Wings (5 page)

In reality the RFC was filling up with some of the most effective and interesting warriors of the new century, many of whom would rise to lead the air force through the two cataclysmic conflicts
that lay ahead. It attracted the adventurous, the unconventional and a fair sprinkling of the frustrated, who turned to it in the hope it might provide satisfactions that had been denied to them
elsewhere. Into this category fell Hugh Montague Trenchard, who combined nineteenth-century mores with a twentieth-century appreciation of the new. He was the son of a West Country soldier turned
solicitor who went bankrupt, and Hugh’s education had been dependent
on the charity of relations. In his youth he displayed little sign of intelligence or charm. He
eventually scraped into the army where he served in India and South and West Africa. In October 1900 he was badly wounded fighting the Boers and was lucky to survive. He went on to spend six years
in the interior of Nigeria surveying, mapping and subduing the natives. His exertions brought little reward. In 1910 he was back with his old regiment, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, in the backwater
of Ulster. He was nearly forty, a mere company commander, disliked by his CO and unpopular with his fellow officers who found his teetotalism and long silences, interspersed with awkward utterances
in a booming voice, a trial.

Trenchard’s great strength was his tenacity. When Captain Eustace Loraine, a comrade who had served under him in Nigeria, wrote from Larkhill, a military camp on Salisbury Plain which had
become the site of the first army aerodrome, describing the excitements of his new life as an RFC pilot, Trenchard set about trying to join him. Like everything in his life so far, this was not
easy. Forty was the upper age limit for pilots. He couldn’t fly and his physique – six foot three and heavily built – counted strongly against him. He wangled three months’
leave and set off for Tommy Sopwith’s flying school at Brooklands in Surrey to obtain the certificate he needed to enrol as a pupil at the RFC’s Central Flying School. He did so after
one hour and four minutes flying time. He arrived at Upavon in August. His friend Loraine was dead, killed in a crash in a Nieuport monoplane. For once,
Trenchard’s
enthusiasm and efficiency were fully appreciated by authority. He was soon second-in-command of the school, the start of a rapid ascent up the ladder of the RFC hierarchy.

He was nurtured by the man who oversaw the birth and first steps of the new force. Brigadier-General Sir David Henderson was an expert in reconnaissance when he was put in charge of the
Directorate of Military Aeronautics, formed at the same time as the RFC. He was unusually intelligent and far-sighted, and was blessed with handsome, classical features that seemed to reflect his
noble character. They contrasted with the ferrety demeanour of the first commander of the RFC’s military (as opposed to naval) wing, who was to go to France as Henderson’s deputy.
Frederick Sykes was bright, sharp, ambitious and seemed to engender instant mistrust in all who encountered him. ‘He never really gained the confidence of his command,’ was
Joubert’s diplomatic verdict. Inevitably, scheming Sykes and trenchant Trenchard fell out.
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The men they commanded, pilots, mechanics and administrators, on the whole seem more enterprising, more intelligent and more ambitious than their contemporaries. The thin ranks of the first few
squadrons are stuffed with names that would be famous later on. Hugh Dowding, who led Fighter Command through the Battle of Britain, is there, along with Wilfred Freeman, the overseer of the
re-equipment programme that provided the Hurricanes and Spitfires. The foundation force includes the Salmond brothers, John and Geoffrey, both of whom would command the Royal Air Force,
Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, a future leader of Bomber Command, and a host of others whose exploits would inspire the airmen that followed.

In the short time between coming into existence and going off to war, the RFC developed a robust
esprit de corps
that was felt at all levels. Cecil King noted that ‘everyone who
joined the Royal Flying Corps in the other ranks held some trade or other, whereas the men in the general regiments – they might be anyone . . . therefore we considered ourselves a bit
superior to the infantry and cavalry, who may have come from any walk of life. We also got more pay than they did, and when they found that out they were a little bit jealous.’
¹²

Similarly, those who gravitated towards the naval air service were often the cream of the Fleet. What the other ranks shared with the officer volunteers was a modern outlook and a taste for the
new. It is reflected in early photographs. Pictures of soldiers and civilians of the period tend to have a stiff, formal air. The subjects fix the camera with a suspicious stare, their faces set in
an expressionless mask, guarding their dignity and affirming their status. The airmen look more confident and comfortable in their skins. Sometimes there is even a smile.

One photograph from 1913 shows pilots of ‘B’ Flight, 3 Squadron in their mess at Larkhill aerodrome. The two in the foreground are hunched over a chess board. Behind them, another is
placing a disc on a wind-up gramophone. Three more are reading magazines and someone is sitting cross-legged on a couch, smoking a pipe, a banjo propped against
the wall next
to him. The whole effect is relaxed, stylish and slightly bohemian.

To outsiders the air force gave the impression of being more free-and-easy than the army and navy. On joining, they found that this was something of an illusion. Flying was new, but traditional
discipline was imposed on the new recruits arriving from Civvy Street to join the military wing. Sykes agreed to a transfer of some Guards drill officers, whose roars soon echoed around the
Aldershot barracks where the recruits were housed. Joubert noted approvingly that ‘in the end the RFC became an extremely smart and highly efficient corps . . . there is no doubt in my mind
that the meticulous disciplinary training to which our mechanics were subjected made them more thorough and more reliable in their technical duties.’
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Nonetheless, fitting, rigging and repairing aircraft and maintaining the engines that powered them was an empirical process. Everything was new. Progress was largely achieved and problems solved
by trial and error. It was found that the copper pipes that fed oil and petrol to the engines cracked easily. The constant vibration hastened metal fatigue and regular annealing was required to
stop them splitting and catching fire. Eventually, rubber hoses were substituted, but the rubber had a tendency to perish and block the flow.

The principles of flying were still only barely understood. In 1912 very little was known of the science of aerodynamics. Biplanes were more stable than monoplanes, but they were still subject
to erratic and inexplicable behaviour, and even
relatively experienced pilots still worried about stalling, spinning and nose-diving.

Attempts were made to codify flying drills. Major Charles James Burke, a stout Irishman known behind his back as Pregnant Percy, was the commander of 2 Squadron, which with 3 Squadron formed the
first two aeroplane units of the RFC (No. 1 was a balloon squadron). Burke had served in the ranks in the Boer War before joining the Royal Irish Regiment. According to Raleigh, he ‘was not a
good pilot and was most famous for his crashes. He was not a popular officer. He was not what would be called a clever man. But he was single-minded, brave and determined, careless alike of danger
and of ridicule.’

Burke approached his work with missionary zeal, spreading the word through papers with titles like ‘Aeroplanes of Today and their Use in War’ and recording his thoughts in a booklet
of ‘Maxims’. These included such musings as ‘nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems,’ but also practical observations. ‘Waiting about on an aerodrome has spoilt
more pilots than everything else put together,’ he noted. Thirty years later the pilots of the Battle of Britain would agree that it was waiting at dispersal for the ring of the telephone and
the order to scramble that jangled their nerves almost as much as actual combat.

The most pressing task facing those in charge of the new service was to find aeroplanes that were tolerably safe, reasonably reliable and relatively easy to fly. At its birth the RFC had only
eleven serviceable aircraft. They were primitive machines
capable of climbing only a few hundred feet and travelling at no more than sixty miles an hour. In August 1912 trials
were held on Salisbury Plain to find a higher-quality machine with which to equip the service. The contestants were to demonstrate that their machines could carry out simple manoeuvres, including
landing and taking off from a ploughed field. The prize was won by Sam Cody who seems to have benefited from being last in the order, so that by the time he had to perform, the field had been
nicely flattened out. His machine, though, was never adopted: the ‘Cathedral’ was neurotically sensitive, particularly on the forward and aft control, and needed its master’s
touch to stay airborne. After two pilots used to less unstable machines crashed, it was dropped and the RFC adopted instead the BE2, which was already in development at the Royal Aircraft Factory.
The letters stood for ‘Blériot Experimental’, in recognition of the fact that it was an adaption of a design by the French pioneer. The modifications were largely the work of
Geoffrey de Havilland.

The BE2 certainly looked good. Its upper wing lay further forward on the fuselage than the lower wing, giving it a rakish angle in profile, and the slender tail swelled into a graceful, rounded
tailplane. It was considerably more stable than Cody’s machine, and would generally fly straight and level without constant adjustments by the pilot. In other respects it was less
satisfactory. The Wolseley, then Renault, engines with which the BE2 was equipped were badly underpowered. Later, on the Western Front, if long flights were planned the observer and his gun had to
be left behind. The observer’s secondary
job of defending his aircraft was hampered by his position, forward of the pilot’s cockpit, where he was surrounded by
struts and wires that cramped his field of fire. The aircraft’s improved stability meant it was less prone to sudden involuntary actions. But it also made it less responsive when the pilot
did want to change course swiftly, which meant it was slow to take evasive action against more manoeuvrable enemies.

At the time, though, the BE2 seemed like a sound and versatile machine, and 3,500 of them would be built in several variations by a number of manufacturers in the years to come. The Royal
Aircraft Factory at Farnborough, nonetheless, continued to produce other types, and by the time hostilities began the RFC was equipped with a plethora of different designs acquired over the early
years.

The navy’s approach to aviation was more enterprising. In the search for good aircraft they did not restrict themselves to the products of the Farnborough factory and sought out the wares
of the private manufacturers like Short, Sopwith and A. V. Roe, springing up around the country, as well as encouraging Rolls Royce production of aero engines. The army believed that the main
function of aviation in time of war was reconnaissance. The navy took a more aggressive approach. Airships and aeroplanes could be used against enemy shipping. They were also aware that the enemy
would come to the same conclusion. They fitted floats on existing aircraft to create seaplanes and ten bases were set up around the coast, stretching from Anglesey in the west to Dundee in the
north, from where they could defend the island and launch attacks
against the enemy. Experiments took place in flying aircraft off ships, dropping 100 lb bombs and even
torpedoes.

This independent policy reflected the fact that the Admiralty had never accepted that the RFC should have control over affairs that it believed lay firmly within its own domain. In July 1914
this divergence of opinion was formalized with the establishment of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). From now on the RFC would operate solely as the air force of the army, while the RNAS
answered to the Admiralty. The two would carry on their separate paths through most of the coming war, complicating the lines of command and competing for resources.

By the time the split was made official Europe was floundering into war. Most of the young aviators welcomed the prospect of action and adventure. Their spirits were dampened, though, as they
surveyed the motley array of aircraft they would have to fight in.

‘I shall never forget the solemn meeting of No. 3 Squadron when our Squadron Commander, Major [Robert] Brooke-Popham, told us what was expected,’ wrote Philip Joubert. ‘Up
until then it is unlikely any but the more seriously minded of us young ones . . . had thought very much about war with Germany, but here we were faced with it in the near future and we knew that
although we had plenty of energy and confidence, our equipment was woefully bad. There were at least eight different types among the serviceable aircraft, and of those only three were British. The
engines were largely of French origin. We had no transport of our own worth
mentioning, spares were lamentably deficient and the reserve of pilots and mechanics were
derisory.’
¹⁴

However, with Lord Kitchener now in charge at the War Office, plans were already under way for a massive expansion. Over the next four years this ragged outfit was to transform itself into the
greatest air force in the world.