The episode seems not to have ended there, however, for within a day or two the officer in charge of the Villacoublay sheds (the friend to whom Harry had confided in an undertone) was requested to report to the controlling authority there, who made serious complaint and requested him to write a letter of apology, containing assurances “that Mr. Hawker would not do this sort of thing again.” It appears that just before Harry had carried out the stunts with the General there had been an epidemic of crashes through foolish, inexperienced young pilots stunting too near the ground. Harry was therefore chosen as the victim for chastisement, an action which caused him and his friends much amusement.
On one occasion it was necessary for Harry to go over from England to Villacoublay by boat and train, a journey which to anyone, aviator or not, was a miserable proceeding during the war. It is said that he arrived at the aerodrome abusing everything to do with the sea, the ships on it, the French railways, the railway officials, and everything connected with rail transport. Finally he explained that he must have a machine on which to fly back, as it was the only way of getting about in reasonable comfort. How his want was satisfied provides an interesting story.
For some time the French had been in a very parlous state in regard to fighting machines, in consequence of which the Sopwith representatives at Villacoublay applied to the Air Board to let them have a Camel to submit for tests. The request was complied with, and instructions were sent from London to G.H.Q. at Marquise for a Camel to be detached from store and sent to Villacoublay. A quaint old ruin turned up, that had about as many flying properties as a tea-tray: the engine, a subcontracted Clerget, was described as “simply a collection of ironmongery,” and, taking the machine as a whole, it was just possible to stagger about in the air if one knew a lot about flying. Needless to say, the machine was of no use for its intended purpose, namely, for demonstration purposes before the French Government, and in consequence it had been rotting in the sheds for months.
When Harry asked for a machine on which to make his return journey, he was told that this was the only one available, and its history was recounted in detail. Nothing daunted, he went and had a look at it, and, after a few minutes’ examination, he expressed the opinion that as apparently it had some indication of having been an aeroplane, he thought, with care, it might be flown to London; and anyhow, anything was better than boats and trains. He took the machine up and found it unsafe to fly in its existing condition, for the engine very nearly came out of its fixings.
As it happened, there were one or two experimental Sopwith 1½ Strutter biplanes, the property of the French Government, in the sheds, and as the authority in charge decided that something very serious might occur if Harry did not fly back, he ordered the engine from one of these machines to be installed in the decrepit Camel.
Harry set out for England in the Camel next morning in filthy weather, but it was not he who had the “hump,” for those at Villacoublay had intermittent spasms of what they called “heart disease” during the next twelve hours, as they could get no news of his safe progress or arrival.
Really, they said, they had not the least anxiety, for they had unbounded confidence in what they described as Harry’s uncanny capacity for getting out of trouble. Nevertheless, there were considerable expressions of relief when news turned up that he had landed safely. During the flight he had three forced landings owing to failure of petrol feed; and he pulled out sundry odd bits of inner tube and rubber piping from his tank. How they ever got there was never discovered, but Harry regarded it as all in a day’s work, and a subject of amusement rather than annoyance.
Mr. Alan R. Fenn, a colleague of Harry’s and French representative of the Sopwith Company at that time, to whom I am indebted for some of these reminiscences, in a recent letter to me wrote:
“One other little thing that occurs to me is concerned with the Dolphin. You will remember that we converted the 200 h.p. Hispano-Dolphin to take the 300, and this work was done in Paris, all more or less by rule of thumb. I then asked Harry to come over and look the job over and fly it, if he thought well, and generally to see if it was all right.