ALBERT BALL, V.C.
FIRST GREAT BRITISH AIR ACE. This is the story of the first great British air ace. He was Albert Ball, a son of whom Nottingham is proud to this day. His father- was Sir Albert Ball, mayor of the city. At the outbreak of the war in 1914. Albert Ball, then barely 18. volunteered for a Nottingham regiment, was promoted to sergeant within a fortnight, and granted a commission soon after. By chance, aviation caught his fancy, and he went to Hendon for training. This was the beginning of his amazing career, brief and brilliant. He practised flying before dawn so that he could be on parade at six. He passed out in October, 1915, flew overseas in February, ,1916, and soon made his presence felt in France. He took part in the opening attack on the Somme, and was the means of definitely establishing British air supremacy over that of ihe enemy. He was always the spearhead of every attack. He had mad courage and sound commonsense. He did not hesitate to attack when the odds were five to one. In August he destroyed an enemy plane and disabled two before flying into a formation of twelve machines, crashing two, setting fire to another, and then going on to attack 14 more. His audacity and skill became proverbial, and he set a standard for all future airmen in wartime.
From the end of 1916 to the spring of 1917 he was at home, filling recruits with his own glorious zeal—though ho hated war. Back again in France, he destroyed his 38th enemy machine on May 3. beating the record of the great French pilot Guynemer. On May 7 he vanished. How he met his end in the air is not officially known, but he was buried near La Bassee, and was awarded a posthumous V.C.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAITA19410523.2.6
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 May 1941, Page 2
Word count
Tapeke kupu
309ALBERT BALL, V.C. Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 May 1941, Page 2
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Wairarapa Times-Age. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.