Airco DH.2 #7910

[Hallibag]

I’m searching for info on the history of this particular 24 Squadron DH.2 as I have a propeller blade that is supposed to be from this aircraft, but I’m not having much luck. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Edited 18 August , 2023 by Hallibag

[pierssc]

The Sky their Battlefield II records DH2 No. 7910 from 24 Squadron as damaged and forced to land on 23rd September 1916 after combat with a Fokker while escorting an offensive patrol.  It landed near Ginchy - Delville Wood.  The pilot, 2 Lt WE Nixon, was OK.

[Interested]

That's a good memento.

It's a pity BBL(?) didn't add a few details about himself, it would be interesting to know the troop location etc.

Edited 18 August , 2023 by Interested
typo

[Hallibag]

6 hours ago, pierssc said:

The Sky their Battlefield II records DH2 No. 7910 from 24 Squadron as damaged and forced to land on 23rd September 1916 after combat with a Fokker while escorting an offensive patrol.  It landed near Ginchy - Delville Wood.  The pilot, 2 Lt WE Nixon, was OK.

Thank you!

[pierssc]

Having said that, there are quite a few discrepancies here.  The trouble is that it wasn't a Sopwith, Ginchy and Delville Wood are roughly EAST of Albert by normal reckonings of the Compass (as I believe is Tara Hill, I don't think is very close to them), the combat is in RFC records as being on the 23rd not the 22nd, and there is no mention of the Fokker being destroyed, though further research might clarify that.  The only things that seem to be in common is the name of the pilot, the squadron, and the aircraft number!  Maybe the paper was added very many years later when memory had faded but if the person who wrote it was the person who "souvenired" the broken propellor I would have thought he would have known where he had been at the time even if he got the date wrong and couldn't tell one aeroplane from another.  Maybe Nixon got it wrong when he reported, and maybe it went into the following day's return to Wing?

Edited 18 August , 2023 by pierssc

[Hallibag]

1 hour ago, pierssc said:

Having said that, there are quite a few discrepancies here.  The trouble is that it wasn't a Sopwith, Ginchy and Delville Wood are roughly EAST of Albert by normal reckonings of the Compass (as I believe is Tara Hill, I don't think is very close to them), the combat is in RFC records as being on the 23rd not the 22nd, and there is no mention of the Fokker being destroyed, though further research might clarify that.  The only things that seem to be in common is the name of the pilot, the squadron, and the aircraft number!  Maybe the paper was added very many years later when memory had faded but if the person who wrote it was the person who "souvenired" the broken propellor I would have thought he would have known where he had been at the time even if he got the date wrong and couldn't tell one aeroplane from another.  Maybe Nixon got it wrong when he reported, and maybe it went into the following day's return to Wing?

Yes, there are a few discrepancies. I believe you’re correct about the note having been added later, as “Sopwith” would not yet be a well-known name in fighter aircaft in September ‘16.

[pierssc]

Tom Sopwith was quite a well-known name in pre-war aviation, but you're right, his later war time products became more famous and at that point in 1916 his might not have been the first name that came to mind.  In one way it's quite surprising as the Company didn't go in for "pusher" aircraft like the DH2, calling it a "Vickers" as the Germans often did would have been understandable.  But that may be assuming too much knowledge.  "Sopwith" was probably being used here as a generic term for a WW1 aircraft.

[Hallibag]

Just now, pierssc said:

Tom Sopwith was quite a well-known name in pre-war aviation, but you're right, his later war time products became more famous and at that point in 1916 his might not have been the first name that came to mind.  In one way it's quite surprising as the Company didn't go in for "pusher" aircraft like the DH2, calling it a "Vickers" as the Germans often did would have been understandable.  But that may be assuming too much knowledge.  "Sopwith" was probably being used here as a generic term for a WW1 aircraft.

Exactly, like every British fighter in WW2 was a “Spitfire”!

[Hallibag]

On 18/08/2023 at 12:40, pierssc said:

Having said that, there are quite a few discrepancies here.  The trouble is that it wasn't a Sopwith, Ginchy and Delville Wood are roughly EAST of Albert by normal reckonings of the Compass (as I believe is Tara Hill, I don't think is very close to them), the combat is in RFC records as being on the 23rd not the 22nd, and there is no mention of the Fokker being destroyed, though further research might clarify that.  The only things that seem to be in common is the name of the pilot, the squadron, and the aircraft number!  Maybe the paper was added very many years later when memory had faded but if the person who wrote it was the person who "souvenired" the broken propellor I would have thought he would have known where he had been at the time even if he got the date wrong and couldn't tell one aeroplane from another.  Maybe Nixon got it wrong when he reported, and maybe it went into the following day's return to Wing?

I’ve just discovered that W.E. Nixon did force land on Tara Hill, but in a different DH.2, a little under a month after the event we’ve been discussing. Perhaps the note on the prop was written months or years after the fact, and some confusion crept in?

 

Edited 23 August , 2023 by Hallibag

[Hallibag]

Also, Air Ministry reports give, variously, dates of 23rd and 24th September, 1916, for the combat with the Fokker monoplane. Perhaps the 22nd September date on the note isn’t impossible?

[pierssc]

This is interesting.  As I said last week,

On 18/08/2023 at 17:40, pierssc said:

Maybe the paper was added very many years later when memory had faded but if the person who wrote it was the person who "souvenired" the broken propellor I would have thought he would have known where he had been at the time even if he got the date wrong and couldn't tell one aeroplane from another.  Maybe Nixon got it wrong when he reported, and maybe it went into the following day's return to Wing?

I'm quite prepared to believe that the paper was added sometime after the events.  I think it is genuinely old, but not correct!

I have seen discrepancies on dates before - if something happened late in the day it didn't necessarily make it into that day's report by the time the report had to be sent off to Wing, and can appear to have happened on the following day.  So did it happen on the 22nd, 23rd or 24th?  Who knows?   Trevor Henshaw reckoned in TSTB II that it was the 23rd and while he would not claim infallability he has seen all the documents.  The fact that Nixon was involved in a crash on Tara Hill - but at a later date - is interesting.

I don't think the note was added by Nixon or by the person who "souvenired" the bit of broken prop, if different.  I think it must have been a person to whom Nixon gave it who was closely associated with him, perhaps a member of his family or a fairly close friend.

Why?  The bits of information that aren't contradictory are all associated with Nixon personally.  His name, his Squadron, his flight (that's not something anyone who didn't know him would easily know) and most importantly the serial number of the aircraft.  That has got to be first hand knowledge.  Before the Internet you would have had to have done a lot of digging around to connect Nixon with that aircraft and such a search then or now would have revealed the aircraft type and where it had crashed.  The serial number is really pretty high-level info and I would bet that is correct.  Most photos of DH2s show two bladed props but there were some with 4.  I'm not sure how one could confirm which one 7910 was fitted with.

The discrepancies are bits of information associated with Nixon, which suggests to me that the writer of the note was (a) not present at the front (b) unfamiliar with the geography and (c) pretty familiar with Nixon's history, but not quite enough.

The writer wasn't familiar with the aircraft Nixon flew.  He may have flown a Sopwith of some kind at some point, but he was killed in May 1917 while flying a Neuport 17, a rotary-engined scout similar enough to a Sopwith Pup or Camel to be confused as one by a non-flyer who may have seen a photograph and didn't really know enough about aeroplanes to correctly identify it.  Or as we have previously discussed, "Sopwith" may have been the only name they knew.

Nixon did crash on Tara Hill, but not in September 1916, and it wasn't West of Albert.  The crash was bad enough to put him in hospital.

He had crashed near Ginchy on the twenty-somethingth of September 1916, and that isn't West of Albert either. 

So the writer wasn't that familiar with the geography but they did know enough about him to connect him with Tara Hill, perhaps because that's what put him in hospital.  (That said, I would have expected them to know that the Tara Hill crash that put him in hospital was the October one, not the September one.  I can't explain that.)

These two events have clearly been muddled up with a relic from one crash attributed to the location of the other by a person pretty closely connected with Nixon.  I'd say the bit came from DH2 7910 from a crash in September 1916.

[Hallibag]

Thank you, Peter, for your thoughts. You make a lot of sense!

Now, I thought I might be able to nail down the date through the squadron history but there’s no mention of Nixon’s  September 22/23/24 forced landing. The note on the prop mentions a destroyed enemy aircraft, and I did discover that Nixon’s flight did force down enemy aircraft on the 22nd and 23rd, but not on the 24th. 
 

[pierssc]

I'm a bit suspicious about the enemy aircraft bit - given that two events have been conflated, and that the writer was very probably not a witness, what's to link it to either of them?

[fetubi]

Just to confirm, everything in TNA AIR1 Files point to the fighting and the forced landing of 7910 being on the 23rd. We're talking a Combat Report, and a Casualty Report. It came down in very challenging country to be able to salve, and was under fire as well, after landing. Relieved that I got it right in The Sky Their Battlefield II !

Trevor