The vast area of Omdurman soon came in sight on our right, then the junction of the two Niles and Khartoum at last. Frank landed in style opposite the Governor General’s white palace and taxied across to the Dockyard, where we hauled out.
Many kind people invited us to dinner during the next few days but as guests we were poor value as we both invariably fell asleep after dinner. [McClean recalled that, as they stepped ashore, a lady had invited Ogilvie and himself to go for a picnic on the river on the afternoon of their arrival!]
We dismantled the aeroplane in the Dockyard and despatched it to Shorts.
It will be admitted that this was a very trying and arduous trip for all but particularly for Frank McClean. He got very exhausted and haggard but I do not recall a cross word to me or to anyone else. He remained his genial and stout-hearted self to the end.
Thus Khartoum was finally reached at 8.55am on 22 March. Ogilvie said, ‘Everyone throughout Egypt and the Sudan was extremely kind and seemed to be determined to push us through to our destination. Unfortunately I had my pocket picked at Khartoum after arrival and so lost my notebook and diary as well as a considerable sum of money.’ Consequently the account of the expedition that he penned in 1955 was compiled from pencil notes made on the margins of the roll-up maps, many photographs, and from some dates and details given by McClean in an article published the Royal Aero Club Gazette in May 1950.
Clearly frustrated by the persistent engine problems, McClean, who had already abandoned any idea of making a return flight, wired The Aeroplane to say that the S.80 was coming back to England by boat. ‘The delay in his journey,’ the magazine reported in its 9 April issue, ‘was caused entirely by trouble with the 160hp Gnome. Apparently this sized Gnome is particularly prone to go wrong.’ On his epic flight down the Nile McClean suffered no fewer than thirteen engine breakdowns, and ‘three bad landings were made’. In 1938 McClean somewhat understated the case when he wrote:
The whole trip would have been rather colourless had it not been for that engine. At Assiut it faded out, and we had to be towed through the lock before we could make repairs. Thirty miles beyond the Aswan Dam it lost most of its horses, but enough remained for us to taxi back to civilisation, where a lady visitor at the Cataract Hotel, hearing that we had done this, expressed surprise that we should have found a ‘taxi’ so far out in the desert. A month went by while new cylinders were coming from Paris, and the time was spent exploring the second and fourth cataracts. One realised after sitting on camels for seven or eight hours a day how much harder a world it would have been if engines had been endowed with camels instead of horses.
The second cataract was passed without incident. The third was left behind before the encounter with the dust devil. The fourth was enlivened by a broken inlet valve, and one of our usual hurried landings, followed by the discovery that our commissariat had been left behind; all we had that night was tea boiled in a castor oil tin. Healthy is as healthy does!
He concluded:
All this must sound strange to those who today travel by Imperial Airways or in service machines, and who in one day cover our two months’ pilgrimage. They have no happy recollections of sand banks, of cataracts, of mud villages, camels and sand flies. Beer they may know, but not nectar.… The unsophisticated inhabitants had never dreamed of human beings appearing from the skies, and though I had once been mistaken for an angel by a small boy in Kent, I was quite unnerved when greeted by the natives as the Almighty (or his arch-enemy) – and worshipped.
Various people, including Major-General Sir Rudolf Slatin Pasha, Inspector-General of the Sudan, were given joyrides at Khartoum on the 23rd, and then S.80 was dismantled the next day for shipment back to England. McClean and company left Khartoum by train on the 26th, and sailed for England from Alexandria aboard the Austrian Lloyd steamer Helonan on 2 April.
During McClean’s absence abroad, his praises had been sung in the 17 January 1914 issue of Flight by ‘Will o’ the Wisp’, the contributor of a regular chat column entitled ‘Eddies’:
It’s a pity aviation cannot boast a few more sportsmen like Frank McClean in its ranks. Possessed of a fair share of the stuff that makes the world go round, and with a huge interest in all that pertains to aviation, either in his own interests or in the interests of others, he has probably done more for the advancement of flying than any other single individual. In the very early days he obtained possession of a large tract of land in Sheppey, round about Eastchurch, which he made over to the Royal Aero Club at a mere peppercorn rent as a practice ground. It would not be wrong either, I think, to call him the father of the Navy flyers, for he it was who at his own expense bought and placed machines at the disposal of the Admiralty to enable the first quartet of naval pupils to be trained at Eastchurch, when the Navy had not a single machine for them to learn on.
A very reticent man, so far as his own good deeds are concerned, he has done more for aviation than most people are aware of, and there is not much doubt that his recent flight up the Nile is as much in the interests of other people as for his own pleasure; nor must we forget his sister, who is frequently his passenger and companion when flying. The enthusiastic private owner is the man for aviation – would to goodness we had more like him.
Shortly after the completion of the Nile flight, and while McClean was still abroad, The Times for 27 March carried a reference to a case brought before Mr Justice Darling in the King’s Bench Division of the High Court of Justice. The plaintiff, Mr George William Hare, was suing McClean for damages for personal injuries in a motor-car accident, and McClean had applied for an adjournment because he was unexpectedly delayed in Khartoum, awaiting spares for his aeroplane. Mr Patrick Hastings, speaking on behalf of the plaintiff, opposed the application, asking ‘why it should take a gentleman, with or without an aeroplane’, such a time to come home, whereupon Mr Justice Darling commented: ‘If he is coming in the aeroplane he will probably never get here at all’. The case was allowed to stand over until 27 April.
The growth of Shorts and naval aviation
By the beginning of March the new Shorts’ factory at Rochester was virtually complete. It comprised general offices and two workshops, each 60ft wide and 240ft long. The one nearest the River Medway was to serve as an erecting and assembling shop, with the separate drawing office in one corner, while the other was to be divided into four to house the sawmills, machine shop, fitters’ shop and covering department. A slipway into the river was to be built at the end of the erecting shop. Sufficient additional land had been acquired to allow for future extensions, there being room for four more shops similar to those already built. The new factory was expected to be ready for occupation in April.
Introducing the Navy Estimates in the House of Commons on 17 March, Winston Churchill stated that £375,000 was to be spent on ‘aircraft, building and repairing by contract’ in the 1914/15 budget, compared with £113,300 the previous year. The total to be spent on naval aeronautics was £900,000. He stated that the Naval Wing now had 103 aeroplanes, of which 62 were seaplanes, 120 regular pilots and 20 officers who had taken their Aero Club certificates in addition. Five seaplane stations had been established along the coast and two more were under construction. There were now 125 officers and 500 men in the service, and by the end of the year there would be 180 officers and 1,400 or 1,500 men. He said, ‘This new service is thoroughly naval in spirit and character, but at the same time it contains, and must contain, a large element of civilians, both officers and mechanics.’ At Eastchurch a large amount of training work had been carried out, particularly in the training of engine-room artificers, artisans and other ratings in flying and in the general care and maintenance of aeroplanes of all kinds and their engines.
Frank McClean arrived back in London on 6 April, attended an RAeC Committee meeting on the 7th, and on Sunday 19 April made his first flight from Eastchurch since his return from Egypt, taking up a lady passenger. He was flying again on Friday 24 April, and made two flight
s with passengers the following day.
On Saturday 23 May Gustav Hamel disappeared over the Channel while flying a Morane monoplane from France to England. Hamel’s body was never recovered, and McClean at tended his memorial service in London on 24 June as a representative of the RAeC. Doubt less he was reminded of the similar disappearance of Cecil Grace in one of McClean’s owr aircraft on 22 December 1910.
At a Committee of Imperial Defence Sub-Committee meeting on 25 June the chairman expressed ‘deep anxiety’ concerning the defence of the Medway against attack from the air, saying it was doubtful whether the most active form of defence could intervene in time. The chief vulnerable points were the dockyard powerhouse, Chattenden magazine, the oil tanks and Kingsnorth airship station, and at tha time the navy was undertaking the defence against the aerial threat. He added that a war station was about to be established at Eastchurch in addition to the school, and that there was also the seaplane station on the Isle of Grain.
On Sunday 5 July McClean made two flights with a lady passenger at Eastchurch on his ‘70hp Short biplane’. On Saturday the 11th he took part in the Hedges Butler Challenge Cup balloon race as a passenger in John Dunville’s balloon, Polo. Ascending from the Hurlinghan Club at 4.15pm, they alighted near Oxford at 8.55 in the evening. The race was won by Dunville’s wife in the balloon Banshee II, who was accompanied by Mr C F Pollock and Captain B Corbet. They descended at Nesscliffe, near Shrewsbury, in the early hours of Sunday and, this being Mrs Dunville’s third consecutive victory in the race, the cup became her ‘absolute property’.
The dismantled S.80 back at Harty Ferry in April 1914 after being shipped back from Egypt. (ROYAL AERO CLUB)
The damaged wingtip uncovered at Harty Ferry showing Ogilvie’s improvised but still sound repair (ROYAL AERO CLUB)
The S.80 Nile Seaplane spent some time under refurbishment in the Shorts factory, but on Monday 13 July McClean took a passenger aloft in it on a ‘fine flight’ from Harty on its first outing since its return from Egypt, and he carried two passengers and a mechanic later in the month. In its 31 July issue Flight reported that the aircraft had been doped with Cellon for its Nile flight, and that when some of the fabric was removed upon its return it was ‘extraordinary to notice the effective way in which it has stood up to the hard usage. In spite of the fact that the machine was left exposed to the atmosphere for the whole of the time it was on the Nile, the condition of the fabric is extremely good.’
With war looming, on Wednesday 29 July McClean made a flight from Harty to Ramsgate with two passengers, and returned to Harty on Saturday 1 August. The next morning he flew to the Isle of Grain with Perrin and Gus, his mechanic, and placed the aeroplane at the Admiralty’s disposal.
Major Christopher Draper was stationed at Eastchurch with the RNAS at this time. He recalled that it was a ‘madhouse’, and that‘… there were continuous alarms and excursions all over the island. Germans were reported landing everywhere and “Sammy” [Samson], with two or three others, armed to the teeth, would rush off in a lorry to repel the “invaders”.’
Frank McClean takes off from Ramsgate, Kent, in his repaired S.80 Nile seaplane, probably on I August 1914, the day before he flew the aeroplane to the RNAS station on the Isle of Grain and placed it at the Admiralty’s disposal. It became ‘905’ in RNAS service. (AUTHOR)
Early wartime activities
War was declared on 4 August 1914, and in its issue of 14 August Flight reported that McClean had ‘joined the Navy at the Isle of Grain, receiving the rank of Flight Lieutenant’ in the RNAS. He was commissioned on the 6th. The first volume of the official history The War in the Air (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1922) records that he ‘offered to the Service his three motor-cars, his motor-boat at Teddington, his yacht Zenaida, with two machines, and his private house at Eastchurch [Aerodrome], which was converted into a hospital. A nation which commands the allegiance of such citizens,’ the author continues, ‘need never fear defeat.’ The naval pilots were reported to be flying ‘Lieut McClean’s biplane’ in the third week of August, and in its 11 September issue Flight reported that Flight Lieutenant McClean’s Short was one of four Short machines being used for instructional purposes for young officers at Eastchurch during the first week of the month.
On 8 August the Admiralty ordered the establishment of a coastal patrol for the whole of Britain’s East Coast, from Kinnaird’s Head in Aberdeenshire to Dungeness, between Dover and Hastings. Incomplete squadrons of the RFC not yet ordered abroad undertook the northern and southern extremities of this patrol, but the most vulnerable part of the East Coast, from the Forth to the Thames, or from North Berwick to Clacton, was to be patrolled by the RNAS. However, these arrangements were soon changed, because shortly after the outbreak of war the Germans became established in Belgium. In the belief that the enemy would use Belgium as a base from which to launch formidable aircraft raids on the Thames estuary and London, the RNAS forces were now concentrated between the Humber and the Thames, from Immingham to Clacton. Moreover, the most likely landfall for German airships raiding London was thought to be The Wash. Consequently regular patrols of the coast were carried out in the early days of the war, with the aim of observing and reporting the movements of all enemy ships and submarines. It transpired that there was little to report, and, in the words of the official history, ‘it was weary work waiting for the enemy to begin’.
When the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was ready to go abroad, the RNAS was charged to monitor its passage across the Channel. Seaplanes, following one another at two-hourly intervals, maintained a regular patrol between Westgate, close to the north Foreland, and Ostend. A temporary seaplane base was established at Ostend on 13 August but was withdrawn, and its men and supplies returned to England, on the 22nd, when the BEF was safely landed and Ostend’s occupation by the Germans seemed imminent. The routine patrols were then discontinued, but seaplanes and airships continued to make special scouting flights over the North Sea and the Channel. Dawn and sunset patrols scouting the coast were carried out on every possible day, defence of the Thames estuary being entrusted to the group centred on the Isle of Grain. They were charged with reporting any approach of hostile ships and aircraft, helping submarines deliver attacks and warning friendly craft.
McClean also donated his S.58 biplane to the RNAS; it was allocated serial number 904. (AUTHOR)
Frank McClean continued to attend RAeC Committee meetings whenever possible. From 6 to 11 August he was serving as a flight lieutenant at Grain on the Channel patrol. On 11 August he made a 35-minute flight to Westgate and then flew with ‘Williamson’ to ‘Sangatti’ (Sangatte) and back to Westgate. The next day he flew back to Grain. On the 13th McClean went to Eastchurch, and he records that on the 15th he was ‘1st Lt of Eastchurch’. This really marked the end of his active flying career, though he headed the instructing staff at Eastchurch, flying when the opportunity presented itself.
On 21 December 1914 a special meeting of the RAeC Committee was convened to resolve a conflict of opinion as to whether £1,000 should be contributed to a Fund for the Air Services. While a majority of the Committee was in favour, a majority of the Finance Committee was opposed, arguing that the Club’s financial position did not justify giving any payment at all. At the meeting Griffith Brewer moved that the Club contribute £1,000 to the Flying Services Fund, and this was seconded by Flight Lieutenant McClean. The motion was carried by twenty in favour and eleven against, an appeal for subscriptions being issued immediately. As a result, two members of the Finance Committee, including the honorary treasurer, resigned.
On 22 December the Admiralty requisitioned Eastchurch under the Defence of the Realm Act, instructions being given to take over all of the privately-owned sheds. Although the Admiralty agreed to house old aircraft of historical value safely elsewhere, this promise was not kept, but Ogilvie was allowed to retain his shed, where he was manufacturing speed indicators. At this time there were eighteen sheds in all, three of which belon
ged to the BAeC. Seven were in active use, including four belonging to McClean. This remained the position until 12 June 1917, when the Superintendent of the Dockyard, Sheerness, formally took possession of all buildings and the RN Air Station, Eastchurch, passed from private ownership. However, the matter was not concluded until 23 September 1919, when the Admiralty exercised its option to purchase the flying ground and Mr G Hayley Mason of the Government Valuation Office wrote to the RAeC, offering £13,500 for the Club’s interests at Eastchurch. The Club had already rejected an offer of £9,000, and only after careful consideration was the new offer accepted. The final figure, paid in May 1920 and including accumulated interest, was £13,621 8s 11d.
Harold Perrin, Secretary of the RAeC, pointed out that McClean had insisted that all he should receive was the actual amount paid by him for the property, and did not wish the RAeC to profit by the transaction, but after many arguments with Perrin he was persuaded to agree to the Club being reimbursed at least the amount it had expended on sheds, roads, etc, during 1908–18. This splendid gesture by McClean resulted in a substantial addition to the Club’s exchequer, out of which the Club voted £2,000 for air racing and £1,000 for the Flying Services Fund.
As Hurren commented in 1951, the foregoing
… does not give full justice to the debt that not only the Club but the nation as a whole owes to Sir Francis McClean. Perrin tends to emphasise the gift of money; but a financial transaction tells of nothing but the skeleton of the story: for what Sir Francis really did was personally to give naval aviation a splendid start. It is often thought that the Royal Aero Club itself gave this facility. In fact, any true assessment of the story will show that it was one of the members, Sir Francis McClean, rather than the Club itself, which set in train the long and glorious tale of naval flying.
Frank McClean Page 20
