These misgivings were justified by the event. The recommendations of the commandant were, in the main, carried out, but the conditions during the winter made progress almost impossible. There were no proper living quarters at Larkhill, so officers and men lived at Bulford—the officers at the Royal Artillery Mess—and went to and from their work in horsed transport wagons. As they used to go down to Bulford for dinner at midday, the actual work done in the sheds was inconsiderable.
A further very real difficulty was inevitable, and might be compared to the growing pains of any healthy organism. The air forces of Great Britain took their origin, as has been explained, from the Royal Engineers. For a very long time—something over a quarter of a century—the Royal Engineers had the monopoly of the air. When science quickened new growth, this new growth was still attached by habit and tradition to the old body. In March 1912 eight out of fourteen officers of the Air Battalion were members of the Royal Engineers. The remainder, including some of the keenest students of aviation—Captain Fulton, Captain Burke, Captain Maitland, Lieutenant Barrington-Kennett—were, in a regimental sense, interlopers. Those who understand the strength and virtue of regimental society and regimental tradition will easily understand also how in a mixed body the old loyalty and the new pull different ways and impede the smooth working of the machine.
All these difficulties deserve mention if only because they did in fact make the work on Salisbury Plain poor and ineffective during the winter of 1911-12. But they are not the whole of the story. 'The first thing that strikes me', Keats once wrote to a friend, 'on hearing of trouble having befallen another is this—"Well, it cannot be helped, he will have the pleasure of trying the resources of his spirit."' That pleasure was enjoyed by the little band of stalwarts who about the end of April 1911 went into camp at Larkhill as No. 2 Company, Air Battalion. If they received scant encouragement, they got to work without waiting for more. When Mr. Cockburn, after instructing the naval officers at Eastchurch, returned to Larkhill to find his old machine, he found the company in possession on the plain. Captain Fulton was in command. Most of the officers had had some little experience of flying. 'Captain Fulton', says Mr. Cockburn, 'had had some practice on my machine; Lieutenant Conner had had some also, but not nearly so much. Captain Burke had learnt in France, and was about on a par with Captain Fulton. These two were certainly the best pilots at that time. Lieutenant Barrington-Kennett had had a short course on a Blériot some time before, but had not flown for some months. Lieutenant Cammell was flying a Blériot of weird and wonderful type, his own property. These were the originals, but Captain Loraine and Lieutenant Hynes joined soon afterwards.' To these names should be added another—Lieutenant H. R. P. Reynolds, of the Royal Engineers.
Having taught the navy to fly, Mr. Cockburn now lent his help to the army. 'The machines', he says, 'with the exception of the Blériot were either Farmans or Bristol box-kites.... Lieutenant Barrington-Kennett had no experience on these, and Lieutenant Reynolds had no experience on anything. The experience of the remainder was not sufficient to admit of their acting as Instructors, so Captain Fulton got permission for me to carry on and take Barrington-Kennett and Reynolds in hand. This was an easy business compared with Eastchurch—a three miles' straight with good landing all the way made the first flights an easy matter. There were no incidents, except in a joy-ride for Lieutenant Cammell when his cap blew off and back into the propeller, causing a most tremendous noise which scared us badly, me particularly, as I didn't know the cause.... Progress was good; every one was very keen; and the Air Battalion soon developed into quite respectable pilots without any accidents.'
The company had a glorious and adventurous summer. It is strange to compare their doings with the elaborate exercises which were being practised at the same time by the French air corps at the Camp de Châlons. On Salisbury Plain very little effort was made to co-operate with other arms, except spasmodically. The pilots were new to their work, and the triumph was to get into the air at all. The first united effort of the battalion, says Mr. Cockburn, was to fly from Larkhill to Farnborough. 'It was a most exciting event; they went off at intervals, and every one of them got there. It was a very creditable performance both for them and for their mechanics. It must be remembered that the latter were all inexperienced, but what they lacked in experience they made up for in zest, always ready to learn, and as keen as possible to go up. One of them at this time was the eldest of the McCuddens, and many of the others are now (1918) officers holding considerable positions in the Royal Air Force. They were a fine lot of men, and deserve their success as pioneers.'
The higher grade Aero Club certificate was obtainable by the successful performance of a cross-country flight to a destination named a short time before the start. Cross-country flights were much in fashion, so that pilots were away from the battalion for about half their time. They flew in mufti; Lieutenants Barrington-Kennett and Reynolds more than once got into trouble for being away as much as a week at a time. These absences were sometimes due to engine failure, sometimes (it was believed) to the discovery of a well-provided country house and kind hosts.
The army manœuvres of August 1911, appointed to be held in Cambridgeshire, were the event of the summer; and the Air Battalion was detailed to take part in them. Owing to the shortage of water in that droughty summer the event never came off, but the aeroplane company started from Larkhill, and met with plenty of incident on the way. Air Commodore Brooke-Popham, who was at that time attached to the company from the Staff College, has very kindly set down his memories of the flight. He started from Larkhill with Captain Burke on the old Farman, with the object of making Oxford, but owing to a slight adverse wind and the low speed of the machine, which made only thirty miles an hour in a calm, they had to be content with Wantage, and got to Oxford the next morning. Lieutenant Barrington-Kennett, with a mechanic, made a forced landing in the neighbourhood of Burford, but with the assistance of Captain Brooke-Popham and Lieutenant Hynes, who went to his rescue in the only motor vehicle possessed by the company, he got into the air again, and also reached Oxford. Meantime Lieutenant Conner had had a crash in a fog, without hurting himself, on high ground at West Ilsley, south of Oxford. Maps, in those days, were mostly provided by the officers themselves, and Lieutenant Conner had steered himself successfully by the aid of a map torn out of a Bradshaw Railway Guide. Eventually the mobilized military air force of the British Empire, that is to say, Captains Burke, Brooke-Popham, and Massy, Lieutenants Barrington-Kennett and Reynolds, arrived in Oxford, at the end of the first stage. Here there were no tools available for repair, the few belonging to the company having been dispatched, by orders given at cross-purposes, straight to Cambridge. Nevertheless the little band of enthusiasts bravely started on the last stage of their journey. Captains Burke and Brooke-Popham had engine failure about ten miles out of Oxford, and, landing in a ridge-and-furrow field, broke a tail skid. Most of the day was consumed in getting this skid mended, patchwork fashion, by a coachbuilder in Oxford, to procure whose aid Captain Brooke-Popham returned to Oxford by earth. When the machine flew again it was forced to land at once, this time with serious damage. The other three officers had all been compelled by the bumpy weather to land not many miles away. In the evening they started again. Captain Massy had engine trouble fifty yards from the start, and completely wrecked his machine without hurting himself at all. Lieutenant Reynolds, who was the next to go, ran into a thunder-storm. His famous accident deserves to be recorded in his own words:
'That evening, soon after seven o'clock, I started again, it was warm and fine but rather suggestive of thunder; the air was perfectly still. I scarcely had occasion to move the control lever at all until I got to Bletchley, where it began to get rather bumpy; at first I thought nothing of this, but suddenly it got much worse, and I came to the conclusion it was time to descend. A big black thunder-cloud was coming up on my right front; it did not look reassuring, and there was good landing ground below. At this time I was flying about 1,700 feet altitude by my aneroid, which had been set at Oxford in the morning. I began a glide, but almost directly I had switched off the tail of the machine was suddenly wrenched upwards as if it had been hit from below, and I saw the elevator go down perpendicularly below me. I was not strapped in, and I suppose I caught hold of the uprights at my side, for the next thing I realized was that I was lying in a heap on what ordinarily is the under surface of the top plane. The machine in fact was upside-down. I stood up, held on, and waited. The machine just floated about, gliding from side to side like a piece of paper falling. Then it over-swung itself, so to speak, and went down more or less vertically sideways until it righted itself momentarily the right way up.
'Then it went down tail first, turned over upside-down again, and restarted the old floating motion. We were still some way from the ground, and took what seemed like a long time in reaching it. I looked round somewhat hurriedly; the tail was still there, and I could see nothing wrong. As we got close to the ground the machine was doing long swings from side to side, and I made up my mind that the only thing to do was to try and jump clear of the wreckage before the crash. In the last swing we slid down, I think, about thirty feet, and hit the ground pretty hard. Fortunately I hung on practically to the end, and, according to those who were looking on, I did not jump till about ten feet from the ground.'
Those who were looking on were two men, stark naked, who had been bathing near by. About fifty or sixty people soon collected, and some time passed before it occurred to any one to remark that these two men had no clothes on.