Ira Jones - King of Airfighters: The Biography of Major Mick Mannock Dfc

This book presents the history of an air fighter who, to quote the citation in the London Gazette of the official award of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for valour given to our arms, was unsurpassed.

His great achievements, his noble selfless character, his manly-boyish spirits, are disclosed for the first time in this, his life-story. His was a spirit in the tradition of our people which we associate in our minds with the qualities required of a Knight of the Round Table. But this romanticised conception of the valorous hero has been so tinged by a false ideal of chivalry, from which we are unable to free our minds, that we always love to think of our heroes in these terms. If a man is brave, we assume he must be a chivalrous Galahad and Lancelot rolled into one. If he is noble, we assume he must be kind; and so on. Mannock reveals the character of the modern hero. Away from the work to which he devoted his great genius, he was all these things. Engaged in air fighting, he expunged all else from his mind, and concentrated to such purpose that he became the most feared, respected, and ruthless air fighter in the British ranks.

He was officially acknowledged by the Air Ministry to be the leading British air fighter of the war, with 73 victories. Many of these he did not officially claim, but they were known to be consistent with his achievements by his comrades and the Air Ministry representative who visited the fighting units in France for record purposes. A microscopic investigation of his achievements unquestionably places him on the throne reserved for the King of Air Fighters.

For reasons which will be explained later, the number of victories officially allocated to air fighters of the various nations can never be strictly accurate, in the same way that it is impossible to say whether Captain Albert Ball or Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the British and German aces, were destroyed by gun-fire from the ground or by their enemys machine guns from the air; but the facts themselves indicate the truth, if they do not actually state it.

Roy Browns claim to Von Richthofens death was convincing enough to his comrades in the fight, yet, to many minds, a doubt exists; and that doubt suggests a whole world of possibilities as to what actually took place during three or four minutes of the most breathlessly astonishing episodes of four long years of war between nearly all the civilised peoples of the earth. Similar doubt creeps into many of the statements made after exciting combats by a number of leading air fighters of the war, and whilst it does not always detract from the merit of their astounding achievements, it serves to throw a blazing searchlight on their characters. Of all the great fighters engaged, none exposed more frankly his modesty than Major Mick Mannock, V.C., D.S.O. thrice, M.C. twice! None showed more unashamedly the hidden depths of his true character, and none of them comes so closely to a realistic conception of what nobility of mind a character unshaped by birth or education can achieve under the most exacting stress.

To the modern schoolboy, Edward Mannock is the most inspiring figure in the Great War. His achievements may well serve as a beacon to them; a guide along the path of personal endeavour and Duty to their State.

I RA J ONES .

R OYAL A ERO C LUB ,

119 P ICCADILLY , L ONDON .

November 1934.