When the review was over, the seaplanes and airships returned to their several bases. The flights of aeroplanes, under Commander Samson, went on tour, first to Dorchester, where they stayed four or five days, and thence to the Central Flying School. They had been there only a few hours when they received urgent orders to return to Eastchurch, where they arrived on the 27th of July. On the same day seaplanes from other stations were assembled at Grain Island, Felixstowe, and Yarmouth, to be ready to patrol the coast in the event of war. These precautionary orders, and the orders given by the Admiralty on the previous day, arresting the dispersal of the British fleet, were among the first orders of the war. On the 29th of July instructions were issued to the Naval Air Service that the duties of scouting and patrol were to be secondary to the protection of the country against hostile aircraft. All machines were to be kept tuned up and ready for action. On the 30th of July the Army Council agreed to send No. 4 Squadron of aeroplanes to reinforce the naval machines at Eastchurch. Eastchurch, during the months before the war, had been active in rehearsal; fighting in the air had been practised, and trial raids, over Chatham and the neighbouring magazines, had been carried out, two aeroplanes attacking and six or eight forming a defensive screen. Work of this kind had knit together the Eastchurch unit and had fitted it for active service abroad. In the meantime, at the outbreak of the war, attacks by German aircraft were expected on points of military and naval importance.