Air and Sea Power in World War 1

This chapter examines the contrasting roles of the RNAS and RFC in home defence and how effectively the air services responded to conflict. Warfare on the Home Front was quite different to that experienced by servicemen on the Western Front, so this chapter also considers the life of the air services in their daily protection of British civilians, which set them apart from their comrades in France. For the men of the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps posted home to guard British skies, this was a new form of warfare involving the daily care of thousands of lives below them. With that in mind, this chapter examines the nature of fighting on the Home Front. The argument here is two-fold: first, that conflict over England was quite different to that experienced in other theatres of the conflict; and second that, like the navy, the RNAS had a pre-war technological initiative which was curtailed by the conflict, whilst its defensive use in combat exposed its inadequacies to fight the Zeppelin. Meanwhile, the tactical offensiveness of the Royal Flying Corps against the raiders eventually led to success in repelling aerial bombardment.

The British public’s fear of airships predated 1914 and was encouraged by the spy scares and invasion hysteria of the early 1910s.1 However, the first Zeppelin to fly over British soil did not appear until some months after war had been declared. The Zeppelin was an enormous bag of hydrogen, the size of a dreadnought, with a small cockpit attached to the bottom from which the pilot steered the vessel. In 1900, Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin, an officer from Wuttenberg who had fought in the Franco-Prussian war, unveiled the first eponymously named Zeppelin airship. The German public, impressed and awed by the Count’s designs, provided significant private funding to expand the workshops, and Zeppelin soon became nationally revered.² At the start of the First World War, Germany owned eight airships (seven military and one naval) and with the boom in production that war necessitated, the construction of ships and bases was prioritised. In the first weeks of the conflict, resentment against Britain grew as the German people began to revile Britain’s involvement in a war they felt was between Germany and France. Consequently, the Zeppelin campaign against Britain became an important national concern for the German people, being both a chance to display the prowess of the formidable airships and a valuable opportunity for revenge against the British people.³

In spite of Germany’s enthusiasm, the raids were considered, under international law, to breach the codes that prevented assaults on unarmed civilians. ‘The opinion of the world,’ pioneer Claude Graham White and Harry Harper wrote, ‘is very definitely against such air raids as these, in which no results of a military importance are obtained.’⁴ Once the Zeppelin had proven its immense strategic value at the naval Battle of Dogger Bank in early 1915, the raids over England were the next step. ‘For the first and only time in history, an airship was present above a naval battle, providing information for its admiral from direct observation of the enemy,’ historian Douglas Robinson wrote.⁵ Soon afterwards the first Zeppelin attack was launched in Britain and the presence of the Zeppelin would remain almost undeterred until their retirement at the end of 1916.

The menacing Zeppelin had a significant psychological effect on British civilians. The sight of any aerial craft at this time was unusual, and represented the possibility of invasion from the sky, which was deeply unsettling. Pilot L. E. O. Charlton described the effect of the raids in his 1936 memoir as ‘our tyranny during the War. On their account men showed fear before their fellow men and were not ashamed.’ Charlton noted that civilians lacked the training and discipline of their military protectors, thus the Zeppelin’s sinister appearance induced panic. ‘The airship could be noisy or silent at will, motionless or swift-moving,’ he chillingly explained, and ‘their monster bulk, ominously shaped and evil-looking, could obsess the mind and endow them with a fabulous power of destruction.’⁶ A further indictment of the actions of Germany came from the descriptions of the devastation caused by the bombs. It soon became apparent that not only was there disruption to the lives of those in Britain but they were also exposed to the brutalities of combat. The ensuing years of war brought over 100 airship raids and aeroplane attacks on Britain, with London bearing the brunt of aerial warfare. There were 12 airship and 19 aeroplane raids in London alone, accounting for more than half the total raid casualties.⁷

In truth, however, the imagined threat was far greater than the reality could boast. Practically the Zeppelin was a clumsy, inexact monster. As historians van Emden and Humphries have explained, their accuracy was poor and any ‘damage caused was more by luck than judgement. Instead bombs were dropped at random, making attacks brutal, if short.’⁸ The War Office recorded only 498 civilian deaths and 1,236 injuries from airship raids between January 1915 and August 1918. In addition, they accounted for the deaths of just 58 soldiers and sailors, while injuring a dozen.⁹ But for the average Briton this was the first experience of aircraft, and when combined with the air services’ apparent inability to intercept them, this only added to public fears. Thus their power was primarily psychological, and a result of the RNAS’s inability to counter them in the first years of the war. This only added to the frustrations of a wartime public having to adapt itself to the restrictions of life on the Home Front.

More and more limitations were then imposed on the freedoms of those stationed in Britain during the first years of war. Mrs Peel complained that in 1915 the ‘streets became darker, travelling more and more uncomfortable, prices went on rising.’¹³ The size of the daily newspapers shrank, theatres and music-halls were subject to an amusement tax, and it was no longer permissible to whistle for taxis between 10 pm and 7 am.¹⁴ But licensing restrictions were most widely resented, with opening hours cut and the alcohol content of drinks reduced. For everyone, serviceman or member of the public, ‘it became impossible to purchase drinks save between the hours of 12 and 2.30 and 6 and 8’, Folkestone resident Ernest Mackaway explained, ‘and no officer or soldier proceeding overseas could ... be served. This led to not a little indignation.’¹⁵ Pilot T. McKenny Hughes who passed through Folkestone found such regulations laughable:

We got to Folkestone at 9.50 & then found that the boat did not leave til {sic} 2.10 ... . I went for a walk & then came back for lunch at the Pavilion Hotel where you have to pay 3/6 in advance for a filthy lunch with worse service, & to crown it all there is a law that officers & men who are going to France shall not be served with any intoxicant (beer is an intoxicant) on the day on which they leave. You can get any drinks you like on the boat so it is not to ensure everyone arrives in France sober, but to get a drink in Folkestone ... you have to sign an affidavit that you are not crossing that day.¹⁶

As a significant port with a direct route to Boulogne, Folkestone (with neighbouring Dover) became the centre of Britain’s plans to transport servicemen to the front lines. The unprecedented level of government regulation in places like Folkestone mobilized whole towns and directed all their endeavours towards the control and support of servicemen stationed in the vicinity.

Life in Folkestone during the war was, therefore, a complicated balance of civilian needs and patriotic duty.¹⁷ Combatants were stationed at Shorncliffe Camp and utilized the local area for training and entertainment. During 1917–1918 up to 9,000 men per day passed through the local camps, and by May 1919 more than nine million men had used the harbour, either embarking to or disembarking from France.¹⁸ Approximately 20,000 recruits were stationed at Shorncliffe Camp by September 1914 and the ‘residents of Folkestone became a committee of entertainment and hospitality’, Reverend J. C. Carlile wrote in his collection of war histories. There were dancehalls, restaurants, sports and library facilities supplied for serviceman. Carlile felt that what could be their final ‘memories depended upon the treatment they received during the last hours’.¹⁹ Servicemen stationed at the local camps could not enjoy all these distractions however, as RAF cadet Joseph Bryant explained to his sister:

This place is miles from civilisation, the nearest town being Folkestone, five miles away and we’re not allowed there only on week-ends with a special pass. The first day we got here it was pouring with rain and we had to carry all our kit including rifle and bayonet for two miles from a little out of way station ... . {A}ll last week ... {we} have been shifting all the furniture and beds. This shifting will delay us again for about a month, but still the war is still going on ... . {W}e are not in houses now but huts, and they are none too warm at night.²⁰

Local towns did their best to provide amenities for servicemen and to make their last night in England more pleasant. Yet for the men who were stationed on the Home Front, living with these restrictions, and charged with its protection, the difficulties of their role quickly became apparent.

The limitations of the navy’s flying service can first be seen in the selection and training process for RNAS officers. When ‘PIX’ applied to the Admiralty, he was told that ‘colonials were not required as they made indifferent officers’. A friend advised him to reapply, and at his first interview to come dressed as a private with his flying certificate. At his second interview ‘PIX’ then ‘wore a suit of civilian cloth cut by a good tailor and carried letters of introduction from sundry important people.’²² In line with other forms of naval recruitment, Official Historian H. A. Jones explained, applicants were interviewed by a committee of senior naval officers who paid particular attention to their standard of education, their sporting accomplishments, and to their social and general qualifications.²³ The quality of the man was fundamental to the navy’s decision on how well he may perform. Flying officers were no less rigorously selected than their ship-based counterparts, and men were expected to believe in the privilege of winning a place in the Royal Navy.

Naval pilots were trained at separate flying schools to RFC and civilian airmen, like the Naval Flying School at Eastchurch, Kent under the command of Captain Charles Paine. Structurally, the RNAS trainees followed a programme similar to that of the RFC but were encouraged to see themselves as a distinct naval service. A series of courses introduced them to notions of discipline and service necessary to create naval identity, as well as understand the mechanical and scientific basis of the machines they flew. But the process was also designed to resemble the rigours of the long naval training for sailors that inculcated values of hierarchy and control through long days of classes and physical activity. The idea was that RNAS men were navy first and pilots second. With this in mind, Oliver Bernard Ellis who was recruited in the summer of 1916 launched instantly into a hard daily routine:

17th July 1916 – Parade at 8.50 in flannels ... and then we were worked in the squads all the morning – a musketry class, and more drill – lunch – more drill – Swedish drill – tea – lecture.

18th July 1916 – Much more to the point to-day. PTI at 6.40 for an hour – breaka {sic} – Parade 8.50 am until 12.15 pm – tea – then Squad drill – from 5.15 pm till 6.15 pm – dinner at 7.30 and then writing up these notes.

Within a month, trainees were spending 12-hour days at the engine shops ‘which meant getting up at something like 5.30!’ Bernard Ellis complained on 14 August 1916. Once inducted into the life of a naval officer, the RNAS man could then learn to fly, which an excited Bernard Ellis experienced for the first time on 21 August 1916:

The De Roper called for me and gave me an introduction to flying – later in the evening he took me up – flying is some by Jove – you feel so rippingly free and ripping when you get up and the ground is stretched away below you like a map in relief – by Jove tho’ but I guess this will suit me – he gave me control after a bit – but I didn’t make much of it. I kept my eyes glued on to the speed indicator which is rong {sic} I believe – but he reasons that for the first 1½ hours you are generally a bit at sea. I do hope I’ll get into it because I can think of nothing nicer than cruising round in a nice comfortable machine at about three thousand – I don’t think we were at more than 1½ but I’ve got a hell of a lot to learn yet!²⁴

Bernard Ellis’s flying training was completed in November 1916 and had taken almost exactly four months from his first day of drill. He noted that only seven of the 15 men in his class passed the final examination, the pass mark being 40 per cent. Thus only the strongest candidates were rewarded with a commission in the Royal Naval Air Service and dispatched to one of the remote aerodromes dotted across the English countryside. Unlike with the RFC, members of the RNAS, in accordance with their fellow naval officers, were taught to obey orders and consequently lacked the same degree of freedom in combat. The restrictive nature of naval training is, therefore, one of the reasons for their failure to adequately manage the Zeppelin threat.

Adding to the lack of direction, on 6 August 1914 in a letter to the Admiralty, the Army Council agreed that ‘aeroplanes would not be a suitable form of defence for use over London, and that action in such an area would be almost certain to result in heavy casualties to pilots and aeroplanes.’ Instead guns would be used as the main method of anti-aircraft attack. This plan was clearly outlined in October 1914, in a letter from the Secretary of the War Office to his equivalent in the Admiralty. Furthermore, to relieve servicemen of any initiative in deciding what action to take ‘defence commanders are hereby relieved of the responsibility of deciding as to whether aeroplanes and seaplanes are friendly or hostile’, it stated. With limited resources, the Council felt it would be preferable to intercept airships on the East Coast and use anti-aircraft guns if enemy machines reached London.²⁸ The decision to use guns rather than aeroplanes to attack hostile craft at home only added to the lengthy periods of inactivity for the RNAS and did not encourage their technological development, as combat had done for the RFC on the Western Front.

Whilst the equivalent RFC planes on the Western Front were focused on reconnaissance duties, official historian Walter Raleigh explained, those on the home front were still looking for a technological advantage, largely outside of the service. The RNAS took several steps to find the right machines, he continued:

{The} navy, who were further from the enemy, had set their hearts on machines that should do more than observe – machines that could fly far and hit hard. They diligently fostered the efforts of leading motor-car companies ... in the production of very efficient engines of high horse power. In the second year of the war, the Admiralty proposed a competition among aeroplane makers for a large bombing machine and a fast fighting aeroplane.²⁹

These measures were primarily the result of Winston Churchill’s enthusiasm for aeroplanes in 1912–1913, when the first experiments with naval planes taking off and landing on moving ships were occurring. But, as Raleigh’s statement shows, even by 1915, the RNAS was still getting to grips with its new status as an independent service, and without adequate aeroplanes, concentrated instead on developing its bases.

The slower development of resources at home meant that pilots were unengaged during the day and lacked contact with the enemy. With little to do, Leonard Rochford recalled being entertained by men such as trainee pilot Ivor Novello. ‘Ivor frequently played the piano in the ward room while we stood around singing the pop songs of those days plus a good many bawdy ones,’ Rochford joked, but whilst a popular recruit, the 23-year-old Novello ‘never appeared likely to get his pilot’s wings and, in fact later transferred to the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve’.³⁰ On some evenings, ‘PIX’s’ mess was livened ‘by the frequent visits of a senior officer who, arriving about dinner-time, would discuss flying far into the night, turn out at daybreak to fly any machine available no matter what the weather was like, and then, after breakfast, hasten off to the Admiralty.’³¹ Yet for the pilots of the RNAS, who could not leave their base, it was the lack of daytime activity that proved hardest to manage.

Zeppelin attacks only occurred at night, so like their counterparts in France, RNAS pilots spent most of their time not in action and had to find other distractions. ‘You know life in the RNAS is really a ragtime sort of thing,’ Oliver Bernard Ellis gloated in a letter to his mother in February 1917, ‘here we are – about a dozen of us – staying in an old country hotel – with a whole wing of the building given over to us – treated like Lords – and doing nothing.’ Yet the relaxation soon became frustrating for men trained for combat. ‘These Lincolnshire towns are killingly funny little places – they are all just exactly the same – with the same magnified sense of their own importance – and exactly the same pubs,’ Bernard Ellis complained. ‘We all trooped off to the local Pantomime last night – it was a beautifully provincial touch,’ he moaned, ‘and must have seemed very funny after London shows – to some of the men who had been down to town for the week-end.’³² The paradox of being a naval officer grounded in a country village is important in understanding the situation of the RNAS pilot on Home Defence duties.

The RNAS pilots eventually made it into action, only to spend their nights fruitlessly chasing the Zeppelins. Pilot L. E. O. Charlton explained that on ‘the Home Front the circumstances were different. Long spells of inactivity and suspense were succeeded by nights of fearful risk, sometimes quite hopelessly run.’33 Even when they were called into action, facing the Zeppelin was an overwhelming task for the RNAS aviator in the first months of war. Even reaching the altitude of enemy craft was a serious challenge, as Amyas ‘Biffy’ Borton noted in May 1915 when he happened upon a Zeppelin returning from strafing Ramsgate. ‘You’ll be interested to hear that I encountered it in my reconnaissance yesterday morning at 4am,’ he explained, but having ambled across the intruder, there was little Borton could do because it ‘thoroughly scared us off by shoving its nose skyward and going up to 10,000ft. leaving me laboriously toiling after it and with difficulty reaching 7,500ft. Perhaps it is as well I couldn’t catch the thing as I don’t know what the devil I would have done with it.’³⁴ Borton’s note is demonstrative of the RNAS situation; that its men were willing and eager to fight, but lacked the resources and equipment to do so. Veteran RFC pilot Geoffrey Norris echoed that analysis, seeing the airship as ‘almost invincible, despite the increased numbers of guns and searchlights in use on the ground. Aircraft,’ therefore, ‘were practically useless against the Zeppelins, which flew at heights of over 10,000 feet. Defending aircraft took some forty-five minutes to reach this height.’³⁵ London’s lack of aerial defence and the failure of the RNAS to counter the Zeppelin raids had consequences for the public.

It is the memoirs of women that offer the greatest insight into the fear the airship induced and what it meant to suffer the raids defencelessly. ‘To the great mass of women in the poorer districts of the metropolis and in East Coast towns, the war as far as they were personally concerned would always mean “air raids” ’, Caroline Playne recalled in her 1931 memoir.³⁶ When the raiders first came to England, it was a terrifying prospect, exacerbated by the inability of those like Borton to protect them. On 28 September 1915, Mrs Hallie Eustace Miles described her fear when she heard

the most awful bang, crash and explosion, close to our flat ... . The poor servants were standing at their bedroom door, trembling with horror ... . My heart beat dreadfully, but I wasn’t faint at all. I felt I had the responsibility of seeing to everything, and was the captain of our little flock, and of course this helped me not to break down. I could not exactly describe what I felt. It was such an absolutely new experience. It was frightfully solemn, too, as if the war and the Germans were at our very doors.

Mixed with their fear, and the strangeness of the situation, Miles also described the fascination with which her son Eustace ‘hung out of the open window directly the first bomb fell, and saw the wicked Zeppelin in the sky like a long grey lighted train, and he saw the bombs dropping. He could not bear leaving the open window to go down to the cellar!’³⁷ Unlike Eustace, most civilians hurried to find shelter below the ground. London suffered most heavily throughout the war, experiencing 12 airship and 19 aeroplane attacks. More than half the total raid casualties happened in London with just the guns in places like Hyde Park to protect them.³⁸ ‘They would throng the staircases, passages and platforms’ of tube stations, Charlton explained, ‘occupying every square inch of available space. As many as a quarter of a million would find accommodation in this manner, the able bodied accompanied by the sick and the halt.’ Despite the suggestion of camaraderie, conditions in the underground networks were poor. ‘Food litter lay around, and worse still, to add to the squalor of the scene,’ Charlton continued, commuters had great difficulty in using the trains at all, as they could not get on or off due to the crowds.³⁹ The suffering described by the public was a direct consequence of military failures to deflect the intruders.

Throughout 1915, the RNAS remained unable to prevent public inconvenience and although ‘naval pilots did not stint to fly in search of invaders’, Charlton explained, ‘the machines they flew were ill adapted for such service and the armament they carried was inadequate’. Furthermore, the restrictions of night flying meant that the Zeppelins were near impossible to spot on a cloudless night because searchlights were ‘few and far between, and their known locations were carefully evaded by the raiders’.⁴⁰ Consequently, there was relatively little the RNAS could do to protect civilians. As discussed in the previous chapter, naval development faltered at the start of war and supplies of adequate machinery were slow. There was a continual reluctance amongst senior personnel to accept the aeroplane as a significant weapon of war and allocate resources to its development. Official Historian Arthur Marder described the Admiralty as a ‘cramping influence’ during the first two years of war, adding that only the ‘most farsighted and enthusiastic officers were alive to the possibilities of naval aviation ... . {T}he average naval officer was not concerned or interested.’ ⁴¹ Naval organization also meant that responsibility for the RNAS was confusingly divided between the different Sea Lords, Marder complained:

The personnel of the RNAS was under the Second Sea Lord, material under the Third Sea Lord and operations under the First Sea Lord and Chief of Staff – meaning that no naval representative could speak with authority on all aspects of naval aviation.⁴²

With few resources, no defined leader to guide developments and a general feeling of indifference from its parent, the RNAS was seriously hindered in the role of Home Defence.

As with much naval strategy during the war, the RNAS employed a defensive strategy against the Zeppelin and failed to develop the means required to adequately confront them. Therefore when the government, through its Air Board, was required to allot resources to the air services, it is unsurprising that machines were allocated to the successful RFC for use in France. It was felt, Marder asserts, that the naval air service was failing in its duty to resist the Zeppelin because ‘the Navy regard aeroplanes as of uncertain value owing to their limited range and the inexperience of their pilots ... . Finally, there was a psychological factor that influenced some officers at least and was but a reflection of the Admiralty contempt for the Air.’ ⁴³ The Royal Flying Corps had begun to take responsibility for some areas of Home Defence, relieving the Admiralty of its responsibilities. The Army Council was ‘willing to undertake the defence of Newcastle against aerial attack from 1st December 1915 and will make temporary arrangements to effect this until such time as a squadron can be stationed permanently at Cramlington with this object.’ ⁴⁴ The review of aerial provision consequently began to suggest that the navy was not acting offensively against the Zeppelin threat and that perhaps their sister service would be better placed to assume the defence of Britain. This was exacerbated by negative attention from other servicemen. Philip Joubert de la Ferte, a Royal Flying Corps pilot, descried the situation in a letter to his mother in October 1915. ‘They are swine, these Deutschers,’ he remonstrated ‘& it is high time some real soldiers were put in charge of the guns at home. The Admiralty have proven themselves hopeless in all matters connected with the air service & it was high time that the War Office took the matter in hand.’ ⁴⁵ The aerial situation was becoming increasingly desperate as the Admiralty no longer had the energy or resources to support it. ‘The navy had their hands full’ dealing with the enemy submarine campaign, Captain Joseph Morris explained in his history of the air raids, which required increasing numbers of aeroplanes to be reallocated from Home Defence. ‘They had no longer sufficient resources to deal with the aerial home defence, particularly if this duty should absorb a number of aeroplanes which were most urgently required for the fleet,’ he concluded.⁴⁶

Under pressure, the navy occasionally embarked on improbable plans. To stop the raids, Admiral Fisher ‘proposed in all seriousness, that they should take a large number of hostages from the Germans in England’, Marder exclaimed, ‘and declare their intention of executing one for every Englishman killed by Zeppelin bombs’.⁴⁷ Churchill resisted, feeling that it would achieve nothing but revulsion for English tactics. The increasing desperation of the RNAS led the Admiralty to request to be relieved of their responsibilities for Home Defence, and to concentrate their resources elsewhere, leaving land defence to their Army counterparts. ‘The Admiralty now said it was a War Office duty. ... The army had no aircraft to spare ... . However, the War Office would take it over and do their best,’ the War Committee noted.⁴⁸ The role of the RNAS in Home Defence was relatively brief and undistinguished. The Admiralty concentration on the war at sea and the use of aeroplanes to support it seriously hindered their ability to adequately protect Britain in the short-term or to establish adequate plans for doing so during the remainder of the conflict. The pilots of the RNAS struggled to meet the demands of their role because they were poorly resourced and not encouraged to build on the pre-war drive in aerial development to destroy the Zeppelin. Finally, after more than a year of war, above 20 raids and over 100 casualties, the navy conceded responsibility for home defence to the Royal Flying Corps.

The growth of the nightclub was an outstanding feature of wartime life ... . By the winter of 1915 it was reported that there were 150 night clubs in Soho alone, some of them of very doubtful character. Drinks were sold after hours at preposterous prices ... . But it was not only the night clubs of Soho which increased. Soho blossomed into an important shopping centre ... . The dancing craze necessitated a good supply of dance frocks, and these establishments throve and multiplied ... more money was spent by women on clothes in 1917 than in 1915.⁵⁰

In contrast to the strict regulations of the first two years of the war, by 1916 the population were experiencing new freedoms, especially in London, that attracted home service personnel.

Some servicemen did not appreciate all the changes made to the Home Front in the early period of war, however. Much to his chagrin, pilot Geoffrey Sparrow arrived ‘at the hotel where I had frequently stayed in the piping days of peace, I was somewhat brusquely informed by a fur-coated individual ... that my favourite doss-house was now a Government office,’ he complained. Rushing instead to his favourite club, ‘memories of the incomparable Coon band and joysome dances flashed through my mind, and I hastened my steps. Ciro’s was there, but how changed! In place of the fashionable club of former days, I found – a YMCA canteen.’⁵¹ Pilots on the Home Front both bore the responsibility for its safety and endured its deprivations. The conflict had liberated parts of London and gave local pilots an opportunity to enjoy the lighter entertainments supplied for them. The experience of life in Britain for servicemen during the First World War was far more than fighting raiders and as the Home Front became more familiar, RFC pilots were able to enjoy their leisure time as their counterparts did in France.

the object with which the Home Defence Wing was originally constituted appears in danger of being lost sight of ... . In view of my responsibility for the defence of Great Britain against hostile attack by air I cannot too strongly impress on the Army Council that the means placed at my disposal for aeroplane defence are now inadequate and that a continuance of the present policy may have disastrous results.⁵⁴

Irrespective of the needs expressed by French, the RFC airmen did not relish the prospect of home service, preferring to be in France. Used to days of activity on the Western Front, some, like Cecil Lewis, feared the lethargy of life in Britain. ‘But what a job!’ he exclaimed, to be ‘waiting night after night, for the possible chance of a raid ... . Therefore imagine my excitement and relief when I found I had been posted to the testing squadron instead.’⁵⁵ For the RFC, home duty also meant long periods of frustrated inactivity and men had to find daily distractions in the British countryside. ‘With another pilot, a Canadian, we would take off in our respective machines and scour the countryside of Durham, chasing trains much to the delight of passengers but incurring the wrath of the engine driver,’ pilot F. C. Penny chuckled. On other days, he wrote, when not protecting them, the public became the target of airman fun:

Sometimes we would simulate a forced landing ... in a field adjacent to a village and when the crowd began to appear, we would take off and dive low over their heads, scaring the life out of them ... . One of our pilots suggested that it would be good fun to fly through one of the arches of the Sunderland Bridge ... . We found that we would have clearance of about four feet on either side ... . Just on entering I noticed a yacht with tall masts putting out from the bank ... . Too late to alter my course I flew through just missing the yacht masts ... . No one attempted to emulate my rather ‘hair-raising’ experience.⁵⁶

Although test-flights were officially sanctioned by the Flying Corps, some pilots abused the privilege. One machine in three belonging to each squadron was to be ‘flown each day for a cross country flight’.⁵⁷ Penny used his plane for stunts to detract from the boredom of life on the home front for RFC personnel who only engaged at night.

On the Western Front opposing pilots were fairly evenly matched in both machinery and tactics, with both air forces driving the other to develop the next effective machine. Yet for the RFC in 1916, the distance between the German Zeppelin and the puny British fighter felt almost scientifically and altitudinally insurmountable. So much so that ‘the steady drone of Zeppelins high in the night sky had almost become part of life for those living in eastern England’, Geoffrey Norris explained:

There was no great public despondency over this. The bitterness of the previous year had been overcome, for the Zeppelins ... achieved very little in the way of systematic destruction ... . But there was still the invidious ... thought that the airman could be achieving much more. It was hard for the public to appreciate the Home Defence Squadrons were achieving some success. They were reaching Zeppelin heights regularly ... . {and} were in fact acting as a useful deterrent.⁵⁸

Still, at this stage, the main anti-aircraft defences were the gun placements in central London and the South East but, despite now reaching the height of the Zeppelins, ‘it was then doubtful if a pilot could ever attack a Zeppelin at night and certain that he would not be able to chase’, the War Office reported in 1916. ‘It was also accepted that pilots would not only patrol and fight over their own grounds owing to navigation difficulties’, the report explained, and this meant ‘the present stations do not form any definite line and allow of gaps through which hostile aircraft can penetrate’.⁵⁹ Initially, therefore, members of the Royal Flying Corps were as impotent as their naval brothers in protecting England. ‘Up to the autumn of 1916 we were comparatively defenceless against the Zeppelin,’ Official Historian H. A. Jones argued, ‘but the attacks were so spaced that we were given time to get our breath in between.’⁶⁰ The RFC did make some strides however. Bombs and machine-guns had been tested, but in the summer of 1916 ‘efficient incendiary and explosive bullets were produced’, Jones continued, which meant that ‘the end of the Zeppelin as a raiding weapon was in sight’.⁶¹ By the end of 1916, however, the dominance of the airship had passed its peak, partly owing to dwindling resources in Germany, but also to the increases in gun placements and patrol systems in southern England. In 1917–18, the War Office recorded only nine airship raids, just one of which reached London.⁶²

For more than a year, the Zeppelin dominated the skies over Britain, with 1916 being a year of unrestricted bombardment, as Captain Joseph Morris recalled in his 1930s book on the raids. ‘Germany had a unique craft which exceeded anything her competitors could produce,’ Morris asserted, and if they could break the ‘morale of the British nation anything would be worthwhile. What is the loss of a few airships ... if a war of nations is to be won?’ However, by then the Zeppelin had reached its peak. Suddenly, the magnificence of these craft were unsustainable, they had become ‘Frankenstein monsters’, Morris continued, ‘fast devouring the personnel and material which had gone to the creation ... the material would be used to better purpose for aeroplanes, which were sadly wanting for the defence of the Fatherland.’ ⁶³ The RNAS and RFC had made few effective attempts to counter them, however, and it was Germany who withdrew the airships as a means of attack. Technology was advancing, and as defences improved, Germany turned its attention to developing bomber aeroplanes, forcing the retirement of the more costly Zeppelin.

A bomb fell ... killing the woman I had just seen ... . {I}t was actually like walking through a thin coating of ice on a winter’s day ... . The roads were thickly strewn with finely broken glass from the hundreds of windows that were smashed ... . The enemy dropped their final lot of bombs on Tontine Street, the poorer part of the town near the harbour, where crowds of women were doing their week-end shopping. I was told afterwards ... that it resembled a battlefield – a gruesome mass of severed heads, arms and legs mixed up with the wreckage of houses and broken windows.⁶⁶

The physical and human costs of these raids stunned the inhabitants of the town and led to a ‘growing sense of public outrage and shock’, White recorded. Consequently, the ‘Home Forces were castigated on every street corner in the town ... . The public was angry because the feeling of security built up following the defeat of the Zeppelins had been rudely shattered,’ he concluded.⁶⁷ That anger was directed against being subjected to the full horror of aerial warfare. As Charlton explained:

Children were blown to pieces in the middle of their play. A child’s hand and worse were found two days later a long way off. Eight dead and dying women lay at the feet of a police constable, himself in the freakish manner of bombs, unhurt. A wine merchant had invited a friend to sample a bottle. When he returned from his inner room with corkscrew and glasses his friend lay dead with head completely severed from his body.⁶⁸

These accounts are reminiscent of the descriptions of bombardment on the Western Front with men being injured or killed almost at random and with severed limbs strewn around the trenches. A. C. Stanton expressed his fury that the public was enduring such sights, and the detrimental effect this was having on service morale. In a letter to his wife on 18 July 1918 he moaned that ‘it is rather cool for Lloyd George to say practically that we must grin and bear it, he doesn’t apparently consider the feelings of the men at the front and what they think of the news that their families are being bombed at home.’⁶⁹ Cecil Lewis recalled the June 1917 London raid in his memoir, adding that despite little collateral damage, ‘their appearance was quite enough to scare the civilian population very thoroughly and raise an outcry’. Again, Lewis continued, Britain was unprepared and the ‘complete German squadron returned home triumphant’.⁷⁰ In addition to the civilian casualties, the War Office states that the aeroplane raids also accounted for 238 soldier and sailor deaths and 400 injuries. This added to the onus on Home Front personnel to protect the civilians of Britain from the enemy.

Consequently a renewed effort was required from the RFC to counter the raiders and allay public fears. Initially there ‘were many gallant, but mainly abortive attempts by pilots of the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps to intercept the raiders,’ Jones sighed, ‘but few of them had aircraft capable of reaching the height at which the German squadrons flew, nor was there any attempt at co-ordinated flying.’⁷¹ With the Western Front being a priority in the wake of ‘Bloody April’, the RFC struggled, as French complained, to allot sufficient resources to deter the raiders. On the Western Front, the RFC strategy had been to use formations of small scout fighters to protect their reconnaissance machines, but these principles were not applied to the defence of England. Partly, this was a question of resources; the Flying Corps (like the RNAS) could not afford to spare the men and the highest calibre machines for home service when it was desperately short of men at the front. The Gotha raids came in the wake of ‘Bloody April’ 1917 that had undermined the RFC fighting force in France with a massive attrition rate. Naturally, the priority for equipment and reinforcements had to be for the French effort. ‘The pilots who went up to fight the raiders had little to show for their gallantry,’ Jones concluded, and in spite of the great risks they undertook, they were ‘without the compensation of striking a blow at the enemy ... . Apart, however, from these considerations, there was the overriding fact that most of the aeroplanes sent up to fight the enemy were not good enough for the task.’⁷² The answer, for the RFC, was to use the machines it did have more strategically. This led to the London Air Defence Area (LADA) which became the most effective method of countering the raids.

The LADA network was originally established in 1916 and had been in use throughout the RFC’s reign as protectors of the Home Front. ‘The main air defence system of 1918, the London Air Defence Area (LADA), featured the most advanced command, control, communication and intelligence system on earth,’ historian John Ferns enthused. The ground centre would immediately receive reports of approaching raiders from its observer stations dotted around the country, and information could be relayed quickly to the aerodromes to intercept them. The entire process could take as little as five minutes. Morris showed that the system relied on a network of intercept stations along the coast to spot the raiders on their approach and contact headquarters at Horse Guards Parade:

When a raid started, all telephones were manned and the information which came to hand at any one station was rapidly passed to all other stations that might be concerned. Similarly the fighting squadrons were in touch with the Horse Guards and the batteries, searchlights and listening posts in their vicinity. At each squadron and at each group of ground stations there was an operations room in which all the telephone wires converged ... . The operations room at the Horse Guards was an elaborate affair. A number of operators sat round the table, each receiving news from a specific area.⁷³

Rapid communications between stations was vital to the success of the system which would be most effectively used in the Second World War. During 1917 and 1918 the system was refined but practical problems such as poor intercept rates and the use of older aeroplanes (as the latest machines were directed to the efforts on the Western Front) meant the value of the system could not be fully realised. The RFC, despite its inferior technology, however, had developed an system that would eventually deter German attack. It was not until 1918 and the amalgamation of the RFC and RNAS that more men and machines could be committed to it, but the existence of the system itself demonstrates the offensive outlook of the RFC, which explored innovative methods even when current resources were not adequate to achieve their goal. ‘By 1918,’ Ferris concluded, ‘LADA had solved many of the problems in strategic air defence and was pursuing effective solutions for the rest.’⁷⁴

The Royal Flying Corps’s task of defending the Home Front was fraught with difficulties and, like its naval predecessors, it felt the strain of fighting on two fronts without being able to dedicate its attention entirely to defending English soil. However, where it departed from the RNAS was in the development of technologies and countermeasures, however ambitious, to complete its task. Systems such as LADA were in place long before there were adequate machines to make them viable, but RFC commanders had the foresight to pursue the method and encouraged technology to meet their objectives. Furthermore the RFC recognized the expertise of pilots in being able to judge the situation and did not insist on over-centralizing orders. ‘It is to be clearly understood that the Senior Flying Corps officer at each station is solely responsible for ordering machines into the air,’ the War Office instructed the LADA network. Consequently patrols ‘should go up at a certain hour if the weather conditions permit of flying, but it is impossible for anyone except an officer on the spot to judge of local conditions.’⁷⁵ As a result, the War Office recorded just ten aeroplane raids in 1918; the last came in July with no fatalities. The total raid casualties for 1918 were just 168 compared to over 450 deaths recorded for 1917.⁷⁶ German resources were dwindling in the final year of the war, but with the great reduction in civilian deaths, the LADA network contributed to effective deterrence of enemy aircraft.

Servicemen had mixed views on the Home Front and its sufferings. As the public became more used to raids, they became more adept at dealing with them. The government stopped issuing warnings, C. M. White explained, ‘particularly by day, because of the unnecessary alarm and disruption of war work, and the probability that people could be enticed onto the streets to watch instead of remaining in the comparative safety of buildings’.77 Panic was less widespread as they were able to manage the movement of people off the streets, and, as Charlton proudly states, so ‘disciplined did the populace become in time that busy thoroughfares such as the Strand, or with equal amount of wheeled and pedestrian traffic, would be cleared and stilled in the twinkling of an eye as soon as the air raid warning was given’. Men abandoned their cars or carts to find shelter as the ‘fizzing, high-pitched whine of the bomb arriving from above at incredible speed’, Charlton recalled, and ‘seemed to be personally directed at each one who heard it, and the curious cushioned sound of the resulting explosion, evil as it was, occasioned a sense of relief that the missile had its mark elsewhere.’⁷⁸ Yet the fear and frustration caused by air raids had some positive outcomes. Ethel Richardson, in her 1934 memoir, explained that British propagandists used the bombing to support military recruitment, and ‘it was remarkable to note the instant effect which one taking place in the town had upon the number of men enlisting for active service. Ocular demonstration of war brought home that fact better than any number of posters and newspaper appeals.’⁷⁹ For the members of the air services assigned to protecting Britain, this increased the sense of responsibility they held for defending the Home Front.

Some British servicemen were motivated by the illegality of the attacks on their families; confident that in the eyes of the international community, Germany had acted illegally. A raid on London outraged RFC pilot Cecil Lewis in June 1917. While the raid caused little collateral damage, the appearance of the aeroplane was enough to cause him to lament ‘Barbarians! Dastards! Bombing towns! Waging war against defenceless women and children.’⁸⁰ Likewise, ace James McCudden complained how ‘insolent these damned Boches did look, absolutely lording the sky above England. I was absolutely furious to think the Huns should come over and bomb London and have it practically all their own way.’⁸¹ The feeling of consternation engendered by air raids led to condemnation by British servicemen and gave greater urgency to the need to develop systems to protect their families.

Whilst some servicemen were outraged, others were unsympathetic. For example, RFC pilot Philip Joubert de la Ferte felt the raids were a just punishment on civilians who had contributed little to the war effort. ‘It sounds a horrible thing to say,’ he told his mother in October 1915, ‘but I am glad that a little execution is being done in England. It may bring home to the “great heart of England” that there really is a war going on.’⁸² The gulf between serviceman and civilian was emphasized by the raids to the annoyance of the former. ‘Orpen’, an artist serving with the RNAS, ranted against civilian self-centredness in his 1924 memoir. ‘Their constant talk,’ he fumed, ‘was of the terrible thing they at home were going through on air raid nights. It hurts me – their complaining about their little chance of damage, when I knew that millions of men were running a big risk of being blown into eternity at any moment, day or night.’⁸³ Whilst on leave, pilot Alan Bott was surprised to discover the public considered his work tedious. ‘I was present at a merry gathering of theatrical luminaries,’ he wrote, who were ‘enormously interested in themselves but enormously bored by the war, which usurped so much newspaper space that belonged by rights to the lighter drama.’⁸⁴ Francis Pattenden was also frustrated by the cynicism at home of those in 1916. ‘You folks at home,’ he told his parents, ‘at least some of you seem to me (from your letters) to be getting jolly pessimistic over the war ... .It gives us chaps the pip, hump, blues etc, to hear people at home talking about the “Germans winning because they are so clever.” That’s all bosh.’⁸⁵ These reactions to the public are quite revealing, and show that some servicemen on the Western Front felt that their role was unappreciated, even though the risks they faced were arguably far greater.

This issue of servicemen responses to civilians during wartime is quite complex and can be described as an essential separation of the ‘public’ and ‘private’ home fronts, meaning that combatants’ attitudes to the general public were quite often different to the care and concern they felt for their families. Privy to the rumours of loose living and especially corporate profiteers in Britain, naturally servicemen would be outraged as they did their duty from a cold ship or aeroplane. Yet simultaneously the safety of their own families and friends was an utmost consideration and part of their complex system of motivation.⁸⁶ Whilst servicemen could be dismissive of the public at home, the protection of their own families was always a primary consideration. This also added to the pressure on those charged with defending the Home Front, the pilots of the Royal Naval Air Service, and the Royal Flying Corps. Not only did their work directly guard the civilians below them who experienced the brutalities and tragedies of enemy action, but their comrades in France and Belgium relied upon them to protect the families they were fighting for.

Being stationed on the Home Front was a new experience for servicemen and quite different to serving in France. The combination of familiar surroundings and the pressure to protect them from the bombers created a closer, more immediately protective link to the civilian population than existed on the Western Front. Servicemen were challenged by longer periods of inactivity than they had encountered abroad, and a greater sense of futility, especially in the early years when reaching the invaders was near impossible. The RFC too was largely powerless whilst fighting a war on two fronts, but still managed to initiate a system (the London Air Defence Area) that would prove invaluable once technological advances could meet the needs of home defence pilots. By 1918, this had been achieved and the system would form the basis of aerial defence in the Second World War. Fundamentally, the story of the Home Front during the First World War is one of confusion, caused by the division of control between the RNAS and RFC. Despite the enthusiasm of their pilots and ‘the seemingly endless disappointments, squadrons held to the belief that success would eventually come their way’, historians Christopher Cole and E. F. Cheeseman argued.⁸⁷ The division created significant problems in the allocation of resources and left large areas of Britain undefended. This led to the formation of the Royal Air Force in the spring of 1918. Although home service pilots complained of inactivity and shared the deprivations of life at home, they continued to hope, as RFC pilot Philip Joubert de la Ferte believed, that war would be ‘the moral and physical salvation of our country’.⁸⁸ During the Great War, the air raids were a central feature of life on the home front and for those charged with their resistance, a difficult and initially overwhelming challenge. But in the context of the entire war, Charlton noted in 1936, the raids were quickly forgotten, for those who actually experienced the fear and destruction were ‘not a large proportion of the present population. It is probable that they do not exceed thirty per cent. Thirty-five millions of persons, old and young ... have only a hearsay knowledge, if any at all, of those dark days.’⁸⁹ They were soon to be reminded, in the arrival of a second war, but were able to rely on a system of detection and interception established during Britain’s first period of air raids, and the men who pioneered the systems of home defence.

CHAPTER 4

HOME FRONT