Chapter VIII: The Expansion of the Air Force (3)

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