 1918, Jimmy had recorded 57 victories, making him the top scoring British pilot.
31:59But the war was exacting a terrible toll on the McCudden family.
32:06Jimmy received news that his younger brother Jack, who he had helped train as a pilot, had been killed in action.
32:13The second of the so-called McCudden syndicate to die.
32:20As he absorbed the impact of his brother's loss, McCudden was to receive more welcome news.
32:26For his conspicuous bravery, exceptional perseverance and high devotion to duty, he was awarded Britain's highest decoration, the Victoria Cross.
32:38There's not a prouder man living than when on the 6th of April I went to Buckingham Palace.
32:42I shall ever remember how the King thanked me for what I had done.
32:53Jimmy McCudden's is one of only 19 VCs awarded to airmen in the First World War.
32:59So, before we see the VC, if I could just let you put some gloves on.
33:04You do.
33:06David Rowland has come to the Royal Engineers Museum in Chatham, McCudden's hometown, where his Victoria Cross is kept for safekeeping.
33:15This is the original.
33:16Wow.
33:17McCudden VC.
33:18There we go.
33:19Thank you. Wow.
33:20What a moment.
33:21I've read about this, heard so much about it, in all the sort of work I've done and studying about McCudden.
33:26It's a real privilege to actually be able to handle it.
33:31Wonderful.
33:33And yes, there on the back, as it should be, his name, Lieutenant Temporary Captain J.B. McCudden, DSO, MC, MM.
33:42Generalist and his 56th Squadron RFC.
33:46It's a delight and a privilege.
33:47Do you know what happened when he received this?
33:50The day, 6th of April, 1918, he went to the Palace to receive the Victoria Cross.
33:54But not only did the king give him this, but also gave him two DSOs, a bar to his military cross.
33:59So he came away with an incredible display of medals in one presentation.
34:06Despite his excitement, McCudden was typically modest about his award, travelling to Buckingham Palace alone,
34:13not even telling his family the investiture was taking place.
34:18Meanwhile, the press continued to hound him.
34:23I see the papers are making a fuss again about the ordinary things one does.
34:28Why, that's our work. Why fuss about it?
34:31I'm so tired of this limelight business.
34:35If only one could be left alone a bit more, and not so much the hero about it.
34:42However McCudden felt about the intrusion,
34:45it was inevitable that this glamorous young fighter pilot would become the centre of attention
34:50while out enjoying London's clubs and theatres.
34:52London at the time is full of what I think have been termed Whitehall Warriors,
34:58which is men in uniform who haven't seen any service.
35:02And McCudden, of course, isn't one of those.
35:04And yes, he's got metal ribbons lovingly sewn on by his mother on his tunic.
35:09It wasn't just the club and theatre owners who were keen to have McCudden's company.
35:14Jimmy had always been a bit of a one for the girls.
35:24There is one girl, and that's Teddy O'Neil.
35:27She's a dancer in the West End, and as we know, McCudden is going to every show he possibly could on leave,
35:34and he had met her there.
35:35I think he was seeing somebody else at the time, because there's a bit of a crossover which causes him some problems,
35:41and he takes her up on a joyride.
35:44And he was brash enough to write in his logbook as well that he'd taken her up as a passenger.
35:54While on leave, Jimmy was to spend time with fellow pilot Mick Mannock.
35:59They were two decorated war heroes, clearly enjoying themselves with the opposite sex.
36:06In Mannock's diary, McCudden was to write the enigmatic comment,
36:12Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
36:15To which he added the word, piffle.
36:19The frivolity was short-lived.
36:21By the spring of 1918, the war was reaching its savage climax, both on the ground and in the air.
36:32Aircraft were now being used to support the troops.
36:36The days of the lone aerial dogfights were over, but they were now even more vulnerable to attack from the ground.
36:41Things have changed. It's not aerial jousting. It's just another part of mechanized warfare.
36:50In 1918, what you see is the aces falling one by one. One by one. They just make that one mistake too many.
36:57And the first of those aces to be brought crashing to earth was the now infamous German pilot, Baron von Richthofen.
37:07The British authorities afforded Richthofen, who had 80 kills to his name, a lavish funeral.
37:17Six British airmen bore his coffin to the French cemetery at Burt Angles, where Allied newsreels recorded the event in all its pomp and ceremony.
37:26Not everyone mourned Richthofen's death.
37:36Mick Mannock refused to raise his glass and salute the downed German ace.
37:40Mannock wouldn't sign up to that, and he's allegedly supposed to have said,
37:46I hope the bastard burnt the whole way down.
37:49He had a deep, deep loathing of the Germans.
37:53Primarily, I think, it's because of his personal experience in the winter of 1914, 1915, the way he personally was treated by the Turks.
38:04He's not fighting Turks, so, you know, he's fighting the people who are responsible for bringing Turkey into the war, Germany.
38:12Against the odds, Mannock embarked upon an extraordinary run of victories.
38:16In May 1918 alone, he shot down 20 German aircraft, beginning to rival his friend McCudden, or Mack as he called him, as Britain's number one ace.
38:28My total is now 41.
38:30If I've a bit of luck, I might beat old Mack.
38:35Then I shall try and oust old Richthofen.
38:37It looked as though Mannock might just do it, as McCudden had now spent three months away from the Western Front, teaching aerial fighting to new pilots in Britain.
38:56McCudden was desperate to get back to frontline duty in France.
39:01The authorities, however, were less keen for him to go.
39:05Bear in mind, now he's famous.
39:08The war ministry, having decided that they're going to let people know who their heroes are, now actually want to use these heroes in a very constructive way to improve morale and the spirit back home.
39:19So, I think there's a reasonable conclusion to draw, that they would have been happy if he didn't go back out, because they didn't want to lose him.
39:24He had every intention of going back to France, and he talked about the men he'd left out there, the young boys he'd called out there, still fighting and dying for their country, and he wanted to go back and join them.
39:34Eventually, the war ministry relented, and McCudden was offered command of the elite 85 Squadron.
39:41But in an extraordinary move, the Squadron rejected him, on the grounds that he was the son of a non-commissioned officer, and had risen through the ranks without recourse to a public school education.
39:51Despite his VC, and being the top-scoring British ace, being born in barracks, made him less worthy in some people's eyes.
40:03Eventually, he was given command of 60 Squadron in France.
40:07On the day of his departure, he met with his sister Mary, and handed her a package containing his VC and his other medals.
40:16It was the last time she was to see him.
40:18On the early afternoon of Tuesday, the 9th of July, 1918, Jimmy McCudden picked up his brand-new SE-5A from Hounslow Aerodrome in London, and set off for France, where his new Squadron was stationed.
40:39The flight across the channel was straightforward, and there was nothing on the journey to suggest that the new aircraft was in any way done.
40:57The flight across the channel was straightforward, and there was nothing on the journey to suggest that the new aircraft was in any way defective.
41:12Aware of the ever-changing front lines in the fast-moving conflict, McCudden landed at a British airfield at Auxy-le-Château, just north of Abbeville in northern France, to ask directions to his new aerodrome at Boffles, close by.
41:27Auxy-le-Château.
41:42Aviation historian and former pilot Mike O'Connor has studied eyewitness reports, and can describe the sequence of events that unfolded that day.
41:51This field is owned by the family of Mathieu de France, and until now he was completely unaware that in the First World War it was an RAF aerodrome. It was in this field that McCudden touched down.
42:09Right, Mathieu, this is the only known photograph of the airfield at Auxy-le-Château. We are here, nous sommes ici. The hangars are along that edge of the wood, and here's the line-up of some of the aeroplanes just there.
42:27McCudden landed, and the two duty NCOs came out and spoke to him, and they gave him directions to where he should be going, which was Boffles, or Boffler.
42:41McCudden taxied and took off again.
42:44As he banked steeply over the airfield, his engine was heard to misfire.
42:55Then it cut out altogether. The plane was seen to nosedive into the woods just beyond the airfield.
43:11The first person on the scene was Corporal Howard, and the aircraft was wrecked, and McCudden was lying beside the aeroplane, bleeding profusely from the nose and the mouth, and was unconscious.
43:24Then a couple of other people then arrived, and he was put on a stretcher and removed to a casualty clearing station quite close by, where he's found to have suffered a severe fracture at the base of the skull and the jaw.
43:36He didn't regain consciousness and died two hours later at eight o'clock.
43:42No one will ever really know what happened that day, but it seems likely that mechanical failure caused the aircraft to lose power and crash.
43:52After surviving three years of aerial warfare, it was a tragic accident which claimed Jimmy McCudden's life.
44:02The following day, a few miles from the scene of the accident, McCudden was buried at the tiny military cemetery at Wavens.
44:12It seems a terrible end for such a brilliant pilot and notable ace to die in a simple accident.
44:25This is the grave of Jimmy McCudden.
44:29This is the grave of Jimmy McCudden.
44:32With all Victoria Cross holders, on the headstone is the facsimile of the decoration, as you can see here.
44:39Very distinct, if you can see a Victoria Cross headstone from a long way away.
44:44And beneath it, most families had an epitaph and a description.
44:48And I'm particularly fond of this one.
44:50Fly on, dear boy, from this dark world of strife onto the promised land to eternal life.
44:56I find it very emotive, very moving.
45:00The style of his funeral, however, seemed less heroic than the manner in which he had fought the war.
45:07There was a lot of criticism of the funeral.
45:10Two officers from McCudden's former squadron, one said that it was a rather rushed affair.
45:18And another one, he said, it made my blood boil that the whole service was done in Latin, mumbled in Latin, and a very soulless affair.
45:28And in fact, he compared it very unfavourably with the funeral that had been accorded von Richthofen, the top German ace, only three months before.
45:39In just four years, James McCudden had risen from the position of air mechanic first class to major.
45:51He had won the Victoria Cross and was one of the highest scoring British pilots of World War One.
45:58And yet, at the time of his death, he was just 23 years old.
46:09Jimmy McCudden's death had hit his friend Mick Mannock very hard, and he vowed to avenge him.
46:23By now, Mannock had nearly equaled McCudden's victories, but his demons were taking an increasing grip on his state of mind.
46:31He was willing, but his mind was starting to let him down.
46:35And there's an awful tale of he was on leave, he was with one of his old friends, and the friend just watched, aghast, as something in the conversation triggered it off.
46:45And Mannock started to cry.
46:47And he didn't just cry, he was crying, his nose was running, snot running everywhere, he was snivelling.
46:53He still hasn't been able to come to term with his own private fears, most notably the prospect of being shot down.
47:04And burning to death.
47:14Publicly, however, Mannock continued to be a hugely charismatic leader.
47:18And for bravery in the spring of 1918, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order.
47:24Not once, but three times, in just over a month.
47:30He does have, amongst his peers, an awesome reputation.
47:36And yet, there is still this contradiction in that, privately, he's the tortured individual.
47:46Mannock's mind was in a terrible state.
47:48If you read his letters, you can see it's jumping from subject to subject.
47:52You know, will I live, will I die? Should I get married?
47:57Perhaps you can feel him leapfrogging, jumping between subjects.
48:00He's a man who can't settle.
48:08Things are getting a bit intense just lately.
48:10And I don't quite know how long my nerves will hold out.
48:18I'm rather old now, as airmen go, for air fighting.
48:22Still, one hopes for the best.
48:26These times are so horrible that, occasionally, I feel that life's not worth hanging on to myself.
48:36But, er, hope springs eternal in the human breast.
48:46Mannock appeared as if he had a death wish.
48:48He flew more and more missions.
48:50He took more and more risks.
48:52He would fly low, acting as a decoy.
48:54He started to break his own rules.
48:57He wanted to kill more Germans.
48:59He wanted to be out with his lads in the squadron.
49:02There's no two ways about that.
49:03I think it's just a very confused man, struggling with almost impossible pressures that are bearing down on him.
49:20On the morning of the 26th of July, 1918, just three weeks after his friend Jimmy McCudden's tragic death, Mick Mannock set off on patrol.
49:29With him was 24-year-old New Zealander, Donald Inglis, an inexperienced pilot with no kills to his name.
49:37They were searching for a German observation plane, which, for the previous few days, had been harassing British troops over the front lines near Mairville.
49:58Mannock's plan was to give the rookie Inglis the opportunity of making his first kill.
50:07It was not long before he spotted the German plane.
50:14Within seconds, Mannock got on the tail of the enemy aircraft.
50:19He fired a burst, which killed the observer.
50:24He then moved aside, to allow Inglis to finish off the attack.
50:37The German aircraft fell to the ground in flames.
50:48It was now that Mannock was to inexplicably break his own golden rule by following the German down and observing the crash site.
50:56What he was doing was gobsmackingly stupid. It was a fatal error.
51:12German machine gun fire from the ground hit Mannock's plane as it pulled away and his aircraft caught fire.
51:17With his plane in flames, Mannock's nightmare had become realized.
51:24Eyewitnesses describe Mannock's SE-5A as going into a glide before crashing beyond British lines.
51:32We don't know whether he was struggling with controls right to the last minute, whether he died quickly, whether he burnt to death.
51:39And it remains unknown whether, in the final moments, Mannock was able to use the revolver he carried in the cockpit to end his life before the flames devoured him.
51:49Britain's two greatest First World War flying aces were to lose their lives within three weeks of each other.
52:08But Mick Mannock's death brought with it a mystery that has endured for 90 years.
52:14The location of his final resting place.
52:19Writer and historian Andy Saunders has come to France to resolve the mystery.
52:30For the past 20 years he has been trying to find out what happened to Mick Mannock's body after his aircraft crashed in flames in the summer of 1918.
52:41His initial research leads Andy to the graves of the two German airmen who were Mannock's final victims.
52:47This is the German war cemetery which is about 12 miles away from where Mick Mannock shot down his last aircraft and in fact buried here is Lieutenant Ludwig Schopf and buried just a few graves away from him is Joseph Hein, his pilot.
53:07And it's interesting, I suppose, that here they are both buried side by side and yet Mannock, the man who downed them is still missing with no known grave.
53:16But there is some evidence which shows that immediately after the crash Mick Mannock's body was indeed found.
53:25And it is this evidence which brings Andy to a track called Butter Lane, close to where Mannock's plane came down.
53:31After the war the British authorities received information from Germany that the German army had found and identified Mick Mannock and had buried him somewhere very close to this road.
53:46The Germans were very specific as to where on Butter Lane Mick Mannock's body had been buried.
53:53300 metres north-west of Pierre Aubert on the road to Pacau.
53:59But when the British authorities searched this location in 1921, they failed to locate Mannock's grave.
54:12Because of the failure of the British to find Mannock's body, his name is commemorated here at the Arras Memorial in France, along with 1,000 other missing airmen from the First World War.
54:28Andy is meeting military historian Paul Reid.
54:33They suspect that the German records were incorrect, which might explain why the British authorities couldn't find Mannock's body.
54:41Well, we've got the trench map of the area we are now, around Butter Lane.
54:45So we've got the dotted blue line here. This is the German positions. This was their front line, Andy.
54:50And then beyond that, right over on the far side of the map, we can see the red line, and that is our front line.
54:55And we can see how close together they were.
54:59So this is La Piero Burr, marks on the British trench map.
55:03Yeah.
55:04And it was from this position that the War Graves Commission believed Mannock to have been buried 300 metres north-west of.
55:11That puts it out here in no man's land. So really, that doesn't make any sense at all in terms of...
55:16No. No one's going to sacrifice your own men to bury one of the enemy's dead in the middle of a battlefield, where the war's still going on.
55:24It just doesn't make any sense at all.
55:26During his research, Andy came across one other intriguing piece of information.
55:32A letter from official files, which describes the exhumation of an unknown British airman, tantalizingly close to where the Germans said they had buried Mannock.
55:44Using satellite navigation combined with World War I trench maps, Paul Reid is able to pinpoint the position where, in 1920, this unknown British airman's body was found and exhumed.
56:00And if we refer to the GPS device, yep, we're right on the spot.
56:06Good Lord. So it was right here?
56:08It was right here.
56:09From this, it would appear that we're actually just behind the German trench there.
56:13It is, yeah. There's this sort of upside-down T-shaped trench, and the grave, as you can see, Andy, is just behind that position.
56:20From the Germans' point of view, away from enemy observation, they can bury the man that they found in the wreckage of that aircraft.
56:27Yeah, exactly.
56:28Andy now believes that this is a much more likely place to bury Mannock than in the middle of no man's land on an active battlefield.
56:39Despite the proximity of the two sites, the British authorities have always refused to accept that the body of the unknown airman was Mannock,
56:47simply because it was not where the Germans said they had buried him.
56:58Andy has come to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery at Lavantie to visit the grave of that unknown airman,
57:08the grave that Andy believes should carry the name of Major Edward Mannock.
57:13In my view, this has to be the grave of Mick Mannock, and I just think it would be appropriate if the authorities were to review the case thoroughly and look at all the evidence again.
57:31After all, this is the grave of one of the greatest heroes of World War I, and it would surely be appropriate recognition of him to have some finality to this and have a headstone here that actually bears his name.
57:46A year after his death, Mick Mannock was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.
57:56Mannock and McCudden were two of Britain's greatest fighter aces from the First World War.
58:01Largely unknown today, they rose from modest backgrounds, and for a brief period they dominated the skies above the Western Front.
58:10Their skills and tactics helped turn a fledgling technology into a modern weapon which helped win the war.
58:18But it was a victory they would not live to see.
58:21The last of the great aerial warriors, they fell to Earth just weeks before peace was declared.
58:29Coming up on the BBC HD channel tonight, it's Who Do You Think You Are with Fiona Bruce.
58:40And for later, a trip out to Sherwood Forest to find Robin Hood, that's at 10.
58:59There's a trip out.
59:00The last trip um–
59:04The last trip's the capital.
59:08I have to be found in the beginning – I will be introducing Ricardo Hanson who is here with a local one of the people who are moving the line.
59:12I have to be chosen as a man who has a horse in the middle.
59:13I have to be chosen as a man who has a horse.
59:14There is a man who's chosen as a man who has a horse in the middle.
59:18And so I may not have to be chosen for him for the first time.
59:21But here it is that you can see in the second trip.
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