A Sample Feature From Aviation News

The Fleet Air Arm – A Centenary Celebration

Above: A Short 184 seaplane (N1098) seen at Yarmouth in May 1918. Aircraft of this type formed the core of Royal Naval Air Service sea-based activity in heavier-than-air applications during the First World War. (Photo, Alan Key)

In May the Fleet Air Arm celebrates 100 years of naval aviation, a century of achievement that has influenced the development of maritime conflict around the world. As a tribute, Aviation News looks back at past accomplishments and forward to the FAA in a 21st century of change.

BRITAIN is the true home of naval aviation and its birth can be fixed to May 7, 1909, when the Special Air Department of the Royal Navy was set up and the admiralty ordered Rigid Airship No.1, the Mayfly, as an aerial observation platform. Handed over in May 1911, it broke its back being manoeuvred out of its hangar before it even entered service. In the ensuing contest between lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air, two great milestones were achieved for aircraft. The first, on November 18, 1911, when Cdr Oliver Schwann made the first ascent and landing from and on to water. He was flying an Avro Type D biplane powered by a 35hp Green engine and equipped with floats. The second milestone took place on January 10, 1912, when Lt (later Cdr) C R Samson flew a modified Short S.27 pusher biplane fitted with pontoons off the launching ramp of HMS Africa anchored in Sheerness harbour. The first flight of a British aircraft from a ship under way was made on May 9 that same year, when Lt R Gregory flew another S.27 off the moving deck of HMS Hibernia steaming at 10kts in Weymouth Bay.

More than 200 naval officers volunteered to fly in 1911 and Samson and Gregory had been among four, including A M Longmore and G Cockburn, selected for training. Francis McClean offered the use of a Short S.28 and a Short S.29 with tuition provided gratis by George Cockburn. Royal Aero Club facilities at Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey were used for this activity, although the first licensed naval aviator, Lt G C Colmore, had already trained at his own expense for Aviator Certificate No 15 awarded on June 21, 1910. The year 1911 was replete with tension as the German gunboat Panther appeared off Agadir and awakened a sleepy nation to the possibility of war. In November, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith requested that the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) ‘consider the future development of aerial navigation for naval and military purposes.’

A new beginning

Complacency set aside, the CID recommended establishment of a Royal Flying Corps (RFC) comprising a Naval Wing, a Military Wing and a Central Flying School formed on May 13, 1912. Service rivalry compromised the arrangement and on July 1, 1914, the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) was officially formed. Barely a month later war broke out and the RNAS pitched into conflict from the start. The first units were formed at Gosport as Nos 1 and 2 Squadrons RNAS on October 17, 1914, with a complement of aircraft, pilots, engineers and support staff to operate as independent units within an air wing. The RNAS established the first military flying school that included ground school training for pilots and engineering training for aircraft engineers. Specialist naval flying training and trials were developed, including wireless and telegraphy operations, submarine searches, photographic exercises and long distance flights, perfecting naval gunfire spotting and aerial reconnaissance.

The RNAS was to be a pioneer in applying the aircraft to war in specific roles. The first raid on German territory was flown by four aircraft of Cdr Samson’s Eastchurch squadron on September 27, 1914, five weeks after it had been ordered overseas. On December 21, Samson became the first man to conduct a night raid when he flew a Maurice Farman against gun batteries at Ostend and quickly after that raids on the Zeppelin sheds and other targets were made, including the railway station at Cologne. While the RFC was very much an adjunct to army field operations, on Christmas Day 1914 the first air raid from ships at sea was launched when seven seaplanes from HMS Empress, Engadine and Riviera bombed Wilhelmshaven, after failing to find the Zeppelin sheds at Cuxhaven in dense fog. Additionally, with the RFC wholly committed in France, from September 3, 1914, the RNAS became responsible for the air defence of Britain. Not until March 1916 would the RFC form Home Defence squadrons.

In those early days, aircraft at sea played a subordinate role, the majority of operations being conducted by seaplanes and flying-boats from shore bases or landplanes at naval air stations. However, towards the end of the war purpose-built aircraft carriers became the optimised choice from which to operate aircraft at sea and the first flush-deck ship of this type was HMS Argus, converted from the Italian liner Conte Rosso. On August 2, 1917, Sqn Cdr E H Dunning became the first pilot to land on a moving aircraft carrier when he landed his Sopwith Pup on Argus, losing his life five days later when his aircraft fell over the side and sank.

Above: With flotation pods in a tail-sitter configuration, the Short S.27 was used to experiment with launching an aeroplane from a platform on the forward gun turret of a warship in 1912. This resulted in the use of aeroplanes for spotting ships at sea over the horizon and for gunlaying in naval engagements. It would lead eventually to the use of special ships designed to carry conventional aircraft originally built for use on land. (Photo, via Alan Key)

A bit of naval ingenuity!

During the First World War Lt Samson developed bombing techniques, dropping weapons from aircraft using a rack device operated by a lever in the cockpit and with Lt Hall, a bombsight to increase the weapon’s accuracy of fall. In March 1915 Samson perfected incendiary devices, modifying a 20gal drum fitted with explosives which he dropped over Turkish lines – the first aerial weapon of this type. The bombing trials resulted in the RNAS forming specialist strategic bombing units in 1916, tasked with striking at enemy industrial targets and military installations and ordering a specialist bomber aircraft developed for the service, the Handley Page O/100 ‘Bloody Paralyser’. The Sopwith Gun Bus was developed following Lt Hall’s design for attaching a gun to an aircraft while at the RNAS flying school at Hendon and he fired the weapon during trials in October 1914.

The RNAS developed air-launched torpedoes and Lt Williamson proposed the depth charge as a means of damaging and sinking submarines underwater using 50lb bombs exploding 20ft below the surface. On August 2, 1916, pilots flying ‘leader aircraft’ identified and illuminated a target for the bomber force using Very Lights, the first pathfinder missions. The RNAS developed Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) procedures and the deep-water search pattern (the Spiders Web) enabled 4,000sq miles of sea to be searched in one operation. This pattern is the basis used today for major ocean search and rescue missions. Hydrophones were developed for use by airships and seaplanes in 1917, a system of lowering a microphone into the sea and listening for submarines, used today in sonobouys.

A force in fact

At the end of 1912, the Naval Wing had 16 serviceable aircraft including 13 land-based aircraft (eight biplanes and five monoplanes), and three types referred to as hydro-aeroplanes, re-categorised as seaplanes from July 17, 1913. By the beginning of 1914 the Naval Wing had 100 pilots and when war broke out on August 4 the re-named RNAS had 91 aircraft including 39 landplanes, 52 seaplanes and seven airships with 128 officers and 700 petty officers and ratings. When the RNAS merged with the Royal Flying Corps to form the Royal Air Force on April 1, 1918, it had 2,949 aircraft and 103 airships on strength and 67,000 officers and men spread across 126 air stations at home and abroad. More than 100 aircraft were operating from capital ships and 22 cruisers had flying-off platforms carrying a single aircraft. All Royal Navy battleships and battle cruisers carried a two-seat aircraft from the forward platform and a single-seat fighter on the aft platform. The Royal Navy was supreme, possessing more aircraft-carrying ships than all the rest of the world’s navies combined!

For the rest of this article please see the June 2009 issue.