Secret Warriors

by Taylor Downing

  With support from the most senior officer in the British Army, things began to change. An Air Battalion was established in April consisting of an Airship Company based at Farnborough and an Aeroplane Company at Larkhill to be commanded by Captain Fulton. Conditions were still primitive. The Larkhill aviators lived in tents alongside the hangars and there were never more than four or five serviceable aircraft available at any one time, but the formation of the Air Battalion marked a very significant step. Flying in the army was once again ‘official’ and no longer the preserve of enthusiastic amateurs.

  Meanwhile, naval aviation was beginning to develop in its own direction. The Short brothers at their base on the Isle of Sheppey, where many of Britain’s early experiments in flight took place, developed a close link with the Royal Navy. They moved a few miles to Eastchurch and loaned two aircraft to the navy on the understanding that they would send four officers there for pilot training. The Admiralty were quick to accept the offer and called for volunteers. Two hundred officers eagerly came forward, and from these four were finally selected and began their training in March 1911. Led by Lieutenant Charles Samson, these officers were delighted with the experience and Samson wrote in his report, ‘The rapid progress in the science of aviation is apparent to all... Few people now deny that the aeroplane has come to stay.’10 The pioneer fliers saw a great role for naval aircraft as scouts, extending the ‘eyes’ of ships at sea, and recommended that the Admiralty should take over Eastchurch as a base for naval flying. It was at this point that a new and dynamic figure was appointed as the Admiralty’s political head.

  In a Cabinet reshuffle in October 1911, Prime Minister Asquith asked Winston Churchill, then aged thirty-six, to take control of the Royal Navy as First Lord of the Admiralty. Churchill, who was at the time Home Secretary and one of the leading figures in the great reforming Liberal government of the day, ‘accepted with alacrity’.11 He brought formidable energy to the task and became one of the great naval reformers, doing for the Royal Navy what Haldane had done for the army five years before. He introduced a newly formed Naval War Staff, based on the example of Haldane’s Imperial General Staff, to focus on strategic planning. He transformed service conditions and opportunities for promotion of the ratings below decks. He introduced a new class of faster and more heavily armed battleship, the Queen Elizabeth class. And in perhaps the biggest long-term revolution of all, he made the decision to shift the navy from the use of home-produced coal to oil in its ships. As a consequence of this hugely important change the government took part-ownership of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (which later became British Petroleum, BP) in order to guarantee oil supplies, giving a new geopolitical importance to the entire Middle Eastern region.12

  Throughout his life Churchill was interested in new technologies and new ideas, and he threw his support behind the development of naval flying. He visited Eastchurch and flew in a variety of aircraft and airships, while a stream of memos flowed from his desk in all manner of encouragement and support. So enthusiastic did he become that at one point he asked a group of naval officers at Eastchurch to teach him to fly. Having decided he wanted to qualify for his own pilot’s licence, he took several lessons before the aircraft he had been using for training crashed in the sea, killing both instructor and trainee. Churchill’s friends pleaded with him to give up the lessons and to think, if not of himself, then at least of his wife Clemmie, who was five months pregnant with their third child at the time. Reluctantly, Churchill gave up trying to obtain his flying certificate.

  However, he continued to encourage naval flying, promoting attempts to enable aircraft to take off from ships at sea. Experiments were conducted from a wooden platform erected over the deck of the battleship HMS Africa, and in May 1912 Commander Samson became the first naval flier to take off from the deck of a moving warship, HMS Hibernia, during the Portland Naval Review. Advances were also made in the use of aircraft with floats that could land or take off from water, craft to which Churchill proudly gave the name ‘seaplane’. With the active encouragement of the First Lord of the Admiralty it looked as though naval aviation might even eclipse the army’s efforts.

  Soon after his appointment, Churchill made a major contribution to the development of military aviation. When the Committee of Imperial Defence debated the future of military flying, its general feeling was that the Air Battalion formed six months earlier was insufficient and that a larger unit was needed, better resourced and with more aircraft and more technical support. Churchill wrote a memo arguing for a new ‘Corps of Airmen’ in order ‘to make aviation for war purposes the most honourable, as it is the most dangerous, profession a young Englishman can adopt’. He claimed there should be no rivalry between the two services to ‘prevent the real young and capable men [from either army or navy] … from being placed effectively at the head of the corps of airmen’.13 Churchill’s intervention was decisive. It was agreed to form a new unit and in April 1912 the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) was established to bring together and supervise naval and army flying. At last, military aviation was guaranteed an independent role in the armed services of Britain.

  When it was formed, the Royal Flying Corps consisted of a Military Wing, a Naval Wing, a Flying School and a Reserve. Major Frederick Sykes was put in charge of the Military Wing, Commander Samson in charge of the Naval Wing. The Commander of the Corps was General Sir David Henderson. The son of a Clydeside shipyard owner, Henderson had studied engineering at Glasgow University and then went on to Sandhurst. He was commissioned into the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and saw active service in the Boer War, where he was wounded in the siege of Ladysmith. For some years he acted as Director of Military Intelligence, in which role he laid down the principles for the process of collecting, interpreting and using field intelligence, and in 1907 he wrote the army manual on The Art of Reconnaissance. At about this time he became interested in aviation and, aged forty-nine, he learned to fly. He was the oldest person at the time to be awarded a pilot’s certificate.

  Henderson and Sykes between them now came up with new terminology and a new plan for the Military Wing. Flying would be organised around ‘squadrons’, consisting of eighteen aircraft in three ‘flights’ of four, each with two extra in reserve. Every squadron would have its own stores and trained mechanics and would operate as an independent entity. Eight squadrons were planned -although only five had come into existence by the time war was declared in August 1914. Henderson brought one other feature to British military aviation. He sported a wide, bushy moustache that was enthusiastically copied and became characteristic of hundreds of fliers for decades to come.

  The year 1912 turned out to be pivotal in the history of British military aviation, and not only with the creation of the Royal Flying Corps. In August, a formal competition was held at Larkhill to find suitable aircraft for the RFC. The terms were announced well in advance to ensure that the different companies had time to prepare their models. Aircraft had to fly at a speed of 55 mph, and must be able to take off from grass in no more than 100 yards and carry at least one passenger or observer. They had to climb at a rate of at least 200 feet per minute to a height of 1500 feet, carrying a load of 350 lb, and stay at that height for an hour. They must be able to land on rough ground and come to a halt within 75 yards. Not many aircraft at the time could meet these specifications. But thirty-two aircraft were entered, although with breakdowns and engine failures only twenty-four actually participated. They included machines built by British & Commonwealth (the Bristols), by Short Brothers, Avro, Vickers and Sopwith, while the French models competing included Blériots, Farmans, Deperdussins and Hanriots. Some were biplanes and others monoplanes. Some had pusher engines; others had tractor engines. The competition was controversially won by the flying cowboy, Samuel Cody, in one of his own designs, known as the ‘flying cathedral’ due to its large size and powered by a huge Austro-Daimler 120 hp engine.14 The RFC bought two models of this aircraft, the Cody V, but after the pilot was kille
d when one of them crashed, the other was discarded and never saw active service.

  One of the judges in the competition was Mervyn O’Gorman, superintendent of the Balloon Factory, which in 1912 was renamed the Royal Aircraft Factory. In order to avoid a clash of interests, aircraft designed and produced at the Factory were not allowed to compete. However, the overall reaction was that the standard of the entrants had been disappointing. This confirmed to O’Gorman and others that the best work was being done in their own factory. Although de Havilland had not been able formally to enter the competition, he had raised the bar at the start by flying his own BE2 at speeds of up to 72 mph and to a record height of 10,560 feet. This was a truly impressive achievement for 1912, and in some ways the competition did nothing more than prove the superiority of the factory’s designs. O’Gorman put this down to the work of the Advisory Committee and to the application of scientific principles to the design of its aircraft. The RFC placed an initial order for twelve BE2s after the competition, the order being sub-contracted out to other manufacturers who were issued with detailed blueprints by the Royal Aircraft Factory.

  The army’s summer manoeuvres of September 1912, when two sides competed in a war game carried out in Norfolk, also demonstrated the advancing status of aircraft. The ‘Blue’ Army under the command of General Sir James Grierson used their aircraft for reconnaissance very smartly. On the first day ‘Blue’ aircraft spotted the ‘Red’ army within an hour, enabling the ‘Blue’ cavalry to attack them. And after three days the ‘Blue’ forces, who had consistently made effective use of their reconnaissance aircraft, won a complete victory. Grierson wrote with extraordinary foresight after the exercises, ‘Personally, I think there is no doubt that before land fighting takes place, we shall have to fight and destroy the enemy’s aircraft … warfare will be impossible until we have mastery of the air.’15 The commander of the defeated ‘Red’ forces was General Sir Douglas Haig.16

  The concept behind the formation of the RFC had been that both army and naval aviation would come under one joint command. However, army flying increasingly came to be focused on providing reconnaissance for the expeditionary force that would travel to the continent of Europe to fight its battles. The RFC consequently developed plans for its squadrons to travel abroad and base themselves in Europe, with a squadron assigned to support each army corps. Scouting aircraft were not intended to act as fighters, they were to carry out reconnaissance and get their intelligence back as quickly and efficiently as possible.

  But this was not what Winston Churchill had in mind for naval aviation. He wanted aircraft that could be used to détend home bases, ports and naval installations from attack and so must be able to shoot at enemy aircraft. And he wanted to continue to develop flying from ships, not only for long-distance reconnaissance but also for offensive purposes. In 1913 a naval aircraft dropped a torpedo for the first time, while other aircraft experimented with all sorts of bombs and machine guns as ways of attacking warships at sea.

  The two wings of the RFC gradually drifted further and further apart. In February 1914 Churchill wrote a memorandum outlining his views, stating with remarkable foresight: ‘The objectives of land aeroplanes can never be so definite or important as the objectives of seaplanes, which, when they carry torpedoes, may prove capable of playing a decisive part in operations against capital ships.’17 It was clear that Churchill wanted a separate division for naval aviation and he did much to support what in July 1914 formally became recognised as the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). A new uniform was designed for naval fliers to make them stand apart from their army brothers in the RFC. Eastchurch was the central air station for naval flying, and the alliance with Short Brothers developed further. The company opened a new factory at nearby Rochester to concentrate on producing aircraft for the navy. Sopwith too turned his attention to the design and building of seaplanes, as did the Avro company. At the time of its formation, the Royal Naval Air Service possessed 39 aeroplanes, 52 seaplanes and a few small airships, along with 120 trained pilots. Morale was high, the fliers were highly motivated and in the summer of 1914 they were as ready for war as a small force like this could be.

  In the two years after the military flying competition, the Air Advisory Committee and the Royal Aircraft Factory continued to make real progress. In the light of the 1912 manoeuvres a new scouting aircraft was produced drawing extensively on the advances made in the science of aeronautics. Henry Phillip Folland, a former apprentice at the Lanchester Motor Company who had gone on to work at Daimler, designed the new aeroplane. Green had brought Folland to Farnborough as a draughtsman for Geoffrey de Havilland but he soon proved to be an inventive and talented aircraft designer in his own right. His new scout, known as the Reconnaissance Experimental One (RE1), was a variant of the super-successful BE2c designed particularly to provide a more stable platform for observation. A two-seater biplane with the observer sitting in front of the pilot, the RE1 was powered by a 70 hp Renault engine and could fly at a maximum speed of 83 mph. Like the BE2, several successful variants of the RE series were to fly throughout the war.

  Some historians have criticised the work of the Royal Aircraft Factory. They have argued that by imposing a rigid state monopoly on aircraft design, Haldane severely limited the procurement of alternative designs and so denied the army access to inventive work that could have been done elsewhere in the privately owned aviation companies.18 There is some truth in this: several gifted designers ended up as subcontractors duplicating models that had been designed at Farnborough. However, the other side of the argument is that it had taken some time to understand the military potential of flight. Aircraft had been too unreliable and too dangerous for many experienced people to appreciate what help they could be to the military. As it was, on the very same day that a British pilot first flew in Britain, the government established a committee of some of the finest brains in the land to help create a scientific foundation on which flying could build. There was nothing lax or lethargic about that. When planes were still hopping just a few hundred yards over the ground in a straight line, scientists were exploring the principles that might establish aviation as a new arm of the military. The Royal Aircraft Factory provided real encouragement to an extremely able aircraft design team who developed a range of ideas. During the war, new technologies and aircraft design were to advance even faster than in the years of peace, and some of the aircraft the RFC went to war with in 1914 were later shown to be inadequate. Nevertheless, by the time of war, Britain had a firmly established aircraft industry that was manufacturing about ten aircraft each month, making sales to continental states as far afield as Greece, Romania and Imperial Russia. Things had come a long way from the industry’s humble origins only eight years before. But the greatest challenge was still ahead. Would the application of scientific ideas help when the biggest test of all came in August 1914?

  4

  Observing the War

  Europe went to war very suddenly in the summer of 1914. Few people had anticipated that a flare-up in the Balkans would ignite a European conflagration. War came, almost literally, out of a clear blue summer sky. And virtually everyone expected it would be over as quickly as it had started, probably ‘by Christmas’. The popular press had whipped up patriotic fervour in all the European nations in the preceding years. In France and Germany, children learned patriotic songs and poems at school, while the French longed to be avenged for their defeat by Germany in 1870. Citizens of both nations grew up knowing of their long-term rivalry with the other. In both countries, as well as in the Austro-Hungarian and Imperial Russian empires, there was conscription and millions of young men left families, villages and towns to train with the army.

  A military culture was dominant in much of continental Europe. In Britain, where conscription did not exist, there was instead immense pride in the Royal Navy as the largest in the world and ruler of the waves, although there was a growing fear that Germany was a rival to this supremacy. There was tremend
ous enthusiasm for the Empire, a belief in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon races, and throughout the country people regularly gathered to celebrate royal birthdays and the anniversaries of military triumphs. Military chiefs such as Kitchener were probably more respected than most political leaders. Books of imperial derring-do and stories of wartime national glories were immensely popular.

  As a result, across Europe, millions cheered the coming of war. In Vienna, Berlin, Moscow, Paris and London crowds assembled to hail the declarations of war. Many young people saw war not only as an adventure but as some sort of liberating force, part of their destiny. Throughout history it had been necessary to fight wars and everyone was convinced that victory would be theirs. In Vienna, a young man wrote, ‘everywhere one saw excited faces. Each individual... was part of the people, and his person, his hitherto unnoticed person, had been given meaning’ In Britain, the young Rupert Brooke wrote, ‘Now God be thanked who has matched us with this hour.’1

  In retrospect it was bizarre that young men should cheer with such immense enthusiasm the news that many of them would be sent to their deaths, and that women, likewise, should encourage their husbands, sons and brothers to head off into the carnage. The fact was, of course, that apart from a tiny number of visionaries who predicted the holocaust that would follow, most people had no sense of what a modern war would involve. It was assumed that huge armies would fight a couple of battles, the fleets would engage each other at sea, some ground would be occupied and then everything would be over. The diplomats would put together a peace settlement and a few territories would be exchanged. With so little awareness of the destructive capacity of modern artillery, machine guns, aircraft and bombs, there was barely any dread of war, only a senseless enthusiasm for it and a desire among the young to be part of it before it was all over.