Chapter V: The Royal Flying Corps (3)

_An aeroplane will live in any wind and a lifeboat in any sea, but they both want good and experienced men at the tiller._

_When on the ground every one overrates his capacity for air work._

_A squadron commander should want a good squadron, and not to be able to break records._

_Waiting about on an aerodrome has spoilt more pilots than everything else put together._

This last truth will come home to all pilots who have flown on the war front. To have discovered it shows an instinct for command. Flying is a nervous business; there is no wear and tear harder on a war pilot than to be kept in attendance on an aerodrome, with the nerves at a high degree of tension, and perhaps to be dismissed in the end. A skilful and imaginative commander will use all possible devices to avoid or diminish these periods of strain.

Any account of Major Burke would be incomplete if it contained no mention of his famous machine, the first B.E. This machine was familiarly known to the officers of the early Flying Corps, most of whom--Sykes, Brancker, Brooke-Popham, Raleigh, Carden, Ashmore, Longcroft, and many others--had occasionally flown it. It was an experimental two-seater tractor biplane, designed as early as 1911 at the factory. At that time no funds were available for constructing aeroplanes of factory design. This difficulty was overcome by an expedient well known to all students of law. There was no money for construction, but there was money for repairs and overhaul. The first B.E. was created by the drastic repair and reconstruction of another machine. A Voisin pusher with a sixty horse-power Wolseley engine had been presented to the army by the Duke of Westminster, and was sent to the factory for repair. When it emerged, like the phoenix, from the process of reconstruction, only the engine remained to testify to its previous existence, and even that was replaced, a little later, by a sixty horse-power Renault engine. It was now the B.E. tractor, and in March 1912, some two months before the formation of the Royal Flying Corps, it was handed over to the Air Battalion, and was assigned to Captain Burke. It had a long and adventurous career, and was often flown at Farnborough for the testing of experimental devices. When at last it was wrecked, beyond hope of repair, in January 1915, it had seen almost three years of service, and had perhaps known more crashes than any aeroplane before or since. It was frequently returned to the factory for the replacement of the undercarriage and for other repairs. The first machine of its type, it outlived generations of its successors, and before it yielded to fate had become the revered grandfather of the whole brood of factory aeroplanes.

Many of the records of the early work of No. 2 Squadron, commanded by Major Burke, are missing. This was the first squadron sent out from Farnborough to occupy a new station, and to carry on its work as an independent unit. It may safely be presumed that a great part of the time spent at Farnborough was devoted to organization, and to preparation for the new venture. The shortage of machines was the main obstacle to early training. In May 1912 Captain G. H. Raleigh and Lieutenants C. A. H. Longcroft and C. T. Carfrae were sent for a month to Douai in France, to pick up what knowledge they could at the workshop where Breguet machines were being constructed for the Flying Corps. They then returned to Farnborough, where they began to practise cross-country flying. Much initial training was necessary before the squadron could be fitted for independence. In January 1913 it began to move north, by air and road and rail; by the end of February it was installed in its new quarters at Montrose. Five of the officers flew all the way: Captain J. H. W. Becke and Lieutenant Longcroft on B.E. machines, Captains G. W. P. Dawes and P. L. W. Herbert, Lieutenant F. F. Waldron on Maurice Farmans. The first stage of the flight was to Towcester on the 17th of February. One machine, piloted by Captain Becke, arrived at its destination that night. The others were stranded by engine failure, loss of direction, and the like. Lieutenant Longcroft had a forced landing at Littlemore, near Oxford, and spent the night in the Littlemore lunatic asylum. By the 20th all five machines had reached Towcester, and started on their next stages--to Newark and York. At Knavesmire racecourse, near York, part of a morning was spent in writing autographs for boys, some of whom, perhaps, may have become pilots in the later years of the war. On the 22nd the squadron moved off for Newcastle. It was a day of fog and haze; only two of the pilots found the landing-ground at Gosforth Park that night, and these two had to land many times to get their bearings. The directions given them would have been helpful to foot-travellers; but turnings in the road and well-known public-houses are not easy to recognize from the air. On the 25th the squadron moved to Edinburgh, and on the following morning to Montrose. At both places they were tumultuously received and liberally entertained. The mechanics in charge of the machines and transport did their business so well, often working at night, in the rain, with no sort of shelter, that both the transport lorries and the machines arrived at Montrose in perfect order.

At their new quarters training in flight and reconnaissance was strenuously carried on, and the squadron flew on an average about a thousand miles a week. Many non-commissioned officers and warrant officers were instructed in aviation. Some thirty miles south of Montrose, across the Firth of Tay, there is a three miles stretch of level sand at St. Andrews, and this was used for instruction in aviation--not without trouble and difficulty from the irresponsible and wandering habits of spectators. The more skilled of the pilots gained much experience in long-distance flying. All deliveries of new machines were made by air. Inspecting officers and other visitors to the camp were commonly met at Edinburgh in the morning, were then flown to Montrose to spend the day, and back again to Edinburgh in time to catch the night mail for the south.

In August 1913 Captain Longcroft, with Lieutenant-Colonel Sykes as passenger, flew from Farnborough to Montrose in one day, landing only once on the way, at Alnmouth. The machine was a B.E. fitted with a special auxiliary tank under the passenger's seat, and the time in the air for the whole journey was seven hours and forty minutes. In September 1913 six machines of the squadron took part in the Irish Command manoeuvres. The outward and homeward journeys by air, of about four hundred miles each way in distance, including the crossing of the Irish Sea, were the severest part of the test. The manoeuvre area was bad for aviation owing to the scarcity of good landing-grounds and the prevalence of mist and rain. Moreover, the opposing armies were separated by too small a distance to give full scope to the aeroplanes. The principal battle took place in a mountain defile. Each of the machines flew on an average about two thousand miles, that is to say, about a thousand miles in reconnaissance, and about a thousand in the journey to and fro. There was no case of engine failure, and no one landed in hostile territory. A statistical account of the work of the squadron from May 1913 to June 1914 shows that, during that time, of eighteen machines in constant use and subject to great exposure only three were wrecked. This fact speaks volumes for the efficiency of the squadron. They flew in all weathers, sometimes even when the wind was faster than the machines. More than once 'tortoise races' on Maurice Farmans were organized; the winner of these races was the machine that was blown back fastest over a given course.

The longest flight of all was made by Captain Longcroft in November 1913. In the front seat of a B.E. machine First-Class Air Mechanic H. C. S. Bullock fitted a petrol tank of his own design, estimated to give at least eight hours' fuel for the seventy horse-power Renault engine. On the 22nd of November Captain Longcroft started on this machine, and flew from Montrose to Portsmouth and back again to Farnborough in seven hours twenty minutes, without once landing.

Major Burke has left a diary for 1914; some of the entries in it go far to explain the causes of the efficiency of the squadron. No detail was too small for his attention; the discipline that he taught was the discipline of war. 'In practice,' he says, 'a man cannot always be on the job that will be given him on active service, but he should be trained with that in view, and every other employment must be regarded as temporary and a side issue. Further, though barracks must be kept spotlessly clean, this work must be done by the minimum number of men, in order to swell the numbers of those available for technical work and instruction.'

The importance of the main issue was ever present to his mind. In another entry he records how he reproved a young lieutenant, telling him that 'he must take his work seriously and make himself older in character'. Map-reading, signalling, propeller-swinging, car-starting, military training, technical training, the safety of the public, the prompt payment of small tradesmen ('which defeats accusation of Army unbusinesslike methods'); these and a hundred other cares are the matter of the diary. That they were all subordinate to the main issue appears in the orders which he gave to some of the pilots of No. 6 Squadron, at Dover, in the summer of 1914. Any pilot who met a Zeppelin, and failed to bring it down by firing at it, would be expected, he said, to take other measures, that is to say, to charge it. Not a few of the early war pilots were prepared to carry out these instructions.

The work done by the other early squadrons was similar in kind. No. 4 Squadron was formed at Farnborough in the autumn of 1912 under Major G. H. Raleigh, of the Essex Regiment, who had served with distinction in the South African War. After completing its establishment it moved to Netheravon, where it carried on practice in reconnaissance, co-operation with artillery, cross-country flying, night flying, and all the business of an active unit. The record of miles flown during 1913 by No. 4 Squadron hardly falls short of the record of the two senior squadrons; all three flew more than fifty thousand miles. When No. 5 Squadron was formed under Major Higgins a part of it was stationed for a time at Dover, and the squadron moved to new quarters at Fort Grange, Gosport, on the 6th of July, 1914, a month before the war. No. 6 Squadron was nearly complete when the war came, but No. 7 Squadron was very much under strength. Thus in August of that year four aeroplane squadrons were ready for war, another was almost ready, and another was no more than a nucleus. The rest of the magnificent array which served the country on the battle fronts was yet to make.

The month of June in 1914 was given up to a Concentration Camp at Netheravon. The idea of bringing the squadrons together in this camp seems to have originated with Colonel Sykes, whose arrangements were admirable in their detailed forethought and completeness. The mornings were devoted to trials and experiments, the afternoons to lectures and discussion on those innumerable problems which confront an air force. Tactical exercises, the reconnaissance of stated areas in the search for parties of men or lorries, photography, handling balloons, practice in changing landing-grounds, and the like, were followed by discussions of the day's work. Lieutenant D. S. Lewis and Lieutenant B. T. James took every possible opportunity, during the discussions, to urge the development of wireless telegraphy. In the speed and climbing tests the greatest success was achieved by a B.E. machine fitted with a seventy horse-power Renault engine. Much attention was paid to reconnaissance and to co-operation with other arms. There was a natural rivalry among the squadrons. Major Burke's squadron was reputed to have the best pilots, while the Netheravon squadrons had had more training in co-operation with other arms, and in the diverse uses of aeroplanes in war. But the unknown dangers which all had to share were a strong bond, and the spirit of comradeship prevailed. The officers and men of the Royal Flying Corps were makers, not inheritors, of that tradition of unity and gallantry which is the soul of a regiment, and which carries it with unbroken spirit through the trials and losses of war.

The single use in war for which the machines of the Military Wing of the Royal Flying Corps were designed and the men trained was (let it be repeated) reconnaissance. There had been many experiments in other uses, but though these had already reached the stage of practical application, it was the stress of the war which first compelled their adoption on a wide scale. The Military Wing was small--much smaller than the military air forces of the French or the Germans--it was designed to operate with an expeditionary force and to furnish that force with eyes. Its later developments, which added the work of hands to the work of eyes, were imposed on it by the necessities of war. Even artillery observation, which is the work of eyes, was at first no regular part of its duty. When the Germans were driven back from the Marne, and the long line of the battle front was defined and fixed, the business of helping the artillery became a matter of the first importance.

Many of the functions brilliantly performed during the course of the war by aeroplanes had been claimed, during the early days of aviation, as the proper province of the airship. A wireless installation for receiving and sending messages was too heavy for an aeroplane; it must be carried by an airship. No sufficient weight of bombs could be carried by an aeroplane; the airship was the predestined bombing machine. Machine-guns were difficult to work from an aeroplane; they were the natural weapon of the airship. Photography was a hope worthy of experiment, but even photography was thought to be best suited to the airship, and internal accommodation for a camera was not asked for or provided in an aeroplane. At the back of all this lay the strongest argument of all: the value of reconnaissance to the army was so great, and our military aeroplanes were so few, that it was impossible to spare any of them for less essential work. As the Flying Corps grew in numbers and skill it found breathing space to look around and to claim the duties that had been judged to be outside its scope.

As a nation we distrust theory. We learn very quickly from experience, and are almost obstinately unwilling to learn in any other way. Experience is a costly school, but it teaches nothing false. A nation which attends experience could never be hurried into disaster, as the Germans were hurried by a debauch of political and military theory, subtly appealing to the national vanity. To insure themselves against so foolish a fate the British are willing to pay a heavy price. They have an instinctive dislike, which often seems to be unreasonable in its strength, for all that is novel and showy. They are ready enough to take pleasure in a spectacle, but they are prejudiced against taking the theatre as a guide for life. This is well seen in the disfavour with which the practical military authorities regarded the more spectacular developments of aviation, which yet, in the event, were found to have practical uses. Looping the loop, and other kinds of what are now called 'aerobatics', were habitually disparaged as idle spectacles. Yet the 'Immelmann turn', so called, whereby a machine, after performing half a loop, falls rapidly away on one wing, was a manoeuvre which, when first used by the enemy, proved fatal to many of our pilots. The spin, at the outbreak of the war, was regarded as a fault in an aeroplane, due chiefly to bad construction; later on Dr. F. A. Lindemann, by his researches and courageous experiments at the Royal Aircraft Factory, proved that any aeroplane can spin, and that any pilot who understands the spin can get out of it if there is height to spare. During the war the spin was freely used by pilots to break off a fight, to simulate defeat, or to descend in a vertical path. Similarly, little stress was laid, at the beginning, on speed, for speed was not helpful to reconnaissance, or on climb and height, for it was believed that at three thousand feet from the ground a machine would be practically immune from gunfire, and that reconnaissance, to be effective, must be carried on below the level of the clouds. These misconceptions were soon to be corrected by experience. Another, more costly in its consequences, was that a machine-gun, when carried in an aeroplane, must have a large arc, or cone, of fire, so that the gun might be fired in any direction, up, down, or across. To secure this end guns had to be carried in the front of a pusher machine, which is slower and more clumsy than a tractor. But the difficulty of accurate firing from a flying platform at an object moving with unknown speed on an undetermined course was found to be very great. The problem was much simplified by the introduction of devices for firing a fixed machine-gun through the tractor screw, so that the pilot could aim his gun by aiming his aeroplane, or gun-platform, which responds delicately and quickly to his control.

When the war began we were not inferior in aerodynamical knowledge to the Germans or even to the French. Speaking at the Aeronautical Society in February 1914, Brigadier-General Henderson said, 'If any one wants to know which country has the fastest aeroplane in the world--it is Great Britain'. This was the S.E. 4, a forerunner of the more famous S.E. 5. If more powerful engines had been installed in the British machines of 1914, they would have given us a speed that the enemy could not touch. But we were preoccupied with the needs of reconnaissance, and we cared little about speed. In the early part of the war we hampered our aeroplanes with fitments, cameras, and instruments, which were attached as protuberances to the streamlined body of the aeroplane and made speed impossible. In the Flying Corps itself an aeroplane thus fitted was commonly called a Christmas tree. We thought too little of power in the engine, a mistake not quickly remedied, seeing that the time which must elapse between the ordering of an engine and its production in quantity is, even under pressure, a period of about twelve months. The engines available at the outbreak of the war for British military aircraft were the seventy horse-power Renault and the eighty horse-power Gnome. In Germany airship engines of two hundred horse-power and more, easily modified for use in aeroplanes, were available in quantity some time before the war. For military machines we were satisfied with smaller engines, which worked well, and enabled our aeroplanes to accomplish all that at that time seemed likely to be asked of them. If we were wrong we were content to wait for experience to correct us.

The problems presented to the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps were widely different from those which engrossed the attention of the soldiers. The difference, to put it briefly, was the difference between defence and attack. The British army does not fight at home, and this privilege it enjoys by virtue of the constant vigilance of the British navy. The ultimate business of the British navy, though it visits all the seas of the world, is home defence. Yet that defence cannot be effectively carried out at home, and when we are at war our frontiers are the enemy coasts and our best defence is attack. This old established doctrine of naval warfare is the orthodox doctrine also of aerial warfare. A mobile force confined to one place by losing its mobility loses most of its virtue. The fencer who does nothing but parry can never win a bout, and in the end will fail to parry. The recognition of this doctrine in relation to aerial warfare was gradual. When the Royal Flying Corps was established and the question of the defence of our coasts by aircraft first came under discussion, our available airships, aeroplanes, and seaplanes, though their development had been amazingly rapid, were weapons without much power of offence. The main thing was to give them a chance of proving and increasing their utility. In October 1912 the Admiralty decided to establish a chain of seaplane and airship stations on the east coast of Great Britain. The earliest of these stations, after Eastchurch, was the seaplane station of the Isle of Grain, commissioned in December 1912, with Lieutenant J. W. Seddon as officer in command. This was followed, in the first half of 1913, by the establishment of similar stations at Calshot, Felixstowe, Yarmouth, and Cromarty. H.M.S. _Hermes_, in succession to H.M.S. _Actaeon_, was commissioned on the 7th of May 1913 as headquarters of the Naval Wing, and her commanding officer, Captain G. W. Vivian, R.N., was given charge of all coastal air stations. For airships a station at Hoo on the Medway was established with two double sheds of the largest size; it was called Kingsnorth, and was completed in April 1914, by which time all military airships had been handed over to the Admiralty. All the seaplane stations were in a sense offshoots of Eastchurch, which continued to be the principal naval flying school. Except for some valuable experimental work, not very much was done before the war at the seaplane coast stations. The supply of machines was small, and when the bare needs of Eastchurch and Grain had been met, not enough remained for the outfit of the other stations. Nevertheless the zeal of the naval pilots, encouraged and supported by the First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Winston Churchill) and by the Director of the Air Department (Captain Murray Sueter), wrought good progress in a short time. The first successful seaplane was produced at Eastchurch, as has been told, in March 1912. Just before the war, the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps had in its possession fifty-two seaplanes, of which twenty-six were in flying condition, and further, had forty-six seaplanes on order. Those who know how difficult it is to get new things done will easily recognize that this measure of progress, though perhaps not very impressive numerically, could never have been achieved save by indomitable perseverance and effort. Sailors are accustomed to work hard and cheerfully under adverse conditions.

In the naval manoeuvres of July 1913 the _Hermes_, carrying two seaplanes, which were flown from its launching platform, operated with the fleet. Four seaplanes and one aeroplane from Yarmouth, three seaplanes from Leven, and three from Cromarty, also bore a part. The weather was not good, and the manoeuvres proved that the smaller type of seaplane was useless for work in the North Sea. Any attempt to get these machines off the water in a North Sea 'lop' infallibly led to their destruction. Further, it was found necessary for the safety of pilots that every machine should be fitted with wireless telegraphy. A machine fitted with folding wings was flown from the _Hermes_ by Commander Samson, and was found to be the best and most manageable type.

In a minute dated the 26th of October 1913 the First Lord of the Admiralty sketches a policy and a programme for the ensuing years. Aeroplanes and seaplanes, he remarks, are needed by the navy for oversea work and for home work. He recommends three new types of machine: first, an oversea fighting seaplane, to operate from a ship as base; next, a scouting seaplane, to work with the fleet at sea; and last, a home-service fighting aeroplane, to repel enemy aircraft when they attack the vulnerable points of our island, and to carry out patrol duties along the coast. The events of the war have given historic interest to all forecasts prepared before the war. Mr. Churchill's minute is naturally much concerned with the Zeppelin, which should be attacked, he says, by an aeroplane descending on it obliquely from above, and discharging a series of small bombs or fireballs, at rapid intervals, so that a string of them, more than a hundred yards in length, would be drawn like a whiplash across the gas-bag. This is a near anticipation of the method by which Flight Sub-Lieutenant R. A. J. Warneford brought down a Zeppelin in flames between Ghent and Brussels on the 7th of June 1915. The immense improvements in construction which were wrought by the war may be measured by Mr. Churchill's specifications for the rate of climb of the two-seater aeroplanes and seaplanes--namely, three thousand feet in twenty minutes. When he drafted his scheme that was a good rate of climb; before the war ended there were machines on the flying fronts which could climb three thousand feet in two minutes.

Under the direction of the Air Department much attention was paid by pilots in the Naval Air Service to experimental work and the diverse uses of aeroplanes. So early as January 1912 Lieutenant H. A. Williamson, R.N., a submarine officer who had gained the Royal Aero Club certificate, submitted to the Admiralty a paper which anticipated some later successes. He advocated the use of aeroplanes operating from a parent ship for the detection of submarines, and showed how bombs exploding twenty feet below the surface might be used to destroy these craft. The practical introduction of depth charges was delayed for years by the difficulty of devising the delicate and accurate mechanism which uses the pressure of the water to explode the bomb at a given depth. But before the war ended the detection of submarines from the air and the use by surface craft of depth charges for destroying them had been brought to such a degree of efficiency that the submarine menace was countered and held. The submarine learned to fear aircraft as the birds of the thicket fear the hawk. It would be tedious to attempt to describe the long series of experiments by which this result was at last attained. The earliest attempts to detect submarines from the air were made with seaplanes at Harwich in June 1912, and at Rosyth in September of the same year. The shallow tidal waters were found to be very opaque, but in clear weather a periscope could be seen from a considerable distance, and in misty weather the seaplane, when it sighted a submarine in diving trim on the surface, could swoop down and drop a bomb before the submarine could dive.

Progress in bomb-dropping was not less. Nothing is easier than to drop a detonating bomb, with good intentions, over the side of an aeroplane; the difficulty of hitting the mark lay in determining the flight of the bomb and in devising an efficient dropping gear. To drop a weight from a rapidly moving aeroplane so that it shall hit a particular spot on the surface of the earth is not an easy affair; the pace and direction of the machine, its height from the ground, the shape and air resistance of the bomb, must all be accurately known. They cannot be calculated in the air; success in bomb-dropping depends on the designing of a gear for dropping and sighting which shall perform these calculations automatically. Very early in the history of aviation dummy bombs had been dropped, for spectacular purposes, at targets marked on the ground. The designing of an efficient dropping gear and the study of the flight of bombs were taken up by the Air Department of the Admiralty from the very first. Under their direction a very valuable series of experiments was carried out at Eastchurch, at first by Commander Samson, and later by Lieutenant R. H. Clark Hall, a naval gunnery lieutenant, who had learnt to fly, and was appointed in March 1913 for armament duties with the Royal Naval Air Service.

The whole subject was new. No one could tell exactly how the flight of an aeroplane would be affected when the weight of the machine should be suddenly lightened by the release of a large bomb; no one could be sure that a powerful explosion on the surface of the sea would not affect the machine flying at a moderate height above it. In 1912 a dummy hundred-pound bomb was dropped from a Short pusher biplane flown by Commander Samson, who was surprised and pleased to find that the effect on the flight of the machine was hardly noticeable. In December 1913 experiments were carried out to determine the lowest height at which bombs could be safely dropped from an aeroplane. No heavy bombs were available, but floating charges of various weights, from 2-1/4 pounds to 40 pounds, were fired electrically from a destroyer, while Maurice Farman seaplanes flew at various heights directly above the explosion. Again the effect upon the machines was less than had been anticipated. The general conclusion was that an aeroplane flying at a height of 350 feet or more could drop a hundred-pound bomb, containing forty pounds of high explosive, without danger from the air disturbance caused by the explosion.

A good war machine aims at combining the safety of the operator with a high degree of danger to the victim. The second of these requirements was the more difficult of fulfilment, and was the subject of many experiments. Until the war took the measure of their powers, the German Zeppelins preoccupied attention, and were regarded as the most important targets for aerial attack. The towing of an explosive grapnel, which, suspended from an aeroplane, should make contact with the side of an airship, was the subject of experiments at Eastchurch. This idea, though nothing occurred to prove it impracticable, was soon abandoned in favour of simpler methods--the dropping, for instance, of a series of light bombs with sensitive fuses, or the firing of Hales grenades from an ordinary service rifle. To make these effective, it was essential that they should detonate on contact with ordinary balloon fabric, and preliminary experiments were carried out at the Cotton Powder Company's works at Faversham in October 1913.

When two sheets of fabric, stitched on frames to represent the two skins of a rigid airship, were hit by a grenade of the naval type with a four-ounce charge, it was found that the front sheet was blown to shreds and the rear sheet had a hole about half a foot in diameter blown in it. Later experiments at Farnborough against balloons filled with hydrogen, and made to resemble as nearly as possible a section of a rigid airship, were completely successful. Firing at floating targets, and at small target balloons released from the aeroplanes, was practised at Eastchurch. It was found that, with no burst or splash to indicate where the shot hit, this practice was unprofitable. The effective use of small-bore fire-arms against aircraft was made possible by two inventions, produced under the stress of the war itself, that is to say, of the tracer bullet, which leaves behind it in the air a visible track of its flight, and of the incendiary bullet, which sets fire to anything inflammable that it hits.

At the outbreak of war the only effective weapon for attacking the Zeppelin from the air was the Hales grenade. Of two hundred of these which had been manufactured for the use of the Naval Wing many had been used in experiment; the remainder were hastily distributed by Lieutenant Clark Hall among the seaplane stations on the East Coast.

The Naval Air Service experimented also with the mounting of machine-guns on aeroplanes. On this matter Lieutenant Clark Hall, early in 1914, reported as follows:

'Machine-gun aeroplanes are (or will be) required to drive off enemy machines approaching our ports with the intention of obtaining information or attacking with bombs our magazines, oil tanks, or dockyards.... I do not think the present state of foreign seaplanes for attack or scouting over our home ports is such as to make the question extremely urgent, but I would strongly advocate having by the end of 1914 at each of our home ports and important bases at least two aeroplanes mounting machine-guns for the sole purpose of beating off or destroying attacking or scouting enemy aeroplanes.'

From what has been said it is evident that the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps paid more attention than was paid by the Military Wing to the use of the aeroplane as a fighting machine. This difference naturally followed from the diverse tasks to be performed by the two branches of the air service. The Military Wing, small as it was, knew that it would be entrusted with the immense task of scouting for the expeditionary force, and that its business would be rather to avoid than to seek battle in the air. The Naval Wing, being entrusted first of all with the defence of the coast, aimed at doing something more than observing the movements of an attacking enemy. Thus in bomb-dropping and in machine-gunnery the Naval Wing was more advanced than the Military Wing. Both wings were active and alive with experiment, so that after a while experimental work which had originally been assigned to the factory and the Central Flying School was transferred to the Wing Headquarters. During the year 1913 wireless experiments were discontinued at the Central Flying School, and were concentrated at the Military Wing. There was a valuable measure of co-operation between the two wings. This co-operation was conspicuous, as has been seen, in wireless telegraphy, which was first applied to aircraft at Farnborough. The lighter-than-air craft, which belonged first to the army and then to the navy, were a valuable link between the two wings. Each wing was ready to learn from the other. In January 1914, by permission of the Admiralty, officers of the Military Wing witnessed the experiments made by the Naval Wing with bomb-dropping gear. If the Naval Wing in some respects made more material progress, it should be remembered that they received more material support. They were encouraged by the indefatigable Director of the Air Department, and received from the Admiralty larger grants of money than came to the Military Wing. No doubt a certain spirit of rivalry made itself felt. Service loyalty is a strong passion, and the main tendency, before the war, was for the two branches of the air service to drift apart, and to attach themselves closely, the one to the army, the other to the navy.

At the end of 1913 H.M.S. _Hermes_ was paid off, and the headquarters of the Naval Wing was transferred to the Central Air Office, Sheerness. All ranks and ratings hitherto borne on the books of the _Hermes_ were transferred to the books of this newly created office, and Captain F. R. Scarlett, R.N., late second in command of the _Hermes_, was placed in charge, with the title of Inspecting Captain of Aircraft. He was responsible to the Director of the Air Department, and, in regard to aircraft carried on ships afloat, or operating with the fleet, was also directly responsible to the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleets. In some respects the progress made by the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps during 1913 had been continuous and satisfactory. Training had been carried on regularly at the Central Flying School, at Eastchurch, and, for airship work, at Farnborough. By the end of the year there were about a hundred trained pilots. Stations for guarding the coast had been established in five places other than Eastchurch, and arrangements were in hand for doubling this number. The record of miles flown during the year by naval aeroplanes and seaplanes was no less than 131,081 miles. Wireless telegraphy had made a great advance; transmitting sets were in course of being fitted to all seaplanes, and the reception of messages in aeroplanes had been experimentally obtained. Systematic bomb-dropping had been practised with growing accuracy and success. A system for transmitting meteorological charts from the Admiralty, so that air stations and aircraft in the air should receive frequent statements of the weather conditions, had been brought into working order.

On the other hand, all these advances were experimental in character, and no attempt had been made to equip the force completely for the needs of war. In this matter there is perhaps something to be said on both sides. Where munitions are improving every year, too soon is almost as bad as too late. In fact, at the beginning of the war the Naval Air Service had only two aeroplanes and one airship fitted with machine-guns. Of the aeroplanes, one carried a Maxim gun, another a Lewis gun, loaned to the Admiralty by Colonel Lucas, C.B., of Hobland Hall, Yarmouth. No. 3 Airship (the _Astra-Torres_) was fitted with a Hotchkiss gun. The offensive weapon carried by other machines was a rifle. The various air stations were not liberally supplied with munitions of war. The Isle of Grain had four Hales hand-grenades. Hendon (the station for the defence of London) and Felixstowe had twelve each. The other stations were supplied in a like proportion, except Eastchurch, which had a hundred and fifty hand-grenades, forty-two rifle grenades, twenty-six twenty-pound bombs, and a Maxim gun. When the war broke out, a number of six-inch shells were fitted with tail vanes and converted into bombs.

On the 1st of July 1914 the separate existence of the naval air force was officially recognized. The Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps became the Royal Naval Air Service, with a constitution of its own. The naval flying school at Eastchurch and the naval air stations on the coast, together with all aircraft employed for naval purposes, were grouped under the administration of the Air Department of the Admiralty and the Central Air Office. So, for a time, the national air force was broken in two. The army and the navy had been willing enough to co-operate, but the habits of life and thought of a soldier and a sailor are incurably different. Moreover, the tasks of the two wings, as has been said, were distinct, and neither wing was very well able to appreciate the business of the other. The Naval Wing had not the transport or equipment to operate at a distance from the sea, and, on the other hand, was inclined to insist that all military aeroplanes, when used for coast defence, should be placed under naval command. The Military Wing was preoccupied with continental geography and with strategical problems. The two attitudes and two methods lent a certain richness and diversity to our air operations in the war. When Commander Samson established himself at Dunkirk during the first year of the war, his variegated activities bore very little resemblance to the operations of the military squadrons on the battle-front.

The review of the fleet by the King, at Spithead, from the 18th to the 22nd of July 1914, gave to the Royal Naval Air Service an opportunity to demonstrate its use in connexion with naval operations. Most of the available naval aircraft were concentrated at Portsmouth, Weymouth, and Calshot to take part in the review. On the 20th of July an organized flight of seventeen seaplanes, and two flights of aeroplanes in formation headed by Commander Samson, manoeuvred over the fleet. This formation flying had been practised at Eastchurch before the review. Three airships from Farnborough and one from Kingsnorth also took part in the demonstration. Within a few weeks all were to take part in the operations of war. The aeroplanes and seaplanes flew low over the fleet. Some naval officers, who had previously seen little of aircraft, expressed the opinion that the planes flew low because they could not fly high, and that their performance was an acrobatic exhibition, useless for the purposes of war. These and other doubters were soon converted by the war.

When the review was over, the seaplanes and airships returned to their several bases. The flights of aeroplanes, under Commander Samson, went on tour, first to Dorchester, where they stayed four or five days, and thence to the Central Flying School. They had been there only a few hours when they received urgent orders to return to Eastchurch, where they arrived on the 27th of July. On the same day seaplanes from other stations were assembled at Grain Island, Felixstowe, and Yarmouth, to be ready to patrol the coast in the event of war. These precautionary orders, and the orders given by the Admiralty on the previous day, arresting the dispersal of the British fleet, were among the first orders of the war. On the 29th of July instructions were issued to the Naval Air Service that the duties of scouting and patrol were to be secondary to the protection of the country against hostile aircraft. All machines were to be kept tuned up and ready for action. On the 30th of July the Army Council agreed to send No. 4 Squadron of aeroplanes to reinforce the naval machines at Eastchurch. Eastchurch, during the months before the war, had been active in rehearsal; fighting in the air had been practised, and trial raids, over Chatham and the neighbouring magazines, had been carried out, two aeroplanes attacking and six or eight forming a defensive screen. Work of this kind had knit together the Eastchurch unit and had fitted it for active service abroad. In the meantime, at the outbreak of the war, attacks by German aircraft were expected on points of military and naval importance.

Germany was known to possess eleven rigid airships, and was believed to have others under construction. Our most authoritative knowledge of the state of German aviation was derived from a series of competitions held in Germany from the 17th to the 25th of May 1914, and called 'The Prince Henry Circuit'. These were witnessed by Captain W. Henderson, R.N., as naval attache, and by Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. A. Russell, as military attache. The witnesses pay tribute to the skill and dash of the German flying officers and to the spirit of the flying battalions. The officers they found to be fine-drawn, lean, determined-looking youngsters, unlike the well-known heavy Teutonic type. Owing partly to the monotony of German regimental life there was great competition, they were told, to enter the flying service, eight hundred candidates having presented themselves for forty vacancies. In 'The Prince Henry Circuit', a cross-country flight of more than a thousand miles, to be completed in six days, twenty-six aeroplanes started. The weather was stormy, and there were many accidents; one pilot and three observers were killed. These were regarded as having lost their lives in action, and there was no interruption of the programme. Among the best of the many machines that competed were the military L.V.G. (or Luft-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft) biplane, which won the chief prizes, the A.E.G. (or Allgemeine Elektrizitaets-Gesellschaft) biplane, the Albatross, and the Aviatik. On the whole, said our witnesses, the Germans had not progressed fast or far in aviation. They were still learning to fly; they were seeking for the best type of machine; and had given no serious attention, as yet, to the question of battle in the air. The test that was to compare the British and German air forces was now at hand.