The activities of the Naval Air Service, from the time it came into being until the outbreak of war, were very largely experimental. Those who were responsible for naval operations had at first no complete, definite, and practical scheme for the employment of aircraft in naval warfare. It would have been difficult for them to produce such a scheme; opinion was fluctuating and divided, and the progress of aeronautical science supplied improved machines and opened out new possibilities every month. The time of the service was spent in demonstrating these new possibilities, rather than in organizing and training their forces for the needs of a definite programme. Nevertheless, this experimental period witnessed rapid growth and prepared the way for surprising achievements by the Naval Air Service during the war.
The uses of the Military Wing, on the other hand, were definitely conceived from the first. It was brought into being to fulfil a certain purpose. Its officers knew when and where and how their services would be required. They knew, that is to say, that on the outbreak of war they would be mobilized, that they would operate with an expeditionary force, and that their business would be, by observation from the air, to keep the commanders of that force acquainted with the movements and dispositions of the enemy. The constitution of the Military Wing was elastic, so that its numbers could be increased and its uses multiplied, but its original purpose, to supply the needs of an expeditionary force, dictated its first establishment and its early training. Its first duty was reconnaissance. All its other and later uses were consequences of this central purpose, and were forced on it by the hard logic of events. The full establishment of the Military Wing was to comprise a headquarters, seven aeroplane squadrons, and one airship and kite squadron (providing two airships and two flights of kites). Later in the year there was also established at South Farnborough what was then called a Flying Depot, Line of Communications, but was afterwards named an Aircraft Park. Its duties were the maintenance of a reserve of aeroplanes, and the carrying out of such repairs as were beyond the powers of the squadron workshops yet were not serious enough to compel the return of the machine to its maker.
In its beginnings and during its early years the Military Wing was greatly indebted to the technical knowledge and the inventive skill of the Royal Engineers. It was they who had produced the army balloon and the army airship. Before the Royal Flying Corps was founded they had devised a practicable and efficient aeroplane, and they had been chiefly responsible for the organization of the Air Battalion. The best tribute that could be paid to their fostering care was paid by the Royal Flying Corps when, being fully fledged, it started on its great career.
The building up of the Military Wing to fit it for its purpose was not a light task. Skilled officers, skilled men, an adequate supply of the best machines, suitable flying grounds in various parts of Great Britain, a well-staffed central school for training—these were some of the first necessities. After two years, when war came, only four out of the seven squadrons were ready for instant service in France. But the value of this little force was out of all proportion greater than its numerical strength. Through all the difficulties and delays that clog a new movement it had kept a single purpose in view and had worked for it. The great achievements of the Royal Flying Corps during the war may seem to make its early history and early efforts a trivial thing in the comparison. But the spirit was there; and some of the merits of the later performance may be detected in the tedious and imperfect rehearsals, the long hours of duty-flights and experiment, demanding that three-o'clock-in-the-morning kind of courage which is willing to face danger in the midst of a world at ease.
In March 1912 Colonel Seely had announced in the House of Commons that there would be required at once for the Military Wing a hundred and thirty-three officers, and for the Naval Wing about thirty or forty officers. It was not proposed at first to teach all these officers at the Central Flying School. They would learn to fly privately, and would go to the school for more advanced instruction. The skilled men required were of many kinds. The most important of these were mechanics, men who had served at full pay in engineering workshops, who had some knowledge of electricity, and could make intelligible sketches of machinery. A list of some other classes whose services were invited proves that though the air service was small its needs were many and complex. Men of the following trades were to be enrolled, by enlistment or transfer, in the Military Wing: blacksmiths, carpenters and joiners, clerks, coppersmiths, draughtsmen, electricians, fitters, harness-makers, instrument repairers, metal-turners, painters, pattern-makers, photographers, riggers, sail-makers, tinsmiths, turners, wheelwrights, whitesmiths, wireless operators, wood-turners. Men of the following minor trades were also invited: cable-jointers, chauffeurs, drillers, dynamo attendants, electric-bell fitters, joiners' helpers, machinists, motor fitters, plumbers' mates, switchboard attendants, tool-grinders, wiremen. Last, a welcome was promised to men above average intelligence whose education at school had reached what is called the Fifth Standard. When an aeroplane glides down to earth as easily as a bird, and comes to rest, a chance onlooker would hardly guess what a world of intricate labour and pains has gone to the attainment of that beautiful simplicity. It is the workshop which gives safety in flight; and because the workshop needs highly skilled men, whose services are in demand, at high wages, for many other purposes, an air force must always be difficult and expensive to maintain in time of peace.
Captain F. H. Sykes was given the command of the Military Wing on its formation. His adjutant was Lieutenant B. H. Barrington-Kennett. Captain H. R. M. Brooke-Popham in March of that year joined the Air Battalion, and was serving at Farnborough when the Royal Flying Corps came into being. Most of the aeroplane company were then at Larkhill, but Captain C. J. Burke, with his B.E. machine, and Captain A. G. Fox, of the Royal Engineers, with a Bristol box-kite, were at Farnborough. Some of the officers of the airship company were making strenuous and successful efforts to get the aviation certificates which were demanded from officers of the new formation. In April and May about a dozen officers from various units joined at Farnborough. One of the first of these was Captain Patrick Hamilton, of the Worcestershire Regiment, who had done much flying in the Argentine (and, incidentally, had been stoned by the human herd for refusing to give an exhibition flight in impossible weather). He was a keen and skilled aviator; he had made more than two hundred flights, and had had some narrow escapes—one particularly, when his machine capsized and glided a hundred feet upside-down, at a sharp angle to the ground. By the two strong masts of the monoplane and by the breaking of the machine he was preserved unhurt. He remarked that it was a good lesson, for 'to an aviator experience is everything'. He brought with him to Farnborough his two-seater Deperdussin monoplane with a sixty horse-power Anzani engine. Others who joined about the same time were Major H. R. Cook of the Royal Artillery, who became instructor in theory at the Central Flying School, Captain E. B. Loraine of the Grenadier Guards, Captain C. R. W. Allen of the Welch Regiment, Captain G. H. Raleigh of the Essex Regiment, Lieutenant C. A. H. Longcroft of the Welch Regiment, and Lieutenant G. T. Porter of the Royal Artillery. A sort of class was held at Farnborough for these early recruits; they heard lectures, and did practical work in the overhaul of engines.
There were only four serviceable machines available at that time, one B.E., one Bréguet, and two Bristol box-kites, so the recruits, who wanted above all things to fly, were disappointed. They were taken up in the baskets of captive spherical balloons, where they spent hour after hour sketching the various parts of Farnborough, counting the cows on the common, and writing descriptions of what they could see from the balloon. The labours of the pencil and the pen are not easily carried on in the basket of a captive balloon: it swings and twirls in a breeze, and very often produces air sickness. This form of instruction was relieved by an ascent in the airship Gamma, and by occasional trips in free balloons.
Towards the end of April Captain H. R. M. Brooke-Popham took over from Captain Fulton the command of the old aeroplane company on Salisbury Plain, and on the 13th of May, when the Royal Flying Corps was formed, this company became No. 3 Squadron of the new formation. No. 2 Squadron was formed from the nucleus of aeroplane pilots at Farnborough, and was placed under the command of Captain C. J. Burke. In August the Central Flying School was started at Upavon, with Captain Godfrey Paine, R.N., as commandant.
The airship company at Farnborough, being lineally descended from the old balloon school, became No. 1 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps Military Wing. The command of this squadron was given to one of the earliest of aeronautical pioneers, Captain E. M. Maitland, who, almost alone among the pioneers, preferred the airship to the aeroplane. Edward Maitland Maitland, after being educated at Haileybury and Trinity College, Cambridge, joined the Essex Regiment as a second lieutenant in 1900. He served in the South African War, and in the spring of 1908 turned his attention to ballooning. On the 18th of November in that year, along with Mr. C. C. Turner and the late Professor A. E. Gaudron, he ascended from the Crystal Palace in the Mammoth, a balloon of more than a hundred thousand cubic feet in capacity, supplied by the enterprise of the Daily Graphic, and travelled in the air to Mateki Derevni in Russia, a distance of 1,117 miles, which was traversed in thirty-six and a half hours. His main interest was not in Russia, but in the air, and he returned to England at once. When in 1919 he accompanied the airship R 34 on the first famous air voyage across the Atlantic, he remained in America for only a few hours. During the years 1909 and 1910 he was attached to the balloon school at Farnborough, and carried out aeroplane experiments at his own costs. He piloted a Voisin biplane in 1909 at the Doncaster meeting, which, because it started the day before the Blackpool meeting, may be called the first flying meeting in England.
In August 1910 he flew a Howard Wright biplane at Larkhill when there were only two other machines there, namely, Captain Fulton's Blériot and the first biplane of the Bristol Company. On this occasion he crashed and broke both his ankles. When the Air Battalion was formed in 1911 he chose to work with airships, and was given the command of the airship company. His courage and gallantry were unfailing, and his parachute descents were legion. When Professor Gaudron fell ill, and was prevented from giving his exhibition descents in a parachute at the Alexandra Palace, Captain Maitland took his place. He was the first to make a parachute descent from an airship; this was from the airship Delta, in 1913. In 1915, for the purpose of experiment, he descended in a parachute liberated from a spherical balloon at a height of 10,500 feet. In 1917 he jumped, with his parachute, from an airship over the sea at a height of a thousand feet. He believed that the parachute is a necessary adjunct to the airship, and that by practice and experience it can be brought into safe habitual use. So he did not sit on a fence and watch the thistledown, but took every opportunity that presented itself for a parachute descent. One such opportunity he refused. When, on the 24th of August 1921, he was killed in the disaster to the R 38, he spent his last moments in endeavouring to check and control the fall of the airship. He was free from self-regard, and had the devotion of all who served with him. His life, though it ended in its prime, was surprisingly long, for he had made danger his friend, and in the advancement of the cause to which he dedicated himself had welcomed every risk.