WWI Aces Falling Timewatch

Powered flight was just 11 years old when the First World War began.

But a dedicated group of men transformed the aeroplane into one

of the most important weapons in helping to win that war.

Some of the pilots who flew these incredible machines are remembered as glamorous heroes.

Germany's highest scoring ace was the aristocratic Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron.

In contrast, the top British aces were two

little-known working class heroes, Edward Mannock and James McCudden.

On two occasions, he shot down four aircraft in a day.

On two more occasions. he shot down three on a day.

They were called knights of the sky.

But beyond the myth lay a brutal reality.

There 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.

As the number of their victories grew relentlessly,

the aces' reputations soared,

but so did their chances of dying in flames.

He feared it to the extent that he started taking a revolver out with him.

If fire broke out, he would take the revolver and blow his own head off.

Timewatch tells the story of two unlikely heroes and their battle

against the odds and themselves to survive...

..and of a 90-year-old mystery surrounding the death of one of them.

Just over 90 years ago, machines like this, constructed mainly

from wood and fabric, were one of the most feared weapons of war.

Today, only a handful of these historic aircraft are still capable of flying,

the largest number of which form the Shuttleworth Collection,

based at the Old Warden Aerodrome in Bedfordshire.

The collection provides a unique link with the earliest days of powered flight.

This is a Bristol Box Kite from 1910.

And it really is a true flying machine.

It's wonderfully basic.

It's the kind of thing that our pilots

who went out to France in 1914 would have learned on,

and what they would have flown before the First World War.

They'd have been very used to this kind of thing. And it's beautiful.

It's basic. It's got bicycle wheels.

It's completely festooned with wires.

And this is the reason why they called these early machines flying birdcages.

You can see precisely why. And, really, it's an astonishing thing.

When you think about the sophisticated aircraft that were being produced in 1918,

we're only talking a few years on

from the manufacture of this sort of contraption.

In 1914, just before the outbreak of war, this was Britain's entire

air force - a disparate collection of only 33 aircraft.

It was called the Royal Flying Corps.

The aeroplanes at the time were looked after by a new breed of soldier, the air mechanic.

Among them was 18-year-old James, or Jimmy, McCudden.

During the course of the First World War, Jimmy McCudden would rise from humble origins

to become one of the most distinguished and highly decorated fighter pilots of the war.

'Against military regulations, Jimmy McCudden kept a written account of his innermost thoughts and feelings.

'It's also a unique record of the history of aviation in World War One,

'and it's here at the RAF Museum in London where McCudden's writings are kept.'

Well, this is the first of four books which form the manuscript

for Jimmy McCudden's book Five Years In The Royal Flying Corps.

It's written in pencil. It's an army exercise book,

as are the other three volumes, ruled pages written in pencil by him in his own very neat handwriting.

And he started writing, "One lovely morning

"about the end of April 1913 found me very pleased with life in general."

Jimmy McCudden came from a close working-class army family.

In the phrase of the day, he was "born in barracks".

One of six children of a non-commissioned officer,

educated to the age of 14 in the army school, he became a bugler boy in the Royal Engineers,

but soon followed his eldest brother Bill into the newly formed Royal Flying Corps.

Bill was really in at the very beginning of aviation in this country, a real pioneer.

He was only the fourth non-officer pilot to be trained as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps.

Bill would frequently give his younger brother Jimmy unofficial flying lessons.

It was his big brother. He was flying. He was doing what Jimmy wanted to do.

So it's not surprising that it was the sort of motivation that would take him forward to fly himself.

The archives of the Royal Air Force Museum in London

also hold a number of other letters and papers from the McCudden family.

Aviation historian Alexandra Churchill

has uncovered one which predicted a glorious war for the young Jimmy.

This is an extraordinary letter from James's older brother Bill.

It's written the day before war is declared, and here on the back he's almost prophetic.

He says, "I can see Jim coming back with a VC or something of the sort."

And here at the bottom he says, "You can bet your boots that the McCudden

syndicate will not be missing when there is something doing."

Bill's letter would prove accurate on both points.

The following day, war was declared and the McCudden syndicate, Bill and Jimmy, were to be posted to France.

But even before leaving England, Jimmy witnessed the very first fatal air crash of World War One

when his friend and fellow air mechanic Keith Barlow was killed in a flying accident.

We then heard the engines stop,

and following that the awful crash which once heard is never forgotten.

I ran for half a mile and found the machine in a small copse of firs.

So I got over the fence and pulled the wreckage

away from the occupants, finding them both dead.

I shall never forget that morning at about 6.30,

kneeling by poor Keith Barlow and looking up at the rising sun,

then again at poor Barlow, who was killed purely by concussion,

and wondering if war was going to be like this always.

Flying these early aircraft was a shockingly dangerous profession.

Of the 14,000 British pilots killed in World War One,

over 8,000 died while training.

And yet Jimmy McCudden was not put off

by his early experience of death.

By mid-1915, he had been promoted to a sergeant and an observer -

one step closer to his dream of becoming a pilot.

Jimmy would have flown as an observer in aircraft like these,

flimsy, two-seater machines not built for fighting.

In fact, in the early days of the war, they were completely unarmed.

The role of aviation at the start of World War One was seen, both by the

Army and the Navy, as being one essentially of reconnaissance.

Using ordinary plate glass cameras, the observers leaned out

over the side of the aircraft

to take photographs of the battlefield below.

They are there for observation.

They are there to locate the enemy, to pinpoint them

and then the second part of their job

is that they will direct artillery fire to destroy that target.

They also carried small bombs in the cockpit and dropped them over the side onto the enemy below.

These were the first crude developments of the aircraft as a fighting machine.

The problem was, of course, the other side was doing exactly the same thing

and before very long, the crews of opposing aircraft started

taking along rifles, pistols, having a crack at each other.

No army in the world could allow the artillery observation aircraft of their enemies

to cross over the lines and photograph them,

to bring down artillery fire right

into the very midst of their trenches.

They just couldn't let it happen, so they had to stop it.

It rapidly became apparent that the aircraft needed more than

just pistols and rifles to fight this new kind of war in the air.

Guy Black restores vintage aircraft.

He also has an extensive collection of aerial weaponry from the First World War.

Looks just like the picture.

The easiest solution was to adapt a weapon that was already in use.

The Lewis Machine Gun was standard issue for ground troops in World War One.

It just needed a few alterations by the Royal Flying Corps.

In order to convert it for aerial use, they removed the wooden

stock off the back, replaced it with a spade grip.

That reduces the length significantly.

Initially, they started off with a 47-round standard infantry magazine.

But that only gave you ten seconds of use.

So that was very soon doubled up to 97 rounds, and that's 20 seconds.

Doesn't sound very much, but you would only fire it

in one or two second bursts,

well aimed bursts and the notion of hosing around the sky

with a machine gun is absolute nonsense.

It wasn't used in that way at all. Here is one

fully loaded and... this length, I can barely lift it,

and to change one in the heat of battle is really quite a task.

Like all observers, the young Jimmy McCudden was responsible for operating the machine gun.

But it was difficult for the observer to fire at the enemy

aircraft without running the risk of hitting his own plane.

The easiest way to mount a machine gun is to mount it

pointing forwards, because then you could actually aim the machine gun simply by aiming the aircraft.

But on the majority of planes, where the engine and the propeller was at the front,

you simply couldn't do that

because the machine gun would shoot off the propeller.

But it was the Germans who first adopted an ingenious device which synchronised the machine guns

so they could fire between the blades of the propeller while it rotated.

It absolutely revolutionised air fighting and it turned the aeroplane

into a genuine fighting machine,

not just a machine that could defend itself if it had to,

but a machine that could actually go out and attack.

The Germans were quick to capitalise upon their technological lead,

tearing into the Allied observation aircraft.

The German pilots would become aerial warriors.

The first of note in 1915 was Max Immelman,

who developed the tactics which gave them the upper hand in dog fights.

They'd dive out of the clouds, they'd come out of the sun.

They always tried to surprise you.

There 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.

It was in this mayhem that the young observer Jimmy McCudden

started to make a name for himself, successfully defending his aircraft from an attack by the German ace

Immelman, who already had many kills to his name.

Jimmy was credited with actually holding him off by

accurate fire from his Lewis machine gun fired from the shoulder.

It's not suggesting that it did any damage to him or shot him down,

but just by holding him off and keeping him out of range.

I stood up with my Lewis gun to the shoulder

and fired as he passed over our right wing.

He carried on flying in the opposite direction.

After this, he climbed to about 300 feet above us

and then put his nose down to fire.

Having been waiting him, I opened fire at once

and he promptly withdrew to a distance of 500 yards.

I was very thankful indeed to return from this outing.

I'd imagine that once Immelman in his Fokker saw us,

there was not much chance for us.

However, we live and learn.

For his bravery in battle, Jimmy McCudden received the first of many decorations when,

on 29 January 1916, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French General Joffre.

Two days later, the newly promoted Flight Sergeant Jimmy McCudden

was sent back to England to fulfil his ambition and train as a pilot.

But Jimmy's dream of flying alongside his elder brother Bill

would never be realised.

Bill had been killed in a flying accident while training a new pilot.

He was the first of the McCudden family to lose their lives

in the Royal Flying Corps.

He wouldn't be the last.

In his memoirs, Jimmy recorded his brother's death

with the bland words, "I suppose it had to be."

In reality, it was a devastating emotional blow.

He was called into the orderly room

and given a telegram informing him of Bill's death,

and the people that were there said that he didn't appear to take it in.

He left with the telegram.

He sort of stumbled out of the office and one of the NCO pilots found him

just inconsolably sobbing his heart out in between two hangars.

Whatever the emotional impact of his brother's death,

it didn't slow Jimmy's rapid progress.

He qualified as a pilot in April 1916 and

within a few months was in France flying DH2 single-seater fighters.

He recorded his first kill at the beginning of September,

and in October received the second of his gallantry awards, the Military Medal.

McCudden was honing his skills, developing a meticulous attention

to detail which would mark him out as an exceptional pilot.

When it came down round to early 1917, he'd by then got five victories

and he'd served overseas for several months.

And he was posted back to the UK as a trainer.

And he would travel round the country with other experienced pilots

lecturing to various courses,

lecturing to various training schools on air combat tactics.

It was here that the new pilots would come to grips with the techniques of aerial warfare.

One of those Jimmy was to train was his younger brother Jack,

the third of the McCudden brothers to join the Royal Flying Corps.

But he was also to instruct an extraordinary character called

Edward Mannock, who, like Jimmy,

was to become one of Britain's highest scoring

and most decorated fighter pilots of World War One.

Mannock and McCudden formed a close bond from the start

and Mannock credited McCudden with saving his life during training.

He'd just had his first spin and remembered my advice,

which I think at the time was to put all the controls central

and offer up a very short and quick prayer.

Mannock was a typical example of the impetuous young Irishman

and I always thought was of the type to do or die.

Born in Ireland, Edward "Mick" Mannock,

like Jimmy McCudden, came from a working-class military family.

But here the similarity ends.

Mannock's father abandoned the family,

taking their meagre savings and leaving them in poverty.

Mannock left school at 14.

He worked as a grocer's boy and then a variety of other jobs

before joining the National Telephone Company,

where he began to travel.

At the outbreak of war, the 26-year-old Mannock was in Istanbul

working as a telephone engineer.

Turkey had sided with Germany and her allies, and Mannock

was interned, where he suffered depravation and serious ill health.

In 1915, he was released back to Britain on medical grounds.

He's released primarily because the Turkish authorities assume that

he won't be a combatant, that his health is too poor

for him to recover and then to join

the fight against the Germans and their allies.

In fact, Mannock made a remarkable recovery

and joined the Royal Army Medical Corps.

But anxious to seek action,

he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps,

where he qualified as a pilot and was posted to France.

At 29, Mick Mannock was some ten years older

than the typical RFC pilots he was joining.

He was also more worldly wise,

which initially caused friction with his fellow officers.

When he arrived there, he got off to a bad start.

He makes the fatal error on the first night of sitting in

the favourite chair of the pilot who had died that day.

He was a man who certainly wasn't the average airman of his time.

He was a socialist. He was a supporter of Irish Home Rule.

He came from a broken home.

He was all these things that on the face of it

you would think he wouldn't fit into the military.

But the Royal Flying Corps was an organisation of slightly irreverent questioning people,

who were trying a new activity, an activity that had never really been carried out before.

And, in a way, it was ideal for somebody with Mannock's edgy character.

If Mannock appeared overly confident amongst his fellow officers,

the writings in his personal diary

reveal a much more fragile character.

What's interesting about his diary is how frank he is

in terms of recording his emotions, and it's quite clear that

he is almost petrified

by his initial experiences up in the air.

Mannock was very different from McCudden.

There's no two ways about it. He was a nervy individual.

Business out here is still very chock full of excitement.

I have an idea that my nerves won't take very much of it.

Old McKenzie goes away on leave today,

14 days.

He's in need of it.

If ever a lad was cracked up Mack is.

I wonder if ever I shall get like that

and what my friends will think of me if I do.

Old Paddy, the devil-may-care with nerves.

I feel nervous about it already.

Mannock's fear was justified.

The life expectancy of a new pilot in 1917 was just 11 days.

The aircraft they were flying were flimsy and dangerous

and lacked basic safety equipment.

Even parachutes were deemed surplus to requirements.

The view of the powers that be in the United Kingdom was that they did

not want to give parachutes to their pilots

because it was felt that with a parachute they might be encouraged

not to make it all the way back with a damaged aircraft.

Without a parachute, being trapped in a burning aircraft

was a constant fear amongst British airmen

and one that haunted Mick Mannock in particular.

He feared it to the extent that he started taking a revolver out with him when he flew.

He had it in a small pocket in the cockpit.

If fire broke out, he would take the revolver and blow his own head off.

Mannock's friend Jimmy McCudden had been promoted to captain and sent back to the front.

In August 1917, he was posted as a Flight Commander of the RFC's elite 56 Squadron.

He would be flying the new SE5A, unglamorously named,

but one of the most successful fighter aircraft of World War One.

It might be described as the Spitfire of the First World War.

It remained a predominant fighter,

capable of dealing with any opposition

right through to the end of the war.

It was in the SE5A that McCudden and Mannock sealed

their reputations as Britain's top fighter aces of the First World War.

Wooden framed, fabric covered, able to survive being attacked by other aircraft.

There's nothing much in here so bullets would pass through.

Jimmy McCudden talks about coming back from a dog fight.

He was perfectly intact, the aircraft was flying and he counted 120 bullet holes in the side of the aeroplane.

Within three days of arriving back in France with his new squadron, Jimmy shot down a German aircraft.

But he faced a challenge of a different nature from his fellow British officers.

The entire squadron almost is comprised of ex-public school boys.

Pretty much every major public school was represented.

So, understandably, there are going to be times when,

as a man who left school at 14, having been educated in an army setting,

McCudden was not going to comprehend entirely what was going on in terms of conversation.

I always wished I'd had the advantages of a public school.

After I joined the officers' mess, I often felt ill at ease

when the chaps were talking about things I didn't understand.

But Jimmy's modest education didn't prevent him performing exceptionally well as a pilot.

He started slowish but steadily and gradually that built up,

so, over the next several months, he was shooting down regularly.

On two occasions, he shot down four aircraft in a day.

On two more occasions, he shot down three on a day.

In just five months to December 1917, McCudden shot down a staggering 52 enemy aircraft,

accounting for 40% of the entire squadron's total and making him Britain's top-scoring pilot.

Jimmy's tactics were one of patience, of stalking.

There was absolutely no point as far as he saw

in pressing on gung ho when your ammunition runs out,

ram your aircraft into the opposition.

You lose your aircraft and maybe your life. They lose theirs. One for one.

Nobody's going to get an advantage. It's just not professional.

But McCudden had another advantage.

He was able to fly higher than his fellow pilots

and it was his training as a mechanic which gave him the edge.

McCudden, using all his engineering experience,

super-charged his SE5, his aircraft

so that it would go another 3,000, 4,000 feet higher.

And he would go up there flying long patrols.

It's amazing, really, at that height, 20,000, 21,000 feet.

No oxygen, freezing cold.

He'd be up there waiting for them to come across.

And he would just shoot them down. He'd shoot two, three, four down. It was fantastic.

But there's a cost.

There's always a cost.

He was starting to suffer.

You just can't fly up there at that height. You need oxygen.

I felt very ill indeed.

This was not due to the height or the rapidity of my descent.

It was due to the intense cold that I experienced up high,

so that when I got down to a lower altitude I could breathe

more oxygen, with the result that my heart beat more strongly

and was trying to force my sluggish and cold blood around my veins too quickly.

My word, I did feel ill.

And when I got on the ground, the blood returning to my veins,

I cannot describe as anything but agony.

While McCudden fought to overcome the physical difficulties of flying at high altitude,

his friend Mick Mannock was winning his battles with his mental demons.

And by the summer of 1917,

Mannock had received the Military Cross for bravery.

He had also become an ace.

French journalists, I think,

coined the phrase of "the ace", the top of the pack.

An ace was a pilot who had shot down more than five enemy aircraft.

But Mannock's diary reveals that he was having difficulties facing up to the consequences of his actions.

I had the good fortune to bring a Hun two-seater down in our lines the other day.

Luckily, my first few shots killed the pilot

and wounded the observer besides breaking his gun.

The bus crashed south of Avion.

I hurried out at the first opportunity.

The machine was completely smashed and, rather interestingly,

also was the little black and tan terrier dead in the observer's seat.

I felt exactly like a murderer.

Despite his at times contradictory emotions,

Mannock was developing into a very effective fighter pilot.

He's worked out the tactics.

He now knows the most effective way of shooting down German aircraft,

of flying from behind, flying from the east,

of flying out of the sun and, crucially, flying extremely close

to your target before you unleash a stream of machine gun bullets.

And it wasn't long before Mannock's exploits were being recognised amongst his peers.

Even the newspapers back home were writing about Mick Mannock,

although they had to refer to him as Captain X.

The War Ministry refused to allow the press to name Britain's star pilots, preferring the view that

it was the team effort which was important and not the individual.

The 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, this could be bad for public morale.

Unlike the British, the German authorities positively encouraged

public adulation of their aces,

the most famous being Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron,

seen here with the British pilot he had just shot down.

In Germany, the aces were household names.

They were known to every man, woman and child in Germany.

They publicised them throughout the newspapers. They were the supreme embodiment of German manhood.

They stood for everything that was brave and good about German men at battle.

By 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.

And so the Daily Mail wrote an article.

This article is entitled Our Unknown Air Heroes, Germany's Better Way.

So an inflammatory sort of headline in itself.

And in the article, he says,

"What 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."

That was on January 3rd.

Over the weekend, the War Ministry had obviously considered their position.

So, by Monday January 7 1918, the Daily Mail again were actually

producing an article that says Our Air Stars.

And down here we have the story of Captain McCudden MC, "born in barracks", as the heading says,

and describes his early life and achievements in the Royal Flying Corps.

Not 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.

So people can now know his name but also they can see what he looks like.

For Jimmy McCudden, the publicity was not welcome.

This is the letter that Jim writes home to his sister Kitty on the day

that his name becomes public in the Daily Mail.

And he says to her, "Have you seen all the bosh in the paper about me?"

And then he also says, "On no account whatever are 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."

McCudden'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.

But the war was exacting a terrible toll on the McCudden family.

Jimmy received news that his younger brother Jack,

who he had helped train as a pilot, had been killed in action,

the second of the so-called McCudden syndicate to die.

As he absorbed the impact of his brother's loss, McCudden was to receive more welcome news.

For his conspicuous bravery, exceptional perseverance and high

devotion to duty, he was awarded Britain's highest decoration,

the Victoria Cross.

There's not a prouder man living than when on 6 April I went to Buckingham Palace.

I shall ever remember how the King thanked me for what I had done.

Jimmy McCudden's is one of only 19 VCs awarded to airmen

in the First World War.

So, before we see the VC, if I could just let you put some gloves on. Thank you.

David Roland has come to the Royal Engineers Museum in Chatham, McCudden's home town,

where his Victoria Cross is kept for safe keeping.

-This is the original McCudden VC.

-Wow.

-There we go.

-Thank you. Wow, what a moment.

I've read about this, heard so much about it

in all the work I've done and studying about McCudden.

It's a real privilege to actually be able to handle it.

Wonderful.

And yes, there on the back,

as it should be, his name,

Lieutenant Temporary Captain JV McCudden, DSO, MC, MM.

General list and it gives 56 Squadron RFC.

It's a delight and a privilege.

Do you know what happened when he received this? The day, 6 April 1918,

he went to the Palace to receive the Victoria Cross,

but not only did the King give him this, but also gave him two DSOs,

a bar to his Military Cross.

So he came away with an incredible display of medals in one presentation.

Despite his excitement, McCudden was typically modest about his award,

travelling to Buckingham Palace alone, not even telling his family the investiture was taking place.

Meanwhile, the press continued to hound him.

I see the papers are making a fuss again

about the ordinary things one does.

Why, that's our work.

Why fuss about it?

I'm so tired of this limelight business.

If only one could be left alone a bit more

and not so much the hero about it.

However McCudden felt about the intrusion, it was inevitable

that this glamorous young fighter pilot

would become the centre of attention

while out enjoying London's clubs and theatres.

London at the time is full of what have been termed

"Whitehall warriors", which is men in uniform who haven't seen any service.

And McCudden of course isn't one of those and,

yes, he's got medal ribbons lovingly sewn on by his mother on his tunic.

It wasn't just the club and theatre owners

who were keen to have McCudden's company.

Jimmy had always been a bit of a one for the girls.

There is one girl and that's Teddie O'Neil.

She's a dancer in the West End and, as we know, McCudden is

going to every show he possibly could on leave and he had met her there.

I think he was seeing somebody else at the time,

because there was a bit of a crossover, which causes him

some problems, and he takes her up on a joy ride.

And he was brash enough to write in his log book as well

that he'd taken her up as a passenger.

While on leave, Jimmy was to spend time with fellow pilot Mick Mannock.

They were two decorated war heroes clearly enjoying themselves

with the opposite sex.

In Mannock's diary, McCudden was to write the enigmatic comment "Hell has no fury like a woman scorned,"

to which he added the word "piffle".

The frivolity was short-lived.

By the spring of 1918, the war was reaching its savage climax

both on the ground and in the air.

Aircraft were now being used to support the troops.

The days of the lone aerial dog fights were over.

But they were now even more vulnerable to attack from the ground.

Things have changed. It's not aerial jousting.

It's just another part of mechanised warfare.

In 1918, what you see is the aces falling one by one.

One by one, they just make that one mistake too many.

And the first of those aces to be brought crashing to earth

was the now infamous German pilot, Baron von Richthofen.

The British authorities afforded Richthofen, who had 80 kills to his name, a lavish funeral.

Six British airmen bore his coffin to the French cemetery at Burtangles,

where Allied newsreels recorded the event in all its pomp and ceremony.

Not everyone mourned Richthofen's death.

Mick Mannock refused to raise his glass and salute the downed German ace.

Mannock wouldn't sign up to that and he's allegedly supposed to have

said, "I hope the bastard burned the whole way down."

He had a deep, deep loathing of the Germans,

primarily, I think, it's because of his personal experience in the

winter of 1914, 1915, the way he personally was treated by the Turks.

He's not fighting Turks, so he's fighting the people

who were responsible for bringing Turkey into the war, Germany.

Against the odds, Mannock embarked upon an extraordinary run of victories.

In 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.

My total is now 41.

If I have a bit of luck, I might beat old Mack.

Then I shall try and oust old Richthofen.

It 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.

McCudden was desperate to get back to front-line duty in France.

The authorities, however, were less keen for him to go.

Bear in mind now he's famous.

The War Ministry, having decided that they're going to let people know

who their heroes are, now want to use these heroes in a very constructive way to improve morale back home.

So 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.

He had every intention of going back to France

and he'd talked about the men he left out there and the "young boys"

still fighting and dying for their country and he wanted to go back and join them.

Eventually, the War Ministry relented and McCudden was offered command of the elite 85 Squadron.

But 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.

Despite his VC and being the top-scoring British ace, being "born in barracks"

made him less worthy in some people's eyes.

Eventually, he was given command of 60 Squadron in France.

On the day of his departure, he met with his sister Mary

and handed her a package containing his VC and his other medals.

It was the last time she was to see him.

On the early afternoon of Tuesday, 9 July 1918,

Jimmy McCudden picked up his brand new SE5A from Hounslow aerodrome

in London and set off for France where his new squadron was stationed.

The flight across the Channel was straightforward

and there was nothing on the journey

to suggest that the new aircraft was in any way defective.

Aware of the ever-changing front lines in the fast-moving conflict,

McCudden landed at a British airfield at Auxi-le-Chateau,

just north of Abbeville in Northern France

to ask directions to his new aerodrome at Boffles close by.

Bonjour, monsieur. Je m'appelle Mike.

-Mathieu de France.

-Mon plaisir.

Aviation historian and former pilot Mike O'Connor

has studied eyewitness reports and can describe the sequence of events that unfolded that day.

This 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.

Right, Mathieu, this is the only known photograph of the airfield at Auxi-le-Chateau.

We are here. Nous sommes ici.

The hangars, along that edge of the wood

and here's the line-up of some of the aeroplanes just there.

McCudden 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.

McCudden taxied and took off again.

As he banked steeply over the airfield,

his engine was heard to misfire.

Then it cut out altogether.

The plane was seen to nosedive into the woods just beyond the airfield.

The first person on the scene was Corporal Howard.

The aircraft was wrecked and McCudden was lying beside the aeroplane

bleeding profusely from the nose and the mouth and was unconscious.

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 was found to have suffered

a severe fracture at the base of the skull and the jaw.

He didn't regain consciousness

and died two hours later at eight o'clock.

No-one will every really know what happened that day,

but it seems likely that mechanical failure caused the aircraft to lose power and crash.

After surviving three years of aerial warfare,

it was a tragic accident which claimed Jimmy McCudden's life.

The following day, a few miles from the scene of the accident,

McCudden was buried at the tiny military cemetery at Wavans.

'It seemed a terrible end

'for such a brilliant pilot and notable ace

'to die in a simple accident.'

This is the grave of Jimmy McCudden.

With all Victoria Cross holders, on their headstone is a facsimile of the decoration, which you can see here.

Very distinctive.

You can see a Victoria Cross headstone from a long way away.

And beneath it most families had an epitaph, an inscription.

I'm particularly fond of this one.

"Fly on, dear boy, from this dark world of strife on to the promised land to eternal life."

I find it very emotive, very moving.

The style of his funeral, however, seemed less heroic than the manner

in which he had fought the war.

There's a lot of criticism of the funeral.

Two officers from McCudden's former squadron.

One said that it was rather rushed affair and another one said,

"It made my blood boil that the whole service was done in Latin, mumbled in Latin, and a very soulless affair."

And, in fact, he compared it very unfavourably with the funeral

that had been accorded von Richthofen, the top German ace, only three months before.

In just four years, James McCudden had risen from the position of Air Mechanic First Class to Major.

He had won the Victoria Cross and was one of the highest-scoring British pilots of World War One

and yet, at the time of his death, he was just 23 years old.

Jimmy's McCudden's death had hit his friend Mick Mannock very hard

and he vowed to avenge him.

By now, Mannock had nearly equalled McCudden's victories, but his demons

were taking an increasing grip on his state of mind.

He was willing but his mind was starting to let him down.

And there's an awful tale.

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

and Mannock started to cry.

And he didn't just cry.

He was crying, his nose was running,

snot running everywhere, he was snivelling.

He still hasn't been able to come to terms with his own private fears,

most notably the prospect of being shot down and burning to death.

Publicly, however, Mannock continued to be a hugely charismatic leader,

and for bravery in the spring of 1918

he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order,

not once but three times in just over a month.

He does have amongst his peers an awesome reputation,

and yet there is still this contradiction in that privately he's the tortured individual.

Mannock's mind was in a terrible state.

If you read his letters, you can see it's jumping from subject to subject.

You know, "Will I live? Will I die?

"Shall I get married? Perhaps..."

You can feel him leap frogging, jumping between subjects.

He's a man who can't settle.

Things are getting a bit intense just lately

and I don't quite know how long my nerves will hold out.

I'm rather old now as airmen go for air fighting.

Still, one hopes for the best.

These times are so horrible.

Occasionally, I feel that life's not worth hanging on to myself.

But...hope springs eternal in the human breast.

Mannock appeared as if he had a death wish.

He flew more and more missions.

He took more and more risks.

He would fly low, acting as a decoy.

He started to break his own rules.

He wanted to kill more Germans.

He wanted to be out with his lads in the squadron.

There's no two ways about that.

I think it's just a very confused man struggling with almost impossible

pressures that are bearing down on him.

On the morning of 26 July 1918, just three weeks after his friend

Jimmy McCudden's tragic death, Mick Mannock set off on patrol.

With him was 24-year-old New Zealander Donald Ingliss,

an inexperienced pilot with no kills to his name.

They were searching for a German observation plane

which for the previous few days had been harassing British troops over the front lines near Merville.

Mannock's plan was to give the rookie Ingliss the opportunity of making his first kill.

It was not long before he spotted the German plane.

Within seconds, Mannock got on the tail of the enemy aircraft.

He fired a burst which killed the observer.

He then moved aside to allow Ingliss to finish off the attack.

The German aircraft fell to the ground in flames.

It was now that Mannock was to inexplicably break his own golden rule

by following the German down and observing the crash site.

What he was doing was gobsmackingly stupid.

It was a fateful error.

German machine gun fire from the ground hit Mannock's plane

as it pulled away and his aircraft caught fire.

With his plane in flames, Mannock's nightmare had become realised.

Eyewitnesses describe Mannock's SE5A as going into a glide

before crashing beyond British lines.

We don't know whether he was struggling with controls right

to the last minute, whether he died quickly, whether he burnt to death.

And 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.

Britain's two greatest First World War flying aces

were to lose their lives within three weeks of each other.

But Mick Mannock's death brought with it a mystery

that has endured for 90 years - the location of his final resting place.

Writer and historian Andy Saunders has come to France

to resolve the mystery.

For 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.

His initial research leads Andy to the graves of the two German airmen who were Mannock's final victims.

This is the German war cemetery, which is about 12 miles away

from where Mick Mannock shot down his last aircraft.

And buried here is Leutnant Ludwig Schopf

and buried just a few graves away from him is Josef Hein, his pilot.

And 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.

But there is some evidence which shows that immediately

after the crash Mick Mannock's body was indeed found.

And it is this evidence which brings Andy to a track called Butter Lane,

close to where Mannock's plane came down.

After 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.

The Germans were very specific as to where on Butter Lane Mick Mannock's body had been buried -

But when the British authorities searched this location in 1921,

they failed to locate Mannock's grave.

Because 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.

Andy is meeting military historian Paul Reed.

They suspect that the German records were incorrect, which might explain

why the British authorities couldn't find Mannock's body.

We've got the trench map of the area we are now, round Butter Lane.

We've got the dotted blue line here. This is the German positions.

This was their front line and then, right over on the far side of

the map, we can see the red line, and that is our front line.

We can see how close together they were.

So this is La Pierre-au-Beure marked on the British trench map.

And it was from this position that the War Graves Commission believed

Mannock to have been buried 300 metres northwest of.

That puts it out here in no man's land?

So, really, that doesn't make any sense at all in terms of...

No, 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 is still going on. It doesn't make any sense.

During his research, Andy came across one other intriguing piece of information - a letter

from official files which describe the exhumation of an unknown British airman,

tantalisingly close to where the Germans said they had buried Mannock.

Using satellite navigation combined with World War One trench maps,

Paul Reed is able to pinpoint the position where in 1920

this unknown British airman's body was found and exhumed.

And if we refer to the GPS device, we're right on the spot.

-Good Lord. So it was right here.

-It was right here.

-From this it would appear that we're actually just behind a German trench there.

-It is.

There's this sort of upside down T-shape trench and the grave,

as you can see, Andy, is just behind that position,

from the Germans' point of view, away from enemy observation.

-They can bury the man that they found in the wreckage of that aircraft.

-Yeah, exactly.

Andy 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.

Despite the proximity of the two sites,

the British authorities have always refused to accept

that the body of the unknown airman was Mannock,

simply because it was not where the Germans said they had buried him.

Andy has come to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery at Lavanty to visit the grave

of that unknown airman, the grave that Andy believes should carry the name of Major Edward Mannock.

In 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.

After all, if this is a grave of one of the greatest heroes

of World War One 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.

A year after his death,

Mick Mannock was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.

Mannock and McCudden were two of Britain's greatest fighter aces from the First World War.

Largely unknown today, they rose from modest backgrounds,

and for a brief period

they dominated the skies above the Western Front.

Their skills and tactics helped turn a fledgling technology

into a modern weapon which helped win the war.

But it was a victory they would not live to see.

The last of the great aerial warriors,

they fell to earth just weeks before peace was declared.

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