The importance of the main issue was ever present to his mind. In another entry he records how he reproved a young lieutenant, telling him that 'he must take his work seriously and make himself older in character'. Map-reading, signalling, propeller-swinging, car-starting, military training, technical training, the safety of the public, the prompt payment of small tradesmen ('which defeats accusation of Army unbusinesslike methods'); these and a hundred other cares are the matter of the diary. That they were all subordinate to the main issue appears in the orders which he gave to some of the pilots of No. 6 Squadron, at Dover, in the summer of 1914. Any pilot who met a Zeppelin, and failed to bring it down by firing at it, would be expected, he said, to take other measures, that is to say, to charge it. Not a few of the early war pilots were prepared to carry out these instructions.
The work done by the other early squadrons was similar in kind. No. 4 Squadron was formed at Farnborough in the autumn of 1912 under Major G. H. Raleigh, of the Essex Regiment, who had served with distinction in the South African War. After completing its establishment it moved to Netheravon, where it carried on practice in reconnaissance, co-operation with artillery, cross-country flying, night flying, and all the business of an active unit. The record of miles flown during 1913 by No. 4 Squadron hardly falls short of the record of the two senior squadrons; all three flew more than fifty thousand miles. When No. 5 Squadron was formed under Major Higgins a part of it was stationed for a time at Dover, and the squadron moved to new quarters at Fort Grange, Gosport, on the 6th of July, 1914, a month before the war. No. 6 Squadron was nearly complete when the war came, but No. 7 Squadron was very much under strength. Thus in August of that year four aeroplane squadrons were ready for war, another was almost ready, and another was no more than a nucleus. The rest of the magnificent array which served the country on the battle fronts was yet to make.
The month of June in 1914 was given up to a Concentration Camp at Netheravon. The idea of bringing the squadrons together in this camp seems to have originated with Colonel Sykes, whose arrangements were admirable in their detailed forethought and completeness. The mornings were devoted to trials and experiments, the afternoons to lectures and discussion on those innumerable problems which confront an air force. Tactical exercises, the reconnaissance of stated areas in the search for parties of men or lorries, photography, handling balloons, practice in changing landing-grounds, and the like, were followed by discussions of the day's work. Lieutenant D. S. Lewis and Lieutenant B. T. James took every possible opportunity, during the discussions, to urge the development of wireless telegraphy. In the speed and climbing tests the greatest success was achieved by a B.E. machine fitted with a seventy horse-power Renault engine. Much attention was paid to reconnaissance and to co-operation with other arms. There was a natural rivalry among the squadrons. Major Burke's squadron was reputed to have the best pilots, while the Netheravon squadrons had had more training in co-operation with other arms, and in the diverse uses of aeroplanes in war. But the unknown dangers which all had to share were a strong bond, and the spirit of comradeship prevailed. The officers and men of the Royal Flying Corps were makers, not inheritors, of that tradition of unity and gallantry which is the soul of a regiment, and which carries it with unbroken spirit through the trials and losses of war.
The single use in war for which the machines of the Military Wing of the Royal Flying Corps were designed and the men trained was (let it be repeated) reconnaissance. There had been many experiments in other uses, but though these had already reached the stage of practical application, it was the stress of the war which first compelled their adoption on a wide scale. The Military Wing was small—much smaller than the military air forces of the French or the Germans—it was designed to operate with an expeditionary force and to furnish that force with eyes. Its later developments, which added the work of hands to the work of eyes, were imposed on it by the necessities of war. Even artillery observation, which is the work of eyes, was at first no regular part of its duty. When the Germans were driven back from the Marne, and the long line of the battle front was defined and fixed, the business of helping the artillery became a matter of the first importance.
Many of the functions brilliantly performed during the course of the war by aeroplanes had been claimed, during the early days of aviation, as the proper province of the airship. A wireless installation for receiving and sending messages was too heavy for an aeroplane; it must be carried by an airship. No sufficient weight of bombs could be carried by an aeroplane; the airship was the predestined bombing machine. Machine-guns were difficult to work from an aeroplane; they were the natural weapon of the airship. Photography was a hope worthy of experiment, but even photography was thought to be best suited to the airship, and internal accommodation for a camera was not asked for or provided in an aeroplane. At the back of all this lay the strongest argument of all: the value of reconnaissance to the army was so great, and our military aeroplanes were so few, that it was impossible to spare any of them for less essential work. As the Flying Corps grew in numbers and skill it found breathing space to look around and to claim the duties that had been judged to be outside its scope.
As a nation we distrust theory. We learn very quickly from experience, and are almost obstinately unwilling to learn in any other way. Experience is a costly school, but it teaches nothing false. A nation which attends experience could never be hurried into disaster, as the Germans were hurried by a debauch of political and military theory, subtly appealing to the national vanity. To insure themselves against so foolish a fate the British are willing to pay a heavy price. They have an instinctive dislike, which often seems to be unreasonable in its strength, for all that is novel and showy. They are ready enough to take pleasure in a spectacle, but they are prejudiced against taking the theatre as a guide for life. This is well seen in the disfavour with which the practical military authorities regarded the more spectacular developments of aviation, which yet, in the event, were found to have practical uses. Looping the loop, and other kinds of what are now called 'aerobatics', were habitually disparaged as idle spectacles. Yet the 'Immelmann turn', so called, whereby a machine, after performing half a loop, falls rapidly away on one wing, was a manœuvre which, when first used by the enemy, proved fatal to many of our pilots. The spin, at the outbreak of the war, was regarded as a fault in an aeroplane, due chiefly to bad construction; later on Dr. F. A. Lindemann, by his researches and courageous experiments at the Royal Aircraft Factory, proved that any aeroplane can spin, and that any pilot who understands the spin can get out of it if there is height to spare. During the war the spin was freely used by pilots to break off a fight, to simulate defeat, or to descend in a vertical path. Similarly, little stress was laid, at the beginning, on speed, for speed was not helpful to reconnaissance, or on climb and height, for it was believed that at three thousand feet from the ground a machine would be practically immune from gunfire, and that reconnaissance, to be effective, must be carried on below the level of the clouds. These misconceptions were soon to be corrected by experience. Another, more costly in its consequences, was that a machine-gun, when carried in an aeroplane, must have a large arc, or cone, of fire, so that the gun might be fired in any direction, up, down, or across. To secure this end guns had to be carried in the front of a pusher machine, which is slower and more clumsy than a tractor. But the difficulty of accurate firing from a flying platform at an object moving with unknown speed on an undetermined course was found to be very great. The problem was much simplified by the introduction of devices for firing a fixed machine-gun through the tractor screw, so that the pilot could aim his gun by aiming his aeroplane, or gun-platform, which responds delicately and quickly to his control.
When the war began we were not inferior in aerodynamical knowledge to the Germans or even to the French. Speaking at the Aeronautical Society in February 1914, Brigadier-General Henderson said, 'If any one wants to know which country has the fastest aeroplane in the world—it is Great Britain'. This was the S.E. 4, a forerunner of the more famous S.E. 5. If more powerful engines had been installed in the British machines of 1914, they would have given us a speed that the enemy could not touch. But we were preoccupied with the needs of reconnaissance, and we cared little about speed. In the early part of the war we hampered our aeroplanes with fitments, cameras, and instruments, which were attached as protuberances to the streamlined body of the aeroplane and made speed impossible. In the Flying Corps itself an aeroplane thus fitted was commonly called a Christmas tree. We thought too little of power in the engine, a mistake not quickly remedied, seeing that the time which must elapse between the ordering of an engine and its production in quantity is, even under pressure, a period of about twelve months. The engines available at the outbreak of the war for British military aircraft were the seventy horse-power Renault and the eighty horse-power Gnome. In Germany airship engines of two hundred horse-power and more, easily modified for use in aeroplanes, were available in quantity some time before the war. For military machines we were satisfied with smaller engines, which worked well, and enabled our aeroplanes to accomplish all that at that time seemed likely to be asked of them. If we were wrong we were content to wait for experience to correct us.
The problems presented to the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps were widely different from those which engrossed the attention of the soldiers. The difference, to put it briefly, was the difference between defence and attack. The British army does not fight at home, and this privilege it enjoys by virtue of the constant vigilance of the British navy. The ultimate business of the British navy, though it visits all the seas of the world, is home defence. Yet that defence cannot be effectively carried out at home, and when we are at war our frontiers are the enemy coasts and our best defence is attack. This old established doctrine of naval warfare is the orthodox doctrine also of aerial warfare. A mobile force confined to one place by losing its mobility loses most of its virtue. The fencer who does nothing but parry can never win a bout, and in the end will fail to parry. The recognition of this doctrine in relation to aerial warfare was gradual. When the Royal Flying Corps was established and the question of the defence of our coasts by aircraft first came under discussion, our available airships, aeroplanes, and seaplanes, though their development had been amazingly rapid, were weapons without much power of offence. The main thing was to give them a chance of proving and increasing their utility. In October 1912 the Admiralty decided to establish a chain of seaplane and airship stations on the east coast of Great Britain. The earliest of these stations, after Eastchurch, was the seaplane station of the Isle of Grain, commissioned in December 1912, with Lieutenant J. W. Seddon as officer in command. This was followed, in the first half of 1913, by the establishment of similar stations at Calshot, Felixstowe, Yarmouth, and Cromarty. H.M.S. Hermes, in succession to H.M.S. Actaeon, was commissioned on the 7th of May 1913 as headquarters of the Naval Wing, and her commanding officer, Captain G. W. Vivian, R.N., was given charge of all coastal air stations. For airships a station at Hoo on the Medway was established with two double sheds of the largest size; it was called Kingsnorth, and was completed in April 1914, by which time all military airships had been handed over to the Admiralty. All the seaplane stations were in a sense offshoots of Eastchurch, which continued to be the principal naval flying school. Except for some valuable experimental work, not very much was done before the war at the seaplane coast stations. The supply of machines was small, and when the bare needs of Eastchurch and Grain had been met, not enough remained for the outfit of the other stations. Nevertheless the zeal of the naval pilots, encouraged and supported by the First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Winston Churchill) and by the Director of the Air Department (Captain Murray Sueter), wrought good progress in a short time. The first successful seaplane was produced at Eastchurch, as has been told, in March 1912. Just before the war, the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps had in its possession fifty-two seaplanes, of which twenty-six were in flying condition, and further, had forty-six seaplanes on order. Those who know how difficult it is to get new things done will easily recognize that this measure of progress, though perhaps not very impressive numerically, could never have been achieved save by indomitable perseverance and effort. Sailors are accustomed to work hard and cheerfully under adverse conditions.
In the naval manœuvres of July 1913 the Hermes, carrying two seaplanes, which were flown from its launching platform, operated with the fleet. Four seaplanes and one aeroplane from Yarmouth, three seaplanes from Leven, and three from Cromarty, also bore a part. The weather was not good, and the manœuvres proved that the smaller type of seaplane was useless for work in the North Sea. Any attempt to get these machines off the water in a North Sea 'lop' infallibly led to their destruction. Further, it was found necessary for the safety of pilots that every machine should be fitted with wireless telegraphy. A machine fitted with folding wings was flown from the Hermes by Commander Samson, and was found to be the best and most manageable type.
In a minute dated the 26th of October 1913 the First Lord of the Admiralty sketches a policy and a programme for the ensuing years. Aeroplanes and seaplanes, he remarks, are needed by the navy for oversea work and for home work. He recommends three new types of machine: first, an oversea fighting seaplane, to operate from a ship as base; next, a scouting seaplane, to work with the fleet at sea; and last, a home-service fighting aeroplane, to repel enemy aircraft when they attack the vulnerable points of our island, and to carry out patrol duties along the coast. The events of the war have given historic interest to all forecasts prepared before the war. Mr. Churchill's minute is naturally much concerned with the Zeppelin, which should be attacked, he says, by an aeroplane descending on it obliquely from above, and discharging a series of small bombs or fireballs, at rapid intervals, so that a string of them, more than a hundred yards in length, would be drawn like a whiplash across the gas-bag. This is a near anticipation of the method by which Flight Sub-Lieutenant R. A. J. Warneford brought down a Zeppelin in flames between Ghent and Brussels on the 7th of June 1915. The immense improvements in construction which were wrought by the war may be measured by Mr. Churchill's specifications for the rate of climb of the two-seater aeroplanes and seaplanes—namely, three thousand feet in twenty minutes. When he drafted his scheme that was a good rate of climb; before the war ended there were machines on the flying fronts which could climb three thousand feet in two minutes.