III.
We were very proud of our new flying office in No. 2 Shed.
It was just inside the big sliding doors opening out on the slipway. It had glass windows on three sides which kept out the dust and some of the noise. It contained a sound-proof cabinet complete with telephone, a desk at which writing could be done, and with drawers in which to keep papers, and a blackboard on the wall for notices. The inside was painted white to reflect all the light possible, and the outside grey to prevent it looking dirty. It was exceedingly smart.
Also a pigeoner's caboosh was put up.
The pigeoner was a busy man—he seemed to do everything but look after the pigeons. There were several of him, for he had to be on duty before patrols went out in the morning and after they came back at night.
If you mislaid your life-belt you asked the pigeoner. He kept them. They were air-bags worn like a waistcoat, and were blown up by pressing a handle which punctured a cap in a small compressed-air bottle. Everybody out on patrol wore one. It was good joss.
He kept the leather jackets and trousers for the ratings, for the War Flight was short of kit and it had to be passed on from man to man.
The engineers drew from him their flying-tool kits, small wooden boxes fitted with all tools that could be used at sea, packed into the smallest space and totalling the least possible weight.
Besides all this he looked after the emergency rations, the ordinary rations, the Red Cross boxes, the spare sea-anchors, the jerseys for the ratings supplied by the R.N.A.S. Comforts Fund, the cameras; and in his spare time he acted as messenger, being summoned to the Flight Office by one tap of the ship's bell. A lazy Duty Officer had fitted up a string, whereby, sitting at the desk inside the office, he could ring the bell outside.
He also looked after the pigeons. Large wicker baskets were brought down each morning from the military loft in Felixstowe town. While on the station the birds were watered but not fed. When a boat was going out the pigeoner put two of them in a basket with two compartments and two lids and placed them on board, well up from the bottom, as petrol fumes made them stupid. Each pigeon had a tiny aluminium receptacle clipped to its leg to hold the message, and a ring with its number, so that it could be identified if it came back without a signal. The naval Huns usually released the pigeons without messages when they captured one of our seaplanes, sometimes turning the holder upside down.
Pigeons cannot fly in mist or when it is dark, and have to be specially trained to fly over the sea, two squeakers, as the young birds are called, being taken out in each boat for training. And sometimes they refused to fly in daytime, perching when released on some part of the machine. When they did return punishment quickly followed. Birds which refused to do their duty had their commissions cancelled and were killed and eaten.
But they did great service.
An aeroplane and a flying-boat crossed from Yarmouth to Terschelling. The aeroplane tried to attack a Zeppelin and received a bullet in the radiator, whereupon it had to land in the sea. The flying-boat rescued the crew, but was damaged in doing so and could not get into the air again. Two pigeons were released. One perished. The other, a great-hearted bird, battled home against a head wind and fell dead with exhaustion on the slipway. The message it carried saved the lives of the seven men who had been out in the disabled boat for four days.
During May, beside bringing down the L 43, the War Flight sighted eight enemy submarines and bombed three.
Morrish and Young, driven off their course by heavy rain-squalls and low clouds on the 9th, passed over an enemy submarine on the Schouen Bank, but as they did not know where they were at the time and could not identify it, they passed on, making the English coast near Dover. Two days later Gordon and Thompson presented one of our new two hundred and thirty pound bombs to a Fritz.
On the same day Dickey and myself, when peacefully booming out to the North Hinder, ran into six winged Huns. Much to the disgust of Dickey, who wanted to eat 'em alive, I dodged the enemy in the mist and carried out the patrol.
But now our activities were curtailed and the War Flight came in for a tremendous strafing.
A Senior Naval Officer from another area on a visit to the station asked to be taken out on patrol. He was boomed out on the Spider Web by Tiny, surprised a submarine on the surface, and dumped on it four one hundred pound bombs before it could submerge.
The Naval Officer arrived back in the harbour safely and departed to his own place, well pleased.
But that night the telephone bell rang and we were informed that one of the Harwich submarines, which was due, had not returned. Tiny's hoodoo was apparently on the job again. He was sent for and carpeted, and straffed for taking out a Naval Officer from another area, and while doing so, bombing and sinking one of our own submarines.
The War Flight was straffed and forbidden to search the Spider Web, and was given instead the task of flying up and down the shipping channel within smelling distance of the land. The pilots were tremendously bored.
And then five days later the E boat came limping in between the guardships at the boom. She was damaged, but not damaged by bombs. She had not been anywhere near where the bombs had been dropped, but had found trouble while poking her inquisitive nose into some of Germany's secret affairs.
But for some days the flying-boats flopped up and down the shipping channel, seeing nothing and accomplished nothing, until June the 28th. Their release was celebrated by Mackenzie and Dickey bombing a Fritz from four hundred feet ten miles west of the North Hinder.
Bombs bursting over Submarine.