Cavalry of the Clouds Read online

  Whether by doing this ‘high above the squalor and the mud’, airmen recreated the legend of medieval chivalry is debatable.

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  Countdown to Conflict

  ‘Are you ready for War?’

  On 24 November 1906, before either an airship (lighter-than-air machine) or aeroplane (heavier-than-air machine) had flown in the United Kingdom, the Daily Mail proclaimed:

  Great Britain and the British Empire stand in the van of progress. We know more about the science of aeronautics than any other country in the world. As yet we have not attempted to apply our knowledge but silently and quietly we have been studying the subject.

  At first sight, the newspaper’s claim appears outrageous, given that Ferdinand Count von Zeppelin’s airship, powered by two Daimler engines, had successfully taken to the air in 1900 and three years afterwards the Wright brothers flew an aeroplane. However, for almost two centuries, Britain had been actively involved in efforts to conquer the air, and the Royal Engineers been prominent in seeking to exploit its military potential. In 1784 a Royal Engineer officer ascended in a hot-air balloon from Moorfields in London, and British interest in aeronautical research gathered pace during the nineteenth century, Henry Coxwell and James Glaisher reached 37,000ft in a balloon. Sir George Cayley defined the fundamental requirements for an aeroplane to fly: the curvature and angle of its wings, lateral and horizontal controls, streamlining of the body, the ability to gain and maintain lift. He experimented with non-powered, man-lifting gliders, but died before invention of an efficient internal combustion engine. Orville Wright believed that Cayley, ‘knew more of the principles of aeronautics than any of his predecessors, and as much as any that followed him up to the end of the nineteenth century’. Wright also paid special tribute to the work of an earlier British scientist, John Smeaton, in connection with air pressure.

  Operationally, during the nineteenth century, a British officer served with a Federal balloon unit in the American Civil War and observation balloons were used during British military expeditions to Bechuanaland (1884) and the Sudan (1885). In 1890, establishment of the Royal Engineers’ Balloon Section formalised the role of balloons for military use, and in the Boer War (1899–1902) the British deployed them to observe and photograph enemy movements and to transmit signals via semaphore flags and lamps. Shortly after the Boer War ended, tethered man-lifting kites were developed for the same purposes, and the Royal Engineers added these to their responsibilities.

  In 1899, Percy Pilcher, university lecturer and former naval officer, was killed at Market Harborough, Leicestershire, when his rudder-controlled ‘soaring machine’ (glider) crashed. Sir Walter Raleigh, official British air historian of the First World War, speculated that had Pilcher survived ‘it seems not unlikely the he would have been the first man to navigate the air on a power-driven machine.’ And the Daily Mail’s reference to ‘the British Empire’ may have been prompted by a belief, until he refuted the rumour 25 years later, that a New Zealand farmer Richard Pearse had beaten the Wrights into the air on 31 March 1903.

  Significantly, in 1906 neither Zeppelin’s nor the Wrights’ feats were universally recognised. LZ (Luftschiff Zeppelin) 1 flew for only eighteen minutes and was followed by less successful trials. Not until 1908 did LZ.3 attract firm German military interest.

  During the morning of 17 December 1903, Orville Wright made the first controlled flight in an aeroplane. Above sand dunes on an island off the Atlantic coast of North Carolina close to the settlement of Kitty Hawk, he remained aloft for twelve seconds and travelled 120ft. Between them Orville and his brother Wilbur completed four flights that morning, the last covering 852ft. Wilbur Wright recorded that the brothers ‘returned home, knowing that the age of the flying machine had come at last’.

  Others were less convinced. Their feats that day are now undisputed, but for some years afterwards considerable doubt existed about the brothers’ claims. Sceptics dismissed the Wrights as fanciful ‘bicycle mechanics’ (a reference to their regular occupation), and in 1906 the Paris edition of the New York Herald ran the headline ‘Flyers or Liars’. The following year the president of the French Aero-Club denounced the Wright’s ‘phantom machine’ and in 1908 L’Illustration declared hazy photographs of a Wright machine in the air a ‘fabrication’.

  The Wrights did little to discourage such derogatory comments. Only five locals witnessed the historic events that chilly morning, and the brothers from Dayton, Ohio, refused to reveal technical data about either their achievement or their aeroplane. Starved of authentic information, reporters gave full rein to their vivid imaginations. In vain did Wilbur Wright condemn ‘a fictitious story incorrect in almost every detail’.

  Despite the aura of disbelief, once news leaked out in 1904 that the brothers were conducting more flights near Dayton, two Royal Engineer officers, Lieutenant Colonel (Lt Col) J.E. Capper and Colonel (Col) J.L.B. Templer, travelled to Ohio. They were greeted politely, but the Wrights declined to discuss their work or even to show the two British soldiers their machine. Nevertheless, on returning to England, Capper warned that, if the Wrights were to achieve what they predicted

  … we may shortly have as accessories of warfare scouting machines which will go at a great pace and be independent of obstacles on the ground, whilst offering from their elevated position unrivalled opportunities of ascertaining what is occurring in the heart of the enemy’s country.

  In 1905, afraid that others might gain public recognition after copying their technique and deny them financial benefit for their achievement, the Wrights had a major change of heart. They approached their own and foreign governments for a commercial arrangement regarding use of their expertise. In 1906, their hand was legally strengthened when a patent was registered in the United States in respect of the three-control system they had fashioned: elevator to control pitch; rudder for stability; and wing warping for roll or banking. Similar patents were secured in several European countries including Britain. Between 1905 and 1909 either directly, via Capper or through an appointed agent, the Wrights sought to do business with the War Office four times and the Admiralty once. The stumbling block, which other European countries also encountered, was cost. Before the Wrights would even demonstrate their machine, allegedly they required a guaranteed order worth £20,000, plus a further sum to train pilots.

  Moreover, quite apart from the Wrights, great strides were undoubtedly being made in France, where pioneers fitted front wheels to their machines instead of skids, allowing them to dispense with the rail along which the brothers launched their aeroplanes. Proud of his nation’s advances in aviation, the president of the French Aero Club, Ernest Archdeacon, declared that, ‘to the genius of France is reserved the glorious mission of initiating the world into the conquest of the air.’ After seeing Brazilian-born Alberto Santos-Dumont fly 80yds (73m) in a biplane powered by a 24hp engine in France in 1906, the British newspaper proprietor Lord Northcliffe concluded: ‘England is no longer an island … It means the aerial chariots of a foe descending on British soil if war comes.’

  Yet official support for aeronautical research and experiment in Britain, echoing the Daily Mail’s earlier complacency, remained at best lukewarm. In 1907, the Secretary for War assured his department ‘that aeroplanes would never fly’, and the following year his successor, while conceding that they had, maintained, ‘we do not consider that aeroplanes will be of any possible use for war purposes.’ Nonetheless, some assistance was already being given to two contrasting figures. A serving officer, Lieutenant (Lt) John Dunne, was encouraged by the War Office to test his embryo aeroplane on a grouse moor in Scotland. In England at Farnborough, near Aldershot in Hampshire, a flamboyant former American circus performer and in 1911 naturalised Briton, Samuel Franklin Cody, was striving to perfect his own aeroplane after working on airships and man-lifting kites. Dunne’s efforts ended in failure, but on 16 May 1908 Cody travelled for 50ft an estimated 5–6ins above the grass. Precisely five months later, h
e made the first recognised aeroplane flight in England over 1,390ft.

  Almost immediately, hopes of developing British military aviation were dashed. The year after Cody’s flight a committee, ‘dominated’ according to one critic by ‘some of the older Service men … [who] showed an extraordinary lack of imagination’, ruled against further War Office investment in aeroplane development. Thus far, German authorities had spent £400,000 on military aeronautics, the French some £50,000, the British £5,000; about half of that on aeroplanes. On 23 July 1909, a press release from Whitehall explained: ‘When it is possible to cross the Channel … and to land at a fixed point, the War Office may be able to regard recent experiments seriously’.

  Two days later, Louis Blériot did just that by landing his monoplane near Dover Castle. He flew 33½ miles (54km) in 37 minutes and incidentally, pocketed a £1,000 prize. The Daily Graphic exclaimed that the aeroplane could no longer be regarded as ‘a toy … What M. Blériot can do in 1909 a hundred, nay a thousand, aeroplanes may do in five years time.’ The security implications were self-evident. Lord Montagu, a motor car enthusiast impressed by the military possibilities of aviation after watching Wilbur Wright fly in France in 1908, warned that ‘aerial machines [are] certain to play an important part in all future warfare’. The Times’ defence correspondent reinforced Montagu’s prediction by stressing the growing size of Germany’s air fleet, whilst an exasperated aviation pioneer Claude Grahame-White, who was among several Britons to qualify as pilots in France, toured the country with ‘Wake Up England’ painted on his biplane’s wings. Quoting an unidentified Russian, who insisted that ‘it is now clear that future wars will be begun in the air’, Graham-White forecast three types of machine: one carrying ‘a machine-gun or a gun throwing an explosive shell’; another capable of ‘detailed reconnoitring’; the third able to carry out ‘swift comprehensive survey work’.

  Caution, however, was understandable and military scepticism predictable. Air power protagonists were claiming a revolution in warfare akin to the advent of battlefield artillery in the fourteenth century and the replacement of sail by steam 500 years later. Aero magazine reported that ‘an influential officer’ attending army manoeuvres had observed: ‘It is all very well saying that we should saddle ourselves with a lot of these aeroplanes. But in nine cases out of ten, they would not be a scrap of good.’ Cavalry commanders maintained they would go too fast to collect useful information about enemy troop movements and Field Marshal Sir William Nicholson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), deemed aviation ‘a useless and expensive fad, advocated by a few individuals whose ideas are unworthy of attention’. The Admiralty agreed; the aeroplane ‘would not be of any practical use to the Naval Service’. Tryggve Gran, a future RFC pilot, later reflected:

  Unfortunately, the English State did not take aviation seriously. They [sic] regarded the flying machine and the airship as experiments with great possibilities perhaps half a century in the future. There was no need for haste.

  Across the Channel, French aeronautical experiments before and after Blériot’s feat were conducted during well-attended demonstrations and international air shows. Advances south of the Alps, especially in military aviation, evolved virtually unnoticed until November 1911, when Italian airmen began dropping bombs (modified hand-grenades) in Tripolitania, North Africa. The previous month they had successfully used aircraft to observe and track Turkish troop movements after the Italian invasion of that territory. The Times acidly declared: ‘No one could have watched the work of the Italian airships and aeroplanes in Tripoli without being … firmly convinced of the practical value of aviation in war.’

  In fact, despite the dismissive comments of senior military officers and lukewarm political opinion, faltering steps had already begun in Britain to acknowledge that reality. An Army Order of 28 February 1911 announced the aim of ‘creating a body of expert airmen … the training and instruction of men in handling kites, balloons and aeroplanes and other forms of aircraft’. A month later, the Air Battalion of the Royal Engineers was established and thirteen months afterwards absorbed into the newly-created Royal Flying Corps (RFC). In recommending formation of the RFC, the Under Secretary of State for War, Col J.E.B. Seely, made clear that ‘actual warfare in Tripoli’ had been persuasive. So were ‘foreign manoeuvres’, France being the first European power to include aeroplanes in its annual manoeuvres in 1910. In addition to developing long-range airships, Germany too, had begun to pay more attention to aeroplanes in the face of evident French progress. Following a 30km (18½mls) flight by Henri Farman in October 1908, a member of the German General Staff remarked that ‘a new epoch of aviation had dawned’.

  In January 1912, Seely warned of a serious deficiency in trained military pilots: ‘At the present time we have in this country … of actual flying men in the army about eleven and … in the navy eight. France has about 263, so we are what you might call behind.’ The Royal Warrant of 13 April 1912, which established the RFC with a Military Wing and a Naval Wing, foresaw the new body comprising 165 officers, 1,264 other ranks, 66 aeroplanes and 95 ‘mechanised transport vehicles’. Seven aeroplane squadrons, each with twelve machines, and an eighth equipped with airships and man-lifting kites were ultimately planned, of which only the latter (No 1) and two aeroplane squadrons (Nos 2 and 3) were formed by the end of 1912. Maj C.J. Burke, commanding No 2 Squadron (Sqn), warned of the need for effective training: ‘An aeroplane will live in any wind and a lifeboat at sea, but they both want good and experienced men at the tiller.’

  The recruitment of aircrew for the RFC did not go smoothly. Officers had to seek approval from their superiors and many were deterred on the grounds that transfer or secondment would harm their promotion and long-term career prospects. If they persisted and passed the requisite medical, potential pilots had to qualify for a Royal Aero Club certificate at a personal cost of £75, refunded only when further military training had been successfully completed.

  Nevertheless, the RFC slowly took shape. Two of its future commanders, Lt Col F.H. Sykes and Brigadier-General (Brig Gen) David Henderson (aged 49 and reputedly the oldest pilot in the world) learnt to fly in 1911. A third was 39-year-old Maj H.M. Trenchard. In July 1912, he began private flying lessons at Brooklands, near Weybridge, Surrey, where a grass airstrip lay in the centre of the famous motor racing track, with the fearsome warning that inefficient pupils frequently finished nose down in the output of a nearby sewage farm. He avoided that pungent disgrace and over thirteen days completed 1hr 4mins in the air to secure Royal Aero Club flying certificate No 270.

  The Aero Club, granted the prefix ‘Royal’ nine years later, had been formed in 1901 to promote first ballooning then heavier-than-air flight. It rapidly acquired international recognition and the right to certify the competence of pilots, who had mastered basic flying skills. Trenchard’s certificate allowed him to attend the RFC’s Central Flying School (CFS) for military training, where his ‘enviable pluck and perseverance’ were noted. However, one instructor remarked that, perched in a Maurice Farman Longhorn biplane, he looked ‘as comfortable as a buzzard in a budgerigar’s cage’.

  Hugh Trenchard was not given preferential treatment; tuition and qualification at this time were rudimentary. Also in 1912, Joubert de la Ferté qualified after 1hr 50mins in the air. On leave at the family home near Weybridge, the young Royal Field Artillery officer was inspired to fly after watching the ‘motley collection of stick and string kites, mostly unairworthy, but very exciting affairs’ wobble aloft from Brooklands. The following year the founder of the Supermarine aircraft company, Noel Pemberton-Billing, bet aeroplane designer Geoffrey de Havilland £500 that he could learn to fly in a single day. A fascinated spectator recorded: ‘We who were watching held our breath at the hair-raising behaviour of his machine as it stalled at every right-hand turn and performed other amazing and unrehearsed feats.’ But Pemberton-Billing won the wager.

  The CFS opened at Upavon on Salisbury Plain on 19 June 19
12. Its airfield astride exposed upland was dubbed ‘Siberia’ by disenchanted arrivals who found that their living quarters were at the foot of an uninviting, steep slope. The length of the first course, twelve weeks instead of four months, was determined by a shortage of available aeroplanes (just seven), which also meant halving the intended number of participants from the intended sixty. The following year, ninety pilots qualified, the bulk of them going to the Military Wing. The intention of making this particular training establishment smart as well as efficient was signalled by the appointment of a guards officer as its first adjutant.

  Lack of aeroplanes for the CFS highlighted a major problem for both wings of the RFC. Britain undoubtedly lagged behind France in aeroplane manufacture and design, so the bulk of machines initially came from across the Channel. Significantly, French words like ‘fuselage’, ‘nacelle’ and ‘aileron’ have become accepted terms for parts of an aeroplane. By 1914, around twenty aviation firms had sprung up in Britain. Several were subsidiaries of large armament companies like Vickers and Armstrong Whitworth, some were grafted on to engineering concerns like J. Samuel White at Cowes, Isle of Wight, or the Coventry Ordnance Works. Many were small enterprises founded by military aviation enthusiasts. Alliott Verdon-Roe, who like Cody designed and flew his own machines, formed A.V. Roe & Co (Avro) with his brother Humphrey. Claude Graham-White, who had qualified to fly in France and sensationally publicised the cause of military aviation, established his firm at Hendon, Middlesex, the Bristol and Colonial Aeroplane was in that city, Supermarine Aviation at Southampton and William Beardmore & Co near Glasgow.