consisted of twelve machines, that is, three flights of four machines
each. It was now recommended and agreed that this number should be
raised to eighteen, that is, three flights of six machines each, and
that the establishment of pilots should be raised from twelve to twenty
for each squadron. It was further agreed that the raising of all
squadrons to the higher establishment should take precedence over the
formation of new squadrons.
On the 15th of June 1916, a fortnight before the battles of the Somme
opened, the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig, wrote to the War
Office, submitting further proposals for the expansion of the Royal
Flying Corps. By the spring of 1917, he says, the British army in France
will consist of five armies of four corps each. For these a total of
fifty-six squadrons will be required, each squadron to consist of
eighteen machines. 'I fully realize', he says, 'that my demand for this
large number of squadrons involves the provision of a very large number
of pilots and observers. The importance of this service, however, is so
great that I consider it essential that the necessary personnel should
be found even at the expense of a reduction in other directions.' The
increased establishment of the squadrons will involve, he adds, a
corresponding increase in the parks and depots; and in addition to all
this, a total of sixty kite-balloon sections will eventually be
required. This programme of requirements, he concludes, does not allow
for long-distance bombing raids on a large scale. An addition of ten
more squadrons is recommended for this purpose. Such raids are good and
useful if the time and place are carefully chosen in connexion with the
needs of the campaign. Otherwise they may do harm; and they are always
attended by considerable risk of losses.
During the three months of the battles of the Somme the Royal Flying
Corps maintained a clear measure of superiority over the enemy in the
air. At the close of those battles, on the 30th of September 1916, Sir
Douglas Haig informed the War Office that the enemy had been making
extraordinary efforts to increase the number and develop the speed and
power of his fighting machines, and within the last few days had brought
into action a considerable number of fighting aeroplanes which were
faster, handier, and capable of attaining a greater height than any of
the British machines, with the exception of three squadrons composed of
Nieuports, F.E.'s, and Sopwiths. To meet this situation he asked for
more and better fighting aeroplanes, and promised a further statement,
to be based on the estimate of the General Officer Commanding the Royal
Flying Corps. Fighting in the air continued to increase, and on the 16th
of November Sir Douglas Haig asked for twenty additional fighting
squadrons. 'Aerial battles on a large scale', he says, 'have practically
superseded individual combats, with the result that, in order to get
information and to allow artillery machines to carry on their work, it
is becoming more and more necessary for the fighting squadrons to be in
strength in the air the whole day.'
The new types of machine asked for did not arrive until the spring of
the following year, and they could not be used to advantage on their
arrival, for the pilots had first to learn to handle them. Accordingly,
as early as April 1917, General Trenchard wrote to the Director-General
of Military Aeronautics, outlining the requirements of the Royal Flying
Corps for the winter of 1917 and the spring of 1918. 'I anticipate', he
says, 'that the Germans will produce a machine as much better than their
present Albatross scout as the Albatross scout is better than the
Fokker.' The great need was still single-seater fighters, and he urges
that all available energy should be concentrated on these.
These programmes have been quoted, not so much to show how fighting in
the air became, in 1916, the most important activity of the Royal Flying
Corps, as to illustrate the initiative and foresight of the command.
Experience at the front of our own successes and failures, and of the
successes and failures of the Germans, suggested the needs of the
future; the provision to be made, so that we might be able to meet those
needs, was thought out beforehand, and was carefully and completely
stated for the information of the authorities at home. Disappointment
was inevitable; there were hitches and delays in design and manufacture;
conditions changed and machines improved at such a rate that a programme
became an antique almost before it could be completely fulfilled. The
growing pains of the Royal Flying Corps were severe, for the growth was
fast; but it grew under quick supervision, and was shaped by the lessons
of the war. The Flying Corps would take no denial; when the carrying out
of a programme was long delayed, they looked yet farther ahead, and
planned a still larger establishment. On the 20th of November 1917 Sir
Douglas Haig wrote to the Secretary of the War Office. In this letter he
points out that when the programme submitted in 1916 shall be completed,
some eighteen months to two years will have elapsed from the date when
it was first accepted. 'I consider it expedient, therefore, even at the
risk of dislocating existing arrangements, to submit a further programme
to cover the requirements of the British armies in France up to the
summer of 1919, in so far as these can be foreseen at present.'
The approved establishment of the Royal Flying Corps in France, at the
time when Sir Douglas Haig wrote, was eighty-six squadrons, ten of which
were long-distance bombing squadrons. His new demand was for a hundred
and seventy-nine squadrons, that is to say, a hundred and thirteen for
the British armies in France and Italy, and sixty-six long-distance
bombing squadrons for use against Germany. Further, he asks that the
establishment of the fighting squadrons shall be raised to twenty-four
machines. Formation tactics have developed; a squadron commonly goes
into a fight with three flights of six machines each, working in
echelon; to maintain this strength when some machines are temporarily
out of action the squadron must number twenty-four machines.
The Army Council approved of all these demands, and suggested further
additions, so that the programme, when it left their hands, provided for
a total of two hundred and forty squadrons, all told. The coming of the
armistice interrupted the fulfilment of these large plans, and saved the
world from a carnival of destruction.
The expansion of the air force was a long process. The large plans which
were made within a few days of the outbreak of war took years to
achieve. In the early part of the war the first duty of those who were
in charge at home was to supply needed reinforcements, both pilots and
machines, to the original squadrons in the field. This was a small
matter in comparison with the efforts of later years, but it was very
difficult. Pilots were hard to come by at short notice. The first demand
from France for reinforcements was telegraphed from Amiens on the 18th
of August 1914, and asked that Captain H. C. Jackson of the Bedfordshire
Regiment and Captain E. W. Furse of the Royal Artillery should be sent
to France to replace casualties. These were Staff College students who
were nominated for attachment to the Royal Flying Corps on mobilization.
A few days later, on the 22nd of August, a request came for any spare
aeroplanes and for pilots to fly them over. Five machines were scraped
together, which were all that were available, namely, an R.E. 1, a B.E.
8, two B.E. 2's, and a Bleriot. Five pilots were found to fly them,
including Second-Lieutenant C. Gordon Bell and Second-Lieutenant B. C.
Hucks. On the 9th of September, in response to a request for fighting
machines, 'C' Flight of No. 4 Squadron, consisting of Maurice Farman
Shorthorn aeroplanes fitted with machine-guns, was sent to France. These
machines took part in many aerial combats, but without much success, for
they were slower than the enemy machines, and their guns very often
jammed at critical moments. In the telegram offering these machines the
following sentences occur: 'Lord Kitchener wishes to give you all
replacements possible, but at the same time wishes to continue
organizing squadrons at home for use with reinforcements (that is to
say, with the divisions of the New Army). Please say if you like flights
of R.E. 5's and Maurice Farmans, but if they go other pilots must be
sent home to keep things going here.'
If only instructors could be obtained, pilots could be turned out more
rapidly than machines. Moreover, pilots, unlike machines, could not be
obtained from foreign nations. In the event a small but steady stream of
qualified pilots came from the Central Flying School and the
supplementary training stations for the reinforcement of the original
squadrons.
For the supply of machines during the earlier period of our preparation
we were chiefly dependent on the French. They were ready, and we were
not. Their magnificent aviation held the air while we prepared ourselves
for our task. They had many factories in good working order, so that
they were able to supply us with machines and spare parts in large
numbers. During the last four months of 1914, from the end of August to
the end of December, the Royal Flying Corps received twenty-four
machines from home, fitted with French engines, and twenty-six from
France. These last were chiefly Bleriots and Henri Farmans. In October
General Henderson posted Captain James Valentine of the Royal Flying
Corps to Paris, to organize a department for the supply of machines,
engines, spares and stores, and to report on the performances of all new
machines. In December the Admiralty followed suit and posted Lieutenant
Farnol Thurstan to Paris to fulfil similar duties on behalf of the Royal
Naval Air Service. The French Government were courteous and willing, but
a certain amount of bargaining was inevitable, for if we wanted their
aircraft, they wanted our raw material, especially steel, and our Lewis
guns. The arrangements were entrusted to a series of conferences, and
subsequently to a joint commission. In spite of difficulties the supply
went forward. It was not until 1916 that we began to be independent of
the French factories. In the four months August to November 1915 the
total value of the orders which were placed in France for aeroplanes,
engines, spare parts, and other accessories, was not much short of
twelve million francs. It was this help from our Allies that enabled us
to make progress during the first year of the war. By the 31st of May
1915 five hundred and thirty aeroplanes had been taken into the service
and about three hundred had been struck off as lost or worn out. On the
same date orders for two thousand two hundred and sixty aeroplanes were
in progress.
The story of the expansion of the Royal Flying Corps for military uses
is simple and clear, as its main purpose was simple and clear. Its
business was to furnish the army with eyes, to observe all enemy
operations, and especially the operations of enemy artillery. Its later
uses grew out of this, as the branches grow out of the stem of a tree.
From the aerodromes which were ranged all along the British front in
France our machines crossed the lines every day, to give help to the
General Staff, to give help to the gunners and the infantry, to carry
destruction to the enemy. The Flying Corps tried to keep pace with the
growth of the army which needed its help. Its own growth was continuous;
the problems which presented themselves to those who superintended that
growth were problems of supply, adjustment, and efficiency. The need was
certain; the only question was how the need might be best and quickest
supplied. A good aeroplane, flown by a skilled pilot, could always find
work of the first importance waiting for it on the western front.
The story of the development and expansion of the Royal Naval Air
Service is a different kind of story. As the first business of the Royal
Flying Corps was to help the army, so the first business of the Royal
Naval Air Service was to help the navy. But this business of helping the
navy was a much more difficult and complicated business than the other.
To help the army from fixed aerodromes behind the line of battle was a
dangerous and gallant affair, but it was not difficult. In the ease of
its solution the military problem was child's play compared with the
naval problem. How was the navy to be helped? As early as 1912 a policy
for the employment of the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps was laid
before the Board of Admiralty by Captain Murray Sueter. In this
statement the duties of naval aircraft were laid down; the two first to
be mentioned were: '(1) Distance reconnaissance work with the fleet at
sea. (2) Reconnaissance work off the enemy coast, working from detached
cruisers or special aeroplane ships.' The policy is clear and sound; but
a world of ingenuity and toil was involved in those two short
phrases--'with the fleet at sea', and 'working from detached cruisers'.
Aircraft must work from a base; when they had to work with the army on
land all that was needed was to set up some huts in certain meadows in
France. For aerial work with the fleet at sea the necessary preparations
were much more expensive and elaborate. Sea-going vessels had to be
constructed or adapted to carry seaplanes or aeroplanes and to serve as
a floating and travelling aerodrome. The seaplane itself, in the early
days of the war, was very far from perfect efficiency. It could not rise
from a troubled sea, nor alight on it, without disaster. Accidents to
seaplanes were so numerous, in these early days, that senior naval
officers were prejudiced against the seaplane, and, for the most part,
had no great faith in the value of the help that was offered by the
Royal Naval Air Service.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet well knew the value to the
fleet of aerial observation, but the means were not to hand. The airship
experiment had broken down. Such airships as were available in the early
part of the war had not the necessary power and range. To build a vessel
which should be able to carry seaplanes or aeroplanes for work with the
fleet was not a simple matter. Such a vessel would be an encumbrance
unless it could keep station with the Grand Fleet or with the Battle
Cruiser Squadron, that is, unless it could steam up to thirty knots for
a period of many hours together. Further, a stationary ship at sea is
exposed to attack by submarines, so that it was desirable, if not
necessary, that the flying machines should be able to take the air and
return to their base without stopping the ship. This consideration led,
at a later period of the war, to the use by the navy of aeroplanes flown
from specially constructed decks. But this was a matter of time and
experiment. As early as December 1911 Commander Samson had succeeded in
flying off the deck of H.M.S. _Africa_, and when the war broke out the
_Hermes_, which had formerly served as headquarters for the Royal Naval
Air Service, was fitted with a launching-deck for aeroplanes. The
_Hermes_ was sunk in the third month of the war; thereafter the _Ark
Royal_, the _Campania_, the _Vindex_, the _Manxman_, the _Furious_, the
_Pegasus_, and the _Nairana_ were each of them successively fitted with
a launching-deck. But launching proved easier than alighting. It may
seem to be a simple thing for an aeroplane to overtake a ship that is
being driven into the wind, and to alight quietly on its afterdeck. But
immediately behind such a ship there is always a strong up-current of
air. This up-current--the bump that the albatross sits on--is what makes
the difficulty and danger of the attempt. An aeroplane which resists it
by diving through it will almost certainly crash on the deck beyond. The
business of landing an aeroplane on the ship from which it had been
launched was not accomplished until the 2nd of August 1917, when Flight
Commander E. H. Dunning succeeded, at Scapa Flow, in landing a Sopwith
Pup on the forecastle deck of the _Furious_, while she was under way.
Five days later, when he was repeating this performance, his machine
rolled over into the sea, and he was drowned. His work was not lost; the
_Furious_ was fitted thereafter with a special landing-deck aft, and it
was by naval aeroplanes flown from the deck of the _Furious_ that one of
the large Zeppelin sheds at Tondern was destroyed on the 19th of July
1918.
The next ships in the succession were the _Vindictive_, the _Argus_
(which was the first ship to be fitted with a flush deck), the _Eagle_,
and the new _Hermes_, which last two ships were unfinished at the time
of the armistice.
In this matter of aerial work for the navy the whole period of the war
was a period of experiment rather than achievement. The conditions of
experiment were hard enough, when all the shipyards and factories of the
country were working at full pressure in the effort to make good our
heavy losses in merchant shipping. Yet experiment continued, and
progress was made. Three new forms of aircraft deserve special mention.
The kite balloon, the small improvised airship called the submarine
scout, and last, though not least, the flying boat, were all invented or
brought into use by the Naval Air Service during the course of the war.
For stationary aerial observation the means employed in England, before
the war, were the captive spherical balloon and the man-lifting kite.
Many successful experiments with the man-lifting kite, or groups of
kites, had been carried out, especially by Major B. F. S. Baden-Powell,
during the closing years of the nineteenth century. But both the balloon
and the kite had serious faults. The kite cannot be efficiently operated
in a wind of less than twenty miles an hour, and the spherical balloon
cannot be operated in a wind of more than twenty miles an hour. The
balloon except in the lightest of breezes, and the kite at all times,
give a very unsteady platform for observation, so that field-glasses are
difficult to use. The merits of both kite and balloon were combined and
the faults of both were remedied in the kite balloon. The attachment of
a kite to the upper hemisphere of an ordinary spherical balloon, on the
cable side, to prevent the balloon from rotating in a wind, had been
proposed by a private inventor as early as 1885, but nothing came of it.
The kite balloon which was used in the war was invented in 1894 by Major
von Parseval, the German airship designer, and Captain von Sigsfeld.
This balloon is sausage shaped; the cable is attached to the forward
portion; the rear end carries an air-rudder, and is weighted down by the
car, or basket. Extending outwards at right angles on both sides of the
rear portion of the balloon is a wind-sail which does the office of a
kite and assists in preventing the rudder end of the balloon from being
too much depressed by the weight of the car. The balloon is divided into
two segments; the forward segment is filled with gas, the rear segment
is kept full of air through a circular entrance attached, facing the
wind, to the under surface of the balloon. But the steadying of the
balloon is mainly achieved by the air-rudder, which is another inflated
sausage, curved round the under side of the rear end of the balloon, and
automatically filled with air through a valve at its forward end. The
kite balloon is the ugliest thing that man has ever seen when he looks
up at the sky, but it serves its purpose.
Before the war, kite balloons, often called 'Drachen' balloons, had been
a German secret. The French and Belgians had obtained drawings of them,
and at the outbreak of war had some few ready for use. Moreover, the
French were at work on their 'Cacquot' balloon, an improvement on the
'Drachen' in that it made use of a new and more convenient stabilizing
device. Where the 'Drachen' had used a long and clumsy string of
parachute streamers attached to the tail, the 'Cacquot' achieved the
same result by means of stabilizing fins attached to the balloon itself.
In October 1914 Wing Commander Maitland was sent to Belgium in command
of a captive balloon detachment, to carry out aerial spotting for the
guns of monitors working off the coast between Nieuport and Coxyde. His
two balloons, which were spherical, proved to be useless in a strong
wind. In January 1915 he made acquaintance with a 'Drachen' balloon
which the Belgians were using in the neighbourhood of Alveringheim. He
was allowed to inspect this balloon and to take measurements and
photographs. In January and February he sent home reasoned reports to
the Air Department of the Admiralty, urging that kite-balloon sections
should be formed in the British air service. He also sent Flight
Commander J. D. Mackworth to Chalais-Meudon, the French kite-balloon
centre, and in the second and fuller of his reports he embodied the
technical information which had been gathered from the French.
These reports were acted on at once. Wing Commander Maitland was
recalled from Belgium, and a centre was established at Roehampton, to
train kite-balloon sections for active service. In March 1915 two kite
balloons, an old type of winch, and a length of cable were received from
the French, who also lent competent instructors and a generous supply of
accessories.
Just at this time General Birdwood, who had been sent by Lord Kitchener
to the Dardanelles to report on the possibilities of a landing, and
Admiral de Robeck, who was in command of the naval forces there,
telegraphed to the War Office and the Admiralty that a man-lifting kite
or a captive balloon would be of great use to the navy for spotting
long-range fire and detecting concealed batteries. The Admiralty at once
appropriated a tramp steamer, S.S. _Manica_, which was lying at
Manchester, fitted her with a rough and ready apparatus, and on the 27th
of March dispatched her with a kite-balloon section under Flight
Commander J. D. Mackworth to the Dardanelles. This was the first kite
balloon used by us in the war, and, it is believed, the first
kite-balloon ship fitted out by any navy. The observation work done from
the _Manica_ was good and useful, especially during the earlier phase of
the operations, and the difficulties encountered suggested many
improvements in the balloon and in the ship. Orders were given for six
balloon ships to be fitted out.
Admiral Beatty, in August 1915, recommended that the work of aerial
observation for the fleet should be done by kite balloons, towed by
vessels accompanying the Battle Cruiser Squadron, and some trials were
made which demonstrated the value of this suggestion. But here again
very elaborate experiments were necessary before authorizing any large
programme of construction, and in the meantime production on a
considerable scale had become difficult, for the kite balloon, which was
first manufactured in this country to the order of the navy, was already
in great demand by the army for use on the western front. As early as
April 1915 the Army Council had asked the Admiralty to supply kite
balloons for aerial observation with the expeditionary force in France,
and by August of that year five kite-balloon sections had gone overseas
and were doing invaluable work on the western front. At this point the
kite-balloon sections working with the army were taken over by the War
Office, but the Admiralty continued to provide the necessary material
and equipment. Great Britain was involved in the greatest land war she
had ever known, and the navy, with all the wealth of its inventive
resources, stood by to help the army.
The two other forms of aircraft which were invented or adapted by the
navy for the needs of the war, that is to say, the submarine scout
airship and the flying boat, must here be mentioned and their origin
described; but their great achievement belongs to the later period of
the war, when the defeat of the German submarine campaign had become a
matter of life or death for the British Commonwealth.
The small airship called the 'S.S.', or Submarine Scout, was an
invention of the first year of the war. On the 28th of February 1915
Admiral Fisher sent for Commander E. A. D. Masterman and Wing Commander
N. F. Usborne, and told them that he wanted some small, fairly fast
airships to operate against the German submarines, and that he wanted
them at once. There was no time for experiment or the elaboration of new
designs; speed in production was essential, and speed could not be
attained except by the adaptation of existing types and the use of
standard parts. The navy is seen at its best when it has to rise to an
unforeseen occasion; within three weeks the first of the now famous
S.S.'s was ready for service. For the design of this airship it is as
difficult to apportion credit among the small band of naval officers who
had a hand in it as it is to divide the praise for the first flying
machine between the brotherhood of the Wrights. The idea seems to have
been struck out during a conversation in the mess at Farnborough at
which there were present the late Wing Commander N. F. Usborne, Flight
Lieutenant T. R. Cave-Browne-Cave, and Mr. F. M. Green of the Royal
Aircraft Factory. In the result the body, or fuselage, of a B.E. 2c
aeroplane was slung on to the envelope of a Willows airship, and the job
was done. The success of this airship was as great as its design was
simple. It fairly fulfilled the main requirements--to remain aloft for
eight hours in all ordinary kinds of weather, with a speed of from forty
to fifty miles an hour, and carrying a load which should include a
wireless telegraphy installation for the purposes of report and a
hundred and sixty pounds' weight of bombs for more immediate use. The
first twenty-five of these ships to be produced were fitted with the 70
horse-power Renault engine. Variations and improvements of the design
followed in steady succession, providing greater endurance, and more
comfortable cars for the crew. One of these variants, the C. 1 or
coastal type, used an Astra-Torres envelope and a car made from two Avro
fuselages with the tails cut off; a later and larger design, the N.S. 1,
or North Sea type, in use at the end of the war, had an endurance, on
occasion, of from two to three days.
Airship work against submarines, an authority on the subject has
remarked, partakes of the nature of research work. An airship is
comparatively slow in manoeuvring, and is an instrument of knowledge
rather than of power. For swift assault on submarines, once they are
located, the seaplane is better; but the seaplane was not seaworthy. The
need for some kind of aircraft which should be able to search the North
Sea far and wide for submarines, and, having found them, should be able
to destroy them without calling for the assistance of surface craft, was
met by the development of the flying boat. There was a flying boat in
use by the navy before the war--the small pusher Sopwith Bat boat. It
had a stepped hull, like a racing motor-boat, about twenty feet long and
four feet in the beam. This was the only flying boat used by the Naval
Air Service when the war began; when it ended they were flying the
_Felixstowe Fury_, a giant boat triplane which, with its load, weighed
fifteen tons, was driven by five 360 horse-power engines, and carried
four guns in addition to a supply of heavy bombs. The development of
this type of aircraft for the purposes of the war must be credited
chiefly to the late Lieutenant-Colonel John Cyril Porte, who had been an
officer of the Royal Navy and a pioneer of aviation. As early as 1909,
when he was a naval lieutenant, he had experimented with a glider on
Portsdown Hill, near Portsmouth. Two years later he was invalided out of
the service, and devoted his enforced leisure to aviation. He learned to
fly at Rheims, on a Deperdussin monoplane, and in 1912 was appointed
technical director and designer of the British Deperdussin Company. The
first British-built monoplane of this type, with a 100 horse-power
Anzani engine, was of his design, and was flown by him at the Military
Aeroplane Trials on Salisbury Plain in 1912. After the trials he flew to
Hendon, a distance of eighty-two miles, in one hour and five minutes.
During the following summer he spent some time experimenting with a
waterplane at Osea Island in Essex. When the British Deperdussin Company
was broken up he went to America, and joined Mr. Glenn Curtiss at
Hammondsport, New York, in the task of designing a flying boat to cross
the Atlantic. Then the war came; on the day it was declared he sailed
for England, re-entered the navy, and was at once made a squadron
commander of the Royal Naval Air Service. For a time he was in command
of the newly-formed naval air station at Hendon, where he trained pilots
for the service; then, in September 1915, he was given the command of
the Felixstowe Naval Air Station. This was his opportunity, and he did
not let it slip. The Curtiss flying boats which were procured from
America were of inferior workmanship and had many faults. He patiently
went to work to improve and perfect them. 'There would probably not have
been any big British flying boats', says one who worked with him, 'but
for the vision, persistence, and energy, in the face of disbelief and
discouragement, of Colonel J. C. Porte, C.M.G., who designed and built
at Felixstowe Air Station the experimental machine of each type of
British flying boat successfully used in the service. His boats were
very large, the types used in the war weighing from four and a half to
six and a half tons, and carried sufficient petrol for work far out from
land, and big enough bombs to damage or destroy a submarine otherwise
than by a direct hit.... The boats were very seaworthy, and no lives
were lost in operations from England owing to unseaworthiness.'
The technical problems to be faced were very difficult; and powerful
flying boats were not in action till the spring of 1917. But this was
in the nick of time to meet the great German submarine effort. During
the following year--the crucial year of the naval war--forty flying
boats were put into commission; they sighted in all sixty-eight enemy
submarines, and they bombed forty-four, some of which it was
subsequently proved that they had sunk.
Through all his strenuous work for the navy, Colonel Porte had to do
battle with ill health; he retired in 1919, and in October of that year
died suddenly at Brighton, in the thirty-sixth year of his age. The
shortest possible list of those who saved the country in its hour of
need would have to include his name.
Another purely naval use of aircraft, on which, during the war, much
effort was spent, was their use for the carrying and launching of
torpedoes. The torpedo has long been one of the chief weapons of naval
warfare; it is commonly carried by surface or submarine craft to the
place where it can be launched against the enemy. If it could be carried
and launched by rapid aircraft, its value would be enormously increased,
and the torpedo-carrying aeroplane or seaplane would outrival the
submarine as a weapon of offence against enemy shipping. This was very
early recognized by those who were concerned in developing naval
aircraft. The first experiments are said to have been made in 1911 by an
Italian, Captain Guidoni, who made use of a Farman machine, and released
from it a torpedo weighing 352 pounds. In the same year the little group
of naval officers who were superintending the construction of the
_Mayfly_ at Barrow-in-Furness had many discussions on the subject. One
of them, Lieutenant Hyde-Thomson, subsequently drafted a paper on
torpedo aircraft, with some rough sketches; in 1913 a design was got out
at the Admiralty, and in the same year Mr. Sopwith constructed two
sample machines. From this time onward the hope of using the torpedo,
launched from the air, against ships which are sheltered and protected
from naval attack, was never long absent from the minds of those who
directed the activities of the Royal Naval Air Service. It was this
hope, more than anything else, which inspired the production of larger
seaplanes and higher powered engines. At the naval review of July 1914,
a Short seaplane of 160 horse-power had been fitted, in a temporary
fashion, to carry a 14-inch torpedo weighing 810 pounds. With the same
end in view, after the war broke out, the principal manufacturers of
motor-cars were encouraged to develop air engines of high power,
especially the Sunbeam engine of 225 horse-power, and the Rolls-Royce
engine, which played so distinguished a part in the war. When H.M.S.
_Engadine_ was fitted out as a carrier in the first month of the war, it
was expressly stated by the Admiralty that her business was to carry
torpedo seaplanes to the scene of action. Later on, at Gallipoli,
seaplanes shipped in the _Ben my Chree_ succeeded in flying across the
Isthmus of Bulair and in torpedoing a merchant ship on the shore of the
Sea of Marmara, an ammunition ship at Ak Bashi Liman, and a steam tug in
the Straits.
All this seemed full of promise. The modern torpedo is a very efficient
weapon, and the problem of designing an aeroplane or seaplane to carry
it was a problem requiring adaptation rather than new invention. Yet the
development of torpedo aircraft during the war was, in the words of an
official memorandum, 'astonishingly slow'. After the Gallipoli exploits
nothing of importance in this kind was achieved during the years that
followed, until the very end of the war.
The causes of this disappointment were many. In the first place the
seaplane, which seems almost as if it had been designed to carry a
torpedo suspended between its floats, was itself a disappointment. It
proved to be a fair-weather craft. Seaplanes were used, early in the
war, to carry out reconnaissances in the neighbourhood of the Ems river;
of those launched for this work more than half had their floats broken
up, and sank before they could rise from the water. Moreover, in
addition to this main objection, there were other obstacles to the
development of torpedo-carrying aircraft. The chief of these were what
are officially described as 'operational difficulties'. On the high
seas, it must be remembered, and in other easily accessible waters,
there were no enemy ships to be attacked. To use torpedoes against
warships in their harbours or sheltered waters, specially designed
aircraft must first make long and difficult flights. In the meantime,
while the war was young, there was a distressing shortage of aircraft
for other and more immediate purposes nearer home. The ships assigned as
carriers for aircraft had to be employed at times in mine-seeking and
other necessary operations. The machines themselves were much in demand
for the purposes of reconnaissance. Experiment continued at Calshot;
practice attacks were carried out with machines from Felixstowe, and
convinced the naval authorities of the value of torpedo aircraft; a
successful torpedo aeroplane, called the _Cuckoo_, was designed in 1916
by Messrs. Sopwith, and was produced in the following year by Messrs.
Blackburn; finally, in 1917, the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet
asked for two hundred torpedo aeroplanes to be provided for the fleet at
the earliest possible date. The bulk of these machines had to be made by
inexperienced firms, so that the first squadron of torpedo aeroplanes
for the fleet was not completed till October 1918, when it embarked in
H.M.S. _Argus_. There had been earlier schemes for a torpedo seaplane
school at Felixstowe and at Scapa in the Orkneys; but now, in the
summer of 1918, a torpedo aeroplane school was established at East
Fortune, and the 1918 programme arranged also for another torpedo
aeroplane school and a torpedo aeroplane experimental squadron, both at
Gosport.
In any future war there can be no doubt that torpedo aircraft will prove
to be a weapon of enormous power. As Lieutenant Hyde-Thomson remarks in
a paper which he prepared in 1915, they will be a menace to the largest
battleship afloat. They have double the speed of a destroyer, and a
large measure of that suddenness of attack which is the virtue of a
submarine and the dread of its victims. The technical difficulties
connected with the release and aiming of the torpedo have been met and
conquered, so that these craft, though they played no considerable part
in the war, were brought by the pressure of war, which quickens all
things, to the stage of practical efficiency.
Some minor causes of the delay in the development of torpedo aircraft
may perhaps be found. Those who pinned their faith to the Dreadnought as
the mainstay of naval power were not likely to be eager to improve a
weapon which, more than any other, seemed likely to make the Dreadnought
belie its name. Moreover, the burden of a torpedo was never very popular
with pilots. A torpedo can be used only against its preordained target;
it gives no protection to the aircraft that carries it, and its great
weight makes the machine slower in manoeuvre and more vulnerable. This
objection was well stated by a German pilot who was taken prisoner in
June 1917. The Germans, in the early part of that year, formed at
Zeebrugge a flight of torpedo seaplanes, which had this advantage over
our torpedo aircraft, that suitable targets were not lacking. These
seaplanes sank three of our merchant ships in the vicinity of Margate
and the Downs. Two of the seaplanes were shot down on the morning of
the 11th of June 1917 by the armed yacht _Diana_. In the report of the
examination of the German pilots it is told that both the prisoners
seemed to deprecate this mode of flying, and to glory chiefly in their
own single-seaters, which were smaller, swifter, and without
encumbrance. 'Once you are given a two-seater,' said one of them, 'the
authorities start loading you up with cameras, machine-guns, bombs, and
wireless, and now, to crown all, they actually hang a torpedo on your
machine!'
The new types of naval aircraft which were invented or developed during
the course of the war have now been briefly described. When a critical
account shall hereafter be rendered of the doings of the years 1914 to
1918, regarded as an incident in the ever-lengthening history of human
warfare upon earth, these new departures in the use of naval aircraft
will probably be recognized as the chief contribution to sea-power made
by the late war. Their importance is enormous, but their place in the
actual history of the earlier years of the war is comparatively small.
The weapons of the Royal Naval Air Service, so far as purely naval uses
were concerned, were in a rudimentary state at the outbreak of war. A
fighting service, suddenly engaged in a great war, must use the weapons
it has; it cannot spend more than a margin of its time and thought on
problematic improvements. The Naval Air Service, when the war began, had
good machines and good pilots. The army had endeavoured, before the war,
to establish, on behalf of the nation, a centralized control of
aeronautical manufacture, and the benefits of that policy, when the war
came, have already been described. The navy, following its traditional
plan, and working on freer lines, had done all it could to encourage
private effort, and so had greatly stimulated aeronautical invention and
progress. There was nothing inconsistent in the two policies; they were
stronger together than either could have been alone. When the great
effort was called for, the only thing that could be done at once was to
multiply the best existing types of machine, and to attempt, with the
means available, to perform such tasks as might present themselves.
Before the war the principal firms employed by the Admiralty in the
manufacture of flying machines were: for seaplanes, Messrs. Short
Brothers at Eastchurch, Messrs. Sopwith at Kingston-on-Thames, and
Messrs. J. Samuel White & Co. at Cowes, who had produced the Wight
seaplane; for aeroplanes, Messrs. Short and Messrs. Sopwith as before,
the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company at Bristol, and Messrs. A. V.
Roe & Co. at Manchester. Orders as large as they could handle were
placed with all these firms on the outbreak of war. Further, a very
large order for B.E. 2c machines was placed with various firms, who were
to construct them by the aid of Government plans and specifications; and
Messrs. Vickers received orders for their gun-carrying two-seater pusher
aeroplane known as the Vickers fighter.
The navy naturally paid more attention than the army to fighting in the
air. They were committed to the defence of the coast and the beating off
of hostile air-raids. In France, where the guns were going all day, the
first need was for reconnaissance machines; the navy, who were farther
from the enemy, had set their hearts on machines that should do more
than observe--machines that could fly far and hit hard. They diligently
fostered the efforts of the leading motor-car companies, especially the
Sunbeam and Rolls-Royce, and so were instrumental in the production of
very efficient engines of high horse-power. In the second year of the
war the Admiralty proposed a competition among aeroplane-makers for a
large bombing machine and a fast fighting aeroplane. In the result the
Short machine for bombing, fitted with a 250 horse-power Rolls-Royce
engine, was produced. Later on, the single-seater Sopwith Pup and the
two-seater Sopwith 1-1/2 Strutter set the fashion in fighting machines,
and did good work with the army at the battles of the Somme. The fact is
that in the early part of the war the best of the existing types of
aeroplane were more useful, as things stood, to the army than to the
navy, and when this was recognized a great part of the work of the Royal
Naval Air Service took the form of help given to the British army.
When in August 1915 Mr. Maurice Baring was sent to Rome on business
connected with aircraft, he records how he had speech with General
Morris, who was in charge of Italian aviation. 'What I am going to say
to you', said General Morris, 'will be absolutely unintelligible and
unthinkable to you as Englishmen, but I regret to say that here, in
Italy, it is a fact that there exists a certain want of harmony--a
certain occasional, shall I say, friction?--between the military and
naval branches of our flying service.' Mr. Baring was amused by this
speech, but he kept a grave countenance, and murmured, 'Impossible'.
Both the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service were eager
to serve their country. Their rivalry was creditable to them. When they
were called on to co-operate, their relations were friendly and helpful.
But the pressing need for more and more aeroplanes on the western front
dominated the situation. The Admiralty were many times asked by the
military authorities to hand over to the Royal Flying Corps large
numbers of machines and engines which were on order for the Royal Naval
Air Service. To the best of their ability they fulfilled these requests,
but the zealous members of a patriotic service would be more or less
than human if they felt no regret on being deprived of the control of
their own material.
When the Royal Flying Corps was formed, in the spring of 1912, it was
intended that either wing should be available to help the other. But
before the war broke out the two had almost ceased to co-operate. The
methods and subjects of instruction were distinct. The discipline and
training of the one wing were wholly military, of the other wholly
naval; and this severance had been officially recognized, just before
the war, by the transformation of the Naval Wing into the Royal Naval
Air Service. In truth, while reconnaissance continued to be, what it was
at the beginning of the war, almost the sole duty of aircraft, effective
co-operation between the two services was difficult or impossible. Most
of the naval air pilots knew little of the business of military
reconnaissance; nor could the military observer be expected to recognize
and identify enemy shipping.
The demand for squadrons to assist the land campaign seemed likely to be
greater than the supply, and on the 24th of August 1914 the Government
had approved the formation of two Royal Naval Air Service squadrons, to
be trained for military duties. The Admiralty took action at once, and
these two squadrons were formed, one at Fort Grange, the other at
Eastchurch, during the early days of October. They were only a few days
old when news came that the army chiefs did not approve of the plan.
Writing on the 17th of October 1914 Sir John French said that the
efficiency of the Flying Corps for military purposes was principally due
to its organization and training. 'It is therefore', he added, 'most
desirable that any reinforcements should be organized, trained, and
equipped in exactly the same manner as the squadrons now in the field.
Owing to the complete divergence between methods and equipment of the
naval and military air services, I do not consider that units of the
Royal Naval Air Service would be suitable as reinforcements to this
force.' Lieutenant-Colonel Brancker, in a minute on this letter, dated
the 22nd of October, suggested that the army should undertake all aerial
work with the expeditionary force abroad and with the mobile forces at
home, while the navy should undertake the aerial work for all fixed
defences at home. A few weeks later the Army Council, replying to the
offer of the Admiralty, suggested that the best way for the Admiralty to
help would be by handing over to the War Office the aeroplanes which
were being provided to the order of the Admiralty, so that the
additional military squadron might be the earlier completed. Lastly, on
the 2nd of December, Lieutenant-Colonel Brancker addressed an urgent
appeal to the Air Department of the Admiralty. The squadrons with the
British forces in the field, he said, were very seriously short of
aeroplanes. There was also a shortage of flying officers, especially for
the training of pilots at home. He suggested that the entire output of
the Avro factory, and all the Vickers fighters, should be placed at the
disposal of the War Office; that four Maurice Farmans under construction
in Paris for the Admiralty should be delivered direct to the
headquarters of the Royal Flying Corps in France; and that any number up
to twenty good pilots, and the same number of wireless operators, should
be lent by the Admiralty to the War Office. The Admiralty replied at
once that they were willing to hand over to the Army Council twelve
Vickers fighters and six Maurice Farman machines, and that they were
preparing a squadron of eight Avro machines and four Sopwith scouts
under Squadron Commander Longmore, to proceed overseas about the middle
of January, and to work under the orders of the officer commanding the
Military Wing. On the 1st of January 1915 the War Office, after
consulting Sir David Henderson, refused this offer of a naval squadron.
'It has been decided', wrote Lieutenant-Colonel Brancker, 'to send no
further new aeroplane squadrons to join the Expeditionary Force until
the winter is over; the bad weather renders aerial reconnaissance
difficult, and we find that owing to the impossibility of protecting the
machine from deterioration it will be better to keep our new units at
home until conditions improve.' In the event about a hundred machines,
and as many more American Curtiss machines, built and building, were
turned over by the Admiralty to the War Office during the first year of
the war, but no further suggestion for the use of naval squadrons on the
western front was made until March 1916; and it was not until October of
that year that the first complete naval squadron got to work as a
self-contained unit under military command.
Service men will understand better than civilians the difficulties of a
mixed service. Each of the great services has always been willing to
help the other so long as it is allowed to preserve its own traditions
intact. Their quarrels are lovers' quarrels, springing from a jealous
maintenance of separate individualities. Moreover, the war, during its
early course, was regarded by most civilians and most service men as
likely to be a short war. The attention of soldiers late in 1914 was
concentrated on the decision that was expected in the following spring.
Lord Kitchener's famous prediction of a three years' war was regarded as
a wise insurance against foolish over-confidence, but was not believed.
The officers responsible for the Flying Corps in France were concerned
chiefly for the maintenance of that admirable little force in full
efficiency. They suffered continually from a shortage of aeroplanes, and
although their casualties had been far lighter than any one had
anticipated, they had every reason to fear a shortage of flying
officers. Their first demand was not for new squadrons, but for a
reserve of pilots and machines, to keep the existing squadrons in
working trim. It was only by degrees that the portentous dimensions of
the war began to be perceived--a war which, just before it ended, was
employing ninety-nine squadrons of British aeroplanes on the western
front alone.
The discovery, or rather the practical development, of new uses for
aircraft in war quickened the demand for additional squadrons and made
it easier for the two branches of the air service to co-operate. As the
war progressed aerial fighting and bomb-dropping became more and more
important. These were new arts, and required no special naval or
military training; they belonged to the air. When the Fokker fighting
monoplane appeared in strength on the western front in the early months
of 1916, the losses of the Royal Flying Corps in reconnaissance and
artillery observation became very heavy. It was then that the Admiralty
were again appealed to for help, and four Nieuport scouts, with pilots
and mechanics, were dispatched from Eastchurch, arriving at the
aerodrome of No. 6 Squadron, at Abeele, between Cassel and Poperinghe,
on the 29th of March 1916. Before this time the pilots of the Royal
Flying Corps in the Ypres salient had had only the barest acquaintance
with the pilots of the Naval Air Service at Dunkirk. Some of the earlier
Flying Corps pilots had met those of the other service at the Central
Flying School; some of the later pilots had had occasion to land at
Dunkirk and had been filled with admiration and envy when they were
shown the machines and equipment belonging to the Naval Air Service.
Sometimes a naval pilot, flying a little south of his usual beat, would
come across a military pilot in the air, and the two would make some
token of recognition. But the four naval Nieuport scouts of March 1916
sent to the salient to help to meet the attacks of German fighting
scouts were the first naval detachment to co-operate with the Royal
Flying Corps in the field under military command. The experiment, though
it lasted only for eighteen days, was a success. The naval officers and
ratings were treated royally, as guests, and there was complete harmony
between the two services. The little Nieuport scouts brought reassurance
to the lonely artillery pilots on the front, and had a happy effect on
the German fighting pilots, who were led to suspect the presence of a
whole new squadron of Nieuports. On the 16th of April No. 29 Fighting
Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps, which had been delayed by accidents,
arrived at Abeele, and the naval machines returned to Dunkirk.
This experiment showed the way and encouraged fuller measures. During
the battles of the Somme, which began on the 1st of July 1916, the Royal
Flying Corps maintained a resolute and continuous offensive over the
enemy lines. They suffered very heavy casualties, at a time when
training and construction at home, which were in process of development,
were unable to make good all the losses. Then the Admiralty, on the
urgent appeal of the Army Council, agreed to detach from the Dunkirk
command a complete squadron of eighteen fighting aeroplanes, under
Squadron Commander G. M. Bromet, for temporary duty with the army. The
squadron consisted of six two-seater Sopwiths, six single-seater
Sopwiths, and six Nieuport scouts. They arrived at Vert Galand
aerodrome, which is situated eleven miles north of Amiens on the
Amiens-Doullens road, on the 16th of October 1916. After three weeks
spent in machine-gun practice and flights to learn the country, the
first full day's work was done on the 9th of November. There were many
combats, and three enemy machines were driven down in a damaged
condition. This squadron continued to operate with the army in France.
By the beginning of 1917 there were in France, working wholly with the
army, thirty-eight Royal Flying Corps squadrons; that is to say,
nineteen artillery squadrons and nineteen fighting squadrons; and the
one fighting squadron belonging to the Royal Naval Air Service. It was
anticipated that the Germans, who had appointed a single officer,
General von Hoeppner, to take charge of all their military aircraft, and
had produced several improved types of machine, would make a great
effort in the spring of 1917 to recapture the air. To meet this effort
more fighting squadrons were needed. The machinery at home for the
reinforcement of the Royal Flying Corps was working at high pressure,
and could not at once supply the need. So an appeal was once more
addressed to the Admiralty, who agreed to provide four more fighting
squadrons to be used on the western front. These squadrons made a
punctual appearance, and during the earlier half of 1917 did magnificent
work in helping to maintain the British supremacy in the air. Naval
Squadron No. 3, for instance, under Squadron Commander R. H. Mulock, was
at work on the western front from the beginning of February to the
middle of June. During this time it accounted for eighty enemy aircraft
with a loss of only nine machines missing, and provided highly respected
escorts for photographic reconnaissances and bomb raids. From July 1917
onwards the naval squadrons, having bridged the gap, were gradually
replaced by squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps, and were returned to
Dunkirk.
The loan of these squadrons naturally diminished the force available for
aerial operations under naval control, but the spirit in which the help
was given is well expressed in a letter of Wing Captain C. L. Lambe,
who was in command of the naval air forces at Dover and Dunkirk.
Writing in August 1917 he points out the serious effects on the force
under his command of the wastage of pilots, but concludes: 'I would
remark however that the loan of these squadrons to the Royal Flying
Corps must have been of the greatest value to the Empire, since the
official record issued by the Royal Flying Corps states that up to
August 3rd, 1917, a hundred and twenty-one enemy machines have been
destroyed by naval squadrons, and two hundred and forty have been driven
down out of control.'
When help was needed by the army, it was generously given by the navy,
but the difficulties which inevitably present themselves when the
attempt is made to secure the smooth and efficient collaboration of two
separate forces cannot be solved by generous feeling. Most men are
willing to help their country, but a country's revenue cannot be raised
by free gift. Without justice and certainty there can be no efficiency,
and for justice and certainty law and regulation are required. The chief
administrative problem of the war in the air had its origin in the need
for a large measure of co-operation between the military and naval air
forces. The repeated attempts to solve this problem, the problem of
unity of control, by the establishment of successive Air Boards, and the
achieved solution of it by the amalgamation in 1918 of the two services
under the control of an Air Ministry--these events took almost as long
as the war to happen; indeed the story of them might truly be called the
Constitutional History of the War in the Air. That story cannot be told
here; it shall be told at a later point, in connexion with the
foundation of the Royal Air Force. The method of government of the Royal
Flying Corps has already been described; all that can fitly be attempted
here is a brief account of the government of the Royal Naval Air
Service, and the earlier vicissitudes of that government.
The union of the two wings of the Royal Flying Corps, that is to say, of
the original Naval and Military Wings, was a one-sided and imperfect
union, because the Royal Flying Corps, in its inception, was under the
control of the War Office. The naval officers who joined the Naval Wing
remained under the control of the Admiralty, and before the war the
Admiralty had established an Air Department, with Captain Murray Sueter
as its Director, to be responsible for the development of naval
aeronautics. But the Director was less happily situated than his
military counterpart, the Director-General of Military Aeronautics at
the War Office, who, it will be remembered, dealt at first hand with the
Secretary of State for War. The Naval Director of the Air Department had
less power and less independence. From the time of Mr. Samuel Pepys,
throughout the eighteenth century, and down to the year 1832, the navy
had been administered by the office of the Lord High Admiral, assisted
by a Navy Board, which was composed, for the most part, of civilian
members of Parliament. In 1832 the Navy Board was abolished, and the
modern Board of Admiralty was created to control the navy. The business
of this Board was divided up among its various members. Finance fell to
the Parliamentary Secretary; works, buildings, contracts, and dockyard
business were the portion of the Civil Lords; while all kinds of service
business, that is to say, preparation for war, distribution of the
fleet, training, equipment, and the like, were assigned to one or other
of the Sea Lords. When the Air Department was formed to take charge of
the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps, its Director was not only
generally responsible to the Board of Admiralty, he was responsible to
each of the Sea Lords in matters connected with that Sea Lord's
department. This divided responsibility, which, by old custom, works
well enough in a body with established traditions, like the navy, was
not a good scheme for controlling the unprecedented duties, or for
encouraging the unexampled activities, of an air force.
When the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps was first established, in
1912, H.M.S. _Hermes_, under the command of Captain G. W. Vivian, was
commissioned as its headquarters. During the following year naval air
stations came into being at the Isle of Grain, at Calshot, Felixstowe,
Yarmouth, and Cromarty, and in December 1913 the duties of the captain
of the _Hermes_ were taken over by Captain F. R. Scarlett, who was given
the newly created post of Inspecting Captain of Aircraft, with
headquarters at the Central Air Office, Sheerness. At the time of the
outbreak of war the Royal Naval Air Service was administered by the
Admiralty, and consisted of the Air Department at Whitehall, the Central
Air Office at Sheerness, the Royal Naval Flying School at Eastchurch,
the various naval air stations, and such aircraft as were available for
naval purposes. The Sheerness office was under the Nore command, and the
Inspecting Captain of Aircraft, who took his instructions from the
Director of the Air Department, was also responsible to the
Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleets in all matters relating to
aircraft operations with the main fleet.
The coming of the war soon multiplied air stations as well as aircraft;
inland stations were established at Hendon, Chingford, Wormwood Scrubbs,
and Roehampton; squadrons were dispatched abroad, and seaplane ships
were commissioned; so that efficient control by the Nore command was no
longer possible. In February 1915 the Admiralty decided that the whole
of the Royal Naval Air Service should be forthwith placed under the
orders of the Director of the Air Department, who was to be solely
responsible to the Board of Admiralty. The Central Air Office was
abolished, and Captain Scarlett was appointed to the staff of the Air
Department to carry out inspection duties.
When this decision took effect in Admiralty Weekly Orders, certain
points of difficulty were at once raised by the Commander-in-Chief of
the Nore. 'Is the personnel of the air stations', he asked, 'to be
subject to local Port Orders? I can hardly imagine that their Lordships
intend otherwise. There are 77 officers and 530 men, including 94 naval
ratings, in the three air establishments at present in my command
(Eastchurch, Grain, and Kingsnorth), and it is understood that these
numbers will shortly be increased by the personnel of three additional
air stations (Clacton, Westgate, and Maidstone).' Further, he asked
whether the Commander-in-Chief was to remain the controlling authority
with regard to punishments; and he added, 'I strongly urge the
re-establishment of some Central Air Authority in the port under my
command with whom I can deal on defence and other important matters
without reference to the individual air stations, which may often be
commanded by officers of small naval experience to whom the naval aspect
of the situation may not especially appeal.'
It was felt in the air service that owing to the technical nature of the
work the question of punishments should not be relegated to any one
outside the air service. The Commander-in-Chief of the Nore had invoked
the King's Regulations, so the question was referred to the naval law
branch of the Admiralty, which, in April 1915, replied that 'the
discipline of the air service is governed entirely by the King's
Regulations, which provide that the powers conferred upon commanding
officers by the Naval Discipline Act shall be subject to the approval of
a Flag officer whose flag is flying or the Senior Naval Officer.... As a
matter of fact the Director of the Air Department has no disciplinary
power under the Naval Discipline Act, and the reference of warrants to
him would neither be in accordance with the King's Regulations nor the
Naval Discipline Act.'
This verdict threw the organization of the Royal Naval Air Service once
more into the melting-pot. The question of discipline was at the root of
the whole matter. The navy were not willing to hand over the control of
discipline to a body which, though it was called the Royal Naval Air
Service, was much looser in discipline than the Royal Navy. The causes
of this comparative laxity are easily intelligible. When the war came,
the need for new pilots was pressing; the training accommodation at the
Central Flying School and at Eastchurch was wholly inadequate; so the
Admiralty had at once made arrangements for entering officers direct
from civilian life, and for training them at civilian schools of
aviation, such as the schools at Brooklands, Hendon, and Eastbourne. The
important thing at the outbreak of war was to get officers who could fly
a machine, and to get them quickly. Of professional training in naval
knowledge and naval discipline there was perforce little. The spirit of
adventure brought many youths at a very early age into the Naval Air
Service; some of them were entered as commissioned officers, and were
paid fourteen shillings a day at an age at which the regular sea service
officer was being paid one shilling and ninepence a day, less threepence
for the naval instructor. It is not to be wondered at that the high
spirits of some of these untrained youths, and their festive behaviour,
exposed them to the criticism of older officers who cared for the high
traditions of the navy. The expansion of the Naval Air Service was too
rapid to admit of that slow maturing process which makes a good sailor.
When, at the end of May 1915, Mr. Winston Churchill vacated his
appointment as First Lord of the Admiralty, he remarked on the rapid
expansion of the service during his period of office. 'At the beginning
of hostilities', he says, 'there were under a hundred officers and six
hundred men. Most of these were transferred from the Navy proper, a
small percentage only being civilians. At present there are over fifteen
hundred officers and eleven thousand men.... We had at the beginning of
the war a total of sixty-four aeroplanes and seaplanes. This of course
represents a very minute proportion of our present numbers, of which all
that I can publicly say is that they total more than one thousand.'
During the first winter of the war a short course in gunnery was
arranged for young officers at the naval gunnery school at Whale Island,
Portsmouth, where they were instructed also in drill, discipline, and
the handling of men. This was a beginning, but it was not enough. The
pioneers of the Naval Air Service had had an uphill task; they had
worked untiringly in the cause of naval aeronautics, to achieve progress
in the new art, and to get recognition for it from the Sea Lords. The
recognition, when it came at last, was overwhelming. The navy claimed
the Royal Naval Air Service as its own, and absorbed it into itself. The
immediate motive for this was disciplinary, but the thing was a
compliment, none the less, to the work of the air service. In the summer
of 1915 the German submarine menace in the Channel became serious, and
the officer in command of the Dover Patrol, who was responsible for the
Straits, knew that for the work to be done from his bases at Dover and
Dunkirk aircraft were essential.
In July the whole question was brought before the Board of Admiralty,
and regulations for the reorganization of the Royal Naval Air Service
were approved, to take effect on the 1st of August. These regulations
are explicit and clear. 'The Royal Naval Air Service' (so they begin)
'is to be regarded in all respects as an integral part of the Royal
Navy, and in future the various air stations will be under the general
orders of the Commander-in-Chief or Senior Naval Officers in whose
district they are situated.
'The Commander-in-Chief or Senior Naval Officer will visit the stations
within his command or district from time to time, or depute a suitable
officer to visit them on his behalf, to ensure that the discipline of
the station is maintained.... Copies of reports on operations are to be
forwarded direct to the Admiralty. It will be the duty of the Director
of the Air Department to visit the various air stations from time to
time ... with a view to ensuring that the technical training of the
personnel is being carried out as laid down by their Lordships, and that
the station is efficiently organized and equipped in respect to works
and materiel.'
These are the main provisions of the new orders. The grouping of the air
stations (which by this time were more than fifty in number) under the
various commands was given in detail. The detachments stationed at
Dunkirk and elsewhere in France and Belgium were put, for disciplinary
purposes, under the orders of the Rear-Admiral, Dover. The inland
stations at Hendon, Chingford, Wormwood Scrubbs, and Roehampton were put
immediately under the Admiralty. Sweeping changes followed in
appointments. The post of Director of the Air Department was abolished,
and Commodore Murray Sueter was placed in charge of the construction
section of the remodelled department. An officer of flag rank,
Rear-Admiral C. L. Vaughan-Lee, was given the newly created post of
Director of Air Services. A senior Naval Air Service officer, Wing
Commander C. L. Lambe, R.N., who had been captain of the _Hermes_, was
appointed to command the air patrols at Dover and Dunkirk, under the
orders of Vice-Admiral R. H. Bacon. Other changes which followed were so
numerous that in effect a new service was formed. When the Air
Department was reorganized in the spring of 1916, it was divided into
two sections--Administration and Construction. Each of these sections
included a considerable diversity of business, which was classified, and
placed under the separate control of eight responsible officers. Of
these eight only two--Squadron Commander Clark Hall, who was responsible
for aeroplane and seaplane design, and Squadron Commander W. Briggs, who
was responsible for engines--were officers of the original Royal Naval
Air Service. Most of the newly appointed administrative officers had no
previous knowledge of aircraft or aircraft operations; what they were
chosen for was their power of organization, their strict sense of
discipline, their untiring energy, and their pride in the ancient
service to which they belonged. The senior naval officer who was
inexperienced in the air was promoted over the heads of the pioneers of
naval aviation who were junior in the navy.
There is no unmixed good on earth. The debate between discipline and
progress can never be settled dogmatically one way or the other. Those
who have to lead men into battle are agreed that without discipline
progress is useless. A crowd of undrilled men of science could not stand
the push of a platoon of common soldiers. On the other hand, it is
all-important that the higher command in war shall be susceptible to
science, and it has been maintained, not without evidence, that the life
of discipline and loyalty which procures promotion in a public service
does not usually increase susceptibility to science.
The immediate practical advantages which were aimed at by the
reorganizers of the Naval Air Service were attained. In place of the old
scattered training stations a central training depot was set up at
Cranwell in Lincolnshire, and a complete system for the instruction and
graduation of pupils was instituted. A designs department was set up at
Whitehall; the airship service was taken in hand and developed for
anti-submarine patrol work. What may be called the most important unit
of the Royal Naval Air Service was created by the amalgamation under
Wing Commander Lambe of the squadrons which had their bases at Dunkirk
and Dover. This unit, later in the war, became the famous Fifth Group,
under the same command. The arrangements made at the time of change
continued in force up to the time of the union of the military and naval
air services, and progress was continuous. In January 1916 the Admiralty
approved that the overseas establishment of the Royal Naval Air Service
should have three wings, each wing to have two squadrons, and each
squadron two flights, with six machines to a flight. One of these wings
was based at Dunkirk; for the others two new aerodromes were
established, in the spring of 1916, at Coudekerque and Petite Synthe,
and were occupied, the first by No. 5 Wing, under Squadron Commander
Spenser Grey, the other by No. 4 Wing, under Wing Commander C. L.
Courtney, R.N. No. 5 Wing was specially trained for the work of
long-distance bombing.
From the very beginning the Naval Air Service had set their heart on the
fitting out of big bombing raids against distant German centres--Essen,
or Berlin. It was a grief to them, when the war ended, that Berlin had
suffered no damage from the air. The success of their early raids on
Duesseldorf and Friedrichshafen naturally strengthened their desire to
carry out more destructive raids over more important centres. In this
way, they believed, they could best help the army. This idea inspired
some of the documents drawn up by Mr. Winston Churchill while he was
First Lord of the Admiralty. When in February 1916 Rear-Admiral
Vaughan-Lee submitted to the Admiralty his scheme for the employment of
the reorganized Royal Naval Air Service the same idea dominated his
advices. 'I consider', his report concludes, 'that we should develop
long-distance offensive work as much as possible.' The preference shown
by the navy, in their orders from the makers, for powerful bomb-carrying
machines tells the same story. When the navy set about carrying out this
policy by the formation of a special force, called No. 3 Wing, at
Luxeuil, for the express purpose of making long-distance raids over
German munition centres, the army, which was preparing its great effort
on the Somme front, and which needed more and yet more machines for the
immediate purposes of the campaign, protested against the use of British
aircraft for what seemed to them a luxury in comparison with their own
dire needs. So the Luxeuil Wing was, for the time, broken up; but the
idea took shape again later when the Independent Force came into being.
The sound doctrine on this matter is laid down in General Trenchard's
reports, which shall be given hereafter. Yet it may be admitted, without
prejudice to that doctrine, that if bombing raids had been possible over
Essen and Berlin their effect would have been very great. The Germans
spent not a little effort on their raids over London, and hoped for the
weakening or shattering of the British war temper as a consequence of
those raids. Their belief in frightfulness was a belief in fright. They
judged others by themselves. No people on earth, it may readily be
admitted, can maintain the efficiency of its war activities under the
regular intensive bombing of its centres of population; but the Germans,
during the greater part of the war, knew nothing of this fierce trial,
and their trust in their army would have been terribly weakened if that
army had proved to be no sure shield for the quiet and security of civil
life.
Such differences as arose between the British naval and military
authorities concerning the use of aircraft in the war were, for the
reasons that have been given, not easily avoidable. They were ultimately
composed by the union of the military and naval air forces under a
single control, and the emergence of a new air force.
Wars have for many centuries been conducted on land and on sea. A third
and larger theatre has now been found for them. The air flows over both
land and sea; more than either land or sea it is the place of vision,
and of speed and freedom of movement. What we of this generation are
witnessing is a process whereby the air shall come into its own. It will
become the great highway for the traffic of peace; and in war, which
cannot be abolished while man has interests that are dearer to him than
his own comfort and safety, the forces of the air will be, not a
late-found timid auxiliary to the forces of the land and of the sea, but
their overseer and their director.
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End of Project Gutenberg's The War in the Air; Vol. 1, by Walter Raleigh