Event Narrative
‘A thunderstorm flight Our activities off Verdun in the summer of 1916 were disrupted by frequent thunderstorms. There is nothing more unpleasant for an aviator than having to fly through a thunderstorm. During the Battle of the Somme, for example, an entire English squadron landed behind our lines because it was caught in a thunderstorm. They were taken prisoner. I had never tried to fly through a thunderstorm before and couldn't resist the urge to give it a go. There was a real thunderstorm atmosphere in the air all day. I had flown over from my airport in Mont to nearby Metz to do some things there. The following happened on my flight home: I was at the airfield in Metz and wanted to return to my airport. As I pulled my aircraft out of the hangar, the first signs of an approaching thunderstorm made themselves felt. The wind rippled the sand and a pitch-black wall was approaching from the north. Old, experienced pilots strongly advised me not to fly. But I had firmly promised to come, and it would have seemed scary if I had stayed away because of a stupid thunderstorm. So I stepped on the gas and gave it a go! It started raining right at the start. I had to throw away my glasses to be able to see anything at all. The bad thing was that I had to go over the Moselle mountains, through whose valleys the thunderstorm was roaring. I thought to myself: ‘Go ahead, it'll work out,’ and got closer and closer to the black cloud that reached down to the ground. I flew as low as possible. Sometimes I had to skip over houses and rows of trees. I had long since lost track of where I was. The storm gripped my machine like a piece of paper and drove it ahead of me. My heart sank a little deeper. I could no longer land in the mountains, so I had to hang on. All around me it was black, below me the trees were bending in the storm. Suddenly there was a wooded height in front of me. I had to fly towards it, my good albatross made it and pulled me over it. I could only fly straight ahead; every obstacle that came my way had to be taken. It was a pure jumping competition over trees, villages, especially church towers and chimneys, as I could only fly five metres high at most to see anything at all in the black thundercloud. Lightning flashed all around me. I didn't know at the time that lightning couldn't strike the aircraft. I thought I was facing certain death, because the storm was bound to throw me into a village or a forest at the next opportunity. If the engine had stopped, I would have been finished. Suddenly I saw a bright spot on the horizon ahead of me. The storm stopped there; if I reached this point, I was saved. Gathering all the energy a young, reckless person can muster, I headed for it. Suddenly, as if torn away, I was out of the storm cloud, still flying in the pouring rain, but feeling safe. Still in the pouring rain, I landed in my home harbour, where everything was already waiting for me, as the news had already arrived from Metz that I had disappeared in a storm cloud heading there. Never again will I fly through a thunderstorm, unless my homeland demands it of me. Everything is beautiful in memory, so there were also beautiful moments that I would not want to miss in my life as an aviator.’
