THE ROYAL FLYING CORPS
In November 1911 the Prime Minister requested the standing sub-committee
of the Committee of Imperial Defence, under the chairmanship of Lord
Haldane, to consider the future development of aerial navigation for
naval and military purposes, and the measures which might be taken to
secure to this country an efficient aerial service. Things had moved
fast since 1908, when a distinguished general had expounded to a similar
committee the futility of observation from the air. This time the
committee came to a quick decision, and recommended immediate action.
The chief of their recommendations were as follows:
The creation of a British Aeronautical Service, to be regarded as
one, and to be designated 'The Flying Corps'.
The Corps to consist of a Naval Wing, a Military Wing, and a
Central Flying School for the training of pilots.
The Flying Corps to be kept in the closest possible collaboration
with the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and with the Aircraft
Factory, so that the work of experiment and research should have
its due influence on practice.
A permanent consultative committee, named 'The Air Committee', to
be appointed, to deal with all aeronautical questions affecting
both the Admiralty and the War Office.
The preparation of a detailed scheme was delegated to a technical
sub-committee consisting of Colonel the Right Hon. J. E. B. Seely, as
chairman, Brigadier-General G. K. Scott-Moncrieff, Brigadier-General
David Henderson, Commander C. R. Samson, R.N., Lieutenant R. Gregory,
R.N., and Mr. Mervyn O'Gorman, with Rear-Admiral Sir C. L. Ottley and
Captain M. P. A. Hankey as secretaries. The deliberations of this body
were remarkable for agreement and dispatch; their report was ready by
the 27th of February 1912; it passed through its successive stages with
very few alterations, and was approved by the Committee of Imperial
Defence on the 25th of April.
The Royal Flying Corps was constituted by a Royal Warrant on the 13th of
April 1912; a special Army Order was issued two days later setting up
the necessary regulations, and on the 13th of May the old Air Battalion
and its reserve were finally absorbed by the new body.
The advantage of government by committee is that it obtains, by
successive stages, the sanction and support of the many for the plans
initiated by the few. Nothing was ever created by eight men. But eight
or more men, expert in various ways, can render invaluable service by
listening, criticizing, and befriending. The plans which were considered
and adopted by the technical sub-committee had been prepared in private
by a small informal body of three, that is to say, by Brigadier-General
David Henderson, Captain F. H. Sykes, and Major D. S. MacInnes.
Brigadier-General David Henderson had served at the battle of Khartoum
in 1898, and had distinguished himself in the South African War. He was
the author of a book on _The Art of Reconnaissance_, which ran through
several editions. His interest in reconnaissance, and his appreciation
of its importance in war, made him a friend to aviation. In 1911, at the
age of forty-nine, he had learned to fly at Brooklands, and thereafter,
as Director of Military Training at the War Office, did all in his
power to encourage the new movement. Captain Frederick Hugh Sykes was a
General Staff officer who had seen service in many lands. In the South
African War he served with the Imperial Yeomanry, and was severely
wounded. In 1901 he joined the 15th or King's Hussars, and for two years
was stationed in West Africa. Thereafter he was attached to the
Intelligence Department at Army Headquarters in India, passed the Staff
College, and in February 1911 became General Staff officer in the
Directorate of Military Operations under Brigadier-General Sir Henry
Wilson. It was in July and August 1904, while he was on leave from West
Africa, that he made his first acquaintance with the air. He obtained
permission to be attached to the balloon units training with the army on
Salisbury Plain; made many ascents, and went through the course and
examination at the Farnborough balloon school. Thenceforward he took
every possible opportunity to improve his knowledge of aeronautics. He
was quick to discern the significance of aviation. When, in 1910, he saw
flight in France, he recognized that the work of cavalry in distant
reconnaissance was dead and done with. During his time at the War Office
he spent the mornings, before breakfast, in learning to fly, and in June
1911 took his pilot's certificate on a Bristol biplane at Brooklands.
Within the office he insisted on the importance of military aeronautics,
and when the Committee of Imperial Defence took up the question he was
naturally chosen to serve on the committee which prepared a draft
organization. Associated with him was Major Duncan Sayre MacInnes, of
the Royal Engineers, who had been through the South African War, and at
the time of the formation of the Flying Corps was serving with the
Military Training Directorate. Only those who worked with him will ever
know how great a debt the Flying Corps owes to his industry and
devotion. During the war he was employed under the Directorate of
Military Aeronautics, and in 1916 was made Director of Aircraft
Equipment, with the rank of brigadier-general. He wore himself out in
the service of the country, and died in May 1918. These three men laid
the groundwork of the plans which were approved by the technical
sub-committee.
The record of the preliminary meetings of the sub-committee, and of the
evidence given by witnesses, is full of interest, and shows history in
the making. 'It has been suggested to me', said the chairman, 'that the
Royal Flying Corps is a better name than the Royal Air Corps.' And
again, when the name for the tactical unit of the force was under
consideration, and objection was taken to the words 'company' and
'group'--'Why not squadron?' said the chairman. It is the happiness of
the small technical sub-committee that the scheme which they approved
was equal to the strain of an unexampled war, and that the very names
which they chose are now engraved on the history of the nation.
The choice of the squadron, consisting of three flights of aeroplanes,
with four machines to a flight, as the unit of the new force was
judicious and far-sighted. In France the unit was the 'escadrille',
consisting of six machines, and roughly corresponding to what we call a
flight. This precedent was rejected. Not enough competent officers, it
was feared, were available to command a large number of small
independent units. On the other hand, if too large a unit had been
chosen, it would have been difficult to put the air service at the
disposal of the various army formations which might ask for assistance
from the air. The squadron, when it was created, was elastic and
manageable, and secured for the air force, as the war has proved, that
corporate spirit and that pride in history and tradition which are the
strength of the regimental system.
The deliberations of the sub-committee were conducted in a severely
practical spirit. Many of the constructive problems which came before
them still remain problems, and might have been debated, with much to be
said on both sides, till the conversion of the Jews; but the pressure of
time made itself ominously felt in all their proceedings. The country,
as a whole, was not awake to the German menace. The sudden appearance of
the German gunboat _Panther_ at Agadir in July 1911 ought, it may be
said, to have awakened it. But the average Englishman could hardly bring
himself to believe that a great European nation would seek war as a
duellist seeks a quarrel, from sensitive vanity and pride in his own
fighting skill. The army and the navy were quicker to discern the
reality of the threat. The military machine that was to supply the small
expeditionary force was working at high pressure, and the air was tense.
If Germany intended to make her bid for the mastery of Europe, it was
recognized that she had every reason for making it soon. 'All the heads
of departments', said the chairman, at a meeting in January 1912, 'are
very anxious to get on with this--Lord Haldane told me so last night,
Mr. Churchill told me so two or three days ago, and the Chancellor of
the Exchequer himself is anxious to see it done, and wisely: but what is
the best method to pursue in order to do in a week what is generally
done in a year?' 'At the present time in this country,' he said later,
'we have, as far as I know, of actual flying men in the Army about
eleven, and of actual flying men in the Navy about eight, and France has
about two hundred and sixty-three, so we are what you might call
behind.'
Moreover, the committee realized that an air service would be needed by
the army of Great Britain more than it is needed by the armies of
foreign powers. In a memorandum by the War Office, drawn up in the same
month of January 1912, it is pointed out that a British expeditionary
force might have to operate as a detached force, and that to such a
force information is all-important. The need for haste appears in many
of the recommendations of the committee. For the supply of trained
flyers to the army and the navy, and for the formation of a reserve, the
first necessity was to start work at the Central Flying School, for
which a site had been chosen on the Upavon Downs of Salisbury Plain,
north of the Upavon-Everley road. The buildings necessary for this
school could not be ready till the end of June, so the committee
recommended that the work of the school should, in the meantime, be
carried on in canvas tents and sheds.
Some problems of wide import forced themselves on the attention of the
committee, and were of necessity settled with a view to immediate
results and immediate efficiency. When shelter is needed from a pitiless
storm, the leisurely plans of the architect must give way. One of these
problems was the rank of pilots. Should every pilot be an officer, or
should we follow the example of France, and train some mechanics to the
work of piloting? From the first, Mr. Churchill was in favour of
admitting to the State school of aviation not only a proportion of
officers of both services, but also petty officers, non-commissioned
officers and men, as well as civilians. In the report of the technical
sub-committee the war establishment for an expeditionary force is
planned on these lines. The Military Wing of the Royal Flying Corps was
to contain seven aeroplane squadrons, each squadron to number twelve
machines, with an additional machine for the commanding officer. Two
pilots were allowed for each aeroplane, and, in addition, to provide for
the wastage of war, an equal number in reserve. The war establishment,
calculated on this basis for the purposes of the expeditionary force,
required the services of three hundred and sixty-four trained pilots, of
whom, it was suggested, one hundred and eighty-two should be officers,
and one hundred and eighty-two non-commissioned officers.
This part of the scheme cannot be said to have failed in practice: it
never reached the test of practice. The surest and readiest way to
obtain the services of skilled flyers was to offer them commissions in
the Flying Corps, and it was felt to be invidious that some pilots
should enter the corps as officers, while others, of equal skill, should
enter in the non-commissioned ranks. Some of the witnesses were of the
opinion that not many men of the skilled mechanic class would be ready
or willing to risk their lives as pilots. The experience of the war has
disproved this forecast; an observer in war must have at least as cool a
head and as stout a heart as a pilot, and every one who has flown on the
western front knows that among the very best observers not a few were
non-commissioned officers. But the fact is that the question was settled
by lack of time. To give effect to the scheme outlined in the report of
the technical sub-committee would have required much time and experiment
and adjustment; in practice the simpler way was chosen, and the business
of piloting was reserved, in the main, for commissioned officers.
Courage is found everywhere among English-speaking peoples; the real
point to secure is that the pilots of one squadron, or the pilot and
observer of one machine, should not only meet on duty, but should live
together. That perfect understanding and instant collaboration which
spells efficiency in the air is the product of habitual intimacy and
easy association during leisure hours.
In the early days of the Royal Flying Corps a certain small number of
non-commissioned officers were trained to do the work of piloting, so
that the officers who flew with them in two-seater machines might be
freed for the more important work of observation. This experiment was
not favourably reported on, and the opinion has often been expressed
that men chosen from the non-commissioned ranks of the army or the
lower-deck ratings of the navy do not make good pilots. A wise judgement
on the question will consider all the circumstances. Promotion in both
army and navy was slow before the war, so that a non-commissioned
officer or petty officer was often a married man, considerably in
advance of the age at which the most successful war pilots are made. The
inspired recklessness of youth does not long persist among those who
from boyhood up have to earn their living by responsible work. Moreover,
commanding officers, whether in the army or the navy, were naturally
reluctant to let their skilled men be taken from them, so that the men
whom they sent to be trained as pilots were too often men for whom no
other good use could be found. 'If they don't break their necks,' said
one naval officer, 'it will wake them up.' Again, in 1918, when cadets,
after a preliminary technical training, were graded as officer cadets or
non-commissioned officer cadets, all the more promising men were given
commissions, so that only men of inferior intelligence were left to
become non-commissioned pilots. It is surely rash to lay stress on vague
class distinctions. A stander-by who happened, during the war, to
witness the management of an Arab camel convoy by a handful of British
private soldiers, remarked that though these soldiers knew no language
but their own, their initiative and tact, their natural assumption of
authority, and their unfailing good temper, which at last got the convoy
under way, showed that they belonged to an imperial race. The question
of the rank of pilots is really a social question, a question, that is
to say, not of individual superiority but of smooth collaboration. If a
whole squadron of the Flying Corps had been staffed, as was at one time
suggested, by men picked from the non-commissioned ranks, there can be
no doubt that it would have made a name for itself among the very best.
The largest question of all in the making of the Flying Corps was the
question whether the air service was to be a new and independent
service, taking rank with the army and the navy, or was to be, for the
most part, divided between the army and the navy, and placed under their
control. This question, it might seem, was settled by the opening words
of the sub-committee's recommendations: 'The British Aeronautical
Service should be regarded as one, and should be designated "The Flying
Corps".' But subsequent developments soon showed that this settlement
was not accepted on all hands. The navy never fully accepted it. The
British navy is a body enormously strong in its corporate feeling,
conscious of its responsibilities, proud of its history, and wedded to
its own ways. Its self-reliant character, which had made it slow to
recognize the importance of the air, made it slow also, when the
importance of the air was proved, to allow a weapon necessary for naval
operations to pass out of its own control. When the active combatant
service of the Royal Flying Corps came into being, it consisted of a
Naval Wing and a Military Wing. The Naval Wing had its headquarters at
Eastchurch, where the Naval Flying School had been established. For
administrative purposes the Naval Flying School was placed under the
orders of the captain of H.M.S. _Actaeon_, and all officers and men were
to be borne on the books of the _Actaeon_. Experiments with seaplanes
and flying boats were still in their infancy, and the organization of
the Naval Wing was wisely left undetermined for the time. The
distribution of the aeroplane squadrons of the Military Wing was left
for the consideration of the War Office, but the sub-committee
recommended that one squadron should be stationed at Salisbury Plain,
within reach of the Central Flying School, and one at Aldershot, in the
neighbourhood of the Aircraft Factory. All recruits training as pilots,
whether for the Naval Wing or the Military Wing, were to graduate at the
Central Flying School, and thence were to be detailed to join either the
Naval Flying School at Eastchurch, for a special course of naval
aviation, or one of the military aeroplane squadrons, for a special
course of military aviation.
That was the plan. So far as the Military Wing was concerned, it was
punctually carried out. In the Naval Wing a certain centrifugal tendency
very early made itself felt. The official name 'Royal Flying Corps,
Naval Wing', after making its appearance in a few documents, dropped out
of use, and its place was taken by a name which in process of time
received the stamp of official recognition--'The Royal Naval Air
Service'. Thereafter the words 'Military Wing', though they were still
used, were no longer required, and 'The Royal Flying Corps' became a
sufficient description of what was a distinctively military body. The
Admiralty from the first worked independently. Soon after the Naval Wing
of the Royal Flying Corps was created the First Lord of the Admiralty
set up a new department to supervise it, and placed Captain Murray
Sueter in charge, as Director of the Air Department. At an earlier date
Commander C. R. Samson had been placed in charge of the Naval Flying
School. The energies of the school, pending the establishment of the
Central Flying School, were devoted mainly to elementary training in
flying. By the provisions of the original scheme this elementary
training belonged to the joint Central Flying School, while the Naval
Flying School was to be used for experiment and for specialized
training in naval air work. But the Naval Flying School continued
throughout the war to train naval flying officers from the beginning,
teaching them the art of flying as well as its special applications for
naval purposes.
The question whether there should be a single air service, specialized
in its branches, or separate air services, organized for mutual
assistance, is a question that stirs deep feeling, so that the very
virtues which make men serviceable to their country are ranged in
opposition one to another. The old allegiances are not easily forgotten;
when a sailor learns to fly he remains a sailor, and the air for him is
merely the roof of the sea. The knowledge, moreover, gained from his
life at sea is knowledge not only useful but essential to him if he is
to do good work in the Naval Air Service. He must be able to recognize
the various types of war vessels, and the various nationalities of
vessels of the merchant marine. He must know all about the submarine,
the mine, and the torpedo. He must be well versed in weather
observation, and able to navigate safely without the aid of landmarks.
He must understand naval tactics, and must be able to bear a part in
them. All this, it has been urged by many sailors, is a much more
complicated and experienced business than the mere flying of an
aeroplane. The Naval Air Service, they contend, should be a part of the
navy.
There is force and weight in these contentions, yet they are not
conclusive. If the navy were itself a new invention, a very similar kind
of argument might be used to subordinate it to the army. The main
business of the navy, it might be said, is to supply the army with
transport facilities and mobile gun-platforms. But this is absurd; the
sea will not submit to so cavalier a treatment. Those who believe in a
single air force base their opinion on certain very simple
considerations. As the prime business of a navy is the navigation of the
sea, so, they hold, the prime business of an air force is the navigation
of the air; all its other activities depend on this. The science of
aeronautics is yet in its childhood; its development must not be cramped
by tying it too closely to a service which works under narrower
conditions. If there should be another great war (and though no one
desires it, no one dares to think it impossible), the fittest man to
hold the command of united land and sea forces might well be a Marshal
of the Air. But the strongest argument for a single air force is not so
much an argument as an instinct. Every kind of warfare develops in men
its own type of character. The virtues of the soldier and the virtues of
the sailor are not the same; or, if they are the same (for courage and
duty can never be superseded), they are the same with surprising
differences. The soldier is drilled to fight men when the occasion
arises; the sailor is at war all his life with the sea. The character of
the sailor--his resourcefulness and vigilance, his patience and
stoicism, his dislike of formality--is put upon him by his age-long
conflict with his old enemy. In seafaring men there is a temper of the
sea, admired by all who have ever made acquaintance with it. Those who
were privileged to watch the performance of our flying men in the war
know that there is developed in them a temper not less remarkable and
not less worthy of cultivation--the temper of the air. War in the air
demands a quickness of thought and nerve greater than is exacted by any
other kind of war. It is a deadly and gallant tournament. The airman
goes out to seek his enemy: he must be full of initiative. His ordeal
may come upon him suddenly, at any time, with less than a minute's
notice: he must be able to concentrate all his powers instantaneously to
meet it. He fights alone. During a great part of his time in the air he
is within easy reach of safety; a swift glide will take him far away
from the enemy, but he must choose danger, and carry on. One service
cannot be judged by the standards of another service. A soldier who
knows nothing of the sea might easily mistake naval discipline for lack
of discipline. A like mistake has often been made by those who are
brought into casual relations with the air force. But the temper of the
air force is a new and wonderful thing, born of the duties and dangers
which war in the air has brought with it. To preserve that temper as a
national inheritance is the dearest wish of those who covet for the air
force a place beside the navy and the army.
Now that the officers for the air force are being trained, as officers
for the navy and the army have long been trained, at a cadet college
with its own traditions, the question will solve itself. The necessity
for collaboration during the war did something to unite the branches of
the force. But perfect unity can be attained only by men who have lived
and worked together. Men who have lived apart speak different languages.
In April 1918, when the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying
Corps were united in the Royal Air Force, it was found necessary to deal
with this language difficulty. The Naval Air Service and the Flying
Corps used different names for the same thing. The Naval Air Service
used the names they would have used aboard ship. The officers' mess they
called 'the ward-room mess', and the dining-room 'the mess deck'. The
cookhouse with them was the galley; rations were victuals; and kit was
gear. In July 1918 an order was issued by the Air Ministry prescribing
the terms to be adopted in the new force. The use of starboard and port
for right and left was ordered as a concession to the sailors; and at
all air stations the time of day was to be denoted, as on board ship, by
the sounding of bells. In some few cases the naval and, military usages
were both discarded in favour of a new term proper to the air force.
Thus, non-commissioned officers and men, who are described in the navy
as 'ratings' and in the army as 'other ranks', were named, in accordance
with a practice which had already grown up, 'airmen'. Names are full of
compliment and fantasy: 'airman' is the official name for those members
of the air force who spend their time and do their work on the ground.
These are not light matters. One of the strongest bonds of human
sympathy is community in habits of speech. Divergences in speech are
fruitful in every kind of hostility. It was a Scottish captain of the
merchant marine who expressed a dislike for the French, and when called
on for his reasons, replied that as a people they are ridiculous, for
they call a boy a 'mousse'.
The navy and the army have always been loyal comrades, ready to help
each other at short notice. These relations persisted between the two
branches of the air force. In the scheme for the Royal Flying Corps it
had been provided that each branch of the service should be treated as a
reserve to the other branch. Thus in a purely naval war the whole of the
Flying Corps was to be available for the navy, and in a war that should
call for no assistance from the navy (if such a war can be conceived)
the whole of the corps was to be available for the army. In accordance
with these ideas machines flown by naval officers played a very
successful part in the army manoeuvres of 1912 and 1913.
Further, in order to co-ordinate the efforts of the Admiralty and the
War Office, a permanent consultative committee, called the Air
Committee, was provided for in the original scheme, and held its first
meeting in July 1912. This committee was a kind of nucleus of an Air
Ministry; the importance attached to it may be judged from its
composition. Colonel Seely, by this time Secretary of State for War,
was its first chairman, and later on Vice-Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, the
Second Sea Lord of the Admiralty, became its vice-chairman. The officers
in command of the Central Flying School, of the Naval Wing, and of the
Military Wing had seats on it. So had the Director of Military Training,
the Director of the Air Department, and the Superintendent of the Royal
Aircraft Factory. The committee proved its value as a place of
conference, where those who were responsible for aerial development in
its various branches might compare their ideas. But it had no executive
powers, so that its success in promoting an active policy automatically
diminished its own importance. It could consider and advise, but the
decision rested with the Admiralty and the War Office. It was useful at
an early stage; then, like the Ghost in _Hamlet_, having prompted others
to action, it faded away.
The need for a central controlling body, that is to say, for an Air
Ministry, was soon to be acutely felt. The naval and military air forces
were friends, but they were also rivals. In so far as this rivalry
prompted them to compete in skill and valour, it was wholly good. But
rival orders for munitions of war, and especially for aeroplanes, given
to manufacturing firms by two branches of one service, are not so good.
The output of the factories was not unlimited, and only a central
authority could determine how that output might be best used for the
nation's need.
The activities of the Naval Air Service, from the time it came into
being until the outbreak of war, were very largely experimental. Those
who were responsible for naval operations had at first no complete,
definite, and practical scheme for the employment of aircraft in naval
warfare. It would have been difficult for them to produce such a scheme;
opinion was fluctuating and divided, and the progress of aeronautical
science supplied improved machines and opened out new possibilities
every month. The time of the service was spent in demonstrating these
new possibilities, rather than in organizing and training their forces
for the needs of a definite programme. Nevertheless, this experimental
period witnessed rapid growth and prepared the way for surprising
achievements by the Naval Air Service during the war.
The uses of the Military Wing, on the other hand, were definitely
conceived from the first. It was brought into being to fulfil a certain
purpose. Its officers knew when and where and how their services would
be required. They knew, that is to say, that on the outbreak of war they
would be mobilized, that they would operate with an expeditionary force,
and that their business would be, by observation from the air, to keep
the commanders of that force acquainted with the movements and
dispositions of the enemy. The constitution of the Military Wing was
elastic, so that its numbers could be increased and its uses multiplied,
but its original purpose, to supply the needs of an expeditionary force,
dictated its first establishment and its early training. Its first duty
was reconnaissance. All its other and later uses were consequences of
this central purpose, and were forced on it by the hard logic of events.
The full establishment of the Military Wing was to comprise a
headquarters, seven aeroplane squadrons, and one airship and kite
squadron (providing two airships and two flights of kites). Later in the
year there was also established at South Farnborough what was then
called a Flying Depot, Line of Communications, but was afterwards named
an Aircraft Park. Its duties were the maintenance of a reserve of
aeroplanes, and the carrying out of such repairs as were beyond the
powers of the squadron workshops yet were not serious enough to compel
the return of the machine to its maker.
In its beginnings and during its early years the Military Wing was
greatly indebted to the technical knowledge and the inventive skill of
the Royal Engineers. It was they who had produced the army balloon and
the army airship. Before the Royal Flying Corps was founded they had
devised a practicable and efficient aeroplane, and they had been chiefly
responsible for the organization of the Air Battalion. The best tribute
that could be paid to their fostering care was paid by the Royal Flying
Corps when, being fully fledged, it started on its great career.
The building up of the Military Wing to fit it for its purpose was not a
light task. Skilled officers, skilled men, an adequate supply of the
best machines, suitable flying grounds in various parts of Great
Britain, a well-staffed central school for training--these were some of
the first necessities. After two years, when war came, only four out of
the seven squadrons were ready for instant service in France. But the
value of this little force was out of all proportion greater than its
numerical strength. Through all the difficulties and delays that clog a
new movement it had kept a single purpose in view and had worked for it.
The great achievements of the Royal Flying Corps during the war may seem
to make its early history and early efforts a trivial thing in the
comparison. But the spirit was there; and some of the merits of the
later performance may be detected in the tedious and imperfect
rehearsals, the long hours of duty-flights and experiment, demanding
that three-o'clock-in-the-morning kind of courage which is willing to
face danger in the midst of a world at ease.
In March 1912 Colonel Seely had announced in the House of Commons that
there would be required at once for the Military Wing a hundred and
thirty-three officers, and for the Naval Wing about thirty or forty
officers. It was not proposed at first to teach all these officers at
the Central Flying School. They would learn to fly privately, and would
go to the school for more advanced instruction. The skilled men required
were of many kinds. The most important of these were mechanics, men who
had served at full pay in engineering workshops, who had some knowledge
of electricity, and could make intelligible sketches of machinery. A
list of some other classes whose services were invited proves that
though the air service was small its needs were many and complex. Men of
the following trades were to be enrolled, by enlistment or transfer, in
the Military Wing: blacksmiths, carpenters and joiners, clerks,
coppersmiths, draughtsmen, electricians, fitters, harness-makers,
instrument repairers, metal-turners, painters, pattern-makers,
photographers, riggers, sail-makers, tinsmiths, turners, wheelwrights,
whitesmiths, wireless operators, wood-turners. Men of the following
minor trades were also invited: cable-jointers, chauffeurs, drillers,
dynamo attendants, electric-bell fitters, joiners' helpers, machinists,
motor fitters, plumbers' mates, switchboard attendants, tool-grinders,
wiremen. Last, a welcome was promised to men above average intelligence
whose education at school had reached what is called the Fifth Standard.
When an aeroplane glides down to earth as easily as a bird, and comes to
rest, a chance onlooker would hardly guess what a world of intricate
labour and pains has gone to the attainment of that beautiful
simplicity. It is the workshop which gives safety in flight; and because
the workshop needs highly skilled men, whose services are in demand, at
high wages, for many other purposes, an air force must always be
difficult and expensive to maintain in time of peace.
Captain F. H. Sykes was given the command of the Military Wing on its
formation. His adjutant was Lieutenant B. H. Barrington-Kennett. Captain
H. R. M. Brooke-Popham in March of that year joined the Air Battalion,
and was serving at Farnborough when the Royal Flying Corps came into
being. Most of the aeroplane company were then at Larkhill, but Captain
C. J. Burke, with his B.E. machine, and Captain A. G. Fox, of the Royal
Engineers, with a Bristol box-kite, were at Farnborough. Some of the
officers of the airship company were making strenuous and successful
efforts to get the aviation certificates which were demanded from
officers of the new formation. In April and May about a dozen officers
from various units joined at Farnborough. One of the first of these was
Captain Patrick Hamilton, of the Worcestershire Regiment, who had done
much flying in the Argentine (and, incidentally, had been stoned by the
human herd for refusing to give an exhibition flight in impossible
weather). He was a keen and skilled aviator; he had made more than two
hundred flights, and had had some narrow escapes--one particularly, when
his machine capsized and glided a hundred feet upside-down, at a sharp
angle to the ground. By the two strong masts of the monoplane and by the
breaking of the machine he was preserved unhurt. He remarked that it was
a good lesson, for 'to an aviator experience is everything'. He brought
with him to Farnborough his two-seater Deperdussin monoplane with a
sixty horse-power Anzani engine. Others who joined about the same time
were Major H. R. Cook of the Royal Artillery, who became instructor in
theory at the Central Flying School, Captain E. B. Loraine of the
Grenadier Guards, Captain C. R. W. Allen of the Welch Regiment, Captain
G. H. Raleigh of the Essex Regiment, Lieutenant C. A. H. Longcroft of
the Welch Regiment, and Lieutenant G. T. Porter of the Royal Artillery.
A sort of class was held at Farnborough for these early recruits; they
heard lectures, and did practical work in the overhaul of engines.
There were only four serviceable machines available at that time, one
B.E., one Breguet, and two Bristol box-kites, so the recruits, who
wanted above all things to fly, were disappointed. They were taken up in
the baskets of captive spherical balloons, where they spent hour after
hour sketching the various parts of Farnborough, counting the cows on
the common, and writing descriptions of what they could see from the
balloon. The labours of the pencil and the pen are not easily carried on
in the basket of a captive balloon: it swings and twirls in a breeze,
and very often produces air sickness. This form of instruction was
relieved by an ascent in the airship _Gamma_, and by occasional trips in
free balloons.
Towards the end of April Captain H. R. M. Brooke-Popham took over from
Captain Fulton the command of the old aeroplane company on Salisbury
Plain, and on the 13th of May, when the Royal Flying Corps was formed,
this company became No. 3 Squadron of the new formation. No. 2 Squadron
was formed from the nucleus of aeroplane pilots at Farnborough, and was
placed under the command of Captain C. J. Burke. In August the Central
Flying School was started at Upavon, with Captain Godfrey Paine, R.N.,
as commandant.
The airship company at Farnborough, being lineally descended from the
old balloon school, became No. 1 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps
Military Wing. The command of this squadron was given to one of the
earliest of aeronautical pioneers, Captain E. M. Maitland, who, almost
alone among the pioneers, preferred the airship to the aeroplane. Edward
Maitland Maitland, after being educated at Haileybury and Trinity
College, Cambridge, joined the Essex Regiment as a second lieutenant in
1900. He served in the South African War, and in the spring of 1908
turned his attention to ballooning. On the 18th of November in that
year, along with Mr. C. C. Turner and the late Professor A. E. Gaudron,
he ascended from the Crystal Palace in the _Mammoth_, a balloon of more
than a hundred thousand cubic feet in capacity, supplied by the
enterprise of the _Daily Graphic_, and travelled in the air to Mateki
Derevni in Russia, a distance of 1,117 miles, which was traversed in
thirty-six and a half hours. His main interest was not in Russia, but in
the air, and he returned to England at once. When in 1919 he accompanied
the airship R 34 on the first famous air voyage across the Atlantic, he
remained in America for only a few hours. During the years 1909 and 1910
he was attached to the balloon school at Farnborough, and carried out
aeroplane experiments at his own costs. He piloted a Voisin biplane in
1909 at the Doncaster meeting, which, because it started the day before
the Blackpool meeting, may be called the first flying meeting in
England.
In August 1910 he flew a Howard Wright biplane at Larkhill when there
were only two other machines there, namely, Captain Fulton's Bleriot and
the first biplane of the Bristol Company. On this occasion he crashed
and broke both his ankles. When the Air Battalion was formed in 1911 he
chose to work with airships, and was given the command of the airship
company. His courage and gallantry were unfailing, and his parachute
descents were legion. When Professor Gaudron fell ill, and was prevented
from giving his exhibition descents in a parachute at the Alexandra
Palace, Captain Maitland took his place. He was the first to make a
parachute descent from an airship; this was from the airship _Delta_, in
1913. In 1915, for the purpose of experiment, he descended in a
parachute liberated from a spherical balloon at a height of 10,500 feet.
In 1917 he jumped, with his parachute, from an airship over the sea at a
height of a thousand feet. He believed that the parachute is a
necessary adjunct to the airship, and that by practice and experience it
can be brought into safe habitual use. So he did not sit on a fence and
watch the thistledown, but took every opportunity that presented itself
for a parachute descent. One such opportunity he refused. When, on the
24th of August 1921, he was killed in the disaster to the R 38, he spent
his last moments in endeavouring to check and control the fall of the
airship. He was free from self-regard, and had the devotion of all who
served with him. His life, though it ended in its prime, was
surprisingly long, for he had made danger his friend, and in the
advancement of the cause to which he dedicated himself had welcomed
every risk.
Under Major Maitland's command the airship squadron--that is to say, No.
1 Squadron--grew in strength and efficiency, but it was cut off in its
youth from the aeroplane squadrons. Expert opinion, which was divided on
the military value of airships, was united on their naval value. Not
without protest the decision was made to hand over all the airships to
the navy, and at the close of the year 1913 this was done. An airship is
much more costly than an aeroplane, whether to construct or to work, and
when it flies at a moderate height for the purposes of military
reconnaissance, it is much more vulnerable. This, no doubt, was the
consideration which determined the severance of the airships from the
army. Yet the airships, during their brief period of service with the
Military Wing, had demonstrated in the most convincing fashion the
enormous value of aerial reconnaissance, and, more important still, had
put the whole Flying Corps in their debt by adapting wireless telegraphy
to the uses of aircraft. The value of this work was not at once
apparent. The time before the war was spent chiefly in experiment.
During the retreat from Mons no ground receiving stations could be
established. But when the German rush was beaten back, and the opposing
armies were ranged along a fixed line, wireless telegraphy became a
necessity for aeroplanes. The machines and the plant needed for this new
development were not in existence; but a good deal of the preliminary
work, much more troublesome and uncertain than the multiplication of a
pattern, had been done. In a very short time there appeared at the front
large numbers of machines fitted with wireless. The credit of this
sudden apparition belongs, in part at least, to the Royal Engineers, and
to their child, the balloon school, which by a steady process of growth
had been transformed into the airship squadron of the Royal Flying
Corps.
The power of sending messages through space, in any direction, over
great distances, is so enormous an addition to the utility of aircraft
that a few words must here be said about wireless telegraphy. The
discovery was made by the gradual researches of men of science. These
researches had their beginning in a famous paper by James Clerk Maxwell,
who subsequently became the first professor of experimental physics at
Cambridge. His paper, _On a Dynamical Theory of the Electro-magnetic
Field_, read to the Royal Society in 1864, contains a theoretical
demonstration that electro-magnetic action travels through space in
waves with the velocity of light. Twenty-three years later, in 1887,
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, of the University of Bonn, published the results
of his experiments in producing these waves by means of oscillating
currents of electricity. His investigations confirmed what Clerk Maxwell
had proved mathematically. Thereafter progress was rapid, and during the
closing years of the nineteenth century the problem of subduing the
waves to the service of man was attacked and solved. In 1889 Professor
Oliver Lodge was measuring electrical radiation. At Liverpool
University College he constructed a Hertz radiator to emit the waves,
and received them at various points of the building. Edouard Branly's
invention of the 'coherer', an instrument designed to receive Hertzian
waves, was communicated to the British Association at Edinburgh in 1893.
During the same year Nikola Tesla published his researches on high
frequency currents; on these much of the later work on wireless
telegraphy was based. In 1895-6 William Rutherford set up at the
Cavendish Laboratory apparatus by which he received signals in distant
parts of Cambridge up to a distance of half a mile from the oscillator.
Many other men of science, among whom was Captain H. B. Jackson, of the
Royal Navy, were at work on the problem, when in 1896 Signor Guglielmo
Marconi arrived in England with an apparatus of his own construction
which ultimately brought wireless telegraphy to the stage of practical
and commercial utility. By 1899 signals had been transmitted across the
English Channel.
Man has no sense organs which record the impact of electrical waves, but
he has succeeded in devising instruments which register that impact, and
which make it perceptible to the organs of sight or of hearing. The
operation of the electrical waves may be best explained, perhaps, by the
analogy of sound. When the string of a piano is struck by its hammer it
vibrates, and communicates its vibrations to the surrounding air; these
vibrations, travelling outwards in waves, produce corresponding
vibrations in the ear-drum of a listener. The string is tuned, by its
tension and its weight, to a single note; the ear can adapt itself to
receive and transmit to the brain only a limited range of notes. There
are many vibrations in the air which are too rapid or too slow for
reception by the human ear. The sound-waves of the piano-string produce
their effect on any neighbouring body which is capable of vibrating at
the same rate as the incoming waves, as, for instance, another string
tuned to the same note, or a volume of air enclosed in a vessel which
vibrates in correspondence. These are in 'resonance' with the vibrating
string; they repeat the original disturbance and reinforce its effect.
So it is with electricity. If the electricity with which any conducting
body is charged be suddenly disturbed, electrical waves are generated
which travel outwards in all directions with the velocity of light. The
problem of wireless telegraphy is the problem of producing these waves
by means of an instrument called a transmitter, and of recording their
impact at a distance by means of an instrument called a receiver. In its
simplest form the transmitting instrument consists of two conducting
bodies, or plates, charged the one with positive the other with negative
electricity, separated from each other by air or some other insulating
material, and connected by a coil of wire called an inductance coil. To
explain the how and why, so far as these questions can be explained,
would involve a whole treatise on electricity; for the present purpose
it is enough to say that when the two plates are connected through the
coil, the electrical discharge is oscillatory in character, as the
current runs to and fro between the one plate and the other, and that
these oscillations are radiated into space in the form of waves. The
frequency of the waves, the rapidity, that is, with which wave follows
wave, depends on the size and proximity of the plates and on the length
and form of the coil which connects them. The receiving instrument is
similarly constructed, and can be so adjusted that the waves which it
would generate if it were a transmitter would have the same frequency as
those it is to receive. It is thus in resonance with the transmitter,
and the effect of the incoming impulses is greatly enhanced.
If the waves produced are to be perceptible at any considerable
distance, the transmitting instrument must be capable of absorbing a
large amount of energy and radiating this energy into space in the form
of waves.
The storing capacity of the instrument is increased by having large
plates close together, but its radiating properties are impaired if the
plates are too close.
The chief advance made by Signor Marconi lay in his use of the earth as
one of the plates. In his wireless installation, a network of insulated
wires, suspended in the air above, is one plate, the earth is the other;
and the two are connected by an inductance coil. This device cannot be
applied to aircraft, for obviously no connexion with the earth is
possible. Both of the plates, or networks of wire, have to be carried on
the airship or aeroplane. No great weight could be carried on the early
type of aeroplane, and no great space was available.
This brief and imperfect description has been given in order to make
clear some of the difficulties which attend the application of wireless
telegraphy to aircraft, and especially to aeroplanes.
The theory of flight was worked out by men of science in the laboratory;
flight itself was first achieved by men who had had no systematic
scientific training, but who endeavoured to acquaint themselves with
scientific results, and to apply them, as best they might, to the
difficulties with which they were familiar in practice. So it was also
with the application of wireless telegraphy to aircraft. The men of the
laboratory were not familiar with all the conditions which had to be
observed, nor with all the unforeseen obstacles which present themselves
in practice. It remained for those who knew the conditions and the
obstacles to work out the practical problem for themselves. The
vibration and noise, which make it difficult in an aeroplane to hear
anything but the engine, the risk of fire, and the imperfect protection
of the instruments from splashes of oil and the rush of the air--all
these things complicated the problem.
As early as 1907 Captain Llewelyn Evans, who commanded the 1st Wireless
Company of the Royal Engineers at Aldershot, lent his help to Colonel
Capper of the balloon school in devising wireless communication between
aircraft and the ground. The apparatus had to be extemporized. The first
experiments were made by Lieutenant C. J. Aston, R.E., in a captive
balloon. In May 1908 a free run was made in the balloon _Pegasus_, in
which a receiving set of wireless had been installed. When the balloon
was over Petersfield, Lieutenant Aston received very good signals from
the Aldershot wireless station twenty miles distant. During the same
month the sending of messages from the balloon was also tried with
promising results.
These experiments soon came to an end. The time was not ripe for further
developments. No airships or aeroplanes were as yet in use in England,
and all available energy had to be concentrated on producing wireless
telegraphy sets for the use of the army. In October 1909 Captain H. P.
T. Lefroy, R.E., was placed in charge of all experimental work in
wireless telegraphy for the army. This appointment he retained until the
outbreak of the war. He had been commissioned in the Royal Engineers in
1899, and had begun to study wireless at Gibraltar in 1905. Approaching
the question from the service side, he was able to do much to adapt
wireless telegraphy to the new conditions presented by the conquest of
the air. As soon as the army airship _Beta_ was available he had her
equipped with wireless apparatus, and on the 27th of January 1911 went
up in her from Farnborough. Many messages were sent from the airship to
the ground station up to a range of thirty miles, and for a short time,
while the airship engine stopped running, it was found possible to
receive messages from the ground. In the roar of the engine nothing
could be heard.
In the summer of 1911 Captain Lefroy spent much of his time in designing
a transmitting apparatus for aeroplanes. In January 1912 he went up with
Mr. Geoffrey de Havilland in the first B.E. machine, to test its
suitability for wireless. In May 1912 he set about fitting the same
machine, which was then being flown by Major Burke, with a generator
driven from the engine crank-shaft by bicycle-chain gear. These
experiments prepared the way for later achievement.
In the same year the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps began to
experiment with a light wireless set for aeroplanes. As no machines were
available for fitting, a station was constructed on Burntwick Island,
the conditions being as nearly as possible the conditions in an
aeroplane. Stray signals were received from this station by H.M.S.
_Actaeon_, about one mile distant. In June 1912 Commander Samson, flying
the first Short seaplane, fitted with a practice wireless set such as
used in destroyers, succeeded in sending messages a distance of three,
four, and, on occasions, of ten miles. In August 1912 Lieutenant Raymond
Fitzmaurice, R.N., who had served as a wireless telegraphy officer with
the fleet, was appointed to arrange for the installation of wireless
apparatus in naval aircraft. A few days after his arrival at Eastchurch
he was ordered to go to Farnborough to take charge of the wireless in
the airship _Gamma_ on the defending side in the forthcoming army
manoeuvres. Captain Lefroy was to take charge of the wireless in the
airship _Delta_, which was intended to operate on the attacking side.
Both these airships had been equipped with wireless apparatus by Captain
Lefroy, on instructions from the War Office, to ascertain what could be
done by wireless from aircraft in the manoeuvres. The set of wireless
for the _Gamma_ had to be improvised from odds and ends--an old magneto
and some Moscicki jars. The 'aerial', which does the work of one of the
plates of a condenser, was a double trailer of wire let down from the
bottom of the car off two drums; the 'earth', which does the work of the
other plate, was made of insulated wires triced out to the bow and stern
of the gas-bag. The magneto was run by a belt from one of the ballonet
blowers. Receiving instruments were also installed, but these could only
be used when the engine was stopped.
As soon as the weather was favourable the two airships sailed from
Farnborough; the _Gamma_ for Kneesworth camp, on the defending side, the
_Delta_ for Thetford, on the attacking side. The _Delta_ broke down over
North London, but so successful was the wireless installation that her
messages reporting the break-down were received near Thetford and at
Portsmouth by H.M.S. _Vernon_; the _Beta_ took her place, but was too
small to carry the wireless installation. The _Gamma_ was thus the only
craft fitted with wireless, and the efforts of the attacking side were
devoted to intercepting her messages at a ground station. The _Gamma_
was an unqualified success. Her signals came in strong and loud from a
distance of thirty-five miles to a station at Whittlesford fitted with
naval service receiving apparatus. Speaking of the work of aircraft,
General Grierson, who commanded the defending force, says: 'The
impression left on my mind is that their use has revolutionized the art
of war. So long as hostile aircraft are hovering over one's troops all
movements are liable to be seen and reported, and therefore the first
step in war will be to get rid of the hostile aircraft. He who does this
first or who keeps the last aeroplane afloat will win, other things
being approximately equal.... The airship, as long as she remained
afloat, was of more use to me for strategical reconnaissance than the
aeroplanes, as, being fitted with wireless telegraphy, I received her
messages in a continuous stream and immediately after the observations
had been made.... It is a pity that the airship cannot _receive_
messages by wireless, but doubtless modern science will soon remedy this
defect.'
This was the first triumph of aerial reconnaissance in England. Every
morning the _Gamma_ went out at daybreak and scouted over the enemy;
within half an hour the general in command was in receipt of very full
information which enabled him to make out his dispositions and movements
for the day. Some attempts were made to conceal troops at the halt from
the view of aircraft; but, as General Grierson remarks, for troops on
the move there is only one certain cover--the shades of night. So
complete was the information supplied from the air that the commander of
the defending force was enabled to organize his attack and end the
manoeuvres a day sooner than was expected. After the manoeuvres the
_Gamma_ flew by night over Cambridge and bombarded that seat of learning
with Very lights. It took three hours to fly twenty miles, from
Kneesworth to Cambridge, against a strong head wind, and at one o'clock
at night the mechanic informed Major Maitland, who commanded the
_Gamma_, that only one-quarter hour's supply of lubricating oil
remained. So the ship had to shut off her engines and float on the tide
of the air. By throwing out all her ballast she kept afloat till dawn,
and made a safe landing in the neighbourhood of Bristol. 'I don't think
I shall ever forget', says Captain Fitzmaurice, 'the feeling of perfect
peace and quiet one experiences when ballooning by night.' The same
feeling was experienced by Lunardi during his first ascent in a
balloon. The history of aeronautics, if it could be fully written, is in
the main a history of Peace in the air.
The two years before the war were years of progress. In 1912 M. Lucien
Rouzet invented a transmitting apparatus which, in proportion to its
power, was lighter in weight than anything that had previously been in
use; a number of these sets were purchased by the Naval and Military
Wings to be used in aircraft. During May 1913 successful wireless trials
were carried out by Lieutenant Fitzmaurice in a Short seaplane piloted
by Sub-Lieutenant J. T. Babington. During one of these a flight was made
along the coast from the Isle of Grain to the North Foreland, the
seaplane being in communication with the receiving stations at Grain and
Eastchurch and with ships at sea during the whole of its flight. Its
signals were read up to a distance of forty-five miles. During this
flight the seaplane signalled a wireless salute to the Royal Yacht,
which was taking the King and Queen to Flushing on a visit to Germany.
In the naval manoeuvres of the summer, Lieutenant Fitzmaurice and
Commander Samson were sent out to scout over the sea due east from
Yarmouth in the latest Short seaplane, No. 81. Her engine failed, and
she was compelled to come down on the sea, but the wireless messages
which she had sent to H.M.S. _Hermes_ served to locate her, and when the
_Hermes_ went to look for her she was found near the expected place on
board a German timber boat which had come to her assistance.
The airships _Delta_ and _Eta_ were both equipped with wireless for the
army manoeuvres of 1913, and were based on Dunchurch, near Rugby. In
all, _Delta_ sent sixty-six messages during her seven voyages, and on
the 24th of September carried out a successful night reconnaissance.
The _Eta_, owing to engine trouble, played no effective part in the
manoeuvres, but during her journey from Farnborough to Dunchurch she
maintained wireless communication with Aldershot till she reached
Woodstock, when she called up Dunchurch and kept in communication for
the remainder of the voyage. Captain Lefroy in his report says: 'It
seems probable that H.M. Airships _Delta_ and _Eta_ can exchange
messages with each other when 100 miles apart in the air, which may
prove useful for organization purposes, &c. I received clear signals
from the North Foreland station (and a ship to which she was talking)
when 130 miles N.W. of it, and whilst H.M.A. _Eta_ was cruising
northwards at touring speed.'
Just before the 1913 army manoeuvres, Lieutenant B. T. James, piloting a
B.E. aeroplane, succeeded in receiving wireless signals with the engine
running at full power. To enable him to do this his machine was fitted
with Captain Lefroy's new receiving set in which magneto disturbances
were screened off and the signals strengthened by Brown relays, that is,
microphones invented by Mr. S. G. Brown. In June 1914 Lieutenants D. S.
Lewis and B. T. James flew from Netheravon to Bournemouth each in a B.E.
aeroplane equipped with sending and receiving apparatus; they flew about
ten miles apart, and kept in close communication with each other the
whole way.
Captain Lefroy continued to act as wireless expert to the Royal Flying
Corps up to the outbreak of the war. The work done by him and by
Lieutenant Fitzmaurice was of great value. When the war broke out
wireless sets had been fitted to sixteen seaplanes, as well as to the
two airships _Astra-Torres_ and _Parseval_, which did good service in
patrolling the Channel during the passage of the Expeditionary Force.
The development of wireless telegraphy for the uses of aircraft was
only one small part of the work which had to be arranged and supervised
by the headquarters staff at Farnborough. They had to recruit, organize,
and train the new force. Energy, faith, and self-sacrifice were asked
for, not in vain, from the officers and men who came into the corps. The
headquarters staff was small, but with the help of the officers
commanding the squadrons and the staff of the flying school at Upavon,
they inaugurated a great tradition. There were no precedents. The staff
had first to invent their work, and then to do it. The details of supply
and transport, the ordering of machines from the makers, the training
and equipment of every recruit--all these things had to be thought out
in advance. The official text-books, regulations, and standing orders,
which were all complete and ready for issue when the war came, bear
witness to the foresight and initiative of Major Sykes and the small
staff who worked under him at headquarters. The Flying Corps resembles
the navy in this respect, that its daily work in time of peace is not
very much unlike its daily work in time of war, so that if the work is
hard and incessant, at least it is rewarded by the sense of achievement.
One particular achievement was greater than all the rest. When flight
began it attracted men of romantic and adventurous temper, some of whom
were much concerned with their own performances and had a natural liking
for display. If these tendencies had been encouraged, or even permitted,
they would have ruined the corps. The staff, to a man, set their faces
like flint against all such indulgences. Publicity, advertisement, the
rubbish of popular applause, were anathema to them. What they sought to
create was a service temper, and they were so successful that the
typical pilot of the war was as modest and dutiful as a lieutenant of
infantry. The building up of the Flying Corps on these lines, remote
from the public gaze, deprived it of popular support, but it gained for
it what was a thousand times more valuable--a severe code of duty, a
high standard of quiet courage, and an immense corporate pride. To have
kept the infant corps and all its doings in the public eye would have
been as disastrous an experiment as to attempt to educate a child on the
music-hall stage.
A great part of the early work of the Flying Corps was experimental.
Various kinds of experiment were assigned by the corps headquarters to
the several squadrons, and the headquarters staff took care that any
success achieved by one squadron should become the rule for the
betterment of all. An experimental branch of the Military Wing was
formed in March 1913 under Major Herbert Musgrave; it dealt, among other
things, with experimental work in connexion with ballooning, kiting,
wireless telegraphy, photography, meteorology, bomb-dropping, musketry,
and gunnery, and co-operation with artillery. Major Musgrave deserves
more than a passing mention in any military history of the air. After
serving throughout the South African War as a lieutenant in the Royal
Engineers he had passed through the Staff College. The possibilities of
aviation very early took possession of his mind. In 1909, from the
cliffs of Dover, he saw M. Bleriot arrive in a monoplane, and was so
impressed by the sight that he went straight to the War Office to draw
attention to the military significance of this portent, and its threat
to our insular security. From this time forward his mind was set on
aeronautics. He applied for military aviation service before the Flying
Corps was formed, and in May 1912 repeated his application. 'A Staff
Officer', he noted in his diary, 'should know the capabilities of
aviation. He should be able to observe from an aeroplane and to travel
by aeroplane with dispatches.' At last, in October 1912, during a short
period of leave, he learned to fly at the Bristol Flying School on
Salisbury Plain. In the following spring he was gazetted a squadron
commander in the Royal Flying Corps. He was at once appointed assistant
commandant and officer in charge of experiments. His utility to the
Flying Corps, while it was in the making, was immense. He urged that new
squadrons should be formed even while machines were lacking, so that the
organization and discipline should be perfected in advance. The flying
training of the corps, he insisted, should always have a clear military
purpose in view. He was no militarist, but he was a good soldier, and he
knew the imminence of war with Germany. As early as December 1911, in a
lecture which he delivered in Malta, he predicted the war. 'When it
comes,' he said, 'be assured it will come suddenly. We shall wake up one
night, and find ourselves at war.... Another thing is certain. This war
will be no walk-over.... In the military sphere it will be the hardest,
fiercest, and bloodiest struggle we have ever had to face; let us fully
make up our minds to that, and probably every one of us here to-night
will take part in it. We need not be afraid of overdoing our
preparations.'
For two years Major Musgrave worked hard in helping to prepare the
Flying Corps for its coming ordeal. In the spring of 1914 a headquarters
flight was placed at his disposal for technical work in many kinds. Up
to this time there had been two kinds of experimental work; the National
Physical Laboratory was responsible for purely scientific experiments,
while the commanders of squadrons tested new ideas in practice. But
these two sets of men worked under very different conditions, and
neither of them fully understood the aims and difficulties of the other
branch. The headquarters flight was intended to serve as a link between
theory and practice. Major Musgrave gave special attention to wireless
telegraphy, and with the assistance of Lieutenants D. S. Lewis and B. T.
James, both also of the Royal Engineers and both pioneers of wireless,
he made good progress in its practical application to the needs of the
Flying Corps. When the war came, the headquarters flight was broken up
in order to bring the four original squadrons up to strength, but the
wireless section was attached for a time to No. 4 Squadron, and in
September 1914 a headquarters wireless unit was formed at
Fere-en-Tardenois in France, with Major Musgrave in command. From this
unit the whole wireless telegraphy organization of the Royal Flying
Corps was gradually developed. In December 1914 the unit was enlarged,
and became No. 9 Squadron stationed at headquarters. Having worked out
all details for the supply of wireless machines to the squadrons in the
field, Major Musgrave in March 1915 left the Royal Flying Corps to take
up duty with the staff of the army. He was severely wounded in August
1916. Almost two years later, on the night of the 2nd of June 1918,
having persuaded a battalion commander to let him accompany a patrol, he
was killed by a rifle grenade, inside the German lines. He desired no
personal advancement, and would have thought no other honour so great as
to die for his country. Such men, though the records of their lives are
buried under a mass of tedious detail, are the engineers of victory.
When the airships were handed over to the navy, it became necessary to
reorganize No. 1 Squadron as an aeroplane squadron. This was put in hand
on the 1st of May 1914, and was not completed when the war broke out.
The senior aeroplane squadrons of the Military Wing were, therefore, No.
2 Squadron under Major Burke, and No. 3 Squadron under Major
Brooke-Popham.
The officers of these squadrons, to whom it fell to set the example and
to show the way, were a remarkable group of pioneers. Some of them were
accomplished flyers, who took delight in the mastery of the air. But
none of them practised the art for the art's sake. They were not
virtuosos, bent on exhibiting the heights to which individual skill can
attain. They did not play a lone hand. The risks that they took were the
risks, not of adventure, but of duty. They were soldiers first. One and
all they were impressed with the importance of military aviation for
their country's need. 'It has got to come,' said Captain Patrick
Hamilton, 'and we have got to do it.' Their lives were pledged to their
country, and until their country should call for them, were held in
trust, not to be lightly thrown away. Some were called early, during the
exercises of peace; others during the war. Others again, a minority,
were marked down for a third chance, and were given the duty of carrying
on, through the war and after it. The time of the call, early or late,
made no difference; the work of the corps was not interrupted. When
Captain Eustace Loraine, the first to go, was killed with his passenger,
Staff-Sergeant R. H. V. Wilson, near Stonehenge, on the 5th of July
1912, the order was issued that flying would go on as usual that
evening. An order like this not only creates a tradition, it pays the
right honour to the dead, who died on duty no less than if they had been
brought down by the guns of the enemy. The casualties of the first
summer were not light in proportion to the strength of the corps, and in
one respect were very heavy, for almost all of those who were killed
were creators and founders, whose work and influence would have been
invaluable in building up the corps. They could ill be spared. They left
nothing but their example; yet any one who remembers what the Flying
Corps achieved during the war may well wonder whether that example does
not count for as much as a long life of devoted service.
Captain Eustace Broke Loraine had served with the Grenadier Guards in
the South African War. His great-grandfather was the famous British
admiral, Sir Philip Broke, who in 1813 commanded H.M.S. _Shannon_, and
after a fifteen minutes' battle outside the port of New York compelled
the surrender of the United States frigate _Chesapeake_. That battle, it
has been truly said, was won before it was fought; the _Shannon_ had
been many years cruising at sea; she was in perfect fighting trim, her
men were disciplined and her gunners practised. The men of the
_Chesapeake_ were fresh from the shore, strangers to each other and to
their officers, so that the heavier armament of the _Chesapeake_ was of
no avail. When Captain Loraine joined the Flying Corps he applied his
great-grandfather's methods, and set himself by study, care, discipline,
and skill to prepare the materials of victory. He was a highly skilled
pilot, perhaps overbold. The machine he was flying on the 5th of July
was the fast two-seater Nieuport monoplane on which Lieutenant
Barrington-Kennett had achieved some records. It seems that he attempted
too sharp a turn, lost flying speed, side-slipped, and nose-dived. He
was only a few hundred feet up, and there was no time to save the crash.
Those who knew him believe that he would have done much for the Flying
Corps. He spared no pains to understand his business, and to make theory
and practice help each other. Staff-Sergeant Wilson, who was killed with
him, was the senior technical non-commissioned officer of No. 3
Squadron, a first-class man, and a heavy loss.
Other fatalities were to follow. On the 6th of September Captain Patrick
Hamilton and Lieutenant A. Wyness-Stuart, flying a hundred horse-power
Deperdussin monoplane on reconnaissance duties connected with the
cavalry divisional training, crashed and were killed at Graveley, near
Hitchin. Four days later Lieutenant E. Hotchkiss and Lieutenant C. A.
Bettington, flying an eighty horse-power Bristol monoplane from Larkhill
to Cambridge, crashed and were killed at Wolvercote, near Oxford. A
committee was appointed to investigate these accidents, and in the
meantime an order was issued by the War Office forbidding the use of
monoplanes in the Royal Flying Corps. This order altered the scheme for
the army manoeuvres, where it had been intended to allot a squadron of
monoplanes to one force and a squadron of biplanes to the other, in
order to compare results. No. 3 Squadron, nevertheless, assembled near
Cambridge in such strength as it could muster; there were Major
Brooke-Popham, Captain Fox, and Second Lieutenant G. de Havilland of the
squadron; these were joined by Mr. Cody, who came as a civilian with his
own machine, and by officers of the Naval Air Service, who flew Short
biplanes.
The ban on monoplanes, it may be remarked in passing, was a heavy blow
to one of the earliest pioneers of aviation in this country. Mr. L.
Howard Flanders, who had worked with Mr. A. V. Roe at Lea Marshes, and
had designed the 'Pup' monoplane for Mr. J. V. Neale at Brooklands, had
subsequently formed a company for the building of aeroplanes, with works
at Richmond. He obtained a War Office contract for four monoplanes, but
when, after trial, he was engaged in reconstructing the under-carriages,
the use of the monoplane was forbidden to army pilots. This and other
disappointments put an end to Mr. Flanders's building activities, but
his name deserves record among the pioneers.