Zepp Over the Quad

THE CENTRAL BLUE (709 pp.)--Sir John Slessor--Praeger ($7.50).

One night in 1915 a young pilot in a 90-h.p. B.E.2C., a primitive, kitelike fighter plane, was jogging along through the fog when he glimpsed far above him--"like a cod's-eye view of the Queen Mary" --the great bladdery hull of the German Zeppelin L-15. It was one of several dirigibles bound for London with bombs. The pilot's orders were to climb above the hydrogen-filled monster and drop on it a "Heath Robinson"* device made of a fuse, gasoline and fishhooks. Before he reached it, the Zeppelin dropped its ballast and soared away. Yet the young man in the frail aircraft, 2nd Lieut. John Slessor of the Royal Flying Corps, had made history. He was the "first pilot ever to have intercepted an enemy aircraft over Great Britain."

As Air Marshal Sir John Slessor now tells the story in his huge military reminiscences, the episode has an innocent, idyllic quality. As he tried to pursue the Zeppelin that night, young Slessor lost his bearings in London fog, but never lost his traditional home base. He reports with relish:

"Somewhere in the dark countryside below me lay Haileybury, where a year before I had been sitting at the feet of Mr. ("Toby") Garland in the Classical Sixth [i.e., last year of secondary school]. That worthy--who was never one to let a little matter like a war interfere with the really important things of life--was reading in his study when an excited colleague burst in upon him and said, 'Come out and look --quick--there's a Zepp immediately over Quad!'

"'Aw!' said he. 'If you've seen one, you've seen the lot.' "

Controlled Nepotism. Few regular officers today are commissioned in quite the way Slessor got into service. Polio-weakened legs had rendered him "totally unfit" for the army or navy, but the new flying corps did not care too much about legs. "Walk across the room," said one officer. Slessor walked. Said another officer, who had known an uncle of Slessor's in the Indian Cavalry: "I don't see why this boy shouldn't perfectly well be able to fly, do you, Ferdy?" Thus Slessor, 17, was set to become one of Britain's first airmen. He still needed his headmaster's imprimatur. Slessor borrowed his father's charger, galloped to the Old School (clutching his umbrella and bowler hat), got his blessing as an Old Boy. and his commission. Thereafter he retained a "lifelong conviction that one of the best possible methods of selection of officers is by selective and controlled nepotism."

Slessor recommends that U.S. readers skip his early chapters, which are full of such stories. Actually they are the most fascinating part of the book, for they show clearly that a man nurtured in the old British army tradition was not necessarily the worst man to assume command in an age of air war.

For the most part, after World War I, Slessor held teaching assignments and minor air commands in distant parts of the Empire. Then, in 1937 he was tapped for greatness as director of plans for the British Air Ministry. In World War II (Coastal Command, Bomber Command, etc.) his skill and perspective won the respect of British and U.S. war planners --generals, airmen and even admirals.

Most of Airman Slessor's judgments on the course of World War II seem sound, but hardly new. Item: The Norwegian campaign was "doomed to failure from the very beginning" because of air power inadequate to protect a landing on a hostile coast. Item: the Royal Navy's Admiral Tom Phillips, who "violently rejected" the notion that aircraft could threaten battleships, was ill-advised to take the Repulse and Prince of Wales unescorted to meet the Japanese out of Singapore (they were both sunk within three days of Pearl Harbor). Apart from such dicta, Slessor's story is a methodical but familiar account of how the "two aeroplanes and pilots" designated for the air defense of Britain in 1915 grew into the force of Hurricanes and Spitfires which won the Battle of Britain in 1940.

Aggressive Villainy. What remains is the anecdotage. Through all his' stories of colleagues referred to as "Tanks,""Boom," "Pug," "Dumby," "Dink," "Bolo," and ''Baby," there emerges the unconscious self-portrait of an excellent officer. His misfortunes--a lost camel while hunting deer, and a Dervish bullet through the thigh while flying air support in the Sudan, the ignorant obstinacy of army officers in the face of his excellent ideas of how to bomb tribesmen on the northwest frontier of India--all are told with sense and humor. Even the Quetta earthquake in 1935, which dropped a ton of bricks on him, left his head sound and clear.

Those with a taste for old soldiers' tales could do worse than comb through Slessor's stories. At least two are fit for a squadron mess dinner. P: During World War II a British officer was being shown the capital's sights. An American friend explained about the White House and how it was painted white after "you British" burned Washington during the War of 1812. As Jack Slessor tells it, the British officer was aghast. "My dear old boy," said he, "I'm most frightfully sorry--I mean to say--I had no idea. I knew we burnt Joan of Arc, but I thought Washington died a natural death." P: In 1940 Winston Churchill used to relax after dinner in the First Lord's Room at the Admiralty and tinker with a new weapon, a bomb (curiously like Slessor's first anti-Zepp bomb) which he thought might be used to mine the Rhine against river traffic. A model was built and tested in a fire bucket. The toy, recalls Slessor, had "just the appropriate flavour of aggressive villainy" for Winston. Said the great man: "This is one of those rare and happy occasions when respectable people like you and I can enjoy pleasures normally reserved to the Irish Republican Army."

-A British cartoonist as famous for mechanical whimsy as Rube Goldberg in the U.S.

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