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
On the 1st of July 1914 the separate existence of the naval air force
was officially recognized. The Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps
became the Royal Naval Air Service, with a constitution of its own. The
naval flying school at Eastchurch and the naval air stations on the
coast, together with all aircraft employed for naval purposes, were
grouped under the administration of the Air Department of the Admiralty
and the Central Air Office. So, for a time, the national air force was
broken in two. The army and the navy had been willing enough to
co-operate, but the habits of life and thought of a soldier and a sailor
are incurably different. Moreover, the tasks of the two wings, as has
been said, were distinct, and neither wing was very well able to
appreciate the business of the other. The Naval Wing had not the
transport or equipment to operate at a distance from the sea, and, on
the other hand, was inclined to insist that all military aeroplanes,
when used for coast defence, should be placed under naval command. The
Military Wing was preoccupied with continental geography and with
strategical problems. The two attitudes and two methods lent a certain
richness and diversity to our air operations in the war. When Commander
Samson established himself at Dunkirk during the first year of the war,
his variegated activities bore very little resemblance to the operations
of the military squadrons on the battle-front.
The review of the fleet by the King, at Spithead, from the 18th to the
22nd of July 1914, gave to the Royal Naval Air Service an opportunity to
demonstrate its use in connexion with naval operations. Most of the
available naval aircraft were concentrated at Portsmouth, Weymouth, and
Calshot to take part in the review. On the 20th of July an organized
flight of seventeen seaplanes, and two flights of aeroplanes in
formation headed by Commander Samson, manoeuvred over the fleet. This
formation flying had been practised at Eastchurch before the review.
Three airships from Farnborough and one from Kingsnorth also took part
in the demonstration. Within a few weeks all were to take part in the
operations of war. The aeroplanes and seaplanes flew low over the fleet.
Some naval officers, who had previously seen little of aircraft,
expressed the opinion that the planes flew low because they could not
fly high, and that their performance was an acrobatic exhibition,
useless for the purposes of war. These and other doubters were soon
converted by the war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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