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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
THE SPIDER WEB
_My acknowledgments are due to the Editor of 'Blackwood's Magazine' and
to the Editor of 'The Times.'_
[Illustration: P. I. X.]
THE SPIDER WEB
The Romance of a Flying-Boat War Flight
by
P. I. X.
With Illustrations
William Blackwood and Sons
Edinburgh and London
1919
_TO
THE JOLLY
FINE FELLOWS,
OFFICERS AND MEN,
OF THE WAR FLIGHT,
FELIXSTOWE._
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE SPIDER WEB 1
II. LIKE A FAIRY TALE 38
III. THE PHANTOM FLIGHT 75
IV. STICKY ENDS OF L 43, U-C 1, AND U-B 20 109
V. THE FATAL FOUNTAIN AND END OF U-C 6 145
VI. WINGED HUNS AND THE TALE OF THE I.O. 183
VII. INTO THE BIGHT AND END OF L 53 215
VIII. THE FUTURE: RUNNING THE U.S. MAIL 245
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
P. I. X. _Frontispiece_
PORTE BABY WITH BRISTOL BULLET ON TOP PLANE _Facing p._ 4
CHART SHOWING THE SOUTHERN PORTION OF THE
NORTH SEA AND THE BIGHT OF HELIGOLAND " 8
SHEDS AND SLIPWAYS AT FELIXSTOWE " 18
FELIXSTOWE PATROL AREA WITH SPIDER WEB PATROL,
SHOWING SUBMARINES SIGHTED AND BOMBED,
AND THE WIRELESS FIXES FOR FOUR MONTHS " 32
5-TON FLYING-BOAT " 40
BOAT ON PATROL. 230-LB. BOMB SHOWING ON
MACHINE FROM WHICH PHOTOGRAPH WAS
TAKEN " 56
DESTROYERS ON BEEF TRIP " 80
PORTE SUPER BABY TAXI-ING ON THE WATER " 104
'77 IN THE MIST " 116
BOMBS BURSTING OVER SUBMARINE " 130
LIFTING 230-LB. BOMB INTO PLACE " 144
DUTCH SAILING-VESSEL PHOTOGRAPHED FROM A
FLYING-BOAT " 178
HUN MONOPLANE DIVING IN TO SHOVE HOME AN ATTACK _Facing p._ 186
THE BOAT THAT STOOD ON ITS NOSE " 206
LIGHTER WITH FLYING-BOAT BEING TOWED IN
HEAVY SEA " 220
CULLY'S CAMEL ON WAY TO TERSCHELLING " 232
WHITE LINE F.-B. _SWIFT_ AND F.-B. _SWALLOW_, 200
TONS " 256
15-TON PORTE SUPER BABY, 1800 HORSE-POWER " 264
ERECTING THE 15-TON FELIXSTOWE FURY " 266
[Illustration]
The Spider Web.
CHAPTER I.
THE SPIDER WEB.
I.
There is magic in salt water which transmogrifies all things it
touches. The aeroplane with its cubist outline undergoes a sea change
on reaching the coast and becomes a flying-boat, a thing of beauty,
a Viking dragon ship, a shape born of the sea and air with pleasant
and easy lines, and in the sun, the dull war-paint stripped from the
natural mahogany, a flashing golden craft of enchantment.
During the war nothing was published about the flying-boats, partly
because they worked with the Silent Navy, and partly because they
were produced in the service. They were created to harry and destroy
the German submarines, and were a manifestation of the genius of the
English-speaking peoples for all things connected with the sea.
There is a tang of salt in the adventures of the men who boomed out
in them over the narrow waters, for they had to do with submarines
and ships, and all that that implies. In their job o' work of bombing
U-boats, attacking Zeppelins, fighting enemy seaplanes, and carrying
out reconnaissance and convoy duties, there is as much romance as
in any particular effort in the war. In the future, grown great in
size, the boats will form the winged Navy, and will carry mails and
passengers over the water-routes of all the world.
Boat seaplanes, or flying-boats as they are called by the men who use
them, are a true type of aircraft designed for dealing with the chances
and hazards of flying over the sea. They have a stout wooden boat hull,
planked with mahogany and cedar, to which the wings, with the engines
between the planes, are attached. They carried a service crew of four:
Captain, navigator, wireless operator, and engineer. Float seaplanes,
which the boats superseded, were practically land machines with two
wooden floats instead of wheels, and struck you as being aeroplanes on
a visit to the seaside which had put on huge goloshes in order to keep
dry. On seeing one pass overhead it was usual to say: "There she goes
with her big boots on."
Float seaplanes were not very seaworthy, breaking up quickly in rough
water; and many a brave lad, down at sea in them with engine trouble,
has been drowned. They are very much to-day what they were in 1914.
From the very beginning of things there was much faith shown by the
sea-going pilots of the Royal Naval Air Service in the seaplane as a
weapon to do down the U-boat. But the technical people of the service
neglected float seaplanes; and flying-boats, of which they did not
approve, took a long time to develop. Instead of perfecting seaplanes
the slide-rule merchants developed scout land machines with the idea
of using them off the decks of ships, and a strong force of aeroplane
pilots was collected and provided with fast and handy aeroplanes. The
Navy was not ready to use this force, only being converted to its value
in 1918, and it was sent to assist the Royal Flying Corps, when the
latter was in difficulties in France owing to the lack of pilots and
efficient machines. Unfortunately this effort turned a great deal of
the energy of the R.N.A.S. away from seaplanes and anti-submarine work.
There would probably not have been any big British flying-boats but
for the vision, persistence, and energy, in the face of disbelief and
discouragement, of Colonel J. C. Porte, C.M.G., who designed and built
at Felixstowe Air Station the experimental machine of each type of
British flying-boat successfully used in the service. His boats were
very large, the types used in the war weighing from four and a half to
six and a half tons, and carried sufficient petrol for work far out
from land and big enough bombs to damage or destroy a submarine other
than by a direct hit. The pilots were out in the bow of the boat, with
the engines behind them, and so had a clear view downward and forward.
The boats were very seaworthy, and no lives were lost in operations
from England owing to unseaworthiness.
[Illustration: Porte Baby with Bristol Bullet on top plane.]
In designing and perfecting flying-boats there were more difficulties
than in producing float seaplanes, for the technical problems were
great, while engines of sufficient horse-power were not to be had
in the early part of the war, and indifference and scepticism had
to be overcome. It was not until the spring of 1917 that suitable
flying-boats were in being. But this was in time for them to meet the
big German submarine effort, when the great yards at Weser, Danzig,
Hamburg, Vagesack, Kiel, and Bremen, working day and night, with
production driven to its highest pitch by standardisation, were pouring
out into the North Sea an incredible number of U-boats.
During this year--a year when it looked as though the Under-sea boats
would strangle our merchant shipping and the danger was greater to
England than her people realised--forty flying-boats were put into
commission, and sighted sixty-eight enemy submarines and bombed
forty-four of them.
A submarine is a steel boat shaped something like a cigar. When on
the surface it is driven by two petrol engines. Under the surface it
is driven by two electric motors, the electricity being obtained from
storage batteries. At the bow and stern are horizontal rudders known as
hydroplanes. Under ordinary circumstances, when the submarine is about
to dive, water is let into tanks until the boat is just floating on the
surface with only the conning-tower showing. The petrol engines are
stopped and the electric motors are started. Then the hydroplanes are
turned down and they force the submarine under the water. The submarine
uses its power of travelling under the water to stalk its prey and to
hide from its enemies.
When the intensive German submarine campaign began, the methods
of hunting U-boats from surface ships had not been perfected. The
hydrophone was crude, the technique of using depth charges was not
perfected, and the mines and nets were not adequate. Also, the Dover
barrage was not then in being. So Fritz, as the service called the Hun
submarine, went south--about from his bases to his hunting-grounds.
Picture the sinister grey steel tubes dropping away from the dock in
the German harbour as the Commander in the conning-tower gave the order
to cast off, the swirl of water at the stern as the twin propellers
took up their job, and the gay flutter of signal flags hoisted to the
collapsible mast as they passed out of the harbour--a harbour which
they would not see, if all went well with them, for from fifteen to
twenty-five days, and which, if things went well for the Allies, they
would never see again. Once outside the harbour, the Commander would
order the engines whacked up to the economical cruising speed of eight
to nine knots, a speed at which he could do about two hundred miles a
day, and would then turn south, and so proceed on the surface through
the North Sea to the Straits of Dover.
Passing through the Straits, either at night on the surface or in
the daytime under the water, the Commander would pass down the south
coast of England and cruise on the surface in the chops of the English
Channel or off the approaches to Ireland. Here he would meet our
merchant ships coming in with food, raw material, munitions, and
passengers, and either sink them by gun-fire or by torpedo. The attack
would be made without warning. Sometimes survivors, who had got away in
boats from the doomed vessel, would be shelled. And once the survivors
were taken on the deck of a submarine, their life-belts removed, and
then the submarine submerged, leaving the unfortunates to drown.
On their run through the North Sea the submarines passed between the
Hook of Holland and Harwich Harbour, the distance between the two
places being one hundred miles.
Harwich Harbour is a sheltered stretch of water on the East Coast made
by the rivers Stour and Orwell emptying into the southern portion of
the North Sea. It was the centre of intense anti-Hun activity. It was
here that Rear-Admiral Tyrwhitt had his "hot-stuff" destroyer flotilla,
that the hydrophone for detecting enemy submarines under the surface
of the sea was evolved, that our own submarines which operated in the
Bight of Heligoland had their base, and where the flying-boat station
of Felixstowe was situated. And it was at Felixstowe that the service
experimental flying-boats were designed and built, and a flying-boat
squadron operated. During 1917 this squadron, which used an average
of only eight boats a month, sighted forty-seven enemy submarines and
bombed twenty-five, besides destroying enemy seaplanes and bringing
down a Zeppelin in flames.
[Illustration: Chart showing the Southern Portion of the North Sea and
the Bight of Heligoland.]
It was my good fortune to be posted to Felixstowe Air Station in
March 1917 and to be put in charge of the flying-boat operations. So
this is a yarn about the beginnings and work of a single flying-boat
station, but it is characteristic of the work carried out at the
seaplane stations strung along the South and East Coasts of Great
Britain, from the Scilly Islands, off Land's End, to the Orkneys and
Shetlands, off the north of Scotland. If the names and deeds of the
pilots at Felixstowe are alone recorded, it is not that equally gallant
and skilful men were not harrying the Hun elsewhere, but that their
adventures would fill many volumes.
II.
In the curious quirks of fortune and chance which moved people across
oceans and continents to play their part in the war, and finally
fetched them up, in some cases, in the jobs which they most desired to
fill, there are all the elements of romance. Just before the war broke
out I was occupying a room at the "Aviator's Home," a boarding-house
in the small American inland town of Hammondsport, N.Y. This town was
situated on a long narrow lake, with a forked end, a lake surrounded
by steeply rising vine-clad hills to which clung the white wooden
houses of the vine-growers, and in which were dug the huge cellars for
storing the excellent champagne of the district.
It was here that Mr Glen Curtiss built his flying-boats before the
war, having recruited his labour at first from the ranks of the local
blacksmiths, carpenters, and young men with a mechanical turn of mind.
And it was here that I first tasted the smoke of a Fatima cigarette, a
particularly biting smoke affected by Yankee airmen, and went out in
a flying-boat for the first time in July 1914. This boat, to memory
quaint and medieval, had a single engine alleged to develop sixty
horse-power; it belonged to the dim dark ages when compared to the
latest boat I have flown, the eighteen hundred horse-power _Felixstowe
Fury_.
Finishing the course of instruction a few days after the declaration
of war, and receiving no satisfaction by cabling to the Admiralty and
War Office offering my services as a pilot, which rather annoyed me at
the time, but which I now know was probably due to their being somewhat
preoccupied with other little matters, I returned to my home in
Toronto, Canada, and joined the first Canadian contingent as a private
in a machine-gun battery.
Arriving in England in the steerage of a troopship in October 1914, I
satisfied at Lockyears in Plymouth a great hunger and thirst, bred of
army fare and a dry canteen, with a most delectable mixed grill, the
half of a blackberry and apple tart smothered in Devonshire cream,
and a bottle of the best. By the end of the dinner I had decided to
emigrate to England. Some few days later I found myself imbedded in
the mud of Salisbury Plain at Bustard Camp, a victim of inclement
weather (which penetrated without difficulty the moth-eaten five-ounce
canvas of the tent under which I sheltered) and the plaything of
loud-voiced and energetic sergeants, who seemed to think that I liked
nothing better on a rainy Sunday than to wheel, from the dump to the
incinerator a half mile away, the week's collections of garbage. After
two weeks of this I decided that I would not live in England.
Believing firmly in the future of aeroplanes and seaplanes in warfare,
I made another attempt to transfer to one of the Air Services, the
Royal Naval Air Service by preference; for having knocked about a good
deal in small boats on the Great Lakes, I thought that the navigation
and seamanship I had picked up might prove useful in seaplane work.
On a personal application to the Admiralty I was informed that
Colonials were not required, as they made indifferent officers, that
the service had all the fliers they would ever need, and, besides all
this, that I was too old. And then it was suggested that I should sign
on as a mechanic. I went to Farnborough, the headquarters of the Royal
Flying Corps, and saw Sir Hugh Trenchard, then I believe a major, and
was informed that I could be put on the waiting list, but found I would
have to wait six months before seeing an aeroplane, owing to the wicked
shortage of machines.
Being full of enthusiasm and impatience, and thinking that the war
would be sharp and quick and soon decided one way or the other, I had
another try at the Admiralty. But this time, on the advice of a friend
who had lived some time in England, I attacked them in a different way.
At my first interview I had appeared with my flying credentials and
in the uniform of a private--a uniform, as being the King's, of which
I was tremendously proud, although the tunic was about two sizes too
small for me and the breeches four sizes too large. The second time I
wore a suit of civilians cut by a good tailor and carried letters of
introduction from sundry important people. I was this time offered a
commission as a machine-gun Sub-Lieutenant, R.N.V.R., in the armoured
cars attached to the Royal Naval Air Service, and believing that this
was a step in the right direction, and fully determined to fly at the
first opportunity, I was duly gazetted in December 1914.
I was told to report to H.M.S. _Excellent_ for training. At the railway
station at Portsmouth I asked a taxi-cab driver if he knew where
H.M.S. _Excellent_ was lying, and he replied that he did, and that
he would drive me right on board. I thought that she must be a very
big ship, but said nothing. Finally I found myself being driven over
a bridge, and was informed a moment later that I was on board H.M.S.
_Excellent_, or, in other words, at Whale Island. This training centre
is the forcing-house of naval discipline, and everything is done at the
double--an exceedingly fast double when the eye of the First Lieutenant
falls upon an instructor. She is a curious ship. The Captain, when he
comes on board by launch from the mainland, is driven up from the
landing stage to his office in a little green railway carriage drawn by
a little green engine.
For some time I trained in England, and finally sailed for the
Dardanelles in March 1915. After forty days in Gallipoli in command of
a travelling circus of machine-guns--and machine-guns were worth more
than gold and precious stones in the first days on the Peninsula, being
attached in turn to the Australians in Shrapnel Valley, sundry units at
Cape Helles, and finally to the 29th Division in Gully Ravine, where
I worked with the 13th Sikhs until they were practically wiped out on
June 4--I again found myself in England in July 1915, my arm in a sling
and feeling very thin as the result of sand colic, a horrid complaint
which seized me the moment I set foot on Turkish soil at Gaba Tepe.
Following a holiday at Sunning-on-Thames, a two-week caravan trip
through the New Forrest behind an old horse named Ben--a horse with
whiskers on its ankles and a three-knot gait--and sundry visits to the
Admiralty, I was transferred from Lieutenant R.N.V.R. to Acting Flight
Lieutenant R.N.A.S. and posted to Hendon Air Station. Here I acted as
First Lieutenant to Flight Commander Busteed until July 1916, having a
good rest in order to get fit again, with only a few jobs to do, such
as digging drains, building roads, altering machines, lecturing to the
school on machine-guns and bombs, building huts for the men out of
packing-cases, doing acceptance and test flights when I had regained
some of my energy, and in my spare time learning what I could of the
theory and practice of flight from my commanding officer, who very
kindly took no end of trouble in assisting me. Then I was given the
command when he left for Eastchurch.
Our Mess was livened up about this time by the frequent visits of a
senior officer who, arriving about dinner-time, would discuss flying
far into the night, turn out at daybreak to fly any machine available
no matter what the weather was like, and then, after breakfast, hasten
off to the Admiralty. It was a tremendous relief to meet a senior
officer who was keen to know everything about flying at first hand,
who could deal on paper with flying problems of which he had practical
experience, and took the trouble to understand the point of view of the
pilots.
Once when a very senior officer, in a very bad temper, was inspecting
the station, he was taken into the first shed. "Quiet, very quiet,"
he said. "You don't seem to be doing much work for the number of men
you have got." A trusty Sub. was despatched to the second shed with
instructions to have the party of tinsmiths in the annex hammer like
mad on a row of empty tanks. When the inspection party entered this
shed the senior officer said, shouting to make himself heard above the
noise--"Better; much better."
During the fall of 1916 many rumours were about concerning the
developments of flying-boats at Felixstowe Air Station, along with a
few facts from Lieutenant Partridge, R.N.V.R., who had been ground
officer at Hendon, until after taking a course in a gunnery school
he went to Felixstowe as armament officer. Also the work at Hendon
was petering out, the soldiers of the R.F.C. had cast a monocled and
covetous eye on the aerodrome, the submarine situation was becoming
acute, and the doctor had forbidden me to fly at any altitude. I
therefore put in to be transferred to a seaplane station, and was
posted in March 1917 to Felixstowe.
Felixstowe town in ordinary times is a summer resort, but owing to the
threat of air raids it was practically forsaken by its usual floating
population and was heavily garrisoned by the military, the water front
being protected by barbed wire and innumerable trenches. The people of
the town in times of peace lived on the summer visitors; during the war
they lived on the soldiers and airmen.
III.
When I first rolled up to Felixstowe Air Station I was tremendously
impressed by its size. It was enclosed on the three land sides by a
high iron fence. As I passed the sentry-box and entered by the main
gate, the guardhouse occupied by the ancient marines was on my right,
flanked by the kennel of Joe, a ferocious watch-dog who had a strong
antipathy to anybody in civilian attire. Beside guarding the gate, Joe
provided a steady income to the marines, for his puppies fetched good
prices. On my left were the ship's office and garage. I entered the
former and reported my arrival to the First Lieutenant.
The First Lieutenant of the station was Lieut.-Commander O. H. K.
Macguire, R.N., known as James the One or Number One, who understood
discipline, and reigned over an exceedingly fine mess. He ran the
station under naval routine, the time being tapped off on a bell, the
ship's company being divided into watches, anybody leaving the station
"going ashore," and the men for leave, when marching out of the gate,
were the "liberty boat." The Navy people, of course, said that the
R.N.A.S. was not run on Navy lines, but it was run as close to them as
everybody knew how, and as the exigencies of the new weapon permitted.
The naval routine and discipline fitted the work of a seaplane station
admirably, for the work approximated to that of a ship, where drill is
of secondary importance, and speed, skill, and accuracy in carrying out
a job of work is of the first importance.
As James the One had a shrewd tongue he was rather feared by the junior
officers, especially the Canadians, who hated with a profound hatred
the ever-recurring twenty-four-hour job of Duty Officer, during which
they could get no sleep in the long watches of the night owing to the
continuous ringing of the telephone bell. But he instilled discipline
into their unruly hearts, which assisted them to carry out their work
when subsequently elevated in rank.
[Illustration: Sheds and Slipways at Felixstowe.]
He had taken over the station at a time when, owing to rapid growth,
the new men were not being digested, and discipline was rather ragged
at the edges; but by this time he had the men well in hand. And woe
betide the defaulter, standing to attention outside the ship's office
in full view of Number One as he sat in an easy-chair on the verandah
of the mess, if the unfortunate so much as moved a little finger. The
tiger roar which greeted such a disobedience to the order not to move,
made every man with a guilty conscience on the station tremble.
On the other hand, he would brook no interference with the rights and
privileges of the men, and looked after their interests as regards
pay and promotion. Divisions, when the whole ship's company were
mustered on the quarter-deck in the morning and at noon, was a marvel
of smartness, especially when it is remembered that the men were
"tradesmen." The effect was heightened by the attendance of the pipe
band, of which Number One was rightly proud.
Leaving the office of the First Lieutenant I stepped out on the
quarter-deck. On the mast, on the far side of this gravelled expanse,
rippling and snapping in the breeze, flew the white ensign.
Crossing the quarter-deck and steering close to the bright and shining
ship's bell, which I passed on my left, I found a path leading to
the harbour. The left side of the path was the starting-point of an
interminable row of huts for the men. Carrying on, after stumbling over
a railway siding, and passing between two of the huge seaplane sheds,
of which there were three--sheds 300 feet long by 200 feet wide--I
eventually arrived at the concrete area on the water front.
Before each of the big sheds was a slipway. These were wide wooden
gangways running out from the concrete into the harbour and sloping
down into the water, and were used for launching the flying-boats.
Here I could look across the harbour and see Harwich and Shotley,
the tangle of light cruisers and destroyers lying at anchor in the
river, and the outlines of the floating dock in which destroyers,
battered by the seas or damaged in contact with the enemy, were lifted
out of the water and their hurts attended to. As I stood sniffing in
the harbour smells, one of our E-class submarines came slinking in
between the guardships at the boom, fresh from patrol in the Bight, and
wearing that sinister air of stealth and secrecy which marks even the
friendliest of submarines.
Walking down the concrete to my left I finally came to the pre-war
buildings of the Old Station. These buildings were used by Commander
Porte for his experimental work. In the early part of 1914 Commander
Porte was in America, at the Curtiss Company works at Hammondsport,
where he supervised the designing and testing of the first American
type of flying-boat. This boat was constructed with the intention, if
it was satisfactory, of attempting to fly the Atlantic. It was a very
big machine for that time, although to a modern pilot, familiar with
the luxuriously fitted up six-ton boats with two Rolls-Royce engines
giving a total of 720 horse-power, she would seem a funny old, cranky,
under-engined tub.
On the afternoon of the day war was declared Commander Porte sailed
for England, and a little later took over Felixstowe. Sundry copies of
the original boat arrived from the United States in 1915. These were
comic machines, weighing well under two tons; with two comic engines
giving, when they functioned, 180 horse-power; and comic control, being
nose heavy with engines on and tail heavy in a glide. And the stout
lads who tried impossible feats in them had usually to be towed back by
annoyed destroyers.
As the Navy people could not understand anything being made which could
not be dropped with safety from a hundred feet, or seaworthy enough to
ride out a gale, or as reliable as the coming of the Day of Judgment
for the Hun, much criticism and chaff, some good-natured but some not,
were worked off by the sailors during this period on both boats and
pilots. But improvements went steadily on.
In the fall of 1916 improved and very much bigger flying-boats, built
in the United States to specifications supplied by Commander Porte,
began to arrive.
By this time Commander Porte had got out several experimental
flying-boats. He carried out his plans with a scratch collection
of draughtsmen, few with any real knowledge of engineering; with
boat-builders and carpenters he had trained himself; and he only
obtained the necessary materials by masterly wangling. He frequently
started a new boat and then asked the authorities for the grudged
permission. But in all things connected with the building of
flying-boats his insight amounted to genius, and the different types of
boats kept getting themselves born. His latest boat, known unofficially
as the _Porte Super Baby_, or officially as the _Felixstowe Fury_, a
huge triplane with a wing span of 127 feet, a total lifting surface
of 3100 square feet, a bottom of three layers of cedar and mahogany
half an inch thick, and five engines giving 1800 horse-power, I flew
successfully--it weighed a total of fifteen tons. On this test I
carried twenty-four passengers, seven hours' fuel, and five thousand
pounds of sand as a make-weight. Some idea of its huge size can be had
when it is realised that its tail unit alone is as large as a modern
single-seater scout.
At Hendon I had assisted in dragging the first twin-engined
Handley-Page, at midnight and with the greatest secrecy, through the
streets leading from the works at Cricklewood to the aerodrome. The
procession was headed by an army of men removing obstructing lamp-posts
and cutting off overhanging branches, followed by a motor-lorry with
two acetylene flares, and then sixty men hauling the machine along by
ropes. At the time I thought she was a very big machine. But in the
sheds at Felixstowe I found boats of equal size and horse-power and
greater speed, and boats that were even larger.
There was the boat called the _Porte Baby_, a bigger machine than any
built and flown in this country until 1918, and this boat was produced
in 1915 and flown in 1916. Although it did little useful active service
work, it set other designers to thinking, and was the father and mother
of all big British aeroplanes and seaplanes. When fully loaded it
weighed about eight and a half tons, but no scales big enough to weigh
it were obtainable in the service.
It was so large that a Bristol Bullet land scout was fitted on the
top plane, which, while the boat was in the air, was successfully
launched and flown back to an aerodrome by Flight Lieutenant Day, of
the seaplane carrier _Vindex_. This gallant officer unfortunately was
killed later in France.
Well on in 1917 sundry young pilots took the _Porte Baby_ out for a
joy-ride, and presently found themselves off the Belgian coast being
attacked by a Hun land-machine and two fighter seaplanes. Two out of
the three engines were shot about and the big boat had to come down on
the water. The Huns circled around firing at it until their ammunition
was exhausted, and then returned joyously to Zeebrugge to report the
total destruction of a giant flying-boat.
But while the tracer bullets were playing about, the crew were lying
down in the bottom of the boat watching the splinters fly. When the
Huns departed the crew repaired the engines, started them up, and all
night long taxied on the water across the North Sea. The much-chastened
pilots beached the boat, in the small hours of the morning, on the
coast of England, near Orfordness. A sentry, believing, as he explained
later, that at last an invasion of England by Zeppelin was being
attempted, fired on them, but was eventually pacified. The crew arrived
at the station very tired, very black, one of their number with a
bullet hole in him, but cheerful.
When the _Porte Baby_ was finally dismantled, her hull was placed in
the grounds of a woman's hostel, a door was cut in the side, electric
light laid on, and four Wren motor-drivers found sufficient room inside
to sling their hammocks, stow clothing, and room even for mirrors and
powder puffs.
After sculling about in the sheds for some time, I finally climbed to
the look-out on top of Number One Shed.
Here I surveyed for the first time the mottled, misty, treacherous
North Sea. In a southeasterly direction and some ninety miles away
was the Belgian coast, with the German submarine and seaplane bases
at Zeebrugge and Ostend. Some hundred and eighty miles away, in a
north-easterly direction, was Terschelling Island, and just around the
corner of this island was the Bight of Heligoland. On a shoal, half-way
on a line between Felixstowe and the Hook of Holland, fifty-two sea
miles from either place and the same distance from Zeebrugge, was the
red rusty North Hinder light-vessel belonging to the Dutch, with a
large lantern on its one stout steel mast, and its name painted in huge
white letters along its sides. This light-vessel was to play a large
part in the bombing of submarines.
IV.
After some days at Felixstowe, feeling rather like a lost dog, as no
work had been given me to do, and always expecting some demonstration
to be made against the German submarines, I was much disappointed to
find that nothing seemed to be done.
Indeed, I got exceedingly mouldy, so mouldy that I broke out in verses
for 'The Wing,' the station magazine. They were a lament for the old
land hack I had left behind at Hendon--a scandalous biplane, which had
been rebuilt so often that nobody could tell the breed. Her fabric was
so ancient that on the last time I had flown her the covering on the
top side of the centre section had blown off. The verses ran:--
TO MY OLD BUS.
To Number One she's ullage and he's ordered her deletion,
For the grease and dirt are ingrained, and she isn't smart as paint,
And the flat-foot X-Y-Chaser helped by calling her a horror--
Although she's sweet to handle, which some experts' buses ain't.
I've tumbled split-all endwise in her from a bank of vapour,
And surprised a little rainbow lying sleeping in a cloud;
I did my first loop in her, and I've crashed her and rebuilt her,
And robbed her spares from other planes, which strictly ain't allowed.
At evening, just at sunset, I have climbed into her cockpit,
And gone roaring up an air lane till I've caught the sun again,
And feeling most important at my private view of glory,
Have watched him set splendacious with his pink and golden train.
Her crash form's all in order, and they'll strip, saw, break, and
burn her,
And I'm sorry more than I can say to know she has to go;
For blue, depressed, fed-up, or sore, I'd but to climb aboard her
To leave my pack of mouldy troubles far away below.
The patrol work of the station was rather at a low ebb at this time
through various causes. With the machines available much good work
had been done in the previous years, but the first five big twin
engine-boats to be erected and tested, together with many good pilots
and engineers, had just boomed off for the Scilly Islands, leaving
a rather large hole in the station resources. Weather conditions
also were not very good. There was no organisation in existence for
carrying out intensive anti-submarine patrol, and there appeared to be
no signs of that passionate energy by which alone, in all branches of
anti-submarine work, the knavish tricks of the U-boat were frustrated.
A great deal of the energy of the station was taken up in experimental
work and the erection of flying-boats, of which forty in all were
assembled, fitted out, and tested during the year.
The engines of the only two boats available for patrol, Nos. 8661 and
8663, were run and tested every morning before daybreak, but after
volunteering many times to get up and run the engines, I found that
the boats never went out. There was a feeling among the majority of
the pilots at this time that there was little use in patrols from
Felixstowe, as from the beginning of the war only two enemy submarines
had been sighted by pilots on patrol from the station. This lack of
success was not due to patrols not having been done, although intensive
work had never been carried out owing to the lack of suitable machines,
but was due to the few submarines that had been navigating about.
But now the enemy submarines were freely and copiously navigating the
narrow seas, and the Zeppelins were nonchalantly parading in daylight
outside the Bight of Heligoland.
Commander Porte, owing to various causes, was absent from Felixstowe
for long periods throughout this year, although fortunately his advice
and experience were available for operations. Number One, who was in
charge in the absence of Commander Porte, was not a flying officer, but
he appreciated the situation, saw the Senior Naval Officer, Harwich,
under whose command the operations came, and obtained a tremendous
concession from him. This was, that Felixstowe was given permission to
carry out anti-submarine patrol on its own, providing that he approved
of the general scheme and was kept informed of the movements of
machines.
Our S.N.O. was unlike some other Senior Naval Officers under whose
command for operations there were float seaplanes and boats. For
some of them did not know the technical and weather limitations,
and therefore frequently ordered impossibilities, and when failure
resulted, damned the machines and personnel of the Royal Naval Air
Service; on the other hand they would not allow possible operations to
be carried out which they had not originated themselves.
In sketching out the campaign from Felixstowe against the U-boats, it
was decided that the only sure method of protecting shipping was to
damage or destroy submarines, and that all other methods were merely
palliative. It was considered that ships proceeding in the shipping
lane, which was close to the coast of England and protected by shallow
mine-fields and surface patrol craft, were well looked after, and that
enemy submarines, if operating in these busy waters, would be so on the
alert and keep such a good look-out that the flying-boats would not be
given a chance; for submarines cannot be seen from the air when once
below the surface of the North Sea. It was therefore decided to expend
all available flying time where submarines were to be found on the
surface, and that the efficiency of the patrols would not be decided
by the number of flying hours put in, but by the number of submarines
sighted and bombed.
The Hun submarines streaming down through the southern portion of the
North Sea were of the U-B, U-C, and U types--the smallest 90 feet
in length and the largest 225 feet long. They were mine-layers and
commerce destroyers, and their commanders travelled on the surface
through the Felixstowe area, because the distance they could go under
water was only about seventy-five miles, and they could only run
submerged at eight knots for two hours before exhausting their electric
batteries. And low speeds--say of two knots, which the submarine could
keep up for forty-eight hours when submerged--were of no value to an
impatient Fritz anxious to get to his hunting-ground. And this was
important, as the hundred-mile stretch of water between England and
Holland is very shallow, and consequently muddy, and presents a brown
and dirty green mottled surface opaque to the eye of the observer in
the air.
The exact position of the German submarines was obtained from time to
time; for when their commanders reported to Germany by wireless--which
they usually did when homeward bound after making up through the
Straits of Dover safely, although sometimes they reported when
south-bound--the signal betrayed their position. The wireless messages
were picked up by two direction-finding wireless stations in England,
each station obtaining a bearing of the U-boat that was sending. When
the two bearings obtained in this way were plotted out on the chart
they crossed, and where they crossed there the U-boat had been. This
was known as a wireless fix.
[Illustration: Felixstowe Patrol Area with Spider Web Patrol, showing
submarines sighted and bombed, and the wireless fixes for four
months.]
The wireless fixes of the submarines showed that they were passing in
the vicinity of the North Hinder light-vessel; so a method of carrying
out the search was devised, and this was called the Spider Web.
This tremendous spider web was sixty miles in diameter. It allowed
for the searching of four thousand square miles of sea, and was right
across the path of the submarines. A submarine ten miles outside of it
was in danger of being spotted, so at cruising speed it took ten hours
for a U-boat to cross it. Under ordinary conditions a boat could search
two sectors--that is, a quarter of the whole web--in five hours or
less. The tables were turned on Fritz the hunter; for here he was the
hunted, the quarry, the fly that had to pass through some part of the
web. The flying-boat was the spider.
The Spider Web Patrol was based on the North Hinder light-vessel,
which was used as a centre point, and allowed for a thorough searching
of the sea in a forty-mile radius. It was an octagonal figure with
eight radial arms thirty sea-miles in length, and with three sets of
circumferential lines joining the arms ten, twenty, and thirty miles
out from the centre. Eight sectors were thus provided for patrol, and
all kinds of combinations could be worked out. As the circumferential
lines were ten miles apart, each section of a sector was searched twice
on any patrol when there was good visibility.
A chart was kept showing the positions, dates, and times of day that
submarines were fixed by wireless, and it was from this chart that the
sectors which would pay for searching were determined.
The pilots were to boom out from Felixstowe to the North Hinder, a
distance of fifty-two sea-miles, fly out a radial arm as instructed,
and then proceed along the patrol lines in the sectors to be searched,
sweeping from the outside to the centre, returning to the North Hinder
and so to the base.
Navigation over the sea, where one square mile of water looks exactly
like every other square mile, is more difficult than finding the way
over land. The only fixed objects by which a pilot can check his
calculated position are light-vessels and buoys, but in war-time these
are shifted about, and there are large areas without any such marks.
The difficulty of navigation is due to the fact that unless there is
absolutely no wind, the compass, after the corrections for variation
and deviation are made, only shows the direction in which the head
of the flying-boat is pointing and not the direction in which it is
travelling, and the air-speed indicator only gives the speed of the
machine in relation to the air.
For an aircraft is completely immersed in the air, so that besides its
movement in relation to the air caused by its own mechanism, it moves
with the air over the surface of the earth, the speed and path of the
machine being the result of the two movements.
If the pilot of a flying-boat had to go to a light-ship sixty miles
due east from his station when a twenty-knot wind was blowing from the
north, and he flew at sixty knots due east by his compass, at the end
of an hour he would not fetch up at his object, but twenty miles to the
south of it. If, instead of flying on 90 degrees, which is east, he
flew on 71 degrees on his compass, he would fetch up at the light-ship
in sixty-three minutes, having travelled due east over the surface of
the sea. To a man in a ship he would appear to be flying sideways.
Similarly, if a pilot flew into a sixty-knot wind with his air-speed
indicator showing sixty knots, he would not be moving over the surface
of the sea, and to the man in the ship he would appear to be standing
still.
The Chaplain of the station, the Rev. W. G. Litchfield, produced for
us a simple table with which the pilot, knowing approximately the
force and direction of the wind, could quickly work out the compass
correction for drift and the time correction for the air-speed
indicator.
The patrols were to be carried out at the height of a thousand feet,
because at this height silhouettes of the submarines and surface craft
could best be seen, the run of the wind on the water could be spotted
and its direction and force determined, and it was easy to drop down to
eight hundred or six hundred feet to bomb a Fritz.
Being now ready to start, and being given the sounding title of
Commanding Officer War Flight, I had No. 2 shed, the two boats 8661 and
8663, and an insufficient number of men turned over to me.
There was no intelligence hut, no flying office, no telephone in the
shed, no pigeons; and Billiken Hobbs, who was the only pilot at this
time turned over to the flight, had never seen an enemy submarine. And
I was in like case myself; besides which, I had never flown one of the
big twin-engined boats.
On the afternoon of April 12 all arrangements had been made.
[Illustration]