T. D. Hallam

“ When the War Flight was first started Jumbo had palmed off on me, being new in the mess, all the halt, lame, and blind for a working party, for he had a habit of secreting away all the best men for nefarious jobs of his own. But after the first submarine was bombed his heart was completely softened, and with a great wrench, and protesting that his own work would never get done, he turned over to me one man who knew his job. ”

“ In shallow water the troughs of the waves are retarded, with the result that they become steep, the crests break, and the water rushes forward with great violence.
Water in mass played upon by the wind is not the tractable element it appears when running through our pipes, contained in shaving-mugs, or filling baths. Thus, while a land-machine pilot, down safely with engine failure, has all his worries behind him, the pilot of a seaplane or flying-boat, down at sea, has all his troubles to come, unless the weather be fine, help near at hand, or his craft very seaworthy. ”

“ Results only have been more or less fully presented, the loyal and often heartbreaking work of the ratings in the sheds has not even been sketched. But the hard and the soft, the comedy and the tragedy, are now in the past, and it is out of such stuff, seemingly raw and grey at the time, that Romance is made.
The German submarines, defeated and surrendered, have come streaming in through the guardships, up past the slipways, their crews on deck, and the white ensign flying above them, and are lying rusting and rotting, huddled together, in "Submarine Trot" off Parkeston, in Harwich harbour. ”

“ As he passed out of the approaches to Harwich the mist shut in; so he brought the boat down to five hundred feet, and fifteen minutes later he passed the Shipwash. This was the last thing he was to see until he sighted the Dutch Islands, and from this time on navigation was done by compass, dead-reckoning, and inspiration.
To a land-machine pilot a compass is an instrument in which he has no trust. It may show him the way over the lines and the way back, or it may not. It may apparently go mad, and swing round and round, or the north point may steady on anywhere but north. ”

“ When he had got off Terschelling, Magor swung his formation east and went into the Bight. They photographed all mine-sweepers and surface craft they met and jotted their position on the chart. At Borkum they ran into two two-seater Hun seaplanes.
Magor crashed down on the tail of the first seaplane and Potter filled it with lead from his machine-gun. It burst into flames, nose-dived into the water, and a pennant of black smoke, ever increasing in volume, tailed off down wind. ”

“ In their job o' work of bombing U-boats, attacking Zeppelins, fighting enemy seaplanes, and carrying out reconnaissance and convoy duties, there is as much romance as in any particular effort in the war. In the future, grown great in size, the boats will form the winged Navy, and will carry mails and passengers over the water-routes of all the world.
Boat seaplanes, or flying-boats as they are called by the men who use them, are a true type of aircraft designed for dealing with the chances and hazards of flying over the sea. ”

“ The merchant ships would get into formation and start across the North Sea. The keen destroyers, sharp as needles, would zigzag and throw circles around them, like a group of rat-terriers chasing a cat around a knot of old ladies. They did this in order to intimidate any submarine commander out pot-hunting. While the swift light cruisers, stately and imperturbable, would boil along well out on the dangerous flank, apparently ignoring the fuss and fury of the show going on near them, but keeping a good look-out [Pg 80] in case a striking force of Hun destroyers made a snatch at the convoy. ”

“ The innocent wavelets dancing in the sun, pretty and sparkling, and the huge black rollers, whose crests under the weight of a gale, before they can curl over and break, explode into spindrift, are propagated by the wind blowing obliquely on the surface of the water. ”

“ With the new year American pilots began to arrive for the War Flight. The first was Ensign Vorys, U.S.N., and Ensigns Fallen, Potter, Sturtevant, Hawkins, and Scheffelin quickly followed. They were splendid chaps, keen on flying, and could not be kept out of the air. They had all the fresh enthusiasm for the war which everybody that came in in 1914 and 1915 had possessed, and regarded patrolling, which the old hands looked on as a hard and exacting business, as a novel and entertaining sport. One of their number, who arrived a little later, looped the loop in a six-ton flying-boat ”

“ I asked to be taken along, and we all shoved out through the guardships into the open sea. We could not get near the barge owing to the shallow water, and Jumbo forsook us, climbing with five of his satellites into a small dingey, which, perilously overloaded, bobbed away over the heavy sea into the darkness.
A long wait. The tug was rolling and tossing in the steep waves. A drizzling rain was falling. There were no shore lights, and the night was pitch-black. And then there was a glare of light in the distance, Jumbo had lit one of the acetylene flares on the stern of the salvage barge. ”

“ To appreciate the work of the flying service, it must be remembered that the pilot in the machine is only the spearhead of the weapon, and behind the spearhead must be a stout and reliable haft, so that the business end can be driven home with full effect.
The helve of the haft consists of the carpenters who true-up, inspect, and repair the machines; the engineers who clean, test, and keep the engines in order; the armourers who adjust the bombs and machine-guns; and the working party who push about the boats and fill the tanks with petrol. ”

“ If the pilot of a flying-boat had to go to a light-ship sixty miles due east from his station when a twenty-knot wind was blowing from the north, and he flew at sixty knots due east by his compass, at the end of an hour he would not fetch up at his object, but twenty miles to the south of it. If, instead of flying on 90 degrees, which is east, he flew on 71 degrees on his compass, he would fetch up at the light-ship in sixty-three minutes, having travelled due east over the surface of the sea. To a man in a ship he would appear to be flying sideways. ”

“ So this is a yarn about the beginnings and work of a single flying-boat station, but it is characteristic of the work carried out at the seaplane stations strung along the South and East Coasts of Great Britain, from the Scilly Islands, off Land's End, to the Orkneys and Shetlands, off the north of Scotland. If the names and deeds of the pilots at Felixstowe are alone recorded, it is not that equally gallant and skilful men were not harrying the Hun elsewhere, but that their adventures would fill many volumes. ”

“ From the very beginning of things there was much faith shown by the sea-going pilots of the Royal Naval Air Service in the seaplane as a weapon to do down the U-boat. But the technical people of the service neglected float seaplanes; and flying-boats, of which they did not approve, took a long time to develop. Instead of perfecting seaplanes the slide-rule merchants developed scout land machines with the idea of using them off the decks of ships, and a strong force of aeroplane pilots was collected and provided with fast and handy aeroplanes. ”

“ Keeping my eyes in the boat, watching the cross level to keep on an even keel, the air-speed indicator to keep to a steady speed, and the eloquent hand—for under these circumstances the hand almost seems to talk—to make small adjustments in the course, I waited. For, to do good bomb-dropping the boat must pass on a line vertically over the submarine, on an even keel, and at a constant speed. ”

“ A wader has not got a soft job. At some stations where there is a strong tide running waders have been washed off the slipways and drowned.
As the flying-boat entered the water the trolley, being heavy, remained on the slipway, and the boat floated off. The thrust of the engines urged her forward, and she taxied clear. Hobbs taxied out into the harbour, turned up into the wind, and opened the engines full out. ”

“ The man told off for the purpose put on board a packet of sandwiches, a bottle of water, the five days' emergency ration in case the boat came down at sea, the Red Cross Box and the pigeons.
The oil in the engines being now warm, the engineers opened out one engine at a time, the fierce slipstream from the propellers shaking the whole tail of the boat and whirling up clouds of dust from the concrete. A two-foot flame stood out from each exhaust pipe, and particles of incandescent carbon, burning red, were blown backwards for many yards. In daylight you cannot see the flame or carbon. ”

“ Everybody all at once got wise to the fact that it was the long hauls over the water routes that were going to pay. Competitors, comparatively slow steamers, fifteen to twenty-five knots. One or two flying-boat companies had been working on the job and were not making such a bad fist at it. But the land-machine people had a cut at it. Couldn't get it into their heads that big flying-boats were just as efficient as big land-machines, and a bit faster, as they hadn't to carry landing wheels and under-carriage. ”

“ He snapped back the lever which removed the safety device from the bombs and set the bomb-sight for height, speed, and wind.
When a bomb is released it travels forward on the same line as the machine, and, at first, at the same speed, but its speed forward gradually diminishes owing to the resistance of the air. At the same time it travels downwards owing to the force of gravity at an ever increasing rate of speed. It thus reaches the surface of the sea just after the machine has passed vertically over the spot. ”

“ Speed and reliability are the essence of mail-carrying. It's the time taken from the office boy licking the stamp until the presentation paper-knife slits open the envelope at the other end that counts, and the letter has always got to get there. The only letter-writers in a tremendous hurry, excepting the mad people who are frantically in love, are in the main centres of population, and they are connected by fast train services. Also, the wireless telephone rather put a bend in the show—talk to anybody anywhere at any time.
Erecting the 15-ton Felixstowe Fury. ”

“ Two wind-driven pumps forced the petrol up from the main tanks to a small tank in the top plane. The engines were fed from the top tank by gravity, and the surplus petrol pumped up ran back to the main tanks. The engineer regulated the flow so that the petrol was drawn from and overflowed back into the main tanks in such a way that the fore-and-aft balance of the boat was maintained. If anything went wrong with an engine he had to climb out on the wing and, if possible, make a repair.
Once a flying-boat attacked a submarine from a low altitude and was met by machine-gun fire. ”

“ Flying-boats can fly on one engine if the total weight is not too great. It is a question of weight for horse-power available. To enable the pilot to keep the boat flying in a straight line without undue strain, a heavy rubber cord is fitted on the rudder wires, which can be tightened as requisite.
During the Beef Trip Hodgson and Ramsden sighted a U-boat, which dived. It torpedoed a small Dutch steamer seven miles north of the North Hinder, which was seen in trouble by Hallinan and Brown. They saw two boats put out, the crew tumble into them, and the ship sink. ”

“ School work was also in full swing, for a boat had been turned over to the War Flight for this purpose, and the first pilots in their spare time crashed around instructing the second pilots in the gentle art of taking off and landing a big boat—an exercise which proved equally hard on the nerves of the instructors and on the bottom of the machine, as there was only a single control-wheel fitted and the first pilot had to give up all control to the pupil. ”

“ Fog? No more dangerous to us than it is to surface ships. The Wireless Navigator tells us where we are to within a mile. And if the fog is very thick in a harbour, or the clouds are right down to the water, we land outside and taxi in, just as we used to do.
"Remember Queenie's night-landing gadget? It put a boat down on the water automatically. You let a lever hang down over the side, shut off your engines, glided down, and when the tip of the lever touched the water it pulled back the controls and the boat landed smoothly. We use an adaptation of the gadget to-day. ”

“ Our Mess was livened up about this time by the frequent visits of a senior officer who, arriving about dinner-time, would discuss flying far into the night, turn out at daybreak to fly any machine available no matter what the weather was like, and then, after breakfast, hasten off to the Admiralty. It was a tremendous relief to meet a senior officer who was keen to know everything about flying at first hand, who could deal on paper with flying problems of which he had practical experience, and took the trouble to understand the point of view of the pilots. ”

“ As the wind-driven petrol pumps would only work when the machine was in the air, one man had to keep the petrol hand-pump going to feed the engines.
Seas bursting over the lower planes were whirled up into the propellers and thrown back over the engines. They were white with the salt; but they kept running.
The tail was nearly full of water from a big leak, but a bulkhead held it out of the main body of the boat, although she was getting heavier and heavier, and was crashing through the seas instead of riding over the top of them. The sledge-hammer blows shook the whole structure. ”