The Royal Navy's Air Service in the Great War

David Hobbs

• Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781848323506
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

In a few short years after 1914 the Royal Navy practically invented naval air warfare, not only producing the first effective aircraft carriers, but also pioneering most of the techniques and tactics that made naval air power a reality. By 1918 the RN was so far ahead of other navies that a US Navy observer sent to study the British use of aircraft at sea concluded that any discussion of the subject must first consider their methods. Indeed, by the time the war ended the RN was training for a carrier-borne attack by torpedo-bombers on the German fleet in its bases over two decades before the first successful employment of this tactic, against the Italians at Taranto.Following two previously well-received histories of British naval aviation, David Hobbs here turns his attention to the operational and technical achievements of the Royal Naval Air Service, both at sea and ashore, from 1914 to 1918. Detailed explanations of operations, the technology that underpinned them and the people who carried them out bring into sharp focus a revolutionary period of development that changed naval warfare forever. Controversially, the RNAS was subsumed into the newly created Royal Air Force in 1918, so as the centenary of its extinction approaches, this book is a timely reminder of its true significance.

1 Origins

By the first decade of the twentieth century the Royal Navy had undergone a half-century of change like no other before it. Iron and then steel-hulled warships, steam propulsion, torpedoes, small warships in the torpedo-boat and torpedo-boat destroyer categories, submarines and the all-big-gun battleship Dreadnought had followed each other in quick succession and some visionary officers were involved in several important projects chronologically. Among them was Captain R H S Bacon RN, the Director of Naval Ordnance (DNO), head of the Admiralty Directorate responsible for the procurement of new weapons and systems. He had joined the RN in 1877 and specialised as a torpedo officer. By 1896 he was a commander and led a torpedo boat flotilla with conspicuous success in the annual manoeuvres that year. In 1899 he served under Admiral Fisher in the Mediterranean and was drawn into the ‘Fish-Pond’, a circle of young officers who enthusiastically supported Fisher’s reforms. He was promoted to captain in 1900 and appointed as the first RN Inspecting Captain of Submarines, tasked with their introduction and development, making them into an effective weapons system and raising the fleet’s awareness of their capabilities together with its own potential for countering enemy submarines. When Fisher became First Sea Lord in 1904 he chose Bacon to be his Naval Assistant and included him on the Committee of Designs that led to the rapid construction of Dreadnought, a warship so revolutionary that all subsequent battleships in every navy became known,generically, as Dreadnoughts. In 1906 he became the ship’s first captain and carried out an extensive trials programme before she became operational. In 1907 he succeeded Jellicoe as DNO, one of the key appointments for a captain who was destined for flag rank.1 Fisher and Bacon undoubtedly had a close working relationship and after studying the Dreadnought covers Norman Friedman described Bacon as both ‘Fisher’s protégé and advisor’.2 When the Fisher/Beresford Scandal appeared to limit his future career prospects, Bacon resigned from the Navy in 1909 to become the managing director of the new Coventry Ordnance Works. He returned to the RN in 1914 and was appointed Admiral Commanding the Dover Patrol.

Over a century later, we look back at early aviation development with the full knowledge of what was to follow but in 1908 heavier-than-air flight was seen as the preserve of a few amiable eccentrics,3 a source of wonder and delight to those stood on the ground watching but offering little obvious naval or military potential. It is widely known that the first manned flight in a powered heavier-than-air aircraft was achieved by the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on 17 December 1903 in an aeroplane of their own design named the ‘Flyer’. Less well known is the fact that the engine was arguably a greater technological achievement than the airframe.4 It weighed only 180lbs and produced 12hp and 90lbs of thrust. There was a strong wind of about 25mph at 10.30 on that day but the brothers were keen to prove that their machine worked before they packed up for the winter. Orville and Wilbur carried out two flights each with Orville flying the first.5 Orville flew under control at about the height of a man’s head for a distance of just over 150ft. The fourth and last flight that day lasted for 59 seconds and covered a distance of 852ft. The first controlled, powered flight in the United Kingdom was carried out by A V Roe at the Brooklands motor track on 8 June 1908 in an aeroplane he had designed but which was powered by a French Antoinette engine which delivered 24hp. He flew for about 180ft just over 2ft off the ground. The contemporary view of aeroplane development is placed into sharp focus by the reaction to a letter written by Roe to the Times; it was published but the newspaper added a footnote written by its engineering editor which warned readers that ‘all attempts at artificial flight as described by Mr Roe were not only dangerous to human life but foredoomed to failure from an engineering standpoint’.6 Roe’s activities led to his being given notice to quit by the management of Brooklands and he moved to Lea Marshes on the outskirts of London where he worked on a tractor triplane powered by a 9hp JAP motorcycle engine which he eventually flew in June 1909. It was both the first all-British aircraft to fly and the lowest powered. The authorities attempted to prevent him from flying over a public place and at one stage police proceedings against him were threatened but when Louis Blériot flew the English Channel on 25 July 1909 a wave of aviation enthusiasm swept the country and the charges were quietly dropped. Roe moved to Wembley Park and then returned to Brooklands which was, by then, being run by a more progressive management.

After the Wright Brothers’ early achievements, the French became the driving force in the design of both aircraft and engines and aviators enthusiastically compared their designs and sought new records. The first international gathering was held at Reims in August 1909 with thirty-eight aircraft present but of these only twenty-three succeeded in getting airborne.7 Among these, Henri Farman succeeded in staying airborne for over three hours and travelled over 100km carrying two passengers. By 1905 the Wright Brothers had developed a practical aeroplane that had flown for 24 miles and remained airborne for 38 minutes before it ran out of fuel. However, their attempts to sell their patents to the US Government proved less successful. In 1907 Charles Flint, the Wright’s European Agent, authorised Lady Jane Taylor to act on his behalf and offer Lord Tweedmouth, the First Lord of the Admiralty, a package including fifty aircraft capable of carrying two aircrew over a radius of action of 30 nautical miles from their airfield.8 These aircraft were priced at £2000 each but Flint subsequently offered improved aircraft at £4000 each, hoping that the higher unit price would encourage the Admiralty to take the offer more seriously. The idea did not work and in his reply on 7 March 1907 Lord Tweedmouth informed Lady Jane that ‘with regard to your suggestions as to the employment of aeroplanes . . . after the careful consideration of my Board, the Admiralty . . . are of opinion that they would not be of any practical use to the Naval Service’. At that moment in time, his view was undoubtedly correct and the Admiralty was right to stand back and monitor the further development of machines that had little but a few flights of short duration over land to commend them. Ballooning had a significantly longer history but only offered a controlled drifting where the wind took the pilot. A manned hydrogen-filled balloon flew across the English Channel in 1785, giving the press the opportunity to make alarmist statements about the potential for airborne attacks on Great Britain, but military balloons subsequently only found limited use in the localised observation of enemy activity. By 1907 Count Zeppelin in Germany had designed and flown the first practical powered rigid dirigible airship and such machines had obvious merit, both as a reconnaissance platform and for carrying out offensive action, even though they were clearly vulnerable to adverse weather and high winds. By 1914 the Zeppelin Company had produced nineteen airships but eleven of these had been destroyed in accidents. The German Navy ordered its first Zeppelin in 1908.

The catalyst that brought aviation into sharper focus within the RN was a letter from Bacon to the First Sea Lord dated 21 July 19089 which proposed that a new post of Naval Air Assistant should be created within the Naval Staff and also that the War Office should be asked to allow its Superintendent of Ballooning at Farnborough to be consulted10 on air matters by the Naval Staff. The third proposal that was the most far-reaching, however, that the RN should fund the construction of a large rigid airship to evaluate the use of aircraft with the fleet. At the time Vickers had an exclusive contract with the Admiralty for the design and construction of submarines; Bacon had worked closely with this firm, both as Inspecting Captain of Submarines and as DNO, and he recommended that development could be hastened if Vickers were awarded a contract for the airship as well as bearing some of the development risk. A provisional cost of £35,000 for the airship was quoted from the outset, the same as an ‘A’ class submarine, making it likely that Bacon had already secretly discussed the project with his contacts at Vickers. It is also likely that Bacon’s letter represented the opening move in a plan prepared carefully beforehand since only two days later, on 23 July 1908, Admiral Fisher wrote formally to the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, proposing the construction of a developmental rigid airship and Treasury approval, in principle, for the project was given on 4 August 1908. On 14 August 1908 Vickers was requested to forward a tender to the Admiralty as soon as it had calculated sufficient design data and it naturally hoped to gain another exclusive contract with the Admiralty similar to the one already in place for submarines. By July 1908 it was clear that airships had become a practical proposition for the RN. On 5 October 1907 the Army airship Nulli Secundus, piloted by Colonel Capper with Lieutenant Waterlow and Mr Cody as passengers, had flown from the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough to London. High winds forced it to land at Crystal Palace on its return journey but by then it had established a world record with a flight of three hours and twenty-five minutes. This record was broken by the Zeppelin LZ 4 on 4 August 1908 which remained airborne for twelve hours before being destroyed by a storm,11 a disaster which nearly led to bankruptcy for the Zeppelin Company. However, press coverage led to an outpouring of public support from across Germany which secured enough finance to cover the cost of a new airship, LZ 5, which was intended to fly nonstop from Lake Constance to Berlin.

A Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) had been established by the then Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, in 1902 after the Second Boer War. It had a political focus and reported directly to the Prime Minister about the material requirements of the RN, Army and Civil Service and their ability to meet Government policies and issues of strategy. The Admiralty and the War Department were both Offices of State in their own right with control over their own budgets which could be argued by their political heads in cabinet but since the CID reported directly to the Prime Minister, its views carried considerable weight and it would be difficult to proceed with projects that it opposed. Typically, it set up working subcommittees to investigate and evaluate specific topics and recommend ways forward and this was exactly what happened when aviation was considered. The German enthusiasm for rigid airships was a cause for concern at a time when the German Navy was undergoing considerable expansion, the only possible outcome of which was to challenge the power of the RN. On 23 October 1908, therefore, Asquith instructed the CID to set up a subcommittee under Lord Esher12 to investigate what was known at the time as ‘aerial navigation’ and make recommendations. The subcommittee, within which Bacon was the RN representative, was tasked to study the recent successes achieved by aerial experiments in France, Germany and the USA and make recommendations. Its terms of reference13 noted that Great Britain had, hitherto, been justified in spending less on aviation than the other powers but required comment on:

a) The dangers to which we would be exposed on sea or on land by any development in aerial navigation reasonably probable in the near future.

b) The naval or military advantages that we might expect to derive from the use of airships or aeroplanes.

c) The amount that should be allocated to expenditure on aerial experiments and the Department which should receive it.

The report, dated 28 January 1909,14 contained an accurate summary of the state of aircraft development and the potential for various types to be used for naval and military operations. Under the heading ‘Aeroplanes’, the subcommittee noted that ‘although great progress has been made towards the successful employment of aeroplanes within the last year, they can scarcely yet be considered to have emerged from the experimental stage’. Further, it noted that ‘it has yet to be shown whether aeroplanes are sufficiently reliable to be used under unfavourable weather conditions’. On the other hand, the subcommittee attached great importance to the construction of dirigible15 airships as naval scouts and noted that ‘it is not unlikely also that they might also be of advantage for the purpose of attacking foreign warships, dockyards and canal gates’.16 The subcommittee agreed, unanimously, that a rigid airship should be procured for naval experiments and unsurprisingly, given Bacon’s membership, recommended the sum of £35,000 for its construction. This sum was compared favourably with £80,000 for the construction of a contemporary destroyer and £400,000 for a light cruiser. For fleet reconnaissance work it was pointed out that a lookout on the bridge of a warship could expect to see an enemy vessel at about 18nm in clear conditions whereas an observer in the car of an airship at 1500ft would expect to see the enemy at 80nm in the same conditions. Airships could remain airborne for protracted patrols and carry a large-enough crew to operate in watches; they could support a blockading force by using a wireless transmitter to tell the fleet commander what the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Origins
• 2 Practical Progress
• 3 The Outbreak of War
• 4 The First Strikes by Aircraft
• 5 Technology and Technique
• 6 A Widening War
• 7 Armoured Cars, Trains, Tanks and Aircraft Procurement
• 8 The RNAS at Sea and Ashore
• 9 The Use of Aircraft in Fleet Operations
• 10 1917 – Expansion and Reorganisation
• 11 Deck Landing
• 12 Training and Experience
• 13 Politics
• 14 The Report that Forgot about Sea Power
• 15 1918: The RNAS’ Final Year
• 16 HMS Argus – The World’s First True Aircraft Carrier
• 17 Tondern and the Planned Attack on the High Sea Fleet in Harbour
• 18 Retrospection
• Appendices:
• Notes
• Bibliography