James Pugh - The Royal Flying Corps, the Western Front and the Control of the Air, 1914–1918

First published 2017

by Routledge

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2017 James Pugh

The right of James Pugh to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Names: Pugh, James, (British historian), author.

Title: The Royal Flying Corps, the Western Front and the control of the air,

19141918 / James Pugh.

Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. |

Series: Routledge studies in First World War history | Includes bibliographical

references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017000127| ISBN 9781472459725 (hardback : alk.

paper) | ISBN 9781315553191 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Great Britain. Royal Flying Corps--History. | World War,

19141918--Aerial operations, British.

Classification: LCC D602 .P84 2017 | DDC 940.4/4941--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017000127

ISBN: 978-1-4724-5972-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-55319-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by HWA Text and Data Management, London

On 17 December 1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first controlled and sustained flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, inaugurating the Age of Aviation. Progress was astonishing. In 1909 a French pilot, Louis Blriot, flew his plane across the English Channel, giving literally a new dimension to Edwardian fears of invasion. Military officers, far from dismissing powered flight for fear it would frighten the horses, were among the first to engage with the new technology. Colonel John Capper, Superintendent of the Royal Balloon Factory, met the Wright Brothers in October 1904 and was favourably impressed. The Aero Club, founded in 1901 to encourage ballooning, embraced the aeroplane in 1908 after demonstrations of powered flight by the Wright brothers in France. In the same year the Asquith government appointed an Advisory Committee for Aeronautics to investigate possible military and naval uses of aviation. In 1910 the Aero Club was granted a Royal title and began to issue aviators certificates. It issued thirty-nine certificates in 1910 and 130 in 1911. Military officers from both services and from different branches of the army were prominent among the early aviation pioneers. By the time the British army adopted aviation institutionally with the formation of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) on 13 April 1912, many men who would be major figures in the history of British military aviation had already qualified as pilots, including Charles Samson (Certificate No. 71), Arthur Longmore (Certificate No. 72), Frederick Sykes (Certificate No. 95), Robert Brooke-Popham (Certificate No. 108), David Henderson (Certificate No. 118), Cyril Newall (Certificate No. 144), William Rhodes-Moorhouse (Certificate No. 147) and Robert Smith-Barry (Certificate No. 161). A Central Flying School was established at Upavon in Wiltshire on 12 May 1912 to provide pilots for the army and navy. In August 1914 the RFC was able to deploy four squadrons with the British Expeditionary Force, where they provided invaluable assistance, especially in reconnaissance. From these modest though impressive beginnings, Britains air arm grew exponentially during the war, evolving technologically, operationally, tactically and institutionally, eventually securing its independence as the Royal Air Force.