Event Topic: Personalities

Fighter aces from the First World War generally have a glamorous and heroic reputation. However, a close examination of their wartime lives can often challenge this positive view. This presentation will examine the meaning of the term ‘authentic hero’ and whether these stories truly challenge any notion of authenticity in wartime. It will also consider the extent to which the popular mythology surrounding First World War aces is guilty of trying to sanitise their war and hold them to a moral standard that was hard for anyone to match.

Michael Terry is currently working on his PhD thesis for the Open University on the Representation of First World War Aerial Combat in Literature. His work examines how this body of work confounds our general expectations of what First World War literature should be like and how it helped form a mythology about early aerial combat that persists to this day. Michael won the 2023 RAF Museum Doctoral Bursary and the RAF Historical Society’s Henry Probert Bursary in 2024. He delivered the 2024 GWAS Leaman Lecture and has previously spoken at the Institut Historique Allemand, The RAF Museum and the British Commission for Military History.

In the group-centred environment of the Royal Flying Corps, human relationships contribute to a sense of collective identity and group dynamics. The isolated nature of the aerodrome and the occupation of a pilot underscored the need for emotional connections in the face of extreme risk that provided an outlet for emotions and a sense of shared experience. This talk explores friendship and loneliness through a case study of three pilots: James McCudden, Albert Ball, and Arthur Rhys Davids. By focusing on the human interactions rather than squadron efficiency, technical history, or tactical development and score counts, we approach these well-known pilots from a new direction; this focus on personalities, relationships, and individuality presents them as complex individuals rather than the focused, two-dimensional stereotypes originating from wartime publications and perpetuated by research over the past century.

Abby Whitlock is an early career researcher and historian primarily focusing on British and German aviation during the First World War. She earned a BA in History and European Studies at the College of William and Mary in 2019, where her undergraduate honours thesis “A Return to Camelot?: British Identity, The Masculine Ideal, and the Romanticization of the Royal Flying Corps Image” focused on the factors contributing to the masculine ideal of the flying ace for media and official use during the First World War. She completed her Masters with Distinction in History from the University of Edinburgh in October, where her dissertation, ‘“It’s a rum life”: Physical Space, Group Dynamics, and Morale Amongst Royal Flying Corps Scout Pilots, 1914-1918″, explored how the infant nature of aviation during the First World War allowed for the maintenance of hegemonic masculine ideals through the creation of physical spaces on aerodromes. She’s presented a variety of lectures and presentations at the Royal Air Force Museum exploring a range of Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force topics. She works as the Digital Initiatives Coordinator for the Digital Content Strategy and Experience Division at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, where she leads administrative and project management support to the Chief Digital Officer and the institution’s digital content.

Among the many social changes that emerged amid World War I was the first entry of non-Europeans into the seemingly elite realm of military aviation. Although they faced prejudice, by 1918, pilots of African descent turned up in the Italian Air Corps, the Turkish Navy, Britain’s Royal Flying Corps and the French Air Service.

Jon Guttman, a resident of Leesburg, Virginia, is currently the senior editor for Historynet.com. Specialising in World War I aviation, he has written nineteen titles for Osprey, including the popular Aircraft of the Aces 66: Balloon-Busting Aces of World War I, as well as Grim Reapers: French Escadrille 94 in World War I and Aerial Foreign Legion: Volunteer Foreign Airmen in French Escadrille Service.

For the last three years, film director Daniel Arbon has been making a new, independent, short film about Lanoe Hawker, who was Britain’s first flying ace.

Hawker tells the story of the action of 25^th July 1915 when Capt Hawker became the first British pilot to successfully shoot down an enemy aircraft by mounting a Lewis Gun to the side of his Bristol Scout. His victories on that day, on top of his sustained bravery since the outset of the war, resulted in the awarding of the Victoria Cross. It was only the third VC given to an Airman and the first for air-to-air combat with another aeroplane.

As major supporters of the project, we have secured an exclusive opportunity to see the film and listen to Daniel’s story about making the film. This event is only available to current members of GWAS.

Daniel Arbon has always been interested in aviation and initially trained in aerospace manufacturing, serving a Modern Apprenticeship with Rolls Royce (In a factory built to manufacture “Merlin” engines during WW2). He went on to RMA Sandhurst as an Officer Cadet in the British Army in 2005 before being medically discharged. He began his career in the arts as an actor, graduating from Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in 2011.  He made his first film, “Ironheart”, in 2016 and formed  Middle Realm Productions, producing short dramas and corporate films.