There were two main obstacles to this scheme. The first and lesser of the two was that for our Hansa-Brandenburg CIs to carry any worthwhile bombload such a distance we would have to fly to Venice with the prevailing east wind of autumn, then turn north to try and reach the nearest Austrian flying field, in the foothills of the Alps. The second—and by far the greater—of the objections was that in the whole embattled continent of Europe in the year 1916 it is doubtful if there was another city more formidably protected against air attack than Venice. A major naval port and the site of several munitions factories, the island city was protected against air-raids by layer after layer of defences: first a line of watch vessels and patrolling airships out in the Gulf of Venice, then the fighter airfield “La Serenissima” at the Lido and the powerful flak batteries at Forts Alberone, Malamocco and Sabbioni, then further belts of flak artillery mounted on barges, then lines of tethered kite-balloons. The flying-boats of the Imperial and Royal Navy had been carrying out bombing-raids against Venice practically each day since the war with Italy began, but the defences forced them now to attack at night and flying above three thousand metres, which—given the primitive bomb-sights of those days—meant that most of their bombs had no other effect than flinging up spouts of muddy water in the lagoons.
In Hauptmann Kraliczek’s master plan the problem of range was to be overcome by making the flight from Caprovizza to Venice merely one leg of a four-cornered journey. The two aircraft—Potocznik and Feldwebel Maybauer in their Brandenburger and Toth and myself in Zoska—would carry two of the new 100kg bombs each, slung on electrically operated bomb racks beneath the centre section, and would fly to Venice with a tail wind. We would drop our bombs, then—in the event of our still being airborne after all this—would head northwards to cross the lines north of Vicenza and land to refuel at Fliegerfeld Pergine, among the mountains near Trient. We would then take off again and fly behind the lines along the crest of the Alps as far as Villach, where we would refuel once more before flying south on the final leg of our journey, through the Julian Alps to Caprovizza. Altogether the round trip would take about two days, weather and the enemy permitting.
Normally, in all such missions conceived on paper by Hauptmann Kraliczek, the hostile purpose of the operation seemed very much to take second place to the business of accumulating Kilometres Flown. But this time our commander had selected a really grandiose aim for us: no less an undertaking than severing Venice’s connection with the rest of Italy, by destroying the causeway-bridge that carried the road and railway line across the lagoon to the mainland. It was of little concern to Kraliczek that the entire well-equipped Imperial and Royal Navy Flying Service had been trying without success to do precisely that for a year or more; as far as he was concerned, no one had ever thought of the idea before, and anyone who dared to suggest that the Italians might have thought of it first and taken precautions was dismissed out of hand as a niggling defeatist. But there we were: orders are orders, however crazy and ill-conceived they may seem to be to the poor devils who are given the task of translating them into reality. The General Staff and the 5th Army Command had been told of the scheme and had given their approval, so who were mere lieutenants to demur? As officers of the House of Habsburg, had we not sworn to do our duty or die in the attempt?
Once again we checked our maps and made our preparations. The two aeroplanes would head out over the Gulf of Trieste just after dawn on the morning of 13 October, and, if they avoided the flak batteries and fighter aircraft off Sdobba, would make landfall some way west of the former Austrian seaside resort of Grado, then head inland and follow the railway line through Portogruaro and San Dona di Piave until they reached Mestre. We would then fly across the lagoons to attack the bridge from the east, hoping in this way to get in between the defences that protected Venice to seaward and the balloon lines and anti-aircraft batteries that guarded it against attack from the north.
It would be a hazardous business, the crossing of the Gulf of Trieste nearly as dangerous in its way as the attempt to penetrate the defences of Venice. But in between those two danger zones I did not expect too much trouble. In those days before radar, aircraft in ones and twos usually had little trouble in wandering about over open countryside. Biplanes look much alike from the ground, telephones were few in the Italian countryside in those days, and anyway, people’s vision had not yet become adjusted to looking up into the sky all the time. For this reason, and in order to save weight, we decided to do without the forward-firing machine guns. On this flight we would have only the observer’s Schwarz- lose to protect us.
Toth and I made our final checks that October evening by the light of the petrol lamps in our hangar. Flying suits, maps, compasses, pistols, emergency rations; also razors, towels, soap and two blankets, since we expected to be away overnight and knew that such things were now in so short a supply that host flying fields expected visitors to bring their own with them. We completed our preparations and while I had a few final words with Feldwebel Prokesch and the mechanics—the ignition had been giving trouble lately—Toth went down to the village to see Magdalena.
Quite a number of our men had taken up with village girls of late. Only the day before, Kraliczek had received his first formal request for permission to marry a local girl—and had promptly set to work devising a suitable wad of printed application forms. There had already been a number of paternity suits filed against enlisted men. It astonished me how quickly our men—drawn from every province of our vast empire and totally ignorant of either Italian or Slovene—had managed to put down roots in the locality. Not for the first time it occurred to me that one of the few good things to be said about war is that it does at least do something to prevent inbreeding, which must once have been a serious problem in an out-of-the-way place like the Vippaco Valley. On the contrary, to judge by the noises I had heard among the haycocks on evening walks that summer, the men were doing everything in their power to make breeding an outdoor activity.
I went for a walk as dusk fell, and met Toth and his belle walking up the lane arm-in-arm and chatting in the curious modified Latin that they used to exchange endearments. Magdalena bade me good-evening as graciously as always; really a quite extraordinarily confident and poised young woman, I thought, considering that she was only a village girl and only nineteen years old.
“Well, Herr Leutnant, I hear that you’re off tomorrow on another long-distance flight.”
“Indeed? I hope that Zugsfuhrer Toth here has not been compromising field security by telling you where?”
“No, Zolli here is being tighter-lipped than usual and won’t tell me a thing; but I hope that doesn’t mean that it’s going to be somewhere dangerous?”
“No, my dear young lady, nowhere in the least bit dangerous,” I said, hoping that my patent insincerity would not show through the smile. “Please don’t worry yourself in the slightest on our account. I expect in fact that it will all be rather tedious. But we shall be gone for two days at least.”
“Oh all right then. But make sure that he behaves himself and doesn’t get into any scrapes. We’re planning to get engaged at Christmas; sooner perhaps, if the war’s over by then.”
I made my way back to my tent to turn in. It was autumn now and getting too cold to sleep under canvas in the blustering Carso wind. Still the promised wooden barrack huts had not arrived. “If the war’s over by then . . .” Some hopes: the war had been going to be over in three months ever since August 1914; but now it had been going on for so long that it was getting to seem as though it had always been with us and always would be. It was about that autumn, I remember, that the first signs became visible of that war-weariness which would eventually bring our venerable Monarchy tottering to its final collapse. The harvest had been wretched that year, as old Josef the forester had predicted. But that I suppose was at least bearable, the common lot of populations under siege. What was more disturbing was the way in which the shortages were now beginning to affect our ability to fight. Copper and brass had been unobtainable for a year or more, now that all of Central Europe’s pre-war coinage and most of its church bells, statues, doorknobs and curtain rails had been requisitioned and melted down. Engine exhausts which should have been made of copper were now fabricated from thinly galvanised steel sheet. A number of Fliegertruppe pilots had already been injured by corroded exhaust stubs snapping off and flying back to hit them in the face. Steel tube radiators constantly sprang leaks.