CHAPTER 9

The Naval Air Service

The Wright Brothers made their first successful flight at Kitty Hawk Bay, North Carolina, on 17 December 1903. It established that the combination of the glider and the new internal combustion engine was possible, and that their system of lateral control, by warping the wings rather than moving the crew from side to side, was the way forward. That first flight was very short and they proceeded cautiously – it was nearly a year before they could stay in the air for more than five minutes. Europe only became fully aware of their achievement in the summer of 1908 when they demonstrated their machine near Le Mans. In London The Times reported: ‘All present affirm that, after yesterday’s experiment, there can be no doubt that the Wrights possess a machine capable of remaining an hour in the air and almost as manageable as if it were a small toy held in the hand.’¹ In Britain the three Short brothers had been making balloons, but soon realised where the future lay. They bought a licence to build six Wright flyers, and soon began to develop designs of their own.

Churchill had observed the Royal Engineers balloon in the march to Ladysmith but did not enquire deeply into its function. His interest in aeroplanes is first noted on 15 February 1909 when the Committee for Imperial Defence (CID) was informed that C. S. Rolls (one of the founders of Rolls Royce) had purchased a Wright biplane from the Shorts and was offering its services to the government for experiments. Churchill, then President of the Board of Trade, noted that ‘there was a danger of these proposals being considered too amateurish. The problem of the use of aeroplanes was a most important one, and we should place ourselves in communication with Mr Wright himself, and avail ourselves of his knowledge.’² As Home Secretary in 1910, Churchill was concerned about international agreements on the use of the air. In particular, he wanted to retain the right to prevent aircraft from overflying sensitive areas such as naval dockyards.³ In May 1911 he attended a display of ‘bombing’ arranged by Claude Grahame-White when he dropped sandbags on mock targets in his airfield at Hendon.⁴ Meanwhile in February 1911 a wealthy enthusiast, Frank McClean, offered the use of two aircraft for training naval pilots. Four officers were chosen out of 200 applicants and they were trained at Eastchurch, where McClean had a site which he let out to the Royal Aero Club. The first to qualify, in April 1911, was Lieutenant Charles Samson, quickly followed by Lieutenant Arthur Longmore. They were given the task of training another batch of pilots at Eastchurch.

Aside from this progress with heavier-than-air machines, Churchill came to the Admiralty just after naval aviation’s first great setback. The airship R1 (popularly known as Mayfly) had been built by Vickers in Barrow in Furness with very little experience of airship design, and limited intelligence of the highly successful craft being built by Count von Zeppelin in Germany. On 24 September she was wrecked by a combination of structural weakness and crew inexperience in handling her as she was put into her shed. Her cost had doubled to £70,000, a large slice of the naval aviation budget. This was precisely the moment when heavier-than-air naval aviation reached the first stage of its gestation. According to Longmore, ‘By the end of October 1911, our flying education was sufficiently complete to turn our attention seriously to the business of applying the new science to the needs of the Navy.’⁵ In April 1912, on the recommendation of the Committee of Imperial Defence attended by Churchill, the Royal Flying Corps was created as a joint-service organisation. There was to be a Central Flying School at Upavon in inland Wiltshire, where army and navy pilots would be trained to fly, an army wing, and a naval wing based at Eastchurch, which would concentrate on the purely maritime aspects of flying. A few weeks later Churchill was able to set up the post of Director of the Air Department under the formidable Captain Murray F. Sueter. Two years older than Churchill, he was an intelligent, inventive and outspoken officer who had already worked on the development of mines, torpedoes and submarines before taking over as inspecting captain of airships in 1910. In his new post, he answered to no less than three separate Lords of the Admiralty on different matters, but Churchill later claimed that he had ‘placed the Royal Naval Air Service under my personal administration, i.e. it was not administered by any of the Sea Lords of the Admiralty, but the Director of the Air Division received his instructions directly from myself’.

Churchill insisted that the air service should not grow out of the Royal Engineers Balloon Service, but be ‘a new and separate organisation drawing from civilian, as well as naval and military sources’. He wanted to ‘make aviation for war purposes the most honourable, as it is the most dangerous profession an Englishman can adopt’.⁶ At this time he was in favour of a good deal of joint operation between the army and naval air services. In November 1911

His view on the matter was that the principal part of the art of aviation was neither naval nor military. Before airmen could be useful either for naval or military purposes they must have mastered the art of flying. Once this had been accomplished it would be comparatively easy for airmen to acquire such special knowledge as would render them useful to the Navy or Army. Even without such special knowledge an airman would be of great value, for he could take an expert as passenger.

Lieutenant Samson was outspoken enough to challenge the last point. At present, ‘the tendency was to employ aeroplanes without a passenger for naval purposes, owing to the sacrifice of petrol and the consequent reduction in the radius of action when a passenger was carried’.⁷

During his first year at the Admiralty Churchill was preoccupied with the problems of setting up a naval staff. When he presented his first naval estimates to parliament on 4 March 1912, there were only three lines on naval aviation, lacking in any detail: ‘The development of aviation for naval purposes has been the subject of special attention, and all possible measures have been taken to procure an adequate and immediate supply of trained officers and mechanics.’⁸ Already he was being urged on by Fisher: ‘Aviation supersedes small cruisers and intelligence vessels.’⁹ But after so much money had been lost on the Mayfly, it was difficult to get more.

The naval wing tended to attract officers of independent disposition, who were only too glad to get away from the stifling atmosphere of the regular navy. At their head was the Director himself, Captain Murray Sueter, who soon became a tireless advocate of air power. Among the pilots, the first to qualify (by a few hours) was Lieutenant Charles Samson. At first the relationship between the two was not easy, however. According to Sueter:

At first I did not understand Samson. He always reminded me of what one reads of Francis Drake. Until you knew him, a most difficult man to deal with. But once he saw that a Senior Officer was full out to help him in every possible way, he was a different person. No job was too difficult for him to undertake, and his men would follow him anywhere.¹⁰

It was officers like these who took most of the initiative in the development of naval air power, but Samson recognised that Churchill encouraged them. He and Murray Sueter were ‘the two people responsible for anything the Navy did to help Naval Aviation’.¹¹

When the first programme was drawn up for ‘The Inspection of the Fleet by His Majesty the King at Weymouth’ on 7–11 May 1912, there was no mention of aerial activity except a list of four in the ‘Aeroplane “Flight”’ – a term which Churchill claimed to have devised himself.¹² These were of some variety, a Short ‘hydro-aeroplane’, a French Deperdussin monoplane, a Short monoplane and a Short biplane, with the possibility that a French Nieuport might be added. They would be flown by the original naval pilots, Samson, Longmore, Reginald Gregory and Eugene Gerrard.

In the event much of the naval display was interrupted by bad weather, but the naval aviators, supported by civilian pioneers such as Claude Grahame-White, were undaunted. Pencil notes were added to a surviving copy of the programme, it is not clear whether before or after the event. As the King arrived his yacht was to be ‘met by aeroplanes, who signal approach to fleet’. As the Red and Blue fleets selected for the annual manoeuvres rendezvoused, there would be ‘Aeroplanes probably in attendance.’ On the final day there would be an ‘aeroplane display – tracking torpedoes etc.’.¹³ On 8 May Gregory dropped a 300-lb weight representing a bomb near the Royal Yacht and raised the possibility of attacking warships. The civilians gave a ‘dazzling display’ while Grahame-White photographed the battleship Neptune and it was reproduced in the newspapers. Samson flew the Short ‘hydro-aeroplane’ off from the bay, the first public demonstration of such a take-off.

The highlight was planned for 9 May. Samson had already taken off from a system of rails on the battleship Africa at anchor off Sheerness, following the American pioneer Eugene Ely. Now he was to carry out the first take-off from a moving ship, the Hibernia. The King was said to fear that he might crash into the water ahead of the ship, but when the battleship steamed at 10½ knots across the bay Samson was able to use the wind to get in the air in 45 feet, less than half the distance he had needed on the Africa. He landed in an airfield nearby, having demonstrated what would become the standard method of launching in the future. The display was largely improvised by the aviators themselves and attracted a great deal of attention in the press. Churchill was present and was perhaps influenced by it. Lord Rothschild wrote to him of ‘the great effect produced on your guests at the Naval Review by everything they saw’.¹⁴ In August Churchill was still complaining: ‘I am much surprised to get a third refusal from the treasury on the subject of the Air Department at the Admiralty.’ He would ‘not be responsible for the conduct of Admiralty business unless this most vital aspect of naval aeronautics received the attention and study it deserves’.¹⁵ But soon this would begin to change.

In October 1913, after two years at the Admiralty, Churchill turned his full attention to the role of naval air power. He saw four main tasks – scouting from a ship at sea, fighting enemy aircraft and airships to protect the fleet, protecting vulnerable points on the British coast, and patrolling the coast. He proposed three types of aircraft. The ‘overseas fighting machine’ was intended to operate from a ship and was to be fitted with floats and folding wings for stowage. It could be used to attack the ‘vulnerable points’ of the enemy on shore, such as docks and magazines, though for the moment ‘promiscuous attack’ should be ruled out. It would depend on its speed to escape from enemy fighters, though that tended to contradict the use of floats. It would also defend the fleet against reconnaissance by enemy airships, perhaps by dropping explosive charges or fireballs on them from a height of 2,000 feet. The ‘home service fighting machine’ was to defend vulnerable points such as oil tanks and magazines. It did not need the burden of floats, but would carry a passenger who would operate a hand gun, plus the bombs or fireballs as the main offensive weapon against airships. The third type, the ‘sea scouting machine’, was for use by the fleet at sea. They might be carried by specially equipped ships, or individually by battleships. Speed could be sacrificed to long range, and they too would need floats and folding wings.¹⁶

As early as December 1911, Churchill was convinced that ‘real, young and capable men, who have already done so much for the new arm’, should be ‘placed effectually at the head of the new Corps of Airmen’. This aim would always conflict with conventional naval opinion, which deplored temporary rank or accelerated promotion, and high rank should only be attained by long years of effort.¹⁷ But the new service could not be set up without some senior officers, and they did not necessarily have any experience of flying: ‘It seems unlikely that senior officers will be required for or suited to the work of pilots …’.¹⁸ Such men did not always accept the open discussion that Churchill encouraged. After the cruiser Hermes was fitted with an aircraft for the 1913 naval manoeuvres, her captain, G. W. Vivian, was technically in command of all naval air personnel. Vivian did not understand that his role was purely nominal. When Churchill held a meeting on board the Enchantress, Lieutenant Seddon complained about conditions in his new base on the Isle of Grain, and was encouraged to put it in writing for the First Lord. When he did so, Vivian was incensed and complained. Churchill decided to terminate his appointment as soon as the commission of the Hermes ended in a few months’ time.¹⁹ Likewise Captain Godfrey Paine of the Central Flying School was by-passed, because it was believed he had ‘a very poor opinion of the Naval Wing’. He was not really a member of it, but a naval officer on secondment to the Central Flying School, and he should be left there.²⁰

The biggest problem was likely to be with the middle levels, the squadron and flight commanders who would lead their men in the air and on the ground. Seniority as a naval lieutenant was no guarantee of suitability in the flying role. In January 1914 Pakenham and Sueter made two proposals for rank structure which Churchill rejected. One alternative would make it possible for ‘a very young and junior officer in the Navy to be advanced to be a Squadron Commander in the flying service’ so that he would have ‘substantive rank and authority over officers of the regular naval service four, five, and six years his senior’. This would ‘not be assented to by the Second Sea Lord, and would be very much disliked in the service afloat’ – a level of opposition which even Churchill did not want to take on. The other proposal was for officers simply to retain their rank in general service while attached to the flying branch, which had equally severe problems. ‘It condemns an officer of junior naval rank to remain permanently at the bottom of his flying grade, and no matter how long he has been flying or how high his qualifications he will be automatically superseded by officers of senior naval rank in the same flying grade, not matter how temporary their connection with the flying service may be.’²¹

In July 1914, therefore, a system of officer ranks was set up especially for the RNAS, in an attempt to by-pass the rules of naval seniority. New entrants from civilian life would be probationary flight-sub-lieutenants. A flight lieutenant was equivalent to a sub-lieutenant RN, a flight commander to a full lieutenant with at least four years seniority. A squadron commander who was not actually in command would be equivalent to a senior lieutenant, or a lieutenant commander if senior enough; a squadron commander in command would have the relative rank of lieutenant commander. Above that in the senior ranks were six wing commanders, including Samson. The highest rank of wing captain was held by Sueter. Promotion would be by selection only, a policy which Churchill supported fully. Officers could expect to serve for four years in the air service, for Churchill believed that ‘we ought not to expect at present that any officer, however young, will continue to fly an aeroplane for more than from three to five years’.²² After that an officer might revert to general service, unless he was offered a post in the higher command.²³

Churchill was aware that this was less favourable than the army system, for ‘The [War Office] give temporary military rank effective for all purposes, even outside the Flying Corps to military flying officers proportioned to their flying grades, involving in most cases an advance of a distinct grade. Thus an Army Captain who is promoted Squadron Commander in the Flying Corps is made an Army Major for all purposes on the day of his promotion in the Flying Corps, and so on.’ The navy scheme was ‘far more modest’ in that the higher rank had no effect outside the flying service.²⁴ Possibly this is what caused Sueter to notice that ‘some of the Air Officers are not in complete agreement with the new scheme for the Royal Naval Air Service’. He issued a memo pointing out that officers who had ‘a personal bias towards a policy which has definitely been rejected’ should buckle under or leave the service.²⁵

The 1914 scheme also allowed for candidates to enter from civil life. Churchill had considered this in August 1913, and commented: ‘… it is necessary to authorise and organise the direct entry of civilian flyers into the Naval Air Wing. The maximum age should, I think, be higher than 22. I apprehend the numbers will not be forthcoming unless the ages is raised to, say, 24.’ They would serve for up to ten years after which they would be entitled to a pension or lump sum, or in some cases transfer to the regular navy.²⁶ In May 1914 he outlined his ideas further:

It is essential that all persons joining the naval wing should receive the groundings of a good military training. Flying should only form a portion of their work, and periods of flying should alternate with other forms of instruction. For the present I must regard the Central Flying School as the best means of weeding those who are not likely to make good flying officers. But thereafter, during their first year of training, the probationers should be at least three months at marine headquarters, and three months either attached to the Nore Defence destroyer flotillas or in larger ships, as may be found convenient.²⁷

This was substantially adopted in the July 1914 order, though it was soon to be overtaken by events.

In 1914 Churchill concluded that naval airmen should wear ‘Naval uniform with an eagle instead of an anchor on buttons, cap badges, epaulettes, and sword belt clasps, with an eagle over the curl on the sleeve.’²⁸ According to Sueter,

Mr. Churchill wanted an eagle for a badge to be worn on the sleeve of the coat to distinguish the naval airmen. An artist was sent for and he produced a design like a goose. But Mrs. Sueter had a gold eagle brooch of French Imperial design that she had purchased in Paris. I took this eagle brooch to the Admiralty to show to Mr. Churchill and Admiral Prince Louis of Battenburg. They much preferred it to the goose design of the artist and adopted it for the badge of the Royal Naval Air Service.²⁹

The eagle was to be worn at all times. On one hand it showed that the wearer was a brave pilot. On the other hand, as Churchill put it, ‘The flying badge (which must always be worn) excludes them from all executive command outside the RF service.’³⁰

By the beginning of 1913, Churchill was much less enthusiastic about a joint service air arm.

[He] had originally been strongly in favour of a joint Naval and Military Air Service, but the lines of development of flying machines in the two Services were divergent. Naval effort was now concentrated on the Hydro-Aeroplane. … The development did not concern the Army, which required machines to alight on the land. … Observation on land was also quite different to observation on the sea. Except, therefore, in experimental work, he did not think the Navy profited in any way by co-operation with the Army in this Service.³¹

However, with his inter-service instincts, Churchill soon became a strong advocate of close links between the naval and military wings. In June 1914 he affirmed that he ‘had always looked on the Naval and Military Wings as branches of one great service’ – which might be taken to anticipate the eventual formation of the Royal Air Force.³² But less than a week later an order on the organisation of the Naval Air Service referred to it as ‘part of the Military Branch of the Royal Navy’. This has been taken to mean a move towards separation, but seen in context it was merely stating Churchill’s own policy, that all flying officers, including those seconded from the engineer and paymaster branches, should be considered part of the ‘military’ or ‘executive’ branch of the navy. This is confirmed by the next sentence, in which it was stated that this would not allow them to take command of ships, which was reserved for those on full careers in the military branch. The document went on to refer to ‘The Royal Naval Air Service, forming the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps’.³³

Churchill claimed that he flew for the first time a few months after taking office, which might explain a letter from his cousin the Duke of Marlborough dated March 1913, in which he suggested he end his ‘journeys in the air’ and that he owed it to his friends and family ‘to desist from a practice or pastime … which is fraught with so much danger to life’.³⁴ One of his first instructors was Lieutenant Spenser Grey, whom he consulted on aircraft control.³⁵ On 6 October 1913, as the Enchantress visited the naval air station at Cromarty, Lieutenant Longmore took him up in a Borel seaplane. ‘It was one of those perfect autumn evenings and from 5,000 feet we had the most beautiful view right across the hills and mountains of Scotland, with their wonderful colour effects. We both enjoyed it immensely.’³⁶ Years later Churchill described early flying in terms he would not have used to his wife at the time.

One sat in a wicker chair with a footrail and a clear view of the earth beneath. In front was a vertical rudder, on the movements of which the flight depended. Behind was the engine, of about 50 or 60 horse-power. Accidents were frequent, and often fatal. The modern generation of aviators take it for granted that the engine will go on running. In those days it was only two or three to one against it cutting out in an hour’s flight. The rule was to fly as high as possible, and always have a gliding line to some practicable landing-place. One hated flying over extensive woods. As for the sea, it was a gamble with life, the odds being somewhat in one’s favour.³⁷

On 23 October he visited Eastchurch with some friends and dignitaries, most of whom were ‘aethereal virgins’ who had not flown before. Samson took him up on a visit to the new station at the Isle of Grain, where ‘we found another large flock of sea planes in the highest state of activity’. The Astra Torres airship landed and Churchill was flown round the Medway in her, with a group of generals. He was allowed to steer the ship for an hour. He wrote to his wife: ‘It was as good as one of the old days in the S. African war, & I have lived entirely in the moment, with no care for all those tiresome party politics …’.³⁸ But Clementine was not impressed and wrote back: ‘please be kind and don’t fly any more just now’.³⁹

Churchill made light of this and was tempted again at the end of November during a visit to the Sheerness area. He began to go beyond mere ‘journeys in the air’ and started to learn to fly. At Eastchurch 17 naval aircraft were set out for him plus three private machines. He wrote: ‘Down here with twenty machines in the air at once and thousands of flights made without mishap, it is not possible to look upon it as a very serious risk. Do not be vexed with me.’⁴⁰ So far the accident record of the Naval Air Service had been very good. Captain Gilbert Wildman-Lushington of the Royal Marines had been one of the officers chosen for the first flying course but had had to drop out through illness and joined a later course. According to Lushington, ‘I started Winston off on his instruction about 12.15 & he got so bitten with it, I could hardly get him out of the machine, in fact except for about ¾ hour for lunch we were in the machine till about 3.30. He showed great promise, & is coming down again for further instruction and practice.’⁴¹ He flew in the same Short biplane in which Samson had flown from the deck of the Hibernia ship in the previous year, though the aircraft had been modified since.

Though he clearly enjoyed the flight, Churchill was not happy about the operation of the controls. He wrote to Lushington:

I wish you would clear up the question of the steering control and let me know what was the real difficulty I had in making the rudder act. Probably I was pushing against myself, though I am not quite sure about this. It may be that they are very stiff and hard to work. Certainly the feeling I had was that I was being repeatedly over-ridden, and I thought you were controlling the steering the whole time.⁴²

Lushington felt that he had done himself ‘quite a lot of good’ during his first flight with Churchill, and investigated the matter. He flew no 2 from the passenger seat and found that the rudders were unbalanced and slightly heavy but that was ‘a good fault for an instructional machine, as the pupil is not so likely to get into difficulties’. Churchill had been pushing against himself, which was a common fault. ‘These little faults rectify themselves in time, and as you continue with your instruction, other little errors will continually be arising which you will find out for yourself. … as an instructor, I prefer the pupil to find out these difficulties himself.’⁴³

As the official manual explained, ‘… the most difficult part of flying is not the act of keeping the machine upright in the air, but that of getting into the air and getting back to the ground again’.⁴⁴ Even an experienced pilot like Lushington could fall foul of this, and soon after replying to Churchill he crashed and was killed while coming in to land at Eastchurch. Churchill wrote to his fiancée: ‘To be killed instantly without pain or fear in the necessary service of the country when one is quite happy and life is full of success & hope, cannot be reckoned the worst of fortune. But to some who are left behind the loss is terrible.’⁴⁵

The accident inspired more criticism of Churchill’s risk-taking. In April 1914 there was a narrow escape when an engine failed and his aircraft had to land near Clacton Pier.⁴⁶ He flew again ‘in good & careful hands & under perfect conditions’ during a visit to the Central Flying School in May, but the accident toll was mounting, and at the beginning of June Clementine was again troubled: ‘Dearest I cannot help knowing that you are going to fly as you go to Sheerness & it fills me with anxiety. I know nothing will stop you from doing it so I will not weary you with tedious entreaties, but don’t forget that I am thinking about you all the time & so, do it as little, & as moderately as you can, & only with the very best Pilot.’ She was pregnant at the time and finally got through to Winston, who agreed not to fly any more, ‘at any rate until you have recovered from your kitten: & by then perhaps the risks may have been greatly reduced’. It was a great wrench to him, for he was about to take his pilot’s certificate. ‘I only needed a couple of calm mornings; and I am confident of my ability to achieve it very respectably.’ He went on to sum up his flying career so far.

… I know a good deal about this fascinating new art. I can manage a machine with ease in the air, and even with high winds, & only a little more practice in landings would have enabled me to go up with reasonable safety alone. I have been up nearly 140 times, with many pilots, & all kinds of machines, so I know the difficulties and dangers of the air – well enough to appreciate them, & to understand all the questions of policy which will arise in the near future.⁴⁷

Certainly his experiences gave Churchill detailed opinions on aircraft control which some might consider to be micro-management. Two days before giving up flying he had written to Sueter:

The engine controls of the new Maurice Farman are a good example of what to avoid in this class of work. They are awkward, flimsy, inconveniently shaped, and ill-secured to the fuselage. The switch is also cheap and common in the last degree. No-one would put such fittings in a motor car costing £1,000.⁴⁸

One might ask why, after 140 flights, he had not yet learned to fly properly or even gone solo. According to the future Chief of Air Staff, Hugh Trenchard, who saw him flying occasionally at Upavon (and who was never a very good pilot himself), ‘He seemed altogether too impatient for a good pupil, and I could sympathise. He would arrive unexpectedly, usually without pyjamas or even a handkerchief, see what he wanted to see, and stay the night – or what was left of it when he’d finished talking.’⁴⁹