The largest question of all in the making of the Flying Corps was the question whether the air service was to be a new and independent service, taking rank with the army and the navy, or was to be, for the most part, divided between the army and the navy, and placed under their control. This question, it might seem, was settled by the opening words of the sub-committee's recommendations: 'The British Aeronautical Service should be regarded as one, and should be designated "The Flying Corps".' But subsequent developments soon showed that this settlement was not accepted on all hands. The navy never fully accepted it. The British navy is a body enormously strong in its corporate feeling, conscious of its responsibilities, proud of its history, and wedded to its own ways. Its self-reliant character, which had made it slow to recognize the importance of the air, made it slow also, when the importance of the air was proved, to allow a weapon necessary for naval operations to pass out of its own control. When the active combatant service of the Royal Flying Corps came into being, it consisted of a Naval Wing and a Military Wing. The Naval Wing had its headquarters at Eastchurch, where the Naval Flying School had been established. For administrative purposes the Naval Flying School was placed under the orders of the captain of H.M.S. _Actaeon_, and all officers and men were to be borne on the books of the _Actaeon_. Experiments with seaplanes and flying boats were still in their infancy, and the organization of the Naval Wing was wisely left undetermined for the time. The distribution of the aeroplane squadrons of the Military Wing was left for the consideration of the War Office, but the sub-committee recommended that one squadron should be stationed at Salisbury Plain, within reach of the Central Flying School, and one at Aldershot, in the neighbourhood of the Aircraft Factory. All recruits training as pilots, whether for the Naval Wing or the Military Wing, were to graduate at the Central Flying School, and thence were to be detailed to join either the Naval Flying School at Eastchurch, for a special course of naval aviation, or one of the military aeroplane squadrons, for a special course of military aviation.