IV.
The quality of the dental platinum, requisitioned from the dentists to make points for the magnetos, brought the first boat down at sea on the eleventh patrol. This platinum, specially prepared for dental work, was not up to the job, and Jimmy Bath and Tiny Galpin had to come to the water forty-five miles out from land. They were found by a destroyer and towed in.
John O. Galpin—known as Tiny, because of his comfortable proportions—was, as he said himself, followed by a hoodoo. He held at this time the record for the greatest number of engine failures out at sea in float seaplanes, and was quite hardened to spending the night adrift.
At this time, if he got up early in the morning on a fine day to go out on patrol, while he was having breakfast it would rain. If it did not rain, the engines would refuse to start. If the engines started, he would be delayed in getting away by finding there was no petrol in the tanks. If he got away, he would get to the point in his patrol farthest from shore and have engine failure. If he was picked up by a destroyer, there would be a collision and his machine would be sunk. And if none of these things happened to him, and he arrived home safely by air, all the submarines had been navigating in other waters.
He describes the state of affairs in 'The Wing' as follows:—
Cheerioh!
The Seaplane is my Hoodoo,
I shall not fly another,
It maketh me to come down on rough waters,
It spoileth my reputation.
Though I fly from the harbour
It returneth by towing.
Its Magneto discomforts me.
Its tank runneth over.
Its rods and its engines fail me.
Yea, even by mechanics is my name held in laughter.
Though I strive to overcome them
Its weaknesses prevail.
In the hour of my need its engines mock me
And bring me down with great bumpings,
And there is no health in it.
Verily, verily, if I continue to fly these things
I shall end by drowning;
For my friends they desert me
And call me a Jonah.
My luck smelleth to Heaven
And I am disheartened,
Therefore shall I turn my hand elsewhere
And become a Tram Driver.
For again I say unto you, that of all Pilots
I am the most unlucky,
Yea, d——d unlucky.
So distressed was he over his bad luck, and so sad was it to see one built for mirth so melancholy, that a small silk bag was made, a pebble from the beach put in it, and he was presented with this mascot, which he was told had come from Egypt. So great is the power of suggestion, that from that moment the hoodoo vanished. So gay did he become that on Guest Nights, after making one speech he would make another, and would make half a dozen more unless forcibly restrained.
Four Hun destroyers, after bursting out into the North Sea from Zeebrugge on the 30th of April, were on their way back when they were overhauled by Lofty Martin and Holmes in Old '61, about ten miles south-east of the North Hinder.
The North Sea was shrouded in mist, so at first the pilots saw only two broad white wakes. Then they made out through the haze two large destroyers steering on the same course as the flying-boat, and running at a speed of about twenty knots. They did not know at this time that they were Huns. Rapidly coming up with the destroyers from the stern, they were half a mile away when they were challenged with a green light, a single ball of fire shot up into the air, lighting up the mist with a sickly glare. The wireless operator in the boat replied with the proper recognition lights for the day.
The lather of foam beneath the bows of the destroyers increased, and the white tumbling wakes tailed out, as the engines of the destroyers were whacked up and the slim long ships thundered along at thirty knots. But the flying-boat was booming through the air at a good eighty, travelling two and a half miles to their one, and overhauled them as though they had been nailed to the water.
Immediately spurts of fire, followed by little black balls which opened out into nasty brown clouds, appeared in front of the flying-boat, and the pilots found themselves in the centre of a barrage of bursting shells.
Banking sharply to the right, Martin saw two more destroyers about a mile away, firing at him, ranged by the first two destroyers. He drew out of range and tried to get into wireless communication with Felixstowe, but failing, he returned to make an oral report.
Billiken and myself started out immediately to look for the destroyers. We saw no destroyers, but came upon a submarine of the U-C type twenty-five miles south-east of the North Hinder. She was just going under when we arrived. As she dived she made a sharp turn to port, and, as the bombs had been dropped a little short, she turned right under them. She could still be seen when the bombs detonated, apparently all around her.
So pleased were we with this little show that we steered a south-east course instead of a north-east course, fetching up at Margate instead of Felixstowe, and had to toddle up the coast to Harwich, where we arrived just in nice time for luncheon.
There was a great shortage of bombs about this time, for the number of bombs that had been dropped had depleted our store. There were only enough bombs left to arm one boat, so that each time a boat came in from patrol the bombs were taken off and put on the next boat going out. Uncle Pat, the armament officer, went about praying that a submarine would not be sighted.
It has been said that the Admiralty up to this time had rated bombs supplied to seaplane stations as "non-expendable stores," and that the officer in charge of the Main Bomb Stores, when notified of the shortage, had replied: "Impossible! Felixstowe? Why, I supplied you with sixteen bombs two years ago."
When I first arrived on the station, Uncle Pat confided in me that he had just ordered a 1½-horse-power electric motor to run his lathe, for which his soul thirsted. From time to time, as the months went by, he would draw me into a corner and tell me of his latest move—for he was a past-master in the art of intrigue—whereby the motor was to arrive from London by the very next train. And then one day there was great excitement: he had word that the motor was actually on the rail. Finally, some considerable time later, a square box arrived at the Stores, and upon the lid being removed a beautiful new grey 1½-horse-power electric motor, with pulley-wheel complete, was revealed.
But by this time Pat had left the station.
And now we lost the first boat at sea. Poor 8659, just handed over to the War Flight, was destined never to grow up and follow in the slip stream of Old '61. She was lost on her first patrol.
Monk Aplin and Rees had pushed off at six o'clock in the morning to look in the Spider Web, and should have been back in harbour at eleven o'clock. But they did not return. Wireless signals sent out to them were not answered.
The strain of sending out long patrols and waiting for the pilots to come back is almost greater than flying on them. I stood on the slipway with an ear cocked to catch the first faint beat of the engines.
I ran over in my mind all the possibilities.
Petrol: yes, the tanks had been filled. Engines: perhaps it would have been better to have changed the spark plugs in the port engine as the revolutions had not been quite good enough. Controls: they had just been overhauled, but the aileron control-wire, with the two broken strands at the fairlead, had not been renewed owing to press of work. Hull: leaking slightly, but nothing to worry about even if the boat came down at sea. Wind: the patrol was not too long for the wind blowing. And so on, and so on.
I followed the boat round the Web in my mind and wondered where she had come down and why, or whether she had run into a crowd of winged Huns.
I telephoned to the pigeon loft and warned them. A speedy messenger was standing-by in the wireless hut, for at this time there was no telephone. The look-out man on top of No. 1 Shed had answered my questions in the same way many times. The seaplane and wireless stations up and down the coast had been warned. And then I took a piece of paper and worked out a little calculation like this—
| 32) | 215 | (6 | |
| 192 | 6 hours 40 minutes. | ||
| 23 |
The engines used thirty-two gallons of petrol an hour and the boat carried two hundred and fifteen gallons in her tanks. She could stay in the air for six hours and forty minutes, and as she had left at six o'clock she would have to come down at half-past twelve through lack of fuel.
At twelve o'clock a little knot of anxious pilots were gathered on the slipway. I ordered two boats to be got ready and turned to the chart to work out probabilities and possibilities for the coming search. At half-past twelve, as the requests for information up and down the coast had drawn blank, two boats were boomed out to the Spider Web, and the Senior Naval Officer, Harwich, was asked to notify all destroyers.
When The Monk was out on the Web eighty miles from Felixstowe one of his engines began to give trouble. He turned for home, which he should have reached in an hour and a half, but at the end of this time he could see no land. As a matter of fact he was off his course and was flying more or less parallel with the coast, but out of sight of it. He shoved along, his failing engine gradually getting worse and worse, and his petrol tanks becoming exhausted.
His main petrol tanks finally gave out and he flew on his gravity tank, which contained sufficient petrol for forty minutes. He had just made up his mind that he would have to land through lack of fuel when he sighted a group of trawlers near the Haisboro' light-ship, and, on his last teaspoonful of petrol, reached them. They were working over a shoal. A thirty-knot wind was blowing, and a heavy breaking sea, with steep crests, was running. As the boat touched the water it was thrown into the air and came down again on one wing. The seas tore off a wing-tip and a wing-tip float, and as the boat yawed, burst across her in a smother of white foam.
A trawler came alongside, and the pilots shouted to the skipper and asked for assistance. But the skipper, to their astonishment, bawled through a megaphone—
"I won't rescue any d——d Huns."
And then the pilots remembered that two trawlers had been sunk a few days before by a submarine. They shouted to the skipper that they were English, but he replied—
"If you're English, give us a sight of the Union Jack."
Flying-boats do not carry a flag, but the skipper would not be convinced. The fins of the boat had been damaged and the water was pouring in. The bilge pump could not keep the leaks under. When the boat was in a sinking condition The Monk thought of throwing across his naval cap, and when the skipper had fished it out of the water and examined it, he put a dingey out and took off the crew. An attempt was made to salve the boat, but without success, and she was a total loss.
Aplin, known as The Monk, because of the way his hair grew, or rather, did not grow, received a severe blow, when landing, on the identical spot from which he took his nickname, and never flew on patrol again, turning over to school work, at which he made a great success.
And so ended April and the first eighteen days of the War Flight.
