Audubon Eric Palfreyman

[annabela]

30 November 1917 - letter from Audubon Palfreyman to his parents; printed in the The Mercury newspaper, Hobart, 30 November 1917

 

Flight-Lieutenant A. E. Palfreyman, Royal Flying Corps (late of A.I.F.). writing to his parents in Hobart, says: -

My little chat is again due, and am still jogging along all right. Last day or two have been doing very little formation work, most of my work being special missions, which means individual bombing, which can only be done in cloudy

weather. As you can imagine, it is rather hard to fly in clouds, especially when one has to do so for 20 to 40 miles. Clouds we find rather "bumpy” and when flying we depend entirely on the compass. If one comes under a cloud, of course he has to be jolly quick and get back, as ‘tis marvellous how quickly you are spotted, and the Huns' "archie" and machine-guns are pretty accurate. There were quite a number of Huns over this way last night, and I heard this a.m. one of our hospitals in the vicinity suffered. The push last week, in which the Anzacs did most of the work, was fairly successful. Our formation did its little bit by dropping bombs on their railway stations, dumps, billets, etc., which must of necessity reduce their morale considerably.

As I have never given you a description of our work, and there being no other news of consequence, I will briefly tell you of a bombing raid we had last Sunday afternoon, as I know you will be glad to know I have done, or, rather, am doing, my bit. I wish though an abler pen than mine could describe the "show" which I'm now going to tell you of. As a matter of fact I was one of the nine to bomb - without an escort; and in which we lost only one machine, and of which mention was made in wing orders. However, this is by the way. Twelve machines were ordered to bomb a rest camp about 12 miles behind the lines near Roulers.  There were to be two separate formations, each with an escort. I was told off with the first six. We had Bristol fighters as escort, and had to rendezvous over- — - at 10,000ft. It was a perfectly clear afternoon; and what one could see from here is beyond description. In the first, place our six (in which I was flying centre rear) were humming along in good formation and at 1,000ft. above us our escort was hovering. 5,000 feet below the second formation were getting their height, and their escort could be observed. A few miles this side of the line four of our "sausage" balloons could be seen doing their work of observation, while the line and the flashes of our artillery were seen. Going over, I tried to discern "No Man's land," but the whole place was so pocketed with shell holes, etc., that I could not distinguish it. It did not take us long to reach our objective and bomb it, which we did at 10,000ft. After finishing our bombs and turning, our escort fired off two very white lights and buzzed off. I heard afterwards that they got into a “scrap” and were "archied" a good deal. A Hun came up on our right rear man and only for the intervention of one of our scouts, the latter would have fared badly. After a while, we were subjected to terrific "archie," and I got a piece through my top plane. The old familiar plonk as it burst was followed by a small cloud of smoke. We then put our noses down 100-110 m.p.h., engines full on, and steered a zigzag course; sometimes zooming up to dodge “archie," and arrived back after 2 hours 45 minutes in the air, a short but fairly lively show. We lost one man who was sent down out of control with two Hun machines following him, and another chap is missing. Another had one of his struts and top planes badly damaged, but their escort were very badly handled. Am sorry I cannot yet claim to have brought down a Hun. As before explained, we never attack unless absolutely compelled, though of course this often happens in bombing raids. If we (the formation) dive on a Hun, he usually puts his machine into a spin; and we do not know whether he has been hit or not. With our new machines we are now looking forward to getting it will be different, and we shall be sure to have individual scraps, and I hope we shall give a very good account of ourselves.

 

 

[charlie962]

Thanks. A good previous thread on AE Palfreyman, including link to photo and memorial is here