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Book Reviews the ROYAL NAVY’S AIR SERVICE in the GREAT WAR by D Hobbs

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Book Reviews the ROYAL NAVY’S AIR SERVICE in the GREAT WAR by D Hobbs Afterburner Book Reviews THE ROYAL NAVY’S AIR SERVICE IN THE GREAT WAR By D Hobbs Seaforth Publishing, Pen & Sword Books, 47 Church Street, Barnsley, S Yorkshire S70 2AS, UK. 2017. xiii; 528pp. Illustrated. £35. ISBN 978- 184832-348-3. Commander David Hobbs is a major authority on British naval aviation history. I have always respected his advice about my own work in this field. I was therefore very interested to see how he would approach a subject in which I have already carried considerable research, the early development of British naval aviation. He has just produced this major work on this subject. I had great expectations; sadly, they were to be disappointed. After an introductory chapter on the origins of Naval flying in Britain the book moves more or less chronologically through the war to the combination of the two former wings of the Royal Flying Corps in the Royal Air Force in 1918. The story is, however, taken forward to the Armistice to follow through important Naval aviation developments. The theme research and acceptance unit as the Army could not Sqn Ldr Rutland flying is the pioneering work of the Royal Naval Air do it. Rather than being operated by the earmarked a Sopwith Pup off HMS Yarmouth on 28 June 1917. Service (RNAS) “as a sea service, that proved itself RNAS Armoured Car Squadrons the operational The Pup is believed to be ...to be adaptable enough to project sea power over tanks were passed to the Royal Tank Corps, not the N6431. All RAeS (NAL). land when called upon to do so. That it could do this Royal Tank Regiment Also it is surprising the author as well as creating an effective shipborne fleet air seems to have missed Bryan Perrett’s book The arm with aircraft embarked in a number of fighting Czar’s British Squadron (William Kimber. 1981) on ships, seaplane carriers and the world’s first aircraft Locker Lampson’s RNAS armoured cars in Russia. carrier is greatly to its credit. Its history should be The book is happier with operational and included with that of the Navy of which it formed a technical detail than with the politics of Naval significant part and not portrayed as some sort of aviation. Documents are quoted partially to make early prototype for an independent air force.” This the author’s argument rather than produce a full conclusion is only possible if one ignores the weight account in its challenging complexity. Much is of the historical evidence. missed out in the account of the changes that took There are a surprising number of omissions in the place once Churchill was replaced at the Admiralty. book’s research. Important sources on the early days The author writes approvingly of the assertion of are ignored. There is no mention of the fact that the more Admiralty control but it is clear that many famous 1 July 1914 letter setting out the structure contemporary airmen did not sympathise with this The First Lord of the ‘Royal Naval Air Service’ clearly referred to it development, not least the erstwhile Director of of the Admiralty still as the ‘Naval Wing of The Royal Flying Corps’, the Air Department Commodore Murray Sueter. He a designation that remained in the Navy List to the was clearly devoted to an independent ‘Royal Air Winston creation of the Royal Air Force in 1918. Service’, a view the Admiralty did not appreciate. Churchill and The book’s desire to impose a ‘Fleet Air Arm’ Another problem is that the book’s claims of the Director structure on a very different situation prevents U-boats sunk by RNAS aircraft are erroneous and proper understanding of the development of the inconsistent. This can be dealt with systematically. of the Air RNAS in the early war period. The First Lord of the The author claims that the boats sunk were UB20, Department Admiralty Winston Churchill and the Director of the UB32, UC1, UC6 and UC 36. Only UB32 was Murray Sueter Air Department Murray Sueter were clearly out to actually sunk by the RNAS; UB20, UC1 and UC6 were clearly create an autonomous service with both air and land were all mined and UC36 was rammed by a French components. Although the RNAS armoured cars are merchantman. Oddly enough, the book misses the out to create covered to an extent the best source on the subject first U-boat now generally agreed to have been an autonomous was not consulted and the discussion of the RNAS’ sunk by the RNAS – UC66 on 27 May 1917. service role in the development of the tank is just wrong. No The book criticises Grand Fleet Commander with both 20 squadron of the RNAS Armoured Car Division Admiral Beatty for his support of the creation of was not abolished when ‘landship’ development the RAF in 1917-18. When one considers the air and land was passed to the Army; it was kept as the tank difficulties he had obtaining aircraft for the Grand components 44 AEROSPACE / SEPTEMBER 2018 Fleet it is hardly surprising he took the view he did. and useful in this book but its clear desire to There is a real issue here. Why was the Admiralty give a ‘Fleet Air Arm’ view of history prevents the apparently so unenthusiastic about creating a fleet reader fully understanding a complex, intriguing air arm for the Grand Fleet and so pro-strategic and much misunderstood situation of the Naval bombing? In fact, in the short term, Beatty was Wing of the Royal Flying Corps (Royal Naval Air right and in 1918, with the Air Ministry in charge, Service) that played a key role in the development the Grand Fleet acquired a powerful and unique air of British air power – and armoured warfare! If one capability, as well described by Commander Hobbs wishes a more intellectually neutral analysis, may I in the book. Things became more difficult later recommend they read my two initial chapters in Tim on when the Air Ministry acquired the Admiralty’s Benbow’s British Naval Aviation, the First Hundred former predilection for strategic bombing at the Years (Ashgate Publishing Limited. 2011). The real expense of air support to the Fleet. As the struggle story is quite fascinating and enlightening! for a Fleet Air Arm developed in the early 1920s Beatty would live to revise his former pro-Air Professor Eric Grove Ministry views and no doubt came round to agree FRHistS with the anti-RAF views of this book’s author. Former Professor of Naval History, There is much that is interesting, informative Salford and Liverpool Hope THE IMAGINED EMPIRE Coloured lithograph depicting Balloon Enlightenments in Montgolfier accident near Revolutionary Europe Paris ‘General Alarm of the inhabitants of Gonesse, By M G Kim occasioned by the fall of the air balloon of Mr Montgolfier’. University of Pittsburgh Press. 2017. xxv; 427pp. RAeS (NAL). Illustrated. $54.95. ISBN 978-0-8229-4465-2. Balloons star here as a vehicle of political ideas in France. “The royal administration welcomed the balloon as an instrument of scientific hegemony that would strengthen the absolutist theatrical polity, but in performance it came to embody the people’s hope for a republican polity” (p 290), Kim concludes. Her disciplinary raid, she claims that “Pamphlet literature history foregrounds balloon spectacles appealing functioned as autoethnography to highlight the elite to the Bourbon court as a new form of display, to colonising outlook on ignorant people” (p 112). It is philosophers as an enlightenment vehicle and to productive, however, to compare balloons to theatre, the people as a possible technology of flight for and even more so to mesmerism, another topical everyone. Happily, the narrative explains in detail phenomenon. Sharing some science of invisible who pitched ideas and experiments and how, with fluids, they threatened royal control, thinks Kim, additional atmospherics from noting the personalities arguing that mesmerism took over public arguments enmeshed in politics. Thus Professor Charles, who about the symbolic force of science. made the first hydrogen balloon, was desperate to Chapters on balloons beyond Paris – in outstrip the competition; possibly he was secretly provincial French cities, where failures made people backed by the duc d’Orleans hoping to thwart Marie- lose interest; in Europe (by Blanchard) and in Britain Kim’s Antoinette, whose approval the Montgolfiers were (by Lunardi and assorted others) cover familiar conceptual courting (p 88). Leaving such sublunary jostlings narrative ground, yet keep an eye usefully on bigger below, the balloon, according to Kim, nonetheless political pictures. density is rose to become a symbol of the philosophical nation The Imagined Empire helps fill in the French rewarding for before being cut short by the ascendancy of the context of philosophical meanings carried by specialists of guillotine, a really democratic machine in that it balloons in the 1780s; especially on the first year the period, decapitated subjects of every class equally. of balloon experiments, it adds productively to aerial Kim’s conceptual density is rewarding for thinking by exploring how science has a politics as despite some specialists of the period, despite some sweeping well as a history. sweeping statements where rigour becomes a bit rigid. statements She sees the balloon as an instrument of internal Clare Brant where rigour colonisation, with landings providing contact zones Professor of Eighteenth-century Literature and (a term significant for travel writing) between Culture becomes a bit educated and lowly ignorant people. In another King’s College London rigid Find us on Twitter i Find us on LinkedIn f Find us on Facebook www.aerosociety.com SEPTEMBER 2018 45 Afterburner Book Reviews ARCHITECT OF AIR POWER General Laurence S Kuter and the Birth of the US Air Force By B D Laslie The University Press of Kentucky, 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, KY 40508-4008, USA.
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