Frederick Handley Page was another of the new generation of engineer-mechanics. Trained at the Finsbury Technical College in north London, he was always interested in the latest trends in technology and it was while he was working as chief electrical designer at an engineering firm in south-east London that be became fascinated by flight. Unhappy with the time he was devoting to flying experiments the firm sacked him and, in 1909, in his mid-twenties, he decided to set up his own company, with capital of £500. For a few years he built one-off aircraft and supplemented his meagre income from aviation by teaching evening classes at Finsbury. His company, based first at Barking, moved to a bigger site in Hendon where he won a contract from the War Office to produce versions of an official design. He began to design passenger-carrying aircraft, the first of which flew across London with a single volunteer passenger in 1911. Later he went on to build larger twin-engined biplanes with 70ft wingspans that became the prototype for the first bombers. By the end of the war the name Handley Page had become synonymous with big bombers, and although the company went on to design and produce several civil airliners it was best known for the first of the Second World War ‘heavies’, the Halifax, and later for the sleek nuclear bomber, the Victor. Within years of the first flights, many of the names who would come to shape British aviation for the next half century were beginning to form small companies and become players in the aviation game.
A great deal of popular interest in early aviation was aroused by the biggest newspaper baron of the day. Lord Northcliffe was keen to promote new sports and technologies. A motoring enthusiast from the beginning, he had a collection of cars of which he was inordinately proud. He founded the Harmsworth Cup for motor-boat racing in the early twentieth century and was a founder member of the Aero Club. Seeing the massive interest aroused by the early pioneers of flight in France, and fearing that Britain was falling behind in this new science, Northcliffe launched the first of what would be a set of prizes intended to encourage advances in aviation. In November 1906 – just a week after Santos-Dumont’s pioneering 200-yard flight in France – the Daily Mail offered an award of £10,000 to the first aviator to fly from London to Manchester. No one in Britain had yet even been able to get airborne, and the idea of flying from London to Manchester in one of the early machines seemed so utterly fantastic that the award provoked widespread ridicule. Punch mockingly responded by offering £10,000 to the first aeronaut who succeeded in flying to Mars and back within a week.8
But Northcliffe had his finger on the pulse. His interest in and encouragement of the early pioneers provided an immense boost to aviation, although it was a long time before anyone was able to fly from London to Manchester. And his readers devoured stories of the magnificent young men in their flying machines. So Northcliffe came up with a series of more modest and achievable awards. He offered £1000 to the first pilot in Britain to fly a circuit of a mile. This posed several problems, because the first generation of aircraft tended simply to take off, fly in a roughly straight line and then come down. Banking and returning to the point of take-off came later. But the award was nevertheless won when Moore-Brabazon managed to fly his craft at little more than twenty feet above the ground for half a mile to a marker, then used the rudder for almost the first time to turn slowly in a perfectly flat semi-circle. He felt the wind in his face change direction and after he completed the turn it blew at him from behind. This was a strange and eerie experience. The pioneers were literally making it up as they went along. There was no instruction manual and certainly no rule book. They simply tried something new and if it worked they repeated it the next time. If it didn’t work they either crashed to the ground, or at least tried to learn from what had gone wrong. And in the case of Brabazon’s mile circuit, the Daily Mail correspondent, Charlie Hands, was there to write it all up for Northcliffe’s eager readers.9
Northcliffe’s next prize was to revolutionise the early flying industry. In 1908 he offered £500 to the first pilot who could fly a powered aircraft across the English Channel. By the end of the year no one had made the attempt, so Northcliffe doubled the prize money, and in July 1909 two pilots announced they were going to make an attempt. The first, Hubert Latham, set up camp at Sangatte near Calais and on 19 July headed off across the Channel in his Antoinette aircraft. He got to within six miles of the English coast when his engine failed and he crashed into the sea – to be rescued by a French naval destroyer. A few days later Louis Blériot arrived in Calais and prepared to make his own attempt.
Blériot had made his name and his fortune as a manufacturer of lamps for the early motor car industry. This gave him the time and opportunity to develop an interest in early flying machines. When he witnessed Santos-Dumont’s first European flight in November 1906 he decided he would design his own aircraft. Several models followed, including a successful monoplane, and despite many mishaps and a crash in which he was badly burned, Blériot carried on designing new aircraft and flying them himself. One of the problems with most aero engines at the time was that they needed to run at maximum power, and few could run for more than five minutes before they overheated or seized up. Better engineering slowly improved engine durability and Blériot was able to make flights of fifteen, then thirty, then fifty minutes duration.
At dawn on Sunday 25 July 1909, Blériot set off from Calais in his model XI aircraft. The monoplane design was recognisably modern with a 25ft wingspan, a partially covered box-girder fuselage and a small rudder in the tail. The 25 hp Anzani three-cylinder engine with a two-bladed walnut wood propeller was mounted in front of the leading edge of the wing. A triangular system of warping wires braced the wings to a support in front of the pilot, who sat just behind the wing. There was an undercarriage with wheels that could slide up or down a steel tube. Flying at 45 mph, at an altitude of about 250 feet, Blériot crossed the Channel and made a bumpy landing in strong winds on a field on the cliffs above Dover Castle. He had been in the air for 36 minutes 30 seconds. The Daily Mail correspondent raced off in a motor car, picked him up and brought him down to the harbour where a huge crowd assembled.
Blériot became an instant celebrity around the world. But in Britain the reaction was particularly intense. The press were up in arms at this Frenchman’s ability to breach Britain’s historic insularity. The Daily Express headline was ‘Britain is No Longer an Island’. The Daily Mail also noted that ‘British insularity has vanished’ but turned its sense of outrage more clearly into an attack on British lethargy for failing to develop a more advanced aviation industry. H.G. Wells blamed the British educational system for a national failure in this new science.10 No one in any part of British life could now fail to recognise the huge potential and strategic significance of powered flight.
The critical issue was that although powered flight had been invented and mastered, who was it really for? What was the market for these early box kites? There were a few wealthy adventurers, like Brabazon, Rolls and Sopwith, for whom a new pursuit like flight offered a great excitement. And the sporting side of aviation and the breaking of early records was a sensation that would attract large crowds and sell a lot of newspapers: tens of thousands queued to see Blériot’s aeroplane when it was displayed at Selfridge’s brand new department store in Oxford Street. But beyond this, everyone recognised that there was really only one market for these early flying machines – the military.
This had been appreciated from the very beginning. The Wright brothers are often presented, especially in the United States, as a homely family of simple, enthusiastic, able mechanics – humble bicycle makers who became accidental heroes. In fact they were keen not only to pioneer the new science, but also to exploit it in order to make money. They were soon offering their knowledge to armies and navies in Britain and France, and by 1906 they had added the armies of Germany, Italy, Russia, Austria and Japan to their list of potential clients. They employed a professional arms dealer, Charles R. Flint, as their agent to negotiate with foreign governments. And his propos
al was not just to sell single aircraft to foreign armies here and there but to sell entire air fleets; fifty aircraft at £2000 each.11 Flint predicted that the military potential for aviation was big.
Historians have often claimed that the British armed forces were abysmally slow to recognise the potential of powered flight.12 In reality, this was not the case. During the nineteenth century the British Army had certainly been slow to take up ballooning as a form of reconnaissance, to use an observer in a balloon to spy behind enemy lines. However, by the end of the century, the Royal Engineers – the most technologically inventive and forward-looking section of the army – had eagerly taken up and advanced the craft of military ballooning. Balloonists were at last taught the skills of aerial reconnaissance and of photography and signalling. Tethered army balloons could usually operate in winds of up to 20 mph and at a height of 1000 feet, from which an observer could often see at least two miles behind enemy lines. An army manual of 1896 declared that ‘no modern army would be considered complete without balloon equipment.’13 The Royal Engineers established the Balloon Factory, initially at Aldershot and then at Farnborough in Hampshire, with a depot containing a hangar, a machine shop, a foundry, a carpenter’s shop and several gasometers to fill up the balloons. From this primitive start, Farnborough would go on to play a central role in the development of British military aviation for almost one hundred years.
In the early years of the new century the leading figure at Farnborough was Lieutenant-Colonel John Edward Capper. He was educated at Wellington College and at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich, from where he joined the School of Military Engineering at Chatham in 1880. As a trained army engineer he was involved in road, railway and bridge construction in India and in South Africa during the Boer War. In the autumn of 1904, Capper was sent to the United States, notionally to visit the St Louis World’s Fair. But while there he called on the Wright brothers at their workshop in Dayton, Ohio. He was fascinated by what he saw and wrote a memo on his return stating: ‘We may shortly have as accessories of warfare scouting machines which will go at great pace … whilst offering from their elevated position unrivalled opportunities of ascertaining what is occurring in the heart of the enemy’s country’ He concluded, ‘America is leading the way, whilst in England practically nothing is being done … [What was needed] was a proper experimental school.’14 Less than a year after the first powered flight, the British Army’s senior aeronautical expert had already identified the aeroplane as the future for military reconnaissance.
Capper continued to hammer home his new message at every opportunity. But military staffs are notoriously slow to respond to new ideas, and it took a few years for the momentum of aviation to build up. It was certainly hard to imagine the potential of powered flight when no one had yet managed to fly in Europe. And those who were talking up flight seemed to be the cranks and experimenters, of whom the military had an inbuilt suspicion. The army view remained that they themselves knew best how to soldier. The amateurs could have their fun, but at this stage there was nothing they could teach the professionals.
However, in 1905, a new player arrived on the scene who was to have a profound effect not just on the future of aviation but upon the impact of science and scientists across the military. In that year the Conservative government of Arthur Balfour collapsed and the Liberals formed a new government under Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman. He appointed as Secretary of State for War, the civilian politician with responsibility for the army, Richard Burdon Haldane, who went on to be one of the greatest reformers of the British military establishment.
Born in Edinburgh into a leading professional family, Haldane studied at Edinburgh Academy and then went to Gôttingen University. There he fell under the influence of the German philosophical school of Hegel, which left him with a lifelong belief that rational, scientific principles should guide all action. After completing his education at Edinburgh University he began a legal career. Having been a great success chiefly as an appeals lawyer, becoming a Queen’s Counsel aged only thirty-four, he entered politics as a Liberal Imperialist supporting Herbert Asquith and Edward Grey. A great believer in education who helped to found the London School of Economics in 1895 and Imperial College, London in 1907, Haldane was rather high-minded, a philosopher by training and a lawyer by profession, an intellectual who never tried to court popular opinion or play to the crowd. In his first government appointment as Secretary for War he began to implement new ideas inspired by his passionate belief that science could help to improve all aspects of life. The period of dramatic reform that he ushered in was to shape the military force with which Britain went to war in 1914.15
First, Haldane decided there was a need to organise the army into a mobile expeditionary force that could be trained and prepared to go abroad should war break out on the continent of Europe. The force would consist of six divisions with cavalry support. With this central decision in place, other changes could be made to fit the army for its new role. The various yeomanry and militia organisations around the country were abolished and reformed into a new territorial force that would provide homeland defence when the expeditionary force went overseas. Haldane appointed Douglas Haig as the new Director of Staff Duties at the War Office and Haig began to reform the training of the army. In 1909 Haig formalised the changes, and his Field Service Regulations became the core training manual for the British Army. At the top Haldane created a new Imperial General Staff to govern the strategic direction not only of the British Army but also of the armies of the several Dominions and the Empire. The new Chief of the Imperial General Staff would be the head of the army reporting to the government. With the rapid growth of aviation it was inevitable that before long Haldane would apply his reforming zeal to this aspect of military activity as well.
While Haldane and his colleagues discussed their first reforms, changes were taking place in the embryonic world of powered flight. The infant motor industry showed the way forward. Engineer mechanics had founded several small companies by raising some cash and turning entrepreneurs. The nascent aviation industry went the same way. The pioneers were often brilliant and inspired engineers who rose to the challenges they faced. But they were not always good businessmen, nor did many of them have access to sufficient capital to establish their operations on the necessary scale. A.V. Roe, struggling to finance the production of his first aircraft in a London suburban mews garage, is a classic case in point. But the companies set up by the Short brothers, Frederick Handley Page, Thomas Sopwith and Harry Hawker were also held back by being too small. And as owner-managers, the founders were inevitably focused on the massive technological changes that were taking place rather than on plans for business growth. So, gradually, just as the aeroplane began to look as though it might have a serious military future ahead of it, bigger players came into the game.
Not surprisingly, some of the big arms manufacturers took a considerable interest in this new technology. Vickers-Maxim, one of the biggest industrial combines in the country, had started as a steel producer, grew with the development of the railways, merged with the company set up to produce machine guns and at the end of the nineteenth century diversified into shipbuilding by acquiring the shipyards at Barrow-in-Furness. In 1901 it bought the Wolseley car company and within a few years of the start of serious flying in Britain it was ready to become involved in aviation too. But, of course, its interest would be directed entirely towards the production of warplanes.
Another company that decided to expand into the aviation business was British & Colonial. Founded by one of the great Victorian entrepreneurs, George White, this had grown into the biggest producer of electric trams in Britain; White was known as the ‘tramway king’. When he decided to form the British & Colonial Aeroplane Company he had ambitions for it to become the biggest producer of aircraft for Britain and the Empire. The new company was based at the Filton tram depot near Bristol and would make aircraft under the name ‘Bristol’.
; Meanwhile, the army’s interest in aviation, directed and encouraged by Lieutenant-Colonel Capper at the Balloon Factory in Farnborough, had also grown considerably. Since the beginning of the century the Germans had been building the large, rigid airships that would become popularly known as Zeppelins. Wanting to keep his options for the future open, Capper therefore organised the construction of a rigid cylinder-shaped airship. Eager to promote the value of this new British craft, Capper had the Nulli Secundus, as it was called, flown from Farnborough to London in October 1907. Here it flew symbolically across Buckingham Palace, made a circuit around the War Office and then flew past St Paul’s Cathedral. Thousands of spectators watched, cheering enthusiastically from below in the belief that Britain was catching up with the Germans. Unfortunately, as the Nulli tried to return home it met fierce westerly headwinds and consequently had to put down in the grounds of Crystal Palace in south London. Here, the airship thrashed around in the wind and had to be dismantled. It was returned to Farnborough by road, ingloriously, in pieces. Despite the public acclaim, the airship’s arrival had not marked the start of a heroic new chapter in British aviation technology.
With a goatee beard, long flowing hair and a Stetson hat, Samuel F. Cody was an unlikely figure to come to the aid of the British Army. Modelling himself on Buffalo Bill, Cody had arrived in England in 1890 to stage Wild West cowboy stunt shows. They proved very popular and made him rich. In the early years of the new century he became fascinated with man-lifting kites and spent many years trying to persuade the military authorities of their potential. Although the army was initially sceptical, Cody was not one to take ‘no’ for an answer and he set up shop at the Balloon Factory, working with Colonel Capper. Soon his interest shifted to powered craft. By the autumn of 1908 he had built an aircraft based on the Wright biplane but powered by a 50 hp Antoinette engine. It was in this machine that he achieved the first powered flight in Britain at Farnborough on 16 October. Cody was practising his taxiing when to his surprise the wind caught the aircraft and he took off, flying for about 450 yards before crashing into a tree. Cody was lucky to walk away with only cuts and bruises.16 As he was an American citizen, however, the Aero Club did not regard Cody’s short hop as the first British powered flight.
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