W. B. Rhodes-Moorhouse
William Barnard Rhodes-Moorhouse, born in England but of Maori New Zealand descent, was the first airman to be awarded the Victoria Cross...
 |
A bookplate depicts the Rhodes-Moorhouse attack on the Kortrijk rail junction |
His father tried to interest him in horses and hunting but he hated riding. As a small boy Will became mad about machines of all kinds, particularly steam engines and locomotive. He was a natural mechanic but never shone at school; he left Harrow needing to attend a crammer before going up to Cambridge University where he never quite fitted in. Will had begun his craze for speed on motorcycles but then he and his student friends raced cars on the open road and he became expert at sliding and skid braking: he could skid right into his garage judging it to a matter of inches. He said his time at Cambridge was completely wasted and he wished he had gone straight from Harrow into the engineering shops.
In 1906-1907 Will spent some months in New Zealand where his Maori ancestry became apparent to him. He was mystified by this as the family at home would never discuss such a sensitive matter. It is only recently that research has revealed the likely parentage of his mother much to the pleasure and interest of his present day relations.
Barnstorming in the US
Back in England he was soon involved in aviation, learning to fly at Huntingdon where he teamed up with James Radley, another pioneer aviator. Together they built the Radley-Moorhouse monoplane which resembled the familiar Bleriot type. In this aircraft Will gained considerable experience and became one of the top cross-country pilots of his time. In 1910 he and Radley took a Gnome-engined Bleriot "barnstorming" across the USA to compete for money and fame in the newly popular aero-meetings. They ended up in San Francisco winning the £1,000 Harbour Prize and where Will became the first to fly through the Golden Gate.
In 1911 he came second in the Aerial Derby race around London. He also made the first cargo flight, carrying Barrats boots from Northampton to Hendon. At about this time it is thought he demonstrated the first tail slides and possibly even a loop. He knew many of the early aviators including the Wright Brothers, Graham Gilmour, Gustave Hamel, Col Cody, Claude Graham-White and, of course, Bleriot.
By now Will and Linda Morritt, the great friend of his sister Anne, were in love. She was also fearless and accompanied Will on several risky enterprises including a winter sports holiday in St Moritz where Will mastered the Cresta Run and she joined in on Lord Carberry's six "man" bobsleigh.
First Channel passenger flight
They were married in the Spring of 1912 and for their honeymoon they went to Belgium to take delivery of a Breguet machine which Will hoped to enter for the Salisbury Plain military flying trails. The Breguet, with a 70HP Canton-Unnee engine, was a great load carrier and with a reporter from the London Evening News they set off for England to make the first Channel flight carrying two passengers. Unfortunately Will was forced to crash land in extremely turbulent weather near Ashford but the flight was big news. The strength of the Breguet saved them but Linda suffered a miscarriage not long after and Will stopped flying only to concentrate on motor racing and rallying. He was a regular at Brooklands with his faithful mechanic, Tookey, and took part, with Radley, in the Monte Carlo Rally driving a Rolls-Royce.
His only son Willie was born in March 1914. Meanwhile the family had bought Parnham House, Beaminster, Dorset, a beautiful Tudor manor, to be his and Linda's future home. Upon the outbreak of war he immediately joined the RFC as a second lieutenant at the age of 27.
Because of his flying accidents Will had a complete set of false teeth and there was an absurd rule that no one could fly in the RFC so "handicapped". He therefore went as officer in charge of a section at the Farnborough factory which accepted and tested Renault engines for the BE series of aircraft. However, on the quiet, Will got himself flying again by Christmas 1914, initially at Brooklands but then in BE machines at Farnborough.
Operational flying in France
In February 1915 he delivered a Parasol Bleriot No 576 to St Omer and in March such was the need for pilots that he flew out a BE2c No 1657 and joined No 2 Squadron RFC at Merville commanded by Major T I Webb-Bowen. His flight commander was Maurice Blake. Will started operational flying immediately usually flying BE2a No 492 and spending the rest of March and most of April doing recce patrols, artillery spotting and photography, frequently recording in his log the incidence of "Archie".
Ivor Lloyd, recently out of Sandhurst, was regularly his observer and described how they chased enemy aircraft getting so close they could fire their revolvers at the pilots. Lloyd told his family later how in just two months with the squadron "...he became the life and soul of everything connected with its work and other escapades indulged in by the less serious members of the community". On several sorties later in April his observer was Sholto Douglas, later Air Vice-Marshal in WW2, who was becoming an expert on mounting aerial cameras. After a month in action the Wing Commander, Lt Col Trenchard, recommended Will for promotion.
The Second Battle of Ypres had now started and German reinforcements were routed through the railway junction at Kortrijk 35 miles beyond the front line. When Trenchard assigned this target to be bombed by No 2 squadron Will took on the task. In his last letter to Linda, only to be read on his death, he described how he would have to carry out the attack very low to ensure hitting the target. "...I am off on a trip from which I don't expect to return but which I hope will shorten the war a bit. I shall probably be blown up by my own bomb or, if not, killed by rifle fire." He also left a letter addressed to "Sonny", full of good advice for his son to read on his 21st birthday.
The raid on Kortrijk
BE2a No 492 was being repaired from shrapnel damage so he selected BE2b No 687, "a good climber", and he took off solo at 3.05pm April 26th carrying a 100lb bomb. On reaching Kortrijk he ignored Maurice Blake's advice to bomb from altitude and flew down to below 300ft through a hail of machine gunfire from a church tower and from hundreds of rifles. A shell drove the seat into his left thigh also tearing part of it away. At the same time a piece of shrapnel took off three fingers from his right hand: so to release the bomb he had to let go of the stick and lean right over to activate the mechanism with his left hand. The explosion of his bomb then very nearly sent the aeroplane out of control. His left leg was now useless so he only had his left hand and right leg to fly the machine, added to which the seat was so shattered that it sagged forward into the controls.
At this point he could have landed immediately and saved his life but he judged it more important to return and report the success of his mission and in any case was determined not to let the Germans have his machine. He was so faint now that he decided to fly very low to keep up speed to re-cross the lines as quickly as possible. Probably while he was crossing the Ypres battlefield he was hit by a bullet which ripped through his abdomen and came to rest just under the skin over the ribs of his left side: this proved to be the fatal wound.
In his diary Maurice Blake described Will's arrival at Merville. "...About 4.12pm saw an aeroplane flying very low on other side of river, when it turned to land machine was only 30ft high. It was Moorhouse and he switched on engine and cleared hedge on other bank and made perfect landing on top ground. Webb-Bowen and I went to machine and we found poor old Moorhouse was badly hit. Sent for stretcher and cut anti-drift wires. He said he felt as if his stomach was shot out of him". Before he died the next afternoon he said to Blake: "It's strange dying Blake old boy - unlike anything one has ever done before, like one's first solo flight".
First VC won in the air
After hearing he had earned an immediate DSO, he was awarded posthumously the first Victoria Cross ever won in the air. This was Gazetted on May 23, 1915. In making the award the authorities had no knowledge of his letter foretelling so exactly what he was to face, had little idea of the professionalism and great experience he drew upon, and no inkling that the nation had lost a pilot and engineer who could have in years to come contributed so much more to aviation than this suicidal exploit.
Exceptionally and at his own request, his body was allowed back to England and he was buried in specially consecrated ground on top of a hill overlooking Parnham House were he and Linda had planned to build a cottage.
In 1991 his surviving relatives decided that the VC Medal Group, impossible to display to the public for being too valuable, should be sold and the proceeds converted into a Charitable Trust to support activities in aviation of which Will would have approved. The Guinness Book of Records of 1992 confirmed that Will's VC and campaign medals fetched the highest price ever paid for a medal group. The WB Rhodes-Moorhouse VC Trust currently provides flying and engineering scholarships through the UK Air League, and contributes to the RAF Benevolent Fund and the Blond McIndoe Centre at Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead.
Son dies in World War Two
Will's only son, Flight Lieutenant Willie Rhodes-Moorhouse DFC, gained his pilot's licence aged only 16 having to bicycle from Eton College to Heston Aerodrome to fly as often as he could. In 1937, after hundreds of hours of private flying, he joined 601 Squadron. He also ski-jumped for England in the winter Olympics. In November 1939 he took part in the first fighter-bomber attack of the war flying a Blenheim on the Borkum Raid.
In January 1940, 601 converted to Hurricanes and during the German advance to Dunkirk was briefly based at Merville, where his father had been. Flying from Tangmere he was a Hurricane "ace" by the time he was awarded the DFC in August. Flying from Hornchurch on September 6, he was shot down and killed over Kent along with his wingman Carl Davis, another pre-war 601 pilot. They were probably "bounced" by Me109s.
The very next day the exhausted and much depleted Squadron moved from 11 Group and the front line to Exeter. The Merlin engine and other remains of his Hurricane are displayed at the Battle of Britain Museum, Hawkinge. His ashes were scattered over the grave of his father.
With kind permission of the W.B. Rhodes-Moorhouse Trust