page_title: Battle of Guillemont
section_title: Air operations
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Guillemont / Battle / Air operations
context_page_description: The Battle of Guillemont was an attack by the British Fourth Army on the village of Guillemont. The village is on the D 20 running east to Combles and the D 64 south-west to Montauban. Longueval and Delville Wood lie to the north-west and Ginchy to the north-east. The village was on the right flank of the British sector, near the boundary with the French Sixth Army. The Fourth Army had advanced close to Guillemont during the Battle of Bazentin Ridge and the capture of the village was the culmination of British attacks which began on the night of 22/23 July. The attacks were intended to advance the right flank of the Fourth Army and eliminate a salient further north at Delville Wood. German defences ringed the wood and had observation over the French Sixth Army area to the south, towards the Somme river.
  Preparatory to a general attack intended for mid-September, from the Somme north to Courcelette, the French Sixth Army, the Fourth Army and the Reserve Army conducted numerous attacks to capture the rest of the German second line and to gain observation over the German third line.
context_section_description: German infantry were under constant observation from aircraft and balloons, which directed huge amounts of artillery-fire accurately onto their positions and made many machine-gun attacks. Infantry Regiment 68 ordered that men in shell-holes should dig fox-holes or cover themselves with earth for camouflage and sentries were to keep still, to avoid being seen. The German air effort in July and August was almost wholly defensive, which led to harsh criticism from the ground troops and ineffectual attempts to counter Anglo-French aerial dominance, which dissipated German air strength to no effect. A fiasco occurred on 22 July, when photographic reconnaissance aircraft were sent to engage a British aircraft, which turned out to be a German Albatros. The effect of Anglo-French artillery observation aircraft was considered brilliant, annihilating German artillery and attacking infantry from very low altitude, causing severe anxiety among German troops, who began to treat all aircraft as Allied and led to a belief that Anglo-French aircraft were armoured. Attempts to help the infantry by redeploying German aircraft, resulted in many losses for no result and further undermined relations between the infantry and Die Fliegertruppen des deutschen Kaiserreiches (Imperial German Flying Corps). German artillery units preferred direct protection of their batteries, to artillery observation flights which led to more losses, as German aircraft were inferior to their opponents as well as outnumbered. Slow production of German aircraft exacerbated equipment problems, which led to German air squadrons being equipped with a motley of designs, until the arrival of Jagdstaffel 2 under Oswald Boelcke, equipped with the Halberstadt D.II, which regained a measure of air superiority in August.
  The attack on 30 July took place in a fog which grounded British aircraft until about 10:00 a.m. when 9 Squadron sent all of its aircraft on artillery observation, contact patrol and photographic reconnaissance. German artillery-fire had increased so much that ground communication failed, which made contact patrols and counter-battery artillery observation much more important. On 8 August, a 9 Squadron aircraft flew for ​2 ¹⁄₂ hours, searching for mirror-flashes from British troops and delivered a map to the Corps headquarters; the same crew patrolled in the afternoon and found the headquarters of the three attacking battalions, which were still cut off from ground communication. On 18 August the afternoon attack on Guillemont was observed by a 9 Squadron crew during another ​2 ¹⁄₂ hour flight, which called for fire on a trench full of Germans near Ginchy, as other aircraft located signalling panels and ground sheets identifying the attacking battalion headquarters, which showed that the right-hand division had failed to reach its objectives and aircrews also made machine-gun attacks on parties of German infantry in and around the front line. Observations early next day indicated that the Germans were making small withdrawals, which continued over the next two days and were seen by crews from 34 Squadron, 3 Squadron and 9 Squadron, many descending below 500 ft (150 m) to observe.
  On the night 28/29 August, airship S. S. 40 made a four-hour reconnaissance but having to fly above 8,000 ft (2,400 m) to avoid ground-fire, found that little could be observed on the ground. A storm on 29 August blew down a 21 Squadron hangar, in which five B.E. 2c's were destroyed and nine damaged. On 3 September the attack on Guillemont was observed by 9 Squadron aircraft. A contact patrol from noon to 3:00 p.m. watched British troops advance on Guillemont and German troops send up distress flares, when they withdrew from the village and the trenches between Guillemont and Wedge Wood. Just after 2:00 p.m. British mirror flashes were seen along the eastern edge of Guillemont and after another half-hour, more were seen at Wedge Wood and the Ginchy road, up to the Leuze Wood–Guillemont crossroads. Further south the 5th Division was seen to be held up before Falfemont Farm, where th
caption: B.E.2f (A1325 in 2009).
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