Richard Bell Davies - Sailor in the Air: The Memoirs of the Worlds First Carrier Pilot

Vice Admiral Richard Bell Davies VC, CB, DSO, AFC was one
of the most important characters in the history of naval aviation.
Despite a traditional naval education he was among the last
cadets to be trained under sail he was quick to grasp the potential
of aircraft. After World War I he continued to promote the flying
interests of the Navy and, as the first man to regularly land and take
off from carriers, he did much to prove the value of shipboard
aviation. He retired from the Navy in 1941 and died in 1966.

Vice-Admiral
Richard Bell Davies
VC, CB, DSO, AFC

Introduction by David Hobbs

Copyright Richard Bell Davies 1967
Introduction Copyright David Hobbs 2008

This edition first published in Great Britain in 2008 by
Seaforth Publishing,
Pen & Sword Books Ltd,
47 Church Street,
Barnsley S70 2AS

www.seaforthpublishing.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84832 011 6

First published by Peter Davies, London, 1967

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage
and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing of both
the copyright owner and the above publisher.

The right of Richard Bell Davies to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Creative Print & Design, Blaina.

Richard Bell Davies was the outstanding personality in the development of aviation within the Royal Navy. He made the very first deck landing on HMS Argus, the worlds first flush-decked aircraft carrier, and refused, unlike the majority of his contemporaries, to transfer to the newly formed Royal Air Force in 1918. In a career that spanned over forty years he was taught seamanship in a sailing vessel as a Dartmouth cadet, learnt to fly at his own expense in 1911 and achieved high command in the newly re-formed Air Branch in 1939. In between flying appointments he served in a number of conventional warships throughout the world and these memoirs are full of fascinating stories that recall an era that has now passed into history. The journey by train from Charing Cross to Manchuria, changing at Moscow and Mukden, in order to take up an appointment in the cruiser Minotaur on the China Station at the end of which he arrived only twenty minutes late to be met by three sailors, who had engaged a rickshaw for his luggage, stands out as an epic from an era which cannot be repeated today.

These memoirs were first published in 1967 shortly after the authors death at a time when the Royal Navy was in shock after the cancellation of the CVA01 aircraft carrier project, to have been named Queen Elizabeth. They are a rich source of historical information about the Royal Navy in general but more particularly about the development and progress of aviation within the Service. They are written in a modest and light-hearted style and contain a wealth of factual material that brings events to life in a clear and logical fashion.

He had been taught to fly at his own expense, while on leave from the battleship Dominion, at the Graham-White Flying School at Hendon. The course cost him 50 plus a 25 deposit against damage, repayable if he had no smash-ups while flying. His first flight in a naval aircraft in 1912 was in Admiralty Aeroplane Number 1.

The design and development of aircraft and their operation from shore bases was rapid and Bell Davies was part of it. He served in the Royal Navys first aircraft squadron at Eastchurch in 1912 as Executive Officer, or Second-in-Command, under the colourful Commander Samson and deployed with the squadron to France in 1914. He served in the Gallipoli Campaign and in France again before appointments to sea as senior aviation officer in the seaplane carriers Campania and Furious from 1917, in their days the largest and most capable aircraft-carrying ships in the Grand Fleet. It had at first been assumed that seaplanes operated from the water would suffice for fleet operations but they proved difficult to hoist in and out and Bell Davies became a leading exponent in the development and installation of flight decks from which wheeled aircraft could take off and land. In addition to his skill as a pilot, he had a flair for administration and the tact and diplomacy with which he organised the use of his small number of flimsy aircraft in support of disparate military and naval operations was noted by a number of senior officers, especially in the Dardanelles.

In the early days of aviation, actual experience in the air was considered more important than military rank gained by seniority or time-served. Career officers serving as pilots were, therefore, given two ranks: their normal naval rank and a flying rank used within the Naval Air Service when appointed to flying duties. Thus a substantive Lieutenant RN could be appointed to flying duties as a Flight Lieutenant, Flight Commander, Squadron Commander or Wing Commander. Bell Davies himself rose rapidly through the flying ranks himself and was a Wing Commander RNAS by 1916.

After the embryonic Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps was reformed as the Royal Naval Air Service in 1914, all pilots wore the RNAS eagle badge over the curl of their left sleeve lace; flight and squadron commanders were denoted by stars over the lace and wing commanders by three stripes in their sleeve lacing. On reverting to general service, officers reverted to their naval rank. Bell Davies was involved in early discussions with Winston Churchill, the First Lord, about what sort of uniform short-service pilots should wear and was keen to see their position within the Naval Service emphasised; and an indication of what early flying was like is demonstrated by his forced landing in Number 33, following a broken inlet valve on the engine, in the Sheppey Marshes during a trip to Whitstable to obtain a barrel of oysters for Churchills lunch at Eastchurch.

Bell Davies will always be associated with the development of aircraft as strike weapons, capable of seeking out and attacking the enemy at ranges far beyond those that a warships own guns or torpedoes could achieve. He was awarded the DSO for an attack on U-boats alongside the mole at Zeebrugge on 23 January 1915, during which he was severely wounded by a bullet in the thigh handling his machine for an hour with great skill in spite of pain and loss of blood. Later in the year he was awarded the VC for an attack on Ferrijik Junction, a point on the strategically significant railway line that ferried German supplies to Turkey. On 19 November one of his squadron pilots was shot down near the junction and Bell Davies landed next to the burning wreckage of his aircraft to pick him up and fly him to safety crouched on all fours between the rudder bar and the engine bearers with his head bumping on the oil tank. The Admiralty described the feat as one that can seldom have been equalled for skill and gallantry.

From 1917 onwards he played a considerable part in the development of aircraft carriers that could operate their aircraft in the open sea in all but the worst weather. He was appointed Wing Commander in Campania, a converted Cunard liner that could launch aircraft from a platform 245 feet long built over the forecastle, but she had no means of landing them back on and they had to land on their floats on the water. Recovering them meant stopping the ship so that they could be attached to a crane and hoisted inboard, an evolution that meant the carrier losing station in the fleet and being desperately vulnerable to enemy action while stopped. In August 1917 Squadron Commander Dunning landed a Sopwith Pup on a similar deck on the new