Frank McClean

by Philip Jarrett

  From February to March 1915 McClean commanded the naval flying school at Eastchurch. It must have been satisfying for him to see that his unstinting efforts to set British naval aviation on a sound footing had borne fruit and contributed to the nation’s preparedness for the great conflict in which it was now involved.

  CHAPTER 8

  McClean’s Post-flying Activities

  The following is a summary of Frank McClean’s principal aviation-related activities from the time he had largely ceased active flying up to his death in 1955.

  1914

  On 6 August 1914 McClean was appointed Flight Lieutenant, HMS Pembroke (HMS Pembroke II, alias RNAS Eastchurch, 1913–18), and from that date to 11 August he went to ‘Grain Air Station as a Flight Lieutenant’. He flew on Channel Patrol/North Sea patrols during the BEF’s crossing to continental Europe. On 16th and 22nd September he recorded that the ‘Flights leave Eastchurch for continent’.

  Christmas Day 1914 was memorable owing to a German air raid. At mid-day on 25 December Oberleutnant-zur-See Stephan Prondzynski, flying Friedrichshafen FF 29 seaplane No 203 with Fähnrich-zur-See von Frankenburg as his observer, crossed the English coast on a hit-and-run raid against London. Anticipating the possibility of attacks on Christmas Day, RNAS Dover had sent up standing patrols from 08.00hr, but the raider made landfall 30 miles north-west of the patrol line. In addition, one sortie was flown from Eastchurch, RNAS-operated Albatros B.I 890 (which had been impressed into British military service upon the outbreak of war) went up from Grain, and RFC sorties were made from Joyce Green, Farnborough and Brooklands. The Vickers Gunbus from Joyce Green exchanged fire with the raider, who turned away and dropped two bombs in a field near Cliffe railway station. Prondzynski later claimed to have attacked oil storage tanks at Sheerness.

  1915

  On 4 February 1915 McClean was appointed Acting Flight Commander, HMS Pembroke (HMS Pembroke II). From February to March he commanded the Naval Flying School at Eastchurch, being replaced by Squadron Commander Alec Ogilvie, who remained CO for a year and then left for Dunkirk.

  After leaving Eastchurch on 6 May McClean spent some time ‘prospecting for aerodromes’ for the RNAS, and on 20 September he commissioned the RNAS night-flying ground at Rochford, Kent, one of Yarmouth’s early substations, and the first of several that came into being in September, October and November 1915. The ground was in use as early as 31 May, when a Blériot monoplane was sent up in a vain pursuit of German Army Zeppelin LZ 38 when it made the first airship raid on London.

  On 26 November McClean was appointed Acting Squadron Commander, HMS President (RNAS Chingford).

  On 29 December the Admiralty announced the promotion of McClean from Flight Commander to the rank of Squadron Commander: ‘Francis Kennedy McClean (for temporary service) (now Acting Squadron Commander)’. (Flight, 6 January 1916, p 4)

  1916

  On 1 January 1916 McClean was Appointed Temporary Squadron Commander, HMS President. He left Chingford on 12 March.

  Around March-April 1916 McClean was involved in planning, with Commander C R Samson and Lieutenant R B Davies (who had been Samson’s First Lieutenant at Eastchurch when Samson was commanding the Naval Flying School), to send 3 Sqn RNAS to France to carry out bombing raids into Germany, however, the project was abandoned in April.

  In his book The Mad Major (Air Review, Letchworth, 1962, p 53), Major Christopher Draper records that in April 1916 he was relieved of his command of the RNAS aerodrome on Scarborough Racecourse by ‘Flight-Commander Frank McClean’. Draper was then put in charge of the War Flight at Eastchurch. McClean was not at Scarborough for long; he notes that he went there on 7 April and left on 25 June.

  From 28 June to 18 September McClean was in France, and on 16 July he made an ascent in a kite balloon near Meudon, Paris.

  On 10 November McClean moved to Chatham, where he was “stationed in DCA [Deputy Chief of Air Staff?] office.”

  1917

  McClean left Chatham on 3 March 1917, and that month went over from Dover to Dunkirk, and visited the trenches on the 22nd. He went back to Dunkirk on 15 June, on the 30th was promoted from ‘From Squadron Commander to Wing Commander’. For the remainder of the year he divided his time between England and France.

  1918

  On 16 February 1918 McClean married Aileen Wale, elder daughter of W H Wale of Lapworth (two daughters: Francis Aileen and Iona (married Peter, later Lord Carington) at St Pauls’ Knightsbridge. On 4 April ‘Acting Wg Cdr F.K. McClean’ was listed as being in command of Dover Aerodrome, RNAS.

  McClean records for 22 April 1918, ‘Send off machines for Zeebrugge raid’. This refers to aircraft that were despatched from the 61st Wing at Dover to escort the naval forces across the North Sea that were to launch an attack in an effort to block the entrance to the Bruges ship canal at Zeebrugge, and thus close the waterway connecting the port with the inland naval base at Bruges. The operations were originally to take place on the night of 11 April, but were postponed. On the night of the 22nd/23rd the weather prevented any air night bombardment by the Handley Page bombers of 214 and 215 Squadrons, based on the European mainland, during the attack, but the operation at Zee-brugge was deemed successful, though in fact it was not. An attempt to block the harbour at Ostend that same night was a failure.

  On the night of 9/10 May 1918 McClean sent off the Handley Page O/400 bombers of 214 and 215 Squadrons to bomb the German defence batteries at Ostend and drop flares. This O/400, C3491, is known to have been on the strength of 215 Squadron. (AUTHOR)

  On 9 May McClean records ‘Send machines to Ostend raid’. A second attempt to block the harbour at Ostend was made this night, and another escort was provided. In the early hours of the 10th seven Handley Page night bombers bombed the German defence batteries and dropped flares. This time the operation was partially successful.

  McClean left Dover on 6 September. An ascent in a kite balloon with his old friend Griffith Brewer was made at the ballooning school at RNAS Roehampton on 11 October to conduct a ‘rip experiment’. Brewer was now Honorary Adviser to the Kite Balloon and Airship Services, acting as an aerostation instructor and lecturer and conducting experiments, and this was probably a test of Brewer’s balloon diaphragm rip for ripping kite balloons to bring them quickly and safely to earth after they had broken away from the cable, which has been described as being ‘far superior to anything in service’.

  On 21 October McClean made a balloon ascent from Hurlingham with ‘Clinton in charge’, and Powter, Glasson and Guinness; the balloon descended at Wanborough. Another ascent from Hurlingham was made on 24 October, the voyage ending at the Burford Bridge Hotel near Dorking in Surrey. Powered lighter-than-air flight was experienced by McClean on 25 October, when he flew in RNAS dirigible SST 11, piloted by ‘McDonald’, from Wormwood Scrubs and travelled over Trafalgar Square and back to Wormwood Scrubs.

  McClean sampled airship flight on 25 October 1918 when he flew in Submarine Scout Twin non-rigid SST 11, which had been delivered to the RNAS earlier that month. This study of sister-ship SST 5 gives a good impression of the airships of this class, which had an envelope capacity of 100,000 cubic feet, were 165ft long and were powered by a pair of 100hp Sunbeam or 75hp Rolls-Royce engines. (AUTHOR)

  McClean made his last balloon flight on 30 October, recording: ‘Balloon Violet 11.30 to 4.15 Hurlingham to Langdale End 12m NW of Scarborough. Pilot Wilkinson. Drop one passenger en route.’

  The signing of the Armistice on 11 November 1918 heralded the end of his RNAS service. He was commissioned as a Colonel in the RAF on 1 December. During war McClean had been awarded the Air Force Cross and mentioned in despatches.

  1919

  Demobilised on 3 February 1919, McClean wasted no time in getting involved with civil aviation again. On 17 May he travelled to Paris with Mervyn O’Gorman, Frederick Handley Page and Harold Perrin of the RAeC, and the 19th to the 22nd were occupied in a meeting with the Federation Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the supre
me body ratifying aeronautical records, represented in the UK by the RAeC.

  On 28 May McClean attended a special Daily Mail lunch at the Savoy Hotel in tribute to Harry Hawker. Hawker and his navigator, Lieutenant-Commander Kenneth McKenzie Grieve, had been assumed drowned during an attempted non-stop transatlantic flight on 18–19 May, but were rescued, and upon their safe return to England a dinner was held in their honour. Two days later McClean gave a speech at an Aero Club lunch for Hawker.

  The following month, on 14/15 June, Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whit-ten Brown accomplished the first non-stop transatlantic flight, flying a Vickers Vimy from St John’s, Newfoundland, to Clifden, County Galway, Ireland. McClean met the two fliers at Euston Station in London on 17 June, and drove them himself to the Aero Club’s offices in Clifford Street in his Rolls-Royce. Three days later he was at the Daily Mail lunch for Alcock and Brown. The following day, the 21st, he attended the first post-war Aerial Derby at Hendon, and on the 23 rd he was at the Aero Club dinner for Alcock and Brown.

  A month later, on 23 July, there was yet another dinner, at Princes, to mark a transatlantic flight. This time it was in tribute to the crew of the airship R. 34 after it had accomplished the first out-and-return transatlantic flight from England to the USA and back, from 2 to 13 July. On 24 July McClean attended the investiture at which Alcock and Brown were knighted.

  McClean was also involved in the planning of the first post-war Schneider Trophy contest for seaplanes, for which Great Britain was the host nation, and on 20 August he went to Southampton and Cowes with Perrin. At Southampton they visited the Supermarine works and met Scott Paine, Commander Bird and other company worthies. The next day he flew to Bournemouth to arrange the event, which was scheduled to take place there on 10 September. On 3 September he went to Southampton and Cowes for a meeting with Perrin, Jimmy Bird and Scott Paine, and on the 8th he was at those locations again to witness the preliminary trials of two of the British entrants, the Avro Type 539 seaplane and the Supermarine Sea Lion flying boat. Alas, after all their efforts the event on the 10th was a ‘fiasco’, to use McClean’s description. Fog, dense in places over the course, turned the contest into a chaotic shambles, with disorganisation, turning markers becoming obscured and aircraft becoming lost. Sergeant Guido Jannello, pilot of Italy’s Savoia S.13 flying boat, completed 11 incorrect laps. Of the three participating British entries, the Sea Lion sank at the end of its first lap, having damaged its hull when it struck and unseen object while taking off after an interim alighting, and the Fairey IIIA and Sopwith aircraft had both retired on their first laps. Neither of the two French machines started. In the end the contest was declared void. The Italians, who felt that they were entitled to be declared the winners, objected vehemently, and the RAeC subsequently recommended that the trophy be awarded to Italy and the prize to Jannello. However, the FAI rejected the recommendation, but asked the Aero Club of Italy to organise the event in 1920.

  On 17 June 1919 McClean drove Alcock and Brown from London’s Euston Station to the Royal Aero Club’s offices in Clifford Street for a reception. Here the car is en route, with McClean at the steering wheel and the Atlantic’s conquerors standing up in the rear. This print, from McClean’s personal collection, has been autographed underneath by the two national heroes. (Fleet Air Arm Museum)

  Sir John Alcock, now serving as Vickers’s chief pilot, was flying the Viking I amphibian G-EAOV solo to the Paris Aero Show when he encountered thick fog and struck a tree in an orchard near Rouen while attempting a forced landing. He was killed in the crash. On 24 December McClean met Alcock’s coffin at Waterloo, and on the 27th he attended his memorial service.

  Succinctly summed-up by McClean as a ‘fiasco’, the 1919 Schneider Trophy contest, held off Bournemouth on 10 September 1919, was declared void owing to fog obscuring the course. McClean witnessed the preliminary trials of Supermarine’s entry its Sea Lion flying boat, seen here, but it sank at the end of its first lap after its hull had been pierced by an unseen object. (AUTHOR)

  When B F S Baden-Powell, brother of the Chief Scout and long-standing member of the RAeS, asked McClean to endorse his application for Fellowship of the society, McClean wrote: ‘The old order changeth and the new forget the foundation of aviation on which their success rests. Most of those who now rule the air and make speeches have probably never heard of you and me.’

  1920

  In its obituary of McClean, published in the issue for 19 August 1955, Flight recorded that ‘In the post-[First World War] years he was to be seen at every aeronautical sporting event, usually visiting them either by air or in his big white Rolls-Royce’. This is evident from his listing of the events he attended. In 1920 McClean was appointed, with Brigadier-General Sir Capel Holden, to represent the RAeC on the Air League’s executive committee.

  1921

  After holidaying in Egypt during January and February 1921, McClean was at the Aero Club on 30 March to meet the brothers Ross and Keith Smith, who had accomplished the first flight from England to Australia from 12 November to 10 December 1919, and were subsequently knighted.

  Griffith Brewer had become closely involved in a long-running dispute between Orville Wright and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., in the USA. In 1914 American pioneer Glenn Curtiss, seeking to win a patent infringement battle with the Wrights by proving that a machine capable of powered fight had been produced before the Wrights’ 1903 Flyer, had obtained the remains of Samuel Pierpont Langley’s tandem-wing ‘Aerodrome’ aircraft of 1903, which had twice failed to fly after being launched by catapult from a houseboat.

  Curtiss was in cahoots with Charles D Walcott, Langley’s successor as secretary of the Smithsonian, who had also been his friend. By rebuilding the machine at Hammondsport as a floatplane and incorporating modifications in two stages he had persuaded it off the water, and the Aerodrome was then returned to the Smithsonian and displayed with a label proclaiming that it was ‘the first man-carrying aeroplane in the history of the world capable of sustained free flight’. Enraged, Orville embarked on a bitter campaign to obtain justice (Wilbur had died in 1912). Brewer had made a clandestine visit to Hammondsport in 1914 and, with other information obtained by Lorin Wright, in 1921 had delivered a lecture exposing the chicanery of Curtiss and others, which was also published in England in the December 1921 issue of The Aeronautical Journal. In response the magazine Nature published controversial article refuting Brewer’s paper and siding with Walcott.

  On 9 February 1922, in a letter to Brewer, Katharine Wright, sister of Orville and Wilbur, remarked: ‘I do think it is pretty bad to have a paper in which Mr McClean has interest and certainly some influence playing the game for Walcott as it is’. Brewer quickly responded, saying that McClean and T P Searight, a director of the British Wright Company, proposed that the company should bear the expense that Brewer had incurred in the controversy, but Katharine replied that she wanted to bear all of the expense. While the dispute continued, Orville had the 1903 Flyer sent to the UK, and it was displayed in the Science Museum from 1928, being removed for safety during the Second World War. The dispute was settled in 1942, when the Smithsonian recanted, and the Flyer was returned to the USA in 1948.

  In 1922 McClean became involved in the controversy between the Wright family and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Enraged by the Smithsonian’s misleading labelling of the Langley Aerodrome, Orville Wright, through McClean’s friend Griffith Brewer, had arranged for the historic 1903 Wright Flyer to be loaned to the Science Museum in London. When the magazine Nature published a piece refuting a paper on the subject written by Brewer; McClean and J P Seawright proposed that the British Wright Co should bear the expenses incurred by Brewer, but Katharine Wright declined the offer The long-running dispute was finally settled when the Smithsonian recanted in 1942, but the Flyer could not be returned to the USA until the Second World War had ended. On 18 October 1948, as seen here, the aeroplane was lowered from its posit
ion in the Science Museum during a ceremony marking the first stage of its journey back to the USA. (AUTHOR)

  1922

  McClean attended a flying meeting at Waddon Aerodrome on 17 April 1922.

  On 13 April, while test-flying Vickers Viking IV amphibian G-EBBZ, in which he planned to attempt a round-the-world flight, Sir Ross Smith died in a crash at Brooklands. McClean attended the Memorial Service on the 20th.

  McClean was at the Hendon Aerial Pageant on 24 June.

  The King’s Cup Circuit of Britain Air Race was to be held on 8–9 September and, probably remembering his disappointment in the Daily Mail Waterplane Circuit of Britain in 1913, McClean decided to take part, though not as a pilot. On 4 August he went to Horsley Towers, where he met Sir Thomas Sopwith, who was to provide an aeroplane, and Flight Lieutenant Walter H Longton DFC AFC, who would pilot it.

  On 22 August McClean attended a reception held by Supermarine to celebrate the winning of that year’s Schneider Trophy contest at Naples by Henri Biard, flying the company’s Sea Lion II flying boat.

  McClean’s entry for the King’s Cup Circuit of Britain Air Race was Sopwith Gnu G-EAGP, powered by a 110hp Le Rhone rotary engine, flying as Race No 3 and piloted by Longton, (The aircraft was not registered to McClean at this time, but was still Sopwith-owned.) The event started from Croydon, but trouble was encountered in starting the engine, and the Gnu got away from Croydon 25 minutes late. It was in ninth position at end of outward leg, and in eighth position at end of homeward leg. Flight for 14 September 1922 remarked: ‘Even the old Sopwith Gnu entered by Col McClean, and flown by Longton, stuck it to the bitter end, once it did get going.’