In a few short years after 1914 the Royal Navy practically invented naval air warfare, not only producing the first effective aircraft carriers, but also pioneering most of the techniques and tactics that made naval air power a reality. By 1918 the RN was so far ahead of other navies that a US Navy observer sent to study the British use of aircraft at sea concluded that any discussion of the subject must first consider their methods. Indeed, by the time the war ended the RN was training for a carrier-borne attack by torpedo-bombers on the German fleet in its bases over two decades before the first successful employment of this tactic, against the Italians at Taranto.Following two previously well-received histories of British naval aviation, David Hobbs here turns his attention to the operational and technical achievements of the Royal Naval Air Service, both at sea and ashore, from 1914 to 1918. Detailed explanations of operations, the technology that underpinned them and the people who carried them out bring into sharp focus a revolutionary period of development that changed naval warfare forever. Controversially, the RNAS was subsumed into the newly created Royal Air Force in 1918, so as the centenary of its extinction approaches, this book is a timely reminder of its true significance.

In 1914 the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps was subsumed into the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). With the bulk of the Royal Flying Corps engaged in France, the aircraft and seaplane pilots of the RNAS protected Britain from the deadly and terrifying Zeppelin menace. In 1915 the RNAS sent aircraft to support the operations in the Dardanelles, and also gave increasing support to the Royal Flying Corps units engaged on the Western Front, conducting reconnaissance, intelligence gathering and artillery spotting, bombing raids, and aerial combat with German pilots. This book explores all of these fascinating areas, and charts the pioneering role of the RNAS in military aviation.

Investigating the employment of British aircraft against German submarines during the final years of the First World War, this new book places anti-submarine campaigns from the air in the wider history of the First World War. The Royal Naval Air Service invested heavily in aircraft of all types—aeroplanes, seaplanes, airships, and kite balloons—in order to counter the German U-boats. Under the Royal Air Force, the air campaign against U-boats continued uninterrupted. Aircraft bombed German U-boat bases in Flanders, conducted area and ‘hunting’ patrols around the coasts of Britain, and escorted merchant convoys to safety. Despite the fact that aircraft acting alone destroyed only one U-boat during the war, the overall contribution of naval aviation to foiling U-boat attacks was significant. Only five merchant vessels succumbed to submarine attack when convoyed by a combined air and surface escort during World War I. This book examines aircraft and weapons technology, aircrew training, and the aircraft production issues that shaped this campaign. Then, a close examination of anti-submarine operations—bombing, patrols, and escort—yields a significantly different judgment from existing interpretations of these operations. This study is the first to take an objective look at the writing and publication of the naval and air official histories as they told the story of naval aviation during the Great War. The author also examines the German view of aircraft effectiveness, through German actions, prisoner interrogations, official histories, and memoirs, to provide a comparative judgment. The conclusion closes with a brief narrative of post-war air anti-submarine developments and a summary of findings. Overall, the author concludes that despite the challenges of organization, training, and production the employment of aircraft against U-boats was largely successful during the Great War. This book will be of interest to historians of naval and air power history, as well as students of World War I and military history in general.

All aspects of naval aviation in World War I are detailed in this superbly researched book.

"No.10 Squadron of England's Royal Naval Air Service was formed at St. Pol, a suburb of Dunkerque, in February 1917, as part of the rapid naval aviation expansion programme required by the Royal Naval Air Service's commitment to assist the Royal Flying Cor"

So rapid have been the advances in the science of aeronautics since the end of the First World War that it requires a considerable feat of imagination to cast one's mind back over the comparatively short period of seventy years to the days when Flight Commander Bartlett of the Royal Naval Air Service was flying some of the world's first bombers over the Western Front.An equal adjustment for those more used to accounts of the nerve-chilling existence of bomber crews in the Second World War is called for when tuning in to the extra ordinarily happy-go-lucky atmosphere which seemed to prevail among these early pilots. Not for them the nail-biting tension as they head over the trenches - rather the schoolboy exuberance of a jolly outing.Philip Bartlett's account is a unique and fascinating record of a pilot's life in the dawn of aerial warfare and, as history, of the first use of the bomber in war, strangely, by the Navy's aircraft.Flying by day and night alone, without navigational aids, the author moves from attacks on the U-boat bases to bombing the German Gothas as they prepared to raid London, and then to the support of Haig's drive to the coast which ended in the mud of Passchendaele. The climax in March, 1918, is reached when the author's squadron finds itself directly in the path of Ludendorff's massive thrust, which broke the British Vth Army and nearly decided the War. Attacked by Richthofen's aces, No 5 Squadron RNAS flew continuous and desperate missions against the advancing troops from aerodomes which were over-run time after time. At a time when the life of a pilot was reckoned in weeks, the author flew 101 missions, enduring the rigours of flying without heating or oxygen, with hesitant engines, no parachutes and the attention of German fighters. Yet there is continual evidence of the pure joy of flying and wonder at the sheer beauty of the the sky.