ACUFO-1918-01-09-VILLERSBOCAGE-1
During WWI and after WWI, a number of fantastic stories appeared in magazines and books. One of them was cited in 2004 by Joseph Trainor, a U.S. citizen who used to publish on the Web a bulletin made of new UFO sighting reports and sometimes stories of UFOs from the past.
Trainor told that people sometimes asked him if there were any UFOs during WWI that would compare to the famous “foo-fighters” of World War II: he answers that there was, and goes on with the story of “Lady Sopwith”.
He said that on January 9, 1918, a British S.E.5 plane flown by Lt. Frederick Ardsley of the Royal Flying Corp was at 3,000 meters on early-morning patrol between Amiens and Villers-Bocage in northern France. He had “a sudden compulsion” to look to his left, and saw there another S.E 5 flying just a few feet away from him. This plane had a brightly-painted red nose, a Lewis gun over the top wing and twin machine guns mounted on the fuselage right in front of the cockpit.
Then Ardsley realized that the other S.E.5's engine was strangely muted, sounding like a toyshop buzzing. It also lacked the blue-white-and-red RFC roundels and any identifying squadron numbers. Instead, there was a curious golden symbol od Venus on the fuselage.
Then, the pilot of this other plane gave him a jaunty salute. Ardsley nodded and waved back. Then the pilot reached up and pulled off the goggled leather cap, letting a cascade of golden hair unfurl in the slipstream, and Ardsley “heard her jubilant laughter over the sound of his own engine.”
This female seemed to be teasing him, making exaggerated kissy-face expressions and winking her cornflower blue eyes; then she sat on the cockpit's wicker rim, with her back to Ardsley. Suddenly, she leaned forward, gripped the voluminous khaki skirt, “and performed a Can-Can routine that would have been the envy of La Goulue.” The slipstream “blew the skirt aloft, exposing a shapely derriere clad in white satin.”
The woman plopped back into the cockpit, banked sharply to the left. Ardsley hit the throttle and followed her plane, but she headed for a bank of clouds at 6,000 meters, and Ardsley was unable to catch up. He had tried to fire his Lewis gun, “but it jammed!”
The story says that ground observers reported the most unusual dogfight of an S.E.5 of No. 49 Squadron in hot pursuit of a red-nosed S.E.5.
Two hours later, Ardsley faced an irate squadron leader at his field near Amiens, told him the other pilot was a woman, reported the event, and the squadron leader decided to report all this as a mock dogfight.
The story “ran the length of the front” and in late January 1918, German pilot Albert Rœhl, “was shot down and captured” behind the Allied lines, and told the British squadron leader, that he had been shot down by a Walkyrie. The story says that other captured German pilots also claimed to have been shot down by “a girl who was flying a red Sopwith triplane”, or in some instances, a red-nosed S.E.5. Allied airmen claimed to have seen as blonde siren skipping about at twelve thousand feet, shooting the tails off unsuspecting Fokkers and Halberstadts, the story said, and it was told that 6-year-old Robert Tuchel, ready to be spanked by his mother managed to flee when she saw a red-nose S.E.5 zoom over the rooftop.
The story then told of endless “theories” of that time about “Lady Sopwith”; British pilots believed that she was Lois, the sister of Captain Albert Ball, a famous ace shot down only a couple of months earlier. Lois was said to be a tomboy who was “carrying out a scourge of family revenge.”
Americans tended to view “Lady Sopwith” as the prototype of a “secret squadron” of female pilots being developed by the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Others said she was a Suffragette on a special mission for President Woodrow Wilson. Other just thougth that it was all just a publicity stunt dreamed up by Wilson's Director of War Information, George A. Creel.
By June 1918, American soldiers impressed with the story of German ace Manfred von Richthofen, said the female pilot was a sister of the baron, out to take revenge for the death of her famous brother; though, Trainor reminds that said sister, Freida von Richtofen, was married to British novelist D.H. Lawrence and spent 1918 interned in the U-K. as an enemy.
Trainor added that long after the war, novelist Arch Whitehouse speculated about the origins of “Lady Sopwith”, and said that he knew that the basis for the legend began on an airfield near Chipilly near the Somme, where a squadron of S.E.5 pilots, “always up to some healthy devilment”, around Christmas of 1917, set up a squadron party complete with a theatrical performance with one of the ringleaders as a female impersonator. Whitehouse thought that this pilot, dressed in drag and wearing a blond wig, clambered into an S.E.5 cockpit after the performance, was seen at a distance by some mechanics, and so the legend of “Lady Sopwith” was born.
| Date: | January 9, 1918 |
|---|---|
| Time: | Early morning. |
| Duration: | ? |
| First known report date: | 1918 or 1957 |
| Reporting delay: | Days, 4 decades. |
| Country: | France |
|---|---|
| State/Department: | Somme |
| City or place: | Villers-Bocage |
| Number of alleged witnesses: | Several. |
|---|---|
| Number of known witnesses: | ? |
| Number of named witnesses: | 1 |
| Reporting channel: | Books about WWI, ufologist on the Web. |
|---|---|
| Visibility conditions: | Start of the day. |
| UFO observed: | Yes. |
| UFO arrival observed: | No. |
| UFO departure observed: | Yes. |
| UFO action: | Approach, pilot dances, goes away. |
| Witnesses action: | Tries to follow, tries to fire. |
| Photographs: | No. |
| Sketch(s) by witness(es): | No. |
| Sketch(es) approved by witness(es): | No. |
| Witness(es) feelings: | ? |
| Witnesses interpretation: | ? |
| Sensors: |
[X] Visual: Several.
[ ] Airborne radar: N/A. [ ] Directional ground radar: N/A. [ ] Height finder ground radar: N/A. [ ] Photo: [ ] Film/video: [ ] EM Effects: [ ] Failures: [ ] Damages: |
|---|---|
| Hynek: | CE3 |
| Armed / unarmed: | Armed, machine gun, rifle. |
| Reliability 1-3: | 1 |
| Strangeness 1-3: | 3 |
| ACUFO: | Urban legend, not UFO-related. |
[Ref. jtn1:] JOSEPH TRAINOR:
People sometimes ask if there were any unidentified flying objects during the First World War, comparable to the famous “foo fighters” of World War II.
Yes, there was a “mystery aircraft” flap in 1918, the last year of World War I, and it featured one of the strangest personalities of that conflict - a woman pilot who challenged all comers, Allied and German alike.
The strange saga began on a Wednesday, January 9, 1918. A British S.E.5 Scout, flown by Lt. Frederick Ardsley, was on an early-morning patrol between Amiens and Villers-Bocage in northern France. Ardsley was out looking for sausage-shaped German barrage balloons, tooling along at 10,000 feet (3,000 meters), the ice-cold slipstream tugging at his leather flying cap and silk scarf.
All at once, Ardsley had a sudden compulsion to look to his left. He did, and then blinked in astonishment behind his goggles. Flying just a few feet away from his biplane was another S.E.5 of the Royal Flying Corps (forerunner of today's RAF-J.T.), complete with a brightly-painted red nose, a Lewis gun over the top wing and twin machine guns mounted on the fuselage right in front of the cockpit.
One of our chaps, Ardsley mused. Thank God for that! If he'd been a Hun, he'd have had me for certain.
The young pilot had the oddest feeling something was wrong. Then he realized what it was. The other S.E.5's engine was strangely muted. Indeed, it sounded more like a toyshop buzzing than the throaty roar of a Rolls-Royce engine. He also noticed that the other plane lacked the blue-white-and-red RFC roundels and any identifying squadron numbers. Instead, there was a curious golden symbol on the canvas fuselage-the astrological sign of Venus.
The other pilot gave him a jaunty salute. Ardsley nodded and waved back. Then the pilot reached up and pulled off the goggled leather cap, letting a cascade of golden hair unfurl in the slipstream. He heard her jubilant laughter over the sound of his own engine.
“What the bloody hell-!?” Ardsley bellowed, gaping at the female pilot.
She seemed to be teasing him, making exaggerated kissy-face expressions and winking her cornflower blue eyes. Then she began moving around in her own cockpit.
Now what's she doing? the stunned pilot wondered.
She was sitting on the cockpit's wicker rim, with her back to Ardsley. Suddenly, she leaned forward, gripped the voluminous khaki skirt, and performed a Can-Can routine that would have been the envy of La Gouloue [sic]. The slipstream blew the skirt aloft, exposing a shapely derriere clad in white satin.
Ardsley's jaw fell. The satin-clad behind moved in a rhythmic side-to-side motion. The RFC pilot could not believe what was happening. I must be dreaming, he told himself.
Laughing merrily, she pulled down the billowing skirt, plopped back into the cockpit, and, with another jaunty wave, banked sharply to the left. Ardsley hit the throttle and followed suit, his engine drone growing in intensity.
Ground observers rotated the cranks of their field telephones and reported a most unusual dogfight: an S.E.5 of 49 Squadron in hot pursuit of a red-nosed S.E.5.
Ardsley was an experienced pilot (meaning he'd survived his first three weeks on the Western Front- J.T.), and he strove hard to keep up with the mad aerobatics of the mysterious aviatrix. Every time he had that rogue S.E.5 in his gunsights, she managed to dip, dart, barrel-roll or split-S out of danger. Or else a sudden burst of mysterious speed would carry her just out of range of his machine guns.
Suddenly, her S.E.5 began climbing, heading for a bank of clouds at 20,000 feet (6,000 meters). Ardsley listened closely, but, unlike his own, her engine did not seem to be laboring. He cocked both fuselage machine guns and fired. Both guns fell silent after four seconds. Frowning grimly, he reached up and triggered the Lewis gun. It jammed!
The high-altitude cold stung his exposed lips. He had trouble catching his breath. His engine began missing on all cylinders. He knew he was at the S.E.5's flight ceiling. His plane could go no higher. But her biplane flew effortlessly toward the clouds overhead.
Ardsley's plane began to stall. Its propellor whirled uselessly. The air up there was too thin for his flimsy machine. With a grimace of defeat, he pushed down on the yoke and sent the S.E.5 into a controlled dive. Glancing over his shoulder, he watched the mystery biplane enter those all-concealing clouds.
Two hours later, Ardsley faced an irate squadron leader at his field near Amiens.
“Are you going to tell me that fellow's number?” the older man asked, “Or am I going to have you confined to quarters?”
“It wasn't one of our chaps, sir. It was a woman.”
“A woman!?”
“Yes, sir.” Ardsley stood at rigid attention. “Somebody's popsy, I suppose. She stole one of our kites (RFC slang for planes-J.T.) and was out for a lark when she came up behind me.”
And then he offered a detailed explanation of the encounter.
When he was finished, the squadron leader shook his head. “Ardsley, if I send that report to Trenchard, he's going to think I've gone stark raving mad. No, I much prefer the observers' version. You and another S.E.5 pilot fought a mock dogfight over the forward lines-”
“But, sir-!”
“Yes, that's the report I'm sending to Trenchard,” he replied, “And you, lieutenant, are confined to quarters. Dismissed.”
It was the world's introduction to Lady Sopwith.
In no time at all, this “new air legend ran the length of the front.” In late January 1918, a German pilot, Albert Roehl, “was shot down and captured” behind the Allied lines. When brought to an RFC field near Amiens, he told the British squadron leader, “Sir, I should very much like to meet her.”
“Her?” he echoed.
“The woman who shot me down. Die Walkure (German for The Valkyrie -J.T.).”
Nor was Roelhl the only German pilot to encounter the mystery aviatrix.
“In this period every German aviator who was shot down and captured within Allied territory - and there were very few - when brought in for interrogation claimed that he had been downed by a girl who was flying a red Sopwith triplane (affectionately called a “Tripe” by the RFC pilots-J.T.). In some instances, the plane was a red-nosed S.E.5...”
“No one refuted these claims, not even when some of the (German) captives went so far as to request an introduction to this militant female, before being sent to POW compounds.”
“Dozens of Allied airmen claimed to have seen this blonde siren skipping about at twelve thousand feet, shooting the tails off unsuspecting Fokkers and Halberstadts. It was no optical illusion, brought on by equal parts of mist, sunshine and Guiness's stout. They had seen her clearly, and she was a beautiful dish. Her Irene Castle-styled bobbed hair fluttered in the wind as she zoomed and banked all over the sky,” in her red Sopwith Tripe or red-nosed S.E.5 that outflew and outran every other biplane in the air.
“The (Allied) infantry adopted this fable with wholehearted enthusiasm, and in no time at all, this flossy figure was zipping up and down the enemy wire, shooting Hun gunners out of machine-gun pits and performing all sorts of fantastic deeds of aerial daring. Nothing in La Vie Parisienne could match this charmer.”
Lady Sopwith was seen by civilians, as well. In May 1918, six-year-old Robert Tuchel was collared in the family farmyard east of Amiens by his irate mother, following some juvenile escapade. Madame de Tuchel seated herself on a bench outside the farmhouse, hauled her errant son over her knee and lifted her hand, ready to smack. Suddenly, the red-nosed S.E.5 zoomed over the rooftop, just above chimney height. Its engine let out a loud roar. Startled, Madame de Tuchel stood up, and her son rolled off her lap. Next thing you know, Albert was off and running across the field, waving his thanks to the blonde pilot for having saved him from a spanking.
As the Germans launched their big spring offensive in 1918, the question was on everyone's lips: Who is Lady Sopwith? There was no end to the theories.
British pilots believed that she was the sister of Captain Albert Ball, a famous RFC ace shot down only a couple of months earlier. “Ball's sister, Lois, a tomboy who loved him devotedly... was carrying out a scourge of family revenge.”
Americans tended to think in terms of conspiracy. That Lady Sopwith was the prototype of a “secret squadron“ of female pilots being developed by the U.S. Army Signal Corps. That she was a Suffragette on a special mission for President Woodrow Wilson. Or, more cynically, that it was all just a publicity stunt dreamed up by Wilson's Director of War Information, George A. Creel.
“Whenever the war situation became grave for the Allies, the girl in the red-nosed S.E.5 sometimes became a German fraulein flying a black-and-white Fokker. This particular damsel had long yellow braids that seemed to streak back all the way” to the biplane's rudder.
By June 1918, “American soldiers impressed with the story of the Red Knight of Germany (Manfred Freiherr von Richtofen [sic], the top-scoring ace of World War I with 80 confirmed “kills”-J.T.) were certain she was a sister of the baron, out to take revenge for the death of her famous brother.”
(Editor's Note: In actuality, Freida von Richtofen was married to British novelist D.H. Lawrence and spent 1918 interned in UK as an enemy alien.)
Long after the war, novelist Arch Whitehouse speculated about the origins of Lady Sopwith. “I think I know the actual basis for this flossy legend that began innocently enough on a field near Chipilly near the Somme. We had a squadron of S.E.5 pilots on the same field with us, and these young scout pilots were always up to some healthy devilment. Around Christmas of 1917... they decided to enliven the dreary days by organizing a squadron party complete with a theatrical performance. They were especially good at this, and one of the ringleaders was a female impersonator. He was young, beardless and probably should have been back at Rugby (School) conjugating Latin verbs.”
Whitehouse thought that this RFC pilot, dressed in drag and wearing a blond wig, clambered into an S.E.5 cockpit after the performance, was seen at a distance by some mechanics, and so the legend of “Lady Sopwith” was born.
But this theory ignores the numerous times Lady Sopwith was seen in the air, plus the amazing stories about her aircraft's unusual performance capabilities. Indeed, no one ever saw Lady Sopwith make a landing. Eyewitnesses' last glimpse of her was usually the sight of the red-nosed S.E.5 plunging into a high-altitude cloud. I have often wondered how many Allied and German pilots pursued the red-nosed S.E.5 into that thick cumulous cloud... and never returned.
Kind of makes you wonder what was in that cloud.
On the last day of the war, November 11, 1918, German pilot Kurt Enniger entered the now-abandoned headquarters of his Jagdstaffel (fighter squadron). Picking up a piece of chalk, he jotted a few lines on the blackboard where missions were posted.
Die Walkure (The Valkyrie)
Im Krieg geboren (In war born)
Im Krieg gestorben (In war destroyed)
It was a fitting epitaph for the mysterious female who had dared to fight both sides in World War I. (See the books Heroes and Legends of World War I by Arch Whitehouse, Doubleday & Co., Garden City, N.Y., 1964, pages 328 to 331; and They Fought for the Sky by Quentin Reynolds, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, N.Y., 1957, pages 168 and 169.)
Well, that's it for this week. Join us in seven days for more UFO, Fortean and paranormal news from around the planet Earth, brought to you by “the paper that goes home -- UFO Roundup.” See you next week.
UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 2004 by Masinaigan Productions, all rights reserved. Readers may post news items from UFO Roundup provided that they credit the newsletter and its editor by name and list the date of issue in which the item first appeared.
[Ref. snt1:] "PETER 2011":
Besides spaceships and weird lights, another baffling aerial phenomenon reported during World War I began with a very strange sighting made by a Lieutenant Frederick Ardsley as he was on a morning patrol in northern France on Villers-Bocage, France. As he flew along, another biplane of the same make and model as his own positioned itself next to him, and when he looked to see who was in the cockpit he was surprised to see a beautiful woman with long flowing blonde hair blow him a kiss and do a Can Can dance in her cockpit before swiftly flying away. Ardsley attempted to chase the mysterious pilot, but she was reportedly a far superior pilot and was able to easily lose him. Unbelievably, the mystery woman would show up at other times during the war and engage German pilots, usually easily beating them and shooting them down, and sighted by both pilots and civilians alike. Some reports even say that her plane was impervious to bullets or that she would vanish into thin air. She came to be known as “Lady Sopwith” or “The Valkyrie,” and became legendary. No one knows who she was or whether this is all just another wartime myth.
[Ref. nwn1:] NIGEL WATSON:
By Nigel Watson
Published 7 years ago - 4 min read
Did a mystery aviatrix haunt the skies over France? Was she a myth, a fake news story, a phantom, pilots in drag having a laugh or a secret squadron of women recruited to boost morale?
She was apparently first spotted by Lieutenant Frederick Ardsley, as he was flying from Amiens to Villers-Bocage, northern France, on an early morning patrol. On Wednesday, 9 January 1918, he was flying at a height of 10,000 feet when he suddenly saw an identical S.E. 5 (Scout Experimental 5) biplane flying next to him.
The odd thing about the aircraft was that its engine made a buzzing sound like something out of a toy shop, and it had a golden symbol for Venus on the fuselage rather than the normal red, white and blue Royal Flying Corps roundels and identification numbers.
Even stranger, the pilot removed their goggles with a loud laugh revealing a cascade of golden hair. The female pilot with 'cornflower blue eyes' waved and kissed at Ardsley before conducting a Can Can dance on the edge of her cockpit. Returning to the cockpit the woman sharply banked left and Ardsley went in hot pursuit of her. Yet, he struggled to keep up with her as her aircraft darted, rolled and dipped or suddenly accelerated out of range of his guns.
Her aircraft easily climbed to a bank of clouds at an altitude of 20,000 feet, he tried shooting her down with his fuselage machine guns but they jammed after four seconds, and his Lewis gun also jammed. Ardsley's aircraft struggled as it tried following the other S.E. 5, and it inevitably stalled, forcing him to make a controlled dive.
This apparently was the start of the legend of Lady Sopwith. At the end of January a German pilot, Albert Roehl was shot down behind Allied lines. When he was interrogated he said he was shot down by a female pilot, 'Die Walkure' (The Valkyrie) as he called her.
From then on many German aviators encountered a red-nosed S.E.5 or a red Sopwith triplane piloted by a woman who shot them down. Her aircraft outflew every other aircraft in the sky and dozens of Allied pilots saw her shooting the tails off enemy aircraft, as easily as shooting fish in a barrel.
Lady Sopwith was also seen by civilians, including a six-year-old Robert Tuchel who was just about to get spanked by his mother when a S.E.5 zoomed overhead making a loud roar. The distraction enabled Robert to run free and wave his thanks to the blonde pilot.
A variant of Lady Sopwith was the sighting of a German fräulein with long yellow braids, who flew a black and white Fokker biplane. She was seen whenever things looked bad for the Allies.
Theories about her ranged from her being the sister of the Red Baron seeking her revenge for his death on 21 April 1918, which would not account for earlier sightings, to her being the tomboy sister of British RFC ace Captain Albert Ball who was killed on 7 May 1917. Rather than personal revenge, Americans tended to think there was a secret squadron of lady pilots, or the legend was just a publicity or propaganda stunt.
'I think I know the actual basis for this flossy legend that began innocently enough on a field near Chipilly near the Somme. We had a squadron of S.E.5 pilots on the same field with us, and these young scout pilots were always up to some healthy devilment. Around Christmas of 1917...they decided to enliven the dreary days by organising a squadron party complete with a theatrical performance.'
The legend was born when some mechanics saw the pilot in drag, climb into the cockpit of a S.E.5 after the performance. Certainly it sounds like the stuff of legend and myth with a good dollop of wish-fulfilment thrown into the mix. The Lady was a protector and saviour to the Allies yet there was also the German fräulein pilot who seemed to be her polar opposite.
A few things shoot down the reality of the first encounter experienced by Lieutenant Frederick Ardsley. First of all Ardsley doesn't appear in the list of RFC pilots for that period and secondly it was claimed he was in the 49th Squadron, which did not use S.E.5 aircraft.
If it did happen as Ardsley said the aviatrix could have been a trick of his imagination caused by him blacking out after flying too high, or more likely this was a work of fiction dressed as fact that satisfied the needs of the time.
In our own day it is all too easy to suggest that she was an alien or a squadron of aliens who flew high-tech flying saucers disguised as biplanes, which relates to our own psychological, sociological and culturally specific need to read everything in terms of UFOs.
The Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5 (“Scout Experimental 5”, photo below) was a British biplane fighter aircraft of World War I developed by Henry P. Folland and J. Kenworthy within the Royal Aircraft Factory located in Farnborough. It was equipped with the new 150 hp Hispano-Suiza 8a V8 engine. It operated on the Front from March 1917 on. In 1918, 21 British and 2 American squadrons were equipped with the S.E.5.
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Of course, to me, this story was never an encounter between a pilot an a UFO. But it did appear in a ufology article, so I have to deal with it.
There are several, opposite reasons why such nonsense appears in the writing of some ufologists.
Some “UFO skeptics” like to publicize such nonsense stories because they think that many if not all UFO sighting reports are nonsense of the same sort: they argue that just like people “saw” ghosts, fairies, religious appearances, they later started to see UFO, which they regard as similar nonsense, just more fashionable in the modern period than the “obsolete” fairies and ghosts of the past.
Some ufologists and sensation writers who are convinced that UFOs are “real”, that they can exert physical effects, but they are convinced all the same that they are something else than extraterrestrial spacecraft. They are, to them, a “phenomenon” created by an “intelligence” that is not quite a part of our “normal” reality, that comes from some “other dimension” and wants us to believe things, wants to exert an “influence” on humankind for one or the other purpose. One may put Kohn Keel or Jacques Vallée in this category of thinkers. Some, such as French ufologist Jean Sider, consider that the “absurdity” in many “UFO reports” explains like this: these absurd UFOs and aliens are illusions created by an intelligence... from outer space.
What I see is that this story may please such theorists, but the main issue is that there is no reality at all to it. There is no “official report”, no investigation, no witness that really exists. What is real is that during and after WWI, many outlandish stories were written, serving a naive allegory or propaganda, or just to serve harassed soldiers with wondrous stories. They were what one later called “urban legends”.
During WWI, there were a number of “legends” or fantastic tales propagated in the military or the media. Some well-known examples are:
No. 49 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps was formed on Dover on April 15, 1916, and spent its first 18 months as an aircrew training unit equipped with BE2Cs, RE7s and Martinsydes. In November 1917, they were re-equipped with DH4s, moved to La Bellevue aerodrome in France, and operated as day bombing unit with a first raid on November 26, 1917. In April 1918, No. 49 Squadron was re equipped with DH9s. They kept on operating bombing raids til the Armistice.
No. 49 Squadron never used the S.E 5.
There was no pilot named “Ardsley” in No. 49 Squadron in WWI.
(www.49squadron.co.uk/personnel_index/aircrew/WW1_Aircrew)
Urban legend, not UFO-related.
* = Source is available to me.
? = Source I am told about but could not get so far. Help needed.
| Main author: | Patrick Gross |
|---|---|
| Contributors: | None |
| Reviewers: | None |
| Editor: | Patrick Gross |
| Version: | Create/changed by: | Date: | Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 | Patrick Gross | April 23, 2024 | Creation, [jtn1], [stn1], [nwn1]. |
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | April 23, 2024 | First published. |
