Gordon Thorburn - Fighter Pilots Handbook--Magic, Death and Glory in the Golden Age of Flight

By Christmas 1917, the Albatros D3 (pictured) was obsolete, outperformed by the Camel, the SE5A and other Entente machines, and the Albatros D5 was not a great deal better. By the time new types came in, it was too late for the German air force.

The Camel was so manoeuvrable it could be unstable in the wrong hands and quite a few learner pilots were killed in this aircraft. It could turn remarkably quickly to the right, helped by engine torque, but tended to go nose down, which Biggles obviously knew how to overcome.

The real 266 Squadron, formed at the end of the Great War, was disbanded a year later like so many and re-formed in December 1939 to fly Spitfires in the Battle of Britain. The squadron was disbanded for good in 1964.

William Earl Johns flew in the First World War but not in Sopwith Camels. Called up in 1914 as a Norfolk reserve soldier, he was with the Yeomanry at Gallipoli and the Machine Gun Corps at Salonika. In 1917 he received his commission as second lieutenant and his transfer to the Royal Flying Corps as trainee pilot.

The new Royal Air Force, established 1 April 1918, had Johns as a flying instructor but he was just in time to see some action when posted to 55 Squadron in August 1918, flying DH4 bombers into Germany.

The squadron raided Mannheim on 16 September. After taking damage from anti-aircraft fire, Johns was set upon by Fokker D7 fighters, said to be of Jasta 4, the unit of Ernst Udet (q.v.) and shot down, although not by Udet himself, who was on sixty victories at the time.

Johns, wounded, survived the crash but his observer did not, so the pilot stood alone in the dock at Strasbourg to be found guilty of indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, a crime that carried the death penalty. Why the sentence was not carried out is uncertain; Johns was in a POW camp when the war ended.

He stayed in the RAF until 1927 with one promotion, from pilot officer to flying officer, the equivalent of army lieutenant, and began writing over a hundred Biggles stories in 1932 but he never was a captain.

The real story that brought Biggles to life was as remarkable as any of his adventures. Imagine a fellow inventing the musket and showing it to His Lordship. I say, says the impressed noble. Jolly useful, what? Could knock down no end of pheasants with that.

Yes, my lord, says the inventor. But I have a cunning plan. What about using it in battle?

In battle? Good heavens, no. By the time youve reloaded, youll have been run through. No, no. Swords and horses, thats what we want in battle. Swords and horses.

It wasnt quite as one-eyed as that with aeroplanes; but it wasnt far off.

The Sopwith Camel was so manoeuvrable it could be unstable in the wrong hands. Note the dihedral angle (the upward angle from horizontal) of the lower wings, unlike the straight-winged machine Albatros, which had no dihedral. This helped stability about the roll axis, or in the spiral mode; but it is unlikely the full aeronautical significance of the dihedral effect was understood by the Camels designers.