If all those who deserve credit and praise for their part in the war in the air were to be mentioned, their names on the Roll of Honour would be thick as the motes that people the sunbeam. Most of them must be content, and are content, to know that they did their work and served their country. But here and there occurs a name which must not be passed without comment. On the 5th of August 1914 Mr. F. K. McClean, by whose help the first naval air pilots had been trained, joined the Royal Naval Air Service as a flight lieutenant. At the same time he offered to the service his three motor-cars, his motor-boat at Teddington, his yacht _Zenaida_, with two machines, and his private house at Eastchurch, which was converted into a hospital. A nation which commands the allegiance of such citizens need never fear defeat. The earliest measure of defence undertaken by the Naval Air Service was the institution of a coastal patrol for the whole of the East Coast, from Kinnaird's Head, in Aberdeenshire, to Dungeness, between Dover and Hastings. This was ordered by the Admiralty on the 8th of August. The Royal Flying Corps, or rather, such incomplete squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps as were not yet ordered abroad, undertook the northern and southern extremes of this patrol, that is to say, the northern section between the Moray Firth and the Firth of Forth, from Kinnaird's Head to Fife Ness, and the southern section between the Thames and the coast of Sussex, from the North Foreland to Dungeness. The most vulnerable part of the East Coast, from the Forth to the Thames, or from North Berwick to Clacton, was to be patrolled by the Naval Air Service. But these arrangements were soon altered. Not many days after the outbreak of war the Germans established themselves in Belgium, and it was believed that they would use Belgium as a base for formidable attacks by aircraft on the Thames estuary and London. The forces of the Naval Air Service were therefore concentrated between the Humber and the Thames, from Immingham to Clacton. The Wash was thought to be the most likely landfall for a German airship raiding London. Regular patrols of the coast were carried out in the early days of the war, to report the movements of all enemy ships and aircraft and to detect enemy submarines. But there was not much to report, and it was weary work waiting for the enemy to begin.