Glebe Collegiate Institute - Lux Glebana Yearbook (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)

Page 19 text:

The Royal Air Force Weldon Pearson EARLY sixty-three years ago the present Royal Air Force came into being when a captain of the 2nd Middlesex Militia began to teach men of the Royal Engineers Law to manipulate balloons. In the latter part of the nine- teenth century the Royal Aircraft Estab- lishment was founded at South Farnborough, England. It was not until 1911, however, that the army decided to establish an air battalion of Royal Engineers, one company to ex- periment with lighter-than-air craft, and the other with heavier-than-air craft. In 1912 King George V signed a charter establishing the Royal Flying Corps with Naval and Military Wings. The Naval Wing became the Royal Naval Air Service CR. N. A. SJ, remaining as such until it merged with the Royal Flying Corps gxR. F. C.J in 1918, to form the Royal Air orce. When war broke between England and Germany in August 1914, Squadrons 2, 3, 4, and 5 went to France under the comm- and of Brigadier-General Sir David Hen- derson. These squadrons were equipped with Farman Blinot and B. E. 2 C. machines. These types, were at best flimsy structures of wire, wood and fabric, mounting engines which fumed and jerked protestingly, as they carried their daring passengers aloft, The men who flew out those happy-go- lucky autumn mornings had no machine- guns for protection. Instead the pilot car- ried a service revolver and his passenger a riiile or a shot-gun firing slugs designed for cutting flying wires. But with these ill- suited weapons they flew as long as their petrol would allow, scouting for enemy troops and directing gun-fire accordingly by Morse, at the same time endeavoring to keep their slow-flying ships in the air. Up to 1915 the aerial cavalry attempted to annihilate each other by shooting at one another with their shot-guns and rifles They even attempted to drop bombs on each other. Then, in that year Anthony Fokker's speedy, easily-manoeuvered little scouts appeared on the scene. Tony Fokker was a Dutchman who had previously offered his services to the allies but had been turned down. Subsequently he turned LUX GLEBANA to the Central Powers and was received with open arms. With the appearance of these little ships which fired a machine-gun through their propellor arcs, the pendulum of aerial supremacy swung to the side of our enemy. Many an allied squadron or flight returned from a trip over the lines leaving a good number of their comrades down in enemy country. The slaughter from 1915 on was particularly strong in the R. F. C. and scarcely a week went by with- out replacements both in men and machines arriving at the front. Thus it raged for months, while such great enemy aces as Immelman and Boelke rode their stars in the heavens. The British and French brought out many pusher types perhaps the most famous being the F. E2 B. which lasted the war. ,Then late in 1915 the Constantinesco gear was invented by a Rumanian army officer and with this mounted on the ma- chines, the machine-gun could be fired through the propellor arc. With the help of this device the allies managed to stagger back to their feet. In 1917 the allies designed such splendid little scouts as the Sopwith Camel , Cso- called because of the peculiar hump on the fuselagej, the S. E5, the S. P. A. D., and the Neuports XXVII and XVIII. The Bristol works in England designed the Bristol Fighter fthe beloved Bris-fit J, a two- seater machine of fine qualifications. Of all these machines the Sopwith Camel is considered the most outstanding developed during the war. It was fast and easily manoeuvered. Moreover, it could dive like a swallow without shedding its fabric or losing its wings. The enemy countered by bringing out the Fokkers D-VII and D-VIII, the different Phalz and Albatross models. But the allies, slowly, yet surely, 'began to gain aerial supremacy and after the last great German offensive of March 1918, they reached the top and so remained until the Central Powers sued for peace in November 1918. At the end of the war the R. A. F. had a total of ten thousand, three hundred- and-fifteen planes, a good third of the pilots and men in the R. A. F. being Canadian. In March 1918 the R. F. C. was re- organized and, with the R. N. A. S. formed into the Royal Air Force. It might be noted here that the R. N. A. S. carried on the best traditions of the silent service and did remarkable workin home and coast- al defense. This section of the navy used blimps for scouting over the North Sea, also many of the heavier-than-air craft that were being used on the Western Front, as well as machines best suited to their type of work such as the Short Skirl . One of Page 17

Page 21 text:

the greatest names of the R. N. A. S. is that of Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Colli- shaw, a Canadian ace who is still flying and who ranks with sixty victories next to the famous Colonel Billy Bishop ex-R. F. C. ace of seventy-two victories. Some R. N. A. S. squadrons were the most famous, being Collishaw's outfit, a flight of dull- black Sopwith triplanes. Contrary to common belief the R. F. C. served elsewhere than just the Western Front. A squadron was situated on Imros Island in the Mediterranean. Squadrons aided Allenby in Palestine and Mesopo- tamia and the famous Lawrence of Arabia had a few machines at his disposal, one of his pilots being a well-known Ottawa chir- opractor. At the end of the war the R. A. F. lost some of its finest pilots when they returned to their peace-time jobs. However, those remaining continued to make aerial history. In 1919 John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown, both R. A. F. men liew non-stop from St. Johns, Newfoundland to Ireland fpreviously the American naval seaplane N. C.4 had crossed by successive steps using the Azores as a stepping stone.J The machine Alcock and Brown used was a Vickers Vimy, Rolls-Royce powered aero- plane, which had been designed as a, heavy bomber for use against Berlin but which had arrived too late to enter the arena of war. Alcock and Brown were both knighted for their feat, but unfortunately Alcock was killed in a crash at Rouen, France, later in December. In 1919 the British dirigible the R. 34 also crossed the Atlantic and re- turned under its own power. The officer commanding was Major G. H. Scott who was to lose his life in the crash of the R. 101 in 1931. In November 1919, the Australian crew of Captain Ross Smith, his brother Keith, and Sergeants Sheirs and Bennet flew to Australia in successive steps, a iiight of 11,924 flying miles. They used the same type of machine as Alcock and Brown, some of the parts of the latter's ship being used in the new craft. Up through the twenties, as wo1nen's clothes became more daring, so did the achievements of the R. A. F. Many fine records in height and distance were set up by these intrepid young men. In 1912, a Frenchman, Jacques Schneider offered a magnificient trophy for the highest speed set by a seaplane over a triangular Left-A Westland Lysander in Flight