Aircraft Down: Landings, Crash Landings and Rescues

by Alec Brew

  Robert Loraine had crossed the Irish Sea, but he had missed by a fifth of a mile, doing it all by air. Despite this, it was generally accepted that the crossing had been achieved, and it was not for two years that someone willing to split hairs prepared to repeat the flight.

  Loraine’s Farman was salvaged and returned to Hendon, but this time it was beyond repair, and he bought two new biplanes. Later in the year he achieved another first when he sent the first wireless message from the air, in a Bristol Boxkite over Salisbury Plain. After his two new aircraft were both wrecked, by a hangar collapse and an explosion, he gave up aviation for a while and returned to the stage to renew his shattered finances.

  It was not until April 1912 that preparations were made for another flight across the Irish Sea, by Vivian Hewitt, a brewer from North Wales. Early in 1912, though he had not yet achieved his Aviator’s Certificate, Hewitt took delivery of a new Gnome-powered Blériot monoplane at Brooklands. He transported it to Foryd aerodrome, near Abergele in North Wales, where he began a series of well-publicised flights. They were not uneventful, for on 25 February he experienced engine failure at 100 feet, just after take-off, and crashed through a fence, though without harm to himself.

  In April Hewitt announced his intention of making the first flight from Holyhead to Dublin. He waited at Rhyl for favourable weather, but his attempt was forestalled by another, impromptu, flight.

  Two Irish aviators, D Corbett-Wilson and Damar Leslie Allen, suddenly decided to attempt the flight to their homeland, and set off from Hendon in their Blériot monoplanes on 17 April. Corbett-Wilson had learned to fly at the Blériot School at Pau, making at least one notable flight, from Pau to Lourdes and back, during January 1912. Allen learned to fly at the Blériot School at Hendon, and on 20 February 1912 was awarded Aviator’s Certificate No. 183.

  Surprisingly, it was apparently without a wager that the two Irishmen set off, just after 3.30 pm on 17 April, each going their own way. Allen flew along the London & Northwestern Railway line, but became lost 10 miles beyond Crewe, and had to land to discover his whereabouts. He flew on and landed at Chester at about 6.30 pm. Corbett-Wilson took a route towards South Wales, and landed that evening at Almeley, 15 miles north of Hereford.

  3. D.Corbett-Wilson, the first man to fly from Great Britain to Ireland – all the way.

  Just after 6 am on 18 April Allen took off from Chester, and was seen passing over Holyhead about an hour later. He was never seen again. No trace of him or his aircraft has ever been found.

  Corbett-Wilson took off from Almeley at 4.30 pm on the 18 April, but was forced to land at Colva, Radnorshire, with engine trouble. It was not until Sunday 21 April, that he was able to continue, taking off early in the morning and flying to Fishguard. Early on the 22nd he took off again, heading for Wexford across the St George’s Channel. The crossing to Ireland took him one hour and forty minutes, and he landed at Crane, 2 miles from Enniscorthy.

  This was the first time that the flight from Great Britain to Ireland had been made entirely by air, without the pilot getting his feet wet. However, Vivian Hewitt was quick to point out that the St George’s Channel was no more the Irish Sea than the English Channel was the North Sea, and went ahead with preparations for his own flight.

  He had left Rhyl at 5 am on Sunday 21 April, heading for Holyhead, but was forced to land at Plas on Anglesey after a flight of one hour and twenty minutes. He flew at 5000 feet, and could see beyond Snowdon in one direction, and Holyhead Harbour in another. He suffered severe turbulence, struggling against a wind that threatened to blow him out to sea, and had to dive towards the coast with the throttle wide open in order to make land. He managed to land at Plas at 6.20 am, feeling quite ill. The next morning he flew on to Lord Sheffield’s field at Penhros Park, Robert Loraine’s starting point nearly two years before.

  4. Vivian Hewitt about to make his flight to Ireland, a still from a silent movie made at the time.

  5. Vivian Hewitt in his Blériot monoplane, the first man to fly the Irish Sea.

  Though this flight took only twenty minutes he was unable to continue because of dense sea-fog. He was then kept on the ground until Friday by strong winds blowing in the wrong direction. At 10.30 am on 26 April he set off for Ireland, his take-off being filmed by one of the silent movie cameras of the day. Like Loraine, he had equipped himself with a safety belt, and all shipping on the route had been asked to look out for him.

  After ten minutes he lost sight of land in the haze, but five minutes after that he flew right over the packet boat from Kingstown, losing sight of it again within three minutes. Such was the height he was flying that none of the ships along his route saw him passing, and he saw nothing more for fifty minutes. He steered by the sun, but at times flew into dense banks of fog, and could not even see his wing tips. After just over an hour and ten minutes he saw the distant Wicklow Mountains, and soon passed over Kingstown Harbour.

  He flew over Dublin at 2000 feet and began to descend towards Phoenix Park. In an echo of Loraine’s flight he began to experience violent turbulence, and at one point the Blériot dropped like a stone for 500 feet Unlike Loraine, however, he made a safe landing, in Phoenix Park, claiming to be the first man to fly the Irish Sea.

  On 1 August 1912 Rhyl Urban District Council, in a ceremony in the Marine Gardens, presented him with a silver cup in honour of his achievement, but there is little else in the way of recognition. Hewitt’s flight was even greeted with humour at Hendon, where it was recalled that on his first flight in his Blériot he had climbed to 1000 feet, but had a righteous horror of banking, and so found turning difficult. By slight movements of the rudder he managed to get the aircraft pointed back at the airfield after having travelled about 15 miles, and then made a good landing after gliding down from 1500 feet. It was suggested that he had had to fly to Ireland, because having taken off from Holyhead, he could not turn round to come back again!

  In a curious footnote to the Irish Sea flights, Robert Loraine volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps at the outset of the War, but after crashing two of the Service’s precious few aircraft was made an observer, one of the first handful that served in France. In November 1915 he was badly wounded while spotting for the guns over the front line. His pilot for that flight was D Corbett-Wilson, the second man to fly to Ireland. After recovering from his wounds, Loraine took pilot training and eventually rose to command No. 40 Squadron, and then No. 17 Wing.

  The Guinness Book of Air Facts and Feats lists Robert Loraine as the first man to have flown the Irish Sea, with no mention of Corbett-Wilson or Hewitt. Perhaps the one clear fact in the affair is that Loraine did not fly the Irish Sea, any more than Hubert Latham first flew the English Channel – they both got their feet wet. D Corbett-Wilson was the first man to fly from Great Britain to Ireland (all the way), on 22 April 1912, but as he traversed the St George’s Channel, Vivian Hewitt was indeed the first to fly the Irish Sea.

  The residents of the farthest corner of Anglesey, are now more used to aviation, with RAF Valley’s Hawks always overhead – so different from those few weeks in 1910 when Robert Loraine visited them, after force-landing in their midst.

  CHAPTER 2

  Down on the Railway

  When aircraft have suffered engine trouble in hilly or forested regions, pilots have often resorted to putting their aircraft down on roads, sometimes the only available piece of cleared or level land. When that road is a railroad, it not only results in a bumpy touchdown, but if a train is coming, a situation worthy of a Buster Keaton film can result.

  In 1910 Captain George William Patrick Dawes was a serving officer in the British Army. He had served with distinction in the Boer War, where the Army had used tethered balloons for observation purposes. Intrigued by the new science of heavier-than-air flight he resolved to learn to fly himself. He bought a Blériot Monoplane and had it shipped to Dunstall Park Racecourse, Wolverhampton.

  Dunstall Park had just been offered to the newly formed Midland Aer
o Club for use as their airfield. As such, it was one of the few dedicated airfields in Great Britain, though it was understood that race meetings would always take precedence over the needs of the aviators. The Midland Aero Club had announced the first All-British Flying Meeting, to take place at Dunstall Park during the week commencing 27 June 1910.

  There had been two flying meetings in Britain during 1909, at Doncaster and Blackpool, but they had largely been dominated by French flyers. This, the third meeting overall, would be restricted to British pilots possessing an Aviator’s Certificate, issued in any country. The Midland Aero Club erected a row of six wooden hangars on one side of the racecourse, and flyers began to arrive about three weeks before the meeting was due to start. Among them were a number who had not yet qualified for the Aviator’s Certificate, but hoped to do so before the Flying Meeting.

  One of the aircraft was a Star Monoplane, built in Wolverhampton, and to be flown by its designer Granville Eastwood Bradshaw. Another was a Humber Monoplane, a Blériot built under licence by Humber Cars in Coventry, entered by Mr N Holder of Edgbaston, Birmingham. There was also Captain Dawes and his Blériot.

  By 8 June he had his aircraft erected and took it up for his first tentative hops, to a height of about 20 to 25 feet. He did not attempt a turn as yet, something he would need to learn quite quickly on what was quite a restricted airfield. The racecourse was triangular in shape, each side being roughly 6 furlongs. There was open country on two sides, but on the third the ground rose quite steeply to Oxley Railway Sidings, with a viaduct of over 100 feet right behind the hangars. Later, more experienced pilots arrived and made the Committee change the shape of the course so that it was four sided, reducing the tightness of the turns required.

  On the following day Dawes tried a few more hops, much appreciated by the crowds that were already gathering in their hundreds each day. On the 10 June Holder brought out his Humber Monoplane, and he, too, tried a few hops of 10 to 15 feet in height, the crowd giving him a burst of applause for his efforts.The following morning Dawes made his most ambitious flight to date. He managed to circle the racecourse twice, and repeated the feat after breakfast. Such early morning flights were usual, because the wind was often less strong in the early hours. Dawes’ turns were rather flat, skidding affairs, as the necessity for banking was not yet generally understood.

  By now Granville Bradshaw had brought out the Star Monoplane, and he was attempting low hops, along with Holder, but it was Dawes who continued to be the star of the show. Two days later he was reported to have ‘surprised and surpassed himself’ with an inadvertent cross-country flight. The country he had inadvertently crossed was reported with due reverence in the local paper as being ‘some trees, a fence, and part of an adjoining field’. He had intended to fly around some trees and a house at the western end of the course, but had gone too far and ended up landing in an adjoining field.

  6. Captain George William Patrick Dawes, surveying the wreck of his Blériot Monoplane at Dunstall Park, Wolverhampton, on 17 June 1910, the same aircraft he was to force-land on the Bombay-to-Baroda railway line.

  On 17 June Captain Dawes came to grief. He twice circled the racecourse, reaching a height of about 100 feet. As he approached the hangars he swooped down to within a few feet of the ground, and then pulled the Blériot up into a steep climb. Undoubtedly, he stalled the aircraft, which plummeted to the ground. It landed on its side, smashing one wing, the propeller and the undercarriage. Luckily, Dawes stepped out unhurt from the wreck. Wood and fabric aircraft were very good at absorbing the shock of an impact as they crumpled up.

  The crash had put paid to any chance Dawes had of entering the Flying Meeting. The Blériot was repaired and after the Meeting, on 26 July, he gained his Aviator’s Certificate at Dunstall Park. It was only the seventeenth such certificate issued in Great Britain. Eleven of the other certificate holders had taken part in the Meeting, together with two or three others who held French certificates.

  Captain Dawes was posted to India after his adventures in Wolverhampton and took his Blériot Monoplane with him. He was credited with making the first ever flight on the Indian subcontinent, and was then to survive an extraordinary forced landing. On 26 March 1911 he was flying to the north of Bombay when the Anzani engine of the Blériot stopped. He quickly looked round for somewhere to land the aircraft, but there seemed to be nowhere flat enough and clear of trees and obstacles.

  The Bombay-to-Baroda railway line was below, and he glided down to land on that. As he did so, he saw, to his horror, that there was a goods train approaching. The Blériot touched down and rolled bumpily to a halt in a few yards. The great snorting steam engine was almost upon him. Dawes scrambled frantically from the aircraft, jumping to the ground and then running clear. He turned round in time to see the engine smash into his beloved aircraft, pulverising it into splinters. By great fortune, he had escaped entirely uninjured, but the aircraft was wrecked beyond repair. This was not the end of his flying career however.

  Dawes applied to join the Royal Flying Corps at its formation in 1912. In July he was one of the RFC observers at the Military Aircraft Competition held at Larkhill, to determine the best aircraft for the RFC to order; a competition won by the totally unsuitable Cody Biplane. He was posted to No. 2 Squadron and took part in their epic flight in their BE2as to Montrose, which was their assigned base.

  No. 2 Squadron quickly became recognised as the RFC’s premier squadron. In May 1914 the Squadron received orders to fly south to the RFC’s concentration camp at Netheravon. Dawes flew one of the ten BE2as that took off, followed by thirty-four vehicles with the rest of the equipment and men. The squadron was sent to France at the outbreak of the First World War and Dawes received his first of seven Mentions in Dispatches on 8 October when he was attached to the Royal Berkshire Regiment.

  By 1 January 1916 he was a temporary major in command of No. 29 Squadron. In this position he gave evidence to the Official Inquiry into the performance of the RFC and its aircraft during the first years of the First World War, with particular reference to the events of 10 March. On this date No. 29 Squadron left Gosport for France, and six of the ten aircraft that took off suffered damage during forced landings because they flew into the middle of a snowstorm.

  By 8 October 1916 Dawes was a temporary lieutenant-colonel in command of the RFC in the Balkans, where he served until 1918, rising in rank to an acting general. In addition to his seven Mentions in Dispatches in the First World War and the Queen’s Medal with three clasps, and the King’s Medal with two clasps awarded in the Boer War, he also received the DSO and the AFC. From grateful allies he received the Croix de Guerre, with three palms; the Serbian Order of the White Eagle; the Order of the Redeemer of Greece; and was created Officer de Legion d’Honneur.

  In the Second World War Dawes served with the Royal Air Force as a wing commander, retiring in 1946 with the MBE. In addition to his impressive collection of medals he had the distinction of being one of the few men to serve in the Boer War and in the First and Second World Wars. He did so for three different services, the Army, the RFC and the RAF. He was probably the only man to be able to claim this honour.

  Considering his adventurous life, among other things surviving his crash at Dunstall Park and his forced landing on a railway line, it is something of a wonder that he reached the ripe old age of eighty. He died in March 1960.

  CHAPTER 3

  Down in the Sahara

  Deserts have claimed the lives of many aircrew even from the earliest days of aviation. The aircraft was quickly seen as a way of crossing the huge expanses of the world’s deserts at a pace somewhat quicker than a camel. In the First World War in particular the use of aircraft quickly became essential. The aircraft of the day operated at a sufficiently slow speed for a forced landing to be a survivable event, but conversely the unreliability of the engines, made a forced landing a most likely event.

  Second Lieutenant Stewart Gordon Ridley was the son of Mr TW Ridley
of Willimoteswick, Redcar, but his mother was an Irishwoman from Derry. He was also a descendant of Bishop Ridley of Northumberland, one of the victims of Queen Mary, Bloody Mary, in the sixteenth century. He was educated at Mr J Roscoe’s School at Harrogate, and then at Oundle, where he was in the Officer Cadet Corps for three years. He left school shortly before the War and was preparing to go into business, but enlisted in September 1914, along with his brother.

  He became a private in the 4th Yorkshire Regiment, and in February 1915 received a commission in the 12th Yorkshire Regiment. He left that Regiment in July and joined the RFC, going to France as an observer in August 1915. He served on the Western Front for four months and then returned to the United Kingdom to take pilot training. On receiving his Pilot’s Certificate he was posted to No. 17 Squadron in Egypt, still only 19 years of age.

  No. 17 Squadron had been formed at Gosport in February 1915, and began to equip with the BE2c. Down the coast at Shoreham No. 14 Squadron was formed the same month, and though it initially received Maurice Farman Longhorns, was also to acquire BE2cs.

  Both squadrons were shipped out to Alexandria in November 1915, where they made up No. 5 Wing, the aerial component of the Army in Egypt. They soon found themselves in action on three separate fronts. They directly faced the Turks in the Sinai; they operated in support of the Arab Revolt in Arabia, also against the Turks; and they faced an uprising by the Senussi in the Libyan Desert. The Libyan Desert did not just refer to that portion of the Sahara that lay within the borders of Libya, but referred generally to the desert west of the Nile.