The War in the Air; Vol. 1: The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air ForceRaleigh, Walter Alexander, Sir
History
The War in the Air; Vol. 1: The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force
Raleigh, Walter Alexander, Sir
Great Britain. Royal Air Force; World War, 1914-1918 -- Aerial operations, British
Captain Eustace Broke Loraine had served with the Grenadier Guards in
the South African War. His great-grandfather was the famous British
admiral, Sir Philip Broke, who in 1813 commanded H.M.S. _Shannon_, and
after a fifteen minutes' battle outside the port of New York compelled
the surrender of the United States frigate _Chesapeake_. That battle, it
has been truly said, was won before it was fought; the _Shannon_ had
been many years cruising at sea; she was in perfect fighting trim, her
men were disciplined and her gunners practised. The men of the
_Chesapeake_ were fresh from the shore, strangers to each other and to
their officers, so that the heavier armament of the _Chesapeake_ was of
no avail. When Captain Loraine joined the Flying Corps he applied his
great-grandfather's methods, and set himself by study, care, discipline,
and skill to prepare the materials of victory. He was a highly skilled
pilot, perhaps overbold. The machine he was flying on the 5th of July
was the fast two-seater Nieuport monoplane on which Lieutenant
Barrington-Kennett had achieved some records. It seems that he attempted
too sharp a turn, lost flying speed, side-slipped, and nose-dived. He
was only a few hundred feet up, and there was no time to save the crash.
Those who knew him believe that he would have done much for the Flying
Corps. He spared no pains to understand his business, and to make theory
and practice help each other. Staff-Sergeant Wilson, who was killed with
him, was the senior technical non-commissioned officer of No. 3
Squadron, a first-class man, and a heavy loss.
Other fatalities were to follow. On the 6th of September Captain Patrick
Hamilton and Lieutenant A. Wyness-Stuart, flying a hundred horse-power
Deperdussin monoplane on reconnaissance duties connected with the
cavalry divisional training, crashed and were killed at Graveley, near
Hitchin. Four days later Lieutenant E. Hotchkiss and Lieutenant C. A.
Bettington, flying an eighty horse-power Bristol monoplane from Larkhill
to Cambridge, crashed and were killed at Wolvercote, near Oxford. A
committee was appointed to investigate these accidents, and in the
meantime an order was issued by the War Office forbidding the use of
monoplanes in the Royal Flying Corps. This order altered the scheme for
the army manoeuvres, where it had been intended to allot a squadron of
monoplanes to one force and a squadron of biplanes to the other, in
order to compare results. No. 3 Squadron, nevertheless, assembled near
Cambridge in such strength as it could muster; there were Major
Brooke-Popham, Captain Fox, and Second Lieutenant G. de Havilland of the
squadron; these were joined by Mr. Cody, who came as a civilian with his
own machine, and by officers of the Naval Air Service, who flew Short
biplanes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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