HISTORY
Unexpected (and undelivered) invitation
On December 12, 1970, in Hamburg Johannes Carl
Gamm sat down at the typewriter. He was writing to Major A. A. Waterhouse who at that time
was an officer in charge of the public relations at
the British Ministry of Defense. “Dear sir, (...) I am
approaching You with a request to you, which may
seem rather extraordinary, but in my opinion not
impossible to fulfill. The problem is as follows: I’d
like to find out a whereabouts of a British First
World War pilot named Youens whom a friend of
mine, Herr Carl Degelow, would like to invite to
his 80th birthday (...)” The celebration was to take
place on January 5, 1971 in Hamburg but Hubert
Youens, whom the invitation was addressed to
was already deceased and the letter reached his
son only in the 1980s. “Father said had he received the letter he would have attended the celebration in place of his father,” said Simon Youens.
In the end the celebration did not take place, Carl
Degelow died on November 9, 1970, two months
before his eightieth birthday… It would have been
an interesting meeting for sure had it taken place. Two veterans of harsh fights who one evening
forgot they were enemies with whiskey, music
and candles light might repeat it again. And this
time as real friends.
In t he foreign service
No details of this aircraft's fate shortly after the
capture are available, it reappears at Jasta 23b
though. When and under what circumstances
this airplane showed up at this unit remains unknown as well. Many sources however state that
the unit’s commander, Lt.Otto Kissenberth scored one victory in it on May 16, 1918. Among many
interesting facts about this important personality
of the German WWI aviation the most frequently mentioned are his reading glasses which he
wore while flying. He was not the only German
ace to do so, the others were for example Walter Kypke, Kurt Wintgens or Fritz Otto Bernert.
More interesting, and even more relevant to our
story is that Kissenberth was a college-educated technician. He studied mechanical engineering first at university in Grenoble graduating at
the technical university in Munich. He was very
interested in aircraft design and joined aviation already in 1914. He was one of few German
aces who fought from the very beginning till
the very end of war and survived. Similar to Jacobs and Degelow he had his aircraft fuselage
painted black and, in his case, decorated with
a large alpine edelweiss. Kissenberth started
Otto Kissenberth, Jasta 23b commander, was a college
educated technician and a successful fighter pilot despite
his eyesight deficiency. It’s highly improbable that he ever
shot down any S.E.5a flying a captured Camel.
his fighter pilot career in a quite impressive way
when still being a member of KEK Ensisheim
shot down three enemy aircraft on October 12,
1916 (two Farmans and one Breguet V). Until May
16, 1918, when he allegedly scored a victory in
Camel B7184, he accumulated 18 (according to
some sources 19) aerial victories. By the way, to
clarify some facts let’s mention the Trevor Henshaw book which claims he flew another Camel
(B7230) captured on March 10, 1918.
Regardless which Camel it was, there are several reasons that make its combat deployment
doubtful. The Germans had quite a lot of captured enemy aircraft in their fighter units’ inventory
nevertheless they were not used in combat. They
were at pilots’ disposal to test the enemy’s aircraft flight characteristics or to develop the right
tactics in the mock dogfight.
Every such flight however had to be approved
Photo: sbírka Jörna Leckscheida
The fate awaiting the Youen’s captured Camel
B7184 was the same as that of many other
captured Camels. In the beginning of 1918 this
aircraft was no longer a secret for IdFlieg however the Germans would not miss the opportunity to test an almost intact aircraft powered
by the potent BR.1 engine. The original marking
was partially left intact, partially alternated. The
cockades on the wings were replaced with crosses, on the top in the white square covering the
cockade. On the bottom the parts of the cockades still visible after overpainting with crosses
were deleted. The fuselage cockade disappeared
under the coat of white paint, same as the crosses on the top wings. The rear fuselage sides
were painted black. The horizontal stabilizer was
marked with black and white stripes which was
Jasta 23b airplanes’ marking. The engine cowling
and wheel discs were left in blue color, quite possibly because this was a Bavarian unit and blue
is the main color of Bavaria's emblem. The third
squadron insignia, a white eagle painted on the
fuselage sides right after the cockpit was preserved too. This resulted in a fairly colorful and
unusual Camel appearance.
A captured Camel in hands of German personnel.
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INFO Eduard - January 2022