LIKE A FAIRY TALE.
I.
The first eighteen days of the life of the War Flight was like a fairy
tale, for the pilots, booming out on the Spider Web in the wet triangle
formed by the Shipwash light-vessel, the Haaks light-ship, and the
Schouen Bank light-buoy, sighted eight enemy submarines and bombed
three, one of the patrols ran into four Hun destroyers and was heavily
shelled, and one boat was lost at sea, although all members of the crew
were saved.
On the morning of April 13 we carried out the first patrol of the
series, patrols which were to make the southern portion of the North
Sea unhealthy for Fritz to travel through on his unlawful occasions.
I had hot-stuffed a big brass ship's bell from the Old Station, put up
a neat white gibbet to carry it in No. 2 shed, polished it, hung it
up, and fitted to its clapper a neatly grafted bell lanyard finished
off with a Turk's-head knot. At ten o'clock on this day, a day with an
overcast sky and a twenty-knot westerly wind blowing, I sounded off
five sharp taps on the bell, the signal for patrol. The chiefs of the
engineer, carpenter, and working parties reported for instructions, and
the working party fell in ready to move machines.
Trim, clean, grey, and rigged true, and just tipping the scales at four
and a half tons, No. 8661 stood on her wheeled land trolley just inside
the shed. She was a fine machine, measuring ninety-six feet from wing
tip to wing tip, and had such a long and honourable life, doing three
hundred hours of patrol work, and three hundred and sixty-eight hours
flying in all, that she was affectionately known to all the pilots
as _Old '61_. Her 42-foot wooden hull, covered with canvas above the
water-line, was flat-bottomed and had a hydroplane step, which lifted
her on top of the water when she was getting off, and so enabled her to
obtain a speed at which the wings had sufficient lift to pick her up
into the air.
She carried six and a half hours' fuel at a cruising speed of sixty
knots, her top speed being eighty. A knot is a speed of one nautical
mile an hour, and a nautical mile is 800 feet longer than a statute or
land mile, so that full out she could do ninety-two land miles an hour.
The working party of twenty men gathered around _Old '61_ and rolled
her out of the shed to the concrete area. Here they chocked her up
under the bow and tail with trestles in order to prevent her standing
on her nose when the engines were tested. Two engineers climbed up to
each engine and started them. After they had been run slowly for about
fifteen minutes in order to warm up the oil, they were opened out until
they were giving their full revolutions, the tremendous power shaking
the whole structure of the boat.
In the meantime the armourers' party had fitted on the four Lewis
machine-guns and had tucked up into place under the wing roots, two on
each side of the hull, the four one hundred pound bombs. The bombs were
fitted with a delay action fuse which detonated them about two seconds
after they hit the water or a submarine. If they hit the water they
would detonate when from sixty to eighty feet below the surface.
[Illustration: 5-ton Flying-boat.]
Bombs detonated near a submarine might merely shake her, fuse cut-outs
and extinguish electric lights, which was very bad for the moral of the
Hun crew and lowered their efficiency. Or they might cause a leak, say
by buckling a hatch, which the pumps could not keep under; or puncture
the external oil-tanks, which would cause a large loss of oil fuel;
or the periscope bases might be shaken or damaged; or the hydroplanes
might be forced hard up or hard down, making them difficult to work
and causing the boat to get out of control. All of which things would
make the commander of the submarine return to port and so save merchant
shipping. Or such serious damage might be caused that the submarine
would immediately sink. Direct hits usually destroyed a submarine. In
the early part of the war a U-boat was sunk by the direct hit of a
sixteen-pound bomb.
When the boat was ready we climbed on board. Billiken Hobbs was the
First Pilot, I was the Second Pilot, and there were the wireless
operator and the engineer.
Master of seven hundred roaring horse-power, responsible for all things
connected with the operation of the boat, and having to make instant
and correct decisions as to the nationality of submarines seen at
strange angles and oddly foreshortened, the first pilot of a flying
boat had to be a very fine fellow indeed. He was the captain, and took
the boat off the harbour and brought her in again, flew her on the
hunting-ground and in an air fight, and saw that the remainder of the
crew knew and did their duty.
From the repairing of the boats and the handling of them on shore,
to the dropping of a bomb on a submarine, it was not a sport but a
business, a business that had to be learned, and the making of a good
first pilot was a longer task than the making of a land machine pilot.
Good first pilots were few, and when found were usually worked until
they cracked under the strain. For the stress due to steering careful
compass courses for hours is considerable, the effort of keeping a
constant and efficient look-out is very tiring, and the early boats
were either tail heavy or nose heavy, which threw a strain on the heart
of the pilot. Canadians seemed to be best fitted for flying-boat work,
and probably as high a proportion as three-fourths of the good boat
pilots came from that dominion.
Billiken took his seat in a little padded arm-chair on the right-hand
side of the control cockpit, a cockpit which ran across the full
width of the boat some distance back from the nose. He was covered in
by a transparent wheel-house so that he did not have to wear goggles,
an important point in submarine hunting, as goggles interfere with
efficient observation.
Before him on the instrument board was the compass, the air-speed
indicator, the altimeter which showed the height above the sea, a
bubble cross level which indicated if the boat was correctly balanced
laterally, the inclinometer which gave the fore-and-aft angle at which
the boat was flying, the oil-pressure gauges, and the engine revolution
counters. Close to his hand were the engine switches and the throttle
control levers. Immediately in front of him was an eighteen-inch wheel,
like the wheel of a motor-car, but carried vertically upright on a
wooden yoke, with which he controlled the boat when in the air. He
worked the steering rudder with his feet.
As Second Pilot I stood beside Billiken. If a submarine was sighted I
ducked forward into the cockpit in the very nose of the boat, where
I had my machine-gun, bomb sight, and the levers which released the
bombs. In a little handbook, got out by a very wily first pilot for the
benefit of second pilots, a few of the hints as to their duties are as
follows:--
"Commence your watch-keeping at once and report to your first pilot
buoys, lightships, wrecks, or other objects which may enable him to
establish his position. Don't take it for granted that he has seen
anything that you have seen until you have pointed it out.
"Observe above, below, around, in front, and behind.
"You must be prepared to give your position to your first pilot or
wireless operator without hesitation at any moment throughout the
patrol. Make a small pencil circle on your track on the chart every
fifteen miles or so and at every alteration in course, writing the time
against this mark.
"When dropping bombs remember they will only function if fused.
"If a crash is inevitable, and you can save anything, four things
should take precedence--pigeons, emergency rations, Very's lights, and
the Red Cross outfit.
"Learn how to tie a bowline. This is the simplest, quickest, and most
reliable knot for making fast your machine to a towline. Learn other
knots too.
"Study the methods of handling machines on the slipway, both going out
and coming in. You may be in charge of this operation some day, and the
responsibility will be yours.
"In short, make this the MORAL:
"Know the boat and all that therein and thereon is, thoroughly, and
its capabilities and efficiencies, if you wish to become not only a
good pilot, but capable of command. This information is acquired from
time spent in the sheds and not from time spent reclining on wardroom
settees."
The wireless operator had climbed into his place and sat facing forward
on the right-hand side of the boat immediately behind Billiken. He
had his wireless cabinet, containing his instruments, before him, and
could send and receive for a distance of from eighty to a hundred
miles. He coded and de-coded all signals. The code-book had weighted
covers, so that if the boat were captured by the enemy it would sink
immediately when thrown overboard. He had an Aldis signalling-lamp for
communicating with ships and other flying-boats. He also looked after
the Red Cross box, which contained a tourniquet, first-aid kit, the
sandwiches for immediate needs, the emergency rations for five days,
and the carrier-pigeons.
The engineer was in his cockpit in the middle of the boat, surrounded
by the petrol-tanks, a maze of piping, and innumerable gadgets. His
duties were to keep an eye on the engines, see that the water in the
radiators did not boil, and take care of the petrol system.
Two wind-driven pumps forced the petrol up from the main tanks to a
small tank in the top plane. The engines were fed from the top tank by
gravity, and the surplus petrol pumped up ran back to the main tanks.
The engineer regulated the flow so that the petrol was drawn from and
overflowed back into the main tanks in such a way that the fore-and-aft
balance of the boat was maintained. If anything went wrong with an
engine he had to climb out on the wing and, if possible, make a repair.
Once a flying-boat attacked a submarine from a low altitude and was
met by machine-gun fire. A bullet drilled a hole in a radiator, and
the water began to run out. Also the first two bombs dropped missed
the submarine. The engineer quickly climbed out on the wing and put
a plug in the hole, and held it there, while the pilot took the boat
over the submarine again, and destroyed it with the second two bombs.
The engineer held the plug in place until the boat landed in the home
harbour.
All four members of the crew were now in their places. The working
party attached a stout line to the rear of the trolley, knocked away
the chocks, and rolled the boat out on the slipway to where it began
to slope down into the water. Here six waders, in waterproof breeches
coming up to their armpits, and weighted boots to give them a secure
foothold when the tide was running, took charge, and steered the boat
down into the water, the working party easing her down by tailing on
the line.
A wader has not got a soft job. At some stations where there is a
strong tide running waders have been washed off the slipways and
drowned.
As the flying-boat entered the water the trolley, being heavy, remained
on the slipway, and the boat floated off. The thrust of the engines
urged her forward, and she taxied clear. Hobbs taxied out into the
harbour, turned up into the wind, and opened the engines full out.
Driven by seven hundred tearing horse-power, the boat ran along the
water with ever-increasing speed, a big white wave bursting into spray
beneath her bow. As the speed increased, the boat was lifted on top of
the water by her hydroplane step until she was skimming lightly over
the surface. The air speed-indicator was registering thirty-five knots.
Then Hobbs pulled back the control wheel, and the boat leaped into the
air, the air speed jumping to sixty knots. Climbing in a straight line
until he was at a thousand feet, he turned the bow of the boat out to
sea.
As much doubt had been expressed about the practicability of flying the
Spider Web Patrol, owing to the great number of changes in course and
the absence of lightships and buoys, it was decided to do the patrol
without any windage allowance. We made the North Hinder light-vessel
dead on, and then started on the Web. Finally, as the wind was
westerly, we fetched up on the Dutch coast, the low white sandhills of
which I now saw for the first time. Coming back against a head-wind, it
took so long that I thought at first that somebody had moved England,
and being very tired, I lay down in the bottom of the boat and had a
sleep.
I was awakened when we were in sight of the Shipwash light-vessel--a
vessel with a single black ball as a day mark carried at the mast head.
She was eighteen sea miles from Felixstowe, four miles off the route
from the North Hinder, and many a pilot, bathed in perspiration with
the stress of handling his boat in bad weather, or coming in out of the
North Sea against a head wind with nearly empty tanks, has been cheered
by the sight of the short dumpy boat champing at its anchor chains.
We saw no submarines on this patrol, but it proved that there was no
difficulty in flying the Spider Web under ordinary conditions.
II.
After the first patrol had been carried out four more pilots
volunteered for the War Flight, and two patrols were carried out on
April 15th. It was on the fourth patrol, on the 16th, that Billiken
Hobbs, booming along in the Web at the thousand foot level in _Old
'61_, sighted the first enemy submarine.
The commander of this U-boat was gaily navigating along on the surface,
fully blown, at a position twenty miles north-east of the North Hinder.
He was feeling quite at ease, for the visibility was good and the
surface of the sea was clear; he was too far out to be molested by
trawlers, and if destroyers hove in sight he could dive to a depth of
45 feet in ninety seconds. The hull of his boat was painted grey and
the decks black, making it very difficult to see.
Had he been expecting trouble he would have been running awash--that
is, with the conning-tower alone showing above water, and with one
electric motor and one Diesel-engine going. He could then have done a
"crash" dive in about thirty seconds, going under with hydroplanes hard
down, full weigh on, and taking in water ballast.
But he did not know about the flying-boats or the Spider Web.
He was standing in the conning-tower beside the look-out man. He may
have been thinking of his sweetheart at home, or the faces of the men
and women he had drowned, but he certainly was not keeping a good
look-out. For he suddenly saw a black shape like a great crow in the
distance, and immediately afterwards a long grey boat, fitted with
wings, passed immediately over him.
When the crew of the flying-boat first sighted the submarine the second
pilot fired two recognition signals, and as no answer was made Billiken
decided it was a Fritz. He took the flying-boat across it at the height
of eight hundred feet, but the second pilot in the front cockpit, not
having been trained in bomb dropping, failed to release the bombs.
Swinging the boat round in a split-all bank he again passed over, but
again the second pilot failed to pull the release levers, pulling
instead at the bowden wires, which came away from their fastenings.
Recovering from his astonishment, the Commander of the submarine
realised that the flying-boat was there with no very friendly
intentions, and tapped the look-out man beside him on the shoulder,
at which signal the latter dropped through the hatchway in the
conning-tower down into the boat. The Commander then pressed a button
which rang the alarm bells below, and the men at the hydroplane wheels
and ballast cocks caused the boat to dive.
As she began to submerge he shut down the hatch of the conning-tower
and the submarine slowly vanished from the sight of the infuriated
Billiken.
The second pilot, poor lad, was killed in a small float seaplane a
short time afterwards, by ramming a flying-boat with which he was
practising fighting, and so had no second chance at a submarine.
When the submarine was sighted the wireless operator had got off a
quick signal to the station, so when the first faint intermittent roar
of the twin engines of _Old '61_ could be heard, and she was seen as a
small black speck over the wreck of the Dutch steamer _Juliana_, mined
early in the war, the whole ship's company seemed to have found work
to do on the slipways and concrete area. Ten men were preventing each
other from coiling down a hawser, twenty men were noisily rolling empty
petrol barrels about, and innumerable men were shifting trolleys or
merely standing still and trying to look busy.
The sheds and the workshops were deserted.
As Billiken boomed in over the harbour and shut off his engines to
glide down, somebody on the slipway cried: "He's dropped his bombs."
And everybody cheered. And then a man with binoculars shouted: "He
hasn't dropped them," and thrust the glasses into the hand of the man
next to him so that he could verify it.
When the motor-boat had taken _Old '61_ in tow and tied her up to a
buoy, the crew were brought ashore. The two pilots were almost mobbed
by the officers, and the wireless operator and engineer were surrounded
by great groups of men to whom they told the tale. It was not very
long, however, before a flying-boat could come into the harbour after
bombing a submarine without anybody looking up from his work.
There was considerable excitement in the mess that night. Great
enthusiasm had seized everybody. They realised that there were
submarines outside and that they could be seen and bombed, and there
was a tremendous surge of pilots asking to join the War Flight. In all,
another eight pilots were taken on.
And then the gilt was put on the gingerbread, for on the eighth patrol
Monk Aplin presented a Fritz with four one hundred pound bombs. Fritz
saw the flying-boat coming and ducked, but the swirl where he had gone
down was still showing on the surface when the four heavy underwater
explosions occurred right across his probable path.
The success of the War Flight was now assured.
Eager young pilots waited on the padre to gather wisdom concerning
aerial navigation, and went about muttering strange things about
"variation, deviation, triangle of forces, and courses made good."
Uncle Partridge, the armament officer, was running a continuous
performance for their benefit entitled: "Bomb the Boche Boys, or
Frightfulness for Fritz." Spring-heel Jack Lyons, the wireless
merchant, whose shore aerial was a makeshift affair attached to a stick
on top of a shed, panicked for a proper wireless outfit. And C.C.
Carlisle, the Old Man of the Sea, approving of the activity, put some
ginger into the working party and the crews of the motor-boats.
The Old Man of the Sea, or Jumbo, as he was called, because of his
appearance and methods on the football field, was an institution on
the station. He was in charge of the working party which did all the
pulley-hauley work, and of the piratical crews of the motor-boats
who looked after the flying-boats when they were on the water of the
harbour. He had all sorts of fascinating model sheerlegs and derricks
for training his men, and on occasion headed the salvage crew or the
wrecking gang.
He was a merchant service officer who had spent thirteen years at sea,
part of the time fetching oil from Patagonia, and it was rumoured
that he had also fetched from that salubrious spot his picturesque
language. Some week-end trippers to Felixstowe, standing outside the
barbed wire enclosing the beach, after watching and hearing, with
eyes popping out and ears flapping, the unconscious Jumbo handling a
working party bringing in the _Porte Baby_, wrote an anonymous letter
to the Commanding Officer complaining of the earache, and adding, "it
was Sunday too." This effusion was signed "A Disgusted Visitor." It
was quite evident that the writer had never been with our armies in
Flanders.
When the War Flight was first started Jumbo had palmed off on me, being
new in the mess, all the halt, lame, and blind for a working party,
for he had a habit of secreting away all the best men for nefarious
jobs of his own. But after the first submarine was bombed his heart was
completely softened, and with a great wrench, and protesting that his
own work would never get done, he turned over to me one man who knew
his job.
III.
It was on the eleventh patrol carried out on the 23rd that I bombed my
first submarine.
On a pleasant morning, with a clear sky, a slight haze, and a 15-knot
wind blowing from the north-east--ideal weather conditions for
submarine hunting--Holmes and myself were shoved down the slipway in
_Old '61_ and took to the air at six o'clock. Thrusting out into the
North Sea on a course for the North Hinder, I steadied at the thousand
foot level and throttled back until we were doing an easy sixty knots.
Looking back inside the boat I saw the wireless operator doing a
pantomime of unwinding a reel, and I nodded to him, at which he began
to let down the aerial through the tube in the bottom of the boat. This
was a copper wire three hundred feet long with a weight attached to the
end.
If the boat was on the water this trailing aerial could of course not
be used, so a telescopic wooden mast was carried. The top of this mast
when it was set up was about thirty feet above the surface of the
water, and the aerial was led from the bow, tail, and ends of the upper
plane to the tip. With this aerial the operator could send and receive
for a distance of about thirty miles. Before these masts were carried
a boat came down at sea through engine trouble near a light-ship. The
first pilot made the flying-boat fast to the stern of the light-vessel
and the wireless operator led the aerial to its mast. In this way the
shore station was called up and a ship was sent out to tow in the
disabled boat.
[Illustration: Boat on Patrol. 230-lb. bomb showing on machine from
which photograph was taken.]
After passing over the well-known buoys at the approaches to the
harbour, we crossed a fleet of trawlers in the emergency war channel
busily engaged in the pleasing task of sweeping up enemy mines laid
the evening before by an optimistic Fritz from Zeebrugge. Fifteen
minutes later we had the Shipwash four miles on our port beam, and were
over the shipping channel which ran parallel with the coast. Here, as
far as the eye could see in either direction, was a thick stream of
cargo boats, of all shapes and sizes, ploughing along on their various
occasions, a striking example of the might of the British Mercantile
Marine.
My ears were now deadened to the noise of the engines, and I would not
hear them again unless something went wrong and the note changed. I
had got the feel of the controls and was flying automatically, and was
unconscious of being in the air. It was merely like rushing over a very
calm sea in a fast motor-boat, except for the absence of shocks and the
wide horizon.
Leaving the shipping channel behind we pushed on into the open sea.
Presently Holmes slapped me on the shoulder and pointed over the
starboard bow. Some seven miles away were four white waves rushing
across the surface of the water, apparently without any means of
propagation. Taking my hands from the control-wheel I made the signal
"wash-out," on recognising the bow-waves of four destroyers in line
ahead pushing through the water at top speed, although the low, slim,
grey ships were invisible, and of course no Huns would be playing about
in such dangerous parts.
The wireless operator came forward--for the crew of a flying-boat can
move about easily and change places if necessary--lifted the flap
in the side of my flying-cap, and shouted in my ear "Hun submarine
working. Heading towards her." All the four of us were now keeping a
keen look-out, my own method being to swing my head from side to side
with a slow steady motion, thoroughly searching the half-circle of the
horizon, keeping my eyes focussed for a distance of four miles, as this
was the average distance for sighting submarines, although they have
been sighted from a distance of fifteen miles.
And then I saw a black speck on the water dead ahead. Involuntarily I
shoved down the nose of the boat and opened out the engines. And then I
saw that it was the North Hinder. As we passed over her the Dutch flag
at her stern was politely dipped in salute. Changing course here we
boomed off towards the Schouen Bank buoy on the first arm of the Spider
Web.
Suddenly, with a nerve shock, a pleasant tingling which cannot be
described, I saw a submarine dead ahead, about five miles away, fully
blown, and running directly towards us. Slamming on the engines, and
pushing the controls forward so as to lose height and gain the maximum
speed quickly, I hurled the 4½-ton machine through the air towards the
submarine at a mile and a half a minute.
As our own submarines operated in this area I did not know whether it
was a Fritz, but fervently hoped it was.
I noticed that it was running at about six knots, in which case it was
probably a Hun travelling on one engine and charging the batteries
with the dynamo on the other. The submarine statement received from
the Naval authorities the evening before had not mentioned one of our
own submarines as working in this vicinity, but then submarines were a
law unto themselves as regards time and navigation, and had a habit of
appearing in the most unexpected places.
With the opening of the engines, the signal for action stations, the
engineer thrust himself up in the rear cockpit and seized the stern
guns in case hostile seaplanes had been sighted, the wireless operator
quickly wound in his trailing aerial to prevent it being carried away
if the boat came down near the water, and Holmes, who had seen the
submarine, ducked into the front cockpit. He snapped back the lever
which removed the safety device from the bombs and set the bomb-sight
for height, speed, and wind.
When a bomb is released it travels forward on the same line as the
machine, and, at first, at the same speed, but its speed forward
gradually diminishes owing to the resistance of the air. At the same
time it travels downwards owing to the force of gravity at an ever
increasing rate of speed. It thus reaches the surface of the sea just
after the machine has passed vertically over the spot. Therefore a bomb
is released some time before the machine is vertically over the target,
and this time is determined by the speed of the machine over the sea,
the height at which it is flying, and the size, shape, and weight of
the bomb. All these factors are worked out on the bomb-sight, and the
bomb-dropper has only to pull the release-lever when two projections on
the sight and the target are in line.
Holmes, in the front cockpit, looking over the sight and with his hand
on the release-lever, waited.
The broad white wake behind the submarine began to diminish in length
and width. The deck disappeared beneath a tumble of broken water. The
conning-tower alone showed. And then the submarine dived.
It had all the air of performing a clever sleight-of-hand trick, and
vanished with such lazy insolence that, arriving over the place where
it had gone down one minute too late, our hearts were filled with
astonishment and anger.
There was nothing to be done. "See you later," we said, and carried on,
for we knew that the Spider Web would bring us back again to the same
place, and we reasoned that the Commander of the submarine would say,
"Here she comes, and there she goes," and would come to the surface
shortly. There was no use waiting around the vicinity, for before Fritz
came up he would search the air with a "sky-scraping" periscope, a
periscope with the lenses so arranged that the whole arc of the heavens
could be viewed.
Pushing on we sighted the Schouen Bank buoy in the distance through
binoculars, and turned north up the Dutch coast. On the next two
legs of the patrol, more or less parallel with the shore, we broke
out the package of sandwiches and broached the thermos flask, taking
this opportunity of having a drop of early lunch. Then after steering
various courses as requisite, we again approached the position where
the submarine had been first sighted.
She was sighted again three miles on the port bow, fully blown, her
engines stopped, and the crew on deck enjoying a breath of fresh air.
But now we were near enough to recognise her as of the U-B class, from
the one gun mounted close before the conning-tower, the deck sloping
down aft to the stern where it was awash, and the net-cutter mounted
above the stem.
As we burst on towards the U-boat full out at a height of six hundred
feet we could see puffs of smoke coming from the conning-tower. The
crew were firing at us with a pom-pom.
And then I lost sight of the submarine.
But Holmes in the front cockpit, with his view unobstructed by the hull
of the boat, could still see the submarine and guided me by hand signal.
Keeping my eyes in the boat, watching the cross level to keep on an
even keel, the air-speed indicator to keep to a steady speed, and the
eloquent hand--for under these circumstances the hand almost seems to
talk--to make small adjustments in the course, I waited. For, to do
good bomb-dropping the boat must pass on a line vertically over the
submarine, on an even keel, and at a constant speed.
As the sights came on Holmes pulled the release-lever, which dropped
all the bombs in quick succession, threw up his arm to show that he
had done so, and then, leaning far over the side, saw the four bombs
travelling forward and downward and burst on a line diagonally across
the submarine.
When the dunt of the first explosion shook the flying-boat I heaved her
over on one wing-tip, so that I could look down and back, and saw a
line of foam completely across the submarine, so closely had the bombs
fallen together. And then, getting into a side slip, I had to attend to
my flying duties. The engineer saw the submarine heel over to port and
disappear with men still on the conning-tower.
At ten o'clock I landed _Old '61_ on the harbour, and not knowing
whether the submarine had been sunk or only damaged, I immediately
sent out another boat. An hour later, piloted by Billiken, I again
pushed out on patrol, but returned without having seen any signs of the
U-boat, having put in during the day nine hours and fifteen minutes in
the air.
IV.
The quality of the dental platinum, requisitioned from the dentists to
make points for the magnetos, brought the first boat down at sea on the
eleventh patrol. This platinum, specially prepared for dental work, was
not up to the job, and Jimmy Bath and Tiny Galpin had to come to the
water forty-five miles out from land. They were found by a destroyer
and towed in.
John O. Galpin--known as Tiny, because of his comfortable
proportions--was, as he said himself, followed by a hoodoo. He held at
this time the record for the greatest number of engine failures out at
sea in float seaplanes, and was quite hardened to spending the night
adrift.
At this time, if he got up early in the morning on a fine day to go out
on patrol, while he was having breakfast it would rain. If it did not
rain, the engines would refuse to start. If the engines started, he
would be delayed in getting away by finding there was no petrol in the
tanks. If he got away, he would get to the point in his patrol farthest
from shore and have engine failure. If he was picked up by a destroyer,
there would be a collision and his machine would be sunk. And if none
of these things happened to him, and he arrived home safely by air, all
the submarines had been navigating in other waters.
He describes the state of affairs in 'The Wing' as follows:--
CHEERIOH!
The Seaplane is my Hoodoo,
I shall not fly another,
It maketh me to come down on rough waters,
It spoileth my reputation.
Though I fly from the harbour
It returneth by towing.
Its Magneto discomforts me.
Its tank runneth over.
Its rods and its engines fail me.
Yea, even by mechanics is my name held in laughter.
Though I strive to overcome them
Its weaknesses prevail.
In the hour of my need its engines mock me
And bring me down with great bumpings,
And there is no health in it.
Verily, verily, if I continue to fly these things
I shall end by drowning;
For my friends they desert me
And call me a Jonah.
My luck smelleth to Heaven
And I am disheartened,
Therefore shall I turn my hand elsewhere
And become a Tram Driver.
For again I say unto you, that of all Pilots
I am the most unlucky,
Yea, d----d unlucky.
So distressed was he over his bad luck, and so sad was it to see one
built for mirth so melancholy, that a small silk bag was made, a pebble
from the beach put in it, and he was presented with this mascot, which
he was told had come from Egypt. So great is the power of suggestion,
that from that moment the hoodoo vanished. So gay did he become that on
Guest Nights, after making one speech he would make another, and would
make half a dozen more unless forcibly restrained.
Four Hun destroyers, after bursting out into the North Sea from
Zeebrugge on the 30th of April, were on their way back when they were
overhauled by Lofty Martin and Holmes in _Old '61_, about ten miles
south-east of the North Hinder.
The North Sea was shrouded in mist, so at first the pilots saw only
two broad white wakes. Then they made out through the haze two large
destroyers steering on the same course as the flying-boat, and running
at a speed of about twenty knots. They did not know at this time that
they were Huns. Rapidly coming up with the destroyers from the stern,
they were half a mile away when they were challenged with a green
light, a single ball of fire shot up into the air, lighting up the mist
with a sickly glare. The wireless operator in the boat replied with the
proper recognition lights for the day.
The lather of foam beneath the bows of the destroyers increased, and
the white tumbling wakes tailed out, as the engines of the destroyers
were whacked up and the slim long ships thundered along at thirty
knots. But the flying-boat was booming through the air at a good
eighty, travelling two and a half miles to their one, and overhauled
them as though they had been nailed to the water.
Immediately spurts of fire, followed by little black balls which opened
out into nasty brown clouds, appeared in front of the flying-boat, and
the pilots found themselves in the centre of a barrage of bursting
shells.
Banking sharply to the right, Martin saw two more destroyers about
a mile away, firing at him, ranged by the first two destroyers. He
drew out of range and tried to get into wireless communication with
Felixstowe, but failing, he returned to make an oral report.
Billiken and myself started out immediately to look for the destroyers.
We saw no destroyers, but came upon a submarine of the U-C type
twenty-five miles south-east of the North Hinder. She was just going
under when we arrived. As she dived she made a sharp turn to port, and,
as the bombs had been dropped a little short, she turned right under
them. She could still be seen when the bombs detonated, apparently all
around her.
So pleased were we with this little show that we steered a south-east
course instead of a north-east course, fetching up at Margate instead
of Felixstowe, and had to toddle up the coast to Harwich, where we
arrived just in nice time for luncheon.
There was a great shortage of bombs about this time, for the number
of bombs that had been dropped had depleted our store. There were
only enough bombs left to arm one boat, so that each time a boat came
in from patrol the bombs were taken off and put on the next boat
going out. Uncle Pat, the armament officer, went about praying that a
submarine would not be sighted.
It has been said that the Admiralty up to this time had rated bombs
supplied to seaplane stations as "non-expendable stores," and that
the officer in charge of the Main Bomb Stores, when notified of the
shortage, had replied: "Impossible! Felixstowe? Why, I supplied you
with sixteen bombs two years ago."
When I first arrived on the station, Uncle Pat confided in me that he
had just ordered a 1½-horse-power electric motor to run his lathe, for
which his soul thirsted. From time to time, as the months went by,
he would draw me into a corner and tell me of his latest move--for
he was a past-master in the art of intrigue--whereby the motor was
to arrive from London by the very next train. And then one day there
was great excitement: he had word that the motor was actually on the
rail. Finally, some considerable time later, a square box arrived
at the Stores, and upon the lid being removed a beautiful new grey
1½-horse-power electric motor, with pulley-wheel complete, was revealed.
But by this time Pat had left the station.
And now we lost the first boat at sea. Poor _8659_, just handed over to
the War Flight, was destined never to grow up and follow in the slip
stream of _Old '61_. She was lost on her first patrol.
Monk Aplin and Rees had pushed off at six o'clock in the morning to
look in the Spider Web, and should have been back in harbour at eleven
o'clock. But they did not return. Wireless signals sent out to them
were not answered.
The strain of sending out long patrols and waiting for the pilots
to come back is almost greater than flying on them. I stood on the
slipway with an ear cocked to catch the first faint beat of the engines.
I ran over in my mind all the possibilities.
Petrol: yes, the tanks had been filled. Engines: perhaps it would
have been better to have changed the spark plugs in the port engine
as the revolutions had not been quite good enough. Controls: they
had just been overhauled, but the aileron control-wire, with the two
broken strands at the fairlead, had not been renewed owing to press of
work. Hull: leaking slightly, but nothing to worry about even if the
boat came down at sea. Wind: the patrol was not too long for the wind
blowing. And so on, and so on.
I followed the boat round the Web in my mind and wondered where she had
come down and why, or whether she had run into a crowd of winged Huns.
I telephoned to the pigeon loft and warned them. A speedy messenger
was standing-by in the wireless hut, for at this time there was no
telephone. The look-out man on top of No. 1 Shed had answered my
questions in the same way many times. The seaplane and wireless
stations up and down the coast had been warned. And then I took a
piece of paper and worked out a little calculation like this--
32)215(6
192
--- 6 hours 40 minutes.
23
The engines used thirty-two gallons of petrol an hour and the boat
carried two hundred and fifteen gallons in her tanks. She could stay
in the air for six hours and forty minutes, and as she had left at six
o'clock she would have to come down at half-past twelve through lack of
fuel.
At twelve o'clock a little knot of anxious pilots were gathered on the
slipway. I ordered two boats to be got ready and turned to the chart
to work out probabilities and possibilities for the coming search. At
half-past twelve, as the requests for information up and down the coast
had drawn blank, two boats were boomed out to the Spider Web, and the
Senior Naval Officer, Harwich, was asked to notify all destroyers.
When The Monk was out on the Web eighty miles from Felixstowe one of
his engines began to give trouble. He turned for home, which he should
have reached in an hour and a half, but at the end of this time he
could see no land. As a matter of fact he was off his course and was
flying more or less parallel with the coast, but out of sight of it. He
shoved along, his failing engine gradually getting worse and worse, and
his petrol tanks becoming exhausted.
His main petrol tanks finally gave out and he flew on his gravity tank,
which contained sufficient petrol for forty minutes. He had just made
up his mind that he would have to land through lack of fuel when he
sighted a group of trawlers near the Haisboro' light-ship, and, on his
last teaspoonful of petrol, reached them. They were working over a
shoal. A thirty-knot wind was blowing, and a heavy breaking sea, with
steep crests, was running. As the boat touched the water it was thrown
into the air and came down again on one wing. The seas tore off a
wing-tip and a wing-tip float, and as the boat yawed, burst across her
in a smother of white foam.
A trawler came alongside, and the pilots shouted to the skipper and
asked for assistance. But the skipper, to their astonishment, bawled
through a megaphone--
"I won't rescue any d----d Huns."
And then the pilots remembered that two trawlers had been sunk a few
days before by a submarine. They shouted to the skipper that they were
English, but he replied--
"If you're English, give us a sight of the Union Jack."
Flying-boats do not carry a flag, but the skipper would not be
convinced. The fins of the boat had been damaged and the water was
pouring in. The bilge pump could not keep the leaks under. When the
boat was in a sinking condition The Monk thought of throwing across
his naval cap, and when the skipper had fished it out of the water and
examined it, he put a dingey out and took off the crew. An attempt was
made to salve the boat, but without success, and she was a total loss.
Aplin, known as The Monk, because of the way his hair grew, or rather,
did not grow, received a severe blow, when landing, on the identical
spot from which he took his nickname, and never flew on patrol again,
turning over to school work, at which he made a great success.
And so ended April and the first eighteen days of the War Flight.
[Illustration]