Secret Warriors

by Taylor Downing

  Another aircraft designer, closer to the military establishment, was John William Dunne. As an officer serving during the Boer War, Dunne had become convinced of the need for effective aerial reconnaissance of the enemy’s gun positions. Invalided out of the army, he started designing aircraft with swept-back, V-shaped wings, convinced that these would bring the stability necessary for high-quality aerial observation. Like many pioneers he was able to raise neither interest in nor funding for his designs until his father, a general, pulled some strings, enabling Dunne to start working with Capper at Farnborough in June 1906. Capper became a great supporter of Dunne’s. For three years he worked on designs for the British Army; historian Hugh Driver has described this as the first ‘uninterrupted, state-aided flight research’ in Britain.17

  In 1908, the reforming Secretary of State for War, Richard Haldane, finally turned his attention to military aviation. Looking at the pioneers, however, he did not like what he saw. He perceived them as a group of cranks, pranksters and hopeless dreamers coming up with impractical designs and offering thrills more akin to a fairground sideshow than a solid military operation. To Haldane, they added up to little more than a bunch of bicycle mechanics, wealthy sportsmen and motor engineers, accompanied by a flying cowboy. Everywhere, their experiments appeared to be based on simple trial and error. There was no scientific theory behind it all. Haldane was a great believer that science should provide the rational principles on which all human endeavours were to be based. This was the ‘faith’, as he called it, which drove his army reforms. But he could see important work going on elsewhere, particularly in Germany, a country of which he was a great admirer. No one had yet flown more than a few hundred yards and Haldane put that down to the fact that the experimenters were amateurs who lacked any proper theoretical understanding of the technology they were attempting to develop.

  Lord Northcliffe was extremely critical of government policy on aviation and argued in a personal letter to Haldane that the country was way behind others in Europe. But aircraft at this very early stage were just too fragile and unreliable to impress the military. Haldane replied that not only was Britain behind Europe in scientific knowledge, but that ‘dirigibles and still more aeroplanes are a very long way off indeed being the slightest practical use in war.’18 He decided that science must be applied to aviation in order to give it value to the British military establishment.

  Accordingly, Haldane turned to the all-powerful Committee of Imperial Defence, the body that looked at the broad strategic objectives for the defence of Britain and its empire. A week after Cody’s first near-fatal flight, Haldane created a specialist sub-committee chaired by Lord Esher on ‘Aerial Navigation’. He invited several leading figures of the day to give evidence. Following the Secretary of State’s lead, the sub-committee took a very dim view of the experiments taking place at the Balloon Factory. To the committee members it always seemed that Capper was on the verge of achieving something significant but never quite getting there. Their report noted that despite all recent progress, the pioneers ‘can scarcely yet be considered to have emerged from the experimental stage’, and that the machines they were working on lacked ‘practical value’.19 The sub-committee therefore came to the remarkable conclusion that the army should abandon its aircraft trials, justifying this in part on the grounds of economy. They argued that private aircraft companies should carry out research and development; when the technology had improved and something of practical value was available, then the army could step in and buy it. In the meantime, Capper, Dunne and Cody could be dispensed with. Instead, Haldane called for a new start in military aviation.

  On 30 April 1909, by a bizarre coincidence on the very same day that Brabazon made his first historic powered flight in Britain, Haldane announced the next and most important reform he was to make in the world of military aviation with the creation of an Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. In announcing the committee Herbert Asquith, who had taken over as Prime Minister of the Liberal government the year before, said it would ensure ‘that the highest scientific talent shall be brought to bear on the problems [of aeronautics]’.20 Its president was one of the most prominent men of science in Britain, the distinguished Cambridge physicist Lord Rayleigh, a Nobel Prize winner and former president of the Royal Society, while its chair was to be Dr Richard Glazebrook, the director of the National Physical Laboratory, a Cambridge mathematician who had immense energy and a reputation for getting things done. Several committee members were also members of the Royal Society: William Napier Shaw, another Cambridge mathematician, was director of the Meteorological Office and always keen to explore new ideas; Horace Darwin, the fifth son of Charles Darwin the evolutionist, was an engineer who later set up the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company; and Sir Joseph Petavel was Professor of Engineering at Manchester University. There were also military representatives, but only one member came from outside the worlds of soldiering and academic science. Lord Rayleigh asked Frederick Lanchester, the motor car designer, to join. Not only had Lanchester been a prime mover in establishing the British car industry, but he had a technical mind that ranged over a variety of subjects. In addition to improving the design of motor engines he studied and wrote about the principles of aviation, before designing his own aircraft. Despite his lack of formal education, Lanchester was a popular committee member and he had a great sense of humour, while as the only one who had actually struggled with the aerodynamics of aircraft design, he would bring essential practical experience to the committee’s deliberations.

  With such leading scientists now applying their minds to the challenges of aviation, Haldane had what he wanted, a group that could provide the ‘foundation of science’ on which to base military aviation. No more trial and error. Now leading men of science would lay down the theoretical foundations of aeronautics. It was a breakthrough for science, for aviation and for the armed services.21 Britain had taken the first step towards creating a form of laboratory to prepare the military for war in the air. But how quickly would their academic and theoretical deliberations take effect if war should come sooner than anticipated?

  3

  The New Science

  The Advisory Committee on Aeronautics immediately set to work. Its distinguished members turned their minds to such subjects as the ‘mathematical investigation of stability’, ‘the resistance of stabilising planes, both horizontal and vertical’, the ‘effect of rudder action’, the ‘effect of gusts of wind’ and ‘materials for aeroplane construction’. They studied the efficiency of different types of propeller blades, they investigated the general principles of aerodynamics and explored the reliability, steadiness, efficiency and design of motor engines. They looked at suitable fabrics for the covering of airships. They built a wind tunnel at Teddington in which to conduct aerodynamic experiments on models and a spinning arm with which to try out different types of propeller. They built a 60ft-high wind tower in a remote spot in Bushy Park in north London to observe both wind velocities and the vertical and rotary motion of air currents. They researched different types of aluminium alloy and assessed their strengths. At Imperial College, London, the committee set up two research scholarships in aeronautics for advanced engineering students.1 They were certainly trying hard, as Haldane wished, to establish the foundations of a science of aviation.

  The government was regularly criticised for making the committee too academic and for not accepting that the aviation companies were also doing valuable practical work. The question was asked time and again whether aviation should develop ‘practically’ or ‘scientifically’. One critic, Arthur Lee, put it to Haldane in a debate in the House of Commons: ‘While pure science is very well in its way, I think this is a case where it is of more value when diluted with a great deal of practical experience.’2 Haldane continued to argue that ‘Science must come first’ and insisted that the purpose of the committee was not ‘to construct or to invent’ but to solve the many problems that arose in making aircraft
stable, reliable and efficient ‘by the application of both theoretical and experimental methods of research’.3 Many, however, including Lord Northcliffe, remained highly critical of the government’s interest in aviation, preferring to continue offering prizes for the practical-minded young pioneers. By 1914, the Daily Mail had handed out more than £24,000 (equivalent to at least £2.4 million today) in prize money for aeronautical contests.4

  Advances in aviation were now happening at a dizzying rate. Britain’s first international air show was held at Doncaster in October 1909 and attracted thirty thousand eager visitors. In June 1910, Charles Rolls, seeking to publicise advances in flight, made the first double crossing of the English Channel in a French version of the Wright Flyer. The Short brothers on the Isle of Sheppey made six Wright brothers Flyers under licence. Rolls bought one and donated it to the army. The Admiralty, too, began a relationship with the Short company that would continue well into the war. And at last investors were coming forward. John Dunne, sacked from working for the army, formed his own syndicate with backing from the Marquess of Tullibardine, Lord Rothschild and the Duke of Westminster. The development of aviation was moving into its next phase.5

  But there was a negative side. Only a month after his double Channel crossing, Rolls was flying at an air show in Bournemouth. He came in to land at a very steep angle when his tailplane broke off and his aircraft plunged vertically to the ground from about eighty feet. Rolls was killed instantly in the crash. One of the great proponents of the nascent motor car and aeroplane industries was lost. John Moore-Brabazon was ‘sickened’ by the death of his friend and did not fly again until the war.6 In 1910, roughly one flight in every 500 resulted in a fatal accident. For the early pioneers, powered flight was not just daring, it was downright dangerous.

  While Haldane’s Advisory Committee on Aeronautics continued with its researches to try to reduce the risks, John Capper was replaced at the Balloon Factory by a dour Dubliner, Mervyn O’Gorman, a senior consulting engineer who shared Haldane’s scepticism of the amateur pioneers and his belief in the need for a scientific base on which to establish aviation. It fell to O’Gorman to try to marry the committee’s theoretical work with the next phase of design work for the army. Having brought in from Daimler a new chief engineer, Frederick Green, O’Gorman decided to seek out a new chief designer, perhaps recognising that theory could go so far, but to get an aircraft flying for the army he would need someone with practical skills. The person he chose on Green’s advice was a man who would become a legend in the British aviation industry, Geoffrey de Havilland.

  De Havilland was the son of a Buckinghamshire clergyman. His father wanted Geoffrey to follow him into the church, but like many young men of his generation he became fascinated by the mechanics and engineering of the new motor cars. He showed his technical abilities when he was only a teenager by installing a generator in the family home to provide electricity. In 1900 he started at the Crystal Palace Engineering School, where as a student he designed and produced a highly efficient motorcycle engine. De Havilland had an inquisitive mind but with this came a sort of restlessness and he tended to move on rapidly from one thing to another. Bored with motorcycles, he sold the patent to his design and it became the principal engine that powered the machines of the immensely successful Blackburne company. He went on to an apprenticeship with a steam engine manufacturer in Rugby, worked for the Wolseley motor car company in Birmingham and then became designer for a motor omnibus company in Walthamstow. While there he came across Wilbur Wright’s aeroplane displays in France. He later wrote that he realised immediately that ‘this was the machine to which I was prepared to give my life.’7

  De Havilland persuaded his grandfather to invest £1000 in his new venture and he left his employment to begin making drawings for his own aircraft. He opened a workshop in Fulham and started construction with whatever materials he could lay his hands on, using a 45 hp engine built for him by a company in Willesden. Like other pioneer designers, he then had to find somewhere to try to fly his aircraft, and he eventually gained permission from Lord Carnarvon to use a part of his Highclere Park estate in Hampshire called Seven Barrows. Here he got his machine flying, but he had so little experience of how to control the aircraft that he soon crashed it. He retrieved the engine and built a second, lighter aircraft which he again succeeded in getting airborne. So confident was he in this new aircraft that he took his wife and eight-week-old baby for a joyride in it. De Havilland then had the good fortune to meet Frederick Green, who knew that things were developing at the Balloon Factory. Green introduced him to O’Gorman, who agreed to buy de Havilland’s aircraft for £400 and to take him on as chief designer. It was a lucky break both for de Havilland and the British Army.

  De Havilland was now effectively the sole War Office aircraft designer, operating a sort of monopoly of aircraft manufacturing for the army. His first aircraft was called the Farman Experimental 1 or FE1. He soon designed and built an improved version with a 70 hp Renault engine, while a variant, fitted out with a Vickers-Maxim machine gun mounted in the nacelle, was called the FE2b. De Havilland must have been like a kid in a candy store, with facilities that he could barely have dreamed of a few years before in his Fulham workshop. He began a highly productive period and designed a series of ‘pusher’ planes (with the propeller facing backwards, ‘pushing’ the aircraft forwards) and a series of ‘tractor’ planes (with the propeller facing forward and slicing through the air). The tractor planes were named as Blériot Expérimentais and were given a BE delineation, although unlike Blériot’s monoplane, all of the army’s BEs were biplanes. The BE2 proved to be a winning model and went on to be one of Britain’s main fighter aircraft in the early part of the war. It was constantly modified and improved, and with its several variants more than 2000 BE2s would be manufactured over the next few years.

  Meanwhile, within the army itself, there was still little interest at senior levels in the development of aviation. Most leading figures just could not see what value these fragile, unreliable contraptions, which only flew when there was no wind, could possibly be to the armed services. General Sir Douglas Haig is supposed to have said that ‘flying can never be of any use to the army’, and another commander commented after seeing a flying demonstration, ‘These playthings will never be of use in war’.8 In the context of such attitudes, the only officers with aviation experience were young enthusiasts who had learned to fly as a hobby at their own expense and who tried to persuade their peers of the military value of their aircraft.

  Many were artillery officers who recognised the need for aerial observation. With guns now capable of firing over distances of up to seven miles, there was a great need for some form of forward observation, in order to know if a target had been hit or if shells were landing short or wide. Aircraft playing a reconnaissance role could potentially provide this function with far greater flexibility than tethered balloons had done, or so some private fliers argued. It seems extraordinary today that a professional body like the army should rely upon hobbyists to make the case for the introduction of new technology, but five years before the First World War this was the case. Moreover, with the acceptance of the recommendation that the army should discontinue its flying trials until the science of aviation was better understood, the little experimentation that still went on took place in a purely informal capacity.

  Despite the lack of interest at the top, an old firing range at Larkhill, on the fringes of the huge military exercise area of Salisbury Plain and near the artillery camp at Burford, was turned over in 1910 to a new army flying field. Artillery officers like Captain John Fulton, the first army officer to be given a pilot’s certificate by the Aero Club, and Captain Bertram Dickson, who had won several prizes for his flying feats in France, began to fly regularly there. The engineering giant British & Colonial, keen to ingratiate itself with the War Office in the hope of winning major contracts to build aircraft, offered to set up a flying school at Larkhill and was al
lowed to build three hangars on the site. Curious officers used to wander across and watch the flying, and gradually more and more of the technically minded became interested in the potential of flight. In September, two British & Colonial Bristol box kites actually took part in the army’s annual manoeuvres. However, thanks to a combination of bad weather, engine failure and inexperience, they performed without much distinction. The prevailing mood was still that there was a long way to go before the dangerous sport of flying could contribute towards fighting a real war.

  The French annual manoeuvres in the autumn of 1910 in Picardy also featured aircraft for the first time. Here the Farman biplanes and Blériot monoplanes performed far more effectively than their British counterparts. When The Times’ war correspondent, Colonel Charles à Court Repington, wrote glowingly of the role the French aircraft had played it began to dawn on the War Office that they would have to do something to avoid being left behind. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir William Nicholson, who had opposed aeronautical experiments by the army two years before, announced his conversion. He wrote in a memorandum in February 1911 that the army should ‘push on with the practical study of the military use of aircraft in the field’, making clear the reason for his conversion by writing that ‘other nations have already made considerable progress in this training and in view of the fact that aircraft will undoubtedly be used in the next war, whenever it may come, we cannot afford to delay in the matter.’9