Dogfight at 6,000 feet

First World War Audio Archive

Dogfight at 6,000 feet

Transcript

I was shot down myself. Got a bullet through the top of my head

Pilots getting ready for flight.

and I’m in a French hospital. When I got hit, I don’t know if it was a flying wire or whether it was a bullet, but the blood was

View from bi-plane.

pouring over my goggles and I couldn’t see a thing, up in a

Bi-plane turning left.

dogfight at 6000 feet. I lifted off my goggles and I had a job

Plane flying through smoke.

keeping my eyes clear and my head was throbbing so badly as if

Plane in the distant horizon.

my head was going to leave my shoulders and I knew I was going

View from behind the pilot showing plane in front with a smoke trail.

to pass out and I wanted to get down badly. I put it into a dive

Planes engaged in a dog-fight, performing maneuvers.

and a tailspin to get down to the ground as fast as I could.

Plane with smoke trailing out of it doing starting to dive.

That was the longest getting down to the ground you ever saw. It may have only been three or four minutes, but it seemed to me three or four hours. When I got where I felt I was close enough to the ground, I levelled off and I don’t remember any more.

Bi-plane doing a fly by near soldiers in the trenches.

But they told me in the hospital, when I was brought in there,

Injured soldiers laying on stretchers on the ground.

that I kept on reaching for something. They wanted to know what I was reaching for. And I was reaching for the joystick,

Front right view of a Bi-plane.

to right the joystick so I could, to right the plane.

Description

Mr. Hatch describes being wounded in the head, blinded by his own blood, and not remembering how he landed his aircraft after a dogfight with a German aircraft.

George Frederick Hatch

George Frederick Hatch was born in Manchester, England, on May 15, 1898. He moved to Colborne, Ontario, with his parents in 1904. After his father was killed in the Boer War, Mr. Hatch worked on the family farm. He ran away to enlist at the age of sixteen, and, with the help of a creative recruiter, was accepted into the 20th Canadian Overseas Infantry Battalion, going overseas in May 1915. He spent Christmas at Ypres, and then saw serious action at the Somme, where he was wounded. Mr. Hatch then joined the Royal Flying Corps, firstly as a “volunteer” machine gunner and then as a fully qualified pilot. He was shot down and, although partially blinded by his own blood, was able to land safely behind his own lines. After the war, Mr. Hatch emigrated to the United States, living in Virginia, then Montana. He and his wife were killed in a car accident on November 26, 1986.

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