sign in sign up
<<
Home , 113 Squadron (Israel), 69 Squadron (Israel), Advanced Landing Ground, Air Board (Australia), Alfred John Brown, Alfred Shepherd

AUSTRALIA, THE EMPIRE AND THE GREAT WAR IN THE AIR

Michael Molkentin

A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

University of School of Humanities and Social Sciences

May 2013

1

ABSTRACT Despite its distance from and lack of technological and industrial infrastructure demonstrated an early interest in military . Starting with a small flying school intended to train militia airmen, during the Great War the raised four service squadrons and a training for overseas service. Through the Australian Flying (AFC), Australia made a small, but unlike the other , distinct contribution to the empire’s effort in the air. Australians also joined the British flying services, contributing to the broader imperial effort.

This thesis substantially revises the account of Australia’s role in the air war presented in Frederic Cutlack’s 1923 volume of the Official history. By using records unavailable to Cutlack and exploring themes beyond his purview, this research places the individual and unit experiences of the AFC, documented in such detail elsewhere, into the contexts that defined and gave them meaning. Through the AFC and the British flying services Australians participated fully in the air war and contributed to the emergence of air power’s importance on the battlefield by 1918. At the same time, however, Australia’s engagement with aviation between 1909 and 1918 was utterly defined by the broader contexts of imperial relations and British air policy. The distinctiveness of Australia’s contribution to the air war is therefore less than it ostensibly appears. Further, comparisons with the other dominions and an analysis of training, administration and command – as well as the campaigns in which Australian airmen fought – suggest that, in fielding its own flying arm, the Australian government unwittingly sacrificed military pragmatism for political expediency without putting Australia on a specially sound footing on which to build an independent in the post war years.

5 CONTENTS Acknowledgements ...... 7

Text Note ...... 10

Abbreviations and Acronyms ...... 11

List of Maps, Tables and Charts ...... 13

Introduction ...... 14

1. The Origin of Military Aeronautics in Australia ...... 33

2. Organisation and Administration of Australia’s War in the Air ...... 63

3. Recruitment, Training and Reinforcement ...... 98

4. The Crucible of Air Power: on the Western Front, 1914-1916 .... 135

5. The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1915 ...... 156

6. The -Sinai Campaign, 1916 ...... 184

7. Australians and Aerial Warfare over the Western Front in 1917 ...... 211

8. The Battles of Gaza and the Advance to , 1917 ...... 249

9. Australians and the Battle for Air Superiority in 1918: The Western Front ...... 284

10. Australians and the Battle for Air Superiority in 1918: ...... 313

11. Army Co-operation on the Western Front in 1918 ...... 331

Conclusion ...... 356

Appendix 1: AFC Dispositions...... 364

Appendix 2: AFC Squadrons: Operational Statistics, July-October 1918...... 366

Appendix 3: 3rd Squadron: Operational Statistics, 1918...... 367

Bibliography ...... 368

6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It has been an immense privilege to work under the supervision of two historians whose work I admire so much and who occupy such eminent positions in their field. Professor Jeffrey Grey encouraged me to take on a PhD. Throughout the project his vast knowledge and experience have been invaluable – as has his commonsense approach to the idiosyncratic world of academia. I have learned a great deal from working under his supervision; I am sure that further into my career I will look back on my association with Professor Grey as a truly formative one. Professor Peter Stanley has been a great supporter of my development as a historian since my undergraduate days and I was delighted to have him as co-supervisor. His insightful criticism of draft chapters thoroughly guided my research and his advice saved me from many pitfalls. Now, free of the university’s ethics regulations, he might let me buy him lunch.

Though not acting in an official supervisory role, a number of other historians generously shared their knowledge and experience, providing insight into the research and writing process as well as aspects of my topic. At ADFA these included Emeritus Professor Peter Dennis, Dr Mark Hinchcliffe, Dr John Connor, Dr Craig Stockings and Dr Mark Lax. Further afield, I am grateful for the assistance of Dr Karl James and Mr Aaron Pegram (), Drs Rhys Crawley and Peter Dean (Australian National University), Drs Chris Clark and Gregory Gilbert (Air Power Development Centre, Canberra), Associate Professor John McQuilton (University of Wollongong), Mr Seb Cox (Air Historical Branch) and Dr Adam Classen (Massey University). A global network of fellow PhD candidates also provided encouragement, collegiality and empathy (or is that sympathy?) – as well as stimulating discussion about our shared interest in the Great War: Kerry Neale (UNSW@ADFA), Lucas (Australian National University) Jen Hawksley (University of Wollongong), Aimee Fox-Godden (University of Birmingham), Julia Dawson (King’s College, ) Immanuel Voigt (Historisches Institut, Jena) and James ‘Skip’ Federici (Ohio State University).

Others, not professional historians but having an understanding of air warfare built on decades of painstaking research also generously shared their knowledge. I am particularly grateful to the Australian Society of World War One Aero Historians for

7 allowing me early access to the beta version of their Australian Airmen of the Great War database. David Perkins has done a splendid job digitising the monumental amount of data collected by the late Barry Videon and several of his Society colleagues. Chas Schaedel generously shared material from his research into Australians in the British flying services; Errol Martyn did the same regarding ’s aviators from his work on a forthcoming book; Trevor Henshaw answered many queries from his comprehensive bank of claim/loss data and Dr Dieter Gröschel, the authority on the German flying services in the Middle East, clarified my understanding of the confusing history of those units.

As the bibliography indicates, research for this thesis drew on material in archives scattered around the globe. I gratefully acknowledge the assistance I received from at all these institutions but especially want to thank Peter Devitt (RAF Museum, Hendon), Jamie Brown (The National Archives, Kew), Warren Sinclair (Directorate of History and Heritage, Ottawa), Dr Thomas Allen (Eugene McDermott Library, University of Texas), Monica Walsh and David Gardener (RAAF Museum, Point Cook) and Kerry Jeffrey (National Archives of Australia). I am also grateful for the assistance provided by Holly Peters in organising copies of records I missed while in the , Meleah Hampton for doing the same in Adelaide and David Pounder who helped me with research in .

My research also drew on privately held collections generously provided by the families of early airmen. I am grateful for the rare privilege and hospitality provided by all those listed in the bibliography but want to particularly acknowledge Mrs Anne Baker and her son David who invited me to Salisbury to examine the papers of Sir . It was an immense privilege to be the first person outside the family to consult this remarkable collection of a significant, yet under-researched, air power leader.

Supporting my efforts to draw on such far-flung archives, my colleagues in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra have provided impeccable administrative support. Professor David Lovell, head of the school, has been a great advocate of my work throughout and encouraged me to travel abroad to get to the records this project needed. The efficient administrative support provided by Jo Muggleton, Bernadette McDermott, Shirley Ramsay and Marilyn Anderson-

8 Smith helped me get overseas and perhaps more remarkably, survive three years without being swallowed whole by the university’s bureaucracy.

The Australian Postgraduate Association provided a scholarship, which made undertaking full-time research possible. The , through the Centenary project, and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, generously funded research in overseas archives.

I also appreciate the support of Mr Tony Cummings, Headmaster of Shellharbour Anglican College, where I taught before commencing my PhD candidature. Despite being reluctant to lose an enthusiastic young teacher (that’s what he told me – perhaps it was because I was cheap) he encouraged me to undertake this challenging project and provided me with casual employment to help make ends meet. Tony also ensured that, though not on full-time staff, I remained in touch with Shellharbour’s immensely supportive community. He has been an influential mentor and friend. Along with his other staff and, indeed, the College’s students, I have benefited considerably from his conviction that educators need to be life-long learners. Now, all he needs is more funding so he can lead the way in making secondary schools not just conduits for knowledge but places in which, like universities, knowledge is created. Of great practical help, Tony also allowed me to use the College’s printers while I was away from ADFA.

‘Doing’ a PhD can be an isolating experience but from this I was saved by my wonderfully supportive friends and family. My wife Melissa has been a pillar of strength and encouragement throughout. She supported my leaving a secure, well- paid job to take up a postgraduate scholarship and has not once, even in the toughest times, faltered in her conviction that it was the right thing to do and an entirely worthwhile undertaking. That our little Harriet Ruth arrived half way through Chapter 9 did not check my progress at all, though again it fell to Melissa to take up the slack on the ‘home front’. Thank you – it’s done and now my girls have their husband and daddy back.

9

TEXT NOTE During the Great War the AFC squadrons had a confusing variety of unit titles. For clarity, throughout this thesis they are identified by their ordinal number titles (1st Squadron, 2nd Squadron, etc.). This reflects how British and Australian authorities referred to them in the war’s final months and also clearly distinguishes the AFC units from British squadrons, which always used cardinal number titles (No. 1, No. 2 etc.). Hence, 3rd Squadron (AFC) is not confused with No. 3 Squadron (RFC), in which some Australian pilots also served.

The British flying services initially described aircraft employed in an aerial combat role as ‘scouts’. By 1918, however, the term ‘fighter’ was gaining currency. Being a more accurate description of this aircraft’s role and clearer to readers, the term ‘fighter’ is used in most instances.

Although the modern Turkish Republic did not exist until 1923, the terms ‘Turkish’ and ‘Ottoman’ are used synonymously in this thesis – as they were by British and Australian contemporaries of the Great War.

Australian English is employed throughout the text except in quotations where the original spelling is maintained. Place names are taken from the British and Australian official histories; where they differ preference has usually be given to the latter.

Where possible, imperial units have been converted to metric except in altitude, as remains the practice in aviation today, and currency.

The term ‘Australian’ is ambiguous in the context of 1914, when as much as 20 per cent of the population were British born and the distinction between being ‘British’ and ‘Australian’ was vague and varied considerably between different parts of society. For the purposes of this thesis, a person is described as ‘Australian’ if they were born and raised in one of the Australian colonies or states or can be shown to have established roots in Australia before the war (via education, marriage, property etc) and considered themselves ‘Australian’.

10 ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS AAG Assistant Adjutant

ADC Aide-de-camp

AFC Australian

AHB Air Historical Branch

AIF Australian Imperial Force

AWM Australian War Memorial

BEF British Expeditionary Force

BGGS Brigadier General, General Staff

BHStA IV Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Abteilung IV

CBSO Counter-Battery Staff Office

CFS

CGS Chief of General Staff

CID Committee of Imperial Defence

CIGS Chief of Imperial General Staff

CO Commanding

DAAG Deputy Assistant Adjutant General

DAD Deputy Assistant Director

DGMA Director-General of Military Aeronautics

DHH Directorate of History and Heritage

DMO Director of Military Operations

EEF Egyptian Expeditionary Force

EML Eugene McDermott Library (University of Texas)

11 GOC General Officer Commanding

GSO General Staff Officer (Grade I, II or III)

HD Home Defence

IEF Indian Expeditionary Force

IWM

LAC Library and Archives ()

LHCMA Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives

MEF Mediterranean Expeditionary Force

NAA National Archives of Australia

NAUK National Archives of the United Kingdom

NSWAS New South Wales Aviation School

PRO Public Record Office

RAF

RAAF Royal Australian Air Force

RE

RFC

RNAS

SLNSW State Library of New South Wales

SLSA State Library of South Australia

SLV State Library of Victoria

SO Staff Officer

SRNSW State Records, New South Wales

12 LIST OF MAPS, TABLES AND CHARTS Table 3.1 AFC Training Squadron ‘B’ Level Graduations, July- October 1918 ...... 131

The Western Front, 1915 ...... 140

Mesopotamia, 1915 ...... 158

Sinai Desert 1916 ...... 187

Organisation of the RFC in the Middle East in ...... 197

Table 7.1 Australians identified in the British and Australian flying services, CWGC burials by year ...... 215

The battle of , 20 November – 6 ...... 235

Palestine, 1917-18 ...... 252

Table 8.1 Co-operation, First and Second Gaza and Vimy Ridge ...... 263

Organisation of the RFC in the Middle East, 27 ...... 269

British and German dispositions on the Western Front, ...... 293

Table 9.1 4th Squadron enemy aircraft claims and mission type, June- October 1918 ...... 307

Palestine, Syria and Trans-Jordan, 1918 ...... 315

Palestine order of battle, 30 September 1918 ...... 317

V Brigade RAF, 8 August 1918 ...... 337

The ’ Advance, 8 August-5 October 1918 ...... 339

13 INTRODUCTION In August 1923 The Argus reviewed the recently published The in the Western and Eastern Theatres of War 1914-1918, Volume VIII of the 12-volume Official in the War of 1914-18.1 The book told a story unfamiliar to the reviewer and indeed, one of which he anticipated the Australian public had little knowledge. ‘It will surprise most people to find that the Australians did so much flying’, he predicted.2

Australians had indeed done some flying during the war, though much of it occurred separate to the Australian Imperial Force’s (AIF) most celebrated campaigns. The air war, as a result, remained outside the canonical narrative of Australia’s war that official war correspondent had established, initially in his dispatches and later in the six volumes of official history he authored. Stories in the newspapers about airmen appeared only occasionally and focused on thrilling descriptions of aerial dogfighting and the individual successes of a few notable fighter pilots such as Arthur Cobby, whom The Age dubbed ‘the Wizard of the air’.3

As it did in Europe and the other dominions, interest in military flying in Australia pre-dated the war. During 1909 reports of developments in aviation overseas and predictive literature inspired the establishment of a small aerial lobby in Australia and drew the attention of political and military authorities. In the context of an unprecedented expansion of Australia’s defence forces that included the establishment of the and the compulsory service scheme, the Department of Defence and service heads planned for the establishment of a local aerial militia. By 1914 this had resulted in the establishment of a rudimentary flying school at Point Cook, which the Department intended would produce a flying squadron of the Citizen Forces over the coming three years.

1 F. M. Cutlack, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VIII: The Australian Flying Corps in the Western and Eastern Theatres of War, 1914-1918, Angus and Robertson, , 1939, (1923). 2 ‘New Books-Australian Airmen in the War’, The Argus (), 11 August 1923, p. 8. 3 ‘The Wizard of the Air-Australian Airman’s Great Record’, The Age, 17 June 1919, p. 4. For other representative examples of coverage of Australia’s air war in the press, see: ‘With Our Boys-The QVFC’, The Courier, 25 , p. 7; ‘Sydney Airman Killed. - Youdale MC’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 December 1917; ‘Record for the Week. Australian Flying Corps Engaged. 145 Enemy Machines Downed’, (), 11 , p. 5. 14 The outbreak of war in altered these plans significantly. The first Australian airmen went to New Guinea with the 3rd Battalion of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force in but did no flying. A ‘half flight’ followed at the request of the Indian Government in to help the Indian Expeditionary Force ‘D’ secure lower Mesopotamia. The detachment, absorbed into No. 30 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), subsequently supported - General Sir Charles Townshend’s ill-fated campaign to capture : most personnel surrendered with Townshend in in .

At the ’s invitation the Australian government formed four complete service squadrons during 1916. Fulfilling a variety of tactical roles, 1st Squadron served with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in the Sinai and Palestine from April 1916 until the Armistice. A ‘corps’ co-operation unit, 3rd Squadron deployed to the Western Front in and supported the Australian Corps for most of 1918. Also arriving on the Western Front in late 1917, 2nd and 4th Squadrons – both flying fighters – supported the British air offensive to achieve superiority over the front and, increasingly during 1918, support ground forces directly.

In the field these squadrons all served within the RFC’s (and from 1 , the RAF’s) general organisation: for command and logistical purposes they were part of British and wings; aside from personal kit they used equipment supplied by the War Office; they operated according to RFC/RAF policy and, most typically, carried out orders emanating from British headquarters. The AIF exercised practically no operational command over its flying units, Australian responsibility extending only to the administration of personnel. Similar circumstances governed training. At the War Office’s behest, in 1917 the AIF established four training squadrons in Britain. For the remainder of the war these practically replaced the Central Flying School at Point Cook in supplying the AFC with airmen. In early 1918 the establishment of an Australian training wing consolidated the administration, command and location of the four Australian training squadrons although the whole organisation remained a subordinate part of the RAF’s training establishment. The wing supplied the majority of the AFC’s pilots with flight training during the war’s closing months but continued relying on British schools for training observers and mechanics, and for providing pilots with advanced combat training. According to 15 statistics compiled by the Australian authorities after the war, 880 officers and 2,840 other ranks served overseas with the AFC.4

Throughout the war, though especially in 1915 and 1916, Australians also joined the British flying services. The efforts of the Commonwealth to preserve the AFC’s distinct identity meant that these men typically had no association with their nation’s aviation arm; they served in squadrons of the RFC, RNAS and RAF alongside pilots from Britain and the other dominions and entirely under British administration. AIF administrators maintained no links with Australians who joined the British flying services while British authorities paid no attention to their origins. There is, hence, very little documentation relating specifically to the service of Australians in the British air services. It has nonetheless been possible to identify 600 individuals who might reasonably be considered ‘Australian’, that is, either born or educated in the dominion.5

This thesis defines and evaluates the Australian contribution to the Great War in the air. Its primary focus is the AFC: its origins, organisation, command, administration and training, in addition to its work in the field. Australian involvement is positioned in its imperial context: the AFC as integrated into the RAF and its antecedents, and Australia’s role in relation to that played by the other dominions. Australians serving in the British air services provide a secondary focus: this thesis quantifies their part in the conflict and draws on their experiences to examine significant aspects of the air war in which the AFC played no part. Though relatively modest, the breadth and extent of Australian participation in the air war provides evidence of the evolution of military flying and permits an evaluation of how it came to contribute to the success of British arms on the battlefield. This broader examination of air power’s development, as revealed by Australian experience, provides the third aspect of this thesis.

4 H. N. Wrigley to Charles Bean, 28 April 1924, AWM38 3DRL8042/64. 5 These sources include an incomplete nominal roll of AIF personnel discharged to accept imperial commissions [AWM27 361/16]; the Australian War Memorial’s commemorative roll, [https://www.awm.gov.au/research/people/commemorative_roll/, consulted 8 November 2012]; the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database which records the address of some next of kin [http://www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead.aspx, consulted 8 November 2012]; ‘Service records and correspondence concerning Australians serving with other Imperial forces, World War 1’, NAA MT1487/1; ‘Official History, 1914-18 War, biographical and other research files’, AWM43; and assorted memoirs, letters and diaries that mention individual Australian airmen serving with British squadrons. 16 The impetus and justification for this topic comes from the identification of orthodoxies and gaps in the secondary literature. The Australian and British official histories provide a significant point of departure for new research into Australian involvement in the air war, as do recurring themes and approaches in more recent scholarship on the Great War in the air and air power generally. At the same time, this thesis engages with a vast literature on Australian defence and military history as well as studies into Australia’s relationship with the . The identification of archival sources neglected or used superficially in previous studies has also fundamentally directed research for this thesis.

The literature on military aviation in the Great War is expansive, but its focus is uneven. On one hand enthusiasts have dominated the field, focusing narrowly on the air war’s tactical level: typically the celebrated fighter aces, personal experiences of aerial combat and the technology. Scholars and air power theorists have meanwhile focused largely on , a nominal function of aviation during the First World War, but one that helps contextualise air power’s foremost role in subsequent conflicts. The application of air power at the level of battles and campaigns, and the related themes of command, logistics, administration and training, has had considerably less attention.6 This characteristic of the literature may account for a tendency to overlook the imperial dimension of Britain’s aerial effort – something obscured in studies of individuals and strategic bombing but potentially more apparent in studies that consider operations and policy.

Under the auspices of the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID), the British published the first comprehensive history of the air war. Beginning a fortnight after the RAF’s establishment in April 1918, the endeavour produced six volumes and an appendix based on exclusive access to the official records; the final volumes appeared

6 The terms ‘operations’ and ‘operational’ have had various meanings and usages. The term’s current, dominant meaning (of US origin) refers to the ‘use of available military resources to attain strategic ends in a theatre of war’ [John Alger, Definitions and Doctrine of the Military Art, Avery Publishing , New Jersey, 1985, p. 5]. To avoid anachronism, this thesis will not attempt to apply this modern American definition to European events of almost a century ago. Rather, it applies the contemporary ’s definition of the term, as established in Field Service Regulations, Part I, Operations, 1909. Although not containing an explicit definition of the term ‘operations’, the manual describes an operation as a military undertaking intended to achieve a specific objective through the co-operation of a number of units, arms and formations (see pp. 26-28, 1914 edition). Military historians of the Great War usually define ‘operational command’ as involving formation level headquarters (, corps and army) [Andy Simpson, Directing Operations: British Corps Command on the Western Front 1914-18, Spellmount, Stroud, 2006, p. xv.]. 17 in 1937.7 The authors – English professor Sir Walter Raleigh for Volume I and ex- RAF pilot Henry Jones for the others – had instructions to write a narrative history for a popular readership, the CID considering operational analysis a discrete function of staff histories.8 By his own admission Raleigh approached his volume as a work more of literature than history; he employs the ‘language of Milton and Swift’ to romanticise the air war and cast the development of military aviation as a national triumph and indicative of virtues inherent in the British character.9 Writing with more restraint (‘damned dry reading’, thought the AFC’s official historian), Jones adhered to the prevailing philosophy of historians such as John Bury and strived for ‘scrupulously exact conformity to facts’ and an avoidance of ‘literary dress’; he saw his role as establishing the facts and allowing them to speak for themselves without being ‘wise after the event’.10 In the main his volumes chronicle rather than interpret the past. Nevertheless both Jones and Raleigh perceived The War in the Air as presenting a case for air power generally and the RAF as an independent third service specifically.11

Assisted by the staff of the ’s historical research section (later Air Historical Branch), during the early 1920s the British official historians collected aviation-related records from the disparate military, government and civilian bodies associated with early military flying and constructed an artificial subject classified series.12 The provenance of this series is significant because during the 1960s the Air Ministry transferred it to the Public Record Office (PRO); it remains the fundamental archival source on British air operations during the Great War. The series’ original

7 Walter Raleigh and H. A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the story of the part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force, six volumes, Clarendon, Oxford, 1922-1937; H. McAnally, Air Ministry Secretary to E. Y. Daniel, Historical Committee Secretary, 7 May 1918, NAUK AIR5/495 Pt V. 8 ‘Official Histories’- memorandum by the secretary of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence, , NAUK CAB24/92; ‘Suggested reorganization of the historical section’, nd (c. February 1919), NAUK AIR5/495 Pt V. 9 H. A. Jones, Sir Walter Raleigh and the Air History: a Personal Recollection, Edward Arnold & Co., London, 1922, pp. 17-18; Raleigh to Hugh Trenchard, Chief of the Air Staff, 13 January 1921, RAF MFC 76/1/261 Raleigh, The War in the Air, volume I, pp. 409 and 420. 10 Frederic Cutlack to Charles Bean, 6 November 1935, AWM 3DRL 7953/33; (ed.), Selected essays of J. B. Bury, University Press, Cambridge, 1930, p.6; J. B. Bury, An inaugural lecture delivered at the Divinity School Cambridge on January 26 1903, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1903, p. 17; J. C. Nerney, ‘The 1917’, p. 13, NAUK AIR1/678/21/13/1942 (see the handwritten annotation on p. 13 in what, when compared with correspondence relating to the writing of the official history in RAF X003-8803, almost certainly appears to be Jones’ handwriting). 11 Raleigh to Lady Trenchard, 27 November 1921, RAF MFC 76/1/261; Jones to McAnally, 2 October 1925, RAF X003-8803; Jones to McAnally, 11 December 1926, RAF X003-8803. 12 Correspondence relating to this process is in NAUK AIR5/1431. 18 organisation (which the PRO retained) reflects the official historians’ priorities, making researching topics beyond their immediate concerns (such as dominion involvement) problematic. Its current state also reflects inconsistencies in record keeping during the war, neglect by the Air Ministry during the 1940s and 1950s, culling by the PRO and, most recently, theft: Britain’s official record of the air war is expansive though far from complete.13

Uniquely among the dominions Australia produced its own official air history in 1923.14 The suggestion for a volume on the AFC originated in 1919 with the CGS, Major-General Gordon Legge, a principal advocate for the establishment of an Australian air force.15 The series general editor, Charles Bean, commissioned his wartime assistant and fellow journalist and lawyer, Frederic Morley Cutlack, to research and write the volume. Cutlack had been on active service since 1914 and had extensive experience with artillery and intelligence – branches associated with aerial operations – though he had not worked with aviation directly. Working on the history part-time at his home in Sydney while employed by the Sydney Morning Herald, Bean paid him £300 (approximately the salary of a public servant at the time) to produce a 150,000-word manuscript.16

Beyond these similarities – official sanction perhaps connected with the promotion of a post-war air service and the appointment of a non-professional historian – the Australian project bears some noteworthy differences to its British counterpart. Although sponsored by cabinet the volumes were not, at Bean’s insistence, subject to official censorship and the services had no official role in their

13 - A. J. Child, SO1 Air Staff, Reserve Brigade RAF to I, III, VIII and X Brigades RAF, 25 January 1919, NAUK AIR1/1039/204/5/1469 (see also the accompanying list of records that squadrons were instructed to keep and destroy); Captain C Fairbairn, report on progress of air history, 25 , NAUK AIR5/495 Pt V; H. A. Jones to A. A. Walser, 22 November 1932, RAF X003-8803; R. D. Farmer, ‘Visit to the Air Historical Branch on 22 August 1957’, 2 September 1957, NAUK PRO57/23; V Brigade War diary for April 1918, AIR 1/2222/209/40/17 (see note relating to the theft of documents from six series relating to the 1914-18 air war in 1989-1990 some of which have not been recovered). 14 Canada published an official history of its involvement in the First air war in 1980: S. F. Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War: Official history of the Volume I, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1980 15 C. D. Coulthard-Clark, No Australian Need Apply: the Troubled Career of Lieutenant-General Gordon Legge, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1988, pp. 180-181; Bean to Major-General Gordon Legge, Chief of the General Staff, 1 August 1919, AWM 3DRL/7953/9 PART 1. 16 Bean to Cutlack, 15 October 1919, AWM 3DRL 7953/9 PART 1; ‘Public Service Appeals’, The West Australian, 5 September 1921, p. 8. 19 production.17 Bean’s all-civilian team had unfettered access to the AIF’s operational and administrative records which, upon repatriation, came under the Australian War Memorial’s custody. Manuscripts went to the Defence Minister for comment as a formality, Bean not being obliged to adopt his suggestions.18

Yet, though subject to minimal political and service influence, other factors shaped Cutlack’s volume. Writing between 1920 and 1923 he worked in a historiographical vacuum; few associated volumes of British and Australian official history had appeared by the time he finished. This limited the extent to which Cutlack could integrate the AFC’s work into the wider contexts of British air operations and campaigns on the ground. It also restricted him to a narrow and immature literature on aerial warfare, namely memoirs by notable fighter pilots such as , and James McCudden.19 The influence of their characteristically sentimental and romantic tone, and focus on and individual pilots is apparent in the AFC’s history. For Cutlack, aerial combat was ‘individual fighting… a series of duels at close quarters’ governed by a ‘special chivalry’ and conceived by the airmen as ‘a form of sport’.20 Reviewers considered this a compelling and authoritative picture of aerial warfare.21

Cutlack had access to a far broader body of primary sources, the Australian War Records Section informing him in January 1920 that in addition to the squadron war diaries it had collected a large quantity of ‘correspondence files’ covering a broad range of operational and administrative topics.22 Although initially expressing a determination to have ‘all the facts and every atom of evidence’, and arranging to have all AFC-related papers freighted to Sydney, Cutlack suddenly changed his mind (after learning the ‘rather large quantities’ available, it seems), opting to rely on the

17 Bean to Edwin and Lucy Bean, 12 and 19 October 1919, AWM38 3DRL 7447/7. 18 Bean to F. S. Shenstone, 21 May 1923, AWM 3DRL 7953/9 PART 1. 19 Cutlack to Bean, 13 February 1920, AWM 3DRL 7953/9 PART 1; Cutlack, research notes for the official history, AWM44 8/1 PART 1. 20 Cutlack, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18, volume VIII, p. xL. 21 ‘Australia in the Air. A Brilliant Record’, The Register (Adelaide), 6 September 1923, p. 11; ‘Australia in the Air. Our Birdmen at the War –A Westralian Boy’s Exploit’, Sunday Times (), 9 September 1923, p. 1. 22 John Treloar, Head of the Australian War Records Section to Cutlack, 6 January 1920, AWM93 12/3/149. Many of these files are now arranged in the following series: AWM25: Written records, 1914-18 War; AWM10: Australian Imperial Force Administrative Headquarters registry, "A" (Adjutant-General's Branch) files; AWM22: Australian Imperial Force Headquarters (Egypt), Central registry files. 20 war diaries and manuscript histories prepared by the squadrons.23 His research notes and the Official History’s content suggest he never consulted the available administrative records – a type of document that, as Jim Sharpe suggests, is particularly useful to historians because its ‘compilers were not deliberately and consciously recording for posterity’.24 The abundant evidence these files provide of themes neglected in the Official History – training, organisation and administration, for example – is a crucial component of this thesis and indeed, justification for research into the AFC beyond that done by Cutlack.

Cutlack’s faith in the squadron war diaries proved misplaced; they turned out substantially incomplete. The most prominent gaps include the complete absence of diaries for the half flight, for 1st Squadron in 1916 and 1917, and only partially complete diaries for 4th Squadron during the first half of 1918. Overall the AFC’s diaries had a ‘vagueness’ and ‘indefiniteness’ and a tendency to accept ‘hearsay as evidence’ that the Australian War Records Section had criticised in mid-1918.25 Particularly problematic, they lacked appended documents such as operations orders, reports and memoranda from higher formations. Access to these might have allowed Cutlack to position the AFC’s sorties in a more detailed operational context but there was little British documentation available in Australia before the Official History’s publication.26 Research for this thesis has identified an abundance of material in the Air Ministry’s records useful for interpreting and evaluating the work of Australian squadrons and revising aspects of the official history.

To compensate for missing AFC records Cutlack drew on the recollections and private records of Australian officers (though not other ranks), a methodology Bean endorsed and used in his own six volumes.27 It provided he thought, ‘material

23 Cutlack to Treloar, 8 January 1920, AWM93 12/3/149; Cutlack to Bean, 12 January 1921, AWM38 3DRL 7953/9 PART 1. Historical Records Section to Cutlack, 24 February 1920, AWM93 12/3/149; Cutlack to Treloar, 28 February 1920, AWM93 12/3/149. 24 Peter Burke (editor), New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991, pp. 29- 31. 25 Lieutenant G. B. Wimble, Assistant collator for aviation, Australian War Records Section to AFC squadron COs in the field, 4 June 1918, AWM25 81/3. 26 On Bean’s recommendation in 1922 the War Museum Committee appointed Tasman Heyes, the Museum’s chief clerk, to go to Britain and oversee the transcription of British documents with historical relevance to Australian operations. Heyes transcribed some AFC-related material but Cutlack could not have seen it while he was writing because Heyes only began work in July 1924- a year after the publication of the AFC history. 27 For Bean’s advocacy of first hand accounts see C. E. W. Bean, ‘A war historian’s experiences with eyewitnesses’, 1958, AWM 38 3DRL 6673. 21 for a new kind of war history’, one that focused on the experiences of individuals at the tactical level and contrasted the British model which, although intended for a popular readership, still reflected elements of traditional staff history.28 Involving his subjects did, however, present Cutlack some difficulties. On the one hand, the AFC’s service culture discouraged airmen from speaking about their exploits, especially to journalists.29 At the same time, Cutlack’s subjects comprised a small group of young and ambitious officers whose jealousy and rivalry were in some cases pronounced. Their allegations against colleagues of fraudulent victory claims presented him with a dilemma he took seriously and may explain why he came to rely on a small group of ex-AFC flyers centred on the service’s senior officer, Richard Williams, and the nascent RAAF.30 Among these, confidantes such as Williams, Cobby and dominate the history; in some cases their voice replaces Cutlack’s in the narrative.31 Others, notably Major Wilfred McCloughry and his brother Captain Edgar McCloughry, both of whom Cobby disliked and who joined the RAF after the war, are almost invisible despite their distinguished service with the AFC.32

Relying on squadron-level records and the personal recollections of Williams ‘and his little circle’, Cutlack produced a detailed chronicle of the AFC’s combat sorties with brief appendices on training, the raising of the squadrons and equipment.33 Bean believed the volume ‘an excellent one’ and Cutlack’s colleagues in the press largely commended it to readers, accepting its somewhat dry, chronicle style and excessive detail as necessary in official history.34 Subsequent archival research, however, indicates that there is much it does not cover regarding Australia’s part in

28 Peter Edwards, ‘Continuity and Change in the Australian Official History Tradition’, Jeff Grey (editor) The Last Word? Essays on Official History in the and the Commonwealth, Praeger, Westport, 2003, pp. 69-80. 29 AWM librarian to Cutlack, 6 December 1922, AWM93 12/3/149; Bean, diary, 24 , AWM 3DRL 8042/64; ‘The Wizard of the Air-Australian Airman’s Great Record’, The Age, 17 June 1919, p. 4; Ross Smith to mother, 20 , SLSA PRG 18/17. In his autobiography, Leslie Sutherland relates some of his own experiences in the third person, as though he is writing about a comrade [L. W. Sutherland, Aces and kings, John Hamilton, London, 1935, pp. 150-156]. 30 A. H. Cobby to Cutlack, 17 October 1921, 3DRL 7953/9 PART 1; Cobby to Cutlack, nd, AWM44 8/1 PART 8. Other examples of internal rivalry can be found in Cutlack to Bean, 18 March 1922, 3DRL 7953/9 PART 1 (regarding Captain Roy Phillipps) and AWM 44 24/1 (regarding Captain Frederick Huxley). 31 See, for example, Cutlack, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18, volume VIII, pp. 186- 188; 226-227; 233-235. 32 Cobby to Cutlack, nd, AWM44 8/1 PART 8. 33 Cutlack to Bean, 18 July 1921, AWM 3DRL 7953/9 PART 1. 34 Cutlack, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18, Volume VIII, p. xxxiii; ‘New Books- Aviation in the War’, The Mail (Adelaide), 1 September 1923, p. 9; ‘New Books-Australian Airmen in the War’, The Argus, 11 August 1923, p. 8. 22 the first major air war. The records Cutlack used limited him to writing about the AFC at the tactical level: he described the almost daily activities of the four service squadrons but left his readers unaware as to why Australian airmen were flying such sorties, how they learned to do so and what they contributed to British planned and led operations. He also neglected the Australian contribution in relation to those made by the other dominions and considered the work of Australians in the British flying services outside his purview and in any case, beyond what the available records could reveal.35

Studies into Britain’s air effort remained difficult until the Air Ministry finished transferring records to the PRO in the early 1970s.36 Until then the Air Ministry restricted access to RAF personnel (for internal service use) and civilians trusted to present the Air Force in a ‘definitely attractive light to boys or young men’.37 The few scholarly works authorised during the inter-war years (such as ’s Air Power and Armies) could not quote from or identify official documents, diminishing their value to subsequent researchers.38 Australian scholars enjoyed greater access to records owing to the Australian War Memorial’s more liberal policy that actively encouraged their use by the public.39 Taking advantage of this, ex- personnel of 3rd and 4th Squadrons produced accounts of their units’ campaigns.40 Relying on the RAF staff college on the other hand, the RAAF produced little of note.

Air war memoirs, which became ubiquitous in inter-war Britain and Australia represented an alternative that required neither official sanction nor skills in archival research. Written almost exclusively by fighter pilots they characteristically emphasised the exciting over the ordinary and, in the tradition of the wartime press

35 Cutlack to Bean, 18 March 1922, AWM38 3DRL 7935/9 PART 1. 36 For correspondence regarding the transfer (including discussion over whether it should be transferred intact or reorganised) and creation of the ‘AIR’ series of records, see NAUK PRO57/23, PRO58/362 and PRO57/2233. 37 ‘Memorandum on a conference held on October 27th, 1933, to discuss the policy regarding the disclosure of information as to RAF exploits to authors and journalists’, NAUK AIR1/498/15/324; ‘Air Ministry Instructions regarding access to official documents by public’, 8 January 1937, NAUK AIR1/498/15/324. 38 Registered correspondence regarding access to official documents by the public, NAUK AIR1/498/15/324. 39 Extract from agenda presented to the Australian War Museum committee at a meeting held on 14 October 1920, AWM315 535/003/001. 40 E. J. Richards, Australian Airmen: History of the 4th Squadron, Australian Flying Corps, Bruce & Co., Melbourne, circa 1922; H. N. Wrigley, The Battle Below: Being the History of No. 3 Squadron Australian Flying Corps, Errol G. Knox, Sydney, 1935. 23 and official historians, presented the air war in isolation from the war on the ground.41 Two representative Australian examples are Leslie Sutherland’s Aces and Kings and Cobby’s High Adventure.42 Both enjoyed critical acclaim, their appeal coming from a casual tone, upbeat pace, and sense of romance and nostalgia. One reviewer described Sutherland’s book as ‘one of those ‘unofficial histories’ which mingle gallant adventure, humorous incident and vivid description in a way that captures some of the élan of those stirring times’.43 Similar in style is Cobby’s memoir, which compelled one reviewer to perceive airmen as duelling knights; ‘They certainly displayed a cheerfulness, a resiliency, an indifference to personal danger, a team spirit that are thoroughly admirable’.44

Complementing the histories and memoirs, the 1930s saw the production of an immense and highly influential body of air war fiction and cinema. Best known among the former is W. E. Johns’ series which first appeared in 1932 and comprised 17 volumes before the Second World War. Following Wings’ Academy Award for Best Picture in 1927, British and American filmmakers produced a dozen major air combat films by 1939. ‘So many films about aerial warfare have gone roaring across the screen during the past ten years,’ wrote an Australian reviewer that year, ‘that the subject seems exhausted’.45 Dominick Pisano argues that these fictional depictions of the air war exaggerated the romanticism and sentimentalism of non- fiction and concentrated popular perception of the subject into a few iconic symbols. The fiction, he argues, supplanted the ‘authentic’ accounts as the authoritative version.46

41 Representative British examples include: Cecil Lewis, Sagittarius Rising, Peter Davies, London, 1936; McScotch, , George Routledge, London, 1936; Norman Macmillan, Into the Blue, Duckworth, London, 1929; Ira Jones, King of Air Fighters: Biography of Major "Mick" Mannock, Ivor Nicholson & Watson, London, 1934; L. A. Strange, Recollections of an Airman, The Aviation Book Club, London, 1940. 42 Sutherland, Aces and Kings; A. H. Cobby, High Adventure, Robertson & Mullens, Melbourne, 1942. Other examples include Frank Clune, D’air Devil: the Story of ‘Pard’ Mustar, Australian Air Ace, Allied Authors and Aristis, London, 1941; , My Flying Life, Andrew Melrose, London, 1937; F. S. Briggs and S. H. Harris, Joysticks and Fiddlesticks: the Unofficial History of a Flying Kangaroo, Hutchinson, London, 1938. 43 ‘Current Literature-War Birds’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 December 1935, p. 12. 44 ‘Australian Ace’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 October 1942, p. 4. 45 ‘Thrills of War Planes’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 April 1939, p. 6. 46 Dominick Pisano et al, Legend, Memory and the Great War in the Air, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1992, p. 12 and pp. 27-28. 24 After declining in the 1950s, Great War aviation history became prolific during the 1960s, one academic describing it as ‘a deluge’.47 The nostalgia of and the appeal of chivalric combat stood in pleasant contrast to the ‘magical and aesthetic quality’ aviation lost in the age of jets and nuclear weapons.48 The field had stagnated, however, becoming the preserve of hobbyists who drew on official history and memoir and showed little inclination to challenge the motifs and clichés established during the inter-war years. Aaron Norman’s The Great War in the Air is representative.49 Based entirely on secondary sources it maintains the romance and parochialism of the earlier literature describing ‘aerial tournaments’ fought ‘with a romantic intensity unknown since the disappearance of the medieval knight’, and likening the famous aces to the ‘knights of Camelot’. Neglecting the RFC’s fundamental army co-operation duties, he devotes significant attention to the bombing of British cities – a reflection of interest in strategic bombing following the Second World War.

The 1960s and 1970s also saw the publication of a second wave of air war memoirs as veterans reached retirement age. These are generally much more prosaic in tone than those published in the inter-war period and they position the first air war within (and are shaped by) a broader context of military and history.50 The development of oral history as a methodology during the 1960s provided another means of preserving the memories of elderly veterans. In 1977 the Imperial War Museum established a sound archive and over the following two decades collected over 100 interviews with British and Commonwealth veterans of the first air war. The

47 James Hudson, ‘Military history and the First Great Air War’, Air University Review, Jan-Feb 1970. 48 Martin Francis, The Flyer: British Culture and the Royal Air Force, 1939-1945, , Oxford, 2008, p. 202. 49 Aaron Norman, The Great War in the Air: the Men, the Planes, the Saga of Military Aviation 1914- 1918, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1968. Australian equivalents include William Joy, The Aviators, Shakespeare Head Press, Sydney, 1965; Terry Gwynn-Jones, Heroic Australian Air Stories, Rigby Publishers Limited, Adelaide, 1981. 50 Examples by Australian Flying Corps veterans include: Lawrence James Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer: an Autobiography, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1972; Eric Roberts, Box Kites and Beyond, Hawthorne Press, Melbourne, 1976; Richard Williams, These are Facts: the Autobiography of Sir Richard Williams KBE, CB, DSO, Australian War Memorial and Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977; George Jones, From Private to Air Marshal: the Autobiography of Air Marshal Sir George Jones KB CB DFC, Greenhouse, Richmond, 1988; , Rising, Qantas Founders Outback Museum, Longreach, 1996. Memoirs and biographies of Australians in the RFC include and Ted Mayman, Australian Aviator, Rigby, Adelaide, 1971; Patrick , The Sky Beyond, Cassell Australia, Melbourne, 1963; Charles Schaedel, Australian Air Ace: the Exploits of ‘Jerry’ Pentland MC, DFC, AFC, Rigby, Adelaide, 1979, pp. 16- 17; Raymond James Brownell, From Khaki to Blue: the Autobiography of Air R. J. Brownell, Military Historical Society of Australia, Canberra, 1978. 25 collection provided the basis for a new genre of personal experience books that, while often retaining a parochial focus on air-to-air combat, democratised the field by documenting the diverse experiences of the ‘ordinary’ airman.51 The Australian Society of World War One Aero Historians interviewed Australian veterans, as did oral historians from the National Library of Australia. These interviews are useful for providing insight into personal experiences and the social and cultural dimensions of the air war but are generally anecdotal in nature. They are also indicate how, as Alistair Thomson discovered, people ‘compose’ memories using ‘the public language and meanings of our culture’.52 The influence of popular representations of war flying is evident in Eric Dibbs’ 1976 recollection of his fellow pilots as ‘carefree and slaphappy’; and of air combat as ‘terribly exciting’, without ‘any sense of fear’ and ‘like a duel’.53

The flaws of memory are avoided in private records, which gained credibility among military historians in the 1970s through the development of social history and the publication of works such as Bill Gammage’s The Broken Years and John Keegan’s The Face of Battle.54 The RAF Museum’s establishment in 1972 centralised the collection of British private records whereas the Australian War Memorial had been collecting since the early 1920s. The Memorial currently holds about 100 collections of personal papers relating to Australians in the first air war, with others in the RAAF Museum at Point Cook and the various state libraries. For studies of the flying corps, in which new tactics germinated in the squadrons, records such as letters and diaries can provide insight into this process that is usually obscured in the official records. They are also useful in determining the contribution of those under- represented by Cutlack, namely observers and ground staff.

The transfer of Air Ministry records to the Public Record Office during the 1960s attracted scholars to the field and inspired interest in the subject’s broader

51 See, for example, Denis Winter, The First of the Few: Fighter Pilots of the First World War, Allen Lane, London, 1982; Nigel Steel and Peter Hart, Tumult in the Clouds: the British Experience of the War in the Air, 1914-1918, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1997; Ralph Barker, A Brief History of the Royal Flying Corps in , Constable and Robinson, London, 2002. 52 Alistair Thomson, ‘Anzac Memories: Putting Popular Memory Theory into Practice in Australia’, Anna Green & Kathleen Troup, Houses of history: a Critical Reader in Twentieth-Century History and Theory, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1999, pp. 240-241. 53 Eric Dibbs, interviewed by Fred Morton, 1976, NLA TRC 425/5. 54 Bill Gammage, The Broken Years: Australian soldiers in the Great War, Penguin, Ringwood, 1980; John Keegan, The Face of Battle, Jonathon Cape, London, 1976. 26 themes.55 Sydney Wise’s Canadian Airmen and the First World War came first, followed shortly after by Malcolm Cooper’s PhD thesis, British Air Policy on the Western Front, 1914-1918, and Peter Mead’s The Eye in the Air.56 All revealed the fruitfulness of using archival records to scrutinise aspects of the air war beyond the scope of the official histories. Most significant as a point of departure for this thesis is Wise’s work, which evaluates the significant contribution made by Canadians to the British flying services. Although acknowledging that Canadians (like Australians) seldom occupied command and policy making positions, Wise demonstrates the need to ‘ground’ the work of the pilots ‘in the many contexts that give pattern and meaning to what they were doing’.57 As a result he successfully connects the part played by individuals at the tactical level with the larger historical forces of organisation, command, administration and imperial politics.

The maturity of First World War historiography during the 1990s has encouraged research into operational aspects of the air war that elucidate the relationship between air and ground operations. John Morrow and Lee Kennett produced multi-national studies covering the entire war and ranging across themes such as operational employment, industry and procurement, and the political dimension of aerial defence.58 Both historians used archival records beyond those in the United Kingdom. Their works remain the standard modern texts on air power in the Great War. Taking a more focused approach, David Jordan outlined and evaluated the RFC’s army co-operation role in his PhD thesis.59 Others have subsequently focused more narrowly on the RFC/RAF at the theatre (Middle East) and campaign levels (the ) and singled out particular roles such as reconnaissance,

55 Preparation of the AIR series for transfer to the PRO began in September 1957. Although initially estimated to take two years, the sorting, cataloguing and transfer of the records from Queen Anne’s Chambers where the AHB was based to the PRO took over a decade. According to correspondence in NAUK PRO57/2233, the PRO was still accessioning files for the AIR 1 series in November 1971. For papers relating to the transfer see also NAUK PRO58/362 and PRO57/23. 56 Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War; Malcolm Cooper, ‘British Air Policy on the Western Front, 1914-1918’, PhD thesis, Oxford University, 1982; Peter Mead, The Eye in the Air: History of Air Observation and Reconnaissance for the Army, 1785-1945, HMSO, London, 1983. Cooper subsequently published his thesis [Malcolm Cooper, The Birth of Independent Air Power: British Air Policy in the First World War, Allen & Unwin, London, 1986]. 57 Wise, Canadian airmen and the First World War, p. xii. 58 Lee Kennett, The First Air War, 1914-1918, Free Press, New York, 1991; John Morrow, The Great War in the Air: Military Aviation from 1909 to 1921, The Smithsonian Press, Washington, 1993. 59 David Jordan, ‘The Army Co-operation missions of the Royal Flying Corps/ Royal Air Force, 1914- 1918’, PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 1997. 27 photography, ground attack and training.60 Edward Hooton recently made a considerable contribution to the field by using statistical data (‘the foundation for operational analysis’) to evaluate air power’s contribution to campaigns on the Western Front between 1916 and 1918.61 His focus on the air war’s prosecution at the levels of wing and brigade is an approach employed in this thesis to establish a context for the Australian effort. Taken together, these focused studies of aviation during the Great War add nuance to the conclusions of some surveys of air power history, which suggest that aircraft remained on the conflict’s periphery and had little impact on the battlefield.62

As well as engaging with the literature of aviation history, this thesis contributes to the historiography of Australia and the Great War, studies on defence and foreign policy and the history of the Royal Australian Air Force. In the tradition of Charles Bean, Australian military history has tended to have a ‘democratic’ focus on the experiences of individual soldiers.63 The tradition of unit histories has also dominated the field, the result of official sponsorship after both world wars and Australia’s junior role in wartime coalitions: Australians have seldom contributed to the higher direction (above the grand tactical level) of the wars they have fought. Although compellingly readable, this soldier-unit focus neglects influential forces such as strategy, command, administration and training. This, as Jeffrey Grey argues, provides an unbalanced perspective on warfare, one in which ‘Australian operations just ‘happen’, with little real indication of the extraordinary preparations

60 David Bullock, ‘Swift as Eagles: The Victory of the Royal Air Force in Palestine, 1914-1918’, PhD thesis, Kansas State University, 1995; Thomas Bradbeer, ‘The British Air Campaign During the : A Pyrrhic Victory’, PhD thesis, University of Kansas, 2011; James Streckfus, ‘Eyes all over the sky: the significance of in the First World War’, PhD thesis University of Cincinnati, 2011; Adam Garth Pye, ‘Evolution in action: the Royal Flying Corps/ Royal Air Force and the development of ground attack in World War I’, MA thesis, University of Calgary, 2003; Robert Morley, ‘Earning their wings: British pilot training, 1912-1918’, MA thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 2006; Terrence Finnegan, Shooting the Front: Allied Aerial Reconnaissance in the First World War, Spellmount, Stroud, 2011. 61 E. R. Hooton, War over the Trenches: Air Power and the Western Front Campaigns 1916-1918, Ian Allan Publishing, , 2010. 62 See for example, Robin Higham, Air power: a Concise History, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1972, p. 27; Phillip Meilinger, ‘Trenchard, Slessor and Royal Air Force Doctrine before World War II’, Chapter 2, The Paths of Heaven: the Evolution of Air Power Theory, Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force Base Alabama, 1997, p. 42; Tami Biddle, ‘Learning in Real Time: the Development and Implementation of Air Power in the First World War’, Chapter 1, Sebastian Cox and Peter Grey (eds), Air Power History: Turning Points from Kitty Hawk to Kosovo, Frank Cass, London, 2002, p. 14. 63 M. McKernan and M. Browne, Australia: Two Centuries of War and Peace, Australian War Memorial Press, Canberra, 1988, p.13. 28 necessary...’.64 Cutlack’s reliance on unit-level records and individuals’ recollections made this a characteristic of the AFC’s official history. It is an approach perpetuated in the few subsequent works on the AFC including my own Fire in the Sky: the Australian Flying Corps in the First World War, which uses diaries and letters to focus on individual experiences, very much in the Bean tradition.65

This thesis departs from this orthodoxy in several ways. Firstly, by considering planning, policy-making and the function of air power in British operations, it positions the work of Australian airmen into a context that accords it meaning and evaluates its contribution to a larger military and imperial whole. This approach moves beyond describing what Australian pilots did to explaining why they did it and assessing their success and effectiveness. This thesis also contributes to an emerging branch of the historiography that examines Australia’s war in an imperial context.66 Scholars in this field challenge an anachronistic tendency to emphasise the uniqueness of the AIF and evaluate its performance in isolation to its British and dominion counterparts. They also accord nuance to Anglo-Australian relations by highlighting divergent strategic priorities between the Mother Country and her dominions. Such studies provide a useful framework in which to position the Australian government’s complete dependence on the War Office for aviation equipment, expertise and leadership. Indeed, in perhaps more than any other part of the AIF, in the AFC we perceive that Britain saw Australia not as an ally, but rather, a

64 Jeffrey Grey, ‘Cuckoo in the Nest? Australian Military Historiography: The State of the Field’, History Compass, volume 6, number, 2, 2008, p. 458. 65 Michael Molkentin, Fire in the Sky: the Australian Flying Corps in the First World War, Allen & Unwin, Crow’s Nest, 2010; Charles Schaedel, Men and Machines of the Australian Flying Corps, 1914-1919, Kookaburra, Dandenong, 1972; Keith Isaacs, of Australia 1909-1918, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1971; David Goodland and Alan Vaughn, Anzacs over : the Australian Flying Corps in 1918-1919, Alan Sutton, , 1993; John Bennett, Highest traditions: the history of No. 2 Squadron, RAAF, AGPS Press, Canberra, 1995; Mark Lax, One Airman’s war: Aircraft Mechanic Joe Bull’s Personal Diaries, 1916-1919, Banner Books, Maryborough, 1997. 66 E. M. Andrews, The Anzac Illusion: Anglo-Australian Relations During World War I, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993; Christopher Pugsley, The Anzac Experience: New Zealand, Australia and Empire in the First World War; Reed, Auckland, 2004; Christopher Pugsley and John A. Moses, The and Britain’s Pacific Dominions: Essays on the Role of Australia and New Zealand in World Politics in the Age of Imperialism, Regina Books, Claremont, 2000; Neville Meaney, A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy, 1901-1923, two volumes, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1976 and 2009; Glen St. J. Barclay, The Empire is Marching: a Study of the Military Effort of the British Empire 1800-1945, Weidenfield and Nicolson, London, 1976; Richard A. Preston and Ian Wards, ‘Military and Defence Development in Canada, Australia and News Zealand: a Three Way Comparison’, War and Society, volume 5, number 1, 1987, pp. 1-21; John Mordike, An Army for a Nation, a History of Australian Military Developments, 1880-1914, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992; John Connor, Anzac and Empire: George Foster Pearce and the Foundations of Australian Defence, Cambridge, Port Melbourne, 2011. 29 source of manpower for an expeditionary force within an imperial army. Australia meanwhile conceived such service not with unfettered devotion, but as a means of developing more autonomous regional defences and justifying a more influential voice in imperial politics.

Finally, this thesis addresses a conspicuous gap in the historiography of the Royal Australian Air Force. In The Third Brother Chris Clark admirably covers the service’s first two decades up to the beginning of the Second World War.67 Aside from a concise, five-page review of the AFC, however, his study begins in 1918 with the planning of the nation’s future aerial defences. Consignment of the AFC to a prologue is a characteristic of Air Force history: official historian Douglas Gillison prefaced his Royal Australian Air Force 1939-1942 with a brief summary of Australian flying during the Great War and a short account of ‘Military Aviation 1909-1914’ in an appendix, while Alan Stephens more recently covered the same (using practically only secondary sources) in a single chapter at the beginning of his volume of The Australian Centenary History of Defence.68 This suggests that Air Force historians do perceive the Great War’s relevance; indeed, as Clark tells us, all 21 of the RAAF’s initial officer establishment had either flown with the AFC or British services during the war, and that men fashioned by such experience dominated the RAAF’s leadership until after the Second World War.69 Still, we lack a scholarly study of the war in which these formative RAAF leaders started their careers and became exposed to notions of air power. This is perhaps explained by the obscure position the AFC occupies from the perspective of the modern . Having disbanded in 1919, it lacks a firm historical lineage with either the modern Australian Army or the RAAF.70 On the other hand, it may be due to the influence of the broader literature on air power and its development between 1914 and 1918. If, after all, it really was all about fighter aces in ‘frail’ biplanes fighting on the

67 C. D. Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother: The Royal Australian Air Force 1921-39, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1991. 68 Douglas Gillison, Royal Australian Air Force 1939-1942, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1962, pp. 1-2 and 708-711; Alan Stephens, The Australian Centenary History of Defence: Volume II: The Royal Australian Air Force, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2001, pp. 1-25. 69 Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, pp. 34-36 70 As Peter Stanley demonstrates, the pre-1914 army that the AFC was initially part of, has little historical continuity with the modern Australian Army [Peter Stanley, ‘Broken Lineage: The Australian Army's Heritage of Discontinuity’, Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey (editors), Proceedings of the 2001 Chief of Army's Military History Conference, Army History Unit, Canberra, 2001]. The RAAF only claims nominal affiliation with the AFC because the Air Force was not established until 1921, two years after the flying corps disbanded. 30 periphery, then there would be little reason for the Air Force to show serious interest in its pre-history.

The first few chapters of this thesis adopt a thematic approach focusing on overarching aspects of Australia’s involvement in the air war that shaped the extent and effectiveness of its work in the field. The first chapter examines the origins of military between 1908 and 1914 to determine the political, military and social forces that led to the establishment of an Australian aviation corps and school before the Great War. Rather than simply emphasising the uniqueness of Australia’s early engagement with military flying, it is considered in relation to the pre-war efforts of Britain and the other dominions, and the broader features of imperial and Commonwealth defence policy during the period.

The second chapter outlines the evolution of Australia’s involvement in the air war from an organisational and administrative perspective. The focus is on factors that shaped, and ultimately limited, the growth of the AFC and the provision of manpower to the British flying services. Fundamental is the tension between Australia’s political aspirations, its military capabilities and its position in the imperial coalition. Ultimately these tensions would result in the Australian contribution to the air war being more conspicuous, though actually smaller, than that of the other dominions.

Maintaining the thematic approach and the emphasis on tensions between political and military considerations, Chapter 3 focuses on training, recruitment and reinforcement. It begins by examining the role of flying schools in Australia and in particular, identifying problems that rendered their efforts largely redundant by the middle of the war. It then proceeds to examine recruitment and training overseas to evaluate how effectively the AIF supported the AFC in the field and, indeed, to determine the feasibility of maintaining a nationally distinct flying service while largely relying on the British training system.

Chapters 4-11 focus on the activities of Australian airmen in the field, proceeding in a generally chronological fashion. Unlike the Official History, which deals which each theatre discretely, this thesis juxtaposes campaigns occurring concurrently in various parts of the world to better illustrate the evolution of air power and the changing nature of Australian involvement over time. This approach reveals 31 that British air power did not evolve along a uniform ‘learning curve’, but rather developed according to the particular needs and constraints of each theatre. Further, it underlines the breadth of Australian experience during the war and the multi-faceted nature air power assumed during the conflict. Chapters 9, 10 and 11, for example, focus on the efforts of the four AFC squadrons during 1918 on the Western Front and in Palestine. Among other things, it emerges that during a finite period each unit played a distinctive role, making considerably different contributions to the campaigns they supported. Chapters 4-11 do not present a continuous narrative of either the air war or AFC operations. Each identifies the main themes and developments in the British use of air power during specific period and demonstrates how these related to and defined Australian involvement at that time. In this respect this thesis builds on and interprets, without duplicating, the detailed unit-level narratives written by the official historians, the squadron historians and memoir writers. It presents an original, unifying interpretation of Australia and aerial warfare in the Great war

.

32 1. THE ORIGIN OF MILITARY AERONAUTICS IN AUSTRALIA In October 1911 Andrew Fisher’s Labor government announced funding in the coming year’s estimates for the foundation of military aviation in Australia. By the beginning of the Great War this had resulted in the establishment of a flying school with a small staff and four aircraft. With this rudimentary establishment the Defence Department planned to provide a nucleus for the nation’s future aerial defence. It envisaged training personnel for a flying squadron in the Citizen Forces over the following three years.

This chapter outlines these early plans and determines why, in the years before the Great War, Australia’s military and political leaders considered it necessary for the Commonwealth to possess its own flying arm. Australia’s engagement with military aeronautics occurred without prompting from imperial authorities but cannot in itself be considered extraordinary considering the interest also expressed by other colonial governments (and, indeed, by the fact that the Indian government also possessed a rudimentary flying school by August 1914). Nonetheless, the aviation establishment planned by Australian authorities reflected the dominion’s distinct strategic circumstances. Although subsequently committed to the imperial war effort in overseas campaigns between 1914 and 1918, the AFC was conceived for local defence. It was fundamentally the product of a prevailing anxiety concerning Australia’s strategic isolation in a world of not only emerging technology, but also new and potentially hostile powers.

Military aviation developed in Australia between 1909 and 1914, a period of rapid evolution in national defence and foreign policy. Between federation and the Great War, the self-governing dominion’s political leaders came to recognise a growing divergence between British and Australian strategic interests. They perceived, especially after the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), a threat from growing Japanese prominence in the Asia-Pacific region. This coincided with a change in the balance of power in Europe, which compelled Britain to shift the weight of its naval strength to home waters.1 Perceiving that this would leave Australia vulnerable, Commonwealth authorities embarked on what Chris Clark describes as a ‘dual policy

1 Committee of Imperial Defence, Minutes of the 112th Meeting, 29 May 1911, pp. 5-8, NAUK CAB 2/2. 33 of collusion in imperial defence and self-reliance in local defence’.2 In the five years preceding the Great War, estimates on defence spending in Australia increased by 352 per cent. The number of men in uniform doubled, their training and equipment improved in quality and quantity and the nation began to develop an autonomous local defence capability.3 Although this provided a foundation from which to recruit an expeditionary force in 1914, and although draft plans for making such a contribution to defend the empire predated the war, the impetus behind the expansion of Australian naval and military forces before the Great War was a perceived threat to regional security and a realisation that Britain’s strategic priorities lay elsewhere.4 As Neville Meaney puts it, during the immediate pre-war period, ‘the people, property and power of the Commonwealth were in policy making mobilised first and foremost for the protection of Australia’.5

Though defined by its participation overseas during the Great War, the AFC originated on this agenda for local and regional defence. Politicians, military leaders and air-minded civilians conceived the AFC as a means of defending Australia’s coastline from an invader in the event of Britain’s declining influence in the Pacific. Those who campaigned for its formation typically imagined aeroplanes bombing a Japanese invasion fleet outside Sydney Heads, not scouting ahead of an expeditionary force at the fringes of the empire or fighting Britain’s imperial rivals in Europe.

Although balloon flights occurred in Australia intermittently from 1858, it was not until mid-1908 that news of heavier-than-air flight in Europe began fostering a nascent air-mindedness (or at least, air awareness) in Australian society.6 Resulting

2 Chris Coulthard-Clark, ‘Australian Defence: Perceptions and Policies, 1871-1919’, Chapter 9 in Christopher Pugsley and John A. Moses, The German Empire and Britain’s Pacific Dominions: Essays on the Role of Australia and New Zealand in World Politics in the Age of Imperialism, Regina Books, Claremont, 2000, p. 171. 3 Neville Meaney, A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy 1901-1923: Volume I: The Ssearch for Security in the Pacific, 1901-1914, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1976, pp. 276-277. 4 Craig Wilcox, ‘Relinquishing the past: John Mordike's an army for a nation’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, volume 40, 1994, 52-65, p. 61; Craig Wilcox, ‘Defending Australia 1914-1918: the Other Australian Army’, in Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey, 1918 Defining Victory: Proceedings of the Chief of Army History Conference 1998, Army History Unit, Canberra, 1999, pp. 173-174. 5 Meaney, A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy, Volume I, p. 257. 6 In 1857 George Coppin, a theatrical entrepreneur, imported a British-built balloon dubbed Australasian and hired a pair of British balloonatics. It first flew over Melbourne on 1 February 1858, embarking from Cremorne Gardens (which Coppin owned), in front of a huge number of spectators, and covering about 8 miles in 40 minutes. [‘First Balloon Ascent in the Australian Colonies’, The Argus, 2 February 1858, p. 5]. Following other successful ascents in Melbourne, it flew from The Domain in Sydney on 13 December. [‘The Balloon Ascent in the Domain’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 1858, p. 5]. Thirteen years later, The Sydney Morning Herald described British 34 from the increasingly tense diplomatic situation in Europe, these reports tended to focus on the military implications of aeronautical technology as it rapidly evolved. A typical report from Britain, published in Hobart in May 1909, described the German Army’s experiments with three types of airborne ‘shell’: one ‘for use against buildings, war material and dockyards’, an incendiary to target other aircraft and gas shells for use against troops, forts and ‘against the population of towns’.7 Predictive science fiction such as H. G. Wells’ The War in the Air, which proved popular in Australia, exaggerated the ideas presented in newspapers while also, as Michael demonstrates, giving expression to popular ambivalence about technology’s potential for malevolence as well as good.8 Straddling the two – journalism and fiction – speculative non-fiction such as R. P. Hearne’s Aerial Warfare provided plausible forecasts of air power’s role in future warfare and compelled people to consider the aeroplane’s function in imperial defence.9 Those who did not purchase Hearne’s book might still encounter his ideas through reviews and editorials. In Adelaide The balloonatic Thomas Gale’s January 1870 ascents over Sydney as a ‘very unusual occurrence… which had not been seen before for eight or ten years…’ [‘Ascent of a Balloon’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 January 1870, p. 5]. Gale toured his balloon, Young Australian, making several flights during the following 18 months but another lengthy break in flights followed [‘Balloon Ascent’ The South Australian Advertiser, 28 August 1871, p. 3]. Professor Emanuel Jackson, an English balloonatic who owned five balloons made an ascent in Ballarat in January 1878. [‘Professor Jackson’s Balloon Ascent at Ballarat’, Border Watch (Mount Gambier), 9 January 1878, p. 4]. Between 1879 and 1881 Australian daredevil Henri L’Estrange made several ascents around the country; his final effort in March 1881 ending in disaster: he escaped but the balloon exploded. [‘The Balloon Explosion in Sydney’, Illustrated Sydney News, 23 April 1881, p. 14]. The novelty of balloons seems to have subsequently worn off: in February 1887 less than 200 people turned out to see a flight over Sydney by ‘well known’ balloonatic Mr H. Henden who had previously made a ‘number of successful balloon ascents in this city from time to time’ [‘Balloon Ascent’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 15 February 1887, p. 8]. For Australians the perception of balloons as things of novelty and amusement began shifting in the 1890s with reports of overseas military trials and the employment of them in the Spanish-American and Boer wars [‘The French Military Manoeuvres’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 September 1891, p. 5; ‘Spanish-American War- Military Balloons’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 September 1898, p. 7; ‘Bombardment from Balloons’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 May 1899, p. 7; ‘The War in - The Ladysmith Baloon’, The Queenslander (Illustrated Supplement), 27 January 1900, p. 165]. Australians witnessed the military use of balloons first hand in 1901 when a Royal Engineer balloon section accompanied the British Army’s federation contingent on a tour of Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide [‘Marshalling the Forces’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 January 1901, p. 9]. For an example of early reports of aircraft in Australia, during August and September 1908, The Argus (Melbourne) carried almost daily reports of the Wrights’ demonstration flights in and the United States that marked their emergence from obscurity. Historians regard these flights as spurring the pioneering aviation communities in the United States and Europe and starting a remarkably rapid evolution in aviation technology over the following three years. [Richard Hallion, Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age from Antiquity through the First World War, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, pp. 230-233]. 7 ‘Air-ships in War’, The Mercury (Hobart), 21 May 1909, p. 8. 8 Michael Paris, Winged Warfare: the Literature and Theory of Aerial Warfare in Britain, 1859-1917, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1992, pp. 15-64. 8 ‘War in the Air’, The West Australian (Perth), 17 December 1908, p. 4. 9 R. P. Hearne, Aerial Warfare, John Lane, The Bodley Head, London, 1909. 35 Register, for example, described Aerial Warfare as ‘a striking book about an important modern problem’ and quoted extracts imaging the total destruction of a city by ‘two or three large dirigibles’ within a couple of hours of a war beginning.10 Significantly, in parliamentary debates on defence in late 1909 politicians would employ Hearne’s logic that aircraft represented an economical means of defending the empire’s fringes.11

Fiction, speculative non-fiction and newspaper articles coalesced to produce an awareness of aviation’s plausibility and, as time went on and international tensions increased, an expectation of its significance in future warfare. Evidence of this dates to August 1909 when newspapers reported the sighting of flying objects all around the country.12 Certainly no ‘phantom airship panic’ followed (as had in Britain in May), but significantly the press and many witnesses concluded that what they saw (often just lights) belonged to aircraft.13 Suggesting an early connection between aviation and external threats a few accounts assumed the ‘airships’’ foreign origin, one describing what he had seen as like ‘a Japanese airship’ while another claimed the crew called out in an unfamiliar language (perhaps significantly, Australian newspapers had reported secret Japanese military airship trials immediately before the first sightings).14 The notion of the aircraft as a weapon would crystallise in 1911 following their employment in the Mexican revolution and Libyan war, and further reports of aviation trials by European militaries.15 Elucidating the relationship

10 ‘Is War in the Air Possible? A Striking Book about an Important Modern Problem’, The Register (Adelaide), 18 January 1909, p. 3. 11 Michael Paris, ‘Air Power and Imperial Defence 1880-1919’, Journal of Contemporary History, volume 24, number 2, 1989, 209-225, p. 215; Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates [hereafter CPD], volume XLVIII, 2 December 1909, pp. 6782 and 6790. 11 CPD, volume XXXV, 31 August 1909, pp. 2769-2770; CPD, volume XXXV, 1 September 1909, p. 2803. 12 See, for example, ‘Lights in the Air’, The Argus (Melbourne), 9 August 1909, p. 7; ‘A Celestial Mystery’, Cairns Post, 10 August 1909, p. 5; ‘Mysterious Lights in the Sky’, The West Australian (Perth), 14 August 1909, p. 12; ‘Mysterious Lights’, The Mercury (Hobart), 14 August 1909, p. 4. 13 Alfred Gollin, The Impact of Air Power on the British People and their Government, 1909-1914, Macmillan in association with King's College, London, 1989, pp. 53-55; Brett Holman, ‘Mystery Aircraft 1873-1946’, consulted 2 August 2012, <‘http://airminded.org/archives/mystery-aircraft/>. 14 ‘The Mysterious Lights’, The Mercury (Hobart), 19 August 1909, p. 2; ‘Phantom Airships’, Kalgoorlie Western Argus, 24 August 1909, p. 34; ‘Japan’s Airship Secrets’, The Argus, 24 July 1909, p. 7; ‘Japan’s Airship Secrets’, Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton), 4 August 1909, p. 5; ‘Japanese Airships’, The Queenslander, 7 August 1909, p. 38; ‘Japan’s Airship Secrets’, The Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate, 14 August 1909, p. 8. 15 See, for example: ‘Aeroplane in War’, Singleton Argus, 1 April 1911, p. 1; ‘Turco-Italian War’, Cairns Post, 7 October 1911, p. 5; ‘Arabs Ready to Attack… Italians use Aeroplanes’, The Argus, (Melbourne), 3 January 1912, p. 7; ‘Turco-Italian War Bomb Dropping from Aeroplane’, The Mercury (Hobart), 3 February 1912, 5; ‘Aviation- Aeroplanes in Wartime’, The Mercury (Hobart), p. 5; 36 between fiction and reality (as reported in the press) and, specifically, indicating the influence of imaginative literature on perceptions and expectations of aviation, a Sydney Morning Herald editor compared the ‘highly coloured pictures’ of aircraft presented by ‘writers of fiction’ with the ‘not sensational’ and ‘unreliable’ performance of Italian aeroplanes in . Nonetheless, he concluded that aircraft would

bring about a revolution in warfare comparable to that which resulted on the invention of explosives or the introduction of steam. Armies and battleships may not become obsolete, but their value will be diminished… The nation that commands the air, that nation will rule the world, and such supremacy will be attained at a far less expense than by means of fleets and armies.16

A small group of civilians, mostly associated with Lawrence Hargrave and the New South Wales Royal Society, had been carrying out aeronautical experiments since the late 1870s.17 As in Britain, reports of the Wrights’ demonstration flights in France and the United States during 1908 and the publication of predictive fiction stimulated the interest of a wider community of inventors and encouraged them to perceive the flying machine’s military potential.18 In September the Minister of Defence, Thomas Ewing, reported that he had received ‘several’ proposals from individuals ‘who claim they have invented Flying Machines’. The Deakin government, he revealed in a private letter, was ‘naturally anxious’ to encourage the development of a flying machine for military purposes, but it lacked experience in aeronautics.19 He sought the advice of Professor William Kernot, Dean of Engineering at Melbourne University, who criticised the proposals as lacking ‘knowledge of scientific principles’. Indeed, surviving examples, such as Mr E. W. C.

‘Aeroplanes in War’, The Register (Adelaide), 14 November 1911; ‘Army Aeroplanes New French Plans’, West Gippsland Gazette (Warragul, Victoria), 7 May 1912, p. 6. 16 ‘Sovereignty of the Air’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 May 1912, p. 8. 17 Ron Gibson, ‘Australian Aviation: the First Hundred Years’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, volume 58, number 3, September 1972, 162-177. 18 For one example of coverage of the Wrights’ demonstration flights in Australia see The Argus, 11 August 1908. This edition reported that Wilbur had flown 2,500 meters, 30 feet off the ground in a minute and 45 seconds. ‘Press representatives who witnessed the flight declare that the machine displayed remarkable birdlike qualities in soaring, skimming and turning. Experts describe it as a revelation in aerial flight’. For an example of how the Wright experiments stimulated Australian experimentation see ‘The Conquest of the Air’, Sunday Times (Perth), 13 June 1909, p. 1. 19 Minister for Defence, Thomas Ewing to Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, , Professor William Kernot, 17 September 1908, NAA A289 1907/2/55. 37 Sadleir’s ‘aeroplane air boat’ validate this assessment.20 Kernot advised the government to ‘wait and see’ how aviation developed overseas and then draw on established technology later.21 The Deakin government adopted this approach as did its successor, Andrew Fisher’s Labor government (November - June 1909). Fisher’s Defence Minister, , did, however, express an interest in aviation and technological innovation in general when, in December 1908, he established boards of civilian and military experts in each state to examine inventions.22

To properly understand this tentative attitude it is necessary to recognise that despite the Wrights’ widely publicised successes, by the end of 1908 powered flight remained in an experimental stage.23 The major European armies possessed balloon establishments but had yet to adopt the aeroplane. Official British interest in aeronautics dated to the 1860s when, spurred by their use in continental Armies, the War Office experimented with balloons.24 Considering their adoption during ‘times of profound peace’ unnecessary, it was 1878 before the British Army formed a Balloon Equipment Store in the Royal Engineers.25 Despite developing innovative equipment, the Engineers employed balloons in the Bechuanaland (1884-85), Sudanese (1885) and South African (1900-1902) campaigns with only limited success.26 The War Office halved funding for ballooning in 1902.27 The Wrights’ work and experiments by rival armies in powered flight rekindled British interest in aeronautics and prompted the War Office, in 1906, to fund aeroplane trials. Disappointing results over the following two years, however, fostered cynicism among British political and

20 Mr E. W. C. Sadleir’s, proposal for an ‘aeroplane air boat’, July 1907, NAA A289 1907/2/490. 21 Kernot to Ewing, 26 September 1908, NAA A289 1907/2/55. 22 CPD, 4 December 1908, Vol. XLVIII p. 2,698. 23 For a frank acknowledgement of the Wright machine’s limitations see ‘The Conquest of the Air’, Sunday Times (Perth), 13 June 1909, p. 1. 24 Report by the Ordnance Select Committee, 7 February 1862, NAUK AIR1/2404/303/1; Report on balloon experiment at Aldershot, 17 July 1863, NAUK AIR1/2404/303/1. 25 Ordnance Select Committee minute, 12 July 1865, NAUK AIR1/2404/303/1. 26 For evidence regarding the effectiveness of balloons in South Africa see: G. M. Heath, ‘Organization and Equipment: South Africa-Engineer Arm-Balloon Sections’, 21 August 1901, NAUK AIR1/728/176/3/3; ‘Report on the work done by the 3rd Balloon Section, Royal Engineers, in South Africa, by Lieutenant R. B. D. Blakeney, DSO, RE’, NAUK AIR1/728/176/3/3’; Lieutenant A. H. Bell to the Committee on Military Balloons, 5 October 1903, NAUK AIR1/728/176/3/12; ‘Final report of the Committee on Military Ballooning’, 4 January 1904, NAUK, WO33/2901. 27 S. Child and C. F. Caunter ‘A historical summary of the Royal Aircraft Factory and its Antecedents’, manuscript notes, July 1946, NAUK AIR1/686/21/13/2245. 38 military authorities and led to the abandonment of official support for the development of a military aeroplane; future trials would focus on dirigible aviation.28

As well as inspiring inventors, the burgeoning air awareness in Australia prompted the establishment of The Aerial League of Australia in Sydney on 28 April 1909.29 Modelled on the Aerial League of the British Empire, which had its first meeting earlier that month, and almost certainly inspired by Hearne’s call for public pressure on governments to address aerial defence, the Australian League started with a small but influential membership.30 Its patrons included the governor-general, the governor of New South Wales and Sydney’s lord mayor as president. Five of the thirteen executive members were military officers – though it appears in a private capacity.31 The League declared its objectives as supporting Australian inventors and educating the public ‘to the grave danger in allowing foreign nations to excel in Aerial Navigation’.32 It also planned to advocate, in cooperation with its British counterpart, the establishment of the same level of superiority in the air as it commanded on the seas. As Major , an artillery officer of the Citizen Military Forces who convened and chaired the inaugural meeting explained, the invention of flying machines presented a new threat to Australia that could only be addressed by the establishment of aerial defences.33

The League had an early success in June when its honorary secretary, George Taylor, convinced the Deakin led ‘fusion’ government to provide £5,000 (approximately $630,000AUD in 2012) to the inventor of ‘a flying machine for military purposes’.34 As conditions the League had to provide another £5,000 from ‘private sources’ and inventors needed to submit completed machines to undergo military trials.35 The government’s precise motives for supporting the scheme are

28 Report of the CID Sub-Committee on Aerial Navigation, CID miscellaneous ‘B’ series papers, 101- 132, Volume 3, NAUK CAB4/3. 29 ‘Aerial League. Flying Machines to Defend Australia’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 April 1909, p. 3. 30 ‘Aerial League of Empire. A Two-Power Standard’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 April 1909, p. 10. 31 Aerial League of Australia meeting minutes, 19 May 1909, SLNSW ML B687. 32 Aerial League of Australia statement of objectives, nd, SLNSW ML B687. 33 Daily Telegraph, 29 April 1909 (clipping in SLNSW ML B687). 34 Taylor made the first controlled glider flight in Australia on a craft he designed and built, at Narrabeen beach in Sydney on 5 December 1909. He was afterwards granted an honourary commission in the Australian Intelligence Corps. 35 Joseph Cook, Minister for Defence to George Taylor, Honourary Secretary of the Aerial League of Australia, 22 July 1909, NAA A2023 A38/4/398. 39 unclear, especially given Kernot’s advice, less than a year earlier, that adequate expertise did not exist locally. It is possible that Deakin, being in an unstable coalition government, wished to appeal to an issue of increasing public concern. Indeed, Taylor had approached the government with letters of petition from several prominent men including one Liberal member.36 On the other hand, Deakin’s advocacy of a larger, more capable local defence force dated to 1905 when he campaigned vigorously for an Australian navy. It is likely that he would have found Taylor’s warning compelling that Australia’s ‘magnificent distances and long length of undefended sea coast’ were particularly vulnerable to air attack.37 In sponsoring the aircraft design competition, the prime minister also had the support of his defence minister, Joseph Cook, and the Military Board.38

Still, Chris Clark reads the competition conditions as evidence that the government was ‘less than serious about acquiring aircraft for the armed forces’.39 He is correct in noting the ambitious nature of the conditions: inventors had to produce a complete aircraft built as far as possible from locally produced components. It had to take off under its own power and, carrying two crew, complete a 32-kilometre circuit in under an hour.40 Yet, the Deakin government did not haphazardly devise these conditions. The Chief of Ordnance drafted them and accepted revisions from the Aerial League, the Crown Solicitor and a noted Melbourne University physicist.41 Further, though ambitious, the criteria were not without precedent. At the Reims aviation show in August (thoroughly covered in the Australian press), French aircraft had reached altitudes over 500 feet, endurance of 180 kilometres and a top speed of 76 kilometres per hour.42 As Cook explained in parliament, he intended the competition to ‘stimulate Australian inventors’ to invent a aeroplane ‘over and above what has already been done in the case of machines already on the market’.43

36 Aerial League of Australia minute ledger, SLNSW ML B687; Taylor to Cook, 28 June 1909, NAA A2023 A38/4/398. 37 Taylor to Alfred Deakin, Prime Minister, 17 June 1909, NAA A2023 A38/4/398; Taylor to Cook, 21 June 1909, NAA A2023 A38/4/398; Thomas Griffiths, Secretary of the Military Board, minute, 28 June 1909, NAA A2023 A38/4/398. 38 Griffiths, minute, 28 June 1909, NAA A2023 A38/4/398. 39 Michael McKernan and Margaret Browne (editors), Australia: Two Centuries of War and Peace, Australian War Memorial Press, Canberra, 1988, p. 138. 40 ‘Prize for Flying Machine for Military Purposes’, NAA A2023 A38/4/398. 41 See drafts of the competition conditions in NAA A2023 A38/4/398. 42 Hallion, Taking Flight, p. 260. 43 CPD, 27 October 1909, voume XLIII, pp. 5,094-95. 40 Despite its apparently genuine interest in aviation experimentation, Deakin’s government vastly overestimated the capability of local inventors and industry. By the closing date (30 June 1910) the Defence Department had received 45 entries, but, after another year had seen no completed machines, at which point the competition lapsed.44 Departmental correspondence with the entrants confirmed Kernot’s prediction; local inventors failed to grasp even the fundamentals of aeronautics.45 John Duigan, a young engineer from rural Victoria, proved the only exception. Beginning work independently a few months before the competition started, he built a machine that flew nearly 200 yards on 7 October 1910. Military representatives witnessed three demonstration flights of about 800 metres each the following May – notable results but well-short of the competition’s conditions and, indeed, far behind the achievements of his European contemporaries.46

The competition’s disappointing outcome also indicates that Taylor had substantially overestimated the League’s influence and public interest in the scheme. Despite his assurances to Cook of ample popular support, in the month after launching the public fund he only managed to collect £56 of the required £5,000.47 The League attracted just 483 members in its first twelve months (1909-1910) and, a year later, the Brisbane Courier described it as an organisation ‘not often heard of by the general public’.48 League records and newspaper coverage suggest that by early 1913 it had practically fallen into abeyance.49 The principal impetus for the establishment of aviation in Australia would, therefore, come from within the political and military establishments and not popular pressure.

Although never as politically charged as it was in Britain, aviation figured in Australian parliamentary debates on defence during 1909. During its time in

44 Department of Defence minute, 28 July 1911, NAA A2023 A38/4/398; Samuel Pethebridge, Secretary of Defence to Mr A. Meyers, 21 February 1914, NAA A2023 A38/4/398. 45 See for example, entries from: H. A. Tipper, NAA A289 1907/2/299; J. A. Burke, NAA A289 1907/2/142; J. S. Gibbon, NAA A289 1907/2/438; J. Williams, NAA A289 1907/2/212; J. Sheard, NAA A289 1907/2/127; C. Burt, NAA A289 1907/2/317; C. Marshall Fletcher, NAA MP84/1 1907/2/525; J. Binnie, NAA MP84/1 1907/2/679. 46 David Crotty, A Flying Life: John Duigan and the First Australian Aeroplane, Museum of Victoria, Melbourne, 2010, p. 62. 47 Taylor to Cook, 28 June 1909, NAA A2023 A38/4/398; Aerial League of Australia meeting minutes, 5 October 1909, SLNSW ML B687. 48 Aerial League of Australia first annual report, SLNSW ML B687; ‘Aerial League of Australia’, The Brisbane Courier, 29 September 1911, p. 4. 49 The League’s minute ledger [SLNSW ML B687] contains no records of meetings between 1 June 1912 and 1918. The Sydney Morning Herald contains no reports of League activities during 1913. 41 opposition to Deakin’s ‘fusion’ government (June 1909 to April 1910), Labor emerged as an advocate of developing local aerial defences. Its position became most clearly articulated during the debate over the naval loan bill, during which parliament considered the War Office’s invitation to contribute a unit to an imperial Pacific fleet. Having advocated the development of Australia’s coastal defences since 1903, Labor had little choice but to support the scheme generally.50 Opposition members did, however, argue that a blue water capability was unnecessary for coastal defence and questioned the wisdom of investing in capital ships given the recent developments in ‘aerial navigation’.51 Even the stridently anti-militarist King O’Malley pressed the government to establish ‘a fleet of flying ships for the protection of Australia’, arguing that they represented a more economical and effective means of protecting Australia’s vast coastline than a fleet of warships which ‘would be on the scrap-heap in eight or nine years’.52 His colleague William Webster made a similar point, and when asked by the government where an aerial attack may originate he responded:

It is quite possible for a warship to stand a long way off the Heads and dispatch its aerial machines over Sydney, destroying more in five minutes than the Honourable member would be able to save by this scheme [naval loan bill] in five years.53

Hence, Labor returned to government in April 1910 having unequivocally advocated aviation while in opposition and, just as significantly, with the means to finance and legislate for its development. For the first time, Andrew Fisher’s administration (April 1910 to June 1913) controlled a significant majority in both Houses and, with the expiration of the constitution’s ‘Braddon clause’, it had access to unprecedented funding for Commonwealth projects.54 The increasingly bleak international situation also justified increased spending on defence. The Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910, diplomatic crises in Morocco and the Balkans and the withdrawal of the ’s first line ships from the Pacific to home waters heightened anxieties in Australia and generated widespread popular and political support for the bolstering of Australia’s military forces.

50 Meaney, A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy Volume I, p. 190. 51 CPD, volume XLVIII, 2 December 1909, p. 6,782 and 6,790. 52 CPD, volume XXXV, 31 August 1909, pp. 2,769-70; CPD, volume XXXV, 1 September 1909, p. 2,803. 53 CPD, volume XLVIII, 2 December 1909, p. 6,773. 54 The Braddon Clause required the Commonwealth to return three quarters of customs duties to the states during the first decade of Federation. It severely curtailed Commonwealth spending until 1911. 42 Crucial in the Fisher government’s decision to include aviation on its defence agenda is the role of its defence minister, George Pearce. As John Connor points out, Pearce comprehensively involved himself in policy and ran his department in a ‘more personal and more direct’ manner than would ministers nowadays.55 Garry Woodard describes this as typical of Commonwealth departments before the Second World War, when bureaucracies were small and public servants rarely had a university education: their responsibility involved office administration rather than policy development.56 Defence Ministers also exercised executive control over the Military Board, ensuring that the administration of the Australian Military Forces remained subject to government authority.57

Pearce maintained the previous government’s flying machine competition and in August 1910 requested the High Commissioner’s office report on the progress of British aeronautics.58 The Aerial League meanwhile lobbied the new government, highlighting Australia’s vulnerability to ‘Asiatic invasion’ and calling for the establishment of an ‘Australian aerial fleet’; Taylor and other League members submitted proposals for flying Schools to the Defence Department.59 The Board considered these and acknowledged the ‘considerable amount of agitation… outside the forces for the formation of an aviation corps’, but advised Pearce to wait. Although during 1910 the War Office committed to the establishment of an ‘Air Battalion’ it had not, by the beginning of 1911, completed its organisation or settled on an aircraft type. Observing that Australian forces ‘should as far as possible adopt the pattern of equipment in use by the British Army’ (a principle agreed to at the 1907 conference), the Board advised Pearce to review developments when he went to Britain in May to attend the imperial conference.60

55 John Connor, ‘Senator George Pearce as Defence Minister’, PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, 2004, p. 14. 56 Garry Woodard, ‘Ministers and Mandarins: The Relationships Between Ministers and Secretaries of External Affairs, 1935-1970’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 54, No. 1, April 2000, p. 80. 57 Peter Dennis, Jeffery Grey, Ewan Morris, Robin Prior and Jean Bou (eds), The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, second edition, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2008, p. 359. 58 Atlee Hunt, Minister for External Affairs to Pethebridge, 25 August 1910, NAA A2023 A38/3/221. 59 Aerial League of Australia first annual report, SLNSW ML B687; ‘The air age and its military significance’, lecture by Lieutenant George Taylor of the Australian Intelligence Corps to United Service Institution of NSW, 22 July 1910, NAA A289 1849/8/222; Charles Lyndsay Campbell to Minister for Defence, George Pearce, 9 January 1911, NAA A289 1849/8/221. 60 Military Board minute, 17 January 1911, NAA A289 1849/8/221. 43 This advice – characterised by its openness to new technology but an inclination to wait and follow the British lead and deference to ministerial judgment – had precedent in the administration of Australia’s armed forces. As Meaney points out, the newly federated dominion’s first military commandant, Major-General Edward Hutton had cast the Australian officer corps in an ‘imperial mould’, which encouraged them to defer to the War Office rather than their own government. This ‘tended to isolate them from the processes of policy-making, as a result, the initiative in the shaping of Australia's military policy and the impetus behind its execution down to 1914 came almost entirely from the responsible ministers’.61

Before the Great War aviation remained a peripheral issue to professional soldiers who were, from mid 1911, consumed by the challenges of introducing compulsory military training. Richard Williams, a young, permanent forces lieutenant on the Administrative and Instructional Staff only learned of the RFC’s existence during General Sir Ian Hamilton’s 1914 inspection tour when he inquired about the distinctive ‘wings’ worn by one of Hamilton’s staff. Williams then saw an aeroplane for the first time in June 1914.62 He probably represented the majority. Less common were those few who either vocally supported or deprecated aviation. Among the former, a handful of officers such as Oswald Watt, Edgar Reynolds, George Taylor and Charles Rosenthal applied their private interest in aviation in professional discussions about its use in their service. On the other hand were the sceptics, officers such as Captain Joseph Niesigh who, after flying from Botany Bay to Liverpool as a passenger, wrote an article declaring reconnaissance from the air difficult and unlikely to produce useful results over Australia’s rugged coastal terrain.63 Aviation remained a peripheral topic in the Commonwealth Military Journal: from August 1911 articles appeared from time to time on flying, but significantly originated from one of either two sources: British service journals or known and vocal aviation advocates in Australia such as Watt and Taylor.64 When the Department called for

61 Meaney, A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy Volume I, p. 60. 62 Richard Williams, interview with Mel Pratt, 1973, NLA TRC 121/50. 63 Captain J. W. Niesigh, ‘Aviation in Relation to Australian defence’, Commonwealth Military Journal, August 1911, pp. 403-410. 64 Sydney Smith, ‘Aviation in Relation to Australian Defence- a Reply’, Commonwealth Military Journal, October 1911, pp. 604-607; Sydney Smith, ‘Aviation in relation to Australian defence- a reply’, Commonwealth Military Journal, October 1911, pp. 604-607, pp. 704-710; H. Bannerman Phillips, ‘Progress in Aeronautics’, Commonwealth Military Journal, November 1911, pp. 717-724; George Taylor, ‘Australian Defence and Aviation’, Commonwealth Military Journal, February 1912, pp. 71-76; Oswald Watt, ‘Australia and the Fourth Arm’, Commonwealth Military Journal, May 1912, 44 applicants from the officer corps (permanent and militia) for the first flying course in August 1914, it received just seven applications.65 Politicians, not soldiers, provided impetus for the development of military aviation in Australia.

The conventional narrative of early aviation in Australia accepts Pearce’s recollection that he became convinced of the need to establish a flying school and corps while in Britain for the conference in 1911.66 Yet it is clear that he reached this decision before leaving Australia. By late 1910 Pearce doubted the feasibility of developing aviation solely from local expertise and invention. After inspecting a partially built aeroplane in Fremantle in December 1910 (the inventor of which could not obtain an engine in Australia), he told reporters that he thought they had been ‘starting at the wrong end’.67 ‘While we want aeroplanes we want men able and willing and accustomed to fly them. We need a corps of aviators’.68 On 31 December journalists quoted Pearce stating that he was considering as a first step, the establishment of a flying school.69

As well as the apparent failure of the invention competition, Pearce was motivated by first hand experience of aviation during 1910 and early 1911, the period in which powered flight came to Australia. While Australian inventors floundered, imported machines and foreign aviators gave flying demonstrations around the country. The most significant for Pearce and the military authorities were those by Joseph Hammond who visited Australia as a representative of the British & Colonial Aeroplane Company in early 1911. On the Minister’s instructions, military representatives attended demonstration flights by Hammond in and Victoria during January and February.70 Both occasions resulted in overwhelmingly positive reports on the aircraft’s potential in military operations in ‘Australian pp. 413-419; Oswald Watt, ‘Recent Aviation Developments and Australian Aerial Organisation’, Commonwealth Military Journal, January 1913, pp. 62-65; , ‘Safety in Aviation’, Commonwealth Military Journal, July 1913, pp. 389-392; Eric Harrison, ‘Military Tuition in Aviation’, Commonwealth Military Journal, April 1914, pp. 292-294. 65 Applications for the first course at CFS, NAA A2023 A38/7/44. 66 George Foster Pearce, Carpenter to Cabinet: Thirty-Seven Years of Parliament, Hutchinson, London, 1951, pp. 82-83; McKernan and Browne, Australia: two centuries of war and peace, p. 140; Connor, ‘Senator George Pearce as Defence Minister’, pp. 60-61; Richard Williams, These are Facts: the Autobiography of Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams, KBE, CB, DSO, Australian War Memorial and Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977, p. 20; Keith Isaacs, Military Aircraft of Australia 1909-1918, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1971, p. 10. 67 ‘Aeroplane Competition’, Kalgoorlie Western Argus, 3 January 1911, p. 33. 68 ‘A Corps of Aviators’, Barrier Miner (), 31 December 1910, p. 5. 69 ‘Training of Aviators. Defence Minister’s Suggestion’, The Argus, 31 December 1910, p. 13. 70 Pearce to Pethebridge, 10 January 1911, NAA A289 1849/8/31. 45 conditions’.71 The press reported Pearce’s satisfaction with Hammond’s machine and his intimations that the next estimates would include a vote for aviation. Although he declined to go into detail, Pearce mentioned the purchase of two biplanes for ‘military experiments’ and explained that while in Britain he would review aeronautics and consider approaching the Royal Engineers to appoint an officer to command a ‘Commonwealth Aerial Corps’.72 On the Military Board’s advice however, he deferred the purchase of aircraft from British Colonial until he had determined which aircraft the War Office preferred.73

Pearce claimed in his memoirs that visiting Britain in May ‘convinced him of the wisdom of our having a flying school in the Defence Department’.74 Other evidence, however, suggests that his experiences left him more ambivalent than that. Reflecting the roles for which British authorities conceived aviation (home defence and co-operation with the fleet and expeditionary forces), military flying did not figure in official discussions on imperial defence at the conference.75 Aviation, indeed, would not be officially considered in an imperial context until the early 1920s.76 On the other hand, Pearce’s arrival in London came a month after the establishment of an Air Battalion in the Royal Engineers and coincided with a week Flight described as ‘likely to become historic in the annals of aeronautics’. Following a day of demonstration flights at Hendon on 12 May, attended by 300 MPs and ‘some hundreds’ of naval and military officers, the British government expressed an expectation that aviation would play an important role in the next war and renewed funding for aircraft trials.77 Pearce missed the Hendon display but on 21 May visited a

71 Lieutenant-Colonel E. Irving, Commandant, Western Australia to Pethebridge, 16 January 1911 NAA A289 1849/8/31; Major C. H. Foot, Director of Engineers to Pethebridge, 27 February 1911, NAA A289 1849/8/31. 72 The Examiner (Launceston), 4 March 1911; The Examiner (Launceston), 8 March 1911. 73 Thomas Griffiths, Military Board Secretary, minute, 21 March 1911, NAA A289 1849/8/31. 74 Pearce, Carpenter to Cabinet, pp. 82-83. 75 Paris, Winged Warfare, pp. 189-190; Paris, ‘Air Power and Imperial Defence 1880-1919’, p. 215; Gollin, The Impact of Air Power, pp. 211-215; 1911 Imperial Conference minutes of proceedings and papers, NAA CA12 CP103/2; Committee of Imperial Defence Minutes of the 111th Meeting, 26 May 1911, NAUK CAB 2/2; Committee of Imperial Defence Minutes of the 112th Meeting, 29 May 1911, NAUK CAB 2/2; Committee of Imperial Defence Minutes of the 113th Meeting, 30 May 1911, NAUK CAB 2/2; Proceedings of a Committee of the Imperial Conference convened to discuss Questions of Defence (Military) at the War Office, 14 and 17 June 1911, NAUK PRO WO106/43. 76 CID meeting minutes, 14 July 1910, NAUK CAB/2/2; CID meetings Nos 83-119, 1 February 1906 to 1 NAUK CAB2/2; CID meetings Nos 120- 175, 2 December 1912 to 23 July 1923, NAUK CAB 2/3. 77 Gollin, The Impact of Airpower, pp. 172-173; ‘The Hendon Demonstration’, Flight, 13 May 1911, p. 412. 46 flying school at Brooklands where he witnessed flights and spoke to army officer aviators. Although undoubtedly encouraged by this, Pearce returned to Australia to tell journalists that ‘from what he could learn… there was still some doubt as to the utility of aeroplanes’. While he would not ‘abandon his inquiries into the matter’ the present state of military flying did not warrant the Commonwealth’s purchase of ‘flying machines’.78 Rather than being decisive therefore, Pearce’s experiences overseas put aviation’s progress into perspective and encouraged the department to be circumspect in its plans to provide Australia with aerial defences.

Pearce’s exposure to the international context compelled him, more broadly, to press the development of Australia’s defence capabilities. During Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) briefings British ministers had frankly acknowledged the decline in Anglo-German relations and the possibility of a British intervention in Europe to prevent German domination of the continent.79 Pearce and Fisher concluded ‘that a European war was inevitable and that it would probably come in 1915’.80 An overland journey home across Europe and Asia added weight to this notion, Pearce noting bellicose nationalism and growing military and industrial strength on the continent and, in Japanese industry, perceiving a ‘readiness for war and the deadly earnestness with which she makes that readiness’.81 The Defence Minister arrived home, as his comments to the Brunswick Labor Club indicate, focused on augmenting Australia’s capacity to defend itself from an Asian aggressor, independent of the Mother Country. He told his audience that whereas he had previously perceived Australia’s destiny as being bound to European affairs, he now saw that it would be ‘more largely affected by the nations to the north’. He noted that although a voyage to Europe took a month, it was only eight days to Japan. ‘Australians should arm themselves,’ he warned, ‘to be in readiness for any emergency’.82

78 ‘Defence- Military Aviation’, The Argus (Melbourne), 1 September 1911, p. 6. 79 See especially, Committee of Imperial Defence Minutes of the 111th Meeting, 26 May 1911, pp. 11- 12, NAUK CAB 2/2; Committee of Imperial Defence Minutes of the 112th Meeting, 29 May 1911, p. 5, NAUK CAB 2/2. 80 Pearce, Carpenter to Cabinet, pp. 81-82. 81 Pearce, typescript diary, pp. 31-32, AWM 3DRL/2222 Item 1/5. 82 ‘Australia’s Danger. Eight Days’ Sail. Senator Pearce and War’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 October 1911, p. 9. 47 Pearce’s message found a receptive audience in Australia. Anxiety about Japanese intentions had, in Meaney’s words, reached a ‘fever crisis’ in early 1911 resulting, he suggests, from rumours about the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Journalists, politicians and military authorities publically acknowledged the threat, providing it with an air of legitimacy.83 Aviation advocates engaged with the public alarm to justify the establishment of an aviation corps. In one pamphlet, the Aerial League appealed to its ‘brother Australians’ claiming that the invention of vessels capable of launching aircraft had nullified the advantage previously accorded Australia by its isolation. It painted a frightening picture of ‘the panic when the aerial reach our city’ and proposed the immediate establishment of a flying school, factory and corps so that when the ‘oft discussed AngloJapanese [sic] treaty’ expired in 1914, ‘Australia will be well prepared for any hostile threat’.84 Developing a similar theme, a fictional story in the stridently nationalist Lone Hand envisaged a Japanese invasion of Australia in which a Commonwealth ‘Aerial Corps’ provided the crucial element of the nation’s defences. Set in 1912, aircraft had developed rapidly beyond ‘the ‘flimsy planes [of] wire and fabric structure of 1910’ to sport metal fuselages, enclosed canopies, bombs and machine guns.85 This may have inspired a similar plotline in Raymond Longford’s film Australia Calls (1913), which depicted ship-borne ‘Mongolian’ aircraft attacking Sydney and a successful counter-attack by Australian ‘aviator Hart’.86

By the end of 1911 it is apparent that such arguments by the air lobby had influenced the press to accept the usefulness of aircraft in Australia’s defence as logical and necessary. An editorial in The Sun on 28 December, for example, considered that the importance of forming an aviation corps to co-operate with the new army and navy ‘can scarcely be exaggerated’. It went on to argue that in the decade it would take to build Australia’s army and navy, ‘daring Australian air-men trained in an Australian school’ would be most likely to save the nation from a

83 Meaney, A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy Volume I, pp. 209-210. 84 George Taylor, Wanted at Once! An Aerial Fleet for Australia, Sydney and Melbourne Publishing Co., c. 1911. The National Library of Australia holds a copy of this pamphlet: NLp 358.4 TAY. 85 Lawrence Zeal, ‘Command of the Air: the Story of How an Australian Aeroplane met the Japanese in the New Warfare’ Lone Hand, March 1911. 86 McKernan and Browne, Australia: Two Centuries of War and Peace, p. 140; Peter Stanley, Invading Australia: Japan and the Battle for Australia, 1942, Penguin, Camberwell, 2008, p. 34; ‘Music and Drama’, The Argus, 11 August 1913, p. 11. 48 ‘crushing defeat’ by an immense enemy invasion force.87 Such coverage of aviation in the press suggests that the Australian air lobby - as its British counterpart did – created an exaggerated perception of the aeroplane’s capability. Lobbyists in both nations tended to assume (as the author of ‘Command of the Air’ had) that because aeronautical technology had evolved so rapidly in the 1908-1911 period, it would continue to do so at an unlimited and exponential rate. As a Sydney Morning Herald journalist predicted in mid-1912, with a fleet of aircraft Australia could protect its entire coastline to a range of 100 miles. Naively he argued that for the cost of two Dreadnoughts Australia could establish an aerial militia of 20,000 aircraft: ‘Once men became thoroughly used to the machines they could be dismissed to their homes, need only be paid a retaining fee, and be required to spend a few weeks in each year to keep themselves in touch with modern improvements’.88

The government took a far more sanguine view of aviation’s potential contribution to Australian defence. The 1911-12 defence estimates represented a significant increase in Commonwealth spending: 35 per cent above the previous year and an almost 5 per cent increase in defence expenditure as a proportion of the total budget.89 Of this however, in October 1911 the government pledged less than one per cent (£4,000) ‘in aid of military aviation’.90 At this stage, the Department of Defence and Military Board had no firm plans for investing these modest funds. When an opposition member criticised the sum as hardly enough to purchase equipment and employ expert staff, the Prime Minister responded vaguely that the Department might ‘hire’ some machines on which to instruct military officers.91

At the 1907 Imperial Conference the dominions had agreed to the principle of uniformity between their military forces. To this end the British granted dominion military advisors access to the CID to obtain advice on ‘any local questions in which

87 The Sun (Sydney), 28 December 1911. 88 ‘Aviation. Its Relation to Australian Defence’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 July 1912, p. 5. The notion of an aerial militia in itself was not without precedent and may have been inspired by the establishment in several European countries, civilian flying clubs whose members agreed to undertake paid military training each year. In Germany, for example, members of the Deutsche Freiwillige Fliegerkorps volunteered for three years reserve service and spent 10 days annually on military exercises. Lee Kennett, The First Air War, 1914-1918, The Free Press, New York, 1991, p. 16. 89 Meaney, A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy Volume I, p. 277. 90 CPD, Volume XLIII, 26 October 1911, p. 1,897. 91 CPD, Volume XLV, 1911, p. 2,368. 49 expert assistance is deemed desirable’.92 Pearce adhered to this principle throughout his tenure as defence minister, always insisting that Australian forces use the same equipment and organisation as their British counterparts.93 In planning Australia’s start in military aviation, however, Pearce had little precedent: in late 1911 the War Office had established neither a flying corps nor a school (the Air Battalion drew its pilots from civilian schools). In any case, Australian conditions differed manifestly to those in Britain; it lacked aviation manufacturers, had no civilian flying schools and, indeed, very few locally-based pilots. The pre-war years saw an exodus to Britain of Australians interested in learning to fly; most stayed abroad to work in the emerging European industry.94

The main question confronting the Defence Department concerned whether to likewise send officers to Britain for training or to import expertise and establish a school locally. Each of the dominions confronted this issue during 1911, their approaches reflecting the attitudes of their political and military authorities towards aviation and their respective strategic positions. New Zealand’s general staff considered the establishment of a flying school but decided, on War Office advice, to instead send officers to Britain for training.95 This decision reflects the dominion’s perception (in contrast to Australia’s) that its security depended on the military efforts of the imperial whole rather than autonomous local forces.96 Canadian authorities likewise sought British advice in November 1911; although the scheme had the support of the Canadian CGS, cabinet blocked it and a further proposal the following year.97 Wise underlines the scepticism of Minister of Militia and Defence Sam Hughes (who reportedly derided aircraft as ‘costly toys, only as yet in the experimental stage’) and the exigencies of Canada’s peace-time military

92 ‘Extracts from Minutes of Proceedings of the Colonial Conference 1907’, p.1, NAA A5954 797/9. 93 Connor, ‘Senator George Pearce as Defence Minister’, p. 35. 94 These included, most notably, Harry Hawker, Henry Kauper, , Eric Harrison, Oswald Watt and Charles Lyndsay Campbell whose proposal to start a flying school the Military Board had considered, but declined, in early 1911. He died in a flying accident in Britain in August 1912. 95 J. M. S. Ross, Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939-45, ‘Royal New Zealand Air Force’, War History Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1955, p, 1. 96 Glen St J. Barclay, The Empire is Marching: a Study of the Military Effort of the British Empire, 1800-1945, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1976, pp. 220-221; Meaney, A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy, p. 184; Committee of Imperial Defence Minutes of the 112th Meeting, 29 May 1911, pp. 26-28, NAUK CAB 2/2. 97 S. F. Wise, Canadian airmen and the First World War: Official history of the Royal Canadian Air Force Volume I, University of Toronto Press in co-operation with the Dept. of National Defence and the Canadian Government Publishing Centre, Supply and Services Canada, Toronto, 1980, pp. 16-18. 50 organisation.98 Isolated from potential enemies and accorded a sense of security by the Monroe Doctrine, Canadian policymakers had difficulty justifying investment in an autonomous local defence force.99 Sharing a continent with potential enemies and remote from centres of strategic importance, the South African government considered aviation more earnestly; its 1912 Defence Act included provisions to establish a flying corps. After obtaining detailed plans from the War Office for a military flying school it decided to contract a private firm to provide candidates with basic training before sending them to schools in Britain.100 The Indian government also relied on Britain’s more thoroughly developed aviation training infrastructure, establishing a flying school in 1914 but sending its staff to the RFC’s Central Flying School at Upavon for flight training.101 The War Office agreed to train colonial flyers, charging dominion governments £450 per pupil for a three-month course.102

The Australian CGS, Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Wilson, came to prefer a similar approach after consulting Captain Oswald Watt, a militia officer who had earned his Royal Aero Club brevet in Britain and William Hart, a dentist turned aviator who, in November 1911, qualified for the first locally administered flying license. Wilson advised the Department to send six officers overseas for attachment to the Air Battalion to acquaint them ‘with the latest developments in aeronautics’ while contracting Hart to train another six officers locally. These would afterwards establish a military flying school in Australia.103 Pearce, however, preferred the early establishment of a school in Australia.104 ‘In view of the shortage of officers’ created by the compulsory service scheme and because of the limited local aviation expertise he opted to advertise for two ‘competent aviators’ and tenders for four aircraft. He

98 Wise, Canadian airmen and the First World War, p. 24. 99 Committee of Imperial Defence Minutes of the 112th Meeting, 29 May 1911, NAUK CAB 2/2; James Woods, Militia Myths: Ideas of the Canadian Citizen Soldier, University of British Columbia, , 2010, p. 195; Richard A. Preston and Ian Wards, ‘Military and Defence Development in Canada, Australia and News Zealand: a Three Way Comparison’, War & Society, volume 5, number 1, 1987, pp. 9-10; Meaney, A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy Volume I, pp. 158, 165 and 213; Barclay, The Empire is Marching, pp. 43-45. 100 Dick Silberbauer, ‘The Origins of South African Military Aviation: 1907-1919 from South African Archives’, Cross and Cockade (UK), volume 7, number 4, 1976, pp. 174-175; Lieutenant-Colonel J. G. Legge, Commonwealth representative on the Dominions Section, Imperial General Staff to Pethebridge, 28 November 1912, NAA MP84/1 1849/8/287. 101 ‘Military aviation in ’, Flight, 10 May 1913, p. 522. 102 Legge to Pethebridge, 15 May 1914, NAA A2023 A38/7/9. 103 Lieutenant-Colonel A. F. Wilson, Acting CGS to Pethebridge, 16 November 1911, NAA MP84/1 1849/8/24; Wilson to Pethebridge, 8 December 1911, NAA MP84/1 1849/8/37. 104 Précis of correspondence, NAA A2023 A38/3/221. The memorandum (1849/8/33) outlining this scheme appears to be missing from the file but the précis summarises the minister’s view. 51 charged the High Commissioner’s office with responsibility for consulting the War Office on the selection of suitable candidates and designs.105 On 30 December 1911 an advertisement for two ‘expert mechanists and aviators’ appeared in the Commonwealth Gazette.106 Three weeks later it was reproduced in British aviation journals along with a call for tenders for a pair each of monoplanes and biplanes.107

The selection process that followed during the first half of 1912 suggests that the Department had only a vague conception of what it hoped to establish and little understanding of the embryonic nature of aviation in Britain. Indeed, the Commonwealth’s advertisement for aviators and machines predated the RFC’s establishment by three months and the War Office’s official aircraft trials by eight months. Despite advice to the contrary from the CGS, for example, Pearce restricted tenders to British aircraft manufacturers.108 He was forced to open the field to foreign companies when, a month after advertising, he learned that only two manufacturers of British aircraft existed.109 The War Office advised him to wait until the aircraft trials in August before selecting types, but the Minister pushed for immediate advice reasoning that ‘machines are required for instructional purposes only and therefore not necessary to postpone action’.110 On the War Office’s recommendation, in July the Department ordered two Deperdussin monoplanes and two government-designed BE biplanes.111

The Department’s choice turned out one of mixed fortune. The BE subsequently set a new height record at the trials in August, but being selected to equip the RFC proved difficult for the Commonwealth to procure before and during the war. Also, it developed quickly from the initial mark purchased by the Australian government; components on the two machines purchased by the government were

105 Minister’s decisions, 15 December 1911, NAA MP153/9 10. 106 Commonwealth Gazette, number 97, 30 December 1911, p. 2,399. 107 Flight, 20 January 1912, pp. 57 and 61. 108 Hunt to Pethebridge, 3 January 1912, NAA A2023 A38/3/221. 109 Captain Robert Muirhead Collins, Official Secretary to the High Commissioner to the Secretary, Department of External Affairs, 12 January 1912, NAA A2023 A38/3/221; Pethebridge to Hunt, 23 February 1912, NAA A2023 A38/3/221. 110 Decode of cablegram from the High Commisioner’s office to Department of Defence, 1 , NAA A2023 A38/3/221; Pethebridge to Hunt, 17 , NAA A2023 A38/3/221. 111 Muirhead Collins to the War Office, 2 May 1912, NAA A2023 A38/3/221. 52 superseded before the aeroplanes even shipped.112 The Deperdussin earned second place at the trials but its British manufacturer went into receivership soon after, making it difficult for the Department to obtain spare parts.113 In any case, it would prove too difficult to fly for training; AFC pupils would only ever practise taxiing in it.

Regarding staff, the High Commissioner’s secretary warned the Department that its offer of a £400 salary was unlikely to attract candidates with expertise in both flying and mechanical engineering.114 With the available estimates, however, the Department had no choice but to maintain its offer – though the secretary’s advice proved correct. The High Commissioner’s office received 58 applications, seven of which the Commonwealth’s military representative in London deemed suitable. After consulting with the War Office he selected Henry Busteed, an Australian working for the British & Colonial Aeroplane Company and Henry Petre, a British lawyer turned pilot employed by Deperdussin as an instructor.115

Both men accepted the positions in July 1912, but two months later, before embarking for Australia, Busteed requested £600 per year with annual increases, control of the school and a guaranteed three-year appointment (the advertisement offered a 12-month probation).116 When Pearce refused Busteed withdrew his application, explaining that European firms offered better salaries and career prospects.117 In his place the War Office recommended Samuel Cody, an eccentric American whose flying experiments it had funded at the Balloon Factory between 1906 and 1908.118 Although Cody met the government’s criteria of ‘expert mechanist

112 Eric Harrison to Major P. N. Buckley, Commonwealth military representative at the High Commission, 18 March 1913, NAA A2023 A38/3/221; G. Stanley White to Muirhead Collins, 10 March 1913, NAA A2023 A38/3/221. 113 Buckley to Muirhead Collins, 23 September 1913, NAA A2023 A38/3/221. 114 Muirhead Collins to the Secretary, Department of External Affairs, 12 January 1912, NAA A2023 A38/3/221. 115 Busteed claimed to have been the first Australian to earn a flying certificate in Britain, having earned Royal Aero Club certificate No. 94 on 13 June 1911 [Henry Busteed to the High Commissioner, Sir George Reid, 27 November 1911, NAA A2023 A38/3/221]. Lieutenant of the Royal Navy, born in St. Leonards New South Wales had, however, already taken his ticket; No. 72 on 25 April 1911. 116 Decode of cable from the High Commissioner’s office to the Department of Defence, 7 , NAA A2023 A38/3/221. 117 Hunt to Thomas Trumble, Acting Secretary for Defence, 9 September 1912, NAA A2023 A38/3/221. 118 Decode of cablegram from High Commissioner’s office to the Department of Defence, 7 September 1912, NAA A2023 A38/3/221. 53 and aviator’ and had distinguished himself at the August trials, the Department opted for Eric Harrison, an Australian who, like Busteed, worked for British & Colonial and had instructed at the company’s schools in Spain and Germany.119 Pearce may have been influenced by criticism in the press that the Department had overlooked local talent by employing foreigners, but it is likely that financial considerations proved decisive.120 By late 1912 the government had decided, on Busteed’s advice, to purchase a fifth machine (a ), compelling it to seek an advance from the Treasury.121 Cody’s subsequent demand for a five year contract with a consolidated salary of £1,250, along with the Commonwealth’s purchase of his three aircraft for £3,500, were impossible on the meagre aviation estimate.122

The Department also appointed four mechanics from overseas applicants but financial constraints precluded the employment of a School commandant – despite strident advice to do so from the Commonwealth’s representative on CID and the application of an ideal candidate for the post. Lieutenant-Colonel William Everett of the 6th Light Horse Regiment had the unique experience, among officers of the Australian Military Forces, of an attachment to the RFC during the summer of 1912, during which time his British superiors reported very favourably on his conduct and the ‘considerable insight’ he developed.123 He approached the High Commissioner’s office in November 1912, offering to oversee the school’s organisation on the condition of a £600 salary and guaranteed two-year appointment.124 The Department declined his offer, a move Lieutenant-Colonel Legge, Australia’s representative on the Imperial General Staff, criticised. Neither Petre nor Harrison were qualified, he pointed out, to command a military establishment or train pilots for military work: ‘A mere flying certificate is of no more value for war than is a riding certificate, gained in a private riding school, to the creation of an efficient cavalry soldier’.125

119 H. White Smith, Secretary of the British and Colonial Aeroplane Co. to Buckley, 21 January 1913, NAA A2023 A38/3/221. 120 The Sun (Sydney), 29 September 1911 and 28 December 1911. 121 Decode of cable from the High Commissioner’s office to the Department of Defence, 24 July 1912, NAA A2023 A38/3/221; Department of Treasury Warrant Authority No. 656, NAA A2023 A38/3/221. 122 Decode of cable from the High Commissioner’s office to the Department of Defence, 7 September 1912, NAA A2023 A38/3/221. 123 Officer Commanding, Royal Flying Corps Military Wing to DAAG, , 18 January 1913, NAUK AIR1/811/204/4/1243. 124 Buckley to Muirhead Collins, 13 September 1912, NAA A2023 A38/3/221. 125 Legge to Trumble, 1 November 1912, NAA A289 1849/8/339. 54 The small vote for aviation in the estimates influenced planning for the school and corps. In mid-1912 the CGS, Brigadier-General Joseph Gordon, submitted an outline for future aeronautical development to the Military Board.126 It proposed the establishment of a flying school in the Federal Capital Territory, capable of training eight officers at a time followed, after a year, by the formation of a 12-aeroplane squadron organised on RFC lines (19 officers and 131 other ranks).127 For the first year, the CGS estimated expenses of £5,481, rising to £13,339 following the squadron’s establishment.128 The Military Board and Pearce both indicated their approval, the defence minister apparently satisfied that it met his stipulation ‘that the commencement of the Corps should be on moderate lines’.129 Military Orders on 22 October 1912 announced ‘Approval has been granted for the formation of a Flying Corps in Australia’.130

When the CGS submitted a more detailed scheme in April 1913 however (developed through discussions with Petre and advice from the War Office), Pearce considered it ‘too costly’ and requested a ‘more moderate proposal’.131 The Minister apparently knew by this stage that the 1913-14 estimates only slightly increased aviation funding from the year before (£8,795, increased from £5,223) and only half what Gordon required to establish his 12-aeroplane squadron.132

Gordon’s Director of Military Operations, Major , modified the proposal, submitting it to the Military Board in June 1913. It represented a compromise between advice from the War Office regarding the absolute minimum basis on which an aviation establishment could function and the small vote for aviation in defence estimates.133 White took up the British recommendation that a

126 Gordon had become an enthusiastic advocate of military aviation after witnessing Joseph Hammond’s demonstration flights in 1911. See Isaacs, Military Aircraft of Australia 1909-1918, p. 10. 127 Military Board minutes, 12 July 1912, NAA A2653 1912. 128 Brigadier J. M. Gordon, Proposal for a flying school and corps, 9 August 1912, NAA A2653 1912. 129 Military Board minutes, 11 September 1912, NAA A2653 1912; Military Board minutes, 12 July 1912, NAA A2653 1912. 130 Australian Military Forces, Military Order No. 570, 22 October 1912. 131 R. H. Brade to the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, 20 November 1912, A289 1849/8/286; Minister’s decisions, No. 24/1913, NAA MP153/9 12; Military Board minutes, 4 April 1913, NAA A2653 1913. 132 Meaney, A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy Volume 1, p. 277. 133 Brade to the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, 20 November 1912, A289 1849/8/286; Legge to Trumble, 28 November 1912, NAA MP84/1 1849/8/287. The War Office had provided advice on establishing a School and Corps to the South African Government in late 1912. The Commonwealth representative on the Dominion Section of the Imperial General Staff, Lieutenant- Colonel Gordon Legge, secured a copy of this for the Defence Department. Gordon and White received 55 two-flight (8 aeroplane) squadron represented the smallest unit ‘of utility in war’ but suggested its establishment in Australia over three years. His modified scheme likewise proposed a school based on RFC lines but with significantly fewer staff. In this, he had to disregard the War Office’s warning that ‘for efficient instruction only very slight reductions in… personnel could be made’. White proposed starting the school with less than half the number of staff recommended by British authorities.134

Even this represented something too ambitious for the available funds. The establishment of personnel approved by Pearce’s successor, Edward Millen, in early 1914 turned out to be even more modest: two officers, five NCOs, two mechanics, a clerk and caretaker for the entire School (against White’s suggested three officers, four NCOs, six mechanics and a clerk).135 As Chapter 3 demonstrates, the War Office’s prediction proved accurate: such a small staff could not operate a flying school efficiently.136 Despite its interest in developing aviation, the Fisher government and the Liberal government of Joseph Cook that succeeded it in June 1913 had also committed to an expensive naval building program and a massive expansion of the citizen forces under the compulsory training scheme. Further, military estimates during the 1910-1914 period needed to compensate for insufficient estimates in previous years that had resulted in the running down of stores and obsolescence of much of the army’s equipment.137 Bolstering existing capabilities took precedence over developing experimental ones regardless of public and press opinion.

Aside from financial constraints, considerations about aviation’s future role also influenced the political and military authorities’ planning. These discussions also underline the notion that Australia made a start in military aviation to provide for local defence, not expeditionary forces. During the second half of 1912, while the

a copy of this in early 1913; both the original detailed scheme (April 1913) that Pearce rejected as being too extravagant and White’s revised scheme were closely based on this recommendation for the South African government. In the latter case, though, White was forced to modify it to fit Australia’s aviation budget. 134 Major C. B. B. White, Director of Military Operations to Gordon, 3 June 1913, NAA A289 1849/8/398. 135 Military Order No. 381 of 1914, NAA A2023 A38/6/70. 136 For evidence of the inefficiency caused by a shortage of mechanics, see Major Edgar Reynolds, Director of Military Operations to Chief of General Staff, Colonel J. G. Legge, 10 October 1914, NAA A2023 A38/7/41. 137 ‘Memorandum on Australian Military Defence and its progress since Federation’, December 1909, NAA A5954 1082/9. 56 Department and Military Board considered the most appropriate scheme for organising a school and corps, the Commonwealth’s representatives in London suggested the importance of maritime aviation for Australia. Robert Muirhead Collins, Official Secretary at the High Commission (and Australian representative on the Aerial League of the British Empire’s council), suggested that ‘hydroplanes’ () would be of more immediate service as regards Australian conditions of defence’ than land aircraft.138 Pearce sought the opinion of Legge (now Commonwealth representative on the Imperial General Staff) and found that he concurred. Legge believed the establishment of a hydroplane base in should take priority, as it could guard the north and north-eastern coast.139 Heeding this advice, when the CGS tabled his first detailed aviation proposal to the Military Board in April 1913 he predicted hydroplanes would be ‘the type of aeroplane most likely to be of service in the defence of Australia’. Although this did not define his proposal, he acknowledged ‘the probability of the ultimate conversion of the Corps to one whose duties are chiefly confined to coastal employment’ and advised his colleagues keep this in mind when considering aviation plans. The new school, he suggested, should be a joint naval and military establishment.140

The Naval Secretary had, by this stage, demonstrated interest in aeronautics by requesting a copy of the CGS’ preliminary aviation plans and, it appears, intimating to Pearce in early 1913 that the Royal Australian Navy hoped to train aviators at the Commonwealth’s school.141 The navy’s intention, as he explained to the Defence Department a few months later, was the establishment of ‘a small aviation unit, with two or three water planes, at each of three bases, all in about Lat. 10° S [i.e. the northern extremity of the continent]’.142 Among strategic proposals considered by the Naval Board in mid-1913, at least one perceived the importance of using water-borne aircraft for the early detection of a Japanese invasion fleet.143 In August, the

138 Muirhead Collins to Pearce, 20 September 1912, NAA A289 1849/8/410. 139 Legge to Pethebridge, 10 January 1913, NAA A289 1849/8/339. 140 ‘Proposals regarding the formation of a flying school and corps’, Military Board minutes, 4-5 April 1913, NAA A2653 1913. 141 Trumble, to the Secretary, Naval Board, 15 October 1912, NAA A289 1849/8/243; Department of Defence minute, 20 March 1913, NAA A705 23/3/16. 142 Naval Secretary to Pethebridge, 6 June 1913, NAA A705 23/3/16. 143 Ian Cowman, ‘‘The Vision Splendid’: Australian Maritime Strategy, 1911-1923’, David Stevens (ed), In Search of a Maritime Strategy: the Maritime Element in Australian Defence Planning Since 1901, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, 1997, pp. 50- 52. This idea was not without precedent. In 1911, Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske of the United States 57 Department accordingly wrote to the Admiralty to obtain advice on the organisation and equipment of an aviation corps, which it planned would include ‘three units, each equipped with two or three Waterplanes for service in connection with the defence of war bases’.144 Further evidence of the Department’s commitment to naval aeronautics came in October, with its inclusion of ‘waterplane sheds’ on initial plans for the flying school site.145 Just before the outbreak of war naval and military authorities would be anticipating ‘some arrangement… for the instruction of officers of the fleet in readiness for the day when hydro-aeroplanes will be carried as part of the equipment of a battle-cruiser’.146

The navy’s interest in aviation and acknowledgement by military authorities that coastal flying suited Australia’s strategic requirements influenced the selection of a site. The CGS’ plan to establish the school in the Federal Capital Territory (based on Watt’s advice) changed when Petre, arriving in Australia in January 1913, reported the area unsuitable due to its altitude and the logistical difficulties imposed by its isolation from Sydney and Melbourne.147 (Also, as he told Richard Williams, Petre may have wished to avoid being ‘isolated in the bush’).148 Following this he inspected sites close to Melbourne, at Langwarrin and Altona Bay, recommending one at the latter on 20 March 1913. The navy objected, however, owing to this site’s marshy coast, which precluded the operation of seaplanes.149 With naval input Petre selected an alternate site at Altona in June but it proved too expensive, lying across private property.150 The Department finally settled on a section of Crown Land with a sea frontage at Point Cook in July, although transfer of it from state to federal

Navy had proposed defending the Philippines from a Japanese invasion with four aerodromes on Luzon, each equipped with ‘one hundred or more aircraft and associated personnel’. Though it had some support on the General Board, the opposition of Rear Admiral Richard Wainwright (who described it as a ‘wild cat scheme’), compelled Fiske not to pursue the idea further. Paolo Enrico Coletta, Admiral Bradley A. Fiske and the American Navy, Regents Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 1979, p. 94. 144 High Commissioner's Office to Admiralty, 26 August 1913, NAUK AIR1/654/17/122/501. 145 Chief of Operations to Gordon, 16 October 1913, NAA NAA A705 23/3/16. 146 ‘Aviation’, The Advertiser (Adelaide), 7 , p. 15. 147 Oswald Watt to Wilson, 9 March 1912, NAA A289 1849/8/409; Petre to Gordon, 5 February 1913, NAA A289 1849/8/409. 148 Williams, These are Facts, p. 21 149 Naval Secretary to Pethebridge, 6 June 1913, NAA NAA A705 23/3/16. 150 Department of Defence minute, 12 June 1913, NAA NAA A705 23/3/16; Telephonic message from Home Affairs Department, nd, NAA A705 23/3/16. 58 governments was delayed until November 1914 by bickering over responsibility for the maintenance of its roads.151

In September 1913, facing criticism from the press over delays establishing the school, Millen announced negotiations over land acquisition were ‘practically complete’, that construction would begin within six weeks and that buildings would be ready by February 1914.152 A vote of £10,000 in the additions and new works estimates covered the site’s purchase but did not provide for buildings and infrastructure. These needed to come out of the small vote for aviation in the 1913-14 defence estimate, forcing the CGS to stipulate that ‘no further expenditure than is absolutely necessary may be made on the construction of Flying School buildings etc’.153 As a result the site was not ready by February 1914, nor would it be by the outbreak of war. The first students started training in August 1914 living under canvas and lacking adequate equipment and personnel. As Petre had predicted of the 1913-14 aviation vote, it ‘would not be sufficient to allow any serious military work being undertaken during the present financial year’.154

As Chapter 2 will demonstrate, the war considerably accelerated the development of Australian military aviation and took it in a direction that its architects had not conceived. As well as being significantly larger than the proposed 8-aeroplane squadron and established more rapidly than the CGS’ projected three- year schedule, the AFC would serve not in the direct defence of Australia’s shores, but in support of expeditionary forces overseas. Despite its keen interest in aviation before the war and ongoing discussion regarding the establishment of a ‘Royal Australian Naval Air Service’ between 1914-1918, the Royal Australian Navy would neither train naval aviators during the war nor build the north-eastern aerodromes.155 (The battle cruiser HMAS Australia and light cruisers HMAS Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne did however use RNAS aircraft on operations overseas in 1917 and

151 Minister for Home Affairs, to Edward Millen, Minister for Defence, 31 July 1913, NAA A705 23/3/16; Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, number 95, 21 November 1914. 152 Department of Defence file of aviation commentary in the press, NAA A2023 A38/3/16; ‘Australia’s Air Fleet. Establishing an Aviation School’, The Brisbane Courier, 24 September 1913, p. 4. 153 Major Edgar Reynolds, Director of Military Operations to Chief of Ordnance, 16 April 1914, NAA A705 23/3/16. 154 Henry Petre, ‘Aviation progress and present position in Commonwealth Forces’, NAA A2023 A38/3/221. 155 For correspondence discussing the establishment of an Australian Naval Service see NAA A11803 1917/89/1061 and 1918/89/155. 59 1918).156 The closest the AFC would come to realising the government’s original vision for it would be in April 1918 when the Department dispatched two aviation detachments from the Central Flying School – one to Yarram, south-east of Melbourne, and another to Bega on New South Wales’ south coast – to search for a German raider believed to be operating off south-eastern Australia. Flown by Point Cook instructors, the armed reconnaissance sorties found nothing of consequence.157

The period between 1909 and 1914 had thus seen a nascent air-mindedness develop in Australia, inspired by fictitious and predictive literature and press reports relating to the development of aviation in Europe. As it did overseas, this found expression in an aviation lobby led by the Aerial League of Australia. Evaluating the influence of such groups on public attitudes and government policy is difficult, not least because they are yet to be subject to a detailed study. Considering the British lobby, Paris concluded that it may have ‘galvanised’ and ‘hastened’ a course of action that the British government had already resolved to take. The critical impetus actually came from the interest that Britain’s potential enemies on the continent invested in aviation.158 This argument is also generally upheld in Alfred Gollin’s and Lee Kennett’s work, and as a point of comparison, in Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham’s examination of British Army reforms in the early 20th Century.159 The latter acknowledge the influence of civilian lobbies but, like Paris, point to the

156 Isaacs, Military aircraft of Australia, pp. 133-140; Arthur W. Jose, The official history of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, volume IX, ‘The Royal Australian Navy 1914-1918’, Angus and Robertson Ltd, Sydney, 1938 (first published 1928), pp. 304-306 HMAS Brisbane was the first Australian vessel to use an aeroplane. While searching the for the German raider Wolf in April-May 1917 it employed an RNAS Sopwith Baby . In Britain in December 1917 HMAS Sydney and HMAS Australia participated in successful experiments with deck launching aircraft in December 1917. From about Sydney operated a while Australia had a Camel and a Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter. HMAS Melbourne was fitted with a launching platform in and from May operated an RAF Sopwith Camel on operations in the North Sea. 157 Captain F. H. McNamara, ‘Report of OC, Air Reconnaissance, South Gippsland’, 7 June 1918, NAA B197 2021/1/168; Lieutenant R. F. Galloway, ‘Report on Expedition to South Coast of NSW’, 29 May 1918, NAA B197 2021/1/168. Reconnaissance reports from this expedition are filed with the CFS’ records at the RAAF Museum. 158 Paris, Winged warfare, p. 134. For evidence that the development of military aviation overseas influenced the British government’s interest in aerial defence see, for example: Report of the Home Ports Defence Committee, 19 May 1910, reproduced in CID Secret Paper 117-B, 6 July 1910, NAUK CAB4/3; ‘Aerial Navigation Conference Memorandum by the General Staff’, 11 July 1911, NAUK CAB4/3; Committee of Imperial Defence, meeting minutes, 14 July 1910, NAUK CAB/2/2; Note by Lord Escher on ‘Aerial Navigation’- CID Secret Paper 119-B, 6 October 1910, NAUK CAB4/3; ‘The Royal Flying Corps’, Flight, 20 April 1912, pp. 346-357. 159Gollin, The Impact of Air Power, passim; Lee Kennett, The First Air War, 1914-1918, The Free Press, New York, 1991, pp. 8-9. 60 activities of rival powers’ armies as key in shaping British defence policy.160 Unlike its British counterpart, the Australian air lobby can be credited with initially establishing aviation on the political agenda. The invention competition resulted directly from Aerial League petitioning and pro-aviation literature more generally appears to have inspired references to aerial defence during parliamentary debate on the Naval Loan Bill. Beyond that however, the Aerial League played little role in the establishment of military aviation in Australia: it brought aerial defence to the government’s attention but made no discernable contribution to subsequent planning.

The burgeoning air awareness in Australia coincided with a vast defence building program pressed by governments of both political persuasions during the 1909-1914 period. This resulted from increasingly dire assessments of Australia’s security given the emergence of Japan as a Pacific power and the re-orientation of British naval strength into European waters. The notion that Australia needed to develop a regional military force independently of Britain proved crucial to the establishment of a flying school. Canada and New Zealand on the other hand, though also possessing local aviation lobbies, inventors and air-minded military officers and politicians, decided against establishing flying schools. Their distinct strategic circumstances made having a military aviation capability appear less necessary than it did to their Australian counterparts.

The influence of individuals also played a role, especially federal ministers who micro-managed policy formulation within their departments. George Pearce’s interest in aviation and military technology is evident from his first tenure as Defence Minister in 1908. His influence is clearly evident in the planning of a school and corps, though funding curtailed his aspirations for the Commonwealth’s air capability.

Similarly, the Australian general staff supported the development of military aviation locally, though most professional officers had only a vague interest in, or even awareness of the new arm before the Great War. As far as the aviation budget would allow, the staff modelled the school and corps on advice from the War Office while considering the coastal defence role an Australian air arm might play in the future. Although subject to a considerable boost during the 1911-14 period, defence spending focused on financing the fleet and the compulsory service scheme. Despite the often-

160 Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham, Firepower: The British Army Weapons and Theories of War 1904-1945, Pen & Sword, Barnesly, 2004, pp. 53-55. 61 alarmist forecasts by the air-lobby and press, the government invested most heavily in the tried and established arms: by the start of the Great War the Commonwealth had invested £18,018 in aviation (not including estimates under works and appropriations for land): that is 0.14 per cent of the total spent on defence between 1911 and 1914.161 The Australian government’s support of aviation in the pre-war era was more prudent than it was prescient. Acknowledgement by both naval and military authorities that seaplanes represented the most appropriate type for Australia underlines the notion that the AFC was conceived for local defence. The war would alter these plans significantly and provide for the development of a larger air force, more rapidly, than the Defence Department initially planned. Some, such as John Steel of the Young Australian National Party despaired at this, imploring Pearce in August 1915 to train 200 airmen to retain in Australia, ‘for we may need to have experts to defend Australia before 1920, not necessarily against the Germans either’.162 As the next chapter will demonstrate, however, the dispatch of squadrons overseas was not necessarily at odds with the development of Australia’s air defences. Pearce and the Australian staff would perceive in the AFC’s overseas deployment an opportunity to cultivate experience and obtain equipment for the future development of a national air force.

161 Meaney, A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy Volume I, p. 277. 162 John B. Steel to Pearce, 26 August 1915, NAA A2023 A37/8/150. 62 2. ORGANISATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF AUSTRALIA’S WAR IN THE AIR As the first Australian airmen arrived home from active service in 1919 Sea, Land and Air, ‘a monthly magazine of general interest’, published an anonymous AFC pilot’s account of wartime flying. The magazine’s editor prefaced the story with the AFC’s history, noting that ‘comparatively little has been heard in Australia’ of its work and that its role as ‘separate and distinct from the Royal Air Force is not generally understood’. He went on to point out that in addition to supplying men to serve in the British flying services, Australia had been the only dominion to raise ‘its own flying corps’ and that it had been a ‘logical sequence of the decision to make our army a complete one, capable of absolutely independent action…’.1 These notions of distinctiveness, autonomy and uniqueness have since characterised the story of Australia’s part in the air war – just as they have featured in Australian military history generally.

This chapter outlines the evolution of Australia’s contribution to the air war with a focus on its organisation and administration: factors that defined it and pervaded every aspect of Australian airmens’ participation in combat. Australia became the sole British dominion to field a multi-squadron flying corps, the result of a burgeoning sense of national identity and pragmatic considerations regarding the nation’s future aerial defences. Nevertheless, Australia’s contribution to the air war occurred on British terms: imperial relations, Australian military capability and the organisation and administration of Britain’s flying establishment comprehensively shaped – and ultimately limited – the extent of Australia’s contribution in the air. Compared with other dominions Australia played a highly visible though minor part in the air war. Overall it was less distinctive, autonomous and unique than Sea, Land and Air led its readers to believe.

On 30 July 1914 a cable from the British government warning of war’s imminence arrived in Sydney. The Australian response, determined at a Cabinet meeting on 3 August and communicated to the Secretary of State for the Colonies the same day, placed the RAN under Admiralty control and offered an expeditionary force of ‘20,000 men of any suggested composition to any destination desired by

1 ‘With the Australian Flying Corps: some reminiscences of training days and of work over the line’, Sea Land and Air, volume II, number 13, April 1919, 26-29, p. 26. 63 Home Government’.2 The British Army Council initially requested two brigades, apparently to enable their attachment to British formations as had occurred during the Boer War, but the Australian government preferred to send a complete division. The Commonwealth relinquished responsibility for its operational command, reserving only to administer, pay and equip it.3 Eric Andrews describes this as ‘an important and far reaching decision’: it established the AIF’s ambivalent status, under the administration of its own government but subject to British operational command.4

Although the Central Flying School’s (CFS) first course commenced within a fortnight of the declaration of war, the CGS, Colonel Gordon Legge, circulated a minute before the end of August observing that as aircraft had ‘little scope’ for contributing to Australian defence, investment in flying should be maintained, but not increased: ‘Money is more needed for other branches’.5 Underlining this position, during 1914 the Defence Department declined offers from several visiting aviators who offered their services and machines: the outbreak of war did not alter its plans for gradually establishing a flying corps for local defence over three years and, hence, it did not require additional instructors or aeroplanes.6

Within three months the official attitude regarding aviation changed, influenced by reports on the useful contribution of aircraft in campaigns overseas and the re-appointment of George Pearce as the new Labor government’s Defence Minister.7 In November, he committed an unprecedented £14,430 to the CFS, claiming that aviation’s value ‘from a military point of view’ had been ‘fully demonstrated in the present war’ (the previous government had allocated £3,071 in 1913-14).8 The Defence Department allocated these funds to additional facilities,

2 Sir Ronald Monro Ferguson, Governor General of Australia to Lewis Vernon Harcourt, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 3 August 1914, AWM48 2041/14. 3 Harcourt to Ferguson, 7 August 1914 and reply of 8 August 1914, AWM48 2041/14. 4 Eric Andrews, The Anzac Illusion, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, p. 41. 5 Major-General Gordon Legge, Chief of the General Staff, minute, 24 August 1914, NAA A2023 A38/3/99. 6 See Department of Defence correspondence, August-September 1914, relating to the offer of Lieutenant R. E. B. Hunt, NAA A2023 A38/3/101. For other examples see Keith Isaacs, Military Aircraft of Australia, 1909-1918, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1979, p. 24. 7 See, for example, ‘The Great War in Europe’, Kalgoorlie Western Argus, 15 September 1914, p. 33; ‘Uhlans Trapped’ and ‘Air Raid on England’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 October 1914, p. 7. 8 Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Debates [hereafter CPD], volume LXXV, p. 1295. 64 equipment and staff at Point Cook and planned the establishment of a training flight in each state.9

At this stage the AFC existed only on paper. Earlier in 1914, the Department had decided to establish a flying squadron gradually (‘in progressive stages’) using mainly militia officers and men trained at the CFS to form ‘an aeroplane squadron of two flights’, each consisting of four officers and 39 other ranks. Apart from a permanent staff of one sergeant and eight mechanics, the flights would comprise part- time soldiers seconded from their Citizen Military Forces units. For 1914-15 the Department planned a modest start, training four officers and eight mechanics from the militia and four permanent forces mechanics.10 Completing the CFS’ first course in November the Dux, Lieutenant George Merz, became the AFC’s first pilot while his three colleagues joined ‘Flying Corps Reserve Class A’.11 Merz returned to Point Cook but the others went back to their regiments perceiving ‘little chance of… seeing active-service flying’.12 The AIF, preparing to embark for Egypt, and the Australian Naval & Military Expeditionary Force (AN&MEF), operating in the Pacific, encompassed the foreseeable extent of the Commonwealth’s military commitment and neither contained aviation units.

A month before the first class graduated at the CFS, however, the government had decided to raise a 3rd Battalion of the AN&MEF to relieve the contingent garrisoning captured German outposts in New Guinea. In the week before the battalion (known as ‘Tropical Force’) embarked the government learned of an allegedly large German garrison and two armed vessels, 60 kilometres inland on the Sepik River. The Department changed Tropical Force’s objective, ordering it to capture the enemy outpost, and attached a hastily established aviation unit to assist

9 ‘Aviation in Australia. “Flights” to be Established’, The Advertiser (Adelaide), 7 , p. 9. 10 Military Order No. 382 of 1914, 14 July 1914, NAA A2023 A38/6/70. 11 Draft Military Order 381 of 1914, 14 July 1914, NAA A2023 A38/6/82. According to Military Order 381 of 1914, Citizen Military Force officers could be either attached to the AFC or the ‘Flying Corps Reserve Class A’ on completion of the CFS course. Officers appointed to the AFC were seconded to the corps from their regular regiments for four years and then placed on Flying Corps Reserve Class A. Officers put on the reserve returned to their regiments but were obliged to undertake 25 consecutive days aviation training each year, for a period of four years, after which they were assigned to Flying Corps Reserve Class B. 12 Australian Military Forces, Military Order 290, 18 ; T. W. White, Guests of the Unspeakable, Angus & Robertson, Sydney 1932, p. 14. 65 with reconnaissance up-river.13 On 27 November, the Department put CFS instructor Lieutenant Eric Harrison in charge of Merz and four mechanics and attested them in the AN&MEF. The following morning CFS staff sent two aircraft – a government BE2a and a Maurice Farman Hydroplane donated by the entrepreneur Lebbeus Hordern – along with spare parts via rail to Sydney to board HMAS Una.14 Anticipating a ‘decent scrap’ and considering the terrain, Legge ordered the mechanics to fit floats to the BE2 machine during the voyage.15 Harrison and the mechanics also modified 36 lb lyddite shells to use as aerial bombs.16

Arriving at Madang on 7 December, Tropical Force’s CO, Colonel Samuel Pethebridge learned from a pair of German missionaries that there was no German station on the Sepik. Without waiting for the arrival of the Una he reconnoitred up river to Angorum, confirming the government’s intelligence as incorrect. The Defence Department subsequently prepared to scale-down operations in the Pacific and reduce the AN&MEF to a garrison force. On 20 December Pethebridge cabled Defence that he did not need the flying machines.17 They arrived back in Australia unused, with their crews, in mid-.

A fortnight after Harrison and Merz’s return, the governor-general received a cable from the Viceroy of India requesting ‘trained aviators for service in [the] Valley’.18 The Indian Army had established a flying arm before the war but in August 1914 its airmen were training in Britain and had been absorbed into the RFC when it mobilised.19 The second CFS course had yet to commence so the Australian government only had seven pilots available. It agreed to send four, along with

13 ‘Report on embarkation of detachment from the Aviation Instructional Staff for active service in New Guinea’, NAA A2023 A38/3/130. The author of this report states the decision to attach the aviation units was ‘from information received’. It doesn’t specify the nature of this information, but the official history notes that it was in the week prior to Tropical Force’s embarkation (i.e. 23-30 November) that the Australian government learned of the German garrison. S. S. Mackenzie, The Official History of Australia in the War, 1914-1918: Volume X: The Australians at Rabaul, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1938 (1927), p. 161. 14 ‘Report on embarkation of detachment from the aviation instructional staff for active service in New Guinea’, NAA A2023 A38/3/130. 15 Mackenzie, The Official History Volume X, p. 161. 16 ‘Airmen at Rabaul’, The Argus (Melbourne), 22 January 1915, p. 7. 17 Colonel Sir Samuel Pethebridge, CO 3rd Battalion AN&MEF to the Department of Defence, 20 December 1914, NAA A2023 A38/3/130. 18 Viceroy of India to Ferguson, 8 February 1915, NAA A11803 1914/89/54. 19 Walter Raleigh, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force: Volume I, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1922, p. 410. 66 mechanics, drivers and motorised transport: a ‘half flight complete’.20 The Indian government agreed to supply aircraft, spare parts and ammunition, and pay the unit’s personnel at AIF rates.21

The Defence Department selected Captain Henry Petre to lead the half flight, promoting Harrison to replace him as commandant of the CFS. Merz and Captain Thomas White of the first course and William Treloar, an Australian civilian who had ‘a fair amount’ of flying experience in Britain, completed the unit’s flying roster.22 All enlisted in the AIF. Tradesmen in the AIF camps provided the various technical specialists the unit needed. The four officers embarked with 41 other ranks in . Though often described as ‘the Half Flight’, these personnel constituted no discrete unit once on active service. During initial operations on the lower Tigris and Euphrates they, along with British and Indian personnel, formed a composite flight of the Indian Expeditionary Force ‘D’, administered by the Indian general staff. From August, when the War Office assumed responsibility for aviation in Mesopotamia, the flight was absorbed into No. 30 Squadron RFC. Australian personnel kept their uniforms and pay rates but the officers received British commissions. The limited nature of Australian aspirations for the AFC in mid-1915 is indicated by plans, in July, to establish another ‘half flight’ to reinforce this British unit in the field.23

Initiative for greater empire involvement in the air war came from British authorities. In mid-1915 the Military Aeronautics Directorate at the War Office began considering how the dominions might help the RFC meet the unexpectedly heavy demands the war had placed on it. A proposal circulated at the beginning of August considering that ‘as none of the Dominion forces have their own aviation units, there seems to be an opportunity of making use in the RFC of aviators and mechanics from the different Dominions, and at the same time of fostering a spirit of Imperial Cooperation’.24 It suggested approaching dominion governments with a scheme to

20 Prime Minister’s Secretary to Ferguson, 26 February 1915, NAA A11803 1914/89/54. 21 Finance Member to DGMS, 25 , NAA A2023 A38/8/188; Secretary to the Prime Minister to Ferguson, 14 , NAA A11803 1914/89/54. It appears that when it came time to settle the half flight’s expenses, the Australian government offered to cover costs. See Prime Minister’s Secretary to Governor General’s Secretary, 14 October 1915, NAA A11803 1914/89/54. 22 ‘Proposals for a Half ‘Flight’ to be placed at the disposal of the government of India’, nd, NAA A2023 A38/8/188. 23 Viceroy to Ferguson, 9 , NAA A11803 1914/89/54; Department of Defence minute, 22 July 1915, NAA A2023 A38/8/188. 24 ‘Dominion Squadrons, 1915-1918’, research notes by F. H. Hitchins, DHH 75/514 file D1. 67 raise four ‘Imperial Colonial’ squadrons; they would be part of the RFC but with a ‘distinguishing designation’, would train in Britain and be completely financed by the British government.25 The Directorate’s proposal met with practically unanimous approval from the War Office’s other branches, conforming as it did to the general staff’s preference for an imperial army as opposed to an army of dominion allies.26 Providing further justification, within three weeks of circulating this proposal the War Office coincidentally received cables from the governments of New Zealand and Queensland inquiring how their citizens could join the RFC.27

The War Office outlined to dominion governments the conditions under which colonial men could serve in the RFC. It would fund the passage of individuals to Britain, train and then commission them in the RFC. It would also ‘gladly accept’ complete flying units raised by the dominions. Although these would have a ‘distinguishing designation’ in their title they would, in all other respects, be squadrons of the RFC. Operating under British command in the ‘general organization’ of the RFC their personnel would be inter-changeable with British officers. The Army Council also reserved the right to employ dominion officers in British squadrons as necessary.28

By the time the proposal reached Melbourne in early the CFS had finished three courses, producing 19 pilots altogether. Considering the ‘inestimable’ benefit ‘for the future training of the Australian forces’, the CGS, Colonel Godfrey Irving, recommended offering two flights comprising 12 officers and 68 other ranks that the School had ‘trained to nearly the standard of the Royal Flying Corps’. He deemed a larger commitment possible given the pool of trained personnel at the School, but ‘impractical’ owing to the shortage of senior officers. Irving also considered the War Office’s suggestion that the dominions might

25 ‘Dominion Squadrons, 1915-1918’, DHH 75/514 file D1. 26 Andrews, The Anzac Illusion, p. 115. The War Office’s support for the scheme didn’t extend to the finance branch, which was unwilling to finance the dominion squadrons because rates of pay for dominion personnel were higher. They suggested the British government pay for technical equipment but leave the payment of personnel to the dominions. 27 Bertram Cubitt, Assistant Under-Secretary of State for War to Arthur Steel Maitland, the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, 10 , AWM27 303/17 PART 1. In August 1915, Queensland’s agent-general asked the War Office to consider under which conditions Australians could enlist in the RFC. This was almost certainly in connection with the establishment of the ‘Queensland Volunteer Flying Civilians’ by a group of Queensland citizens using funds from a public subscription (see Chapter 3). 28 Cubitt to Maitland, 10 September 1915, AWM27 303/17 PART 1. 68 collaborate to form composite colonial units (such as an Anzac squadron) unfeasible for reasons he did not articulate.29 Pearce agreed, and the governor-general cabled the War Office with a formal offer of two flights on 26 November 1915.30

Assuming that Australia found raising an entire squadron (three flights) ‘impractical’ because of a lack of trained personnel, the Army Council suggested that soldiers serving abroad with the AIF, ‘many of whom have asked for employment in Flying Corps’, could make up the shortfall, along with the remnants of the half flight serving with the RFC in Mesopotamia. As an incentive, the British relaxed their condition on dominion personnel being inter-changeable with British ones. A three- flight squadron, it offered, would match RFC organisation and be ‘probably kept wholly Australian’.31

Andrews demonstrates that the campaign, fought in the background of these negotiations, cultivated a sense, both at home and in the AIF, of a distinctive Australian identity.32 It is impossible to tell if this phenomenon influenced Irving as he reconsidered the War Office’s proposal, but the concession regarding the inter- changeability of personnel and the realisation that sufficient personnel were available changed his mind. Again citing the ‘value of such a unit for the future training in Australia’, in he recommended the establishment of a full Australian squadron.33 Working from documents outlining the RFC’s 12-aeroplane squadron organisation, the Department raised pilots from Point Cook graduates and a few civilian pilot volunteers; officers from the permanent forces’ artillery and intelligence branches provided the unit’s observers and air mechanics came from tradesmen in AIF camps.34 Pearce approved the scheme and the governor-general informed London that a squadron (later 1st Squadron of the AFC) of 28 officers and 181 ranks would embark in .35 The War Office requested it go to Egypt where it could

29 Colonel G. G. H. Irving, Chief of the General Staff to the Secretary for Defence, 18 November 1915, NAA A2023 A38/8/542. 30 Ferguson to Andrew Bonar Law, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 26 November 1915, AWM27 303/17 PART 1. 31 Bonar Law to Ferguson, 14 December 1915, AWM27 303/17 PART 1. 32 Andrews, The Anzac Illusion, pp. 51-56. 33 Irving to the Secretary for Defence, 20 December 1915, NAA A2023 A38/8/542. 34 Documents outlining the establishment of a 1915-era 12-aeroplane squadron of the RFC, as supplied to the Department of Defence are in AWM27 303/17 PART1. 35 Thomas Trumble, Acting Secretary for Defence to Secretary to the Prime Minister, 27 December 1915, NAA A2023 A/38/8/542 69 do advanced training more quickly than in Britain’s overcrowded schools and where it might co-operate with AIF units, ‘though it is impossible to guarantee’.36

The appointment of commanding officers for 1st Squadron over the following two years provides one indicator of how the AFC evolved during that time, albeit within the framework of the RFC/RAF. At the time of 1st Squadron’s formation, the CGS considered Lieutenant-Colonel Edgar Reynolds, the Director of Military Operations (DMO), the only suitable candidate to command the unit.37 A permanent forces artillery officer, Reynolds had keenly advocated aviation since attending the British staff college in 1911 and, as DMO, had overseen the CFS since its establishment. Reynolds also managed 1st Squadron’s formation during January and February 1916, ‘practically command[ing]’ it in addition to his regular duties as DMO, claimed the CGS. He assumed command officially on 10 February 1916; despite having no formal flying instruction he appears to have graded himself an observer.38 The Military Aeronautics Directorate objected however, reasoning that as a lieutenant-colonel, Reynolds was too senior to command a squadron ( commanded RFC squadrons) but too inexperienced to command a wing. It suggested Reynolds go to London as ‘officer in charge of aviation at the High Commissioner’s office’ while an RFC officer with ‘war experience’ replace him.39 The Department ‘acquiesced’, cabling Reynolds, by then en-route to Egypt with the squadron.40

Justifying the general staff’s original misgivings that Australia lacked senior officers to field entire squadrons, Major Henry Macartney temporarily replaced Reynolds in Egypt. An artillery instructor at Duntroon, Macartney had volunteered for the unit to make up a shortfall in officers but had yet to learn to fly. The War Office offered Captain Thomas Forster Rutledge, an Australian-born and educated stock

36 Bonar Law to the Department of Defence, 12 , NAA A2023 A38/8/542. 37 Department of Defence minutes, 20 December 1915 (by Irving), 29 December 1915 (Dodds) and 5 January 1916 (Foster), NAA A2023 A38/8/542. 38 Colonel H. J. Foster, Chief of the General Staff to the Adjutant General, 9 February 1916 and 17 February 1916, NAA A2023 A38/8/481; Mark Lax, ‘A Hint of Things to Come: Leadership in the Australian Flying Corps’, Barry Sutherland (ed.), Command and Leadership in War and Peace: the Proceedings of the 1999 RAAF History Conference, Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 1999, p. 28. 39 Cubitt to Andrew Fisher, Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, 21 , NAA A2023 A38/8/696. 40 Memorandum for the Secretary, Department of External Affairs, 26 March 1916, NAA A2023 A38/8/696. 70 broker who had served in the RFC since August 1914, as a permanent replacement.41 Rutledge was, explained British authorities, ‘very anxious’ to serve in the Australian squadron and ‘a most excellent pilot and a first-class Officer in every way’.42 The Department accepted Rutledge but objected to the Army Council’s offer to transfer him to the AIF, citing the War Office’s previous ‘suggestion irrespective of how or where an officer was employed each country will pay for its own officers’.43 Reynolds (by this time in London) reminded his colleagues in Melbourne that the Commonwealth had offered to pay for the squadron and that whereas the War Office ‘can appoint any RFC officers to the [1st] squadron’; it had demonstrated goodwill by suggesting an Australian. In any case, reasoned Reynolds, as the AIF had no appropriately experienced officers ‘an RFC officer must be appointed’.44 Reynolds’ logic failed to change the Department’s position: it responded by pointing to the large proportion of British officers on AIF divisional and brigade staffs and reiterating the established principle ‘of all governments paying for their own officers however employed’.45

Remaining an RFC officer then, Rutledge commanded 1st Squadron for its first year of active service (mid-1916 to mid-1917). His replacement with an officer of the AFC occurred not because a more qualified replacement presented himself but because of a growing sense of nationalism in Australia. In February 1917 Pearce wrote to the AIF’s GOC, Lieutenant-General Birdwood, describing ‘a largely growing feeling within the Commonwealth that officers and men of the Australian Imperial Force’ should have priority for command appointments. It had become the government’s ‘policy’, explained Pearce, that AIF officers command Australian units wherever possible.46 Two months later 1st Squadron, which besides Rutledge had several officers seconded from British regiments to compensate for a shortage of trained AFC airmen, received orders to replace all British officers with appointments

41 Rutledge was born in Warnambool, Victoria in 1887 and attended . The RFC Special Reserve commissioned him on 12 August 1914. Before taking command of 1st Squadron he flew with Nos. 11 and 21 Squadrons on the Western Front during the second half of 1915, being appointed a flight commander in September [Biographical notes on T. F. Rutledge, AWM43 A758]. 42 W. W. Warner to Colonel P. N. Buckley, Staff Officer for Administration, 2 March 1916, AWM27 303/17 PART 2. 43 Department of Defence to High Commissioner’s office, 14 , AWM27 303/17 PART 2. 44 Reynolds to Foster, 20 May 1916, NAA A2023 A38/8/779. 45 Dodds to Foster, 20 May 1916, NAA A2023 A38/8/779. 46 George Pearce, Minister for Defence to Lieutenant-General , GOC AIF, 2 February 1917 and 3 February 1917, AWM 3DRL/3376 2/13. 71 from the AIF.47 The AIF’s Administrative Headquarters proposed replacing Rutledge with Major Henry Petre who, following the half flight’s disbandment in 1916, had gone to Britain to command a home defence squadron.48 Agreeing initially, Birdwood changed his mind when the Military Aeronautics Directorate again intervened, pointing out Petre’s poor performance as a unit commander.49 Command of 1st Squadron went to the unit’s senior flight commander, Richard Williams, a permanent forces officer who had graduated on the first CFS course. Williams’ leadership of the squadron through difficult operations in 1917 would prove outstanding, earning him command of the RAF’s 40th (Army) Wing in 1918. Succeeding him, the unit’s senior flight commander, Major Sydney Addison, led 1st Squadron during the final few months of the war. Like Williams, Addision, a Tasmanian journalist, had graduated at Point Cook and progressed from 2nd lieutenant to squadron commander, indicating that by the war’s final year the AFC had developed the capacity to produce its own unit . After the Armistice Williams temporarily commanded Palestine Brigade RAF – the only AFC officer to command at that level. To do so, however, he needed a temporary RAF commission so that he, a colonial officer, could discipline British subordinates.50

Despite the establishment of an AFC squadron in early 1916, for the first half of the war the British flying services offered better prospects to aspiring Australian aviators. Illustrating this, in April 1916 Private Ivan Richardson, a new AIF recruit at Claremont Camp, wrote to the Department asking about joining the AFC. There were ‘very few, if any, vacancies’ replied the Acting Secretary, as 1st Squadron had a complete establishment: ‘further appointments will only be necessary to supply reinforcements’.51 In any case, Private Richardson’s chances of getting into a cockpit were slim given that, until , the CFS only accepted officers for flying instruction.52

47 Major T. F. Rutledge to Commandant, AIF HQ (Egypt), 14 , AWM22 31/4/2000. 48 Colonel Thomas Griffiths, Commandant, Administrative Headquarters AIF to Lieutenant-Colonel John Whitham, Assistant Adjutant General, AIF, 9 May 1917, NAA B2455 PETRE HENRY ALLOYSIUS. 49 Colonel Thomas Higgins, report on Major Henry Petre regarding his poor command of a squadron, 28 , NAA B2455 PETRE HENRY ALLOYSIUS. 50 Richard Williams interviewed by Mel Pratt, 1973-74, NLA TRC 121/50. 51 Trumble to Private Ivan Richardson, 26 April 1917, NAA A2023 A38/8/695. 52 Foster, minute, 29 , NAA A2023 A38/7/434. 72 The beginning of the war found a handful of Australian expatriates already serving with the RFC and RNAS. Career officers in the British regular army and navy, this small cohort comprised men such as George Raleigh, born in Melbourne and educated at Geelong Grammar and Melbourne University. Raleigh served in the Essex Regiment for 11 years before learning to fly privately in early 1912 and joining the Air Battalion. He commanded No. 4 Squadron in France during the war’s opening campaigns but died in a flying accident early the following year.53 Serving in the same unit, William Mitchell from Sydney had learned to fly in Britain in 1913 while on leave from a regimental posting in India; he would finish the war commanding a training group in Britain.54 The British flying services also attracted Australian civilians living and working overseas at the beginning of the war. Like many born in Australia to middle class families around the turn of the century, Charles Booker’s childhood was divided between Britain and Australia. Boarding at school in Bedfordshire when the war started, in 1915 he joined the RNAS. Others like Roderic Dallas, a gold assayer from rural Queensland, were still in Australia in August 1914; after failing to get into the AFC Dallas paid his own passage to Britain and topped the RNAS entrance examination.55 Likewise, future civil aviation pioneers Norman Brearley and Patrick Gordon Taylor both travelled to Britain independently and joined the RFC in 1915 when it became clear that the AFC had so few positions.56 Some went in groups, such as the self-styled ‘Queensland Volunteer Flying Civilians’, nine flying enthusiasts who the Defence Department declined for the AFC in mid-1915; and a dozen Geelong Grammar boys and their science master who sailed to Britain in early 1916 to, as their headmaster put it, ‘best serve the Empire in her time of need’.57 All joined British regiments, with two, George Kay and , going to the RFC.

As these examples suggest, empire nationalism, interest in aviation, ambition and pragmatism all figured in an Australian man’s decision to trade service in his native force for a British commission. An ambition to fly that could not be

53 Biogrpahical notes on Major George Hebden Raleigh, AWM43 A714. 54 William Gore Sutherland Mitchell, service file, NAUK WO339/7288. 55 Adrian Hellwig, Australian Hawk Over the Western Front: a Biography of Major R. S. Dallas DSO, DSC, C de G avec Palme, Grub Street, London, 2006, pp. 14-22. 56 Norman Brearley and Ted Mayman, Australian Aviator, Rigby, Adelaide, 1971, p. 4; Patrick Gordon Taylor, The Sky Beyond, Cassell Australia, Melbourne, 1963, p. 1. 57 George Pollard Kay, Letters from Bob: Flight Commander, 46th Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, Melville & Mullens, Melbourne, 1917, p. viii. 73 accommodated in Australia during the early part of the war undoubtedly motivated some, but for others securing an imperial commission took precedence over flying. The influence of growing up in a society that venerated the British Army and its celebrated, empire-winning deeds – what Craig Wilcox describes as ‘red coat dreaming’ – pervaded pre-war Australia; indeed, before Gallipoli, Australians looked wholly and enthusiastically to Britain for martial inspiration.58 Peter Drummond, a West Australian who commanded an RAF squadron in 1918 apparently felt this way, initially applying for a commission in a British artillery regiment. Likewise, Scotch College graduate Rupert Hoddinott, who ‘wish[ed] above all to have a commission in the British Army’ failed to secure appointment in a British regiment, joined the AIF in 1914 and transferred to the Royal Field Artillery shortly after arriving overseas. From there he went into the RFC in 1917.59

Alongside abstract notions of imperial nationalism more pragmatic considerations compelled men to choose service in the British over the Australian flying service. In John Wischer, a 19-year-old militia subaltern from Melbourne, was at No. 2 Officer Training School at Broadmeadows when the Defence Department restricted commissions in the AIF to candidates of at least 23- years of age. Deciding ‘to proceed to England to offer his services’ his first preference, the , commissioned him in June 1915 and a year later he transferred to the RFC and trained as a pilot.60 Another Australian who joined the RFC, Bob Kay, considered transferring to the AFC when he became lonely for Australian company but decided to remain with the British service where he perceived better prospects of ‘get[ting] into a fine squadron, [and] flying the very latest and best thing in scouts…’.61 Most pragmatic are the attitudes of those, like Edgar Johnston of the 110th Howitzer Brigade, who joined the RFC to avoid winter in the field.62 Thinking similarly, Geoffrey Sulman, a 22-year-old engineering student from Sydney, secured his parents’ consent to join the RFC by arguing that it was

58 Craig Wilcox, Red Coat Dreaming: How Colonial Australia Embraced the British Army, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2009. Especially relevant to this point is Chapter 9, ‘England’s Bugler’ [pp. 108-122] in which Wilcox demonstrates the influence on Australians of W. H. Fitchett’s Deeds That Won the Empire, first published in 1897. 59 Rupert Uriah Hodinott, ‘Years That Have Flown’, manuscript memoir, p. 17, AWM MSS0791. 60 John Victor Wischer, personnel file, NAUK WO 339/53587. 61 Kay, Letters from Bob, p. 85. 62 Edgar Johnston, manuscript memoir, c. 1984, AWM PR01977. 74 safer, more comfortable and offered better prospects than ‘trench work’.63 He died in a training accident the following June.

Besides those who joined the British flying services as civilians, the AIF granted around 200 discharges to men (and occasionally officers) so they could join the RFC or RNAS.64 The majority went to the RFC in two special drafts permitted by Birdwood before the establishment of further AFC squadrons (beyond 1st Squadron) in late 1916. The first occurred in response to a call from Brigadier-General Hugh Trenchard (commanding the RFC on the Western Front) in November 1915 for 1,500 other ranks from ‘the Armies in the field’ to meet a shortfall in ‘suitable’ civilian recruits for the flying corps.65 The War Office apparently extended this invitation to the AIF and, with Birdwood’s approval, some two dozen Australian men left their units during late 1915 and early 1916 for commissions in the RFC.66 Most, like 21- year-old Private Alexander ‘Jerry’ Pentland of the 12th Light Horse Regiment, were convalescing in Britain from wounds or illness contracted on Gallipoli.67

The War Office asked Birdwood for another 200 volunteers in .68 By this time the Director-General of Military Aeronautics (DGMA), Lieutenant-General Sir David Henderson, now deprecated the idea of distinctive colonial squadrons, preferring the RFC to develop a heterogeneous, imperial character.69 At the same time RFC Training Brigade’s staff perceived the dominions as an excellent source of pilots. In a hierarchy of the most desirable candidates created in early September 1916, colonial recruits rated second after observers who had around 200 hours of active service flying.70 With Pearce’s consent Birdwood agreed but, considering it ‘hardly right’ that the Commonwealth pay for officers ‘to all intents and purposes…

63 Geoffrey Sulman to his parents, 31 July 1916: ‘Florence Sulman and Geoffrey Sulman letters from England and France in war time, 1916-1917’, pp. 183-185, SLNSW A1378. 64 Roll of officers and other ranks discharged from the AIF to accept British commissions, 1915-1918, AWM27 361/16. 65 Minutes from wing commanders conference, 4 November 1915, NAUK AIR1/920/204/5/884. 66 This request from the War Office has apparently not survived. Birdwood refers to it in a July 1916 letter to the Minister for Defence, Sir George Pearce as having come to AIF HQ ‘some little time ago’, Birdwood to Pearce, 14 July 1916, AWM 3DRL3376 7/2. 67 Charles Schaedel, Australian Air Ace: the Exploits of ‘Jerry’ Pentland MC, DFC, AFC, Rigby, Adelaide, 1979, pp. 16-17. 68 Cubitt to Administrative HQ AIF, 11 July 1916: quoted in Cutlack, The Official History, Volume VIII, p. 421. 69 ‘Dominion Squadrons, 1915-1918’, DHH 75/514 file D1. 70 ‘Notes on training of Pilots by Training Brigade, Royal Flying Corps’, 2 September 1916, NAUK AIR1/676/21/13/1773. 75 in the English service’, he recommended the 200 volunteers ‘be permanently transferred from the AIF to the English service’.71

Despite further appeals from the War Office, transfers from the AIF to the British flying services practically ceased with the establishment of additional AFC squadrons in late 1916.72 Australian political and military authorities became particularly wary ‘of the eyes being picked out of the Australian Squadrons for the RFC’ and hence ‘much averse to transfers from the AIF to the Imperial Forces’.73 Underpinning this concern, by the beginning of 1917 volunteer enlistment in Australia was consistently falling short of the AIF’s needs and would continue to do so for the remainder of the war. In May 1918, when Ballarat’s federal member asked the government why Birdwood had prevented ‘thousands’ of Australian from joining the British flying services, Pearce cited the recent disbandment of battalions to provide reinforcements, which made it clear the AIF was in no position to relinquish manpower to the RAF.74 When the Air Council appealed to the Australian government in October for access to the ‘practically unlimited’ flying candidates in Australia and offered to establish local RAF recruiting offices (as there had been in Canada since 1915), the government declined, again citing a ‘shortage of reinforcements for the Australian Imperial Force’.75

The other dominions proved more accommodating to British requests for manpower. Aside from South Africa, which provided personnel for an RFC squadron in German East Africa, none took up the War Office’s offer to field their ‘own’ squadrons (following much procrastination the Canadians established an air service in mid-1918 though it never saw active service). Having also matched the size of their expeditionary forces to their potential recruitment capabilities, the other dominions were also more capable of feeding the British air services with pilots. Canada made the largest contribution, its government believing that individual pilots, and not complete squadrons, best served the imperial war effort. More than 20,000 Canadians

71 Birdwood to Pearce 14 July 1916, AWM 3DRL/3376 7/2; Pearce to Birdwood, 14 September 1916, AWM 3DRL/3376 2/13. 72 Roll of officers and other ranks discharged from the AIF to accept British commissions, 1915-1918, AWM27 361/16. 73 GOC AIF Middle East, Major-General Henry Chauvel to Commandant, AIF Headquarters, Egypt, 9 April 1917, AWM22 31/2/2004. 74 CPD, vol. LXXXIV, pp. 4,400-4,401 and p. 4,467. 75 Ferguson to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Walter Long, 25 October 1918, NAA A11803 1918/89/276. 76 served in the RFC, RNAS and RAF, roughly a quarter coming from the Canadian Expeditionary Force in monthly drafts from May 1917 (seconded to the RFC, they retained their Canadian commissions). The RFC recruited and trained the rest in Canada.76 Less evidence exists on the contributions of the other dominions, though it appears South Africa provided some 3,000 personnel to the British air services, a number completing basic training at a private school at Alexanderfontein before moving on to British schools.77 New Zealand’s government had a similar agreement with the War Office; the RFC funded the passage of pupils who qualified for a Royal Aero Club Certificate at one of two private schools in the dominion, some 200 taking this route. Overall, the New Zealand Air Force’s official historian describes the number of New Zealanders who joined the flying corps as ‘several hundred’.78 More recently, Errol Martyn estimates that about 700 New Zealanders joined the flying services during the Great War, about half in service squadrons (including 50 in the AFC).79

Determining the number of Australians who joined the British flying services is difficult as British administrators did not distinguish colonial personnel and because many enlisted independently, as civilians. Nonetheless it is possible to identify 600 Australian born and/or educated officers who served in the RFC, RNAS and RAF from records relating to casualties and repatriation, and from the private records of Australians who served with British units and often identified fellow officers from home.80 It appears few Australians joined the British services as other ranks, RAF air

76 S. F. Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force Volume I, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1980, pp. xi and 594-95. 77 James Ambrose Brown, A Gathering of Eagles: the Campaigns of the in Italian East Africa June 1940-November 1941 with an Introduction 1912-1939, Purnell, Cape Town, 1970, p. 5. 78 J. M. S. Ross, Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939-45, Royal New Zealand Air Force, War History Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1955, p. 6. By examining Royal Aero Club certificates, New Zealand aviation historian Errol Martyn has determined that 225 pupils from the New Zealand flying schools were commissioned in the RFC. At the time this thesis was completed Martyn was examining other records to determine how many New Zealanders also joined the British flying services as civilians and from the NZEF. This work will appear in a forthcoming publication [Errol Martyn to Michael Molkentin, 24 February 2013]. 79 Errol Martyn, Swift to the Sky: New Zealand’s Military Aviation History, Penguin Group, 2010, p. 26; Errol Martyn, For Your Tomorrow: A Record of New Zealanders who Have Died While Serving with the RNZAF and Allied Air Forces Since 1915: Volume One: Fates 1915-1942, Volplane Press, 1998, p. 37. 80 These sources include an incomplete nominal roll of AIF personnel discharged to accept imperial commissions [AWM27 361/16]; the Australian War Memorial’s commemorative roll, [https://www.awm.gov.au/research/people/commemorative_roll/, consulted 8 November 2012]; the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database (searching for RFC/RNAS/RAF burials with an 77 mechanics receiving less than half the wage of their AFC counterparts.81 By the Armistice 880 officers and 2,840 other ranks had served overseas with the AFC, bringing the Australian commitment in manpower to the air war to some 4,320.82 Considering 560 of the AFC’s officers flew with service squadrons, the provision of Australian airmen to the AFC and to the general British effort appears roughly even.83

Despite ostensibly leading the way in establishing a national flying service Australia actually made a much smaller contribution than the other dominions relative to population size.84 Counting both AFC personnel and Australians in the British flying services, 175 Australians participated in the air war per 100,000 head of the dominion’s population. Against this, South Africa supplied 438 and Canada at least 588 (and probably more). If the 700 New Zealanders described in the literature is accurate this dominion provided 121 air and ground crew per 100,000 head of its white male population.

Returning to the AFC’s development, 1st Squadron arrived at Alexandria in April 1916 with an ambiguous identity and status. Neither the AIF nor RFC in Egypt expected the squadron; initially nobody knew what to do with it.85 ‘Speculation is rife as to whether we go to England or stay in Egypt,’ noted Lieutenant Eric Roberts in his diary.86 Confusion also existed over the squadron’s name. The Defence Department and AIF HQ had been describing the unit as ‘No. 1 Squadron Australian Flying Corps’ or ‘1st Squadron, Australian Flying Corps’, but in August (apparently without consulting AIF authorities) the War Office dubbed it ‘No. 68 (Australian) Squadron,

Australian next of kin), [http://www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead.aspx, consulted 8 November 2012]; Service records and correspondence concerning Australians serving with other Imperial forces, World War 1’, NAA MT1487/1; Official History, 1914-18 War, biographical and other research files AWM43; and various memoirs, letters and diaries that mention individual Australian airmen serving in British squadrons. 81 ‘Pay and allowances of the Royal Air Force (Provisional) 1918’, NAUK AIR 10/4; AIF Records Circular No. 39, AWM25 81/18. 82 H. N. Wrigley to Charles Bean, 28 April 1924, AWM38 3DRL8042/64. 83 Wrigley to Bean, 21 March 1924, AWM38 3DRL8042/64. 84 For the white male population size of Britain and the dominions in July 1911 Great War see: The War Office, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War, The London Stamp Exchange, London, 1922, p. 363. Canada had an estimated white male population of 3.4 million of which 13.48 per cent were recruited; Australia recruited 13.43 per cent of 2.47 million; New Zealand 19.35 per cent of 580,000 and South Africa 11.12 per cent of 685,000. 85 Assistant Adjtant General for Commandant, AIF HQ to GHQ EEF, 18 April 1916, AWM10/4301/10/2; Richard Williams, These are Facts The Autobiography of Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams KBE, CB, DSO Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1977, p. 42. 86 Eric Roberts, diary, 15-16 April 1916, AWM 3DRL/7866. 78 Royal Flying Corps’ (shortly afterwards changing this to No. 67).87 Williams later claimed that British authorities had no authority to do so but, in fact, the original proposal from the War Office had unequivocally indicated that colonial squadrons would take their place in the RFC’s ‘general organization’ but receive a national designation.88 Indeed, as the War Office understood it, Australia had raised the squadron ‘to be incorporated in the Royal Flying Corps’.89

The attachment of 1st Squadron to 5th Wing RFC in Egypt and the decision by its officer commanding to split its flights up for attachment to British squadrons while most of the officers went to Britain for training must have emphasised the Australian squadron’s ‘incorporation’ into the British service. British officers replaced them and, indeed, throughout 1916 and 1917 made up a significant portion of 1st Squadron’s flying establishment. It was , as Williams put it, before the squadron had become ‘all slouch hats’.90 This, combined with Birdwood’s agreement to provide the War Office with volunteers for the RFC, made it appear by mid-1916 that Australia’s contribution to the air war would remain ‘imperial’ in character, and in line with the other dominions.

Impetus to change this situation came from Reynolds in May 1916. Established at the high commissioner’s office as the Commonwealth’s liaison officer for aviation, he made an inspection tour of the Western Front: it proved a revelatory experience. Writing to the CGS he described how ‘flying has made most remarkable development during the war’ and urged him to raise an additional two Australian squadrons, and thus, create a ‘regular flying corps’. Personnel were available, he suggested, at the CFS and among Australians in the RFC who were willing to transfer to the AIF, having only enlisted in the British service because of a lack of opportunities for flying with the AFC. Having perceived the importance of training and logistics, he also pressed the general staff to appoint a Director General of Military Aeronautics to oversee an expansion of the CFS (‘we must employ another 50 men at once’) and the development of an Australian aviation industry. Reynolds, indeed, had a long-term vision for Australian aviation – one that had continuity with

87 List of officers for 1st Squadron, January 1916, NAA A2023 A38/8/542; Assistant Adjutant General for Commandant, AIF HQ to OC No. 1 Squadron, 20 April 1916, AWM10 4301/10/2; War Office to GHQ Egypt, 20 September 1916, AWM22 31/2/2005. 88 Williams, These are Facts, p. 42; Cubitt to Maitland, 10 September 1915, AWM27 303/17 PART 1. 89 Cubitt to Chauvel, 28 March 1916, AWM10 4301/10/2. 90 Richard Williams interviewed by Fred Morton, 1976, NLA TRC 425. 79 the general staff’s pre-war conception of the AFC and CFS as protecting Australia’s shores. ‘I think that if ever operations take place in Australia’, he warned, ‘the army must be adequately supplied with highly trained flying squadrons’. Perhaps considering Japan’s efforts towards developing a military aviation capability, which dated to 1910, he added, ‘I know the invading army will be’. Reynolds pressed the Department to act with urgency, not only because flying squadrons ‘may be needed at any time’ for local defence, ‘but because after the war it will be most difficult to obtain votes for new supplies’.91

Having graduated eight pilots in and with another 16 due to start in August, at the end of July the government cabled the War Office offering a second squadron.92 Though it would be short of its establishment the War Office accepted it, and urged for its immediate embarkation. 93 Indeed, the Commonwealth’s offer had come at a critical juncture for Britain’s flying services. A month earlier Trenchard had projected that the RFC needed to expand from 27 to 56 squadrons by spring 1917.94 This, coming after his decision in March to increase the establishment of RFC squadrons from 12 to 18 machines, put considerable pressure on available resources – especially airmen. ‘Output is not nearly equal to demand’, reported the Director of Air Organisation in March. ‘We are very nearly bankrupt at the moment’.95

The circumstances compelled Henderson to relax his preference for the dominions to provide the RFC with individuals rather than complete units. In August, the Military Aeronautics Directorate invited dominion representatives to Adastral House to plan their future contribution to the air war. Representing the Australian government, Reynolds expressed its ‘ability and willingness’ to field two service squadrons and a reserve squadron ‘for training and the replacement of wastage’. Along with the Canadian and South African delegates he agreed to the British conditions that squadrons receive RFC numbers and relinquish responsibility for appointing squadron and wing commanders to the War Office. The Director for Air

91 Reynolds to Foster, 20 May 1916, NAA A2023 A38/8/779. 92 Acting Secretary, The Prime Minister’s Department to the Official Secretary to the Governor- General, 29 July 1916, NAA A11803 1914/89/54. 93 Bonar Law to Ferguson, 15 August 1916, NAA A11803 1914/89/5; Bonar Law to Ferguson, 2 September 1916, NAA A11803 1914/89/54. 94 H. A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force: Volume III, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1931, pp. 251-2. 95 Brigadier-General , Director of Air Organisation to Lieutenant-Colonel C. J. Burke, 21 March 1916, NAUK AIR1/131/15/40/218. 80 Organisaion, Brigadier-General Sefton Brancker, offered a concession to the original September 1915 scheme, however, when it came to the composition of the units. In future they would, as far as possible, contain dominion personnel only. Brancker also conceded to Australian and Canadian wishes that, when practical, dominion squadrons should co-operate with their own units. The War Office would equip the squadrons for overseas service but, unwilling to send new aircraft to schools in Australia, required Australian pilots to train in British schools.96

The British offer to train and equip the AFC had significance. By mid-1916 the Commonwealth’s capacity to meet the needs of its nascent flying corps had become exhausted. The rapid development of aviation overseas had rendered the CFS’s few training aircraft obsolete and the War Office refused to provide newer types while British industry struggled to supply the RFC.97 In 1914 the Department had somewhat naively expected the School to construct its own machines but this failed for lack of expertise and suitable raw materials in Australia.98 In early 1916 the government approved the establishment of a central government arsenal near Canberra and Pearce appointed a committee to investigate the feasibility of aircraft manufacture.99 Its efforts also proved abortive and, on British advice, the government abandoned the scheme in 1917. Rather than attempt to import machinery and expertise, the Commonwealth co-operated in the recruitment of over 4,500 Australian labourers and tradesmen to work in factories throughout the United Kingdom, including the aviation industry.100 The Department’s intention to establish a permanent post-war air force would resurrect the idea of a native aircraft industry the following year. In May 1918, on the general staff’s advice, Pearce appointed an ‘Aeroplane Construction Committee’ to investigate the availability of raw materials for manufacturing aircraft locally. Aside from a dearth of suitable raw materials, it found that Australian industry lacked the infrastructure to produce aircraft

96 ‘Minutes of conversation held with representatives of Canada, Australia and South Africa, on 26.8.16’, DHH 75/514 file B1; Army Council to Sir Sam Hughes, Canadian Minister for Militia and Defence, 8 September 1916, quoted in DHH 75/514 file D1, pp. 6-7. 97 For evidence of problems Australian authorities had procuring aviation equipment from the War Office, see Report on CFS, 1916-1917, NAA MP367/1 600/4/15; Ferguson to Long, 17 October 1917, NAA A11803 1917/89/96. 98 ‘Aviation in Australia- Flights to be established’, The Advertiser (Adelaide), 7 December 1914; Major Eric Harrison, Department of Defence minute, 3 May 1918, NAA A2180 1821/1/6. 99 Department of Defence minute, 27 July 1916, NAA A2023 E168/3/22. 100 Ernest Scott, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18: Volume XI: Australia During the War, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1938 (1936), pp. 268 and 276-277. 81 components. Aluminium smelting, for example, was at least five years away from commercial production.101 Findings such as this forced the Committee to conclude, in October 1918, that it was best to ‘lead up gradually to production’; that is, assist private industry to develop organically. Even this, it conceded, required imperial assistance. The Committee recommended the government invite companies such as Vickers to establish manufacturing outposts in Australia.102

A week after Reynolds’ meeting at the Military Aeronautics Directorate, the War Office invited the Commonwealth to raise a third squadron in Egypt from volunteers in AIF units.103 Significantly, it described the proposed unit as ‘a squadron, Royal Flying Corps’.104 Despite the Department’s request that it be known as the ‘Third Australian Flying Squadron as Second being raised in Australia’, the War Office assigned both of the new units RFC numbers.105 The squadron forming in Egypt became No. 68 (Australian) Squadron RFC while the squadron raised at Point Cook (known to the Australian government as 2nd Squadron) became No. 69 (Australian) Squadron RFC.106

In September the War Office approached AIF HQ desiring to know the total number of squadrons Australia ‘might be able and willing to raise’ on the principle that each two service squadrons required a reserve (training) unit. They would be employed on ‘the various fronts to cooperate with their own troops’ and the RFC would train and equip them.107 The Australian government agreed to send personnel to Britain to form a fourth service squadron and two reserve squadrons.108 4th Squadron formed at Point Cook on 25 ; its officers – predominantly

101 Undated draft report to Secretary, Aeroplane Construction Committee, NAA A2180 1821/1/6. 102 Aeroplane Construction Committee meeting minutes, 1 October 1918, NAA A2180 1821/1/6. 103 War Office to Department of Defence, 28 August 1916, NAA A2023 A38/8/881; Acting Secretary, The Prime Minister’s Department to Ferguson, 7 September 1916, NAA A11803 1914/89/54. 104 War Office to Department of Defence, 28 August 1916, NAA A2023 A38/8/881. 105 Acting Secretary, The Prime Minister’s Department to Ferguson, 7 September 1916, NAA A11803 1914/89/54; War Office to GHQ EEF, 20 September 1916, AWM22 31/2/2005. 106 War office letter 121/8903, 3rd Squadron war diary, December 1916, AWM4 8/6/1. Hence, what would eventually come to be known as ‘3rd Squadron’ of the AFC was in fact the second squadron to be raised by the Australian government. The Department of Defence initially referred to it as No. 2 Squadron; as did its personnel (see, for example, the stationary 2nd Lieutenant Stanley Garrett used to write letters to his family during the sea voyage. They are embossed with ‘No. 2 Squadron Australian Flying Corps’: SLV MSS10762). The War Office issued a number to the unit forming in Egypt (the third to form) before the unit forming in Australia, inadvertently reversing their seniority. In January 1918, when the War Office renumbered the Australian squadrons with their AFC designations, No. , despite being second to form, received ‘No. 3 Squadron AFC’. 107AIF HQ to Department of Defence, 22 September 1916, NAA A2023 A38/8/982. 108 Ferguson to Bonar Law, 3 October 1916, NAA A11803 1914/89/54. 82 partially trained pupils from the sixth CFS course– embarked on 17 . 5th and 6th (Training) Squadrons formed in Britain in June 1917 from volunteers in AIF units overseas.

There is little explicit evidence in the Defence Department’s files to explain the Australian government’s decision, in late 1916, to expand the AFC so rapidly and so far beyond anything previously conceived. Still, it is plausible to attribute the sudden escalation of Australia’s contribution to the air war to concerns held by Australia’s political and military authorities for the nation’s post-war security. Reynolds’ argument that the Australian Military Forces required a well-equipped flying corps to defeat an invading army coincided with heightened anxieties regarding Japan’s strategic intentions in the Pacific.109 Although the area of Australia’s defence arrangements at home during the war requires further research, examples cited by Chris Clark, Jean Bou and Craig Wilcox suggest that this strategic anxiety encouraged planning and preparation for Australia’s post-war security – even if providing the AIF equipment and reinforcements remained the priority.110 The link between the AFC and future defence planning is further suggested by Labor Senator Edward Findley’s call for the construction of ‘aeroplanes by the thousand’ on the day the government approved a fourth AFC squadron. Australia needed to pursue military aviation ‘whole-heartedly and systematically’ to ‘secure us for all time against an invasion’, he argued. Unlike the ‘non producing’ navy, Findley predicted an air force’s civil utility too; carrying mail, and perhaps one day, passengers between Australian cities.111

The War Office’s concessions, granted at the conference attended by Reynolds in August, also gratified the popular yearning for greater distinction of Australian endeavour in the war. The offer of equipment and training meanwhile solved

109 John Connor, ‘Senator George Pearce as Defence Minister’, PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, 2004, p. 28; David Lowe, ‘Australia in the World’, in Joan Beaumont (ed), Australia’s War, 1914-18, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, 1995, pp. 129-30; Robert Thornton, ‘Invaluable Ally or Imminent Aggressor? Australia and Japanese Naval Assistance, 1914–18’, Journal of Australian Studies, volume 7, number 12, 1983, pp. 5-20. 110 Chris Coulthard-Clark, ‘Australian Defence: Perceptions and Policies, 1871-1919’, Chapter 9 in Christopher Pugsley and John A. Moses, The German Empire and Britain’s Pacific Dominions: Essays on the role of Australia and New Zealand in World Politics in the Age of Imperialism, Regina Books, Claremont, 2000, p. 171; Jean Bou, ‘An Aspirational Army: Australian Planning for Citizen Forces Divisional Structure Before 1920’, Sabretache, the Journal of the Military Historical Society of Australia, number 49, 2008, 25-30; Craig Wilcox, ‘Defending Australia 1914-1918: the other Australian Army’, in Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey, 1918 Defining Victory: proceedings of the Chief of Army History Conference 1998, Army History Unit, Canberra, 1999, pp. 182-183. 111 CPD, volume LXXX, pp. 9,195-197. 83 problems faced by the CFS that could not be surmounted by Australian industry or local expertise. The Department apparently disapproved of the squadrons’ RFC titles, internal correspondence persistently using the ‘Australian’ numbers and referring to them as units of the AFC. Yet, as Connor points out, Pearce recognised ‘the only way to develop Australia’s independent naval and military forces was to use the Imperial relationship to gain access to British resources, expertise and assistance’.112 This was the case when he attended the 1911 Imperial Conference and the expansion of the AFC suggests it remained so in 1916. Nevertheless, in 1917, Pearce would demonstrate another characteristic Connor identified: a desire for Australian units to have a distinct identity among the empire’s forces.113

As the three new squadrons travelled to Britain in early 1917, the ambiguity of the AFC’s position between Australian and British forces began to cause administrative confusion. In February, for example, AIF staff in Egypt complained that HQ RFC Middle East Brigade had made promotions and appointments without reference to it, or indeed, even 1st Squadron’s . As an Australian staff officer put it

As the Australian Squadrons, although a portion of the RFC, are still AIF troops, and personnel paid by Australia, it is not understood how appointments, promotions, etc. can be made, except with the concurrence of GOC AIF.114

Similar disputes followed the arrival of the new AFC squadrons in Britain, indicating the need for some clarification.115 In February 1917 staff officers from Administrative HQ, AIF met the RFC’s Assistant Adjutant General for Organisation and agreed ‘generally’ to a set of principles regarding the administration of the Australian squadrons in Britain. Foremost among these, the squadrons remained unequivocally part of the AFC, itself ‘a portion of the Australian Imperial Force’, and under the authority of GOC AIF. AFC personnel would ‘be attached to the RFC in England for training’ but as far as possible, train in Australian reserve squadrons.

112 Connor, ‘Senator George Pearce as Defence Minister’, p. 48. 113 Connor, ‘Senator George Pearce as Defence Minister’, pp.53, 78, 98-99. 114 AAG&QMG, Anzac Mounted Division to Australian Headquarters, , 6 February 1917, AWM22 31/2/2004; DAA&QMG Anzac Mounted Division to Australian Headquarters, Cairo, 23 AWM22 31/2/2004; Major, Commanding, Australia Headquarters Egypt to HQ ANZAC Mounted Division, 27 March 1917 AWM22 31/2/2004. 115 See, for example, correspondence regarding pay, appointments and promotions in AWM10 4343/20/6. 84 AFC units would contain AIF officers only – and they were not to be used in British squadrons, at least until the Australian units were at full establishment. AIF HQ reserved the authority to order postings and transfers, and make appointments and promotions on the recommendation of RFC authorities. Australian squadron COs were to have authority to promote men to the rank of , on approval from their . Financially, the Commonwealth assumed complete responsible for the squadrons. Finally, the AIF conveyed the Department of Defence’s wishes that Australian squadrons have ‘Australian Flying Corps’ added to their titles, so that ‘No. 67 (Australian) Squadron RFC’ became ‘No. 67 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps’.116

Administrative HQ, AIF outlined these requests in a memorandum circulated to the AIF’s Headquarters on the Western Front and in Egypt, and to the Military Aeronautics Directorate. Birdwood concurred ‘generally’ and in March, the Director for Air Organisation convened a conference at the offices to determine a definite policy.117 Australian and Canadian representatives attended – the latter proposing to establish a flying service on similar lines to the AFC – and it is likely Henderson presided.118 Unable to agree among themselves, the Canadian delegates made no firm decisions and deferred the establishment of their air service for what would be another year. The meeting was, however, most fruitful from the Australian perspective, RFC authorities agreeing to practically all the Australian terms. They also suggested the appointment of a staff officer to liaise between the War Office and AIF on aviation matters.119 Presenting the obvious choice, in May the AIF graded Reynolds GSOII and appointed him Staff Officer for Aviation at Administrative Headquarters, AIF.

The policy appears to have provided for the generally sound administration of AFC units training in Britain during 1917.120 It was less prescriptive about their status

116 Whitham to the Secretary, War Office, 22 February 1917, AWM10 4301/10/35. See other correspondence in this file for context on the creation of this document. 117 Whitham to Administrative HQ, AIF, 8 March 1917, AWM10 4301/10/35. 118 ‘Dominion squadrons, 1915-1918’, DHH 75/514 file D1, p. 10. ‘Appendix B’ of this document is a table drawn up by the Director for Air Organisation’s staff to summarise the Australian proposals and compare them with their Canadian counterparts. Copies of the same are in AWM10 4343/9/3. 119 ‘Minutes on Australian-Canadian Conference held at the Air Board Office on Thursday, 29th March, 1917’, DHH 75/514 file D1, Appendix C. 120 See, for example, correspondence regarding appointments and promotions in AWM10 4343/20/6. Correspondence from April and May (especially Warner to Griffiths, 19 April 1917 and Officer i/c 85 in the field however; a fact that is evident from correspondence in the files of the AIF’s Egypt Headquarters in April 1917, which complained of disputes between AIF and RFC authorities there. In frustration, at the end of the month 1st Squadron’s commanding officer, Major Rutledge, complained ‘that Middle East Brigade (RFC) transfer AIF personnel to the Royal Flying Corps or vice versa, just as they wish’.121 RFC and AIF headquarters in the Middle East received their instructions from different sources, the War Office and Administrative HQ, AIF in London respectively, an issue not canvassed at the March conference.122

At the beginning of August, with 3rd Squadron’s deployment to the Western Front imminent, AIF HQ proposed a ‘definite procedure’ for the AFC’s command and administration in the field. It began by stating the ‘special desire of the Australian government that they [AFC squadrons] may remain distinctively Australian’ and, to this end, listed a number of administrative requirements. It reversed the earlier condition under which AFC officers might be posted to British squadrons once the Australian units were at full establishment. In future, AFC personnel could only be attached to British squadrons temporarily – and only with GOC AIF’s approval. The AIF would likewise retain control of reinforcements. RFC HQ in the Field could request other ranks reinforcements from Administrative HQ, AIF (which held them in an AFC Depot near Upavon). Flying officers would, AIF HQ proposed, be held in a special pool in one of the RFC’s depots in France to be assigned, at RFC HQ’s discretion, to replace casualties in the Australian squadrons. Although initially Australian squadron commanders would communicate directly with Administrative HQ, AIF regarding records and internal administration, AIF HQ remained open to the future establishment of a ‘small AFC section’ on RFC HQ’s staff.123

AIF HQ outlined the above in a proposal for Henderson. Before sending it, however, Birdwood demonstrated a judicious understanding of the RFC’s internal politics by showing the proposal to Trenchard. Although subordinate to the Director General of Military Aeronautics, Trenchard exercised immense influence in the service and moreover would have operational command of the Australian squadrons.

aviation to OC No. 69 Squadron, 12 May 1917) suggests an observance of the policy regarding promotions established at the 29 March conference. 121 Rutledge to Commandant, AIF HQ, Egypt, 30 April 1917, AWM22 31/2/2004. 122 Commandant, AIF HQ, Egypt to Administrative HQ, AIF, 20 April 1917, AWM22 31/2/2004. 123 Griffiths to the Secretary, War Office, 3 August 1917, AWM10 4343/4/2. 86 Trenchard met Birdwood at AIF HQ on 4 August and suggested a few relatively minor amendments: while agreeing to AIF control of reinforcements, he requested they ‘be sent to France through RFC channels, in exactly the same way as RFC personnel, so that I may be able to keep touch with them’.124 He also advised Birdwood to attach an AFC staff officer to RFC HQ, and insisted that promotion of officers be made provisionally by him and confirmed by GOC AIF.125 The Australian staff incorporated these points into a slightly revised scheme, which Trenchard approved on 14 August 1917.126 Ten days later, after receiving War Office sanction, I Brigade RFC received a copy, just in time for the arrival of the first Australian squadron (3rd) on the Western Front. 127

AIF HQ’s negotiations with Trenchard left two issues unresolved: financial responsibility for the AFC and squadron nomenclature.128 Initially Pearce wanted the War Office to uphold its offer, in September 1915, to equip and maintain dominion squadrons.129 In December 1917 however, for reasons unclear in the files, he reconsidered this and extended the Australian government’s offer to ‘accept whole liability’ for the AFC, as it did with the rest of the AIF.130 Though prepared to ‘undertake complete financial responsibility for the establishment and upkeep of all Australian Flying Units abroad’, the Commonwealth could not possibly keep track of actual expenses incurred by units in the field.131 Rather, Administrative HQ, AIF and the British authorities agreed that the Commonwealth would pay for the squadrons’ initial equipment but then cover their ongoing maintenance with a ‘capitation rate’.132 In any case, when it came to settling accounts at the end of the war, the Air Ministry offered to waive all costs if the AFC returned all extant equipment. ‘This was a wonderful offer from Australia’s point of view,’ considered Williams, then Staff Officer for Aviation at Administrative HQ. ‘The corps had been issued with no less than 940 aircraft, plus all the spares, tools, equipment, transport, fuel, bombs and

124 Birdwood, diary, 4 August 1917, AWM 3DRL/3376 1/3. 125 Birdwood to Trenchard, 10 August 1917, NAUK AIR1/1044/204/6/1506. 126 Trenchard to Birdwood, 14 August 1917, NAUK AIR1/1044/204/5/1506. 127 AA&QMG RFC to GOC 1st Brigade RFC, 24 August 1917, NAUK AIR1/1044/204/5/1506. 128 Trenchard to Birdwood, 14 August 1917, AWM25 81/5. 129 Cubitt to the Under Secretary of State, Colonial Office, 10 September 1915, AWM27 303/17 PART 1. 130 Lieutenant-Colonel H. D. Wynter, AAG AIF HQ to RFC HQ, 10 December 1917, AWM25 81/5. 131 Undated and unsigned memo regarding adjustments for AFC in response to Birdwood’s 10 August 1917 letter to Trenchard, (probably internal to Administrative HQ, AIF) AWM25 81/5. 132 H. Evans for Commandant, Administrative HQ, AIF to AIF HQ, Egypt, 5 January 1918, AWM25 81/12 87 ammunition needed’.133 Accepting the offer, the Australian government bore only the cost of the AFC’s personal equipment and wages. Further enhancing the deal for Australia, in June 1919 the Air Ministry would offer each of the dominions a ‘gift’ of up to 100 war surplus aircraft to assist them in establishing air forces and ‘thereby develop defence of the Empire by air’.134

Negotiations over squadron nomenclature also remained unresolved for some time. On instructions from the Defence Department, Administrative HQ, AIF wrote to the War Office in requesting its recognition of the AFC’s ‘Australian’ numbers.135 Although the War Office agreed, issuing orders on 11 January 1918 that the units be known as No. 1 Squadron AFC etc., this did not end the long-winded ambiguity regarding the squadron titles. When AIF HQ promulgated the change a week later it used ordinal titles (1st Squadron etc.), as usual for infantry units. Despite receiving the conflicting orders, RFC HQ ordered its units in the field to use the Australian-preferred style.136 Aviation staff at the War Office remained obstinate though; it was only after seven months of petitions from Administrative HQ, AIF that, in August 1918, the Air Council rescinded its January order and recognised the Australian style.137

Of his negotiations with Trenchard, Birdwood’s BGGS, Brigadier-General Brudenell White, told Charles Bean, that ‘he made several concessions in a manner wh[ich] s[ai]d – “I am prepared to give you so much but the corps – your flying corps – remains mine”’. White considered it ‘very clear he had no intention to let the Australian Flying Corps be considered as anything else than a wing of the RFC’.138 Despite putting the Australian squadrons firmly under RFC command in the field however, Trenchard and his superiors in London had consented to what represented a significant shift in policy. Almost exactly a year earlier, in August 1916, Reynolds had brokered an agreement with the Military Aeronautics Directorate that essentially left Australian squadrons as dominion units of a British flying service. The policy determined by Birdwood and White pragmatically acknowledged that the AFC lacked

133 Williams, These Are Facts, pp. 109-110. 134 Telegram from the Secretary of State for the Colonies to the Governor-General of Australia, 4 June 1919, AWM10 4343/18/32. 135 Administrative HQ, AIF to the War Office, 11 November 1917, AWM25 225/6 PART 1. 136 RFC HQ circular memo to brigades, depots etc., 19 January 1918, NAUK AIR1/1044/204/5/1506. 137 S. O. Everitt to the Secretary, Air Council etc., 21 August 1918, NAUK AIR1/1044/204/5/1506. 138 Bean, diary, 27 August 1917, AWM 3DRL606/132/1. 88 the higher command and logistical organisation to operate independently of the RFC in the field while also emphasising and protecting its status as part of the AIF. Still, Bean initially shared White’s disappointment regarding the handling of the AFC squadrons in France. In December, however, a visit to 2nd Squadron would prompt him to feel ‘a little ashamed at taking such a narrow view’. The Australian commander, Major Oswald Watt was, Bean discovered, working hard to promote good relations between his unit and the RFC, ‘insisting that the Australian corps is really part of the RFC and making them proud of it’. Interviewing the pilots, Bean discovered them ‘proud of their connection with the RFC’ and enthusiastic about carrying out ‘its orders’ and the prospect of ‘going home [to] train its recruits when their rest time comes…’.139

In September, the AIF appointed Captain Clive Baillieu as Deputy Assistant Adjutant General (DAAG) AFC, for attachment to RFC HQ in the field. He would liaise between the AIF and RFC in the field and oversee the administration of the Australian squadrons on the Western Front. It appears he spent a significant amount of his time filleting RFC brigade reports for details regarding AFC personnel to include in his weekly returns to Administrative HQ, AIF.140 Baillieu was also responsible for the administration of the AFC’s numerous wireless personnel who served scattered among Australian artillery batteries and may, at any time, be co- operating with several RFC squadrons.141 Baillieu remained in the post until the Armistice; it appears his function remained consistent with the exception that, in May 1918, he gained authority to promote wireless operators to non-commissioned ranks.142

As DAAG AFC Baillieu reported to Reynolds, SO for Aviation at Administrative HQ, AIF in London. The AFC’s expansion in 1917 made it necessary to assign Reynolds a small staff, which subsequently became known as ‘Aviation Section’, or sometimes (though misleadingly) ‘AFC HQ’.143 At the end of the war, it

139 Bean, diary, 8 December 1917, AWM 3DRL606/94/1. 140 Captain Clive Baillieu, DAAG AFC to Administrative HQ, AIF, 26 September 1917, AWM10 4343/4/2. 141 AIF Records Circular No. 24, circa Nov 1917, AWM25 81/18. 142 AIF Records Circular No. 59, 28 May 1918, AWM25, 81/18. 143 The two titles were used synonymously. Compare, for example, Commandant, Administrative HQ, AIF to AIF HQ, 10 October 1918, AWM10 4309/3/12; with Reynolds to the Secretary, Air Board, 23 May 1918, AWM10 4242/7. 89 consisted of 2 officers, 4 other ranks and 5 civilians. From October 1917 it also had an equipment branch, which by November 1918 had a staff of seven led by Captain David Manwell, a graduate of Point Cook’s first course. When Reynolds returned to Australia to oversee the CFS’s reorganisation in June 1918, his staff captain, Horace Brinsmead took over as SO for Aviation. He saw out the war, with Richard Williams replacing him in March 1919 to administer the AFC’s repatriation.

As Williams pointed out when he attempted to write a history of the Aviation Section in June 1919, it is difficult to evaluate its function because it did not keep a war diary and had a relatively high turn over of personnel.144 In his assessment, SO for Aviation ‘had nothing to do with training or operations or with the technical equipment’, only administering ‘certain personnel movements’.145 Williams, though technically correct, overlooked the Section’s contribution to the AFC’s evolution – a view that has influenced one study of the AFC’s leadership.146 He only witnessed its function during the AIF’s demobilisation and, moreover, resented the promotion of his predecessor, Brinsmead, to lieutenant-colonel without having flown on operations.147 The AIF’s aviation staff was, in fact, instrumental in organising the new AFC squadrons in 1917 and protecting their identity as part of the AIF. Reynolds’ appeals to Henderson led to, for example, the grouping of the AFC’s training squadrons in one area and the provision of huts for personnel.148 What’s more, during an inspection tour to Palestine in October 1917, Reynolds successfully lobbied RFC authorities to replace 1st Squadron’s obsolete machines with Bristol Fighters – something Williams, as the unit’s commanding officer, had attempted unsuccessfully earlier in the year.149 The aviation staff played an unglamorous but important role: it enabled Australia to participate in the air war to the extent that it did, while maintaining control of its personnel and representing the squadrons’ interests to the RFC’s command. Further, the administrative arrangements that AIF HQ secured for

144 Richard Williams, manuscript history of AFC HQ, Administrative HQ, AIF, AWM10 4343/36/21. 145 Richard Williams interviewed by Mel Pratt, 1973-74, NLA TRC 121/50. Williams provides a similar opinion in Williams, These Are Facts, p. 108. 146 Mark Lax, ‘A hint of things to come: leadership in the Australian Flying Corps’, in Barry Sutherland (editor), Command and Leadership in War and Peace: The Proceedings of the 1999 RAAF History Conference, Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 1999, p. 29. Lax sums up Aviation Section as having ‘had little power and merely acted as a liaison and promotion vetting authority’. 147 Richard Williams interviewed by Mel Pratt, 1973-74, NLA TRC 121/50. 148 Reynolds to Lieutenant-General Sir David Henderson, Director General of Military Aeronautics, 25 September 1917, AWM10 4343/14/2. 149 Reynolds, report on Middle East inspection tour in October and November 1917, AWM10 4343/3/2. 90 the AFC in 1917, which confirmed its distinct national identity, could not have been maintained without Aviation Section’s staff work. It is conceivable that, without dedicated aviation administration, the comparatively small number of personnel in the AFC may have become victims of administrative neglect with negative outcomes not only for them, but for historians using the AFC’s records in the future.

Further expansion of the AFC during 1917 involved the overseas training units. The Australian government’s initial decision to establish two reserve squadrons in August 1916 resulted from the War Office’s advice that this would be adequate to support the four fighting squadrons.150 The Director of Air Organisation modified this recommendation in , however, advising the AIF that it needed two additional reserve squadrons (i.e. a total of four) and asking if it might also form additional fighting squadrons.151 Colonel Thomas Griffiths, Commandant of Administrative HQ, AIF, and Birdwood considered the latter impossible: the four service squadrons already established would ‘tax the resources of the AIF to its full capacity’. Seeking ‘proof’ of the necessity of additional training squadrons, Griffiths discovered that the intense air fighting of spring 1917 had rendered earlier wastage estimates redundant. Revised predictions indicated that the AFC’s four fighting squadrons would consume 35 airmen per month, considerably more than two reserve squadrons could produce.152 On the strength of this evidence, and with Pearce’s approval, in September 1917 AIF HQ sanctioned the formation in Britain of the 7th and 8th (Training) Squadrons.153

To assist administration and ‘create healthy rivalry between the squadrons’, in August 1917 Birdwood expressed his ‘special desire’ to Henderson that the original two Australian training squadrons operate from the same aerodrome.154 Henderson’s staff claimed this impossible, but agreed to base them close to each other.155 With the Australian government’s approval to establish the additional training squadrons in September, Reynolds took it upon himself to organise the concentration of all four

150 AIF HQ to Department of Defence, 22 September 1916, NAA A2023 A38/8/982. 151 Lieutenant-Colonel B. C. H. Drew to Griffiths, 18 July 1917, AWM10 4343/14/2. 152 Griffiths to AIF HQ, 11 August 1917, AWM10 4343/14/2. As elementary instruction typically took one month, and ‘higher’ instruction three months the two training squadrons with their capacity of 40 cadets were insufficient. 153 Department of Defence to Administrative HQ, AIF, 7 September 1917, AWM10 4343/14/12. 154 Administrative HQ, AIF to Henderson, 11 August 1917, AWM10 4343/14/2. 155 Staff Captain for Director of Air Organisation to AIF HQ, 23 August 1917, AWM10 4343/14/2. 91 units in the one area. He wrote to Henderson, claiming the Australian government had only agreed to form the two new training units if they were based together with the original pair.156 This was untrue – the Defence Department cable authorising the additional training squadrons made no mention of this – but it apparently had the desired effect, as the Air Board changed its earlier position and arranged for the four Australian squadrons to operate in Gloucestershire from two aerodromes: 5th and 6th at Minchinhampton; 7th and 8th at Leighterton.

Reynolds’s motives are revealed by his recommendation, three weeks later, to form an AFC wing comprising the four training squadrons and an aeroplane repair section. This formation would, he argued, be ‘self contained in every way’ and put the AFC’s entire administration and training under Australian officers.157 He apparently went outside normal channels and approached the Air Board directly with his proposal. Four days later it ‘strongly recommended’ a practically identical proposal to Reynolds’ superiors at Administrative HQ, AIF. It even used, almost verbatim, the Australian Staff Officer for Aviation’s justification for the AFC training wing:

If this is approved, the Australian Flying Corps will be self-contained in every way, and the whole of the Administration and instruction of Australian Flying Corps Officers, Cadets and Other Ranks will be carried out by Australian Officers’.158

Significantly, whereas Reynolds had originally argued that the formation of a wing headquarters and repair section would make the AFC’s training establishment self-sufficient, the Air Board’s proposal suggested the same for the AFC itself. In reality, an AFC training wing would make neither the AFC, nor its training establishment, ‘self-contained’ in any way. The AFC training squadrons would not all be completely operational until mid-1918. Even then, the AFC would rely on British schools to train mechanics, observers and provide the final stages of a fighter pilot’s training.

Birdwood agreed to the establishment of a wing headquarters and repair section provided they did not exacerbate the AIF’s ‘already serious shortage of reinforcements’.159 Surveying available personnel in the AFC depot and those en-

156 Reynolds to Henderson, 25 September 1917, AWM10 4343/14/2. 157 Reynolds to Griffith, 12 October 1917, AWM10 4343/14/2. 158 Griffiths to AIF HQ, 16 October 1917, AWM15 2305/11. 159 Dodds to Administrative HQ, AIF, 21 October 1917, AWM15 2305/11. 92 route to Britain Griffiths found adequate other-ranks; for officers he planned to promote experienced flight commanders in the service squadrons and replace them with promising subordinates.160 To command the formation he recommended Williams, but Birdwood’s headquarters amended this to Major Oswald Watt, 2nd Squadron’s CO, on Trenchard’s recommendation.161 Though subordinate to Williams in seniority, Watt had more experience having been flying since 1911 and serving with the Aéronautique Militaire and during 1914-15 before transferring to the AFC.162 With the French, and later the AFC, Watt distinguished himself as an outstanding leader but, at almost 40 years old, had reached the end of his capacity for service in the field by late 1917.163 Above Watt, Reynolds attempted to install himself as commander of the AFC in Britain – the wing, the AFC Depot at Wendover and AFC personnel training with RFC units.164 His argument that only this could achieve ‘highest efficiency’ and best represent ‘the interests of the AIF’ did not convince Birdwood’s staff: it determined that the AFC wing and associated units remain subordinate to the RAF’s training organisation.165

The expansion of the Australian training establishment overseas considerably increased the opportunity AFC officers had to gain experience in leadership, administration and training – skills crucial to the development of a post-war Australian air service but otherwise unobtainable given the AIF’s refusal to allow AFC officers to serve in British units. This policy, which protected the AFC’s identity and integrity in the short term, actually restricted the breadth of experience with which Australian airmen would bring home. Of the AFC’s 880 officers, only one commanded a wing in the field (another commanded a training wing), eight commanded service squadrons and 57 led flights on combat operations (others

160 Baillieu (?) to Dodds, 5 November 1917, AWM10 4343/14/2. 161 Griffiths to HQ AIF, 31 December 1917, AWM10 4343/14/12; Report on Major Oswald Watt from RFC HQ, 10 January 1918, AWM15 2305/2/1; Dodds to Administrative HQ, AIF, 14 January 1918, AWM15 2305/2/1. 162 Ordre du Corps d’Armee No. 77 P. 20 Avril 1916, AWM27 303/17 PART 2. See also, Sydney Ure Smith, Bertram Stevens & Ernest Watt (eds), Oswald Watt, Lieut.-Colonel A.F.C., O.B.E., , : a tribute to his memory by a few of his friends, Art in Australia Ltd, Sydney, 1921, pp. 28-31. 163 Commanding Officer, Training Division RFC to Administrative HQ, AIF, 25 September 1917, AWM15 2305/2/1; Bean, diary, 9 December 1917, AWM 3DRL 606/94/1. 164 ‘Australian Flying Corps’, letter addressed to Griffiths, no date, AWM10 4343/14/12. 165 Administrative HQ, AIF to GOC South Western Area, 22 June 1918, AWM25 81/18. This document quotes a memo by Dodds (DAG AIF) recommending the above system, dated 5 March 1918. 93 commanded training units and flights).166 Most, as Richard Williams observed, had ‘gone from privates to officers without any special training on the military side of their work’; they lacked knowledge of leadership and even basic regimental responsibilities.167 Among the 600-odd Australians who served independently with the British flying services, at least 25 commanded service squadrons.168 Six Australians in the British services were graded wing commanders before the Armistice and several others commanded schools and experimental stations – in some instances occupying quite senior positions.169 Ironically then, even with the establishment of the AFC training wing, an Australian had considerably better prospects for promotion in the British, rather than his native, flying corps.

Aware of this, the AFC’s administrative staff considered expanding the AFC beyond a training wing. In October 1917 Captain Baillieu (DAAG AFC) proposed the establishment of an Australian strategic bombing squadron to make the AFC a ‘thoroughly representative force’; it would provide Australian airmen experience in the ‘highly specialised work’ of night bombing and in flying the heavy aircraft, he predicted, that would feature in civil aviation after the war.170 Despite Baillieu’s strident efforts – which included going outside the AIF to lobby politicians – a shortage of flying officers, it appears, curtailed his plans. Nonetheless, during 1918 he continued pressing for the AFC’s expansion to prepare for the development of experience necessary for aviation’s development in post-war Australia. In August he proposed using surplus mechanics in the AFC depot to establish an Australian Aircraft Park in France; though not essential, he argued that such an establishment would give the AFC valuable experience in aviation logistics. This, it appears was preliminary to his proposal, later that month, to transfer 1st Squadron from Palestine to the Western Front and establish an Australian army wing with all four service squadrons: ‘the necessary corollary of a Training Wing’ that would ‘emphasise the

166 These figures come from nominal rolls provided by the units to the Australian War Records Section, AWM224 MSS515 (1st Squadron), MSS517 (2nd Squadron), MSS518 (3rd Squadron) and MSS520 (4th Squadron). 167 Richard Williams, manuscript history of the AFC, c. 1919, AWM224 MSS510 Part 2. 168 Official History, 1914-18 War, biographical and other research files, AWM43. 169 Australians graded wing commander in the RFC/RAF included Henry Richard Busteed (graded wing commander, 31 December 1917); Richard Graham Blomfield (23 November 1917); William Gore Sutherland Mitchell (18 December 1916); Barry Fitzgerald Moore (13 July 1918); Thomas Forster Rutledge (6 October 1917). In the RNAS, Arthur Murray Longmore was appointed wing commander on 1 January 1915. Stanley James Goble also briefly held a wing commander’s rank after the armistice (15 March to 30 April 1919). 170 Baillieu to Dodds, 12 October 1917, AWM15 2305/11. 94 distinctly Australian character of our Flying Corps’.171 Despite the fact that the AFC lacked the necessary units to create a functional army wing (RAF wings contained between six and 11 squadrons by mid-1918 and included medium-range bombing squadrons, of which the AFC had none) Birdwood directed Administrative HQ, AIF, to approach the Air Ministry requesting 1st Squadron’s redeployment to France. Griffiths did so in September 1918, arguing that the formation of an AFC army wing would put the AIF ‘in a position to at least keep in line with the Canadian Forces’, then in the process of establishing a wing for service on the Western Front.172 The Air Ministry took a month to respond, rejecting the Australian request on the basis of the ‘obscurity of the present situation in the Balkans and the difficulties of transportation’. A repeated request from Griffiths did not secure an answer before the Armistice in Europe – perhaps because British authorities apparently planned to send 1st Squadron to Somaliland to suppress insurgents.173 This, and the RAF’s posting of 4th Squadron to Cologne with the British Army of Occupation over the winter of 1918-19 emphasises the point that the Air Ministry perceived the AFC not as a national air arm but as a dominion component of the RAF subject to British operational and strategic control. In any case, it is difficult to see how the AIF could have possibly produced the personnel required for a wing that would fit the RAF’s organisational structure. Indeed, the collapse of recruitment would likely have curbed Australian involvement in the war in 1919, at all levels, rather than augmented it.

Though incapable of expanding the AFC beyond the high water mark it reached in late 1917 with the establishment of the training wing, during 1918 Australian authorities planned for a peace-time air service. Less than a fortnight before the establishment of the RAF (1 April 1918), Administrative HQ, AIF suggested to Birdwood that he should propose, to his political masters in Australia, the creation of an Australian Air Force, ‘as part, or attached, to the Royal Air Force’. Griffiths considered it desirable that Australia, as the only dominion to have a flying corps, should ‘be the first of the oversea possessions to embody its Flying Corps in the New Service’.174 Open to the idea, Birdwood agreed to send home a party of experienced AFC and RAF officers to advise the Defence Department on the latest

171 Baillieu to Dodds, 21 August 1918, AWM10 4343/17/12. 172 ‘Memorandum of interview with Lieutenant-Colonel Sir N. Leslie, SO1, Air Ministry WC2’, 17 September 1918, AWM10 4343/17/12. 173 Williams, These are Facts, p. 104. 174 Griffiths to AIF HQ, 21 March 1918, AWM10 4308/5/10. 95 developments in military aviation. Three RAF and four AIF officers under Reynolds’ command left for Australia in June 1918, some returning to Australia via North America to gauge developments there.175

Meanwhile planning for a post war air service gained momentum in Australia. Within a month of the RAF’s establishment the CGS, Major-General Gordon Legge, proposed the immediate formation of an air corps commensurate with the size of the permanent forces army. ‘A sufficient air service,’ he explained, ‘…can go far towards breaking the strength of an attack, or increasing the value of an inferior defending force if it can master the air service of the enemy.’ He envisaged a force considerably larger than the AFC’s peak size: 10 service squadrons, five training units, a balloon wing, a factory and an extensive maintenance and logistics base. In all it would operate 405 aircraft and employ 654 officers and 7,209 other ranks. Pearce endorsed the scheme immediately and in August cabinet pledged £3,000,000 over three years to an ‘Aviation Programme’. The Council of Defence appointed a sub-committee to divide the funds between Legge’s proposal and another from the Naval Board for the establishment of an Australian Naval Air Service. It recommended, in January 1919, the establishment of an Australian Air Corps under unified army-navy command and administration. Although what neither Legge nor his navy colleagues had in mind, this recommendation effectively laid the foundations for the establishment of the Royal Australian Air Force in 1921.176

Besides the apparent influence of the RAF’s establishment, Chris Clark attributes Legge’s proposal to competing service interests – the Royal Australian Navy was planning an air service at the time as well – and fears that the would force the Allies to settle for an unfavourable peace, leaving Australia vulnerable in the Pacific.177 At the same time, the need for local air defences had been brought into sharp relief by rumours of German aircraft operating over the Australian coast from offshore raiders and secret inland bases. During April and May 1918 the Defence Department received reports of around 100 sightings from all over

175 For more on this contingent, see Chapter 3. 176 Douglas Gillison, The Royal Australian Air Force 1939-1943, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1962, pp. 1-6. 177 C. D. Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother: the Royal Australian Air Force 1921-39, Allen & Unwin, North Sydney, 1991, p.1. 96 the country: all bogus.178 An attempt to locate these by two aerial reconnaissance parties dispatched to Wilson’s Promontory and the New South Wales South Coast from Point Cook found nothing but highlighted the minimal aviation capability Australia possessed, even after four years of war.179 All these factors – the RAF’s establishment, the Royal Australian Navy’s air service plans, Allied setbacks in France and fears of a German presence in Australian skies – are likely to have galvanised the general staff’s course and encouraged cabinet’s unprecedented financial support of aviation. Nonetheless, establishing an autonomous air capability in Australia had been on the political and military agenda for the best part of a decade. The expansion of the AFC during 1915-18 had, indeed, been directed to this end. A national air service’s establishment shortly after the war seems inevitable, regardless of the dramatic events that coalesced in the early months of 1918.

178 Brett Holman, ‘Seeing Things’, Wartime, number 61, summer 2013, 48-53. 179 Captain F. H. McNamara, ‘Report of OC, Air Reconnaissance, South Gippsland’, 7 June 1918, NAA B197 2021/1/168; Lieutenant R. F. Galloway, ‘Report on Expedition to South Coast of NSW’, 29 May 1918, NAA B197 2021/1/168. Reconnaissance reports from this expedition are filed with the CFS’ records at the RAAF Museum. 97 3. RECRUITMENT, TRAINING AND REINFORCEMENT The growth, maintenance and combat effectiveness of any military force hinges on recruitment, training and reinforcement. The RAF owes its emergence from the Great War as the world’s largest and most operationally proficient flying arm to the immense and well-organised pilot training system that evolved, practically from scratch, in the British empire during the war. Spanning Egypt, Canada and the United Kingdom, by the Armistice the imperial training establishment was producing around 1,200 pilots each month. Canadian schools alone had achieved a monthly output of 230 pilots –almost ten squadrons worth.1

Australia made a modest contribution to this total. Throughout the war, the Defence Department’s Central Flying School (CFS) and the New South Wales government’s Aviation School (NSWAS) at Richmond produced less than 200 pilots altogether. Practically all required additional training overseas. Nevertheless, these schools provided a crucial foundation for the establishment of four AFC service squadrons in 1916. The lack of a native aero-industry and their distance from the front thereafter diminished the relevance of Australia’s flying schools. In the war’s final 18 months, practically all recruitment and training of the AFC’s personnel occurred overseas. This chapter examines the AFC from a ‘manpower’ perspective; it evaluates how effectively Australian authorities sustained the AFC units in the field through their recruitment policies and schools in Australia and Britain.

In August 1914 Australia’s Central Flying School (CFS) was far from complete. Situated in grazing paddocks 30 kilometres west of Melbourne, the site’s only permanent structures consisted of a corrugated iron shed, which housed a , and a wooden barracks for the school’s ground staff. The pupils, instructor, caretaker and other aircraft (a Deperdussin and a BE2a) remained under canvas.2 A diesel generator powered the site and the nearest water supply lay six and a half kilometres away.3 Nevertheless, just two days before the Australian government

1 S. F. Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1980, pp. 117-118. 2 Petre crashed the second Deperdusin on 9 March 1914 during a demonstration flight in front of Pearce and other Department staff [Department of Defence minute, 7 October 1914, NAA A2023 A38/3/199]. 3 Report by Surgeon General, Director General Medical Services, 19 March 1914, NAA A2023 A38/5/38; Department of Defence minute, 15 , NAA A2023 A38/5/72; Richard Williams, 98 received a cable from London warning war’s imminence, the Department of Defence called for applicants for the first course.4 Defence Minister Edward Millen ordered the chief instructor, Captain Henry Petre, to ‘expedite completion of arrangements’ and enlist additional staff so the first pupils could begin on 17 August.5

Four students attended the inaugural three month course where, according to the syllabus, they were to receive practical instruction in flying (including ‘cross- country flights’) to the standard of the Royal Aero Club’s license, theoretical instruction in aeronautics, meteorology and aviation engineering. Pupils would also study the military application of aeronautics, including aerial observation and photography, navigation, signalling and aircraft recognition.6 The Department based this course closely on the Royal Flying Corps’ (RFC) CFS syllabus, of which it had obtained a copy in November 1913.7

Point Cook’s first four pupils qualified for their Royal Aero Club brevets in November, but the first course revealed some striking deficiencies in the School’s organisation and resources. Practical instruction had included nothing beyond elementary circuits on the Bristol Boxkite and some practice rigging aircraft in the workshop.8 Neither Petre, nor his assistant instructor Lieutenant Eric Harrison, had qualifications to teach military subjects and, in any case, the School lacked signalling and photographic equipment. The availability of a single machine for dual instruction (the Boxkite) meant that accidents and breakdowns disrupted training for days at a time and stretched the capacity of the school’s meagre maintenance staff.9

Considering these problems, in October 1914 the Director of Military Operations, Major Edgar Reynolds, proposed a significant expansion of the school including additional mechanics and instructors, permanent structures and new aircraft. Perhaps already envisaging an opportunity to employ aviators overseas with

These Are Facts: The Autobiography of Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams KBE, CB, DSO, Australian War Memorial and Australian Government Publishing Service, 1977, p. 24. 4 Australian Military Forces Military Order 419 of 1914, 28 July 1914. 5 Major Edgar Reynolds, Director of Military Operations to Captain Henry Petre, Chief Instructor, Central Flying School, 5 August 1914, NAA A2023 A38/6/33. 6 Military Order 381/1914, NAA A2023 A38/6/70. 7 ‘Central Flying School Syllabus of Instruction’, supplied to the Department of Defence by the British Admiralty, 4 November 1913, NAUK AIR1/654/17/122/501; see also British CFS’ syllabus in ‘Précis of files on training’, 1910-1918, NAUK AIR1/683/21/13/2234. 8 Williams, These are Facts, p. 26; White, Guests of the Unspeakable John Hamilton, London, 1928, p. 1. 9 Williams, These are Facts, p. 26. 99 expeditionary forces, Reynolds also proposed increasing the School’s annual output from 12 to 36 pilots.10 The Department had attempted to order another Boxkite in February 1914 but, in August, learned that ‘under existing conditions’, British firms were only able to meet the War Office’s orders. Reynolds proposed that the Aviation Instructional Staff’s mechanics build Boxkites in Point Cook’s workshops.11 The new Defence Minister, George Pearce, approved the scheme and on 3 December 1914 the government announced an increase to the School’s funding of almost five times and allocated another £27,585 under the estimates for new works to cover workshop equipment and additional buildings.12

The funding increased class sizes and improved the quality of tuition during the 1915 and early 1916 courses. The second and third courses (March-May and August-October 1915) produced seven pilots each and eight graduated from the fourth course (March to June 1916).13 The instructors noted that test scores improved with each course and accidents decreased. From August 1915 an additional Boxkite, built in the workshop, allowed the school to increase time spent on flying instruction by about a third. 14

Nevertheless, the courses continued to neglect several aspects of the syllabus. Even with the additional Boxkite, students on the third course graduated with just two hours solo each and no experience on the more advanced BE2a.15 Lieutenant , who graduated on this course, described training as practically identical to that undertaken by the first cohort, a year earlier.

10 Reynolds to Colonel James Gordon Legge, CGS, 10 October 1914, NAA A2023 A38/7/41. 11 The Department had obtained a set of drawings for the Bristol Biplane in 1913 from the British and Colonial Aviation Company [Robert Muirhead Collins, Official Secretary to the High Commissioner to Secretary of Defence, Samuel Pethebridge, 9 May 1913, NAA A289 1849/8/410]. The Aviation Instructional Staff comprised the CFS’ permanent staff. 12 Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates [CPD], Volume LXXV, p. 1,295. 13 Both courses started with eight pupils. During the second course, Lieutenant William Treloar went to Mesopotamia with Half Flight before graduating (he had already qualified for his Royal Aero Club certificate at the Bristol School in Brooklands in July 1914). During the third course, one pupil did not complete the course due to illness. 14 ‘Report on No. 2 course of aviation’, NAA A2023 A38/7/63; ‘Report on third course of instruction…’, NAA A2023 A38/7/339. According to these reports, the additional Boxkite allowed an increase in flying time from 46 hours in the second course to 68 hours in the third course. 15 ‘Report on third course of instruction…’, NAA A2023 A38/7/339. 100 We learned to fly straight and level, to turn right and left, to glide straight and in a spiral and to land. When we could do this well, and execute a figure-of-eight course we were pronounced qualified to wear the pilot’s badge.16

Not surprisingly the graduates from these 1914-15 courses, who contributed to the raising of 1st Squadron in early 1916, required extensive training overseas before flying combat sorties.17 Whereas training at the CFS in Australia remained practically stagnant since the war’s beginning, RFC pilots were, by the beginning of 1916, receiving substantially more sophisticated preparation before seeing combat. From September 1915 the Military Aeronautics Directorate began reorganising the RFC’s training establishment to reflect both the more sophisticated operational roles aircraft were assuming and the RFC’s increased reliance on civilian volunteers. It established an aerial gunnery school in November 1915 and in the same month, a wireless school for observers. In December the RFC opened its first School of Military Aeronautics at Reading to provide a two-month course on aviation theory before practical instruction.18 Exporting these innovations to the empire proved beyond the War Office’s capacity. As the Army Council advised the Indian government in October 1915, its plans for a flying school ‘should be dropped’. Training in the United Kingdom had ‘fully occupied’ all available instructors and, given the great distances, it would be impossible to supply colonial schools with the mechanical parts that regularly required replacement.19 The War Office would make an exception with Canada, establishing three wings and various schools there in 1917-18. Crucially, and in contrast to the Australasian dominions, ‘RFC Canada’ could sustain itself with American industry and reach the principal war theatre in relatively little time.20

Difficulties procuring equipment proved the main constraint on Point Cook’s activities during the war. Australia had started a flying corps and school without an aviation industry and despite Pearce’s keen support, attempts to develop one proved abortive.21 This obliged the Australian government to rely on the War Office which,

16 Lawrence Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer: An Autobiography, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1972, p. 42. 17 Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Salmond, CO 5th Wing RFC to Major-General Arthur Lynden-Bell, CGS, MEF, 18 April 1916, NAUK AIR1/2283/209/75/4. 18 ‘Notes on training, home, Part 1’, p. 10, 13 and 28, NAUK AIR1/676/21/13/1773. 19 Bertram Cubitt, Secretary, War Office to the Under Secretary of State for India, 2 October 1915, NAUK AIR1/140/15/40/306. 20 War Office correspondence regarding the appointment of an RFC liasion to Canada to establish training units in ‘Précis of files on training, 1910-1918’, NAUK AIR1/683/21/13/2234. 21 Department of Defence minute, 3 February 1917, NAA A1952 E524/10/408. 101 throughout the war, struggled with aircraft supply difficulties itself.22 The Department’s initial order for an additional Boxkite in June 1914 took two years to arrive.23 By this time it was obsolete as a trainer, but the receipt of contradictory and incorrect advice complicated the selection of a replacement. In December 1915, on the advice of an Australian test pilot who worked for the Admiralty, the High Commissioner’s office recommended that the Department order American-built Curtiss JN4 machines.24 When it did so, Reynolds (in touch with the War Office) recommended that instead it order Maurice Farman ‘Longhorns’.25 The Department changed its order accordingly, only to learn in December 1916 that the RFC had abandoned the ‘Longhorn’ five months previously (just after Reynolds recommended it).26 Consequently, it ordered the current generation trainers (Maurice Farman ‘Shorthorns’ and DH6s) but discovered four months later (April 1917) that they had still not shipped and had, in any case, been superseded by the 504.27 Reynolds advised Harrison to purchase these, but the CFS’s commandant refused, knowing that Australian manufacturers could not produce the rotary engines Avro’s trainer used.28 Harrison reiterated his order for the superseded ‘Shorthorn’, which finally shipped at the end of June 1917. Farcically, they arrived at Point Cook with broken and missing parts and propellers that did not match the engines.29

The arrival of Point Cook graduates in Britain with the new AFC squadrons in early 1917 prompted alarm among British and AIF authorities. The RFC’s leadership considered them so poorly trained they needed to start the British course from scratch

22 For studies of problems experienced by the British aircraft industry during the Great War see: Peter Fearon, ‘The Formative Years of the British Aircraft Industry, 1913-1924’, Business History Review, volume 43, number 4, 1969, 476-95; Hugh Driver, The Birth of Military Aviation: Britain, 1903-1914, Boydell Press, Suffolk, 1997, pp. 188-248; John Morrow, The Great War in the Air: Military Aviation from 1909 to 1921, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1993, passim. 23 Department of Defence minute, 12 June 1914, NAA A1952 E524/10/408; Colonel Hubert Foster, CGS to Thomas Trumble, Acting Secretary, Department of Defence, 6 June 1916, NAA A1952 E524/10/408. 24 Reynolds to Trumble, 4 November 1915, NAA A1952 E524/10/408; High Commissioner’s Office to the Department of Defence, 30 December 1915, NAA A1952 E524/10/408. The test pilot was Sydney Pickles. He had enlisted in the RNAS in August 1914 but resigned his commission in July 1915 and thereafter worked for the Admiralty as a civilian. 25 High Commissioner’s Office to the Department of Defence, 16 June 1916, NAA A1952 E524/10/408. 26 High Commissioner office to the Department of Defence, 5 December 1916, NAA A1952 E524/10/408. 27 Official Secretary to the High Commissioner, Sir Robert Muirhead Collins to the Secretary, Prime Minister’s Department, 18 April 1917, NAA A1952 E524/10/408. 28 Captain Eric Harrison, Chief Instructor, Central Flying School to Trumble, 17 April 1917, NAA MP367/1 600/4/15. 29 Harrison to Trumble, 1 November 1917, NAA A1952 E524/10/408. 102 and suggested again that Australian authorities abandon training to ‘save time and expense’.30 The AIF’s command agreed, also noting that a number of Point Cook candidates had failed to meet the RFC’s medical standards.31 When quizzed about this Harrison acknowledged that, despite requesting it, he had been unable to get advice from the War Office about how to select suitable candidates for flying.32 Birdwood ordered that in future the AFC would draw all its recruits from AIF units overseas and train them entirely in Britain and Egypt.33

Believing the closure of Point Cook would ‘cripple’ the future development of military aviation in Australia, the Defence Department broke with usual policy and offered AFC flying officers, trained at the CFS, for attachment to RFC squadrons.34 The British reply was an unequivocal indictment of the Australian training system’s redundancy. Although the War Office ‘highly appreciated’ Australia’s offer, it described the ‘quality’ of training at Point Cook as ‘not sufficiently up to date to enable pilots to be used in war without very considerable further instruction which [the] Royal Flying Corps would find great difficulty arranging.’35 It advised the Commonwealth government to completely reorganise its training system along British lines.36 The matter went before the Prime Minister, William Morris Hughes. He accepted the need to upgrade Point Cook to RFC standards but insisted – contrary to Birdwood’s wishes – that in the meantime, the School remain open to provide elementary training for AFC reinforcements, ‘especially with the object of weeding out unsuitable candidates’.37 From a military perspective, this would prove pointless. The 28 Point Cook graduates who embarked from Australia during 1918 to complete ‘a more advanced course’ in Britain (as Pearce described it) actually arrived overseas

30 Military Board minutes, 13 July 1917, NAA A2653 1917. 31 Colonel Thomas Griffiths, Commandant, Administrative HQ, AIF to Lieutenant-Colonel John Whitham, Assistant Adjutant General, AIF, 16 May 1917, AWM10 4343/32/1; A. G. Butler, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914-1918, Volume III, Problems and Services, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1943, p. 413. 32 Harrison to Foster, 13 June 1917, NAA MP367/1 527/5/130. 33 Griffiths to Whitham, 16 May 1917, AWM10 4343/32/1; Whitham to Griffiths, 22 May 1917, AWM10 4343/32/1; Walter Long, Secretary of State for the Colonies to Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson, Governor-General of Australia, 19 June 1917, NAA A11803 1917/89/96. 34 Department of Defence minute, 31 July 1916, NAA A2023 A38/7/333A; Ferguson to Long, 15 August 1917, NAA A11803 1917/89/96. 35 Long to Ferguson, 10 September 1917, NAA A11803 1917/89/96. 36 Long to Ferguson, 25 October 1917, NAA A11803 1917/89/96. 37 Ferguson to Long, 17 October 1917, NAA A11803 1917/89/96. 103 with no advanced standing whatsoever.38 All had to complete the entire RAF training course alongside those who had joined the AFC from the trenches.

The overhaul of aviation training in Australia began in November 1917 with Pearce’s approval of an additional 84 hectares of land at Point Cook and a building program to provide additional workshop space and accommodation for another 40 officers. In January 1918 the Treasurer allocated funding additional to the 1917-18 aviation estimates to finance construction.39 Obtaining expert advice proved more difficult. In November 1917 the Department asked AIF HQ to send an AFC officer home to replace Harrison as commandant of the CFS together with three experienced pilots for instructional staff. Birdwood had recently sanctioned the formation of the AFC Training Wing and, according to the officer responsible for the AFC’s administration, sending an experienced squadron commander would be to ‘the detriment’ of the Australian training establishment in Britain. As this, not CFS, produced practically all the AFC’s pilots, Birdwood prudently deferred the Department’s request for three months.40 Considering the establishment of an Australian air force (see Chapter 2), AIF HQ reviewed the matter in April 1918, concluding it could now release some AFC officers. Reynolds resigned as SO for Aviation and arranged a party of AFC and RAF officers to return to Australia via North America to evaluate the local aero-industries and training establishments.41 He also drew up a proposal for a new Australian training system, recommending the establishment of an school, a School of Military Aeronautics and specialist schools to teach gunnery, artillery observation and technical trades, all ‘with exactly similar training as far as possible to that in vogue in RAF institutions in

38 ‘Australian Flying Corps. The Training of Cadets’, The West Australian (Perth), 9 April 1918, p. 4. 39 Legge to Trumble, 28 November 1917, NAA A2023 A38/5/46; Report by Director-General of Works, P. T. Owen, 15 December 1917, NAA A2023 A38/5/46; Walter Single, Sectretary, Works and Railways Department to Trumble, 23 January 1918, NAA A2023 A38/5/46. 40 ‘Memo in regard to appointments for Central Flying School, Australia…’, 11 January 1918, AWM15 2305/11; Colonel Thomas Dodds, Deputy Adjutant General, AIF to Administrative HQ, AIF, 14 January 1918, AWM15 2305/2/1. 41 Apart from Reynolds, the party included a new commandant for the CFS (Major William Sheldon – previously CO 2nd Squadron), three instructors ( Roland Oakes and Frederick Sheppard and Captain Frank Tregilles), an Australian Army Medical Corps officer who had studied aviation medicine at the RAF’s medical facility at Hampstead (Major Henry Turnbull) and three RAF officers with experience in aviation logistics, theoretical aeronautics instruction and combat leadership. The RAF officers included Major Lee Murray, a Victorian who had commanded an Aircraft Park and worked as a test pilot; Captain Patrick Gordon Taylor, another Australian who had flown with the RFC since August 1916; and Lieutenant Haniel Kilby, assistant instructor at No. 2 School of Military Aeronautics at Oxford since September 1917. Reynolds to OC, Transport Section, Administrative HQ AIF, AIF, 7 May 1918, AWM10 4242/7/5. 104 England’. He reckoned the Commonwealth could turn out 100 pilots per month with sound elementary training, who would then undergo advanced instruction in the AFC’s training squadrons in Britain.42 The Air Ministry’s Director of Air Organisation enthusiastically endorsed the proposal but Pearce considered it too ambitious for the time being.43

Indeed, when Reynolds’ ‘aviation party’ arrived in Australia at the beginning of August 1918 its meeting with the Defence Minister produced a more modest scheme, capable of training 25 cadets at a time. Under revised plans, three new AIF units formed at Point Cook: No. 1 Home Training Squadron AFC, No. 1 Home Training Depot and an Aircraft Repair Section. The Department demurred on the point of establishing an officer cadet school, but established a School of Military Aeronautics at Point Franklin under the command of Lieutenant Haneil Kilby, an Australian RAF officer who had taught at the No. 2 School of Military Aeronautics at Oxford.44 Although smaller in size than Reynolds’ proposal, the federal government’s vision for its new training establishment was altogether more ambitious. Whereas Reynolds had envisaged cadets receiving thorough but elementary instruction in Australia and then completing advanced training in Britain, the government announced that its new training system ‘will produce pilots completely trained and ready for service abroad’.45

Despite still waiting for a shipment of modern aircraft the Air Ministry had promised several months earlier, in October 1918 the Department called applicants for the new training program. 46 The first round of applications were due to the CGS on 11 November 1918 and following this, commandants were to forward applications from suitable candidates each fortnight ‘to enable a regular supply of Flight Cadets to be maintained’.47 The end of the war meant this ambitious scheme never started. In March 1919 the Department closed the School of Military Aeronautics and the CFS

42 Reynolds to the Secretary of the Air Board, John Baird, 23 May 1918, AWM10 4242/7/5. 43 Brigadier-General B. Andrew, Director of Air Organisation to Administrative HQ, AIF, June 1918, NAA MP367/1 559/28/310; Griffiths to Trumble, 3 June 1918, AWM10 4242/7/5; Trumble to Administrative HQ, AIF, 10 September 1918, AWM10 4242/7/5. 44 Department of Defence minute, 5 August 1918, NAA MP367/1 559/28/310; Draft military order, ‘Central Flying School’, nd (a slip of paper attached to this draft MO by Legge is dated 6 September 1918), NAA MP367/1 559/28/310. 45 CPD, Volume LXXXV, p. 6,349. 46 Andrew Fisher, High Commissioner to the United Kingdom to Trumble, 25 April 1918, NAA A1952 E524/10/408. 47 Military Order 505/1918, NAA MP367/1 559/28/334. 105 units spent the rest of 1919 doing what instructor Lieutenant Roland Oakes described as ‘all sorts of unimportant odd jobs’ – mainly survey flights and tours to promote peace loans.48 Although evidence for later courses is incomplete, by the Armistice it appears that the CFS had completed eleven courses (including one advanced course), providing around 150 pupils with varying levels of instruction.49

The general staff disbanded the CFS, Aviation Instructional Staff and the remaining training units on 31 . Until the establishment of the RAAF, Point Cook served as the Australian Air Corps’ base, where a tiny establishment – nine officers and 70 other ranks – maintained a nucleus of experience and equipment.50 Despite the significance the Department had attributed to it for Australia’s future aviation development, the CFS had come full circle from its conception in early 1914.

Aside from briefly entertaining plans in 1915 to establish training flights in each state, the Commonwealth focused its efforts entirely on Point Cook.51 Nonetheless, two features of Australian society at the time made it likely that lower levels of government and civilian organisations would also endeavour to raise and train airmen. Since the replacement of British garrison units in the 1870s with a volunteer and, later militia, force, Australians had come to associate defence with civic responsibility.52 At the time of federation in 1901, fewer than 1,500 of Australia’s 29,000 soldiers served in a professional, full-time capacity.53 The new dominion relied overwhelmingly on militia for defence, and would continue to do so until after the Second World War. Secondly, the pre-federation military system whereby the colonies raised, offered and administered their own military units for

48 Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, Allen & Unwin, Crowe’s Nest, 1991, p. 14. 49 RAAF Historical Section, Units of the Royal Australian Air Force: a Concise History, AGPS, Canberra, 1995, p. 137. Though a call for applicants was published in Military Orders (MO 274 of 1918, 22 June 1918) for a 12th Course there is no evidence that this course graduated any pilots or, indeed, commenced. 50 Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, p. 17-18 51 ‘Aviation in Australia. “Flights” to be Established’, The Advertiser (Adelaide), 7 December 1914, p. 9. 52 Peter Stanley, ‘Soldiers and fellow countrymen in colonial Australia’, in Michael McKernan and Margaret Browne (eds), Australia: Two Centuries of War and Peace, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1988, p. 89; Craig Wilcox, For Hearths and Homes: Citizen Soldiering in Australia, 1854- 1945, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1998; Richard A. Preston and Ian Wards, ‘Military and Defence Development in Canada, Australia and News Zealand: a Three Way Comparison’, War & Society, volume 5, number 1, May 1987, pp. 1-21. 53 Chris Clark, RAAF Support for an Australian Maritime Strategy Before World War II, Air Power Development Centre, Canberra, 2012. 106 overseas campaigns still lived in recent memory at the time of the Great War.54 Indeed, in 1914 Australia’s military districts roughly conformed to the colonial/state boundaries.

These influences appear to have been at work in late 1914 when militia officer and aviation enthusiast Major Thomas MacLeod established a citizen’s aviation arm in Brisbane ‘for the patriotic purpose of training local men in the building and flying of aeroplanes…for defensive purposes or active service’.55 Funded by public subscription, MacLeod purchased an old Caudron biplane from the barnstorming circuit and established the ‘Queensland Volunteer Flying Corps’.56 During 1915 he trained eight ‘cadets’ – an undertaking the federal authorities deliberately distanced themselves from, insisting the group remove ‘corps’ from their title (MacLeod changed it to ‘civilians’) and refusing to accept the ‘Volunteers’ directly into the AFC. 57 Through its agent-general in London, Queensland’s government arranged for the War Office to accept them into the RFC. After completing the entire British training program eight qualified as pilots and the other as an equipment officer. All served with RFC squadrons overseas.58

Inspired by the Queensland initiative, in mid-1915 NSW Premier William Holman convinced his government to establish a flying school near Richmond for the ‘training of aviators whose services could be made use of for war purposes’.59 Pearce initially opposed the proposal arguing that it intruded on defence, a constitutionally established federal responsibility. After an appeal by Holman that deliberately obscured the proposed school’s military function, Pearce relented – though with several caveats.60 He was emphatic that New South Wales’ school could not provide ‘instruction in military subjects’ and that the Defence Department would not consider

54 Glen St. J. Barclay, The Empire is Marching: a Study of the Military Effort of the British Empire 1800-1945, Weidenfield and Nicolson, London, 1976, pp. 12-15. 55 ‘An Attractive Entertainment’, The Brisbane Courier, 30 January 1915, p. 5. 56 ‘Aeroplane Fund’, The Brisbane Courier, 14 May 1915, p. 8. 57 Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates [hereafter CPD], 17 December 1914, Volume LI, p. 2,217. 58 ‘With Our Boys. The QVFC Members Do Well’, The Brisbane Courier, 25 August 1916, p. 7; Biographical notes on MacLeod, AWM43 A550. 59 Arthur Cutler, Chief Engineer, Public Works Department, report for the Premier, 24 August 1916, SRNSW 4/6254.2; Holman, notes for speech to Senate, no date, SRNSW 4/6254.2. At this meeting which probably occurred between July and October 1915, Holman proposed the School be attached to the University. In his speech he cited the Queensland initiative and referred to the difficulties faced by Australians wishing to serve in the flying services. The University Senate subsequently decided that it could not afford to be involved, whereby Holman proposed the government fund and administer the School. 60 Holman to Pearce (draft with annotations), 3 December 1915, SRNSW, 20/12876. 107 its graduates as having equivalent qualifications with their CFS counterparts.61 AIF recruits could attend the School on leave without pay providing they understood that it did not guarantee them a commission in the AFC and that, indeed, graduates from Point Cook would have preference for positions in the flying corps.62 Considering the question of pensions for AIF pupils injured during training at the NSW school, the Department’s attitude to the state government’s initiative became clear:

They are not pressed, or even invited by the Dept to learn aviation. On the contrary, they are given leave as a favour, and the Dept has no concern with their becoming pilots. Of those who do, we take a few we can find vacancies for, as new reinforcements. This is rather a matter of gratifying the NSW govt, than a necessity.63

With this heavily qualified approval from the Commonwealth, at the beginning of 1916 Holman appointed a committee to oversee the New South Wales Aviation School’s (NSWAS) establishment. The committee’s chairman, Minister for Education Arthur Griffith, selected land at Richmond (60 kilometres northwest of Sydney) and arranged for the building of a and classrooms.64 Facing the same obstacles as the Commonwealth in obtaining aircraft from the War Office, he purchased a pair of American-built Curtiss JN4 biplanes and, through the New South Wales agent-general in London, employed two Australian-born pilots as instructors. 65

The press in other states followed New South Wales’ preparations with interest, prompting discussion in at least one other state cabinet room. The South Australian Legislative Council adopted a motion in May suggesting its government ‘establish an aviation school to prepare a corps for national defence’.66 Similar proposals followed from an Adelaide University physicist and William Goodman,

61 Pearce to Holman, 9 December 1915, SRNSW 20/12876. 62 Dodds to Colonel Gustavo Ramaciotti, Commandant, 2nd Military District, 31 July 1916, NAA A2023 A38/7/434. 63 Department of Defence minute, 15 May 1917, NAA A11803 1917/89/303. 64 The site, 327 acres in the parish of Ham Common already had an association with flying. In 1912, William Ewart Hart, a dentist from Parramatta who earned the first Royal Aero Club certificate officiated in Australia by the Aerial League, set up a makeshift aerodrome here. Shortly before the war French aviator Maurice Guillaux tested his Bleriot XI at Ham Common before carrying the first airmail between Sydney and Melbourne in July. John Claude Marduel took over the aerodrome and, later in 1914, carried out joy flights from there. Neville Hayes, Billy Stutt and the Richmond Flyboys, Pacific Downunder, Cowes, 2008, pp. 7-9. 65 ‘Flying School. Airmen for Australia’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 June 1916, p. 18. The Agent- General secured the services of Lieutenant Andrew Lang, an Australian who had joined the RFC, and Mr William Hart, a pilot for the Royal Aircraft Factory. 66 ‘Aviation’, The Advertiser (Adelaide), 20 May 1916, p. 10. 108 Manager of the Tramways Trust Commission. In August 1916 Premier Crawford Vaughan acknowledged to journalists ‘a project on foot’, explaining that his government contemplated an aviation school for Adelaide; something ‘not altogether a defence matter’ but nonetheless ‘naturally of service to defence’. On the South Australian cabinet’s behalf, Goodman inspected the Richmond school in mid-August and probably attended the opening ceremony.67 In early 1917 the government sent him on an inspection tour of Canada, USA and Europe to report on, among other things, the operation of aviation schools.68 The project, however, did not survive South Australia’s change of government in mid-1917, by which time the state’s politicians may, in any case, have become aware of growing problems associated with New South Wales’ school.

Premier Holman opened the NSWAS on 28 August 1916 at a luncheon and flying display for 423 invited guests and some 4,000 spectators. In contrast to his deliberately vague explanation of the School’s function to Pearce, Holman made it clear in his speech that the 100 students it would produce each year were intended to ‘help to inflict the final defeat on the enemies of Great Britain and of the human race’. He and Griffith envisaged a force of 1,000 New South Wales-trained aviators bombing bridges and ‘fortresses round Berlin’.69 Holman went further than political hyperbole, committing his government to match public subscriptions for ‘gift battleplanes’ and supply each aircraft funded by the people of New South Wales to the British government with a pilot from the School’s inaugural course.70 The committee had conceived the idea shortly before the School’s opening, assuming that the School’s instructors could train pilots to a war-flying standard.71 It advised

67 ‘Aviation School for South Australia’, The Register, (Adelaide), 22 August 1916, p.4. 68 ‘Personal’, The Advertiser (Adelaide), 24 February 1917, p. 6. 69 The Daily Telegraph, 29 August 1916 [clipping filed in SRNSW 4/6254.2]; ‘Aviation. The State School. Official Opening’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 August 1916, p. 6. 70 ‘Aviation. The State School. Official Opening’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 August 1916, p. 6. Earlier in 1916, the New Zealand born rubber magnate C. Alma Baker had established a public subscription fund in Australia, through which citizens and could purchase ‘gift battleplanes’ for the war effort. Between 1916 and 1918, Australians collectively subscribed £109,500 to fund the purchase of 41 aircraft for the scheme. Keith Isaacs, noting that archival evidence relating to gift aircraft is practically non-existent, has used photographs and newspaper articles to identify several other machines privately funded by Australians. For a list of them and facsimile documents relating to the fund’s origins and administration see C. Alma Baker (ed.), Souvenir of Ninety-Four Gift Battleplanes which Helped us to Victory, August 4th, 1914 to November 11th, 1918, The Field Press, London, c. 1920; Keith Isaacs, Military Aircraft of Australia 1909-1918, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1971, pp. 174-177. 71 Cutler, report for the Premier, 24 August 1916, SRNSW 4/6254.2 109 Holman to seek agreement from the Defence Department and the War Office before announcing this scheme, advice the Premier disregarded.72

The opening ceremony provides unequivocal evidence that the New South Wales government intended its aviation school to produce military pilots for active service, independently of the Commonwealth. Recognising this, the following day the Sydney Morning Herald predicted that it would antagonise federal authorities and dismissed the whole venture as a ‘mere electioneering placard’.73 Questioned about the ‘objects of the establishment of this school’ in parliament, Holman claimed that graduation from the NSWAS course ‘will obviate the necessity of undergoing preliminary examination at the hands of the military authorities, who will accept them as having been so far prepared’.74

In fact, he had no such guarantee from either the federal authorities or the War Office. In October 1916, with the first course nearly finished, the Premier’s Office offered the War Office eight pilots to fly the gift battleplanes that New South Wales citizens had funded.75 Previously chastised by the governor-general for communicating directly with the Australian states, the War Office referred the matter to the Australian federal government, which had recently indicated it was struggling to find enough airmen for the three squadrons it offered to raise in late 1916.76 Agreeing to examine the 19 NSWAS graduates, the CFS’s chief instructor, Eric Harrison, considered 10 suitable for commission in the AFC.77 They joined 4th Squadron, forming at Point Cook. The Department permitted the others to embark for Britain to join the RFC; eight did so, supported by a stipend from the NSW government that would sustain them through their training. The final graduate remained at the NSWAS as an instructor. In future, Pearce insisted, ‘all persons obtained in Australia for [the] Royal Flying Corps should be selected’ by the federal and not state authorities. As far as he was concerned, ‘it is the sole province of the

72 C. H. Hay, Secretary, Premier’s Department to Cutler, 21 August 1916, SRNSW 4/6254.2. Holman admitted that he was yet to secure the agreement of federal and imperial authorities in parliament on 29 August 1916. See also clipping from the State Parliament Hansard, 29 August 1916, SRNSW 4/6254.2. 73 ‘Aviation and the State’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 August 1916, p. 6. 74 Extract from the State Parliament Hansard, 29 August 1916, SWNSW 4/6254.2. 75 Premier’s Department minute, 12 October 1916, SRNSW 4/6254.2 76 Eric Andrews, The Anzac Illusion: Anglo-Australian Relations During World War I, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, p. 88; Andrew Bonar Law, Secretary of State for the Colonies, to Prime Minister William Hughes and Pearce, 11 November 1916, NAA A11803 1914/89/54. 77 Harrison to Trumble, 2 January 1917, NAA A2023 A38/7/434. 110 Commonwealth Government to raise troops and not the states’.78 Clearly, now that Australia had four squadrons on active service Pearce wanted first right of refusal on Australia’s aspirant pilots for the AFC.

The gainful employment of all 19 graduates gave the School’s Committee of Control cause for optimism. Executive member Arthur Cutler declared the first course ‘an unqualified success’ and claimed that the Commonwealth’s acceptance of 10 pupils ‘permanently established’ the School’s ‘military significance’.79 He had spoken prematurely, though, as the unique conditions of late 1916 when the federal military authorities struggled to raise two AFC squadrons from scratch were not to be repeated. For efficiency, in 1917-18 the focus on training and recruitment for the AFC would shift overseas. The NSWAS’ second course produced 12 graduates in April 1917 but the military authorities initially declined to offer any commissions in the AFC, explaining that there ‘were not enough vacancies’. The Department would accept them as air mechanics for the AFC or, alternatively, offer them to the War Office for the RFC.80 Considering service as a mechanic a waste of their skills, the NSW cadets opted for the second course.81 Holman asked the Prime Minister to offer them to the War Office for service in the RFC, hoping for a permanent arrangement for the acceptance of New South Wales-trained aviators into the British flying services.82

It was the end of June 1917 before the Commonwealth reached an agreement with the War Office.83 The state government attempted to hurry the process along (against Pearce’s earlier instructions) by communicating with London directly, but the British authorities refused to deal with it regarding a matter of federal jurisdiction.84 The agreement, which Holman considered ‘a partially satisfactory solution’, involved NSWAS graduates enlisting in the RFC as civilians and completing the entire British

78 Department of Defence minute, 9 January 1917, NAA A2023 A38/7/434; Department of Defence to Long, 6 February 1917, A11803 1917/89/303. One of the 19 graduates from the first course, David Williams, stayed on as an instructor to replace Lang, who also joined the AFC. 79 Cutler, Report on the School from its inception to the end of the first course for the Minister for Education, Augustus James, 2 January 1917, SRNSW 4/6254.2. 80 D. H. Russell to Holman, 4 May 1917, SRNSW 4/6254.2. 81 Gordon Oxenham, NSWAS pupil to Acting Premier of New South Wales, George Fuller, 23 May 1917, SRNSW 4/6254.2 82 Hay to Hughes, 12 June 1917, SRNSW 4/6254.2. 83 Long to Ferguson, 28 June 1917, NAA A11803 191789/303. 84 Holman to Long, 16 June 1917, SRNSW 4/6254.2; Long to Holman, 22 June 1917, SRNSW 4/6254.2; Holman to Long, 27 June 1917, SRNSW 4/6254.2; Long to Holman, 29 June, SRNSW 4/6254.2. 111 training course from scratch. Responding to criticism in the press regarding this ‘solution’, Holman and the new Minister for Education, Augustus James, claimed that NSWAS cadets entered the RFC ‘in good stead’ to quickly pass the British courses.85 James claimed that Richmond graduates passed the RFC’s four-month cadet wing course ‘in less than a fortnight’.86

The experiences of the NSWAS graduates who embarked to join the RFC in October 1917 actually suggest the contrary. After completing the second course in April, Raynes Royle waited at Richmond for six months while the federal authorities negotiated with the War Office. He finally began training with the RFC in January 1918 and qualified for active service on 21 September 1918. He thought his training at Richmond provided him some additional confidence but admitted that, nevertheless, he and the other NSWAS cadets had to ‘begin all over again on the elementary machines’. Royle, writing to the agent-general and possibly sensitive to the fact the state government had provided him extensive financial support, also considered the Richmond training useful for weeding out men who would make poor pilots.87 The case of his classmate, Wallace McDougall, suggests otherwise: arriving in Britain after qualifying at Richmond, RFC medical examiners deemed him unfit to be a pilot and diverted him to observer training. Despite the shorter course for observers, he did not reach the front until late September 1918.88 McDougall was not unique; other NSWAS graduates failed RFC medical examinations.89 Far from expediting their passage from civilian to service pilot, the New South Wales initiative added an unnecessary impediment. In April 1918 the Premier’s department received a report from London that, owing to poor instruction and lax discipline at Richmond,

85 ‘From report of the Premier’s Official Mission to the United Kingdom’, SRNSW 4/6254.2; Acting Sect, Premier’s Department to James, 11 June 1917, SRNSW 4/6254.2; Acting Secretary, Premier’s Department to the Under Secretary, Department of Education, 13 August 1917, SRNSW 4/6254.2. 86 ‘State Flying School. Minister’s Reply to Critic’, The Sun, 24 October 1917 [clipping in SRNSW 4/6254.2. In fact, the RFC’s cadet course was, at this time, a two-month course. See ‘Syllabus for the first two months of instruction in the RFC’s officer cadet battalion’, NAUK AIR1/130/15/40/208. 87 2nd Lieutenant Raynes Royle to Sir Charles Wade, Agent-General for New South Wales, 20 September 1918, SRNSW 4/6254.2. 88 McDougall describes his rejection as a pilot and observer training in Britain in his diary, AWM PR01381. 89 In February 1918, 12 students completed the fourth NSWAS course. Three however, failed to pass a medical examination appointed by the Department of Defence, which prevented them from embarking for Britain to enlist in the RFC. 112 NSWAS graduates ‘experience[d] considerable delay in procuring their commissions’.90

Recognising this, at the beginning of August 1918 the Air Council informed Australian authorities that it ‘would gladly accept up to 100 pupils per month from Australia for training as pilots in Egypt’ but only if they had not previously trained at a civilian school.91 Private training on outdated machines with redundant instructional methods had proven counter-productive; it produced pilots with ‘bad habits’.92 Coincidentally, that same month the Defence Department reneged its standing offer to accept NSWAS graduates into the AFC as mechanics, having received word from Birdwood that the AFC had ample mechanics overseas and required no further reinforcements from Australia.93 Both routes to the air war from Richmond were, henceforth, closed.

Refusing to accept the NSWAS’s redundancy, Holman and James spent the war’s final months appealing to the Air Council through official channels (that is, the Commonwealth) and the agent-general.94 The School remained open until the Armistice, having commenced its sixth course in August 1918. With cabinet approval Holman pressed ahead with plans to double its output, telling Pearce that he was prepared to go to ‘any expense if we can get a permanent basis of understanding as to employment of men’.95 His Minister for Education, however, would not commit to the purchase of additional equipment until they achieved ‘some definite arrangement’ regarding the employment of Richmond graduates.96 It was the kind of conundrum that had plagued the School since its beginning and that the agent-general had aptly described as ‘worthy of comic opera’.97 Twelve days before the Armistice, Holman asked the Acting Prime Minister to cable the Air Council offering, on a permanent

90 Premier’s Office minute, 16 April 1918, no author, SRNSW 4/6254.2. This report may have come from the Agent-General as it implies that the author had met with Richmond graduates in London. It claims that ‘information has been volunteered’ for private communication to the Premier. 91 Long to Ferguson, 24 August 1918, NAA A11803 1918/89/276. 92 Pearce to James, 5 September 1918, SRNSW 4/6254.2. 93 Minute prepared by the Secretary, NSW Premier’s Department, 21 October 1918, SRNSW 4/6254.2; James to Holman, 27 August 1918, SRNSW 4/6254.2. 94 The Secretary, NSW Premier’s Department to James, 12 September 1918, SRNSW 20/12876; James to Holman, 16 Sept 1918, SRNSW 20/12876. 95 ‘State Aviation School. Enlargement Scheme’, The Daily Telegraph, 7 May 1918 [clipping in SRNSW 4/6254.2; Minute prepared by the Secretary, NSW Premier’s Department, 21 October 1918, SRNSW 4/6254.2. 96 NSW Premier’s Department minute, 18 October 1918, SRNSW 4/6254.2. 97 The Acting Secretary, NSW Premier’s Department to Board, 25 October 1917, SRNSW 4/6254.2. 113 basis, 12 NSWAS pilots every three months.98 Pearce stopped the cable at Melbourne, reasoning that the Air Council had already been clear about the conditions under which it would accept future enlistments and citing the Armistice, which in any case made further offers redundant. Had the war continued, it seems unlikely the RAF – producing an average of 1,200 students per month during 1918 – would have been compelled to make an exception for Richmond’s four students each month.99 During six courses, the NSWAS had instructed 71 students; 20 had joined the AFC and 41 went to the RFC.100

The Department of Education attempted to remodel the NSWAS in early 1919 from its prior function (‘solely for the training of pilots for war purposes’) to a civilian flying school.101 Lack of public interest prevented future courses commencing and, despite again employing aviation as political policy at the March 1920 elections, the Holman government lost office to the Labor government led by John Storey. At the 1920 Premier’s Conference Storey supported a motion for federal control of aviation and, later that year, began negotiations to sell the Richmond site to the Department of Defence.102 The Commonwealth purchased the aerodrome in March 1923 and established an RAAF base there in 1925, which still exists.

The redundancy of aviation training in Australia came about not only because of difficulties procuring aeroplanes and expertise but also because of a realisation among the AIF’s staff that it was impractical to reinforce four squadrons in the field from Australia. A lack of experience with aviation meant that Australian authorities only slowly came to appreciate the unique requirements, in personnel, of a flying corps. For 1916-17, the Australian service squadrons struggled to get adequate reinforcements and, even during the war’s final year, found it difficult to find candidates suitable for flight training. Despite the thorough organisation of recruitment and training overseas for the AFC, the Australian air arm never became truly self-sufficient or, indeed, even reliably capable of reinforcing itself.

98 The Secretary, NSW Premier’s Department to William Alexander Watt, Acting Prime Minister, 30 October 1918, SRNSW 4/6254.2. 99 Wise, Canadian airmen and the First World War, pp. 117-118. 100 Hayes, Billy Stutt and the Richmond Flyboys, passim. 101 ‘Richmond Flying School’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 February 1919, p. 6; Hayes, Billy Stutt and the Richmond Flyboys, p. 223. 102 Premier’s conference reports, May 1921, NAA A2487 1919/4845, p. 41; Hayes, Billy Stutt and the Richmond flyboys, p. 230. 114 The Australian government had accepted the War Office’s invitation to form 1st Squadron at the end of 1915 with a barely adequate pool of trained personnel. Bound to four years in the militia (and not the AIF), only 12 Point Cook graduates of the required 18 pilots volunteered for the squadron.103 The shortfall forced the government to commission every available civilian aviator it could find, compromising the criteria by which it selected candidates for Point Cook. Whereas applicants to the CFS had to be permanent or militia officers with at least two years commissioned service and under 26 years of age, the Department hastily attested Royal Aero Club certificate holders Andrew Badgery and Arthur Geere (both 27 years old) and William Hart, 31, dentist who had qualified for the first Australian pilot’s license in 1911 but, like the others, had no soldiering experience.104 1st Squadron’s requisite seven observers came from permanent forces officers who volunteered and received superficial instruction at Point Cook before embarkation. Finding experienced tradesmen in the AIF’s camps proved relatively easy with the exception of riggers and wireless operators, which the navy also eagerly sought.105

Australian military authorities initially assumed that Point Cook could sustain 1st Squadron and possibly another unit with adequate pilot reinforcements.106 Regarding mechanics, authorities in Melbourne anticipated a bi-monthly reinforcement of 16 tradesmen (of specific types: two fitters, one electrician etc.) sufficient.107 As Richard Williams noted however, the ‘basis of this reinforcement appeared to be a general Army rule’ and did not meet the unique requirements of a flying squadron.108 Indeed, shortly after arriving in Egypt, 1st Squadron’s CO requested a reinforcement of completely different size and composition, which took

103 The CFS course graduates who volunteered for 1st Squadron included: Captain William Sheldon, Lieutenant Allan Murray Jones, Lieutenant Alexander Macnaughton, Lieutenant Charles Brookes, Lieutenant David Manwell, Lieutenant Eric Roberts, Captain Richard Williams, Lieutenant Lawrence Wackett, Lieutenant Roderick Ross, Lieutenant Frank McNamara. Also, Lieutenants Charles Merett and Alfred Ellis, who had enlisted in the RNAS in January after graduating the CFS also volunteered. The third flight commander was Australian Captain Oswald Watt, who secured a transfer from the French flying service to the AFC. 104 Military Order 381/1914 NAA A2023 A38/6/70. 105 Richard Williams, These are Facts: the Autobiography of Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams, KBE, CB, DSO, Australian War Memorial and Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977, p. 42. 106 Department of Defence minute, 21 November 1916, NAA A2023 A38/7/333A. 107 Foster to Commandant, 3rd Military District, 29 March 1916, NAA A2023 A38/8/810. 108 Williams, These are Facts, pp. 53-54. 115 the general staff almost two months to muster and embark.109 This appears in hindsight an early indication of the inefficiencies associated with reinforcing a unit in the field from Australia and the lack of experience Australian military authorities had in administering a flying service.

To raise two new squadrons in Australia in the second half of 1916 the Department changed the CFS’ entrance criteria to make graduates liable for overseas service and shortened the course to increase the School’s output. Nonetheless, the government had to concede in October 1916 that the new service squadrons would embark incomplete and partially trained.110 3rd Squadron left Australia that month with half its establishment of officers while 4th Squadron embarked in January 1917 with a full establishment, but only because civilian graduates from the NSWAS met the deficit. In both cases, AIF camps provided ample mechanics, though they received minimal training at Point Cook before embarkation.111 Indeed, the Defence Department’s sudden decision to raise two more squadrons in Australia failed to consider the inadequacy of the CFS’s facilities. Arriving there in October 1916 with hundreds of others to join 3rd and 4th Squadrons, James Ross described it as a ‘fearful camp’, the ‘worst’ he had ever seen: it had no showers or ‘much tucker’ and with few roads, quickly became a quagmire. ‘They have taken a lot of men and can’t cope with them – that’s the trouble’.112 Fortunately the Defence Department decided to raise 2nd Squadron in Egypt from volunteers in AIF units and a nucleus of experienced officers from 1st Squadron. Here too, however, authorities struggled to procure enough volunteers, light horse commanders being reluctant to lose good men.113 2nd Squadron left Egypt for Britain in December 1916 79 short of its establishment strength.114

109 AIF HQ, Egypt to Department of Defence, 5 July 1916, NAA A2023 A38/8/810; Foster to Trumble, 24 July 1916, NAA A2023 A38/8/810. 110 Ferguson to Bonar Law, 3 October 1916, NAA A11803 1914/89/54. 111 H. N. Wrigley, The Battle Below Being the History of No. 3 Squadron Australian Flying Corps, Errol G. Knox, Sydney, 1935, p. 20. 112 James Ross to family, 5 October 1916, AWM 3DRL/1298. 113 Commandant, AIF HQ Egypt to Major-General Henry Chauvel, GOC AIF Egypt, 11 November 1916, AWM22 31/2/2005. The experiences of Trooper Verner Knuckey corroborate with Chauvel’s suspiscion that light horse commanders were reluctant to authorise the transfer of experienced soldiers. Knuckey’s application to transfer to the flying corps was delayed by the CO of his unit. Private Verner Knuckey, diary, book 4, p. 11 and pp. 17 and 18, AWM PR03193. 114 Paine to HQ, Anzac Mounted Division, 16 December 1916, AWM22 31/2/2005. 116 It appears that raising and training the three new squadrons during the latter part of 1916 and early 1917 completely consumed the attention of the Department and AIF authorities overseas.115 There is no evidence that either considered the provision of reinforcements for 1st Squadron which, after commencing operations in Egypt in June 1916, received no flying reinforcements from Australia.116 Attached RFC officers initially made up the shortfall but in April 1917, the squadron received orders originating from the Australian government that ‘all Imperial officers’ needed to be replaced from the AIF.117 At the same time, Administrative HQ, AIF in London determined that in future the AFC training squadrons in Britain would supply 1st Squadron’s pilots as needed. It refused to permit a reserve and even ordered AIF authorities in Egypt to break with RFC policy and use surplus AFC pilots as observers.118 These decisions proved detrimental for 1st Squadron, causing a shortage of airmen during the 1917 Gaza campaigns and forcing the squadron to keep exhausted officers flying long after they needed a rest. By mid-July RFC staff in Egypt predicted that unless the AIF organised ‘a sound system for the supply of officer reinforcements’, 1st Squadron would be so reduced as to ‘altogether cripple’ its operational capacity.119 It took Australian staff in Egypt over three months – until early August – to convince Administrative HQ, AIF to authorise the training of a pool of reserve pilots in Egypt. Another four months passed before the situation had been rectified; it was December 1917 before the AFC in the Middle East had sound arrangements for recruiting and training reinforcements and an adequate reserve.120

Three factors coalesced to cause this reckless neglect of an Australian unit in the field. In the broadest sense it reflected the haphazard manner in which Australian authorities had expanded the AIF – not just the flying corps – in 1916 as volunteers became available and with little consideration of whether voluntary enlistment could

115 Whitham, memorandum, 12 February 1917, AWM10 4301/10/81. 116 ‘Australian Flying Corps No. 1 Squadron 1st to 3rd Reinforcements Nominal Roll’, AWM8 8/4/3. 117 Pearce to Lieutenant-General Sir William Birdwood, GOC AIF, 2 February 1917 and 3 February 1917, AWM 3DRL/3376 2/13; Major Foster Rutledge, CO 1st Squadron to Lieutenant-Colonel David Fulton, Commandant, AIF HQ, Egypt, 14 April 1917, AWM22 31/4/2000. 118 Administrative HQ AIF, London, to AIF HQ, Egypt, 9 May, 10 May and 16 May 1917, AWM22 31/2/2004. According to Ross Smith, this order prohibiting the training of AFC pilot reinforcements in Egypt had originally been issued in early March 1917. Ross Smith to mother, 11 March 1917, SLSA PRG 18/17. 119 SO1, Middle East Brigade RFC to AIF HQ, Egypt, 17 July 1917, AWM22 31/9/2000. 120 Major W. D. Long for GOC RFC Middle East to AIF HQ, Egypt, 3 December 1917, AWM22 31/9/2000. 117 sustain them in the field.121 Pearce, indeed, had authorised the raising of three additional AFC service squadrons despite also being aware of the CFS’s limitations and acknowledging that mid-1916 recruitment rates could not sustain the AIF beyond the end of the year.122 Then there was the ‘administrative void’ (as John Connor has described it), into which Australian units in the Middle East fell following the move of the AIF’s administrative staff to London in April 1916.123 It left 1st Squadron at the mercy of what AIF staff in Egypt described as a ‘chaotic position of control’, in which local commanders best placed to appreciate their units’ needs had to defer to the senior AIF staff in London.124 Also at play, however, neither the military authorities in Australia nor the AIF’s administrative staff appreciated the unique personnel requirements of flying units, namely the length of time required to train and orientate replacement pilots and the brevity of their service life span.

Indeed, AIF staff first considered the issue of reinforcements for the AFC in May 1917 – just four months before the first Australian squadron deployed to the Western Front. AIF administrative staff in London had received a cable from the Defence Department offering a permanent monthly draft of four flying officers and 86 other ranks trained at Point Cook.125 Checking this figure with the War Office, the Australian staff in London discovered it was grossly inadequate. ‘Wastage’ in RFC squadrons was, at that time, around 240 per cent per annum for flying officers and 10 per cent for other ranks, a figure that Birdwood considered ‘startling’ and far in excess of what authorities in Australia had anticipated.126 Administrative HQ, AIF’s commandant, Colonel Thomas Griffiths acknowledged that ‘no steps’ had been taken to replace losses of this magnitude. The three service squadrons preparing for active service on the Western Front (2nd, 3rd and 4th) had, in fact, just ten flying officers additional to their combined establishment strength in training. Given the British statistics, the Australian units might need 120 reinforcements by the year’s end and, as it took a minimum of six moths to train a pilot, Griffiths considered it ‘most urgent

121 Christopher Pugsley, The Anzac Experience: New Zealand, Australia and Empire in the First World War, Reed, Auckland, 2004, pp. 69-70; John Connor, ‘Senator George Pearce as Defence Minister’, PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, 2004, p. 96. 122 Pearce to Prime Minister William Hughes, 20 July 1916, AWM 3DRL/2222 4/2. 123 Connor, ‘Senator George Pearce as Defence Minister’, p. 102. 124 Fulton to HQ, Middle East Brigade, RFC, 24 April 1917, AWM22 31/2/2004. 125 Ferguson to Long, 21 February 1917, NAA A11803 1917/89/96. 126 Griffiths to Whitham, 2 June 1917, AWM10 4343/32/1; Birdwood to Pearce, 20 August 1917, AWM 3DRL3376 7/1. 118 and important’ that the AIF organise a system for recruiting and training flying officers at once.127 As an expedient he promoted 120 mechanics to begin pilot training immediately.128 Considering the AFC’s longer-term requirements Griffiths calculated that 35 new pilots needed to begin training each month.129 Believing Point Cook graduates to be under-trained and sometimes medically unfit and mechanics generally unsuited to be officers, he convinced Birdwood to provide a monthly draft of volunteers from AIF units overseas.130

Griffiths’ efforts narrowly prepared the AFC for service on the Western Front and only because the RFC rushed the first cohort of reinforcements through their courses.131 By the end of 1917 things were better in hand. Despite suffering 50 per cent casualties during the battle of Cambrai, 2nd Squadron finished the offensive at full strength.132 During 1918, Griffith’s monthly draft would reliably supply the training squadrons with an adequate number of candidates for flight training. In February, he reported the AFC’s reinforcements as ‘ample’: 302 flying officers in training and another 43 in reserve. Griffiths nonetheless recommended increasing the monthly intake of volunteers from AIF units to 40, including 7 observers, to cope with the heavy fighting anticipated for the summer.133 Birdwood agreed, but was unwilling to increase the burden on units in the field; additional candidates had to come from AIF units in the United Kingdom.134

Mechanics meanwhile remained in abundance throughout 1918. With 47 per month arriving from Australia and negligible wastage in service squadrons, such a surplus existed by mid-year that Birdwood asked the government to stop sending

127 Griffiths to Whitham, 15 June 1917, AWM10 4343/32/1. 128 AIF HQ circular, 23 June 1917, AWM27 366/47. 129 Griffiths calculated that the AFC squadrons in Europe needed 30 fresh officers per month. Yet, because of the ‘constant wastage’ of training, he estimated that at least 35 should begin the course each month [Commandant AIF to AAG AIF, 15 June 1917, AWM10 4343/32/1]. Griffith’s estimation was probably a bit low. After the war, official historian H. A. Jones reported that wastage during courses had been around 28 per cent, meaning that to produce 1,300 pilots about 1,800 needed to start training. H. A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played by the Great War by the Royal Air Force, Volume V, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1935, p. 426. 130 Griffiths to Whitham, 16 May 1917, AWM10 4343/32/1; Whitham to Griffiths, 22 May 1917, AWM10 4343/32/1; Griffiths to Sir David Henderson, Director General of Military Aeronautics, 2 June 1917, AWM10 4343/32/1. 131 Brigadier-General Guy Livingstone for GOC Training Division RFC to HQ Southern Training Brigade, RFC, 14 September 1917, AWM25 81/19. 132 2nd Squadron war diary, December 1917, AWM4 8/5/5. 133 Griffiths to Dodds, 22 February 1918, AWM25 81/53 134 Dodds to Administrative HQ, AIF, 22 March 1918, AWM25 81/53. 119 them.135 Hoping to reduce the drain on his combat units, he suggested Administrative Headquarters train superfluous mechanics as flying officers.136 As Griffiths had anticipated back in mid-1917, though, it turned out the RAF considered few among the mechanics fit to be ‘trained as Officers as well as Pilots’.137 In June, AIF Headquarters ordered the training squadrons to send their ‘inefficient mechanics’ to the infantry.138

Although adequate in quantity, arrangements to reinforce the AFC from units in the field had problems that Griffiths had not anticipated. In February 1918, the RFC’s chief medical officer, Major James Birley, drew the attention of AIF authorities to the ‘somewhat high proportion of breakdowns among pilots and observers of the AFC’. He attributed this to the fact that most of them had previously ‘served many months in combatant units’, challenging the conventional notion that extensive active service suggested a resilient candidate for flight training.139 Indeed, despite devising thorough medical criteria in 1917, RFC doctors had not fully appreciated the cumulative effects of prior combat service.140 Selectors typically saw combat veterans as good candidates for flight training, while experienced soldiers tended to perceive the flying corps as a respite when they felt they were ‘losing their punch’.141 2nd Squadron’s initial officer establishment illustrates the influence of such logic: it arrived on the Western Front in September 1917 with only three of its 19 pilots having enlisted directly into the AFC. Of the remainder, seven joined the AIF in 1914 and another seven during the first half of 1915. Five had been wounded before

135 NSW Minister for Education, Augustus James to NSW Premier William Holman, 27 August 1918, SRNSW 4/6254.2. 136 Lieutenant-Colonel Horace Brinsmead, Staff Officer for Aviation, Administrative HQ, AIF, to Griffiths, 8 August 1918, AWM10 4343/14/2. 137 Griffiths to DAG AIF, 20 July 1917, AWM10 4343/32/1; Brinsmead to Griffiths, 14 August 1918, AWM10 4343/14/2. 138 5th (Training) Squadron, war diary, June 1918, AWM4 8/8/10. 139 Major James Birley, Chief Medical Officer, RFC HQ to Captain Clive Baillieu, DAAG AFC, 26 February 1918, AWM81/4. 140 ‘The examination of candidates for commissions in the Royal Flying Corps’, nd, sent to Griffiths by the Director of Air Organisation’s staff, 19 October 1917, AWM10 4343/34/24. In May 1917, William Osborne, a University of Melbourne Professor of Physiology visited London and on Pearce’s instructions inspected an RFC medical board. He acknowledged that it applied specialist criteria to selecting candidates for flight training but that its methods for testing their nervous systems were ‘crude’ and conducted by doctors without specialist knowledge in that field [Professor William Osborne to Pearce, 21 May 1917, NAA MP367/1 527/5/130]. 141 Butler, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, Volume III, p. 422 120 joining the AFC. It was probably this squadron’s sending home of three flight commanders with ‘aero-neurosis’ in early 1918 that prompted Birley’s report.142

The AIF’s Director for Medical Services, Major-General Sir Neville House, agreed with Birley.143 Noting the error of selecting men ‘who have had a great deal of previous fighting’ he recommended the AIF ‘exercise closer medical supervision over AFC officers’ and select only ‘fresh’ candidates for flight training.144 On his recommendation, in May 1918 Birdwood approved the assignment of AIF medical officers to train at the RAF’s specialist medical facilities in Hampstead. From July an AFC medical board assumed responsibility for selecting candidates for flying instruction and assessing invalided AFC airmen. Between 29 July 1918 and the Armistice, the AFC medical board examined around 300 candidates.145

Meanwhile, another problem associated with drawing pilots from units overseas became apparent. In April 1918, Lieutenant-Colonel Edgar Reynolds, (Staff Officer for aviation at Administrative Headquarters) noted that selectors struggled to find suitable candidates among those offered by the AIF. Those ‘sent from France did not altogether seem to be quite the right type to hold commissions’. Reynolds believed the AFC needed ‘public school boys’ who had the ‘right’ characteristics for leadership such as keenness, initiative, self-reliance and a strong bearing – men AIF staff at the front claimed to be in short supply.146 Indeed, in July the new AFC medical board had to examine 56 candidates to pass 26 – something the official historian of the AIF’s medical services describes as typical.147

These problems prompted Reynolds’ proposal to return to the original practice of drawing all personnel from ‘direct enlistments in the Australian Flying Corps in Australia’ and the expansion and reorganisation of Point Cook.148 Given that the Air Ministry and Commonwealth authorities enthusiastically supported this scheme, it is

142 AIF personnel dossiers for Captains Gordon Wilson, Fred Huxley and Harry Taylor, NAA B2455. 143 Dodds to Major-General Sir , Director of Medical Services, AIF, 28 February 1918, AWM25 481/115. 144 Howse to Dodds, 4 March 1918, AWM25 481/115; Butler, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, Volume III, pp. 422-423. 145 ‘History of the medical service of the AFC…’, 24 September 1918, AWM27 370/259. 146 Baillieu to Interviewing Officer, RAF, Captain E. H. C. Bald, 15 April 1918, AWM25 81/53; Butler, Official history of the Australian Army medical services, Volume III, p. 414. 147 ‘History of the medical service of the AFC…’, 24 September 1918, AWM27 370/259; Butler, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, Volume III, p. 414. 148 Staff Officer for Aviation, Administrative Headquarters AIF, London, Edgar Reynolds to the Secretary, the Air Board, 23 May 1918, AWM10 4242/7/5. 121 likely the AFC would have drawn its pilots directly from Australia had the war continued. Australian society still had an abundance of ‘quite the right type’: fresh young men from prestigious schools. A ‘special draft’ of 16 Point Cook graduates left Australia on 5 June 1918, providing a foretaste of what the AFC’s future pilots may have looked like. All but two had not previously served overseas and they had an average age of twenty and a half years. Seven were students, three engineers, two electricians, two clerks, a business manager and a carpenter.149

The Air Ministry revised its medical literature in mid-1918, codifying Birley’s hypothesis from earlier in the year. Due to the mental strain they had often experienced, soldiers with front line service proved less resilient to the ‘novel strains of flying’ than those fresh from home or with minimal time in the field.150 With no immediate alternative, the AFC continued promoting the vast majority of its flying officers from the ranks of units at the front. The candidates selected for the September 1918 intake suggest that indeed, by this stage, the AIF overseas struggled to provide ‘the right type’. Among others who would not have fit Reynolds’ and Birley’s conception of the ideal candidate – and who stand in stark contrast to Point Cook’s June 1918 ‘special draft’ – were 25-year-old Lieutenant Donald Junner of the 4th Pioneer Battalion, an ‘assisting signal adjuster’ who had enlisted in August 1914 and been hospitalised four times since; Lance Frank Mason of the 20th Battalion, a 29-year-old station manager who had enlisted in March 1915; and Harold Bowler, 25-years-old, on active service since mid-1915 and three times in hospital.151 Not surprisingly, Major Rolf Brown, CO of the AFC training station at Minchinhampton during the war’s final months, found the ‘standard’ of pupils in 1918 ‘not, generally speaking, up to the standard of the 1916 ones’.152

The AFC’s reliance on combat veterans for flying recruits despite emerging medical knowledge perhaps accounts for a striking contrast between the average lifespan of pilots in the Australian and British flying services. During the war’s final 18 months RFC/RAF pilots served 5.2 months on average before death, hospitalisation, capture or home establishment leave ended their front line service.

149 ‘Flying Corps November 1917 to May 1918 Reinforcements and Special Drafts’, embarkation roll, AMW8 15/3. 150 ‘The examination of aviation candidates for the Royal Air Force’, c. mid-1918, NAUK AIR10/116. 151 Baillieu to Dodds, 5 September 1918, AWM25 81/53. 152 R. S. Brown, ‘War Experiences’, RAF Staff College essay, 3rd course, NAUK AIR1/2387/228/11/54 122 Squadron type altered this considerably with RE8 pilots flying 6.6 months on average, 5 months for SE5as and 4.2 months for Sopwith Camels.153 In the AFC, however, 3rd Squadron’s RE8 pilots served four months (60 per cent of their counterparts in the British service) 2nd Squadron’s SE5a pilots flew four months on average (80 per cent) and 4th Squadron’s Camel pilots, two months (47 per cent).154

As with its recruitment efforts, from the beginning of 1917 the AFC conducted the vast majority of training overseas. A conference between the Air Board and dominion representatives in March had agreed that Australian airmen would train in Britain and that, ‘as far as practicable’, they would do so in AFC training squadrons.155 As the first two were not operational until late July 1917 and the other two not until a year later, during 1917 most Australian airmen learned to fly with British units. Even when all four AFC training squadrons were operational in mid- 1918, they provided only one stage of a staggered training course that took between six and eight months to complete.

Civilians and British other ranks began with a two-month course at the RFC Cadet Wing (later brigade) where they learned the fundamentals of soldiering, leadership and military law. Although there is no official correspondence explaining why, it is clear that AIF other ranks skipped this course.156 They, like British officers, began at one of the RFC’s Schools of Military Aeronautics. For two months, in university-style lectures and practical workshops, cadets (the rank all students held) studied a broad range of subjects including aerial navigation, aeronautical theory, mechanics, signalling and photography.157 After passing examinations, students attended a four-week course at the RFC’s Armament School at Uxbridge to receive ground instruction in the operation of Lewis and Vickers guns.158 In his fourth month,

153 Statistics regarding the service, up to 31 October 1918 of 1,437 pilots sent to the Western Front between July and December 1917, NAUK AIR 9/3 Folio 5. 154 Australian Flying Corps manuscript unit histories prepared for the Australian War Records Section: 2nd Squadron (AWM224 MSS517), 3rd Squadron (AWM224 MSS518) and 4th Squadron (AWM224 MSS520). 155 ‘Notes on Australian-Canadian conference held at the Air Board Office on Thursday, 29 March 1917’, DHH 75/514, file D1, Appendix C. 156 For cadet training syllabus see ‘Officer Cadet Battalion syllabus and suggestion to extend course, Aug 16- April 17’, NAUK AIR1/130/15/40/208. 157 For No. 2 School of Military Aeronautics’ (Oxford) syllabus see NAUK AIR1/2263/209/62/1. See also the lecture notebook of Cadet Harold Cornell, AWM 1DRL/0212 and the typescript diary of Cadet Donald Day, pp. 106-109, AWM PR85/344. 158 For the Armament School’s syllabus in 1918 see ‘Outline of syllabus of gunnery training for pupils at RAF Armament School’, NAUK AIR10/132. 123 an AFC cadet learned basic flying at an elementary training squadron. After about four hours solo he progressed to a ‘higher instruction’ squadron to learn advanced aerial manoeuvres on faster machines. After approximately two months, he underwent a series of air and ground examinations to qualify as a .159 Training finished with a fortnight at a ‘finishing school’. Scout pilots practiced firing in the air at one of the RFC’s Schools of Aerial Gunnery, whereas two-seater pilots finished at the Artillery and Infantry Cooperation School at Winchester.160

The thoroughness and sophistication of this course challenges a prevalent assumption in the popular literature that British pilot training remained deficient throughout the war.161 Certainly, until mid-1917 the RFC struggled with the coalescent pressures of rapid growth, high wastage rates in service squadrons and a shortage of suitable training aircraft – all underpinned by a nascent understanding of flight itself. During this period the RFC’s training establishment seldom produced pilots of a standard deemed adequate by the flying corps’ leadership.162 Edgar McCloughry from South Australia, who began training in Britain in late 1916, provides a typical example. Taught by instructors who had no specialist training themselves, his dual instruction practically ceased after he went solo at three hours. He went to France with perhaps ten hours practice and ‘no real idea of flying’. At the crux of the problem, instructors had little training themselves, either in teaching or

159 On 15 December 1916, the War Office issued new standards for pilots to qualify for their wings. To graduate a pilot had to have logged at least 20 hours solo, flown a service machine ‘satisfactorily’, successfully completed a 60 mile (96.5 kilometre) cross country flight, climbed to 8,000 feet and landed with his engine off. Before proceeding overseas he then needed 28 hours solo on a service machine and an additional minimum of two hours on the type of machine flown by the squadron to which he was being posted. To earn the right to wear his ‘wings’, a pilot also needed to pass a series of auxiliary tests on topics such as gunnery, photography, bombing and artillery observation. [Memorandum by AO1a, ‘Qualification tests in flying’, 15 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/676/21/13/1773; Major Bertie Drew for the Director of Air Organisation to GOC Training Brigade, RFC, 29 November 1916, NAUK AIR1/676/21/13/1773]. 160 From September 1917, scout pilots also did a week course at a School of Aerial Fighting where they learned the latest aerial combat tactics. In May 1918 the RAF amalgamated the gunnery and fighting schools into a ‘School of Aerial Fighting and Gunnery’, known from the following month simply as ‘Fighting Schools RAF’. For a description of the work carried out at RAF aerial gunnery and fighting schools, see the letters of instructor Captain Ian Henderson to his father, the DGMA, Lieutenant- General Sir David Henderson, RAF 173620. Before late 1917, the Artillery and Cooperation School was known as the RFC Wireless and Observers School and was based at Brooklands. In April 1918 it was renamed the ‘RAF Army Cooperation School’. For a history of this school and its syllabus see documents in NAUK AIR1/687/21/20/SC. 161 See, for example, Michael Paris, Winged Warfare: the Literature and Theory of Aerial Warfare in Britain, 1859-1917, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1992, p. 217; Ian Mackersey, No Empty Chairs: the Short and Heroic Lives of the Young Aviators who Fought and Died in the First World War, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2012, pp. 67-78. 162 See correspondence regarding the inadequate training of RFC airmen during 1915 and 1916 in NAUK AIR1/131/15/40/218. 124 flying.163 Cedric Hill, a Queenslander who joined the RFC in mid-1915, underwent the bewilderingly rapid transformation from civilian shearer to flying officer in 14 weeks. With only the example of his own teachers, he then commenced his first posting as an instructor himself.164

The turning point occurred in August 1917 with the opening of the School of Special Flying at , under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Smith- Barry. As CO of No. 1 (Reserve) Squadron, Smith-Barry had devised a novel approach to flight training defined by two overarching principles: the importance of dual instruction throughout a pupil’s training, and the belief that students should learn and practice what instructors typically condemned as ‘dangerous’ manoeuvres such as spins. As Norman Brearley, a West Australian in the RFC who instructed at Gosport during 1917, summated, ‘the whole course was orientated to give pilots complete confidence in their own abilities’.165 Additional schools of ‘Special Flying’ opened in 1918; from June Brearley commanded the unit at Lilibourne through which service pilots returning from France had to pass before commencing their home establishment appointment as instructors. One of Brearley’s pupils, the AFC’s most successful fighter pilot Captain Arthur ‘Harry’ Cobby completed the six-week course in late 1918 after 10 months on the Western Front. ‘It took something like twenty-four hours to discover how little I knew about the accurate flying of an aeroplane,’ he admitted. ‘The instructors did things with the old Avro that I did not think possible’.166

By November 1917 Major-General Hugh Trenchard (GOC RFC) had perceived a general improvement in new pilots arriving at the front.167 Historians likewise credit the RFC’s general adoption of the Gosport principles with discernable improvements in safety. Robert Morley notes, for example, that during 1918 fatalities among students decreased from one per 790 flying hours to one every 1,340 hours of flight training.168 Nevertheless improvements could neither eliminate the inherent dangers of flying in that era, nor prevent the shortcuts sometimes forced by the

163 Robert Morley, ‘Earning Their Wings: British Pilot Training, 1912-1918’, MA thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 2006, pp. 62-69. 164 C. W. Hill, The Spook and the Commandant, William Kimber & Co. Ltd, London, 1975, pp. 22-28. 165 Norman Brearley and Ted Mayman, Australian Aviator, Rigby, Adelaide, 1971, p. 35. 166 A. H. Cobby, High Adventure, Robertson & Mullens, Melbourne, 1942, p. 181. 167 Morley, ‘Earning their wings’, p. 110. 168 Morley, ‘Earning their wings’, pp. 110-111; Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, p. 107-108; Lee Kennett, The First Air War, The Free Press, New York, 1991, p. 129. 125 pressures of war. Despite the fact that the majority of AFC airmen trained post-Smith- Barry’s reforms, slightly more (50) died in training accidents than combat (44).169 During 1918 and 1919 20 per cent of the total number of pupils who graduated in the Australian training wing were killed or injured in accidents, along with 16 per cent of their instructors.170 Further, in mid-1918 AFC squadron COs were still occasionally sending incompetent replacement pilots back to Britain for additional instruction.171

Despite efforts by Administrative HQ, AIF and the War Office in early 1917 to arrange for the sound administration of Australian airmen in Britain (see Chapter 2), the first cohort of AFC students found themselves subject to a curious administrative oversight. To help pupils cope with the expenses of messing and purchasing kit, the RFC commissioned its cadets after they made their first solo flight and granted them a £50 allowance to purchase personal flying kit.172 The AIF, however, insisted on commissioning cadets only once they had graduated from higher instruction and then only granted them the standard £15 ‘outfit allowance’ that all AIF officers received upon commission.173

This presented AFC cadets with two problems. Firstly, as Donald Day discovered when he joined an RFC unit for higher instruction, he and another Australian were ‘amongst about 150 officers [British students, commissioned after their first solo flight], some of whom were not as advanced as we; but prepared to come at the “salute an officer” stunt’.174 The same situation at a different squadron prompted Stanislaus Nunan to tell his family that ‘it is rotten being a cadet… we are neither officers or men’. As far as he was concerned the Australian cadets were as entitled to their commissions as their British colleagues.175 Secondly, the disparity

169 Gareth Morgan, ‘Australian Flying Corps Roll of Honour 1915-1921: Part Three’, The 14-18 Journal, 2010, 43-61, p. 60. 170 From 21 February 1918 to 15 March 1919, the AFC Training Wing graduated 266 pilots. During that time, 17 pupils were killed and 36 injured. In the same period, five instructors died in accidents and 11 were injured, from a total of 99 instructors (including flight commanders) who worked in the training squadrons from their establishment in 1917 to their disbandment in 1919.‘Records 1st Wing Australian Flying Corps 21/2/18- 3/3/19’, AWM224 MSS521. 171 Correspondence regarding the return of Augustus McCulloch and James Baxter to Britain for further training in 1918, AWM25 81/51; John W. Wright, ‘From horses to horsepower’, unpublished manuscript, private collection. 172 Fulton to AAG AIF, Egypt, 23 August 1917, AWM22 41/7/2001; ‘Regulations for Australians who wish to serve in RFC’, July 1917, NAA A11803 1917/89/303. 173 ‘Australian Flying Corps rules for seniority, promotions and clarifications’, 18 September 1917, AWM25 81/18. 174 Cadet Donald Day, typescript diary, p. 113, AWM PR85/344. 175 Cadet Stanislaus Nunan to family, 30 November 1917, AWM 3DRL/6511. 126 between the kit allowances granted by the War Office and AIF disadvantaged the Australian cadets. As Ross discovered in July 1917, the AIF’s allowance ‘goes nowhere’.176 Indeed, another Australian cadet reported spending just over £44 on his kit.177 Accommodation and travel bills further impoverished the Australians. ‘We have to live like gentlemen now- on privates’ pay,’ explained Nunan. ‘YMCASs and 3rd class travelling is taboo’. A month later at Dartford, he noted having had ‘a rotten time for money lately’ as his 24/6 AIF allowance didn’t cover the RFC’s 35/- mess bill.178

Reynolds cited these problems in September 1917 to support his request for the concentration of the Australian training squadrons on their own aerodromes.179 5th and 6th Training Squadrons had formed on 15 June 1917 and began training pilots in July, although from separate aerodromes and attached to RFC training wings.180 They provided ‘elementary’ and ‘higher’ instruction respectively. During September and October, nuclei of 7th and 8th Training Squadrons AFC formed and attached themselves to No. 66 Training Squadron RFC and 6th Training Squadron AFC respectively. Both provided ‘higher instruction’; 7th producing two-seater pilots and 8th, pilots for scouts.

The establishment of an Australian wing headquarters at Tetbury in February 1918 and the Air Board’s allocation of land for two aerodromes at Leighterton and Minchinhampton concentrated the AFC’s training establishment in Gloucestershire. 7th and 8th Training Squadrons occupied the aerodrome at Leighterton from late February but work to develop the site delayed their first graduations until May and June respectively.181 6th Training Squadron moved to Minchinhampton at the end of February but a lack of accommodation prevented 5th Training Squadron joining it until the beginning of April. In July, as part of the Air Council’s major reorganisation of training, most squadrons in the United Kingdom came together on multi-squadron

176 Cadet James Ross to family, 10 July 1917, AWM 3DRL/1298. 177 Cadet Alec Paterson, handwritten price list of RFC kit, undated, AWM 3DRL/4151. 178 Nunan to family, 12 August and 25 September 1917, AWM 3DRL/6511. 179 Reynolds to Henderson, 25 September 1917, AWM10 4343/14/2 180 Military Aeronautics Directorate to OC, Administrative Wing, RFC, 11 June 1917, NAUK AIR1/1604/204/84/5. 181 The presence of the two Australian training aerodromes had a significant impact on the local communities, as documented in David Goodland and Alan Vaughan, Anzacs over England: the Australian Flying Corps in Gloucestershire, 1918-1919, Sutton Publishing Limited, United Kingdom, 1992. 127 aerodromes known as ‘training depot stations’ to increase efficiency and standardisation.182 Henceforth, Minchinhampton became ‘No. 1 Two Squadron Station AFC’ and Leighterton, ‘No. 2 Two Squadron Station AFC’.183 One of the squadron COs at each acted as a station commander and from September 1918, the squadrons centralised their workshops.184

Although geographic concentration of the Australian training establishment under an AFC wing headquarters conveys the impression of autonomy, the AFC’s training units occupied a subordinate position in the RAF’s training hierarchy. The Australian training wing was part of No. 7 Group (one of 23 ‘training groups’ in the United Kingdom), which in turn operated under the command of the Southwestern Training Area (one of five in the United Kingdom). Overseeing the entire organisation, the Air Ministry’s Directorate of Training formulated policy that, during 1918, sought greater standardisation in British aviation training. As a result, the AFC’s training squadrons operated under the close supervision of their superior British commands and employed orthodox RAF training methods imposed from the top down.185

One such endeavour towards standardisation occurred in January 1918, when Major-General , GOC RFC Training Division (predecessor to the Training Directorate), announced that to improve relationships between instructors and pupils and more clearly define responsibility for the training of individuals, ‘elementary’ and ‘higher’ instruction squadrons would henceforth become ‘all through’ squadrons. In these, instructors led a flight of six pupils throughout their training until graduation to a finishing school.186 By mid-February all the AFC training squadrons had reorganised along these lines.187 In future, 5th and 8th

182 Major-General , Master General of Personnel to GOC, Home Areas, RAF, 4 July 1918, NAUK AIR1/31/15/1/156. 183 5th Training Squadron, war diary, July 1918, AWM4 8/8/11. 184 5th Training Squadron, war diary, Sept 1918, AWM4 8/8/13. 185 As an example of the extent to which the RAF training commands imposed standard procedures on the Australian squadrons, in April No. 7 Group ordered 1st Wing to provide all pupils with two hours of ground instruction in map reading each week [CO, No. 7 Group RAF to Lieutenant-Colonel Oswald Watt, CO 1st Wing AFC, 30 April 1918, AWM25 943/25]. 186 Major-General Charles Longcroft, GOC RFC Training Division to HQ, Western Group Command, RFC, 1 January 1918, AWM25 81/27; Memorandum on training by Group Flying Examiner, Western Command, RFC, 1 January 1918, AWM25 943/5. 187 Initially, when the RAF announced the move to ‘all through’ squadrons in January 1918, 5th Training Squadron was designated to continue elementary training for the time being. In mid-February 128 Training Squadrons would train Sopwith Camel pilots for 4th Squadron; 6th Training Squadron, SE5a pilots for 2nd Squadron; and 7th Training Squadron, RE8 pilots for 3rd Squadron. 1st Squadron would continue to draw reinforcements from the RFC’s training organisation in Egypt, which by November 1917 comprised 10 training squadrons, a cadet wing and schools to teach aerial gunnery, the theory of military aeronautics and artillery observation.188

The AFC training wing had no capacity for instructing observers. Medical boards usually selected them from officers unfit to be pilots and put them through a shorter course at the No. 1 School of Military Aeronautics. Observers then completed aerial gunnery training, followed by a finishing course at the RAF and Army Co- operation School at Winchester, the whole process taking about nine weeks.189 The AFC Depot at Halton (and Halefield from June 1918) supervised the training of Australian mechanics. Most trades trained at the nearby RAF School of Technical Training, marching out for lessons each day. Some specialists, such as armourers and wireless operators trained at schools in other parts of the United Kingdom. By the Armistice 1,208 air mechanics had passed through the depot.190

How effectively did these training arrangements meet the AFC’s needs?

In Palestine, once Administrative HQ, AIF authorised the training of AFC airmen locally and the maintenance of a reserve, 1st Squadron generally had an adequate supply of reinforcements. Despite heavy action in an arduous environment, throughout 1918 1st Squadron maintained an excess of pilots and other ranks on strength, although a deficit in observers.191 The cause of this is difficult to discern, especially, as from February 1918 the RFC’s School of Artillery Observation in Egypt provided observer training.192

however, it began converting to ‘all through’ instruction. 5th Training Squadron, war diary, February 1918, AWM4 8/8/6. 188 ‘Notes on training, Egypt, 1916-1918’, pp. 33-34, NAUK AIR1/678/21/13/2085. 189 ‘Training courses in RAF for commissioned and non-commissioned personnel showing status and pay’, Field Service Publication 39, NAUK AIR1/2087/207/7/39. 190 ‘History of the AFC Depot’, AWM27 161/3. 191 1st Squadron’s war diaries for the period January to October 1918 indicates that it was, on average, 7.9 pilots above establishment strength, 4.2 observers below establishment strength and 5.9 other ranks above establishment strength. 192 ‘Notes on training, Egypt, 1916-1918’, p. 34, NAUK AIR1/678/21/13/2085. 129 In contrast, the Australian squadrons on the Western Front had an abundant supply of observers. When Wallace McDougall graduated in August 1918, he spent a month waiting at the AFC Depot to be posted. Arriving at the front he discovered the reason, 3rd Squadron being ‘crowded out with observers’.193 The relatively short course for observers (nine weeks) and the comparatively low casualties 3rd Squadron sustained (an average of 1.6 observer casualties per month) accounts for this, but suggests another oversight on Administrative HQ, AIF’s behalf given the shortage of Australian observers in Palestine.194

The AFC training wing had greater difficulty supplying pilots, especially for the scout squadrons. They were prone to higher wastage rates and took substantially longer (up to 9 months) to train than any other personnel.195 Complicating matters further was the fact that wastage rates differed between squadron-types. During its tour on the Western Front, 2nd Squadron, operating SE5as, typically on high altitude offensive patrols, suffered 19 casualties (1.9 per month on average). In contrast 4th Squadron’s Sopwith Camel pilots sustained 55 casualties (5.5 per month on average). Squadrons equipped with the ‘Camel’, both difficult to fly and with poor high altitude performance spent most of 1918 operating at low altitudes, exposed to ground fire and generally disadvantaged in aerial combat. Increasing the drain on Camel pilots, from February 1918 the RFC raised the establishment of all its Camel units, including 4th Squadron, from 18 to 24 pilots (SE5a units such as 2nd Squadron generally maintained a strength of 19 machines until the Armistice). Although two of the four AFC training squadrons (5th and 8th) trained Camel pilots, in April 1918 the RAF’s Training Division noted an ‘urgent need’ for pilots in 4th Squadron. At the time the AFC had 11 SE5a pilots in reserve but just one trained to operate the Camel’s rotary engine.196 This forced the AFC to turn to the RAF; between April and July 1918 19 British officers flew with 4th Squadron. Indeed, at the beginning of June 1918 almost half the unit’s pilots were ‘lepers’ as the Australians dubbed them.197

193 McDougall, diary, 27 August and 16 October 1918, AWM PR0138. 194 3rd Squadron sustained 25 casualties in its establishment of observers between September 1917 and November 1918. ‘No. 3 Squadron Aust. Flying Corps brief history’, pp. 5-6, AWM224 MSS518. 195 4th Squadron sustained 55 casualties to its flying establishment between January and November 1918. ‘No. 4 Squadron Aust. Flying Corps records and statistics’, p. 5, AWM224 MSS520. 196 GOC, Training Division, RAF, Brigadier-General Edgar Ludlow Hewitt to HQ, Western Group Command, RAF, 13 April 1918, AWM25 81/27. 197 Tabulated from data regarding flying officer appointments in ‘No. 4 Squadron Aust. Flying Corps records and statistics’, AWM224 MSS520. For an account of one British pilot who flew with 4th 130 Using data from the training squadrons it is possible to make an approximate quantitative evaluation of the AFC’s capacity to replace its losses.

In absolute terms the Australian training wing’s monthly output failed to meet the War Office’s original estimates for the AFC’s requirements in pilots. In August 1917 the RFC’s statisticians projected that the Australian squadrons in Europe required 29 pilot reinforcements each month: 21 for the three service squadrons and 8 for the four training units.198 The Australian training wing’s average monthly output indicates that, even once well established in the later part of 1918, its training squadrons struggled to graduate an adequate number of pilots. The wing’s total output of pilots for the period 21 February to 11 November 1918 (177 graduated) also falls short of the 232 pilots the War Office predicted the AFC squadrons in Europe would consume in the eight full months of the wing’s existence before the Armistice.199

Table 3.1 AFC Training Squadron ‘B’ Level Graduations, July- October 1918200

No. 5 TS No. 8 TS 1st Wing No. 6 TS No. 7 TS (Rotary (Rotary AFC Monthly (Inline scouts) (Two seater) scouts) scouts) Totals

July 12 7 8 7 34

August 6 4 12 7 29

September 4 9 5 7 25

October 7 7 4 6 24

Monthly 7.25 6.75 7.25 6.75 28 Average

A similar conclusion emerges from a comparison between the output of pilots and actual squadron wastage rates. 4th Squadron’s pilots served for two months on average (half a month less than the War Office had projected) indicating that it

Squadron during the summer of 1918, see J. C. F. Wilkinson, manuscript memoir, 1937, RAF X001- 2325. 198 O3 Statistics, the Military Aeronautics Directorate to Drew, 28 August 1917, AWM10 4343/32/6. 199 ‘Records 1st Wing Australian Flying Corps 21/2/18- 3/3/19’, AWM224 MSS521. 200 ‘5th Training Squadron AFC Minchinhampton July to September and 1st Wing Graduation Figures’ AWM25 81/42 Parts 2 and 3. The data for July 1918 comes from the war diaries of the squadrons for that month. ‘B’ level graduations qualified a pilot as a flying officer. Following this he needed to graduate from a finishing school to be graduate ‘C’ level, and hence, qualify for active service. 131 required an average of 12 pilots per month to maintain establishment strength.201 Its training squadrons (5th and 8th) graduated a combined total of 14 Camel pilots per month, but from this needs to be subtracted replacement instructors. If the RFC’s estimate of two per squadron per month is correct (it is difficult to verify this given the surviving records), then 4th Squadron had a shortfall of about two pilots each month.202

2nd Squadron suffered lower losses than the War Office had projected: its flying officers served an average of four months, meaning the unit required six fresh pilots each month to maintain establishment strength.203 Nevertheless, 6th Training Squadron’s mean monthly output of 6.75 pilots (from which two might become instructors) appears inadequate to keep up with 2nd Squadron’s requirements.

Wastage in 3rd Squadron matched the RFC’s estimate of a four-month life- span for pilots in corps squadrons.204 The unit therefore required an average monthly reinforcement of 4.5 pilots.205 7th Training Squadron’s output (5.25 pilots after allowing for two replacement instructors) appears, therefore, adequate. Indeed, 3rd Squadron’s war diary records that for the second half of 1918, it regularly had a surplus of several pilots above establishment strength.206

Of course, these averages for pilot output and consumption do not consider a number of variables that prevent a more precise quantitative evaluation. Variable weather, the influenza epidemic (which significantly diminished output in AFC

201 O3 Statistics, the Military Aeronautics Directorate to Drew, 28 August 1917, AWM10 4343/32/6; ‘No. 4 Squadron Australian Flying Corps records and statistics’, p. 4, AWM224 MSS520. 202 The records indicate that the four training squadrons employed 99 instructors (including flight commanders) between their respective formation dates in 1917 and their disbandment in Britain in 1919. Of these 99 instructors, 28 had no prior combat experience, that is, they went from graduating to instructing without doing a tour of the front. Complicating matters however, is the fact that an undeterminable number of the 99 instructors came, on loan, from the RFC/ RNAS. ‘Records 1st Wing Australian Flying Corps 21/2/18- 3/3/19’, AWM224 MSS521. 203 ‘No. 2 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps: Records, 1915-19’, AWM224 MSS517 PART 1, p. 6. 204 O3 Statistics, the Military Aeronautics Directorate to Drew, 28 August 1917, AWM10 4343/32/6; ‘No. 3 Squadron Aust. Flying Corps brief history’, pp. 9-10, AWM224 MSS518. Average time served by 3rd Squadron pilots tabulated the number of weeks (rounded down) served by pilots who joined the squadron prior to 1 September 1918. This includes 69 of the 84 pilots who served with the squadron during its active service on the Western Front. Overall, if observers are included in calculations, the average time served by 3rd Squadron flying officers was about five months, according to the author of this manuscript unit history. 205 ‘No. 3 Squadron Aust. Flying Corps brief history’, p. 13, AWM224 MSS518. 3rd Squadron’s establishment strength remained 18 aircraft throughout 1918. 206 See, for example, the daily strength returns in 3rd Squadron, war diary, October 1918, AWM4 8/6/22 PART 2. 132 training squadrons in mid-1918), equipment shortages and bottlenecks at British finishing schools affected supply, while the varying intensity of operations at the front determined demand.207 Further, veteran pilots occasionally returned to the front for a second tour after instructing, making it difficult to evaluate the training squadrons’ consumption of instructors.208

Nevertheless, the data clearly indicates the inadequacy of the AFC’s training establishment to meet the demands of its units in the field. Further it is evident that ‘all through’ training, though a logical solution to improve pilot-instructor relationships, overlooked variations in the wastage rates of different unit-types. British training authorities failed to understand this, attributing for example, the AFC’s shortage of Camel pilots in mid-1918 to inefficiencies in the Australian training units.209 Indeed, in August 1918 the Training Directorate announced plans to adopt a system throughout the RAF whereby each service squadron had a dedicated training squadron.210 The AFC’s experiences during 1918 suggest this would have been an ineffective reform.

The AFC’s recruitment and training arrangements therefore add weight to the argument that Australia’s aspirations for fielding an independent flying arm did not represent the most efficient means by which it might have contributed to the empire’s war effort in the air. Although initially enabling the government to raise squadrons for overseas service, the schools in Australia afterwards only succeeded in delaying the transition of a number of aspirant pilots from civilian life to gainful employment in service squadrons. Establishing AFC training units overseas ostensibly represents a sounder policy and, indeed, one that emphasised the AFC’s distinct identity. In practice, the AFC wing did not become fully operational until mid-1918 and, even then, relied comprehensively on the RAF’s training establishment for equipment, policy and significant aspects of pilot, observer and mechanic training. Moreover, the

207 In June 1918, for example, 5th Training Squadron was ‘considerably handicapped’ by cases of influenza which during one week rendered ‘practically all the Instructors and the majority of Pupils were unfit to fly’. [5th Training Squadron, war diary, June 1918, AWM4 8/8/10]. 208 In the AFC it appears that second tours of the front were rare. Among all the flying officers who served with 4th Squadron, only five returned to the front following Home Establishment appointments as instructors. In 3rd Squadron, it appears that only four pilots returned for a second tour. Tabulated from data in ‘No. 4 Squadron Australian Flying Corps records and statistics’, AWM224 MSS520; ‘No. 3 Squadron Aust. Flying Corps brief history’, AWM224 MSS518. 209 Ludlow-Hewitt, to Headquarters, Western Group Command, RAF, 13 April 1918, AWM25 81/27. 210 GOC, Southwestern Area, RAF to Headquarters, No. 7 Group, RAF, 5 August 1918, AWM25 81/27. 133 attempt by Australian authorities to make the AFC self-sufficient (at least in terms of pilots) caused unnecessary shortages in the service squadrons and ultimately failed, forcing the AFC to break with policy and use British pilots to fill cockpits in Australian squadrons at the front.

Striving for the AFC’s distinctiveness and self-sufficiency while so comprehensively relying on British resources and expertise proved inefficient. The establishment of an RFC medical board in Australia early in the war, as occurred in Canada, and the sending of untrained recruits to Britain to train for service in the RFC would have resulted in a higher number of Australians involved in the air war and their more rapid and effective training. Such an arrangement however, would have obscured Australia’s contribution to the air war and, in the minds of Australian military authorities, not best served the nation’s future strategic interests.

134 4. THE CRUCIBLE OF AIR POWER: AERIAL WARFARE ON THE WESTERN FRONT, 1914-1916 Despite the limited military use of aircraft before the Great War in Libya, the Balkans and , and experiments by armies and navies around the globe, Europe went to war in August 1914 only narrowly conceiving aviation’s military application. Generally this did not result from official parochialism or conservatism but, rather, a frank appraisal of the aeroplane’s technical limitations and a misunderstanding of the next war’s nature. Aeroplanes, in the pre-war imagination, would increase the tempo of the moving battles envisaged in the future European conflicts; they would enhance the capabilities of the existing arms, not replace or fundamentally change them.

Within the conflict’s first two years, aircraft would assume a much broader function – one that would be distinct and important – albeit not decisive – to military operations and would, by removing surprise and increasing the capability of indirect artillery fire, contribute to creating the stalemate that characterised the conflict. Ironically, commanders also looked to aircraft to solve tactical problems and break the deadlock. To establish a context for Australia’s modest involvement in this process, this chapter examines the development of military aviation during the war’s first two and a half years on the Western Front. Although the RFC and RNAS fought in practically all theatres, it was France and that provided British air power’s crucible. This chapter demonstrates how British thinking and technological capability evolved to make aviation an important supporting arm and establish a distinct function for air power on the battlefield. The AFC did not fight on the Western Front in this period but, where possible, Australian involvement (through the British flying services) is identified and linked to the broader themes and developments.

In the years preceding the Great War the British Army embraced aircraft, expecting them to ‘be extensively employed’ in future wars. As Andrew Whitmarsh demonstrates, the use of aeroplanes on exercises and manoeuvres from 1910 onwards encouraged the army’s acceptance of the new weapon and shaped its expectations for how it might be employed.1 By August 1914, both the RFC and the wider army anticipated reconnaissance to be the principal duty of aircraft. The general staff also recognised that pilots would probably need to fight their opposite numbers to carry

1 Andrew Whitmarsh, ‘British Army Manoeuvres and the Development of Military Aviation, 1910- 1913’, War in History, volume 14, number 3, 325-346, July 2007. 135 out their duties and prevent the enemy from doing theirs. Pilots might also supplement observation with attacking enemy troops and co-operating with the artillery.2 To develop the necessary capabilities, in mid-1913 the RFC established an experimental section to encourage internal innovation and oversee trials.3 Before the war the RFC’s airmen experimented with photography, gunnery, bombing and wireless telegraphy.4

Although the RFC garnered relevant knowledge and experience from these trials the war intervened before it could develop policy and standardised equipment. By August 1914 the RFC had only vague theories of aerial warfare and no clearly established tactics for co-operating with the army.5 Its material assets comprised 14 machine guns, 50 rifles, 200 20lb bombs and around 14 hand-held cameras. It had no machine capable of carrying automatic weapons, nor any specialist bomb carrying or aiming gear.6 The RFC’s photographic staff included, in total, an NCO and four men.7

During the war’s initial campaigns British pilots accordingly operated within Field Service Regulations’ and the RFC Training Manual’s precept that reconnaissance was the flying service’s fundamental job. The reliance placed on air reports by British commanders and their French allies did however, exceed pre-war expectations. The breakdown of communications during the retreat from Mons emphasised the importance of aerial reconnaissance. Several times during the retreat and subsequent counter-attack, aerial observation (in concert with cavalry reconnaissance and wireless interception) contributed to command decisions that

2 Field Service Regulations Part I Operations, 1909, HMSO, London, 1914, pp. 20-21; Training manual, Royal Flying Corps Part II (Military Wing), HMSO, London, 1914, pp. 21, 42-45, 50. 3 ‘Notes on the conduct of experiments in the RFC’, June 1913, NAUK AIR1/779/204/4/469. 4 Michael Paris, Winged Warfare: The Literature and Theory of Aerial Warfare in Britain, 1859-1917, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1992, p. 178; Miscellaneous papers regarding wireless experiments, 1913-1914, NAUK AIR1/779/204/4/467; Reports regarding RFC photographic experiments, 22 February 1913-29 July 1914, NAUK AIR1/779/204/4/470; Reports regarding wireless experiments, May-August 1913, NAUK AIR 1/742/204/2/43; Bomb dropping from aeroplanes: report on experiments carried on Knighton Down, 3-10 May 1913, NAUK AIR1/798/204/4/1018. 5 Training manual, Royal Flying Corps Part II is typical in that it predicts the effectiveness of aircraft in attacking enemy troops but it specifies no weapons or tactics that might produce the best results [p. 50]. Field Service Regulations Part I Operations (1914 edition) likewise describes the most effective means of dealing with hostile aircraft as engaging them in air-to-air combat, though it provided no details on how pilots should do this [p. 129]. 6 ‘Statement showing on July 31/14 the equipment of aeroplanes…’, NAUK AIR1/686/21/13/2252; Officer in charge of experiments, RFC Headquarters to Officer in charge of stores, RFC, 24 April 1914, NAUK AIR1/779/204/4/470; ‘List of photographic equipment on charge of photographic department, RFC’, c. March 1914, AIR1/779/204/4/470; Paris, Winged Warfare, p. 227. 7 Terrence J. Finnegan, Shooting the Front: Allied Aerial Reconnaissance in the First World War, Spellmount, Stroud, 2011, p. 166. 136 singularly influenced the campaign.8 At the same time, the Fliegertruppen (German flying corps) informed German commanders of French and British movements, thus removing surprise from the battlefield – an essential element of decisive victory – and contributing to the stalemate that soon prevailed.9

The initial RFC contingent of three squadrons, a headquarters and aircraft park (105 officers) contained at least three Australians. In addition to Major George Raleigh and Lieutenant William Mitchell of No. 4 Squadron (see Chapter 2), Lieutenant Eric Conran, born in Queensland and raised in both Australia and Britain flew with No. 3 Squadron. His exploits are documented in the memoir of his mechanic, James McCudden – later a leading British fighter ‘ace’.10 For providing important reconnaissance reports during the retreat, Sir John French mentioned Conran in despatches and included him in the first cohort to receive the . Conran would be appointed to command a squadron but his career stalled in late 1916 when, as CO of No. 29 Squadron, a military court convicted him of attempting to solicit sex from one of his subordinates. Though overturned on appeal, General Sir Douglas Haig (the BEF’s Commander-in-Chief) requested Conran not return to the Western Front; he was posted to East Africa.11

The RNAS, which started the war conducting coastal and home defence patrols and mounting bombing raids out of , also contained a handful of Australian-born airmen. Like Basil Ash, who went missing during a

8 Those who argue that the RFC played a minor, if any role, in shaping the direction of the August- September 1914 campaigns include Malcolm Cooper, Birth of Independent Air Power: British Air Policy in the First World War, Allen & Unwin, London, 1986, p. 18; and David Divine, The Broken Wing: A Study in the British Exercise of Air Power, Hutchninson, London, 1966, pp. 50-52. Among those who point to the significance of the RFC’s intelligence during the August-September 1914 battles are: Peter Mead, The Eye in the Air: History of Air Observation and Reconnaissance for the Army, 1785-1945, HMSO, London, 1983, pp. 53-57; Walter Boyne, The Influence of Air Power Upon History, Pelican, Gretna, 2003, p. 47 and 55; Basil Collier, A History of Air Power, Weidenfield and Nicolson, London, 1974, pp. 49-50; Glenn Graham, ‘We shall deliver the goods’: the Development of British Airpower During the First World War, MA thesis, Simon Fraser University, April 2003, pp. 7- 8; John Morrow, The Great War in the Air: Military Aviation from 1909 to 1921, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC, 1993, p. 77; Thomas Bradbeer, ‘The British Air Campaign During the Battle of the Somme: A Pyrrhic Victory’, PhD thesis, University of Kansas, 2011, pp. 40-41; Lee Kennett, The First Air War, 1914-1918, The Free Press, New York, 1991, pp. 31-32; Finnegan, Shooting the Front, pp. 28-41. 9 Morrow, The Great War in the Air, p. 69; ‘Activities of the Air formations of the German First Army during the operations near Mons from the 21st to the 25th August 1914’, manuscript history by the Reichsarchiv, c. January 1921, NAUK AIR1/682/21/13/2219. 10 James McCudden, Flying Fury: Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps, Bailey and Swinfen, Folkestone, 1973. 11 Eric Lewis Conran, service file, NAUK WO339/643. 137 patrol off Kirkwall on 30 September 1914, and Squadron Leader Arthur Longmore, appointed to raise and command No. 1 Squadron RNAS in October, most were career naval officers seconded to the navy’s nascent aerial arm.12 Like their Antipodean counterparts in the RFC (Military Wing) at this time, they had only a nominal affiliation with Australia: born there, but being educated and beginning careers in Britain. Longmore, like Conran and Mitchell would all pursue post-war careers in the RAF rather than the RAAF.

The trench stalemate presented the BEF with a myriad of novel tactical problems. This encouraged a reliance on aircraft to gather intelligence while at the same time creating new opportunities for aviation. The RFC adapted to these challenges remarkably swiftly – if not necessarily smoothly or evenly – due to a combination of grass-roots ingenuity among the corps’ junior officers and the willingness of commanders such as 1st Wing’s CO (and future GOC RFC) Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh Trenchard, to listen to their subordinates.13

Although sketch maps remained standard during 1914, the complexity of trench systems and the employment of elaborate camouflage to conceal guns encouraged an early shift towards photographic reconnaissance.14 Airmen improvised, trying out their own expedients and, impressed by the French Army’s use of aerial photographs, in January 1915 RFC HQ established an experimental section.15 The squadrons of 1st Wing impressed First Army’s staff the following month by photographing the enemy’s front line to a depth of between 700 and 1,500 yards.16 Finnegan describes this as ‘one of the most significant intelligence production feats of the war’; it demonstrated to the staff that aerial photographs could empirically depict the battlefield and shaped plans for the Neuve Chapelle offensive in March 1915.17 Although the clarity of photographs and the ability of intelligence officers to interpret

12 Arthur Longmore biographical file, AWM43 A501; Arthur Longmore, From Sea to Sky, 1910-1945, Geoffrey Bles, London, 1946, passim. 13 , Trenchard, Collins, London, p. 129; Maurice Baring, Flying Corps Headquarters, 1914-1918, Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1968, pp. 111, 141. 14 Walter Raleigh, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force Volume I, Clarendon, Oxford, 1922, p. 349. 15 Finnegan, Shooting the Front, pp. 48-52. 16 H. A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force, Volume II, Clarendon, Oxford, 1928, pp. 87-90; James Edmonds and G. C. Wynne, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents by Direction of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence. Military Operations. France and Belgium, 1915, Volume I, ‘Winter 1914-15, , Battle of ’, Macmillan, London, 1927, pp. 85-86. 17 Finnegan, Shooting the Front, p. 54. 138 them left something to be desired, by April photography had effectively superseded handwritten reports and sketches.18 In mid-1915 the fuselage mounted semi-automatic type ‘C’ camera replaced the RFC’s unwieldy hand-held units and each wing established its own photographic section.19 By the year’s end they had produced some 80,000 prints.20

Visual reconnaissance nonetheless retained some importance, especially at the tactical level. As GHQ realised during the battle of Neuve Chapelle, telephonic communications ‘are almost certain to fail during a successful advance’ leaving commanders ‘completely at a loss’.21 As a result, during the year the RFC conducted several trials in maintaining contact with advancing infantry using visual signals such as flares and mirrors. Although suggesting potential, when tested at Aubers Ridge in May and Loos in September, these ‘contact patrols’ (as latter dubbed) tended to fail because of inadequate training in co-operation between the airmen and infantry.22

Trench warfare and the range of artillery in 1914 made indirect fire from concealed positions an inevitable feature of warfare on the Western Front and ensured the emergence of artillery co-operation as the RFC’s predominant role. Despite pre- war experiments, it was not until the battles of the Marne and Aisne, in September 1914, that French and British commanders appreciated the considerable assistance

18 Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Command on the Western Front: The Military Career of Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1914-18, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1992, p. 39; Graham, “We shall deliver the goods”, p. 39. 19 From April 1916 responsibility for developing and disseminating photographs would devolve to the squadrons, with each maintaining its own photographic section and staff, to keep up with the rapidly expanding demand for photographs to numerous branches of the BEF. [Finnegan, Shooting the front, p. 168.] 20 Graham, “We shall deliver the goods”, p. 30. 21 Michael Meech, ‘The Development of Contact Patrols: a Short History of Appendix B of SS135’, Cross and Cockade International, volume 40, number 2, summer, 2009, p. 117. 22 Jones, The War in the Air Volume II, p. 131. 139 The Western Front, 191523

23 Robin Neillands, The Death of Glory: The Western Front in 1915, John Murray, London, 2007. 140 aerial observation could accord the artillery.24 Before the end of the year British tactical notes claimed that ‘No battery can now be considered really efficient that is not able to range rapidly and accurately by means of aerial observation’. Visual signals such as Verey lights proved functional but wireless transmissions were unequivocally more effective.25 In 1914 however, the RFC had few wireless sets and no established procedures for artillery co-operation. Pilots and gunners improvised initially, the later ubiquitous gridded trench map and ‘clock-code’ emerging from experimentation within the squadrons during the closing months of 1914.26 Meanwhile, RFC HQ standardised signals (though procedures remained different between corps) and engaged civilian experts to design lighter and more effective wireless equipment.27 By Neuve Chapelle the RFC could employ eight wireless- equipped aircraft on artillery co-operation, while another 10 used signal lamps. Wireless effectively superseded visual signalling by July 1915.28 At Loos, in September, 1st Wing devoted practically all its aircraft to artillery co-operation before zero hour and on the battle’s first day, all but 4 of the RFC’s 61 sorties involved artillery observation.29

Although predictions that aircraft would need to fight each other predated the war, air combat developed slowly because, initially, neither side possessed effective fighting machines.30 Just over a fortnight after landing in France the RFC’s GOC, Major-General David Henderson, cabled the War Office urgently requesting armed

24 Kennett, The First Air War, p. 33; Gary Sheffield and John Bourne (editors), Douglas Haig War Diaries and Letters, 1914-1918, Weidenfield & Nicolson, London, 2005, p. 71 (Haig’s diary entry for 16 September 1914). 25 Stephen Bull (editor), ‘Notes From the Front, Part 1, 1914 Tactical Notes’, An Officer’s Manual of the Western Front, 1914-1918, Conway, London, 2008, p. 50. 26 Raleigh, The War in the Air Volume I, pp. 85-86; Graham, “We shall deliver the goods”, p. 14; Captain D. S. Lewis, Flight Commander, No. 9 Squadron to OC No. 9 Squadron, 25 January 1915, NAUK AIR1/834/204/5/237. 27 Major W. Salmond, GSO II, HQ RFC France to CO, No. 9 Squadron, 26 January 1915, NAUK AIR1/834/204/5/237; ‘Co-operation of Aeroplanes with Artillery’, c. November 1914, NAUK AIR1/524/16/12/21; ‘Instructions regarding the cooperation of aeroplanes with other arms (provisional)’, c. April 1915, NAUK AIR1/524/16/12/24. 28 ‘OB/114 Co-operation of Aeroplanes and Artillery when using Wireless’, July 1915, NAUK AIR1/746/204/3/24. 29 ‘The : cooperation between aircraft and the artillery’, manuscript notes prepared by the Air Historical Branch, September 1925, NAUK AIR1/675/21/13/1322. 30 See, for example, Robert Brooke-Popham, ‘Military Aviation’, The Army Review, January 1912, pp. 87-102. In this article, Brooke-Popham (an officer in the Air Battalion and later RFC) foresees the need for aircraft to fight each other to secure the freedom to reconnoiter enemy positions and the feasibility of aircraft carrying air-to-air weapons. 141 ‘fighting machines’.31 The RFC had ordered two such types (the FE2 and Vickers FB- 5) shortly before the war but a lack of domestic aircraft manufacturers meant they only began arriving on the Western Front very gradually in February 1915. In the meantime GHQ ordered all airmen to carry rifles or sidearms and, when possible, machine-guns.32 At the beginning of February RFC HQ issued the first official tactical notes on aerial fighting and, by May, 1st Wing had formalised the ‘patrol’ as a distinct mission. Thereafter the contrast, as Michael Howard identifies it, between obtaining and exercising command of the air became apparent.33

Air combat intensified during the second half of 1915 as both sides employed dedicated fighting machines to protect their reconnaissance and artillery sorties and disrupt the enemy’s work. The Germans gained a tactical advantage with the introduction of the E.I, a ‘tractor’ (engine in front of the machine) monoplane equipped with a gear that allowed the pilot to fire a machine-gun forward, through the propeller arc. From the beginning of August, the began claiming an increasing number of RFC machines, especially the two-seaters that still comprised the vast majority of the corps’ aircraft. Whereas the British lost five machines in aerial combat up to June 1915, during the following six months the RFC recorded 39 losses to enemy aircraft.34 Contrary to the hysterical response in the British press, as their own sources attest the Germans failed to deploy the Fokker in sufficient numbers to secure an operational advantage.35 Of the aircraft 1st Wing lost between July 1915 and January 1916 only half (19) can be attributed to Fokkers, while during that period the wing flew 4,400 sorties.36 Nonetheless, the sudden increase in British losses and the technological advantage possessed by the Germans undermined morale in British

31 Bradbeer, ‘The British Air Campaign During the Battle of the Somme…’, p. 41. 32 ‘Notes on air reconnaissance’, 15 January 1915, reproduced as Appendix I in , From Many Angles: An Autobiography, George G. Harrap & Co. Limited, London, 1943, pp. 525-526. 33 ‘Fighting hostile aeroplanes in the air’, issued by RFC HQ to OC No. 4 Squadron RFC, 1 February 1915, NAUK AIR 1/746/204/3/22; Michael Howard, ‘The Concept of Air Power: An Historical Appraisal’, Air Power History, Winter, 1995, p. 7; S. F. Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1980, p. 361. 34 Trevor Henshaw, The Sky Their Battlefield: Air Fighting and the Complete List of Allied Air Casualties from Enemy Action in the First War, Grub Street, London, 1995, pp. 575-76. 35 Ernest von Hoeppner, Germany's War in the Air: the Development and Operations of German Military Aviation in the World War, The Battery Press, Nashville, 1994, p. 41; Mark Osborne Humphries (ed.) and John Maker (ed.), Germany's Western Front: translations from the German official history of the Great War, vol. 2, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Ontario, 2010, pp. 259-260 and 265. 36 E. R. Hooton, War Over the Trenches: Air Power and the Western Front Campaigns 1916-1918, Ian Allan, Surrey, 2010, p. 29. 142 squadrons and prompted the RFC to adopt protective tactics such as formation flying and close escorts.37

At least one victim of the ‘’ (as British journalists dubbed it) was Australian. Born in Melbourne and raised in Western Australia, Gavin Porter had gone to London to study in 1910. After fighting with the during the BEF’s initial campaigns in France he transferred to the RFC. He flew BE2cs with No. 13 Squadron on the Western Front during the second half of 1915, being appointed acting flight commander in November.38 Escorting a photographic reconnaissance on 5 December, Porter, his observer and another crew were shot down by a pair of Fokkers.39 All four died, making Porter the first Australian pilot to lose his life in air- to-air combat.

Pilots initially dropped bombs opportunistically, encouraged by RFC HQ’s instructions, in October 1914, that all reconnaissance sorties carry ordnance to drop ‘whenever suitable targets… present themselves’.40 Airmen employed crudely improvised equipment, with artillery shells and grenades serving as bombs while notches on the wing worked as bombsights (the ‘chuck it and chance it method’, according to John Slessor).41 During 1915 the RFC’s bombing efforts became progressively integrated into the army’s operational objectives and the equipment and tactics more sophisticated. At Neuve Chapelle, First Army charged the RFC with disrupting the German transportation system and rear-area communications. Poor results in that instance, and again at Aubers Ridge and Festubert (in May), led to further centralisation; in July the RFC delegated planning raids against rail targets to ‘GHQ as part of [an] overall allied operational plan’.42 Aided by a bombsight developed by civilian scientists, at Loos the RFC dropped five and a half tons on the German railway system.43 This caused ‘considerable damage’, in the German official

37 Cecil Lewis, Sagittarius Rising, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1977, p. 51; Richard Hallion, Rise of the : 1914-1918, The Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America, Inc., Baltimore, 1984, pp. 23-24. 38 ‘Promoted on the Field: the late Flight Commander Captain G A Porter RFA and RFC’, The Kalgoorlie Western Argus, 25 July 1916, p. 15. 39 Henshaw, The Sky Their Battlefield, p.61. 40 Graham, “We shall deliver the goods”, p. 30; Kennett, The First Air War, p. 47. 41 Nigel Steel and Peter Hart, Tumult in the Clouds: The British Experience of the War in the Air, 1914- 1918, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1997, pp. 36-38; Kennett, The First Air War, p. 51; John Slessor, Air Power and Armies, Oxford, London, 1936, pp. 122-28. 42 Graham, “We shall deliver the goods”, p. 33. 43 Jones, The War in the Air, Volume II, pp. 119-120. 143 historian’s assessment, and disrupted the movement of enemy reinforcements.44 Importantly too, the bombing compelled the German air commander to employ his fighting aircraft defensively behind the line, leaving the RFC corps squadrons to work over the battlefield relatively unhindered.45 At the end of the year, RFC HQ declared the ‘go as you please’ bombing methods finished; theatre level planning, scientific aiming methods and specialist tactics had replaced them and established bombing as a distinct, yet integrated, aspect of British operations.46

By autumn 1915 therefore, the RFC on the Western Front had substantially broadened the portfolio of operations that it had taken to war a year earlier; it also conducted them with growing professionalism and effectiveness. In a relatively short period the army came to regard air support as a prerequisite for conducting successful operations. In March 1915 for example, First Army’s commander, General Sir Douglas Haig, disclosed a willingness to postpone his offensive at Neuve Chapelle if the weather proved unsuitable for aerial observation.47 Appointed Commander-in- Chief of the British Armies on the Western Front in December, Haig would provide the RFC with ‘robust support’ and show a determination to exploit air power to its fullest possible potential.48 The scope and sophistication of army co-operation and the tripling of the RFC’s size in France during the war’s first year prompted decentralisation in the flying corps’ organisation. British squadrons went to war equipped to be ‘self sufficient’ and to work as ‘field units’ attached to GHQ and other headquarters.49 Upon the re-organisation of the BEF into separate armies at the beginning of 1915 the RFC formed wings of two or three squadrons, one for each army and GHQ. RFC HQ maintained control over technical and policy matters but the wings would come under the direct operational command of the army staff to which

44 Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, pp. 354-5; James Edmonds, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations France and Belgium, 1915: Volume II: Ridge, Festubert and Loos, Macmillan, London, 1928, pp. 141-142; Humphries (ed.) and Maker (ed.), Germany's Western Front, p. 278 and 301. 45 Humphries (ed.) and Maker (ed.), Germany’s Western Front, p. 278. 46 Jones, The War in the Air Volume II, pp. 461-462. 47 Boyle, Trenchard, p. 128; Sheffield and Bourne, Douglas Haig: War Diaries and Letters, 1914- 1918, p. 109 (diary entry for 10 March 1915); Gary Sheffield, The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army, Aurum Press, London, 2012 (2011), p. 106. 48 Gary Sheffield, The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army, Aurum Press, London, 2012 (2011), p. 106, 151-52. 49 Training Manual, Royal Flying Corps Part II, June 1914 edition, RAF AP144; Field Service Regulations Part I Operations, 1909, 1914 edition, p. 126. 144 they were attached.50 The RFC’s further growth during 1915, and the increasingly specialised roles for aircraft, prompted further decentralisation. At the beginning of 1916 the RFC created a brigade for each army, each comprising a ‘corps’ wing for tactical co-operation and an ‘army’ wing for aerial fighting, bombing and long-range reconnaissance. GHQ maintained control of 9th Wing (later brigade) as a strategic air reserve.51

Despite these developments, by the end of 1915 air power remained far from being a decisive force on the battlefield. In addition to being subject to the weather and co-operating with an army that possessed minimal training in co-operation with aircraft, the RFC was still limited by the available technology. Notably, in the British offensives of 1915, aircraft proved most valuable during the preliminary phase, that is, in photographic reconnaissance and artillery registration. They proved less effective once battles commenced and communications broke down. In other words, while the RFC made a sound and relatively consistent contribution to the BEF’s campaigns at the operational level it generally struggled to make its presence felt at the tactical level. Further, it took time for the army co-operation methods, typically conceived in squadrons on the Western Front, to disseminate throughout the RFC, which by late 1915 had units deployed around the globe. British industry also struggled to meet demands for equipment. Lewis guns for example (for which the RFC competed with the rest of the army) would remain in short supply until July 1916, while camera lenses, 90 per cent of which Britain imported before the war, would not be available in necessary quantities until 1917.52 Of the limited aviation materiel available to the British empire in 1915 and 1916, most would go to the Western Front, leaving little for theatres elsewhere.53

Finally the RFC’s rapid expansion during 1915 meant that pilots went to the front inadequately trained in flying, let alone the emerging tactics of army co- operation. Observer training – considered particularly important in the pre-war RFC –

50 Henderson to CGS, GHQ BEF, 30 October 1914, NAUK AIR1/503/16/3/18. 51 B. B. Cubitt, Secretary, War Office to Commander-in-Chief, BEF, 10 December 1915, NAUK AIR1/503/16/3/18; Brooke-Popham, memo from RFC HQ, 10 February 1916, NAUK AIR1/1/4/3. 52 Andrew Rawson, British Army Handbook 1914-1918, Sutton Publishing, Phoenix Mill, 2006, p. 266; David Jordan, ‘The Army Co-operation Missions of the Royal Flying Corps/ Royal Air Force, 1914- 1918’, PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 1997, pp. 123-126. 53 Major-General C. E. Callwell, Director of Military Operations to Major-General Arthur Lynden- Bell, CGS, MEF, 20 November 1915, Lynden-Bell Papers, IWM 7826. 145 also fell by the wayside, with volunteers from the other arms learning the task on the job.54 Stanley ‘Jimmy’ Goble, a relieving stationmaster from Victoria, experienced this first hand when, after being rejected by the AFC, he paid his own passage to Britain and enlisted in the RNAS in July 1915. With ‘two or three hours solo’, Goble began flying submarine patrols out of Dover in October. Six weeks later he joined 1st Naval Wing at Dunkirk, which operated a motley assortment of several aircraft types.

The morning after my arrival I was detailed to carry out what was termed a fighting patrol in a twin-engined Caudron. My armament was a Very pistol and my gunner was supplied with a rifle… [he] had never been in the air, had never fired a rifle in his life, and, as he had just returned from his honeymoon, displayed no intense desire for an early demise. I had not seen a twin-engined Caudron until after dark on the previous evening and could not even obtain a map of the front over which the squadron was operating. Fortunately, this highly efficient fighting combination found nothing to fight.55

By the beginning of 1916, the RFC had emerged as the British Army’s predominant tool for reconnaissance, striking the enemy’s line of communications and directing artillery fire. On the Western Front British airmen had conducted these tasks relatively unhindered until the introduction of purpose-designed fighting aircraft in the autumn of 1915. When losses among British squadrons spiked, the RFC’s new GOC, Brigadier-General Hugh Trenchard, decided to maintain an offensive posture but to send aircraft across the line in groups and provide unarmed machines with a close escort.56 Despite this commitment to maintaining a presence in enemy skies, Trenchard only gradually conceived offensive air power. In December 1915 he asserted that fighters should not be grouped together in homogenous squadrons, as ‘on the majority of days, the pilots would have nothing to do’.57 Although reversing this

54 Précis of files on training, 1910-1918, NAUK AIR1/683/21/13/2234; ‘Training of observers RAF’, NAUK AIR1/161/15/123/15. 55 Wing Commander S. J. Goble, account of wartime experiences written at RAF Staff College, NAUK AIR1/2388/228/11/68. 56 Richard Hallion, Rise of the Fighter Aircraft: 1914-1918, The Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America, Inc., Baltimore, 1984, pp. 23-24; Chief Staff Officer, RFC HQ in the Field, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Brooke-Popham, ‘Organization of the British Royal Flying Corps in the Field’, 10 February 1916, NAUK AIR1/1/4/3. 57 Malcolm Cooper, ‘British air policy on the Western Front, 1914-18’, PhD thesis, Oxford University, 1982, p. 86; Director General of Military Aeronautics, Major-General David Henderson to GOC RFC, Brigadier-General Hugh Trenchard, ? December 1915, RAF 76/1/76. 146 idea in March 1916, he continued to believe two-seat aircraft superior to those carrying only a pilot.58

Not quite the ‘the prophet’ of offensive air power that his enamoured biographer claims, Trenchard’s ideas evolved from lessons learned by the Aéronautique Militaire in its efforts to stem the German offensive at Verdun during the spring.59 Tested by the RFC during the Somme campaign (July-November 1916), these notions spawned a policy that would underpin British flying operations until the end of the war, including those undertaken by the Australian squadrons. The RFC kept in touch with developments at Verdun by posting liaison officers and via Trenchard’s relationship with Commandant Paul du Peuty, aviation officer on French Tenth Army’s staff. Drawing on French experience of the campaign that marked the war’s first concerted concentration of air power, RFC HQ implemented a range of tactical changes and adopted new equipment.60 The most significant ideas absorbed from Verdun, however, related to organisation and strategy. The French had initially parcelled off their fighters under separate commands (as Trenchard previously argued they should be), allowing the German Fliegertruppen to dominate the battlefield.61 Eight days into the offensive French Second Army centralised its fighters into a strategic reserve; it ordered them to abandon close escorts and defensive flights and conduct co-ordinated offensive patrols east of the line. With their Fokkers outclassed by new generation French aircraft, and under pressure from the troops to provide overhead protection, the Germans responded in turn with a defensive luftsperre (air barrier) behind their line.62 The Luftstrietkräfte’s future Kogenluft (commanding general of aviation), Ernst Von Hoeppner, related how this distracted German airmen from essential duties such as reconnaissance and, in any case, proved futile as French

58 Brooke-Popham, ‘Organization of the British Royal Flying Corps in the Field’, 10 February 1916, NAUK AIR1/1/4/3. In February 1916, the first British single-seat squadron, No. 24 Squadron, arrived on the Western Front equipped with DH2 aircraft. 59 Andrew Boyle, Trenchard, Collins, London, p. 129; Thomas Bradbeer, ‘The British Air Campaign During the Battle of the Somme: A Pyrrhic Victory’, PhD thesis, University of Kansas, 2011, pp. 77, 83 and 86. 60 John H. Morrow Jr, The Great War in the Air: Military Aviation from 1909 to 1921, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC, 1993, p. 117; ‘Information received from Aeroplanes and Balloons on the situation of our troops during an attack’, NAUK AIR1/1283/204/11/5; ‘Report by Commandant Du Peuty on the Working of the Aviation in the Vaux-Douaumont Sector’, May 1916, NAUK AIR1/1283/204/11/11. 61 Ernest von Hoeppner, Germany's War in the Air: the Development and Operations of German Military Aviation in the World War, The Battery Press, Nashville, 1994, p. 49. 62 Morrow, The Great War in the Air, pp. 149-150. 147 aircraft inevitably slipped through.63 By April the French claimed air superiority over the battlefield; owing to ‘the quasi permanency of offensive patrols’, its army co- operation machines only required close escorts in ‘exceptional circumstances’.64 The lesson was underlined when, at one point, the French briefly resumed their original scheme. As de Peuty told Trenchard, they again struggled to ‘hold their own’ against the Fliegertruppen: ‘We then resumed the second method and immediately recaptured local air superiority’. Maintaining a constant presence in enemy skies, however, entailed high casualties and rapidly exhausted aviators.65

This represented an indictment of the RFC’s use of fighter aircraft to escort the two-seaters, and suggested a manner in which the British army could employ its newest arm that complemented one of its core institutional principles. As Field Service Regulations argued, decision in warfare only resulted from the offensive, while ‘the defensive implies a loss of initiative’.66 Trenchard disseminated the lessons from Verdun throughout the RFC, drawing attention to the growing importance of air- to-air combat and advocating the use of fighter formations to dominate enemy skies.67 As he would later write, the Aéronautique Militaire demonstrated

that the only possible way of preventing the enemy interfering with our artillery and photographic machines and preventing him from carrying out artillery and photographic work, is to make him defend himself in his own country. In order to do this, larger numbers of fighting machines of the best type are essential.68

Absorbing these ideas, the RFC commenced its preliminary air-campaign over the Somme in April. Among its six objectives – which included the army co-operation roles established in 1915 – was the destruction of enemy aircraft.69 Using the FE2b and DH2, new-generation machines with forward-firing guns, 14th (Army) Wing patrolled over the enemy’s second line while the corps squadrons photographed the front and registered artillery. By 23 May, General Sir Henry Rawlinson (GOC Fourth

63 Hoeppner, Germany’s War in the Air, p. 50. 64 du Peuty, Report on the employment of aviation at Verdun, 19 March – 4 April 1916, issued by RFC HQ in the Field, 11 April 1916, NAUK AIR1/1283/204/11/5; ‘Report by Commandant du Peuty on the Working of the Aviation in the Vaux-Douaumont Sector’, May 1916, NAUK AIR1/1283/204/11/11; ‘Further notes from Verdun’, 6 May 1916, NAUK AIR1/1283/204/11/10. 65 Staff Officer for Aviation, French 10th Army, Commandant Paul du Peuty to Trenchard, 4 April 1916, NAUK AIR1/1585/204/82/41. 66 Field Service Regulations 1909 Part 1, Operations, 1912 edition, HMSO, London, p. 127. 67 ‘Further notes from Verdun’, 6 May 1916, NAUK AIR1/1283/204/11/10. 68 Trenchard, ‘Short notes on the Battle of the Somme 1st July- 17th November 1916’, RAF 76/1/4. 69 Bradbeer, ‘The British Air Campaign during the Battle of the Somme’, p. 358. 148 Army) reported to Haig that his corps machines had photographed over 30 kilometres of line without interference. ‘This’, he declared, ‘clearly shows that for the moment at any rate we have command of the air by day’.70 For Trenchard, gaining ascendency over the Fokkers prompted a departure from earlier ideas. In June he revised his earlier expansion scheme, increasing the proportion of fighting squadrons to other types.71

Though popularly remembered as an unmitigated disaster, the opening of the Somme campaign on 1 July 1916 proved an overwhelming success for the RFC. For its first eight weeks, British airmen enjoyed a remarkable degree of freedom over the battlefront. Offensive patrolling by the army squadrons ensured that most combat (and hence losses) occurred over the enemy’s third line, leaving the corps squadrons to work relatively unhindered over the battlefront.72 This hamstrung the Fliegertruppen; it could neither prevent the RFC’s reconnaissance and artillery co- operation, nor conduct its own.73 According to Hoeppner, the British and French airmen secured ‘an absolute mastery of the air’.74

Allied success in what Edward Hooton describes as the ‘outer battle’ contributed to the RFC’s accomplishment of its other five objectives for the Somme campaign, that is, reconnaissance, photography, artillery co-operation, bombing and contact patrolling.75 None worked flawlessly, though in all cases the RFC provided the army with support more consistent and effective than during the 1915 offensives. Moreover, army co-operation tactics and technology continued to evolve, as is evident in the tactical pamphlets published at the end of the campaign to codify lessons learned.76 Of these various tasks, however, 1916 continued to emphasise the

70 Bradbeer, ‘The British Air Campaign during the Battle of the Somme’, pp. 169-170. 71 GOC BEF, General Douglas Haig to the Secretary, War Office, 13 June 1916, NAUK AIR1/676/21/13/1777. 72 E. R. Hooton, War Over the Trenches: Air Power and the Western Front Campaigns 1916-1918, Ian Allan, Surrey, 2010, p. 120. Between 28 August and 8 October, corps squadrons flew over 3,400 sorties for the loss of three machines to enemy aircraft. 73 Extracts from ‘The Experiences of the German in the Somme Battle’ by General Fritz von Below, GOC I Armee, Air Chief Marshal Robert Brooke-Popham Papers, LHCMA, Item 1/8. 74 Hoeppner, Germany’s War in the Air, p. 69. 75 Bradbeer, ‘The British Air Campaign during the Battle of the Somme’, p. 358. 76 See for example: Trenchard to GHQ, 30 July 1916, NAUK AIR1/122/15/40/112; ‘Instructions for Contact Patrol Work for Aeroplanes’, December 1916, NAUK AIR1/122/15/40/112; ‘Notes on Aeroplane Fighting in Single-Seater Scouts’, issued by the General Staff, November 1916, NAUK AIR1/122/15/40/13; General Staff, SS120 ‘Provisional Instructions for Co-operation between Aeroplanes and Artillery During an Advance’, Army Printing and Stationary Service, September 1916; ‘Extension of the Present Intelligence System so as to Afford Closer Co-operation with the Royal 149 predominance of artillery co-operation, especially against enemy guns, with corps squadrons devoting two thirds of their aircraft to this mission.77 Despite often unfavourable weather, during the campaign’s first seventeen weeks Fourth Army’s corps squadrons co-operated in 1,721 pre-arranged counter-battery shoots (an average of 90 per day) with around half of these resulting in the damage, destruction or neutralisation of enemy guns.78 German sources report the loss of 88 per cent of field guns and 45 per cent of heavy artillery between 26 June and 18 August.79 Rawlinson, who reported the counter-battery statistics to Haig, also commented favourably on the RFC’s use of ‘zone calls’ (adapted from the French just before the campaign) to direct artillery fire on fleeting targets and the ‘remarkably accurate’ reports received from contact aeroplanes. The campaign, claimed Rawlinson, had fully demonstrated the value of the RFC’s co-operation and he called for the corps’ further expansion and closer integration with the artillery.80

Squadrons attached to neighbouring armies either supported the main campaign with bombing raids or co-operated in minor operations to pin down German reserves on their sectors. The largest of these occurred in First Army’s sector, at Fromelles, on 19 July. Like the main campaign to the south, the costly failure at Fromelles illustrated that air power, no matter how effectively employed, could not compensate for serious deficiencies in planning and the force’s artillery capability. Not figured in the oft-quoted 5,533 Australian casualties suffered during the 19-20 July battle are No. 32 Squadron’s 2nd Lieutenant John Godlee of Sydney and Lancelot Richardson, of No. 25 Squadron, from Barraba in New South Wales. Godlee, who transferred to the RFC from the light horse in late 1915, died in combat with Fokkers while Richardson, a direct enlistment into the RFC credited with five

Flying Corps’, 20 December 1916, NAUK, AIR1/678/21/13/1942; General Staff, SS135 ‘Instructions for the training of Divisions for Offensive Action’, Army Printing and Stationary Service, December 1916. 77 Lee Kennett, The First Air War, 1914-1918, The Free Press, 1991, p. 35. 78 GOC Fourth Army, General Henry Rawlinson, to GHQ, 29 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/676/21/13/1777. 79 Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkreig 1914 bis 1918, Volume X, Die Operationen des Jahres 1916 bis zum Wechsel in der obersten Heeresleitung, E. Mittler & Sohn, Frankfurt am Main, 1936, pp. 385-386; Erich Ludendorff, Ludendorff's Own Story, August 1914-November 1918; the Great War from the of Liège to the Signing of the Armistice as Viewed from the Grand Headquarters of the German Army, vol. 1, Harper, New York, 1919, p. 316. Given the British army’s gradual progress during the campaign, it is unlikely many (if any) of these guns were captured by troops during ground operations. 80 Rawlinson to GHQ, 29 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/676/21/13/1777. Rawlinson, along with General Henry Horne (First Army’s GOC) used this to argue for the transfer of control of corps squadrons to the artillery. Haig, however, sided with Trenchard and the RFC maintained control of the artillery co- operation squadrons. 150 victories in his first six weeks at the front, escaped with wounds (only to be killed in action the following April). Lieutenant Edye Manning, another Australian who had been studying in Edinburgh when the war started, was also wounded escorting a bombing raid during the battle of Fromelles. Nonetheless, on the quiet northern sectors British air superiority remained even more pronounced than on the Somme. Joining No. 10 (Corps) Squadron on First Army’s front at the beginning of August, 2nd Lieutenant Geoffrey Hughes (one of five Australians in that unit) did not see his first German aircraft until the middle of October – though he did daily artillery co- operation sorties and regularly raided enemy aerodromes and railways.81 As on the Somme, the British fighter squadrons kept the Germans occupied, allowing the RFC’s corps squadrons to work above the front unmolested. ‘It is very seldom one of our squadron meets a Hun’, wrote Hughes to his parents. ‘Our fighting squadrons go right over the lines and try and tempt the Huns to fight and they get all the scrapping there is to do’.82

The least successful aspect of Britain’s 1916 air campaign involved Trenchard’s excessively optimistic attempt to seal off the battle area with bombing attacks on railway and marshalling areas in a 90 by 160 kilometre zone stretching from St Quentin to . Spreading 292 tons of bombs across 298 targets, the RFC caused little material damage to the enemy’s line of communications and, in the process, lost 93 aircraft: close to a quarter of all machines written-off during the campaign.83 More successful than this centrally directed bombing campaign, British airmen on low sorties such as contact patrols regularly attacked enemy troops and transport on the battlefront. There is ample evidence that they severely undermined German morale (the soldiers had a ‘feeling of complete helplessness’, claims the

81 Geoffrey Hughes to parents, 13 August 1916, SLNSW MLMSS 1222/1. Hughes identifies the other Australians as Arthur O’Hara Wood, ‘a boy named Garland’ (Ewart James Garland) and ‘another Australian named Foster’ (probably Eric Charles Foster). Hughes apparently did realise that the CO No. 10 Squadron, Major William Mitchell, had also been born in Sydney, though had left Australia in 1901. 82 Hughes to parents, 16 October 1916, SLNSW MLMSS 1222/1. 83 For evidence of the limited extent of damage see Hooton, War Over the Trenches, p. 104 and Hoeppner, Germany’s War in the Air, p. 68. For the statistical data relating to RFC losses on bombing campaigns see Henshaw, The Sky Their Battlefield, p. 575. 151 German official history) and soured relations between the army and the Fliegertruppen.84

The situation prompted the Germans to reorganise and strengthen their air service on the Somme. Units moved from the control of corps to armies and aviation staff officers, previously advisors, gained command authority. Fighters, once parcelled out among the two-seater units, formed homogenous units known as Jastas (from Jagdstaffeln, or ‘hunting/pursuit units’), with the first four arriving on the Somme in August with a brand new fighter, the Albatros DI. The reformation of German aviation culminated on 6 October with the establishment of the Luftstreitkräfte (air force), which brought all facets of German military aviation under the command of Ernst von Hoeppner.85

In their first month of operations, the Jastas claimed fifty enemy aircraft for the loss of just three of their own.86 Air combat remained deep behind German lines in September, but during October the Luftstreitkräfte began to exert an influence over the front. The number of offensive patrols flown by 14th (Army) Wing halved as a proportion of all sorties and in the corps wings, losses increased by 66 per cent.87 On 25 October, a Jasta 2 pilot, Manfred von Richthofen, shot down the first RFC aircraft inside British lines during the war.88 A few hours later his commanding officer, , claimed his 39th victory – a BE2c piloted by 2nd Lieutenant William Fraser, originally of the Queensland Volunteer Flying Civilians.89 Boelcke

84 Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkreig 1914 bis 1918, Volume X, p. 386. For evidence that RFC bombing and the regular presence of British aircraft over German troops damaged the morale of German troops and damaged relations between the German Army and its aviation units see, for example: ‘Report on the Defence of Gommecourt on July the 1st, 1916’, Royal United Services Institution Journal, volume 62, number 447, 1917, 535-556, p. 549; Hoeppner, Germany’s War in the Air, p. 70; Georg Paul Neumannn and J. E. Gurdon (translator), The German Air Force in the Great War, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1920, pp. 219-221; H.A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force, vol. 2, Clarendon, Oxford, 1928, pp. 269-270; Christopher Duffy, The Somme Through German Eyes, Phoenix, London, 2007, p. 310; Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, p. 383; 85 Hooton, War Over the Trenches, p. 101; Morrow, The Great War in the Air, p. 151; Jones, The War in the Air, vol. 2 p. 305. 86 Norman Franks, Frank Bailey and Rick Duiven, The Jasta War Chronology: A Complete Listing of Claims and Losses, August 1916- November 1918, Grub Street, London, 1998, pp. 8-12. 87 Hooton, War Over the Trenches, p. 111; Henshaw, The Sky Their Battlefield, p. 575. For further evidence of the rising casualties in the corps squadrons see the prevalence of two-seaters among claims made by jasta pilots during September in Franks et al, The Jasta War Chronology, pp. 8-12. 88 Hooton, War Over the Trenches, p. 111. 89 The State Library of Queensland hold Fraser’s private correspondence: SLQ M 836. 152 killed another Australian BE2c pilot, 2nd Lieutenant Leslie Focken, the following day before dying himself in an aerial collision, two days later.90

In response to an appeal from Trenchard for reinforcements, the RNAS – which by virtue of the Admiralty’s stronger relationship with private aircraft manufacturers had greater access to fighters in 1916 – formed No. 8 Naval Squadron for service with the RFC’s V Brigade on the Somme.91 It arrived at Vert Galland on 3 November with three Melbourne-born pilots: Stanley Goble (a flight commander), Robert Little, George Simpson and an Englishman, Charles Booker, who had attended Melbourne Grammar. Over the following three months ‘Naval 8’ participated in the increasingly intense fighting above the Somme, claiming 24 enemy aircraft by the year’s end. Goble claimed five (raising his total to seven), while Little and Simpson opened their tallies with three and one respectively.92 The ever-increasing ascendency of German aircraft over the battlefield is evident in Little’s thoroughly-detailed logbooks. Escorting a flight of to their target and back on 3 December, for example, he engaged and drove off enemy interceptors on five occasions despite being forced to land in a ploughed field to clear a gun stoppage in the midst of the action.93

The Australians in ‘Naval 8’ and evidence that Boelcke’s final two victims were Australian might imply a ubiquity of antipodean pilots on the Western Front by mid-1916. In fact, their numbers probably only amounted to a few dozen who had either been in Britain in 1914, travelled there shortly after the war started, or secured a discharge from the AIF. It is possible to identify 13 Australians killed in the British flying services during 1916, that is, 1.76 per cent of the total number of British airmen buried that year.94 In contrast, around 700 Canadians joined the British flying services during 1915 and 1916, the crucial difference being the presence of RFC recruiters in

90 Franks et al, The Jasta War Chronology, p. 16. An accountant from Melbourne, Focken had transferred to the RFC from the AIF in January 1916 while recovering from enteric fever contracted at Gallipoli. Focken changed his name to ‘Fawkner’ after enlisting in the AIF and served in the RFC under this pseudonym. 91 ‘Naval 8’ was a composite unit consisting of a flight from each of the three RNAS wings at Dunkirk. It initially had a flight of Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutters, a flight of and a flight of Sopwith’s new single seat scout, the ‘Pup’ but by the end of 1916 had replaced its other machines with Pups. 92 Christopher Shores, Norman Franks and Russell Guest, Above the Trenches: A Complete Record of the Fighter Aces and Units of the British Empire Air Forces, 1915-1920, Grub Street, London, 1990, pp. 170, 241 and 339; Hallion, Rise of the fighter aircraft 1914-1918, p. 60. 93 Captain Robert Alexander Little, flying log book, 3 December 1916, AWM 3DRL/6858. 94 See Chapter 7 for the sources used to calculate these figures and similar data for other years of the war. 153 Canada, flying schools and aircraft manufacturers in North America and the shorter passage across the Atlantic.95

The experiences of the handful of Australian pilots who saw action on the Somme nevertheless exemplify an important point regarding British air policy during the campaign: despite increasingly effective enemy resistance, the RFC maintained its ‘relentless and incessant offensive’. Little’s log, for example, records that of the 33 sorties he flew between November 1916 and January 1917 at least nineteen involved crossing the line and, on a third, he engaged enemy aircraft.96 Goble, his flight commander, recalled the offensive patrol ‘at high altitudes with the object of engaging enemy aircraft between… 10,000 and 20,000 feet’ as Naval 8’s standard sortie. Though claiming them a ‘considerable success’, Goble reckoned that without oxygen or electrically-heated clothing the routine was unsustainable: ‘it appeared to sap our nervous energy and all pilots felt the strain’.97

In mid-September, just as British losses began to increase sharply, Trenchard wrote a memorandum considering the RFC’s options should the Luftstreitkräfte become more aggressive. It is a significant document, the first clear exposition of Trenchard’s conception of air power and the policy that would underpin RFC operations for the rest of the war. Citing experience at Verdun and on the Somme, Trenchard argued that aircraft proved ineffective when deployed defensively owing to the vastness of the sky and posited that hostile aircraft had a profound effect on the morale of enemy troops. To exploit the aircraft’s inherently superior offensive qualities and the effect it could have on enemy troops, and at the same time prevent the enemy from reciprocating, Trenchard concluded that

The sound policy would seem to be that if the enemy changes his tactics and pursues a more vigorous offensive, to increase our offensive, to go farther afield, and to force the enemy to do what he would gladly have us do now.98

The impression this policy made on enemy troops during the campaign’s final month is evident in the war diaries of German units returning to the Somme for a

95 Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, pp. 36-39. 96 Little, flying log book, entries for 8 November 1916 to 24 January 1917, AWM 3DRL/6858. 97 Wing Commander S. J. Goble, RAF staff college essay on wartime experiences, September 1925, p. 4, NAUK AIR1/2388/228/11/68. 98 Trenchard, ‘Future policy in the Air’, 22 September 1916, RAF 76/1/4. 154 second tour in late October. They refer to continued, and in some cases augmented, interference by British aircraft.99 Christopher Duffy notes that this is puzzling given the considerable technical superiority the Luftstreitkräfte held, and would maintain, until May 1917. The answer lies not in the technological gap, however, but in the contrast between the two sides’ air policies. Although the Germans belatedly followed the French and British by centralising their fighters, as their own records reveal, they continued using them defensively as interceptors over the line.100 As one German airman told British interrogators, ‘It is seldom that scouts are sent out on patrols unless the presence of hostile machines has previously been announced’.101 Hence, despite using technically inferior aircraft the RFC could maintain the superior position in the air throughout the campaign and provide British troops with considerably better air support than that available to their adversaries.

The 1916 campaigns on the Western Front represent a watershed in the history of military aviation. On the one hand, they confirmed the aeroplane’s considerable value to forces on the ground to an extent only implied by operations in 1914 and 1915. On the other, Verdun and the Somme marked the tangible realisation of what perceptive air power thinkers had predicted before the war: that is, that aircraft needed to fight each other for control of the air before they could effectively support forces on the ground. Reflecting this, and ensuring the fighter’s centrality in future RFC operations, in November the general staff published its first comprehensive treatise on aerial fighting and Haig wrote to the War Office with an expansion plan for the RFC featuring fighter squadrons at a 2:1 ratio to other types.102 These machines and their pilots would assist the RFC in the increasingly intense struggle over the Western Front in 1917 and 1918. The ambitious program would, however, stretch the empire’s resources leaving little for the so-called sideshows in the Middle East.

99 Duffy, Through German Eyes, pp. 312-313. 100 RFC Intelligence Summary, 17 February 1918, NAUK AIR1/6B/4/56/2A; ‘A review of the principals adopted by the Royal Flying Corps since the Battle of the Somme’, Army Printing and Stationary Services, A-8/17-S1388-100, 23 August 1917, Brooke-Popham papers, LHCMA Item 8/3/2. 101 ‘Examination of Observer Officer of German Flying Corps Captured in the Afternoon of January 21st 1917, near Tincques’, NAUK AIR1/1/4/26/1. 102 ‘Notes on Aeroplane Fighting in Single-Seater Scouts’, November 1916, NAUK AIR1/122/15/40/13; Jones, The War in the Air, vol. 2, p. 325. 155 5. THE CAMPAIGN IN MESOPOTAMIA, 1915 Although the AFC first went to war in November 1914 with the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force it did not see action until May the following year. In response to an appeal for an aviation unit from the Government of India in February 1915, an AFC ‘half flight’ embarked for Mesopotamia in April and began operations the following month with the Indian Expeditionary Force ‘D’. Throughout 1915 the AFC supplied between half and two-thirds of Force D’s aviation personnel, though was not, as one of its pilots Lieutenant Thomas White inaccurately claimed, ‘a distinctive Australian unit’.1 The ‘half flight’ never constituted a discrete unit overseas; AFC personnel served in the theatre until May 1917, initially as part of an Indian Flying Corps detachment and later, an RFC squadron into which this merged.

White’s perspective was an influential one. The Australian War Records Section struggled to obtain Indian Army records, forcing the AFC’s official historian to rely heavily on his manuscript history of the campaign.2 Cutlack’s chapters on Mesopotamia follow White’s narrative closely, quote it extensively and adopt its broad-brush evaluation of the flight’s contribution to Force D’s operations.3 Though important, as a pilot White’s perspective did not encompass the planning and conduct of operations; nor do the other sources on which Cutlack appears to have relied.4 This chapter re-evaluates the air operations in which Australian airmen participated with the Indian Army during 1915. It uses Indian Army and RFC records unexamined by Cutlack to examine how aviation, in its nascent state, contributed to the campaign.

When the British government declared war on the on 5 November 1915, Indian Army forces were already waiting at the head of the Persian

1 T. W. White, manuscript history of the , c. August 1920, AWM44 8/1 Part 13, p. 22. 2 Captain C. T. Atkinson, Historical Section, Committee of Imperial Defence to Captain John Treloar, Australian War Records Section, 21 September 1918, AWM16 4379/30/8. 3 F. M. Cutlack, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VIII: The Australian Flying Corps in the Western and Eastern Theatres of War, 1914-1918, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1939, (1923). 4 Quotations and references in Cutlack’s text suggest that he also had access to: Extracts from Major P. W. L. Broke-Smith, Deputy Assistant Director of Aviation [hereafter ‘DAD Aviation’] diary, AWM45 43/1; Lieutenant William Treloar, manuscript account of the Mesopotamian campaign, nd, AWM PR84/244; William Treloar to John Treloar, Director, Australian War Memorial, nd, AWM25 256/3; Captain Thomas White, diary, AWM 2DRL/0766; Brief record of 1st Half Flight prepared by the Australian War Records Section, nd, AWM224 MSS511; ‘Operations since leaving base’, manuscript account by an anonymous AFC member of the half flight, AWM224 MSS513; Edmund Candler, The Long Road to Baghdad, volumes 1 and 2, Cassell & Co., London, 1919. 156 Gulf. That evening, the brigade-size Force ‘D’ entered the Shatt al Arab with orders to secure the British-owned oil refinery at Abadan and make a demonstration of strength to the local Arabs whose allegiance British policy makers perennially doubted. Under Brigadier-General Walter Delamain, the 16th Brigade of the 6th (Poona) Division captured Fao on 6 November against minimal Turkish resistance and established a position to screen the oil refinery. At this stage the Turkish military organisation in Mesopotamia (the ‘ Area Command’) consisted of a single, poorly equipped division (the 38th), ‘scattered along the Tigris from Baghdad to Fao’.5 Reinforced by the rest of 6th Division, on 22 November Force D advanced to and from there along the Shatt al Arab to Qurna, its confluence with the Tigris and Euphrates. The Turks resisted two Indian attacks before succumbing to a flanking manoeuvre across the river to their north on 8 December. With its logistics strained by the advance upstream and aware of Turkish reinforcements on the way from Syria, Force D assumed a defensive posture, establishing a base of operations at Basra screened by detachments at Qurna and Shaiba. In April 1915 Force D expanded to an army corps (II Indian Corps) of two divisions (6th and 12th) and came under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir John Nixon.

Difficulties capturing Qurna in December 1914 indicate how Mesopotamia’s terrain and climate constrained traditional forms of reconnaissance and artillery observation. Force D’s first major engagement at Shaiba, in April 1915, further underlined these problems. Advancing along the Euphrates, a force of 17,500 Ottoman troops closed within 10 kilometres of Force D’s left flank fortifications at Shaiba (itself just 13 kilometres south-west of the Force’s main base at Basra) before being detected by Indian cavalry.6 The Turkish attack started less than 24 hours later, before reinforcements from Basra arrived. Indian forces held the line at Shaiba for two days before launching a successful counter-attack against prepared enemy positions at Barjisiya Wood. Although Force D won a tactical victory, it

5 Edward J. Erickson, Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War I: A Comparative Study, Routledge, Abingdon, 2007, p.67. 6 General Staff, Indian Army, Critical Study of the Campaign in Mesopotamia up to April 1917, General Staff Army Headquarters, Government of India Press, 1925, p. 17. 157

Mesopotamia, 19157

7 F. J. Moberly, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations: The Campaign in Mesopotamia 1914-1918: Volume I, London, HMSO, 1923. 158 fought the battle clumsily, sustaining around 20 per cent casualties and allowing most of the Ottoman force to escape with its guns to Nasiriya.8 After detecting the Turkish approach too late for reinforcements to intervene, the British cavalry continually failed to discern the enemy’s dispositions and suffered considerable casualties attempting to do so. The British commander at Shaiba, Major-General Charles Melliss, launched the counter-attack with, by his own admission, little idea of the enemy’s whereabouts.9 His diffident battle plan and the manner in which his infantry unexpectedly blundered into the Turkish line reflects this.10 Force D’s artillery also performed poorly, mirages hindering observation of enemy positions.11

Recognising the potential of aircraft to mitigate such problems, Force D’s staff had requested an aviation unit in January 1915. Having relinquished the Indian Army’s few trained pilots and aircraft to the RFC at the beginning of the war, and with the War Office unable to assist, the Indian government approached the dominions. The Viceroy cabled the governments of Australia and New Zealand on 8 February, requesting ‘trained aviators for service in [the] Tigris Valley’ with aircraft, motor transport and air mechanics.12 With the Australian offer of personnel and maintenance equipment for a ‘half flight’, Indian authorities sanctioned the ‘preliminary arrangements… for the organisation of a flight of aeroplanes’.13 When Nixon arrived at Basra on 9 April 1915 his staff included Major Phillip Broke-Smith, the theatre’s Deputy Assistant Director of Aviation.

Contrary to the recurring motif in Australian military history, in which forces embarking overseas do so poorly equipped and trained, the AFC half flight left Australia in mid-April 1915 with a highly-skilled establishment and a large and prudently-selected stock of equipment and supplies. The unit was commanded by

8 Moberly, Military Operations: The Campaign in Mesopotamia 1914-1918: Volume I, p. 21. 9 Major-General C. J. Melliss, Report on operations near Shaiba, 24 April 1915, NAUK WO106/52. 10 General Staff, Indian Army, Critical Study of the Campaign in Mesopotamia up to April 1917, p. 19. 11 Melliss, Report on operations near Shaiba, 24 April 1915, NAUK WO106/52; Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume I, pp. 213-214. Captain John Harris, who joined 1st Squadron as medical officer in October 1917 in Palestine described this type of optical illusion in which sudden variations in air temperature bend light rays to project a false image of the sky onto the landscape. ‘It looks for all the world like a beautiful blue lake of water surrounded by high banks and yet when one looks a little more closely a telegraph line with its poles is seen to pass right through the centre of the lake’ [John Harris, diary, 31 October 1917, AWM PR84/003]. 12 Sir Charles Hardinge, Viceroy of India to Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson, Governor-General of Australia, 8 February 1915, NAA A11803 1914/89/54. 13 Government of India, Army Department to Sir Percy Lake, Chief of the General Staff, 12 April 1915, NAUK AIR1/130/15/40/306. 159 Captain Henry Petre, previously the chief instructor at Point Cook. It also included Captain Thomas White and Lieutenant George Merz, graduates of the first flying course, and Lieutenant William Treloar, an officer of the Citizen Military Forces who had privately learned to fly in Britain a month before the war started. Aside from the senior NCOs, who came from the permanent staff at Point Cook, Petre drew the unit’s mechanics from volunteers in the AIF camp at Broadmeadows. Although they would only have a few weeks training in the workshops at Point Cook before embarking, practically all hailed from trades relating to their job in the flight.14 In addition to a full complement of tools, the half flight had its own mule and motorised transport, the former suggested by the Australian general staff ‘in case of difficulty with mechanical transport in sandy country’ and the latter custom-built to provide mobile storage and workshops.15 As one mechanic recalled, the unit left Australia with ‘a very elaborate equipment complete in all details’.16

Australian military authorities determined half flight’s size and composition based on the Indian government’s agreement to provide aircraft and spare parts and make the necessary logistical arrangements.17 When Petre arrived in Basra on 14 May, however, he found the situation ‘rather different from the impression conveyed by their cablegrams’.18 Broke-Smith had struggled to find additional personnel and equipment. Although he had recommended a minimum of eight aircraft for the theatre, Indian authorities could only provide two airworthy machines, both unarmed Maurice Farman two-seaters, along with few stores and equipment and 15 air mechanics seconded from British and Indian forces.19 New Zealand sent its only qualified military aviator, Lieutenant William Burn, and the Indian Army provided the flight’s CO, Major Hugh Reilly who, since November 1914, had flown with an RFC detachment on the . The unit’s strength amounted to less than a standard

14 Flying Corps embarkation roll, April 1915, AWM8 15/1. 15 Ferguson to Hardinge, 23 March 1915, NAA A11803 1914/89/54. 16 Anonymous, ‘Operations From Time of Leaving Base’, AWM224 MSS513. 17 Ferguson to Hardinge, 26 February 1915, NAA A11803 1914/89/54; Hardinge to Ferguson, 7 March 1915, NAA A11803 1914/89/54. 18 Captain Henry Petre, OC Australian half flight to Colonel G. G. H. Irving, Chief of General Staff, 14 June 1915, NAA A2023 A38/8/202. 19 Notes on aviation requirements in Mesopotamia prepared by Broke-Smith, 26 April 1915, AWM45 43/1; DAD Aviation diary, 14 May 1915, AWM45 43/1. 160 RFC flight; with it, Broke-Smith had orders to establish a depot in Bombay, an aircraft park in Basra and a flight to co-operate with Force D’s columns in the field.20

The flight established an airfield at Basra and erected its aircraft just in time to participate in Force D’s first offensive of 1915. A day after the initial test flight (28 May), 6th Division’s newly appointed GOC, Major-General Charles Townshend, ordered an advance from Qurna to capture Amara, 140 kilometres up the Tigris. The enemy had dug in just a few kilometres beyond Qurna on a series of hills transformed into islands by seasonal floodwaters. Townshend planned ‘an operation methodically undertaken in successive phases as in siege warfare’. The infantry would advance on boats, covered by a flotilla of steamers, launches and minesweepers. Townshend expected Force D to overrun the enemy positions during two days of operations starting on 31 May, with a pursuit to Amara beginning on the third day.21 Townshend’s plans did not mention aviation but in an assessment of Force D’s air requirements written in April, Broke-Smith had outlined the function aircraft should play in the theatre: strategic reconnaissance for GHQ, tactical reconnaissance for columns, artillery observation and ‘intercommunication’ between widely separated forces.22

By the eve of the offensive, the flight had established an advanced aerodrome at Sherish, two and a half kilometres south of Qurna. At 0500 on 31 May the artillery of 6th Division bombarded the first objectives and an hour later the infantry commenced their amphibious assault on the Turkish outpost line. They captured all objectives before noon. During the morning the flight made two sorties, reconnoitring as far north as Sakrikiya, 20 kilometres behind the enemy’s front line and dropping a few bombs (probably 2 lb hand bombs) on enemy camps.23 The observers corrected Force D’s existing maps and, in accordance with Field Service Regulations, conveyed them personally to 6th Division’s headquarters aboard the sloop HMS Espiègel.24

The offensive resumed the following morning at 0540 with a bombardment of the enemy’s main positions between Abu Aran and Muzaibila. The naval flotilla

20 ‘A squadron- Royal Flying Corps (12 aeroplanes) War Establishment’, c. mid-1915, AWM27 303/17 PART 1 and PART 2; DAD Aviation diary, 26 March 1915, AWM45 43/1. 21 6th Divisional Order No. 16, 28 May 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 22 Notes on aviation requirements in Mesopotamia prepared by Broke-Smith, 26 April 1915, AWM45 43/1. 23 Major H. L. Reilly, Reconnaissance report No. 2, 31 May 1915, NAUK AIR1/504/16/3/23. 24 DAD Aviation diary, 31 May 1915, AWM45 43/1. 161 advanced an hour later behind a screen of mine sweepers, noting the silence of the Turkish guns. Preceding them, White, with Reilly as an observer, discovered the enemy positions between Abu Aran and Ruta ‘clear of Turks who were in flight in every available craft’.25 As Townshend later put it, ‘it then became a question of as rapid pursuit on Amara as I could possibly carry out…’.26 Although receiving White and Reilly’s report at 0820 however, enemy mines and the slow embarkation of his troops onto river transport prevented Townshend beginning the pursuit until 1500, diminishing the value of the aerial reconnaissance.27

By dawn on 2 June an advanced flotilla carrying Townshend and his staff had overtaken several abandoned Turkish vessels (one believed to have grounded after a near miss by a bomb White dropped) and reached Gumaijah Gharbi, where Espiègel ran aground. A dawn reconnaissance by Petre and Burn reported ‘few troops in barges at Amara’ but ‘no other sign of the enemy’.28 This appears to have compelled Townshend to press forward with four steamers, not waiting for the arrival of his main force, still several hours behind.29

Townshend captured Amara on 3 June, his diminutive advanced party of 41 sailors and marines accepting the surrender of some 1,200 Turkish regulars and holding them overnight until 6th Division’s main force arrived the following morning.30 He emphasised the riskiness of this operation in his memoir, claiming he expected a fight from Amara’s garrison but that he was prepared to ‘chance it’.31 In fact, before deciding to precede the main force he received an aerial reconnaissance report from GHQ, via wireless, indicating that he could expect little resistance and faced no danger of counter-attack from enemy forces retreating through Arabistan, off his right flank.32 Twenty-four hours after 6th Division secured Amara the flight established a ‘mobile field base’ there comprising the majority of the flight’s AFC personnel (though White, appointed Broke-Smith’s adjutant remained at Basra to

25 6th Division war diary, 1 June 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 26 Major-General Charles Townshend, GOC 6th (Poona) Division to Lieutenant-General John Nixon, GOC Indian Expeditionary Force D, 11 June 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 27 6th Division war diary, 1 June 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 28 Petre to Irving, 14 June 1915, NAA A2023 A38/8/202. 29 6th Division war diary, 2 June 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 30 Major-General Charles Townshend, GOC 6th Division to Lieutenant-General Sir John Nixon, GOC II (Indian) Corps, 11 June 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 31 Charles Townshend, My Campaign in Mesopotamia, T. Butterworth, London, 1920, p. 70. 32 Petre to Irving, 14 June 1915, NAA A2023 A38/8/202; 6th Division war diary, 3 June 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 162 oversee the aircraft park).33 The airmen reported no enemy forces within 40 kilometres of Townshend’s troops at Amara and, as Field Service Regulations had foreseen, when Force D’s wireless communications failed they conveyed messages between Nixon, at GHQ in Basra, and his subordinates upstream.34

Reporting to the Australian CGS, Petre attributed the campaign’s success to aviation, claiming it undermined the morale of enemy troops who had not previously faced aircraft in battle.35 While the evidence does not allow a qualification of this, it does suggest that aviation increased 6th Division’s operational tempo and demonstrated its potential to Force D’s senior officers. Aerial reconnaissance kept the staff in touch with the retreating Turks and encouraged Townshend’s bold capture of Amara. Illustrating GOC 6th Division’s opinion of air power, on 9 June he issued a defence scheme for Amara that had aircraft co-operating with river-craft to reconnoitre north along the Tigris. While not a revolutionary conception of military aviation, it marked the flight’s integration into the force, being the first divisional order to specifically refer to aviation and include Major Reilly among the recipients.36

GHQ ordered the flight back to Basra to support planned operations along the Euphrates before it could contribute much to Amara’s protection. Before returning downstream however, Reilly and Burn identified the enemy digging in on a 12- kilometer front astride the Tigris at Es Sinn (just south of Kut-al-Amara).37 Burn sketched a map that Townshend would use during subsequent months to plan his next offensive.38 This reconnaissance of a position 200 kilometres beyond Indian lines in itself suggests the assistance that aircraft may have provided Townshend were there enough in the theatre to simultaneously support operations on the Tigris and Euphrates lines. Instead, during June and July, 6th Division would have to rely on cavalry and river patrols that consumed vast amounts of time and manpower. In early July, for

33 DAD Aviation diary, 2 June 1915, AWM45 43/1; Flight Commander Mesopotamia war diary, 3 June 1915, NAUK AIR1/2263/209/61/1; Lord to parents, 4 June 1915, Andrew Smith private collection. 34 Field Service Regulations, 1909, (1914 edition), p. 128. 35 Petre to Irving, 8 September 1915, NAA A2023 A38/8/202. 36 6th Division Operation order No. 20, 9 June 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 37 6th Division war diary, June 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 38 ‘Sinn Position as per aeroplane reconnaissance- mid June’, 6th Division war diary, August 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 163 example, it took 50 infantry three days to investigate rumours that Turks had reoccupied Ali Gharbi and report ‘all quiet there’.39

Despite the success of aviation’s debut in the theatre, the battle of Amara had also exposed weaknesses within the flying unit. Petre’s machine spent four days out of service because the flight had only a single spare engine and one river transport on which to carry it upstream. At Amara Reilly noted the ‘great difficulty’ caused by the ‘very inadequate’ supplies of spare parts and consumables such as oil, fabric and dope.40 Meanwhile, the unhealthy climate affected the unit’s efficiency and underscored its lack of reinforcements, Broke-Smith noting on 6 June how almost a third of the park’s mechanics were off-duty with malaria or gastritis.41 Five days later Reilly reported the number of sick mechanics at Amara as ‘exceptionally high’ and noted that, in the heat, his mechanics could only manage a four-hour work day.42 Acknowledging that even the minimal workload requested by 6th Division had strained his unit’s capability, Broke-Smith pressed GHQ for additional pilots, mechanics, aircraft and some wireless sets, which he noted, had proved useful on the Western Front.43

Immediately after 6th Division’s capture of Amara, GHQ Force D began planning an amphibious advance along the Euphrates, using 12th Division to capture Nasiriya. Nixon ordered the two Maurice Farmans to reconnoitre the route on 22 June. Though successful – Petre and Burn corrected Force D’s maps and identified dry ground suitable for landing troops along the Akakika Channel – the engines in both machines overheated and failed, putting the flight out of action for the initial stages of the operations.44 Broke-Smith warned Force D’s staff that such delays ‘were only to be expected’ given that the Basra park lacked the staff and equipment to carry out major repairs.45

With the feasibility of an amphibious operation confirmed by Petre and Burn’s reconnaissance, Major-General George Gorringe’s 12th Division embarked upstream

39 6th Division war diary, 2 July 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 40 Flight Commander Mesopotamia war diary, 10 June 1915, NAUK AIR1/2263/209/61/1. 41 DAD Aviation diary, 5-6 June 1915, AWM45 43/1. 42 Flight Commander Mesopotamia war diary, 10 June 1915, NAUK AIR1/2263/209/61/1. 43 DAD Aviation diary, 15 June 1915, AWM45 43/1. 44 ‘Copy of aeroplane reconnaissance report by Captain Petre and Lieutenant Burn, dated Sandy Island, 22 June 1915’, 12th Division war diary, NAUK WO95/5142. 45 DAD Aviation diary, 25 June 1915, AWM45 43/1. 164 on 26 June 1915. During ten days of fighting to overcome enemy outposts downstream from Nasiriya Gorringe lamented the lack of aerial observation – especially so on 5 July when his infantry suffered 16 per cent casualties attacking prepared enemy positions. The flat terrain prevented 12th Division’s gunners ‘getting the correct line of fire and range’, leaving the infantry to advance against unsuppressed enemy positions.46 After establishing a camp at Asani on 6 July, Gorringe’s forces spent a frustrating week reconnoitring the enemy’s main position before Nasiriya. The cavalry failed to discover the position of enemy guns and trenches; preparatory bombardments had no effect while concealed Turkish guns harried the Indian infantry; and Gorringe remained unsure of the enemy garrison’s size.47 Although his troops had occupied staging positions by 14 July, Gorringe postponed the attack to wait for reinforcements, ‘especially aeroplanes’.48

Having received two new Caudron G3 biplanes, Broke-Smith immediately dispatched them to Asani on 19 July to support 12th Division. Piloting one, Merz with an Indian Army observer made the first aerial reconnaissance of the Ottoman positions, producing a sketch map. It added detail to one drawn by the cavalry on 8 July, notably by outlining enemy positions on the right bank and establishing that flooded marshland to the west would preclude taking these by flank attack. Like the cavalry, however, Merz failed to see Turkish positions concealed in a date plantation on the left bank.49 An aerial camera had arrived at Basra in mid-June but, at this stage, the flight could not supply water cool enough to develop prints in the field.50 Nixon would later report that the sketch maps produced by Merz and his observer ‘materially assisted in clearing up the situation before the battle’, though it must be said that compared with what his colleagues had to work with at Neuve Chapelle, they lacked the uniformity of scale and detail of and had no grid system to assist the artillery.51

46 Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918 Volume I, pp. 281-282 and p. 290. 47 Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume I, pp. 284-286; 12th Division war diary, 16 July 1915, NAUK WO95/5142. 48 Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume I, p. 289; ‘The Campaign in Mesopotamia 1914 to 1918’, c. 1923, NAUK AIR1/674/21/6/87. 49 The aerial and cavalry sketch maps are in 12th Division’s war diary, July 1915, NAUK WO95/5142. 50 DAD Aviation diary, 18 June 1915, AWM45 43/1; Report on aviation in Mesopotamia, June 1916, NAUK AIR1/504/16/3/23. 51 Nixon’s despatches relating to the Nasiriyeh operations, 20 August 1915, NAUK WO106/892. 165 12th Division advanced at dawn on 24 July along both sides of the Euphrates. By 1000 the Turks had abandoned their main line and in the afternoon evacuated their reserve positions. Indian troops entered Nasiriya unopposed the following morning and aircraft reported no enemy forces near enough to threaten a counter-attack. Evaluating the contribution of the two Caudrons is difficult owing to vague record- keeping: the flight’s war diary records ‘Reconnaissance work during the attack’, while Gorringe’s staff noted that one of the pilots reported the location of two enemy guns.52 In a letter to the GSO1 at Indian Army Headquarters Reilly thought they had ‘been distinctly useful’ but admitted that during the battle itself they were unable to do much partly owing to the brevity of the action which precluded fitting bomb racks and registering targets for the artillery (‘a rather lengthy process’). He also noted the inadequacy of the flight’s equipment, considering it ‘a pity’ they had no wireless as they might ‘have given the artillery some very useful information about their fire’ and noting the ‘tremendous amount of trouble’ experienced with the Caudrons’ engines; ‘It is really not surprising considering that they are air cooled, and the air from 500 to 3000 feet is often like a blast furnace’.53

Indeed, despite being overhauled before attempting the return flight to Basra, both Caudrons made forced landings after suffering engine failure.54 With the assistance of friendly Arabs Reilly made it to the flight’s advanced refuelling point at Abu Salabiq. Merz and Burn went missing, however, their wrecked machine being discovered three days later. After a week of investigation, Force D’s political officer determined that the crew had died fighting 15 Arabs who, according to one eye- witness, had attacked them after landing.55 Broke-Smith attributed their deaths to Merz’s failure to comply with his orders that the two aircraft remain together throughout the homeward journey – he should have landed with Reilly, whose engine

52 12th Division war diary, 24 July 1915, NAUK WO95/5142; Flight Commander Mesopotamia war diary, 24 July 1915, NAUK AIR1/2263/209/61/2. 53 Reilly to Lt Colonel E. J. M. Wood, GSO1, Indian Army Headquarters, 6 August 1915, NAUK AIR1/140/15/40/306. 54 Reilly, ‘Flight from Asani to Basrah’, 6 August 1915, NAUK WO158/685. 55 Captain Dickson to General Staff Intelligence, 9 August 1915, AWM45 43/1; Note by Major- General K. Davidson, Inspector General of Communications, 20 August 1915, WO158/685. Merz was, hence, the first AFC airmen to lose his life on active service. He was not the first Australian-born airmen to die: this was most likely Flight Lieutenant Basil Ash of the RNAS, who failed to return from a coastal patrol in September 1914 (see Chapter 4). Further, Merz can not be considered to have been the first Australian officer to have lost his life in air to air combat: this unfortunate distinction goes to Gavin Porter of No. 13 Squadron RFC, killed in a with Fokkers over the Western Front on 5 December 1915 (see Chapter 4). 166 failed first.56 Merz, who had studied medicine, volunteered in the Asani hospital the night before and probably flew exhausted; he failed to notice Reilly descend.57 Fundamentally, this serious loss to the unit (a third of its flying strength) had resulted from the failure of equipment unsuited to the task. Having retrieved Merz & Burn’s Caudron, the mechanics examined the engine and ascribed its failure ‘directly due to heat’ despite having been overhauled by the unit’s most experienced mechanic just before the flight.58

The inadequacy of Force D’s aviation establishment prompted Nixon to urge the Indian General Staff to request additional personnel and equipment from the dominions.59 The Australian government agreed to establish a second half flight on 11 June, though it would be October before it had trained any additional pilots.60 At the viceroy’s entreaty ten mechanics left Australia in late July. The War Office agreed to expand Force D’s flying establishment to squadron strength and, considering the Indian staff incapable of handling such a unit, assumed responsibility for aviation in Mesopotamia.61 The RFC absorbed Force D’s flight and attached it to a similarly sized detachment operating in Egypt, recently named No. 30 Squadron.62 The two detachments would join together in Mesopotamia later in the year. The flight’s officers received British commissions, though those from the AFC kept their Australian uniforms and insignia and remained on the Commonwealth government’s payroll.63 The new arrangements had the potential to significantly improve the RFC’s capability in Mesopotamia but pressure to reinforce units on the Western Front and Sinai would delay the appearance of a full squadron on Force D’s order of battle for another year.

Following 12th Division’s capture of Nasiriya, Nixon switched his attention back to the Tigris, considering an advance further upstream to Kut al Amara a

56 DAD Aviation diary, 31 July 1915, AWM45 43/1; Nixon to Lake, 7 August 1915, NAUK WO158/685. 57 T. W. White, Guests of the Unspeakable, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1932, p. 15. 58 DAD Aviation diary, 16 August 1915, AWM45 43/1; Extract from letter, Kemball to Brigadier- General Offley Shore, Director of Staff Duties, 17 August 1915, NAUK AIR1/140/15/40/306. 59 Nixon to Indian General Staff, ? June 1915, AWM45 43/1; Hardinge to Ferguson, 5 June 1915, NAA A11803 1914/89/54. 60 Secretary for the Prime Minister to Ferguson, 11 June 1915, NAA A2023 A38/8/188. 61 Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume I, p. 269; ‘The Campaign in Mesopotamia 1914 to 1918’, c. 1923, NAUK AIR1/674/21/6/87. 62 Captain H. P. R. Coode, for the Deputy Director of Military Aeronautics to the Officer Commanding Administrative Wing, RFC, 11 August 1915, NAUK AIR1/691/21/20/30. 63 White to F. M. Cutlack, 22 August 1920, AWM44 8/1 Part 13. 167 ‘strategic necessity’. On 23 August he instructed Townshend to plan an advance from Amara for ‘the destruction and dispersal of the enemy’ and the seizure of Kut.64 Eleven days before Nixon had even received the Indian Secretary of State’s authorisation for a further advance along the Tigris he ordered Broke-Smith to send the flight to 6th Division’s advanced outpost at Ali Gharbi.65 With White in temporary command of the aircraft park to reduce Broke-Smith’s workload and Petre engaged in training Indian Army officers to fly, Treloar, alone among the AFC officers, made the voyage upriver.66 Arriving at Amara on 25 August, he, Reilly and two new Indian Army pilots spent a week testing new equipment. They practised controlling artillery fire with visual signals and taking aerial photographs, 6th Division’s staff noting the effectiveness of both.67 Trials with bombs from the Kirkee arsenal proved less successful; a high proportion failed to explode while those that did produced a blast radius smaller than 10 yards.68 New aircraft also failed to live up to expectations. The theatre received its first single seat scouts in late August when four Martinsyde S1s arrived from Britain. Despite having been introduced to the Western Front in January 1915 they were, by August, already being withdrawn from service.69 Testing one at Basra, Petre considered the Martinsyde a disappointment, having neither adequate speed or climbing power for a scout – something already acknowledged by pilots in France.70

During the first fortnight of September Townshend’s force advanced from Ali Gharbi towards Sannaiyat, from where he intended to attack the main Turkish position screening Kut, at Es Sinn. Operating from makeshift aerodromes along the river the flight reconnoitred ahead of the column, an RFC ‘representative’ acting as liaison at 6th Division headquarters for the first time. Townshend relied on the aerial reports to control the force’s advance, basing his orders on what they revealed and

64 Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume I, p. 312. 65 DAD Aviation diary, 9 August 1915, AWM45 43/1. 66 DAD Aviation diary, 25 August 1915, AWM45 43/1. 67 Flight Commander Mesopotamia, war diary, 26-31 August 1915, NAUK AIR1/2263/209/61/3; 6th Division war diary, 31 August 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 68 Report on aviation in Mesopotamia, June 1916, NAUK AIR1/504/16/3/23. 69 J. M. Bruce, The Aeroplanes of the Royal Flying Corps (Military Wing), Putnam, London, 1982, p. 274. 70 DAD Aviation diary, 29 August, AWM45 43/1; L. A. Strange, Recollections of an Airman, Aviation Book Club, London, 1940, p. 98. 168 issuing amended instructions when the air reports indicated an unanticipated change in the enemy’s dispositions.71

Reaching Shaikh Saad on 13 September, the flight started reconnoitring the Ottoman positions at Es Sinn, unobserved from the air since mid-June. After initial doubt as to whether the enemy still occupied the position, a reconnaissance by Reilly on the 16th confirmed the enemy in occupation of some 20 kilometres of heavily fortified trenches astride the river.72 He updated 6th Division’s sketch map of the area and confirmed the presence of a dry passage through marshland on the Turkish left, through which Townshend hoped to outflank the entire position.73 The unanticipated strength of the enemy defences also compelled Townshend to request reinforcements from Nixon.74 The flight’s efforts cost another aircraft and crew when, on 16 September, Treloar and Captain Basil Atkins’s Caudron suffered engine failure and landed near the enemy line: ‘before going many paces we were surrounded… by an excited crowd of Arab fanatics and Turkish irregulars…’.75

Constrained by a shortage of river-craft, 6th Division’s concentration at Sunnaiyat took until 26 September. Operating from an aerodrome there, the flight – reinforced by a pair of RNAS seaplanes sent from East Africa – meanwhile flew daily sorties over Es Sinn to drop bombs and propaganda leaflets, and take photographs.76 In his post-battle despatches, Nixon would claim these provided Townshend with ‘complete and accurate information’ of Ottoman positions.77 Still, compared with what the RFC could provide the BEF by September 1915, Force D’s aviation capability appears primitive. As White, who with Petre reinforced the flight just before the battle, recalled, ‘Photographs were taken with an ordinary reflex camera, by… holding the camera over the side of the machine or placing the lens through a

71 For evidence of the influence the aerial reconnaissance had on Townshend’s command and control of 6th Division’s advance from Amara to Sunnaiyat see Flight Commander Mesopotamia, war diary, 14 September 1915, NAUK AIR1/2263/209/61/4; 6th Division Order No. 8, 13 September 1915, NAUK WO95/5112; 6th Division Order No. 10, 14 September 1915, NAUK WO95/5112; 6th Division war diary, 15 September, NAUK WO95/5112. 72 6th Division war diary, 16 September 1915, NAUK WO95/5112; Intelligence summary, 25 September 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 73 ‘Aeroplane reconnaissance No. 25’, 16 September 1915, NAUK AIR1/504/16/3/23. 74 Townshend, My Campaign in Mesopotamia, p.110-111. 75 Lieutenant William Treloar, manuscript account of the Mesopotamian campaign, nd, AWM PR84/244. 76 Flight Commander Mesopotamia, war diary, 14-23 September 1915, NAUK AIR1/2263/209/61/4. 77 ‘Report from General Sir J. E. Nixon KCB on the Battle of Kut-al-Amarah, 28th September 1915’, NAUK WO32/5207. 169 hole in the floor’. Although capturing the basic layout of the enemy trenches, critically, ‘they did not give their location with sufficient accuracy to place them to scale on a map’.78 Indeed, compared with an conducted in 1922, 6th Division’s sketch map of Es Sinn had a considerably distorted scale.79 Divisional staff also lacked experience with interpretation, Townshend noting how ‘curious black prong like projections’ captured in one image turned out to be explosive mines.80 The Es Sinn map did, however, for the first time in Mesopotamia, include a grid-reference system.81

Townshend’s operation orders, issued on 26 September, included instructions for the RFC: aircraft would bomb designated points on the enemy line (identified by grid reference) and maintain communications between GHQ and the widely dispersed assault columns committed to the attack. Equipped with wireless, the naval aircraft would co-operate with the divisional artillery.82 Owing to accidents and a lack of river transport, by the eve of the battle the RFC flight possessed just two airworthy machines.

The main effort began on 28 September with an assault by two Indian columns: a mobile force to turn the Turkish left (northern) flank and advance south, rolling up the enemy line, and an infantry column to attack the position frontally in support. As planned, by nightfall the mobile column had penetrated behind the Ottoman line, though enemy troops still held sections of it and had caused both 6th Division columns significant casualties. During the night they abandoned the position altogether, allowing Townshend’s forces to occupy Kut the following day.

Force D went into battle at Es Sinn more thoroughly equipped to co-operate with aviation than previously. Divisional headquarters had an RFC liaison officer, the division’s senior artillery officer had wireless-equipped seaplanes to help range targets and the mobile flanking column had an attached RFC party so that aircraft could land and communicate with it directly.83 Still, the evidence suggests that at zero

78 White, manuscript history, c. August 1920, p. 13, AWM44 8/1 Part 13. 79 Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume I, Map No. 7; 6th Division war diary, Headquarters map No. 16 B, 23 September 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 80 ‘Circumstances of every important period of the fight, Battle of Kut, 28th September 1915’, NAUK WO95/5112. 81 6th Division war diary, Headquarters map No. 16 B, 23 September 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 82 6th Division Order No. 24, 26 September 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 83 Report on aviation in Mesopotamia, June 1916, NAUK AIR1/504/16/3/23. 170 hour the airmen had already made their most valuable contribution; as at the Battle of Loos – fought during the same week in France – the RFC still lacked the equipment and tactics to shape the battle’s outcome at the tactical level. Early in the morning one of the seaplanes attempted to range a 5-inch howitzer battery, but for the rest of the day neither machine could take off owing to the wind direction and the short run available on the river.84 The RFC flight bombed enemy positions as ordered, though the effectiveness of this is not recorded.85 Given earlier experiments with the bombs it is reasonable to assume a minimal effect. Tactical reconnaissance occupied the flight throughout the battle, especially after 1100 when the flanking column outran its telephone line, cutting communications with Townshend’s headquarters at Nukhailat. Nixon, White and Cutlack emphasised the ‘great’ and ‘useful’ assistance these sorties provided Townshend but there is, in fact, little he could do with the information as he had practically no reserves and had positioned his divisional artillery so that it could only cover the infantry column making the subsidiary, frontal attack.86 At noon, for example, Townshend learned from the airmen that the mobile column had penetrated behind the Turkish centre but, owing to considerable casualties, needed the frontal column’s co-operation to overrun the position. Without reserves Townshend could only send a message by air ordering the frontal column, pinned down before the Turkish redoubts, to ‘press on if possible’. It could not, and the position remained in enemy hands until nightfall.87 Further, although the map charting the results of aerial contact patrols generally correlates with other accounts of the battle, it appears there were not enough aircraft to provide Townshend’s staff more than intermittent glimpses of the action. In the 12 hours following zero hour, aircraft delivered five reports to battle headquarters.88 At sunset, 6th Division HQ remained unsure of the location of their columns and whether the enemy still held their trenches.89

84 H. A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force, Volume V, Clarendon, Oxford, 1935, p. 260. 85 Report on aviation in Mesopotamia, June 1916, NAUK AIR1/504/16/3/23. 86 ‘Report from General Sir J. E. Nixon KCB on the Battle of Kut-al-Amarah, 28th September 1915’, WO32/5207; T. W. White, manuscript account, p. 13, AWM44 8/1; Cutlack, The Official History of Australia in the war of 1914-18, Volume VIII, p. 14. 87 6th Division war diary, 28 September 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 88 The aircraft reported the battlefield situation at 0600, 0930, 1200, 1650 and 1830. 6th Division war diary, Map No. 16a with air reports marked, October 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 89 6th Division war diary, 28 September 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 171 The airmen reported the enemy retreating along both banks just after dawn on 29 September, prompting Townshend to order 6th Division to pursue.90 Aside from dropping bombs opportunistically, he used the aircraft to keep touch with the retreating enemy and came to rely on them solely after his cavalry broke contact 65 kilometres upriver from Kut. On 3 October, Reilly observed the enemy digging in at . His report appears not to have survived but a summary of it in 6th Division’s war diary indicates that he described the position as ‘strongly held’.91 Townshend cabled Reilly’s report to GHQ along with an assessment of the situation in which he advised stopping the pursuit.

You will see that the chance of breaking up the retreating Turkish forces… no longer exists. The position is astride the Baghdad road and the Tigris and is estimated to be six miles of entrenchments. They have also been probably reinforced from Baghdad.

Noting his considerable logistical difficulties and the weakness of his force, Townshend suggested a retirement to Kut. A resumption of the advance on Baghdad could, he argued, only occur via road (on account of falling river levels) and by two divisions well supported by line of communications troops.92

Townshend’s cable on 3 October would become one of the most controversial documents tabled at the Mesopotamia Commission. Nixon’s ADC and CGS both confirmed that GHQ received it, but Nixon claimed he never saw it.93 Paul Davis gives Nixon the benefit of the doubt, suggesting he planned an advance on Baghdad ‘in ignorance of Townshend’s appraisal’.94 It appears, however, that Nixon had indeed received 6th Division’s cable and that he replaced Townshend’s assessment of Reilly’s reconnaissance report with his own, more optimistic analysis. In a cable to the Indian CGS on 3 October, Nixon cited Reilly’s air report from that morning, claiming it revealed the enemy making a stand at Ctesiphon, in a ‘partly prepared position astride the Tigris’.95 That Nixon received but disregarded Townshend’s

90 ‘General instructions No. 2 in the case of victory and pursuit’, 25 September 1915, NAUK WO95/5112; 6th Division Order No. 26, 29 September 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 91 6th Division war diary, 3 October 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 92 Townshend, My Campaign in Mesopotamia, pp. 124-125; Paul Davis, Ends and Means: The British Mesopotamian Campaign and Royal Commission, Associated University Press, Cranbury, 1994, p. 115; 6th Division war diary, 3 October 1915, NAUKWO95/ 5112. 93 Davis, Ends and Means, p. 115. 94 Davis, Ends and Means, p. 116. 95 Nixon to Lake, 3 October 1915, Appendix II, Committee of Imperial Defence, ‘Report of an Inter- Departmental Committee on the Strategical Situation in Mesopotamia’, NAUK CAB24/1. 172 advice on 3 October is also apparent in the reply that his chief of staff sent 6th Division that evening. Nixon’s optimistic appraisal of the air reconnaissance is evident here too:

The Turkish force there [at Ctesiphon] is inferior in numbers and moral to the force you successfully defeated at Kut and the position is not nearly so strong. It is the Army Commander’s intention to open the way to Baghdad as he understands another division will be sent from France…’.96

Accordingly, during early October Townshend’s forces concentrated at Aziziya. As they did, twice daily reconnaissance flights developed an intelligence picture that should have challenged GHQ’s assessment of the enemy force. The airmen reported the Turks in an extensive system of fortifications at Ctesiphon with garrisons of between 1,500 and 3,000 troops in screening positions at Zor and Kutuniya, the latter just 8 kilometres from 6th Division HQ at Aziziya.97 The anxiety this, combined with reports that local Arabs had allied with the Turks, produced among Townshend’s staff is clearly evident in the division’s war diary entries for early October. ‘It appears that [the] enemy is sending troops down towards us’, recorded the divisional diarist after receiving an aerial reconnaissance on 6 October. ‘Whether for the offensive or for observation we do not yet know – but we are of course somewhat isolated’.98 On the 10th, Townshend again appealed for permission to withdraw to Kut. GHQ replied, ordering him to remain at Aziziya and prepare to attack as soon as reinforcements arrived.99

The British cabinet’s War Committee authorised Force D’s advance to Baghdad on 24 October 1915 on two incorrect premises: firstly that Force D possessed adequate river transport to support operations further along the Tigris and secondly, that the Turks had approximately 9,000 troops in Mesopotamia and could not reinforce these until 1916.100 The Committee’s failure to recognise that Force D’s

96 F. J. Moberly, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume II, HMSO, London, 1924, pp. 6-7. In his memoir, Townshend notes that he received this at 2100 on 3 October [Townshend, My Campaign in Mesopotamia, p. 130]. 97 6th Division war diary, 6-15 October 1915, NAUK WO95/5112; Petre, Reconnaissance report No. 57, 6 October 1915, NAUK AIR1/504/16/3/23. 98 6th Division war diary, 6 October 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 99 6th Division war diary, 10 October 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 100 For details of the British government’s decision to authorise Force D’s advance to Baghdad see Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume II, pp. 16-19 and 23-30; Davis, Ends 173 logistics were in a ‘near complete collapse’ following the advance to Aziziya resulted from Nixon’s failure to emphasise his transportation requirements in shipping to London.101 The Committee’s misunderstanding of enemy strength in Mesopotamia has more complex origins to which the RFC inadvertently contributed.

In mid-October the War Committee accepted the War Office’s estimate, from various intelligence sources, that around 9,000 Turkish regulars garrisoned Mesopotamia – an estimate that approximately matched that made by Force D’s intelligence staff.102 The first aerial reconnaissance flight over Baghdad by Petre on 6 October corroborated this, reporting the city practically empty of enemy troops.103 Another sortie by Reilly on 1 November likewise noted ‘no activity or large numbers…’ within the city.104 This probably discredited a report received by GHQ from Egypt the following day that 8,000 enemy troops and a dozen guns had arrived in Baghdad during the previous week.105

From Turkish sources, however, we know that by the beginning of November, the 45th Division was deploying on the Tigris front, boosting the forces of Colonel Nurettin Bey at Ctesiphon to some 18,000 rifles.106 That Petre and Reilly missed this illustrates the limitations of aerial reconnaissance in 1915. The Ottoman reinforcements apparently did not encamp in Baghdad, moving directly to the front, probably by night. In September Force D’s intelligence officers had captured documents providing evidence that the Turks camouflaged their positions from aerial observation (which also accounts for the initial, incorrect suggestion by pilots that the Turks had abandoned Es Sinn).107 Force D’s aviators typically reconnoitred at 5-6,000 feet from which, as Field Service Regulations suggested, troops ‘if in the open’ could

and Means, pp. 112-138; Committee of Imperial Defence, ‘Report of an Inter-Departmental Committee on the Strategical Situation in Mesopotamia’, p. 2, NAUK CAB2 4/1. 101 Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume II, p. 18; Davis, Ends and Means, pp. 121-123. 102 ‘The present and prospective situation in Syria and Mesopotamia’, 19 October 1915, Appendix VIII, Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume II, pp. 467-474; Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume II, p. 39. 103 Petre, Reconnaissance report No. 57, 6 October 1915, NAUK AIR1/504/16/3/23 104 Reilly, Reconnaissance report No. 94, 1 November 1915, NAUK AIR1/504/16/3/23. 105 Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, vol. 2, p. 52. 106 Translation of Major Mehmed Emin’s article from the Turkish official military journal Mejmua-i- Askeria, May-June 1922, p. 7, NAUK CAB45/87; Erickson, Ottoman Army Effectiveness, p. 69. 107 Intelligence summary, 25 September 1915, NAUK WO95/5112. 174 be seen in ‘clear weather’.108 The BEF’s experiences on the Western Front had, however, demonstrated that ‘much can be done to conceal artillery positions and trenches, and the use of overhead cover… makes it difficult to ascertain from the air whether trenches and gun emplacements are occupied or not’.109

White and his observer, Captain Francis Yeats-Brown, finally noted the presence of Turkish reinforcements in Baghdad on 13 November – though this information never reached Townshend. The airmen had volunteered to land outside Baghdad to sabotage telegraph lines preliminary to 6th Division’s offensive. Approaching the city, White noted ‘considerable traffic both ways along the road [leading to Ctesiphon]’ he considered turning back ‘in case Intelligence was unaware of this apparent reinforcement’ but reasoned that he felt confident of carrying out the task and, in any case, had to refuel the aircraft from spare cans carried on board for the return journey.110 White made a rough landing, damaging the aircraft and although Yeats-Brown destroyed one telegraph pole, Arabs surrounded and seized them before they could escape.

Over the following week GHQ received intelligence from other sources indicating the arrival of considerable enemy reinforcements, but Nixon and his staff continued disregarding it as unreliable.111 Townshend remained uneasy however; on the 21 November – 24 hours before zero – he ordered two aerial reconnaissance flights: one to Ctesiphon and the other to Baghdad. Conducted by an inexperienced observer from the Army, the morning sortie over Ctesiphon reported no sign of enemy reinforcements.112 That evening, on his way to Baghdad, however, Reilly noted a significant increase in Turkish forces at Ctesiphon. He recorded the presence of a large reserve (the 51st Division which arrived on 17 November) but when he dropped to 1,000 feet for a closer look was shot down by ground fire and captured.113

108 Lieutenant William Treloar, manuscript account, nd, AWM PR84/244; Flight Commander Mesopotamia war diary, 10 June 1915, NAUK AIR1/2263/209/61/1; Field Service Regulations 1909, (1914 edition), p. 127. 109 Bull (ed.), ‘Notes From the Front, Part 1, 1914 Tactical Notes’, An Officer’s Manual of the Western Front, 1914-1918, p. 49. 110 White, diary, AWM 2DRL/0766; T. W. White, Guests of the unspeakable, p. 35. 111 Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume II, pp. 56-58; Nixon to War Office, 20 November 1915, NAUK WO106/878. 112 Jones, The War in the Air, Volume V, p. 264. 113 Staff Bimbashi Muhammad Amin, ‘The Battle of Suliman Pak’, February 1921, translated by Brigadier-General U. W. Evans, pp. 51-52, NAUK CAB44/33. The 51st Division had been ordered to 175 The British official historians attributed great significance to this, suggesting that had Reilly returned safely, Townshend would have been unlikely to attack and hence, ‘there might have been no ’.114 Nixon’s attitude to earlier aerial reconnaissance and his refusal to allow Townshend to withdraw from Aziziya raises doubts about this, though there is no question that with Reilly’s capture Townsend lost his last opportunity to discover the true extent of his enemy’s strength before the battle. He continued to believe his forced faced 11-13,000 enemy troops instead of the 36,669 indicated to be at Nurettin’s disposal by an Ottoman staff history.115

The British official historians also noted the importance of Reilly’s failure to destroy a sketch map, which fell into enemy hands. They quote one of Nurettin’s staff who emphasised the importance of the captured document: for Iraq Command ‘there was no such thing as a map’.116 Nonetheless, the official historians may have overstated things, as Amin also acknowledged that even with Reilly’s incomplete sketch and a map drawn from ‘hearsay’, Nurettin’s staff had difficulty tracking 6th Division’s movements. ‘In the reports we received’, he recalled of the night before the battle, ‘there were the names of many hills and canals of which we knew neither the place nor direction, and of these we could find but few on the Commander in Chief’s “hearsay” map or on Major Reilly’s sketch’.117

On this score at least, Townshend’s staff had an advantage over their adversaries. The RFC’s aerial map of Ctesiphon, which Townshend used to plan the attack, represented another stage in the evolution of cartography in Mesopotamia. Though again sketched, it accurately plotted the enemy’s defensive positions onto a uniformly-scaled and grid-referenced chart. An improvised sextant-like instrument devised by Petre (‘it looked like a small garden rake… the pegs showed the degree of distance from the centre’) allowed the airmen to triangulate the distance between objects on the ground.118 Otherwise, the unit faced a litany of difficulties stemming

Iraq from the Caucasian front on 4 October 1915 and marched 5,000 kilometers to reach Ctesiphon just in time to meet the British offensive. 114 Jones, The War in the Air, Volume V, p. 264; Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume II, p. 59. 115 Amin, ‘The Battle of Suliman Pak’, p. 28, NAUK CAB44/33. 116 Jones, The War in the Air, Volume V, p. 263; Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume II, p. 59. 117 Amin, ‘The Battle of Suliman Pak’, pp. 29-32, NAUK CAB44/33. 118 Cutlack, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18 Volume VIII, p. 21; White, manuscript account, c. August 1920, p. 17, AWM44 8/1 Part 13. 176 from the fact that it was operating over 500 kilometres upriver from Basra at the end of a hopelessly inadequate supply line.119 The RFC’s supply steamer could not navigate the shallows beyond Kut, meaning spare parts and fuel spent weeks waiting for space on Force D’s other transports.120 New aircraft and stores, along with RFC reinforcements and the AFC mule transport section that began arriving at Basra on 23 October could not find transport upriver. With the new personnel Broke-Smith formed a headquarters and B Flight (No. 30 Squadron), while the existing flight at Aziziya became A Flight and the base at Basra, No. 4 Aircraft Park.121 With two new BE2cs, B Flight embarked for the front on 9 November, but navigation problems (‘we ran aground continually’, recorded one air mechanic) prevented it reaching 6th Division’s staging point at Lajj before the offensive started.122

Townshend’s assault on Ctesiphon began at dawn on 22 November 1915 with simultaneous flanking attacks on the enemy’s first and second lines. After heavy fighting Indian forces captured the Turkish front line but a counter-attack, delivered by one of the recently arrived Turkish divisions, thwarted attempts to enter their reserve position. By sunset 6th Division held the old Ottoman front line while the Turks faced them from their second line.123 The operation orders specified reconnaissance work only for the RFC, making its ‘principle duty… to give information as to the direction of retreat of the bulk of the enemy’s forces in the field’ and to watch for reinforcements from Baghdad.124 Owing to the loss of a Martinsyde to ground fire in the morning, A Flight, with two airworthy machines, managed just two reconnaissance sorties during the battle. Neither revealed anything of consequence to the operation’s outcome.125

A stalemate ensued on 23 November, both sides exhausted and having suffered heavy casualties in the previous day’s fighting. Despite reports from the RFC

119 For analysis of Force D’s river transport shortage see Davis, Ends and Means, pp. 187-194. 120 DAD Aviation diary, 11 October 1915, AWM45 43/1; Report on aviation in Mesopotamia, June 1916, NAUK AIR1/504/16/3/23. 121 ‘The Campaign in Mesopotamia 1914 to 1918’, c. 1923, NAUK AIR1/674/21/6/87. 122 Air Mechanic William Henry Minter Candy, diary, 14 November 1915, RAF DC 73/48; Notes on the organisation of aviation in Mesopotamia prepared by the Air Historical Branch, nd, NAUK AIR1/687/21/20/S.C. 123 For a more detailed account of the Battle of Ctesiphon see Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume II, pp. 62-91. 124 6th Division operation orders, No. 60, 21 November 1915, NAUK WO158/663B. 125 Jones, The War in the Air, Volume V, p. 264; DAD Aviation diary, 22 November 1915 AWM45 43/1. 177 that only a small enemy rearguard held the Turkish second line, consolidating their position and evacuating the wounded preoccupied Townshend’s forces throughout the day. During the night 6th Division weathered several enemy counter-attacks launched from the second line. In the morning Townshend decided to retreat but several aerial reconnaissances during the day suggested an imminent enemy withdrawal, compelling him to change his mind.126 He resolved to hold the Ottoman front line and request the flotilla move up from Lajj to support him.127 In fact, the Turks had not yet started retiring though they would do so during the early hours of the following morning after Nurettin received an inaccurate report from his cavalry of British forces outflanking him to the north.128

Townshend vacillated early on 25 November, cabling GHQ that he intended to withdraw to Lajj the following day. Davis claims he made this decision ignorant of the Turkish retreat from the second line earlier that morning, positing that had Townshend ‘the merest hint of the true situation, [he] could have taken immediate victory’.129 This suggests that the outcome of the battle hinged on flawed intelligence, an interpretation also suggested by the British official historian and a Turkish staff historian.130 All apparently base this on Townshend’s cable to GHQ explaining his decision to retreat and his memoirs. In neither does Townshend mention that at 0910 No. 30 Squadron reported that the enemy had ‘vacated’ their second line of trenches and were retreating towards the Diyala River.131 From the air reports it is clear that – far from being ‘bewildered by inaccurate intelligence’ as A. J. Barker suggests – Townshend possessed an accurate picture of the enemy’s movements when he made the decision to retire.132 It was a decision prompted by the heavy casualties sustained by his force (42 per cent including a third of all British officers) and the incapacity of

126 Reconnaissance reports No. 129-136, 24 November 1915, NAUK AIR1/504/16/3/23. 127 Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume II, pp. 100-02. 128 Amin, ‘The Battle of Suliman Pak’, p. 110-115, NAUK CAB44/33; Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, Volume II, p. 102. 129 Davis, Ends and Means, pp. 135-35. 130 Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, Volume II, p. 108. 131 Summary of aeroplane reports, 25 November 1915, NAUK AIR1/504/16/3/23. 132 Further evidence that the British command knew about the Turkish retirement from air reconnaissance is found in Nixon’s despatches, where the GOC notes that on the 25 November ‘it appeared from hostile movements to their rear- reported by air reconnaissance that the Turks contemplated a retirement from their remaining positions’. Nixon’s despatches, October- December 1915, NAUK WO106/896, p. 4; Barker, The First Iraq War, p. 108. 178 river transport to extend his line of communications upstream. In short, he realised that even if the enemy retreated to Baghdad, his force lacked the means to pursue.133

Leaving Ctesiphon in the evening of 25 November 6th Division retreated to Kut, arriving there, completely exhausted, eight days later. For the first four days of the retreat No. 30 Squadron watched pursuing Turkish forces, allowing Townshend to control the pace of his division’s retreat. Arriving at Lajj early on 26 November Townshend planned to halt for a week, but an aerial reconnaissance reported the approach of an estimated 12,000 enemy troops, compelling him to order an immediate forced march to Aziziya.134 Air reports during 28-29 November convinced Townshend that his depleted division faced a Turkish corps and prompted him to abandon plans to hold Aziziya and make for Kut.135 6th Division left Aziziya at 0900 on 30 November but, in order to keep abreast with the river transport, the troops had to halt after 15 kilometres at Umm at Tubal.

From this point No. 30 Squadron played no useful role in the retreat as it could no longer muster any serviceable machines.136 Although four aircraft made it back to Kut on 30 November, the maintenance staff and stores remained with 6th Division’s river flotilla. This effectively blinded Townshend; he failed to foresee an enemy attack on his camp at Umm at Tubal in the early hours of 1 December that forced him to abandon several river transports carrying stores and wounded. Among them, No. 30 Squadron’s barge fell into Turkish hands, though most of the mechanics narrowly escaped.137 During the next three days Townshend pushed his exhausted troops the remaining 90 kilometres to Kut. From his memoir it is evident that his ignorance as to how closely the enemy followed compelled him to maintain such a punishing pace.138 In fact, having outrun their supply lines, Nurettin’s forces could not keep up with Townshend’s retreat. 6th Division reached Kut 48 hours before the Turkish advanced

133 Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918, Volume II, p. 105. Townshend reiterated his motive for ordering the retreat (that is, 4,500 casualties and his infantry brigades depleted to battalion strength) in another telegram to Nixon in the early morning of 26 November. It is quoted in his memoir [Townshend, My Campaign in Mesopotamia, p. 187]. According to Davis, 6th Division had suffered 4,200 casualties from a force of 10,000 infantry. Of the force’s 317 British officers, 130 had been killed or wounded [Davis, Ends and Means, p. 136] 134 Townshend, My Campaign in Mesopotamia, p. 188. 135 Townshend, My Campaign in Mesopotamia, p. 191. 136 No. 30 Squadron RFC war diary, 1 December 1915, AWM45 43/2. 137 Candy, diary, 30 November 1915, RAF DC 73/48. 138 Townshend, My Campaign in Mesopotamia, p. 196; Amin, ‘The Battle of Suliman Pak’, p. 188, NAUK CAB 44/33. 179 guard and four days before Kut became besieged.139 There is substance, therefore, to the Indian Staff College’s criticism that after 30 November Townshend made an unnecessarily hasty retreat owing to his ignorance of the enemy’s dispositions.140 This accounts for the extent of 6th Division’s exhaustion upon reaching Kut, one of the reasons Townshend later used to justify his decision to stay, rather than retreat further downstream.141

Though often cited as a model military operation, Townshend’s retreat had a catastrophic effect on his force’s aviation unit.142 In addition to the stores barge lost at Umm at Tubal on 30 November, practically all of A and B Flights’ personnel and equipment remained besieged in Kut. Only four officers (including Petre) managed to escape by air.143

To support the relief efforts of the newly-established Tigris Corps in January 1916, No. 30 Squadron could muster a single airworthy machine.144 New aircraft and equipment from Britain began arriving in March but as Tigris Corps’ GOC, Lieutenant-General Sir Fenton Aylmer noted, aviation in Mesopotamia remained low on the War Office’s priorities. ‘Most’ of the new machines were ‘miserable things’ he remarked; ‘anything was good enough for Mesopotamia’.145 Even the tactical literature arriving in Mesopotamia represented scraps from the Western Front. In February 1916 No. 30 Squadron began ranging artillery using a pamphlet that had been issued in France ten months previously and since superseded.146 At the same time, the Turks – assisted by equipment captured from the RFC and German pilots and aircraft – achieved air superiority over southern Mesopotamia.147 They severely

139 Erickson, Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War 1, p.82. 140 Indian General Staff, Critical Study of the Campaign in Mesopotamia up to April 1917, p. 65. 141 Davis, Ends and Means, p. 140. 142 Erickson, Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War 1, p. 81; Davis, Ends and Means, p. 138; ‘Mesopotamia Commission Report of the Commission Appointed by Act of Parliament to Enquire into the Operations of War in Mesopotamia…’, NAUK CAB19/26, p. 30. 143 No. 30 Squadron RFC war diary, 6 and 7 December 1915, AWM45 43/2; DAD Aviation diary, 5 December 1915 and 14 February 1916 AWM45 43/1. 144 Jones, The War in the Air, Volume V, p. 266. 145 Aylmer’s comments on Jones’ draft of Mesopotamia history for The War in the Air, Volume V, 6 July 1932, NAUK AIR1/674/21/6/87. 146 Captain S. D. Massy, No. 30 Squadron staff, ‘Short report…’, 25 May 1916, NAUK AIR1/121/15/40/110; ‘Instructions regarding the cooperation of aeroplanes with other arms (provisional)’, c. April 1915; NAUK AIR1/524/16/12/24; ‘OB/114 Co-operation of Aeroplanes and Artillery when using Wireless’, July 1915, NAUK AIR1/746/204/3/24. 147 Captain F. N. Murray, No. 30 Squadron Headquarters to Director of Operations, War Office, 19 June 1916, NAUK AIR1/121/15/40/110. 180 disrupted the RFC’s army co-operation work and bombed Kut, using captured 20lb Hales bombs. One of the RFC mechanics besieged there reckoned they did more damage than the enemy’s heavy artillery.148 The enemy scouts also disrupted a novel attempt to resupply Townshend’s besieged troops by air. Using an improvised devised by AFC Sergeant John Stubbs, No. 30 Squadron made a concerted attempt to deliver the 5,000lbs of supplies Kut’s garrison required each day. Only capable of carrying 200-250lbs, No. 30 Squadron’s aircraft managed, at best, 3,350lbs in one day. Like most of the roles for air power that emerged in the war’s first 18 months, air resupply represented considerable foresight and would later mature into a valuable function of military aviation. In 1915 however, the vision outstripped the available technology and expertise.

Forty-four RFC other ranks surrendered with the Kut garrison at the end of April 1916, including nine AFC mechanics. Only two would survive captivity, along with White and Treloar. Petre continued flying with No. 30 Squadron until 22 May 1916 when illness invalided him to India. Another Australian, Captain Gerald Cowper, joined the squadron the day before Petre’s departure, flying with it until the end of June.149 An estate agent from Melbourne, Cowper was one of a handful of AIF soldiers convalescing in Britain during the who managed to secure a transfer to the RFC. After Mesopotamia, he flew with the RFC on the Western Front, before transferring to the AFC in 1917 to command an Australian training squadron.150 AFC mechanics remained with the RFC in Mesopotamia until October 1916 when they went to Egypt for distribution between 1st and 2nd Squadrons. The mule drivers stayed with Tigris Corps during its successful campaign to re-capture Kut and then advance to Baghdad in March 1917. Australian authorities ordered them to Egypt in May for re-mustering with units of the AIF, thus ending the AFC’s first campaign.151

Pre-war advocates of aviation argued that aircraft represented a far more economic military tool than dreadnoughts and armies.152 The AFC’s first campaign in Mesopotamia during 1915 reveals the flaw in this logic. Although comparatively

148 Candy, diary, 1 March 1915, RAF DC 73/48. 149 No. 30 Squadron nominal roll of officers, NAUK AIR1/691/21/20/30. 150 Captain Gerald Audrey Cadogan Cowper, AIF service dossier, NAA B2455 COWPER GAC. 151 Colonel Griffiths to B. B. Cubbitt, 12 May 1917, AWM10 4343/3/4; War Office to GOC IEF D, 22 May 1917, NAUK AIR1/140/15/40/306. 152 See for example, ‘Command of the air’, The Argus, 21 June 1913, and others from Chapter 2. 181 inexpensive in themselves as the ‘tooth’ of a flying arm, aeroplanes required a substantial ‘tail’ comprising industry, a well-administered logistical system, transport and adequate maintenance staff – as well as an organisation to train reinforcements. As John Buckley demonstrates, only the wealthiest, most industrially developed nations can maintain effective air forces in the field.153 The British dominions – on which responsibility for supporting the campaign in Mesopotamia largely fell – did not meet these criteria. In 1915 the British government itself could barely support an aerial campaign, and its efforts on the Western Front, Gallipoli and the Suez Canal all took precedence on the strategic agenda over Mesopotamia.

Force D’s aviation detachment had, nonetheless, provided some useful support in 1915. Aerial reconnaissance before the battles of Nasiriya, Es Sinn and Ctesiphon provided divisional staff with a far more extensive picture of the enemy’s dispositions than they would have had otherwise. The evidence indicates that commanders – especially Townshend – increasingly relied on aerial reconnaissance to plan operations. Its failure to disclose the extent of enemy reinforcements before the Battle of Ctesiphon was an anomaly, caused by a combination of bad luck, inexperienced replacement observers from the army and insufficient aircraft to fly sorties more regularly. The Mesopotamia commission correctly identified the latter as having a particularly adverse effect on operations at Ctesiphon.154 As on the Western Front in 1915, Force D’s airmen provided their most effective support before the infantry engaged the enemy directly. Despite Broke-Smith’s knowledge of developments in France he lacked the equipment and his airmen lacked the training to do much beyond reconnaissance in 1915.

Australia’s first airmen and mechanics to see active service performed admirably in extremely adverse conditions. Though they embarked for service well- equipped for the task outlined by the Indian government, they found themselves – like the rest of Force D – subject to the deficiencies of the Indian military organisation, its leadership’s failure to grasp the importance of logistics and the pre-occupation of political and military authorities in London. The AFC’s own government could do little to help. When Indian authorities urgently appealed for reinforcements and

153 John Buckley, Air Power in the Age of Total War, UCL Press, London, 1999, pp. 16-18. 154 ‘Mesopotamia Commission Report of the Commission Appointed by Act of Parliament to Enquire into the Operations of War in Mesopotamia…’, NAUK CAB 19/26, , p. 38-39. 182 equipment in July 1915, the Australian government had no aircraft to offer and needed time to train additional pilots. By the time this second half flight was ready to embark in September the War Office had other ideas regarding Australia’s contribution to the war in the air.155

155 Director of Military Operations, Major Edgar Reynolds to Secretary, Department of Defence, 3 September 1915 and 6 October, NAA A2023 A38/8/188. 183 6. THE EGYPT-SINAI CAMPAIGN, 1916 Docking at Suez on 14 April 1916, the officers and men of 1st Squadron had little preparation for the task that lay ahead. Aside from uniforms and kit, they had no equipment or aircraft and, indeed, only a dozen-or-so of the unit’s 180 personnel had any practical experience with aeroplanes. Just one officer, Lieutenant John Treloar, had seen aircraft in action at Gallipoli the year before; he reckoned them a useful adjunct to the cavalry for reconnaissance and effective at spotting targets for the artillery.1 Joining the RFC’s 5th Wing in Egypt, 1st Squadron would shoulder the burden of supporting General Sir ’s advance across the Sinai. Without precedent, and with the campaign bearing little resemblance to that fought concurrently in France on the Somme, the Australians would need to improvise and innovate to carve out a new role for air power.

The AFC’s role in this campaign is obscured among the British records. Not required by the RFC to keep its own war diary, 1st Squadron’s operational reports became integrated into the voluminous files maintained by its parent formation, 5th Wing RFC.2 These records did not come to Australia after the war, forcing Cutlack to rely on pilots’ private records and recollections. Consequently, the official account of 1st Squadron’s formative campaign is light on detail and context. Cutlack covers the unit’s first battle (Romani, August 1916) in a single sentence and gives the same treatment to its first co-operation with a major mounted operation (Magdhaba, December 1916).3 This chapter revises the official account by consulting British and German records; its primary concern is to determine and evaluate the role played by 1st Squadron during operations in the Sinai and to position this within the broader context of air power’s evolution that year.

British authorities anticipated the declaration of war against the Ottoman Empire by dispatching an RFC flight to Egypt in October 1914. By the end of the year it had established aerodromes along the Suez canal at Kantara, Ismailia and Suez, gateways to the three east-west routes across the . With assistance from a French naval aviation detachment, the RFC supplemented the canal defences

1 Alan Treloar (editor), An Anzac Diary, Cambridge Press, Newcastle, 1993, pp. 355-56. 2 Routine Orders, 5th Wing RFC, 5 July 1916, LHCMA P. R. C. Groves papers Item 6/1. 3 F. M. Cutlack, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VIII: The Australian Flying Corps in the Western and Eastern Theatres of War, 1914-1918, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1939, (1923), pp. 40 and 49. 184 by reconnoitring these potential approaches for a Turkish invasion. In January 1915 the airmen earned the commendation of the theatre’s GOC and the officer in charge of canal defences for identifying, tracking and bombing Turkish forces advancing across the peninsula to attack the canal.4

At the end of 1915, anticipating further Ottoman aggression against Egypt, and taking the view that ‘a very elaborate and well organised air service will be necessary if it comes to a question of defending Egypt’, the War Office expanded the RFC there to a wing (the 5th) of two squadrons under the command of Lieutenant- Colonel Geoffrey Salmond.5 Besides a wealth of highly pertinent experience on the Western Front and an enthusiasm for innovation, Salmond brought to Egypt the understanding that ‘conditions out here are very different to those in France’ and an optimism for air power’s potential in the desert.6 The terrain offered scant cover to enemy formations and restricted them to a ‘few and well-known’ approaches. It also forced them to rely on linear supply lines and employ camel columns in the field, which were vulnerable to air attack. This, Salmond believed, presented 5th Wing with an ‘opportunity’ that ‘appear[ed] to be unique’.7 Salmond needed at least an additional squadron though, something with which the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force’s (MEF) staff agreed.8

The pressures of expanding the RFC on the Western Front precluded reinforcements for Egypt – a situation that would continue the rest of the war, and not only in relation to aviation resources.9 In late March 1916, however, the War Office informed the MEF that the Army Council had instructed the Australian government to send its first complete squadron to Egypt where it could begin training sooner than in Britain and might possibly operate in ‘the area in which the remainder of the troops of

4 ‘History of No. 30 Squadron, Egypt and Mesopotamia, 1914-1919’, NAUK AIR1/691/21/20/30. 5 Major-General Charles Callwell, Director of Military Operations to Major-General Arthur Lynden- Bell, CGS MEF, 20 November 1915, IWM Documents 7826. 6 Lieutenant-Colonel W. G. Salmond, CO 5th Wing to Peggy Salmond, 11 January 1915, quoted in Anne Baker, From Biplane to Spitfire: The Life of Air Chief Marshal Sir Geoffrey Salmond KCB KCMG DSO, Leo Cooper, Barnsley, 2003, pp. 57-58; Salmond to General Staff, Cairo, 27 December 1915, NAUK AIR1/2283/209/75/4. 7 Salmond to BGGS, MEF General Staff, 11 January 1916, NAUK AIR1/2283/209/75/4. Further evidence of Salmond’s appreciation of the RFC’s potential in the Middle East come from lecture notes made by one of the MEF’s intelligence officers, Gerard Clauson, in early 1916: IWM Documents 4886. 8 Lieutenant-Colonel G. P. Dawnay, staff officer, MEF general staff, 12 January 1916, NAUK AIR1/2283/209/75/4. 9 For evidence of the difficulties experienced by the RFC leadership in supplying aircraft and pilots during early 1916, see for example: Henderson to Trenchard, 15 March 1916, RAF MFC76/1/76. 185 the Commonwealth are operating’.10 When 1st Squadron arrived at Suez in April 1916, however, to Salmond’s surprise its personnel had no equipment and, though being ‘a good class of man’, possessed minimal experience with aviation. Concluding that the unit was ‘at present far from being a real squadron’, Salmond sent all but the eight most experienced pilots to Britain for further training along with all the observers. He divided the mechanics up between the various RFC aerodromes in Egypt to train with the British squadrons.11

1st Squadron’s arrival in Egypt coincided with a change in Britain’s strategic posture in the region. In January General Sir Archibald Murray had arrived to take command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) with orders to bolster the canal defences and create a ‘general strategic reserve for the Empire’.12 At the end of February he gained War Office sanction to advance the northern canal defences and occupy the oasis region around Katia, a likely staging point for an enemy offensive against the canal. The Australians also arrived at a critical juncture for the EEF’s aviation force. By the beginning of May, in addition to manning the Canal stations, 5th Wing had airmen in the Sudan and was under pressure to provide reinforcements for France and Salonika.13 At the same time, the appearance of German aircraft over the Sinai in April compelled the RNAS to abandon strategic reconnaissance into Palestine. ‘The consequence is’, explained Murray’s CGS, Major-General Arthur Lynden-Bell, ‘that we really know very little of what is going on in the area, which is beyond our radius at the present moment’.14 On 23 April a Turkish raiding force annihilated the British outposts at Katia; 5th Wing had only

10 B. B. Cubbitt, Secretary, War Office to General Sir Archibald Murray, GOC , 28 March 1916, NAUK AIR1/2283/209/75/4. 11 Salmond to CGS, MEF, 18 April 1916, NAUK AIR1/2283/209/75/4. 12 George MacMunn and Cyril Falls, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations Egypt and Palestine: Volume I: From the Outbreak of War with Germany to June 1917, HMSO, London, 1928. p. 99. In March 1916 the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force became the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. 13 Lynden-Bell to Major-General Frederick Maurice, Director of Military Operations, 1 May 1916, IWM Documents 7826; Lynden-Bell to Maurice, 10 June 1916, IWM Documents 7826. 14 Lynden-Bell to Maurice, 1 May 1916, IWM Documents 7826. 186

Sinai Desert 191615

15 Michael Molkentin, Fire in the Sky: The Australian Flying Corps in the First World War, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2010. 187 been able to provide 12 hours warning – not enough to avert the destruction of practically an entire British cavalry regiment.16

1st Squadron therefore represented an important asset to the EEF (‘one thing we cannot do without here is aircraft’ explained Lynden-Bell to the War Office).17 After six weeks training it reformed at Heliopolis reorganised according to the RFC’s new 18-aeroplane establishment. Though close to strength in other ranks, British officers had to replace pilots and observers still training in Britain. Alongside these, the only other experience in the squadron came from its new commanding officer, Major Thomas Rutledge, an Australian who had commanded an RFC flight on the Western Front in 1915, and Captain Oswald Watt who had flown with the Aéronautique Militaire since the beginning of the war.18 Under Watt’s command, B Flight moved to Suez on 15 June and, from the following day, 1st Squadron appeared in 5th Wing’s daily orders.19 The other flights started operations under the command of two permanent forces graduates of Point Cook: A Flight went to Sherika under Captain William Sheldon at the end of June to support British forces suppressing the Senussi rebellion; Captain Richard Williams’ C Flight remained at Heliopolis with squadron headquarters.

Enemy activity in the Sinai remained negligible for two months following the Turkish raid on Katia. The RFC co-operated with mobile columns patrolling the Sinai to gather intelligence and destroy water reservoirs likely to assist an Ottoman invasion force.20 In this respect 5th Wing assumed the cavalry co-operation role envisaged in the pre-war Field Service Regulations – one unrealised in the stalemate conditions of the Western Front.21 Whereas in France the RFC now co-operated at the corps and army level, in the Sinai flights were detached to work with divisions, often in direct support of mounted patrols. And whereas squadrons on the Western Front assumed specialist roles in early 1916, in Egypt their function remained general, with flights

16 ‘Rough outline of events on the Eastern Front, April 1916’, NAUK AIR1/1754/204/141/9; Salmond to Peggy Salmond, 25 April 1916, quoted in Baker, From Biplane to Spitfire, pp. 86-87. 17 Lynden-Bell to Maurice, 1 May 1916, IWM Document 7826. 18 Watt’s experiences of flying with the French in 1914 and 1915 are documented in letters he wrote his family, AWM 3DRL/5018. 19 Review of operations, 5th Wing RFC war diary, June 1916, NAUK AIR1/1754/204/141/12; Operation Order No. 133, 5th Wing RFC, 16 June 1916, NAUK AIR1/1754/204/141/12. 20 ‘Memorandum on Employment of the Royal Flying Corps in Co-operation with Mobile Columns’, June 1916, NAUK AIR1/2290/209/75/71. 21 General Staff, War Office, Field Service Regulations Part I Operations, 1909, HMSO, London, 1909, p. 118. 188 conducting strategic and tactical reconnaissance, artillery observation, bombing and aerial combat.22

On the Western Front the size of the forces involved and the complexity of operations meant that infantry-aircraft co-operation worked on rigid timetables.23 In the Sinai things remained flexible, the airmen communicating directly with patrols. 1st Squadron’s early sorties provided intelligence for the planning of mounted expeditions; aeroplanes also accompanied patrols into the desert, operating from makeshift aerodromes to fly protective reconnaissance around the column’s flanks. Mounted officers considered the air support ‘invaluable’ and reported that it considerably increased the speed and efficiency of desert patrols.24

The three RFC aerodromes along the canal (at Suez, Ismailia and Kantara) dispatched daily patrols along the peninsula’s three principal east-west routes to supply the EEF with intelligence. More occasionally special flights sought to verify agents’ reports or bomb suspected enemy outposts and water supplies.25 While the RNAS, operating from tenders in the Mediterranean, generally took care of strategic reconnaissance into southern Palestine, the RFC in May began using an advanced aerodrome at Romani to bomb and reconnoitre as far east as El . On 3 May ground fire here brought down 2nd Lieutenant Cedric Hill, a Queenslander serving with No. 14 Squadron. After crash landing, he kept an Arab patrol at bay with a for six hours before surrendering.26

Although the EEF had only fleeting contact with the enemy on the ground during the middle of 1916, activity in the air increased sharply with the arrival in April of a German aviation unit, Flieger Abteilung 300 (FA 300), part of the ‘Pascha’ contingent dispatched by Germany and to assist Turkish forces in a second

22 ‘Memorandum on Employment of the Royal Flying Colum in Co-operation with Mobile Columns’, June 1916, NAUK AIR1/2290/209/75/71. 23 H. A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force: Volume II, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1928. pp. 179-180. 24 H. S. Gullett, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: The Australian Imperial Force in Sinai and Palestine, 1914-1918, Angus & Robertson, 1939 (1923), pp. 70-71; ‘Report on a reconnaissance of the Wadi um Muksheib with the object of obtaining information on the following points’, 24 March 1916, AWM4 1/60/1; Brigadier-General A. Short, GOC No. 2 Section Canal Defences to GHQ, EEF, 17 June 1916, NAUK AIR1/1754/204/141/12. 25 Squadron Leader Hanmer, RAF Staff College essay on wartime experiences, NAUK AIR1/2389/228/11/118. 26 5th Wing War diary, 25 June 1916, NAUK AIR1/1754/204/141/12; ‘A Queenslander’s Feat’, Brisbane Courier, 22 July 1916, p. 5; C. W. Hill, The Spook and the Commandant, William Kimber & Co. Ltd, London, 1975, pp. 43-46. 189 offensive against the Suez Canal. From the outset the German airmen possessed some clear advantages over the British. Most were decorated veterans from other fronts and the unit flew the new two-seat Rumpler C.I. Compared with 5th Wing’s BE2cs, this machine had considerably better speed and climbing performance. Typically for German two-seater units at this stage, FA 300 also had a pair of single seat Pfalz E.II monoplanes, both with a forward-firing .27 In two key areas, however, the RFC retained an advantage over its adversaries. FA 300’s journey from Döberitz, near Berlin, to Beersheba had taken eight weeks and seven transfers, indicating the slow and difficult route that the unit’s technical stores would need to follow given ’s lack of an aviation industry.28 Within Palestine itself the squadron would find itself perennially short of fuel and other consumables, the result of the region’s tenuous supply lines.29 Secondly, even with No. 17 Squadron’s departure to Salonika the RFC maintained a considerable numerical superiority. To FA 300’s eight aircraft, by mid-1916 5th Wing could muster about 50 machines with typically a third of them operational.30 And with the establishment of a flying school at Aboukir, local RFC squadrons looked forward to a steady supply of airmen: indeed, in their first year training squadrons in Egypt would produce nearly a thousand airmen.31

From 21 April FA 300 began intermittently raiding towns and camps along the canal. The RFC responded by establishing a flight at Port Said to fly hostile aircraft patrols and retaliatory raids. The bombs did little damage to either side owing to rudimentary bomb aiming equipment and, for the RFC at least, a high proportion of dud bombs.32 As Salmond predicted, however, even light aerial bombing proved effective against mounted units camped in the desert. On 1 June a lone German aircraft bombed the 1st Light Horse Brigade’s camp at Romani. ‘The result was almost indescribable,’ recalled Sergeant . ‘Practically every animal

27 Dieter Gröschel and Ladek Jürgen, ‘Wings over Sinai and Palestine: the adventures of Flieger Abteilung 300 'Pascha' in their fight against the Egyptian Expeditionary Corps, from April 1916 until the in November 1917’, Over the Front, volume. 23, number 1, 1998, 98-144, p. 128. 28 Brian Flannegan (translator), ‘Erich Serno reports on Turkish/ German Aviation in the Middle East: Parts 1 and 2’, Cross and Cockade (US), volume 11, number 2, 1970, 97-144, p. 128. 29 Gröschel et al, ‘Wings over Sinai and Palestine’, p. 9; Neumann, The German Air Force in the Great War, pp. 245-46; Flannegan, ‘Erich Serno reports’, p. 134. 30 Yigal Sheffy, British Military Intelligence in the Palestine Campaign, 1914-1918, Frank Cass, London, 1998, p. 191. 31 Middle East Brigade RFC Headquarters to CGS, GHQ EEF, undated (c. October 1917), Sir Geoffrey Salmond papers, private collection. 32 Macmunn and Falls, Military Operations. Egypt and Palestine: Volume I, p. 177; 5th Wing War Diary, 18 May 1916, NAUK AIR1/1754/204/141/11; Flannegan, ‘Erich Serno reports’, p. 131. 190 broke away and stampeded across the desert… In ten minutes there were not a dozen living horses left in the brigade lines.’ Aside from suffering 30 casualties, it took the ‘dazed and confused’ Australians two days to round up their mounts during which ‘false alarms were constantly raised, at first as many as three or four times a day’. Bostock believed that if FA 300 returned, ‘two well handled low flying aeroplanes could have completely dispersed and virtually destroyed the whole brigade as a fighting force’.33

On 4 July 1916 a Turkish force of 16,000 troops and 30 guns crossed the Sinai frontier and, over the following ten nights, marched west to El Arish. Commanding the Fourth Turkish Army, Djemal Pasha had originally conceived a major offensive against the canal but the outbreak of an in the Hejaz in June forced him to adopt the more modest objective of capturing Romani.34 Though reported to EEF intelligence staff by ‘semi-reliable Bedouins’, the RFC did not confirm this major enemy movement until 19 July, when a reconnaissance flight carrying Brigadier- General Edward Chaytor (CO, New Zealand Mounted Rifles) spotted some 7,500 troops between Bayud and Bir el Abd (less than 35 kilometres from Romani).35 The RFC had noted indications of a large enemy operation a month beforehand and ordered the northern flying detachment to maintain ‘special vigilance’, but evidently, the Turkish force managed to avoid detection by advancing at night and sheltering in oases by day.36

5th Wing concentrated all its available aircraft in the northern sector, including six machines from 1st Squadron.37 Attached to No. 14 Squadron RFC, the Australian pilots helped track enemy movements over the following 10 days. By 29 July the Ottoman force had established a ‘very good line of trenches and redoubts’ to

33 Flight Lieutenant William Bostock, RAF staff college essay on wartime experiences, 3 September 1926, NAUK AIR1/2389/228/11/96. Bostock’s account (he was later CAS in the RAAF), is corroborated by Hudson Fysh, also of the 1st Light Horse Brigade (and later, a volunteer for the AFC) in Hudson Fysh, Qantas Rising: the Autobiography of the Flying Fysh, Angus & Robertson, London, 1966, p. 37. 34 Sheffy, British Military Intelligence, p. 202. Historians have used various spellings for Djemal’s name, selecting either modern Turkish, Ottoman Turkish or an anglicised variant. This thesis uses the spelling employed by the Australian official historians. 35 Sheffy, British Military Intelligence, p. 203; 5th Wing RFC war diary, 19 July 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/14. 36 ‘Despatch dealing with the work of the Royal Flying Corps on the Suez Canal front during the operations from July 19th and August 12th, 1916’, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/16; Review of operations, 5th Wing RFC, June 1916, NAUK AIR1/1754/204/141/12. 37 Operation Order No. 166, 5th Wing RFC, 19 July 1916; 1st Squadron manuscript history, AWM224 MSS514. 191 the immediate east of Romani.38 Repealing orders to watch the advance ‘without in any way interfering with their progress’, from this date 5th Wing ordered raids on the enemy trenches and line of communications.39 Australian pilots assisted, flying BE2cs out of Ismailia and Kantara, and reported effective bombing.40 German documents indicate that the RFC’s efforts caused negligible material damage but generated fear, disrupted supplies and discredited the Germans in front of their Turkish allies.41

Murray and his subordinate in command of No. 3 Section (the northern canal defences), Major-General , anticipated an enemy feint against Romani’s east-facing positions (held by 52nd Division) with the main effort directed from the south and south-east against the railway, screened by the Anzac Mounted Division. Murray and Lawrence agreed to draw the enemy in on the southern flank and, when they had committed and exposed their left flank, attack it with a cavalry reserve held at Hill 70, some 20 kilometres back towards the canal.42 Lawrence, however, refused Murray’s advice on two points: he kept his headquarters at Kantara, 35 kilometres west of Romani and chose not to appoint an officer in overall charge of the Romani garrison.43

The RFC’s orders suggest that Lawrence planned on using aerial observation to identify the point of the enemy’s main attack once the offensive began. From an advanced aerodrome at Romani No. 14 Squadron would also co-operate with divisional artillery, using a combination of wireless and visual signals. The staff apparently made minimal arrangements with the artillery; aircraft were not assigned to batteries as in France, nor were flights detailed to specific areas. The squadrons received no instructions regarding the anticipated counter-attack and pursuit.44

The Turkish offensive began at 0100 on 4 August 1916 and played out as Murray had predicted. Facing the enemy’s main thrust from the south-east, the light

38 2nd Lt McDiarmid, No. 14 Squadron, reconnaissance report, 29 July 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/14. 39 ‘Despatch dealing with the work of the Royal Flying Corps on the Suez Canal front during the operations from July 19th and August 12th, 1916’, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/16. 40 Lawrence Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer: an Autobiography, Angus & Robertson, Sydney 1972, p. 47; Lieutenant A. W. L. Ellis, 1st Squadron (attached to No. 14 Squadron), reconnaissance report, 1 August 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/16. 41 ‘Extracts from the diaries of captured officers’, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/16. 42 Macmunn and Falls, Military Operations Egypt and Palestine: Volume I, p. 183. 43 Gullett, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VII, pp. 131-2. 44 GOC Middle East Brigade, RFC, Brigadier-General W. G. Salmond, to OC 5th Wing, RFC, Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Joubert de la Ferte, 1 August 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/16. 192 horse made a fighting withdrawal, eventually holding the enemy just 700 yards from British lines. Lawrence ordered his reserve forward at 0700, but it was mid-afternoon before it was in position to counter-attack. By dusk the Turkish advance had been turned and the key heights of Mount Royston re-captured. Over the following week the Turks conducted a well-ordered retreat, their rearguard using positions constructed before the offensive to frustrate Anzac Mounted Division’s attempts to rout them at Katia (5 August), Oghratina (7 August) and at Bir el Abd (9 August). In each case the mounted troops had little support, having left the infantry and most artillery behind. From Abd the Turks successfully withdrew with most of their guns across the desert to El Arish.

RFC despatches emphasise the quantity and quality of work it carried out during the week-long battle, a sentiment echoed in the RAF’s official history and elsewhere.45 Ostensibly, this appears to be the case: 5th Wing carried out the objectives established in its operation orders and, despite having just 17 serviceable aircraft, flew an average of 31.5 hours and 3,000 kilometres during each of the first five days of August.46 Nonetheless, a closer examination of the operational records permits a more nuanced evaluation of the RFC’s role, including Australian involvement through the six AFC pilots attached to No. 14 Squadron.47

The RFC had a very limited presence over the battlefield on 4 August; 5th Wing recorded a dozen sorties throughout the entire theatre that day.48 Though he noted German aircraft directing artillery, Sergeant Bostock of the light horse recalled seeing no British aircraft at all.49 By attacking at night the Turks stymied the RFC’s plans to provide an early indication of the enemy’s plans. From Romani, Australian pilot Lieutenant William Ascroft carried out the first reconnaissance, escorted by

45 ‘Despatch dealing with the work of the Royal Flying Corps on the Suez Canal front during the operations from July 19th and August 12th, 1916’, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/16; ‘Despatch of RFC operations 18 July to 12 August 1916’, NAUK AIR1/2119/207/72/3; Resume of operations, 29 July 1916 to 4 August 1916, AIR1/2286/209/75/17; H. A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force: Volume V, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1935, 194-5; David Bullock, ‘Swift as Eagles: The Victory of the Royal Air Force in Palestine, 1914- 1918’, PhD thesis, Kansas State University, 1995, pp. 167-171. 46 5th Wing RFC, Weekly resume of operations, 29 July 1916 to 4 August 1916, AIR1/2286/209/75/17. 47 1st Squadron manuscript history, AWM224 MSS514; Reconnaissance and bombing reports, 5th Wing war diary, 4-12 August 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/16. Australian pilots who appear to have flown during the Romani operations included Captain Richard Williams, Lieutenants Stanley Muir, William Ascroft, Alfred Ellis, Lawrence Wackett and Arthur Murray-Jones. 48 See flight reports, 5th Wing war diary, 4 August 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/16. 49 Bostock, RAF Staff College essay on wartime experiences, 3 September 1926, NAUK AIR1/2389/228/11/96. 193 Williams in one of No. 14 Squadron’s few Bristol Scouts.50 By the time Ascroft landed however (0750), Lawrence had already ordered his reserve forward.51 After direct telephonic communication between Kantara and Romani failed at 0700, Williams relayed messages by air – though nothing in No. 3 Section’s message register or GHQ’s war diary indicates that they shaped higher command of the battle.52

In any case, following the commitment of reserves, the battle played out on the spot with Anzac Mounted and 52nd Division’s headquarters making all the critical decisions. Here too, aerial reconnaissance played little discernable part. The enemy’s advance along multiple axes perplexed the airmen and they struggled to distinguish friend from foe.53 Evidently, 52nd Division’s staff did not deem anything the airmen reported worthy of passing on to Anzac Mounted Division and, hence, the troops that played the critical part on 4 August gained no tactical advantage from the RFC.54 Certainly, the evidence fails to validate the BGGS of No. 3 Section’s praise for the RFC’s ‘remarkable accuracy’ in reconnaissance, which ‘contributed very largely to the success which has been gained’.55 Likewise, 5th Wing’s description of artillery co-operation as ‘notably successful’ does not bear scrutiny.56 Anzac Mounted Division’s batteries (which fired over 1,000 rounds) had no aerial support while a single attempt at directing the fire of an off-shore monitor resulted in four hits on a Turkish camp well behind the battlefront.57

50 Richard Williams interviewed by Mel Pratt, 1973-74, NLA ORAL TRC 121/50; Williams, ‘Experience in Connection with the war of 1914/1918’, unpublished manuscript, n.d., Williams Papers, RAAF Museum. 5th Wing’s war diary has no flight reports written by Williams for 4 August but the following day he made references on a reconnaissance report to enemy forces he had seen the previous day: Captain Richard Williams, 1st Squadron (attached to No. 14 Squadron), 5 August 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/16. 51 ‘In and Out Messages’, 4 August 1916, No. 3 Section war diary, August 1916, Appendix 5, WO95/4429 52 1st Squadron manuscript history, AWM224 MSS514; No. 3 Section HQ War Diary, August 1916, NAUK WO95/4429; GHQ EEF War Diary, August 1916, AWM4 1/6/5 Part 1. 53 Joubert to Henderson, 6 August 1916, NAUK AIR1/2119/207/72/3. 54 Anzac Mounted Division war diary, 4 August 1916, AWM4 1/60/6. 55 Brigadier-General H. E. Street, BGGS No. 3 Section to OC RFC Detatchment at Kantara, 8 August 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/16. Such views have contributed to an exaggerated interpretation of the RFC’s contribution at Romani. Salmond’s biographer notes for example that ‘Although only 17 aircraft took part in the battle, vital information was continuously passed to the troops’ [Baker, From Biplane to Spitfire, p. 97]. 56 ‘Despatch dealing with the work of the Royal Flying Corps on the Suez Canal front during the operations from July 19th and August 12th, 1916’, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/16. 57 2nd Lieutenant C. D. Thompson, No. 14 Squadron, reconnaissance report, 4 August 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/16. 194 Over the following week No. 14 Squadron accurately reported the various stages of the enemy’s withdrawal to GHQ, but a lack of arrangements to co-ordinate the operations of the pursuing forces generally prevented them from using this intelligence effectively.58 Otherwise the RFC struggled to co-operate with the ground forces. Practically no artillery observation occurred after 4 August, despite Anzac Mounted Division’s serious deficiency in fire support when attacking Turkish rear guard positions and a request for air support by the formation’s GOC, Major-General Henry Chauvel.59 5th Wing, in fact, flew no sorties over Bir el Abd during Anzac Mounted Division’s abortive assault there on 9 August.60 Australian airmen reported causing considerable casualties to enemy columns with bombs on 5 August, but thereafter, 5th Wing received orders to cease bombing to avoid friendly casualties.61

Compared with the RFC – which flew around 10 sorties each day during the battle – FA 300’s lack of aircraft and logistical problems allowed it to only fly three sorties daily, its efforts mainly directed at ground-attack.62 Light horsemen described the effectiveness of their raids which, throughout the battle, delivered 363 bombs and 5,500 rounds onto the advancing British columns.63 ‘Most of us don’t mind the shells but they have a disliking for bombs,’ noted Trooper Jeffrey Holmes in his diary on 12 August.64 German reconnaissance efforts proved less successful, Murray’s staff afterwards concluding from captured ‘maps and other documents’ that the enemy had ‘no idea as to the extent to which we had fortified Romani’.65 Further, FA 300 failed to turn their unequivocal technical advantage into air superiority. Between 23 July and 11 August, British pilots initiated the fighting and either drove down or compelled the

58 See, for example, Captain Richard Williams, 1st Squadron AFC (attached to No. 14 Squadron), reconnaissance report, 7 August 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/16; Lieutenant Edwards, No. 14 Squadron, 11 August 1916, reconnaissance report, AIR1/1755/204/141/16; Gullett, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VII, pp. 186-188. 59 Gullett, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VII, p. 179. 60 5th Wing war diary, 9 August 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/16. 61 Lieutenant Lawrence Wackett, 1st Squadron AFC (attached to No. 14 Squadron), 5 August 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/16; Lieutenant Alfred Ellis, 1st Squadron AFC (attached to No. 14 Squadron), 5 August 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/16. 62 Gröschel and Jürgen, ‘Wings over Sinai and Palestine’, p. 21. 63 Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, Mit den Türken zum Suezkanal, Otto Schlegel, Berlin, c. 1938, p. 191. 64 Trooper Jeffrey Holmes, diary, 12 August 1916, AWM PR00740. For other evidence of the effectiveness of enemy aeroplane attacks on the light horse see Ion Idriess, The Desert Column: Leaves from the Diary of an Australian Trooper in Gallipoli, Sinai and Palestine, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1951, p. 98; Corporal Hubert Billings, diary, 4 August 1916, AWM 3DRL/6060; Trooper Reginald Forsyth to family, 29 October 1916, AWM MSS1276. 65 Lynden-Bell to Maurice, 17 August 1916, Lynden-Bell Papers, IWM Documents 7826. 195 enemy to disengage in more than half the combats that occurred.66 Despite inflicting six casualties on British pilots, German airmen did not seriously disrupt the RFC’s work. 1st Squadron suffered one casualty, Ascroft, hospitalised with ‘neurasthenia’ and later discharged from the AIF with ‘shell-shock’.67 Certainly, FA 300’s ascendency was nowhere near as pronounced as Cutlack alleged.68

Though a British victory, Romani represents a failure of air-ground co- operation. A shortage of equipment is partly to blame for 5th Wing’s disappointing battle debut: additional aircraft might have allowed more comprehensive reconnaissance and detected the enemy advance sooner while wireless sets, cameras and gridded maps – all in short supply in the Middle East – may have permitted better co-operation. There is also the issue of inexperience: most pilots – especially the Australians –had not flown in battle before, while 5th Wing’s staff undoubtedly had much to learn about planning. On the other hand, a single wing headquarters staff was too small and too junior to effectively co-ordinate support for actions involving multiple corps.69 Just before Romani the RFC in the Middle East had created a brigade level headquarters but for some time it existed only on paper. The wing’s staff, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Joubert de la Ferté (recently appointed to his first wing command), had complete responsibility for the RFC at Romani.70 During the battle Salmond (promoted to command the new Middle East Brigade RFC) and his chief staff officer were absent on inspection tours of Mesopotamia and Macedonia.71

66 Summary of combats in the air, 5th Wing, July 1915, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/14. 67 William Percy Arlington Ascroft, AIF dossier, NAA B2455. The Romani airfield, from which Ascroft operated, was subject to enemy shelling throughout 4 August 1916. 68 Cutlack, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VIII, p. 38. He suggested that the pilots flew knowing the BE2c had little hope of ‘beating off’ enemy machines and that the ‘was useless against the German aircraft’. 69 No. 2 Section of the canal defences, effectively a corps-level command, supported No. 3 Section’s pursuit operation with a mixed mounted force, making Romani essentially an operation involving two corps headquarters. On the Western Front, a similar operation would have involved, by mid-1916, the squadrons of two wing headquarters coordinated by a brigade level command. 70 Preface to Middle East Brigade RFC war diary, August 1916, NAUK AIR1/2192/209/18/1B. 71 Baker, From Biplane to Spitfire, pp. 96-97; Salmond to Lady Salmond, 13 January 1917, Sir Geoffrey Salmond papers, private collection. 196

Organisation of the RFC in the Middle East in September 1916

Both air services emerged from Romani exhausted: FA 300 down to 800 litres of fuel and 5th Wing with almost half its machines unserviceable and short of spare engines.72 Aerial activity accordingly slackened in September and October, allowing Middle East Brigade time to reinforce, reorganise and consider better methods of army co-operation.73

Casualties suffered by No. 14 Squadron at Romani and the transfer of one of its flights to Rabegh in September left 1st Squadron as the only complete flying unit on the Sinai front. The Australians took responsibility for No. 3 Section’s tactical reconnaissance with headquarters and C Flight occupying the aerodrome at Kantara and B Flight on a forward aerodrome at Mahemdia.74 For the rest of the year the AFC would co-operate almost exclusively with the Anzac Mounted Division, becoming, in Lieutenant Eric Robert’s words, ‘the eyes of the light horse’.75 Until November,

72 O. Nikolajsen, ‘Ottoman Aviation 1911-1919’, p. 177, AWM MSS0862; Georg Paul Neumann (ed.), The German Air Force in the Great War, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1920, p. 247; Murray to Sir David Henderson, Director-General of Military Aeronautics, 17 August 1916, NAUK AIR1/2192/209/18/1B; Lynden-Bell to Maurice, 17 August 1916, IWM Documents 7826. 73 According to the monthly summaries in 5th Wing’s war diary, in September the RFC fought three aerial combats and suffered one machine damaged. Between 20 September and 9 October no enemy aircraft crossed the line. After that, an enemy sortie ranged as far as Romani on reconnaissance every second day. In November, 5th Wing’s war diarist would describe enemy aircraft as ‘few and far between’, with German aircraft engaging an RFC flight on just one occasion. 74 1st Squadron manuscript history, AWM224 MSS514. 75 Eric Roberts interviewed by Fred Morton, 1977, NLA ORAL TRC 536. 197 however, 1st Squadron remained split between two fronts, A Flight co-operating with the Kharga Oasis Force in the Western Desert on long and typically fruitless patrols.76

At Kantara, a busy canal crossing, 1st Squadron became subject to the curiosity of passing light horse regiments. ‘Amongst them,’ recalled Williams, ‘were some very good tradesmen who immediately started to inquire as to how they could get into the flying corps’.77 With the arrangements for reinforcements from Australia proving unsatisfactory (see Chapter 3), Rutledge began drawing mechanics and observers from volunteers in the light horse. In Williams’ assessment, the light horsemen’s knowledge of mounted tactics and geography made them ideal observers, far superior to RFC officers who typically came direct to the squadron from schools in England.78 For their part, the light horsemen saw the flying corps as an opportunity for commission, a chance to escape arduous conditions in the field and to provide skills they anticipated would put them in good stead for employment after the war.79

Prior field experience, however, could not prepare observers to undertake the increasingly sophisticated army co-operation roles Salmond envisaged for the RFC. At the beginning of October, 5th Wing introduced a training syllabus for observers focused heavily on wireless and artillery observation.80 That same month, the wing adopted ‘the latest method of fitting BE machines’ with the Mark III Sterling transmitter, as used on the Western Front.81 Until this time, 1st Squadron’s wireless officer had been forced to improvise, describing the squadron’s first wireless- equipped machine in July as ‘a beautiful representation of what may be done with odd pieces of wood, glue, hoopiron, nails and a few screws’.82 With the new sets 1st Squadron practiced observing artillery fire on a ‘puff’ range at Kantara – a useful introduction to the task, though one Salmond acknowledged was no substitute for ‘practice with guns, which is not easy to get’.83 By December, all BE2cs in the unit

76 For an account of A Flight’s activities on the western desert front see Squadron Leader Hanmer, RAF Staff College essay on wartime experiences, NAUK AIR1/2389/228/11/118. 77 Richard Williams interviewed by Mel Pratt, 1973-74, NLA ORAL TRC 121/50. 78 Richard Williams interviewed by Mel Pratt, 1973-74, NLA ORAL TRC 121/50. 79 Ross Smith to Keith Smith, 26 September 1916, SLSA PRG 18/24; J. P. McCoy and K. Keohane, ‘Interview with G. N. Mills, Former Observer with the Australian Flying Corps’, The 14-18 Journal, 1968, 76-80; Reginald Forsyth to family, 29 October 1916, AWM MSS1276. 80 Joubert to COs Nos 14 and 1 Squadrons, 2 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19. 81 Wireless report, 5th Wing RFC, October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19. 82 Lieutenant A. E. P. Mott, diary, 3 July 1916, AWM 2DRL/0011. 83 Wireless report, 5th Wing RFC, October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19; Salmond to unknown, 23 October 1916, Sir Geoffrey Salmond papers, private collection. 198 had wireless sets and a dozen trained operators attached to artillery units at ‘wireless out-stations’.84

For southern Palestine GHQ possessed two maps surveyed in the 1870s (at 1:63,360 and 1:168,960 scale) and a 1:125,000 topographic map of the Sinai completed just before the war. Aside from inaccuracies (Murray’s CGS noted elevations 2,000 feet higher than charted) their scale was too small for tactical use.85 GHQ had a topographic section, but the distance between British and Turkish front lines restricted them to working behind the British front. For territory occupied by the enemy, Murray’s cartographers relied entirely on 5th Wing for aerial survey.86 At the beginning of October 1st Squadron established a photographic section at Kantara, which, by the end of the month, had produced the first ‘mosaic’ map by overlaying photographs.87 The following month its BE2cs photographed enemy positions in Palestine, over 360 kilometres beyond the most advanced British troops, as well as ‘practically the whole area from the Turkish front line to the town of El Arish, 5 miles [eight kilometres] further east, or about eleven square miles [28.5 square kilometres] of country’.88 Although providing British forces in the northern Sinai with a fast alternative to maps created by traditional field survey, these photo-mosaics had some notable limitations in the field, especially in the application of artillery fire control. In most instances a lack of reliably fixed points on the pre-war survey maps and distortions caused by camera tilt prevented the photographs from being properly scaled.89 Moreover, 5th Wing’s limited resources in 1916 only allowed for the

84 Lieutenant John Brown, 5th Wing Wireless Equipment Officer, wireless report, 5th Wing RFC, 31 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22; Lynden-Bell to Maurice, 29 November 1916, IWM Documents 7826. 85 Dov Gavish, ‘The Military Cartographic Effort in the Sinai-Palestine Campaign’, Yigal Sheffy and Shaul Shai (eds), The First World War: Middle Eastern Perspective: proceedings of the Israeli-Turkish International Colloquy, 3-6 April 2000, The Colloquy, Tel Aviv, 2000, pp. 194 and 197. On the Western Front, the BEF’s tactical maps had a scale of 1:10,000. 86 Gavish, ‘The Military Cartographic Effort in the Sinai-Palestine Campaign’, p. 197. 87 Rutledge to Commander, Royal Engineers, No. 3 Section, 2 October 1916, AWM25 759/3; Leckie, unpublished manuscript, 1973, AWM 3DRL/4180. In France, the BEF had been relying on mosaics of aerial photographs since early 1915, the first being produced by 1st Wing RFC before the battle of Neuve Chapelle. [Terrence Finnegan, Shooting the front: Allied aerial reconnaissance in the First World War, Spellmount, Stroud, 2011, p. 124.] 88 Monthly despatch, 5th Wing war diary, November 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/20. 89 At the end of 1916 5th Wing still employed the handheld ‘A’ type camera; the RFC’s first pattern, introduced in early 1915 and superseded by the ‘C’ type in the middle of that year. The ‘C’ camera had two advantages over its predecessor, being designed for mounting on an aircraft’s fuselage and possessing a semi-automatic plate changing mechanism that replaced the 10 separate actions required to load and expose each new plate on the ‘A’ type [‘Photographic work of the RFC in Sinai and 199 mapping of specific locations within the Sinai’s wide expanse, such as enemy strong points.90 Such maps were useful for field commanders in planning assaults but could provide little assistance to the gunners who needed an accurate fix on both the position of their guns and their target.

The British official historian attributed such innovations in the Middle East to the absorption of ideas from the Western Front, describing Salmond’s headquarters as ‘a clearing house for ideas’.91 As a staff officer at RFC HQ in France in 1914 and a squadron commander in 1915, Salmond had been a key proponent in the RFC’s evolution during the war’s first 18 months. A gunner originally, he had a particular interest in artillery co-operation and, in May 1915, developed a scheme allowing airmen to circumvent pre-arranged fire plans and direct artillery at fleeting targets.92 From Egypt Salmond kept abreast with developments in Europe by corresponding with Trenchard and other former colleagues and by establishing positions on his staff for photography and wireless liaison officers responsible for obtaining and disseminating the latest official publications.93

Nonetheless, as the example of photo-mosaics suggests, technology and ideas from the Western Front often needed adaptation for the Middle East. The region’s climate subjected RFC pattern equipment to stresses unknown in Europe and it was only after extensive experimentation, for example, that 5th Wing settled on suitable developing chemicals and light filters.94 Further, despite Salmond’s intention to institute a ‘uniform system’ for artillery observation throughout Middle East Brigade ‘the same as we had in France’, and his staff’s receipt of literature on the RFC’s new

Southern Palestine during 1917, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28; Finnegan, Shooting the front, pp. 267- 272]. 90 H. Hamshaw Thomas, ‘Geographical Reconnaissance by Aeroplane Photograph, with Special Reference to the Work Done on the Palestine Front’, The Geographical Journal, volume 55, number 5, May 1920, 349-76, p. 351. During 1916 Thomas served as 5th Wing’s officer in charge of photography. 91 H.A. Jones, The War in the Air: Volume V, Clarendon, Oxford, 1935, p. 189. 92 Anne Baker, From Biplane to Spitfire, pp. 67-73. The RFC on the Western Front used Salmond’s scheme as the basis for its official pamphlet on the subject: ‘OB/114 Co-operation of Aeroplanes and Artillery when using Wireless’, July 1915, NAUK AIR1/746/204/3/24. 93 See for example, Trenchard to Salmond, 12 February 1917, RAF B3091; Baker, From Biplane to Spitfire, pp. 101-102; Captain G. P. Grenfell, Middle East Brigade staff, ‘Suggested duties of wireless officer on Middle East Brigade Staff’, 14 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/2192/209/18/1D. 94 ‘Notes on difficulties experienced in Egypt owing to climatic conditions’, 13 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/2192/209/18/1Dl; Squadron Leader A. T. Cole, ‘War Experiences’, Air Publication 1097, ‘A selection of lectures and essays from the work of officers attending the second course at the Royal Air Force Staff College’, 1923-1924, Air Ministry, 1924, p. 19. 200 ‘zone call’ system in August, they did not adopt it, apparently because the EEF lacked accurate mid-scale (1:40,000) maps and enough heavy guns to divide the battlefront into permanently covered zones.95 Until mid-1917 the RFC in Palestine would have to rely on an older system that, although introducing some flexibility in the direction of artillery fire, took several minutes to execute and involved marking targets with smoke, rather than wirelessly transmitting more precise map co-ordinates.96

Another difference that would endure between RFC organisation on the Western Front and in the Middle East concerned the handling of fighting aircraft. By August 1916 all British scouts in France and Belgium operated in homogenous fighting squadrons, grouped into ‘army’ wings.97 As 5th Wing possessed only two squadrons that effectively needed to support three corps along the canal (and maintain a presence on the western desert and Red Sea fronts) it made sense to maintain flexibility in each flight. In October and November 1st Squadron’s flights each received a single-seat Martinsyde G102. Although relegated to bombing and strategic reconnaissance on the Western Front by July 1916, the few Martinsydes 5th Wing procured would provide a crucial stopgap in the force’s combat capability until the arrival of Bristol Fighters in late 1917.98 Capable of considerably higher speeds than the BE2c, and armed with a forward firing Lewis gun, 1st Squadron’s flights employed the Martinsyde in an escort role with good effect. During a raid on FA 300’s aerodrome at Beersheba on 11 November, for example, Lieutenant William Guilfoyle engaged and drove off an enemy interceptor. During another raid on 22 December Lieutenant Stanley Muir, an Australian officer of the RFC attached to the AFC, claimed the squadron’s first victory by forcing down a German monoplane.99 Just over a week later he attacked a pair of Rumplers and, after firing two drums of ammunition into one, forced it too, to land.100

95 Hamshaw Thomas, ‘Geographical Reconnaissance by Aeroplane Photography’, p. 372; ‘Instructions (Provisional) – Co-operation between Aeroplanes and Artillery During an Advance’, registered by HQ Middle East Brigade, 29 August 1916, RAF B3096. 96 ‘Artillery Co-operation Notes for Observers’, 10 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22. 97 Jones, The War in the Air Volume II, p. 168. 98 J. M. Bruce, The Aeroplanes of the Royal Flying Corps (Military Wing), Putnam, London, 1982, pp. 277-78. 99 Lieutenant Stanley Muir, 1st Squadron AFC, Combats in the air report, 22 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22; Jourbert to HQ Middle Brigade, 23 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22. 100 Lieutenant Stanley Muir, No. 1 Squadron AFC, Combats in the air report, 1 January 1917, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/23. 201 5th Wing had the opportunity to test and refine these developments in limited- scale operations during the autumn. Although Murray had secured War Office sanction to advance to El Arish in July, it was December before Eastern Force (appointed to administer operations east of the canal under the command of Lieutenant-General Charles Dobell) had built adequate rail and water infrastructure in the Sinai to support operations further east.101 Desert Mounted Column (effectively a corps-level command under Lieutenant-General Philip Chetwode) meanwhile sought to secure the British position in the Sinai with patrols and occasional raids on enemy outposts.

On 17 September Anzac Mounted Division raided the Turkish outpost at Mazar. 1st Squadron supported the operation under orders from 5th Wing that indicate a marked improvement in staff work since Romani. Throughout the day preceding the raid, aircraft patrolled above the mounted troops as they deployed and as the attack commenced the following morning, the RNAS and RFC raided FA 300’s aerodrome. While the mounted troops advanced airmen reported their progress by dropping handwritten messages at a report centre four kilometres from Mazar and then covered their withdrawal with protective patrols.102

Though the operation failed to capture Mazar it reflects well on the RFC. Despite costing three naval aircraft, the raid on Beersheba prevented FA 300 from interfering with Anzac Mounted Division.103 One enemy aircraft had flown over the light horse as they deployed the day before but, as Ion Idriess recorded in his diary, the RFC responded efficiently: ‘four planes instantly rushed her. She fired a startled burst from her machine gun and fled’.104 Three days later, 5th Wing reported the enemy abandoning Mazar, the raid having convinced the Ottoman command – until then divided over the question of further withdrawal – to pull back to El Arish.105

101 MacMunn and Falls, Military Operations Egypt and Palestine: Volume I, pp. 230-32 and 242; Lieutenant-General C. M. Dobell, GOC Eastern Force to CGS GHQ, 18 October 1916, WO95/4429. 102 Monthly dispatch, 5th Wing RFC, September 1916, AIR1/1755/204/141/18. 103 Anonymous, ‘Die andere Seite: Der kampf um den Suezkanal’, Luftwelt, volume 4, number 3, 1937, 99-102, p. 102; Monthly despatch, 5th Wing RFC, September 1916, AIR1/1755/204/141/18. 104 Idriess, The Desert Column, p. 149. Surviving FA 300 papers at the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv do not reveal if the German airmen detected the concentration but the RFC believed it did not, the Turks appearing ‘quite unprepared’ the following morning [Monthly dispatch, 5th Wing RFC, September 1916, AIR1/1755/204/141/18]. 105 Sheffy, British Military Intelligence, p. 204. 202 By the time 1st Squadron supported the Anzac Mounted Division’s next raid on 15 October – on the Turkish outpost at Maghara – 5th Wing had again improved its capability for army co-operation. Given responsibility for the air component, 1st Squadron’s CO, Major Rutledge, drew up notably thorough plans to directly support the light horse throughout the operation with bombing and artillery co-operation, and ‘to keep the GOC in the closest possible touch with the progress of operations’.106 1st Squadron would operate by a timetable to provide at least one wireless-equipped machine over the battlefield all day.107 5th Wing meanwhile arranged for the mobile column’s provision of a wireless station and party of operators, and established radio procedures.108 For the first time in the theatre the airmen and the troops went into action with a gridded sketch map, based on aerial photographs and a 1:10,000 mosaic map of the Turkish positions.109 Given the limited artillery carried by mounted units, the force’s commander, Major-General Alister Dallas, requested aircraft carry bombs to subject the enemy garrison to a constant bombardment.110

Despite delays caused by early fog, eight Australian BE2cs supported the raid from its outset, flying 37.5 hours of sorties from an advanced aerodrome at Salmana. Though the airmen identified a few enemy machine gun posts and identified possible routes for Dallas’s troops to attack, poor visibility and the enemy’s effective camouflage limited the usefulness of tactical co-operation.111 The Australian pilots spotted no enemy artillery and, according to agents, the 40 bombs they dropped caused just five enemy casualties.112 The wireless machines maintained a constant presence over the battlefield and reported the battle’s progress to Dallas, whose staff included wireless operators from 1st Squadron.113 Between 1300 and 1400 the

106 Major T. F. Rutledge, CO 1st Squadron, ‘Maghara Operations- Instructions to Pilots and Observers’, 13 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19. 107 Rutledge, Timetable of No. 1 Squadron for the Maghara operations, 13 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19 108 Special Operation Order No. 8, 5th Wing RFC, 10 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19; After Order No. 1 to Special Operation Order No. 8, 5th Wing RFC, 11 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19. 109 After Order No. 2 to Special Operation Order No. 8, 5th Wing RFC, 11 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19. 110 ‘Reference Special Operation Order No. 8, 5th Win RFC, 15 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19; Special Operation Order No. 9, 5th Wing RFC, 11 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19. 111 Captain T. C. Macaulay, No. 14 Squadron (attached ,1st Squadron), reconnaissance report, 15 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19; Joubert to General Staff, Middle East Brigade RFC, 15 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19. 112 Monthly summary, 5th Wing RFC, October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19. 113 Special Operation Order No. 8, 5th Wing RFC, 10 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19. 203 Australian observers reported the mounted assault stalled and enemy troops well concealed.114 AFC crews covered the withdrawal and dropped messages warning light horse commanders that their crowded formations made them vulnerable to attack from the air.115 In any case FA 300 made no appearance; No. 14 Squadron had raided their advanced aerodrome that morning.116

Though far from a conspicuous success, 1st Squadron’s use of liaison personnel, aerial photographs, wireless and close support bombing – all tied together with thorough operation orders and a timetable – illustrates the early stages of a technical, tactical and organisational evolution within Middle East Brigade. It is also evidence of the aviation staff’s growing ability to integrate the efforts of their airmen with the broader force.

By 1 December 1916 the British railhead had reached Bir el Mazar, making an advance on El Arish feasible.117 Unlike the raids during the autumn, the strength of the enemy garrison there (as indicated by aerial reconnaissance) compelled Dobell to order a joint operation involving Anzac Mounted Division as well as two divisions of infantry and Eastern Force’s limited heavy artillery.118 It was 20 December by the time the Desert Column had concentrated at Mazar. The shift of Eastern Force’s weight forward involved 5th Wing’s move to Mustabig, with the Australian squadron’s flights coming together at the same aerodrome for the first time on 17 December.119

Working from a ‘general outline’ produced in collaboration between Eastern Force and Desert Column’s senior staff officers, Joubert issued elaborate plans for aerial co-operation.120 As well as providing two aircraft to observe naval gunfire, he allocated flights to each of the divisions and detailed contact, protective and hostile aircraft patrols, and bombing sorties.121 The wing wireless officer issued procedures

114 Rutledge to Jourbert, 15 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19. 115 Captain Richard Williams, 1st Squadron, 15 October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19. 116 Monthly summary, 5th Wing RFC, October 1916, NAUK AIR1/1755/204/141/19. 117 MacMunn and Falls, Military Operations, Egypt and Palestine: Volume I, p. 271. 118 Sheffy, British Military Intelligence, pp. 204-205. 119 1st Squadron manuscript history, AWM224 MSS514. 120 Dawnay to Joubert, 15 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22. 121 ‘Proposed instructions regarding W/T and inter-communication between the Army and the Navy in the event of combined operations’, 16 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22; Joubert, ‘Orders for Group 1 Machine’, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22; Joubert, ‘Orders for Group 2 Machine’, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22; Joubert, ‘Provisional Arrangements for Aeroplane Co-operation in the 204 for artillery co-operation and the airmen participated in a ‘sham fight’ with Desert Column a week before zero hour to rehearse the operation.122 The planning, and the involvement of Desert Column and Eastern Force staff in the process, indicates the closest integration yet between air and ground forces in the Middle East.

What Eastern Force conceived as a set-piece battle, however, changed suddenly two days before zero when Lieutenant Eric Roberts, flying 42nd Division’s senior artillery officer over El Arish, confirmed the position abandoned.123 Roberts’ colleagues had, in fact, noted evidence of the enemy withdrawal over the past 48 hours, but, fixated on intelligence to the contrary, Desert Column’s intelligence staff had maintained the opinion that the Turks would defend the position.124 Without waiting for the infantry, Anzac Mounted Division occupied El Arish the following morning.

Arriving 24 hours later (22 December), Chetwode ordered an immediate pursuit. Uncertain as to the enemy’s path of retreat, he directed Chauvel to split Anzac Mounted Division between an advance along the coast toward Rafa and another, southeast along the Wady El Arish to Magdhaba. Aerial reconnaissance that afternoon indicated the enemy at Magdhaba in considerable strength, compelling Chetwode to cancel the operation against Rafa and direct Anzac Mounted Division to attack Magdhaba in force.125

5th Wing’s orders to 1st Squadron reflect the mobile nature of this operation and the haste with which it had been conceived. The Australian squadron’s brief was to simply provide a relay of aircraft throughout the day ‘to keep the GOC Cavalry fully informed of the progress of the action and to assist in every way by bombing and machine gun fire’. Meanwhile, supported by No. 14 Squadron, other airmen would

Attack on El Arish’, 17 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22; Lieutenant-Colonel V. M. Ferguson, GSO1, Desert Column, ‘Special Instructions for RFC’, n.d. (filed with documents dated 19 December 1916), NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22. 122 ‘Artillery Co-operation Notes for Observers’, 10 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22; Lieutenant Eric Roberts, diary, 14 December 1916, AWM 3DRL/7866. 123 E. G. Roberts, Box Kites and Beyond, Hawthorn Press, Melbourne, 1976, p. 24; Roberts, diary, 20 December 1916, AWM 3DRL7866. 124 Lieutenant Ian Cullen, No. 14 Squadron, reconnaissance report, 17 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22; 2nd Lieutenant J. N. Wilkinson, No. 14 Squadron, reconnaissance report, 18 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22; 2nd Lieutenant J. M. Glen, 1st Squadron, reconnaissance report, 18 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22; Sheffy, British Military Intelligence, p. 206. 125 MacMunn and Falls, Military Operations, Egypt and Palestine: Volume I, p. 253; 2nd Lieutenant J. M. Glen, 1st Squadron, reconnaissance report, 22 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22. 205 attack railway bridges to impede the Ottoman retirement.126 Wireless operators would not accompany Anzac Mounted Division, but the column carried a gridded 1:25,344 scale map of the enemy positions, traced from aerial photographs.127

On 23 December 1st Squadron flew a dozen sorties in support of Anzac Mounted Division’s attack on Magdhaba, with No. 14 Squadron contributing another three. The first Australian airmen were over the battlefield almost two hours before the mounted units attacked at 0900 and they remained over it, in relays, until mid- afternoon.128 All aircraft carried bombs, 1,300 lbs falling on the Turkish redoubts and the enemy’s line of retreat towards Abu Aweigila. The evidence suggests these proved most effective behind the battle area against enemy troops retiring, though they perhaps also compelled Turkish troops to divert fire from the advancing columns to the aircraft.129 Trooper Holmes’s description of 1st Squadron aircraft bombing the redoubts before the advance also suggests that, whatever damage it caused the enemy, the bombing boosted the attackers’ morale.130 Lacking wireless stations, Anzac Mounted Division’s six batteries of horse artillery received practically no assistance from the air and, owing to mirage, struggled to lay their fire accurately.131

Tactical reconnaissance represented 1st Squadron’s most influential contribution to the battle. By dropping hand written messages and landing to make verbal reports the Australian airmen influenced several command decisions. Unable to reconnoitre the enemy positions effectively from the ground, Chauvel relied on an observer’s sketch maps to work out his deployment and route of advance.132 Half an hour after the attack started, an AFC observer reported enemy retreating southeast along the road to Abu Aweigila prompting the commitment of the 3rd Light Horse

126 Operation Order No. 44, 5th Wing RFC, 22 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22; ‘Details of the two special operations for 23-12-16’, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22. 127 ‘Operations of A&NZ Mtd Division Magdhaba 23-12-16’, Anzac Mounted Division war diary, December 1916, Appendix No. 25, AWM4 1/60/10. 128 ‘Operations December 20th to December 24th including the occupation of El Arish and the attack at Bir el Magdhaba’, Anzac Mounted Division war diary, December 1916, Appendix No. 24, AWM4 1/60/10. 129 Lieutenant Ross Smith, 1st Squadron AFC, diary, 23 December 1916, SLSA PRG 18/19; Smith to mother, 7 January 1917, SLSA PRG 18/17; Cole, ‘War Experiences’, p. 26. 130 Holmes, diary, 25 December 1916, AWM PR00740. 131 MacMunn and Falls, Military Operations, Egypt and Palestine: Volume I, pp. 255 and 258. For a definition of mirage see Chapter 5. 132 ‘Operations December 20th to December 24th including the occupation of El Arish and the Attack at Bir El Magdhaba’, Anzac Mounted Division war diary, Appendix No. 24, AWM4 1/60/10. 206 Brigade and part of the Machine Gun Squadron to an enveloping movement.133 It resulted in the capture of 300 Turks and put the brigade in position to attack the enemy positions from the rear.134 While most air reports went to brigade and divisional headquarters, some airmen supplied intelligence to troops on the battlefield. 2nd Lieutenant John Glen, for example, dropped a note to 3rd Light Horse Brigade’s advanced guard: ‘There appear to be about 6 men lying behind bushes about 300 yards due S of you…’.135

The influence of aerial observation did not, however, prove altogether constructive. At 1000 Lieutenant Henry Bowd reported ‘that the enemy were making off and that there was a possibility of their escaping General Chaytor’s enveloping move’, prompting Chauvel to prematurely commit his reserve brigade.136 As Ottoman sources reveal, Bowd had actually seen a body of Arab troops fleeing but the main garrison remained in their positions.137 Clearly, he had exceeded his mandate, as spelled out in the RFC’s training manual, that observers should only report ‘facts’ and leave ‘deduction’ to the staff.138 On the other hand, Bowd’s report was corroborated by two earlier reports (including one from Chaytor) that Chauvel received of enemy troops withdrawing.139 And, its casualties aside, 1st Light Horse Brigade’s assault proved crucial to the operation’s success later in the afternoon when it captured the western-most redoubt and the Turkish garrison commander.140

In the post-war assessment of one 1st Squadron pilot, Magdhaba ‘laid the foundations of mutual understanding [between air and ground forces] which assisted subsequent operations’.141 Despite hastily prepared orders, the RFC (and predominantly, 1st Squadron) had a stronger presence in the Magdhaba operation than any that had preceded it. It thoroughly impressed Murray’s CGS, Lynden-Bell who,

133 Lieutenant H. W. Bowd, 1st Squadron AFC, reconnaissance report, 23 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22. 134 Gullett, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VII, p. 222. 135 2nd Lieutenant J. M. Glen, 1st Squadron AFC, reconnaissance report, 23 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22. 136 ‘Operations December 20th to December 24th including the occupation of El Arish and the Attack at Bir El Magdhaba’, Anzac Mounted Division war diary, Appendix No. 24, AWM4 1/60/10. 137 MacMunn and Falls, Military Operations, Egypt and Palestine: Volume I, p. 254. 138 Training Manual, Royal Flying Corps Part II Military Wing, War Office, London, reprinted with amendments 1916, p. 93. 139 ‘Operations December 20th to December 24th including the occupation of El Arish and the Attack at Bir El Magdhaba’, Anazc Mounted Division, Appendix No. 24, AWM4 1/60/10. 140 Gullett, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, p. 221; MacMunn and Falls, Military Operations, Egypt and Palestine: Volume I, pp. 256-257. 141 Cole, ‘War Experiences’, p. 26. 207 writing to the Director of Military Operations in London, claimed that ‘I cannot speak too highly of the work of the aircraft’. Salmond attributed Magdhaba’s capture ‘largely due to aerial photography’ which had provided planners with ‘absolutely complete information’ regarding enemy defences.142 Nonetheless, despite the establishment of a wireless capability in 5th Wing, artillery co-operation – the RFC’s raison d’être on the Western Front – remained yet to figure properly in the EEF.

During the week following Magdhaba’s capture, 5th Wing observed the Turks evacuating their remaining outposts in the Sinai. By 31 December the airmen reported all clear, with an enemy garrison entrenched at Rafa blocking the coastal route into Palestine.143 A week later, Chetwode issued orders for an assault on the position by Desert Column’s mounted troops.

For the RFC the battle of Rafa, fought on 9 January 1917, entailed the now familiar methods of army co-operation – protective patrols to watch for reinforcements, contact aeroplanes to provide divisional HQ with reports, a bombing raid on FA 300’s aerodrome – but also saw the theatre’s first concerted attempt at artillery co-operation. Five RFC wireless stations accompanied the Desert Column, one with battle headquarters and four mounted on sleds attached to the Royal Horse Artillery.144 Using Sheikh Zowaid as an advanced landing ground, 1st Squadron provided three aircraft, along with two from No. 14 Squadron, to work in continuous relays of two machines using different radio wavelengths. As with the staff who produced fire programs and twenty copies of a 1:16,000 map of Rafa, traced from aerial photographs, these airmen expended considerable effort: Lieutenant Ross Smith, for example, spent nine hours directing artillery, landing three times to refuel.145

The results, however, did not reflect the exertion. During the preliminary bombardment airmen struggled to distinguish the shell bursts of ‘their’ guns from the others, and once the advance commenced the horse artillery moved, regularly interrupting wireless communications as the operators shifted their equipment. Some

142 Lynden-Bell to Maurice, 28 December 1916, IWM Documents 7826; Hamshaw Thomas, ‘Geographical Reconnaissance by Aeroplane Photography’, p. 372. 143 Monthly dispatch, 5th Wing RFC, December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22. 144 Brown, ‘Wireless report for January 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/23. 145 Hamshaw Thomas, ‘Geographical Reconnaissance by Aeroplane Photography’, p. 351; ‘Photographic work of the RFC in Sinai and Southern Palestine during 1917’, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28; Smith to mother, 12 January 1917, SLSA PRG 18/17. 208 gunners ignored the RFC’s directions altogether and resorted to the more familiar horse artillery role of supporting ‘their’ unit with direct fire. A shortcoming in Middle East Brigade’s procedure for the engagement of fleeting targets also emerged when it took 15 minutes for a battery to fire at a body of Ottoman troops moving in the open.146 The airmen gave up on artillery work at 1400 and strafed enemy troops and gun crews, reportedly inflicting casualties.147 Meanwhile, three 1st Squadron crews returning from a raid on FA 300’s aerodrome spotted 1,200 enemy troops near Shellal making for the battlefield, prompting Chauvel to order a withdrawal. His troops did accordingly, though not before overrunning the last enemy redoubts. Desert Column returned to occupy Rafa the following morning after Williams and Muir reported it clear of enemy.148

As Middle East Brigade’s wireless officer acknowledged afterwards, horse artillery proved unsuited for aerial co-operation; aircraft were better assigned to larger calibre guns. He also recommended that batteries be assigned specific zones ‘so that one does not fire into the area of another’.149 Both were principles already established on the Western Front and they effectively amounted to an admission that the EEF could not, with its current organisation or resources, rely on air-controlled gunfire in mobile operations. Yet, as events in France during the coming weeks would demonstrate, open warfare presented artillery co-operation with monumental challenges that transcended sophisticated technology and elaborate organisation. In the sudden move forward to follow the German Alberich retirement to the , the zone call system, so effective in the stalemated conditions on the Somme, would fail, ironically, at the very task for which the RFC had conceived it.150

Since arriving in Egypt in April, virtually untrained and unequipped, 1st Squadron had taken responsibility for the bulk of aerial work on the Middle East’s

146 See various flight reports, 9 January 1917, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/23. 147 ‘Report on the work carried out by Nos 14 and 67 Aust Squadrons at Sheikh Zowaid landing ground, 9. 1.17’, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/23; ‘Narrative of operations, 9/1/17’, 5th Wing RFC, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/23. 148 Cutlack, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VIII, p. 51. 149 Brown, ‘Co-operation Between Artillery and Aeroplanes During Operations Against Rafa’, 30 January 1917, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/23. 150 H.A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force Volume III, Clarendon, Oxford, 1931, p. 330; E. R. Hooton, War over the Trenches: Air Power and the Western Front Campaigns 1916-1918, Ian Allan Publishing, Surrey, 2010, p. 131. 209 principal battlefront. By the end of the year the squadron had logged some 1,500 flying hours and conducted a range of missions to support Eastern Force including reconnaissance, photography, artillery observation, bombing and tactical/contact work with troops in the field. Although the RFC in the Middle East lacked the technology and organisational framework to achieve closer integration with the army in 1916, aircraft augmented Anzac Mounted Division’s striking power and provided it with intelligence and security during the long-range raids into the Sinai. In this role, several future Australian air leaders started their careers, no less than two future air marshals and three air-vice marshals serving with the squadron in 1916 – in addition to several other more junior officers who would later join the RAAF.151 More immediately relevant to the AFC, the Sinai campaign also produced a core of experienced officers and men for 2nd Squadron, raised in Egypt in October 1916.152 In the following year, they would find themselves engaged in a struggle over the Western Front of an altogether grander scale and intensity than anything they had encountered in 1916.

151 These included the future Air Marshal Roy ‘Peter’ Drummond (commissioned in the RAF but seconded to the RAAF as Director of Operations, 1925-1929), Air Marshal Richard Williams (CAS RAAF 1921-1922, 1925-1932, 1934-1939), Air Vice-Marshal Lawrence Wackett (also founder of Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation), Air Vice-Marshal Frank McNamara and Air Vice-Marshal Adrian Cole. Lower ranking RAAF officers who started their careers in 1st Squadron in 1916 include Squadron Leader Arthur Murray Jones, Squadron Leader Alfred Ellis and Flying Officer John Tunbridge. Though born and raised in Australia, Captain William Guilfoyle (attached to 1st Squadron from the RFC) later became an in the RAF. 152 Officers who served in No. 1 Squadron during 1916 and later served as flight commanders in No. 2 Squadron include Captain William Guilfoyle, Lieutenant Stanley Muir, Captain William Sheldon, Captain Arthur Murray Jones, Lieutenant Adrian Cole. Captain Oswald Watt, who commanded No. 1 Squadron’s B Flight between 1 June and 26 October 1916 was appointed No. 2 Squadron’s first OC, a post he held until 16 February 1918. A number of other ranks also transferred from No. 1 Squadron to the new AFC unit. See Captain W. O. Watt, Routine Order, 25 November 1916, AWM MSS515 Part 1. 210 7. AUSTRALIANS AND AERIAL WARFARE OVER THE WESTERN FRONT IN 1917 In mid-November 1917 Australian newspapers published an article by Charles Bean titled ‘Australian Airmen - Marvellous Work - A Fascinating Life’. His first dispatch devoted to the topic, it explained that there were, by this time in France, ‘two bodies of Australian fliers’. On the one hand, there were those ‘scattered through’ the RFC and RNAS committed ‘ungrudgingly to the general cause’ and on the other, the units of the AFC.1 Prompting Bean’s interest in the air war, 2nd and 3rd Squadrons had arrived on the Western Front in September 1917 after training in Britain and 4th Squadron was slated to join them just before Christmas.

Australian airmen participated in the length and breadth of the air war over France and Belgium in 1917. Their private papers, casualty records and service files indicate a diversity of experience that makes a history of Australian involvement in the air war of 1917, very necessarily, a history of fighting in the air itself that year. Accordingly, this chapter identifies and analyses the major developments and themes of the RFC’s campaign over the Western Front in 1917 that characterised the Australian contribution. It singles out the Cambrai offensive for closer examination as representing both a watershed in the evolution of and the AFC’s first involvement in a major offensive in France.

In his article, Bean considered that the AFC’s work ‘will always be easy to identify for their country’s history’. Indeed, as it appeared in Australian newspapers, RFC Headquarters was instructing brigades to produce duplicates of AFC war diaries for the Australian War Records Section.2 The three AFC squadrons on the Western Front would, as a result, return to Australia with a daily record documenting their work on the Western Front. On the contrary, predicted Bean, it would ‘be most difficult to collect and record’ evidence relating to Australians in the British flying services.3 British administration did not differentiate them as colonial pilots making it challenging to even identify them today in the official records, to say nothing of evaluating their contribution. Press reports generally prove barren too given the

1 ‘Australian Airmen - Marvelous Work - A Fascinating Life’, The Advertiser (Adelaide), 15 November 1917, p. 6. 2 Brigadier-General G. S. Shephard, GOC I Brigade RFC to RFC Brigades, 16 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/1044/204/5/1506. 3 ‘Australian Airmen - Marvelous Work - A Fascinating Life’, The Advertiser (Adelaide), 15 November 1917, p. 6. 211 RFC’s policy (in contrast to the German and French air services) of not publicising the efforts of individual pilots.4 It largely falls to private records to reveal Australian involvement in the RFC and RNAS.

By spring 1917 well over 200 Australian flying officers served in RFC and RNAS units. In addition to those who, as civilians, independently enlisted in Britain during 1915 and 1916, there were approximately 30 members of the AIF who had secured a discharge to join the RFC or RNAS in early 1916 and another 200-odd volunteers Birdwood released to join the RFC’s Special Reserve in October (see Chapter 2). As the War Office had intended, this later cohort provided the RFC with desperately needed reinforcements in time for the start of the 1917 campaigning season. Indeed, between October 1916 and April 1917 at least 163 ex-AIF soldiers qualified as flying officers in the RFC.5

Considering that the RFC in all theatres did not exceed 60 service squadrons during 1917, it would be reasonable to suppose that, by the middle of the year, there were few British squadrons without at least one or two Australians on their increasingly heterogeneous flying rosters. ‘Essentially an Empire unit’, is how Eric Dibbs, a clerk from Sydney, described No. 11 Squadron, which he joined in June. ‘We had in it three Australians [two of them flight commanders], a number of Canadians, two South Africans, a Newfoundlander, as well as representatives of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales’.6 Joining No. 5 Squadron in May, Jack Allport likewise found himself among three fellow Australians.7 Going to No. 2 Squadron RFC in August he came under the command of Major Wilfred Snow, a metallurgist from Adelaide.8 Bob Kay, a Geelong Grammar old boy, joined No. 46 Squadron at the beginning of the year, one of four Victorians in that unit.9 Promoted in June, he succeeded Australian tennis champion Rodney Heath to command ‘A’ Flight while

4 Sir Douglas Haig, GOC BEF to Sir William Robertson, CIGS, 5 October 1917, NAUK AIR1/522/16/12/5. 5 Roll of officers and other ranks discharged from the AIF to accept British commissions, 1915-1918, AWM27 361/16. 6 Anonymous, ‘Interview with Captain Eric Rupert Dibbs Formerly of the AFC’, The 14-18 Journal, 1967, 86-101, p. 91. Dibbs identifies the other Australians as Captains Geoffrey Hooper and Edye Manning. 7 2nd Lieutenant Jack Allport to family, 24 May 1917, Australian Society of World War 1 Aero Historians newsletter, March 1971, p. 7. 8 2nd Lieutenant Jack Allport to family, 3 October 1917, Australian Society of World War 1 Aero Historians newsletter, April 1971. 9 George Pollard Kay, Letters from Bob, Melville & Muller, Melbourne, 1917, p. 98. 212 Clive Brewster Joske, a Melbourne Grammarian, led ‘B’ Flight. ‘So’, reported Kay to his father, ‘Australia is not doing so badly, and is keeping her end up in this part of the line’.10

As these examples also suggest, being colonial proved no impediment in itself to promotion in the RFC, while the numerous Australians who commanded squadrons and flights in the RNAS imply the same for the naval arm.11 Captain Alexander ‘Jerry’ Pentland, a Queenslander who served in four different British squadrons on the Western Front between June 1916 and August 1918, recalled that ‘we got a very fair go’.12 Indeed, it appears Australians in the British flying services earned promotion on the usual grounds of seniority and distinction in combat, both of which could occur rapidly in the high-tempo air operations in 1917. , ex-46th Battalion AIF, joined No. 29 Squadron in April 1917; within 11 weeks he had claimed 10

10 Kay, Letters from Bob, p. 138. Arthur Lee, a British pilot in No. 46 Squadron during 1917 regularly mentions Kay, Heath and Brewster Joske in his letters and diary entries [A. S. G. Lee, No Parachute: A Fighter Pilot in World War I, Time Life Books, New York, 1991]. Another example comes from the diary of Lieutenant Geoffrey Forrest Hughes from Sydney; he notes that at the beginning of February 1917 the three senior pilots in his flight of No. 10 Squadron were Australians- himself, Wilfred Snow and Ewart James Garland [Geoffrey Hughes, diary, 1 February 1917, SLNSW MLMSS 1222/6]. 11 The Canadians discovered likewise when investigating allegations that Canadians in the British flying services progressed slower than their counterparts from the British Isles: S. F. Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force Volume I, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1980, p. 585. Examples of Australians who held command appointments in the RNAS include: Stanley Goble (born in , Victoria; commanded a flight in No. 8 Naval Squadron in 1916 and then No. 5 Naval Squadron/ No. 205 Squadron RAF in 1918); Roderic Dallas (born in Mount Stanley, Queensland; commanded a flight in No. 1 Naval Squadron in 1916 and took command of that same unit on 14 June 1917. In 1918 he would also command No. 40 Squadron RAF); Arthur Longmore (born in St Leonards, New South Wales; held several appointments in the Naval Wing before the war; during 1914-15 he commanded both Nos 3 and 1 Naval Squadrons); Bertram Bell (born in Boonah, Queensland; appointed flight commander in No. 3 Naval Squadron in March 1917 and OC No. 10 Naval Squadron from April 1917 until the end of the war); Arthur Allen (born in Burwood, New South Wales; acting flight commander in No. 6 Naval Squadron in 1916); Charles Booker (born at Staplehurst, but schooled at Melbourne Grammar until 1911; appointed flight commander, No. 8 Naval Squadron, 18 May 1917 and commanded No. 1 Naval Squadron from 18 March 1918 until dying of wounds on 13 August); Ivon Courtney (born in Sydney, News South Wales; appointed squadron commander 1 September 1915); Hippolyte De La Rue (born in Auburn, New South Wales; commanded No. 223 Squadron RAF in 1918); (born in Broken Hill; appointed acting flight commander in 1st Naval Wing, June 1915 and OC No. 2 Naval Squadron in November 1916); Charles Gilmour (born in Emu Bay, ; served as an acting flight commander in 1918); Phillip Johnston (born in Woollarha, New South Wales; killed in action on 17 August 1917 while commanding a flight in No. 8 Naval Squadron); Robert Little (born in Hawthorne, Victoria; appointed flight commander in No. 8 Naval Squadron, January 1918 and commanded a flight in No. 3 Naval Squadron from March until his death in action on 27 May 1918); Richard Minifie (born in Alphington, Victoria; commanded a flight in No. 1 Naval Squadron from mid-1917 and served briefly as the unit’s acting OC in March 1918 before being shot down and captured); George Simpson (born in St Kilda, Victoria; commanded a flight in No. 8 Naval Squadron, 1916-1917). 12 Jerry Pentland interviewed by Fred Morton, 1976, NLA TRC ORAL 425/6. 213 enemy aircraft, earned an MC and been appointed flight commander.13 Despite the literature’s fixation on them, however, large victory tallies did not always equate to promotion. Robert Little, the highest scoring Australian pilot of the war (though a ‘clumsy flyer’ and ‘brilliant loner rather than a leader’, according to his biographer) went to France in October 1916 and had, by mid-1917, claimed 38 enemy aircraft. Nonetheless, he did not get command of a flight until January 1918 and died in May before leading a squadron.14 In accordance with standard practice in the RFC, when squadron commanders took leave their senior flight commander assumed temporary command of the unit, something Australian pilots Alfred Youdale, Jerry Pentland Francis Penny and Herbert ‘Jimmy’ Larkin all recorded doing.15 AFC officers also temporarily commanded RFC formations when British colleagues might have otherwise filled the position; 3rd Squadron’s CO, Major David Blake, temporarily commanded 2nd (Corps) Wing in March 1918 and 15th (Corps) Wing in August. His recording officer, Captain Errol Knox, stood in as wing adjutant in July.16 During 1917 Australian officers led at least 12 of the 50-odd British service squadrons on the Western Front (including two of the seven naval squadrons attached to RFC wings).17 Lieutenant-Colonel William Mitchell from Sydney commanded one of the RFC’s 11

13 Christopher Shores, Norman Franks and Russell Guest, Above the Trenches: A Complete Record of the Fighter Aces and Units of the British Empire Air Forces, 1915-1920, Grub Street, London, 1990, p. 336; Charles Bean, diary, 24 August 1917, AWM 3DRL/606/87/1. 14 Little, J. C., 'Little, Robert Alexander (1895–1918)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/little-robert- alexander-7207/text12471, consulted 29 March 2012. 15 Youdale to family, 11 December 1917, AWM 1DRL/0611; Charles Schaedel, Australian Air Ace, Rigby, Adelaide, 1979, p. 47 and 59; Francis Penny, ‘Memories of Flying, 1915-1918’, manuscript, p. 14, RAAF Museum. 16 ‘Routine Order No. 348 by Captain L. J. Wackett, Commanding 3rd Squadron, AFC’, AWM4 8/6/20 Part 3; 3rd Squadron war diary, 10-11 July 1918, AWM4 8/6/19 Part 1. 17 These included (though this list may not be exhaustive) Major Alfred Barton Adams (born in London but attended Sydney Church of England Grammar School and worked in Sydney before the war; he commanded No. 1 Squadron RFC from 20 June 1917 until 3 August 1918). Major Richard Blomfield (born in Sydney, commanded No. 56 Squadron, January 1917 to October 1917); Major Hugh Champion de Crespigny (born in Melbourne, commanded No. 29 Squadron, March to July 1917 and September to October 1917); Major Kelham Kirk Horn (born in North Walkerville, South Australia; commanded No. 54 Squadron, November 1916 to c. December 1917); Major Rupert Henry Mealing (born in Hobart, commanded No. 46 Squadron between December 1917 and July 1918); Major Wilfred Snow (born in Adelaide, commanded 2nd Squadron between August 1917 and August 1918); Major David Stodart (born in Gobur, Victoria, commanded No. 3 Squadron between September 1916 and May 1917); Squadron Commander Bertram Charles Bell (born in Boonah, Queensland; commanded No. 10 Naval Squadron from April 1917 until the end of the war; the unit became No. 210 Squadron RAF following the 1 April 1918 amalgamation of the servies) and Squadron Commander Stanley Goble (born in Melbourne, commanded No. 5 Naval Squadron from 18 July 1917 until mid-1918). AFC squadron commanders: Major David Valentine Jardine Blake (3rd Squadron, September 1917- October 1918); Major Wilfred Ashton McCloughry (4th Squadron, December 1917-November 1918); Major Walter Oswald Watt (No. 2 Squadron, September 1917-February 1918).

214 wings on the Western Front – 12th (Corps) Wing – his squadrons supporting Third Army’s offensives at and Cambrai.

Shepherd, Kay and Youdale are among at least 62 Australians killed flying in British squadrons during 1917. Casualty records are another indicator of the scope of Australian involvement in the British air services in 1917. From next-of-kin records kept by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Australian War Memorial’s Commemorative Roll, and Defence Department repatriation files, it is possible to identify 107 Australians who died serving in the British flying arms and a further 176 in the AFC between 4 August 1914 and 11 November 1918. Table 7.1 compares these with the overall numbers killed in the British flying services.

Table 7.1 Australians as a proportion of British airmen killed between 4 August 1914 and 11 November 1918

Airmen killed in the Australians as a Airmen killed in the Airmen killed in the British air services percentage of total Year Australian Flying British air services identified as British air service Corps19 overall (incl. AFC)20 Australian18 losses 1914 1 0 28 3.57 1915 2 1 211 1.42 1916 13 8 779 2.70 1917 62 51 2,889 3.91 1918 29 116 5,399 2.69 Totals 107 176 9,306 3.04

It is particularly revealing that more Australians in the RFC and RNAS died in 1917 than in the other three-and-a-half years of the war combined. Indeed, Australian involvement in the air war peaked in 1917, if not in raw numbers, as a proportion to the imperial whole (though it still remained minor: just under four per cent). The decrease in the burial of Australians in the British flying services in 1918, while the

18 This includes all CWGC burials/memorials from 4 August 1914 until 31 December 1918. The totals are tabulated from next of kin records in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission burials database: http://www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead.aspx, consulted 24 October 2012; Australian War Memorial Commemorative Roll, https://www.awm.gov.au/research/people/commemorative_roll/, consulted 9 December 2012; Service records and correspondence concerning Australians serving with other Imperial forces, World War 1’, NAA MT1487/1. 19 Commonwealth War Graves Commission burials database: http://www.cwgc.org/search-for-war- dead.aspx, consulted 24 October 2012. 20 Chris Hobson, Airmen Died in the Great War, 1914-1918: the Roll of Honour of the British and Commonwealth Air Services of the First World War, J. B. Hayward, Suffolk, 1995, pp. 413-415. 215 number of British deaths overall nearly doubled, illustrates the changing priorities of Australian authorities as their focus shifted from meeting the War Office’s requests for manpower to raising and sustaining squadrons of the AFC. In comparison, the proportion of Canadian airmen among RFC/RAF casualties increased steadily during the war, comprising approximately 10 and 13 per cent of deaths in 1917 and 1918 respectively.21

The table includes those killed in Britain with training and home/coastal defence units. It is possible to identify a number of Australian officers scattered throughout the RFC’s Home Defence Wing, established in mid-1916 to counter raids, and its successor, the London Defence Area, organised in August 1917 to counter attacks by German Gothas. Wilfred McCloughry, later CO 4th Squadron AFC, flew patrols out of Dover with No. 50 Home Defence (HD) Squadron in late 1916. During the same period Henry Petre, having gone to Britain after the Mesopotamia campaign, raised and commanded No. 75 HD Squadron; coincidentally two Australian RFC officers, Majors Clifford Ross and Thomas Rutledge (ex-CO 1st Squadron) would also command this unit during 1917. Roland Oakes, a member of the party that returned to Australia in mid-1918 to reorganise aviation training flew with No. 37 HD Squadron in 1917. His manuscript memoir indicates the manifest difficulties of night flying and includes a vivid account of intercepting one of the six Zeppelin raids that occurred over Britain in early 1917.22 Another revealing account comes from Lawrence Wackett who logged some 40 hours patrolling around London during the later part of 1917 to test night-flying equipment for the RFC Experimental Station.23 At least one Australian died defending Britain: 2nd Lieutenant Wilfred Salmon of No. 63 (Reserve) Squadron was shot down while engaging 20 Gothas over London in daylight on 7 July 1917.24 Typically, when The Times reported his death it identified him as a ‘British airman’ of the RFC but neither mentioned his antipodean upbringing nor his prior service in the 4th Field Artillery Brigade, AIF.25

Before the deployment of the first Australian squadrons on the Western Front in September 1917 a number of AFC officers temporarily joined British squadrons to

21 Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, p. 649. 22 Roland Oakes, ‘Work and be Happy’, manuscript, c. 1985, pp. 93-98, AWM MSS1037. 23 Lawrence James Wackett, Aircraft pioneer: an autobiography, Angus & Robertson, Cremorne, 1972, pp. 62-69. 24 ‘Ballarat Airman Killed’, The Ballarat Courier, 12 July 1917, p. 3. 25 ‘British Airmen Killed in Raid’, The Times (London), 11 July 1917, p. 7. 216 gain experience under service conditions. There is little surviving documentation regarding this cohort, but from one piece of correspondence it seems that between 30 April and 5 August 1917, around 40 AFC officers served temporarily in RFC units at the front. Many of these airmen participated in the intense fighting above Fifth Army’s offensive at Ypres; some led patrols and returned to their units to command flights. At least 15 AFC officers became casualties while attached to British squadrons: 11 wounded, two killed in action and two captured.26 Some 60 AFC wireless operators also went to the front in August 1917 ahead of 3rd Squadron for temporary attachment to the RFC.27 At the Australian government’s request they replaced British operators working with Australian artillery units.28 During the campaign they operated wireless receiving stations close behind the front line and suffered ‘a number of casualties’ including at least two killed.29 The Australian wireless operators rejoined 3rd Squadron in December 1917 and for most of 1918 co-operated with artillery in the Australian Corps.30

To understand the contribution made by this modest Australian component of the British flying services in 1917, it is essential to understand the way that British aviation commanders thought about air power. Foremost is Trenchard’s thinking on the air offensive, developed during the Verdun and Somme campaigns and articulated in September 1916 (see chapter 4). There is an assumption in the literature that this

26 Lieutenant-Colonel F. Festing, AA&QMG RFC HQ in the Field to AIF Headquarters, 5 August 1917, NAUK AIR1/1044/204/5/1506. This list is apparently not complete as it is possible to identify others not included on it such as 2nd Lieutenant Eric Dibbs, who went to No. 11 Squadron RFC on 11 June 1917 and 2nd Lieutenant Owen Lewis, also an AFC officer, who joined No. 7 Squadron RFC on 6 August 1917 and was subsequently wounded in action. For an evidence of observer Owen Lewis’ experiences on attachment to No. 7 Squadron RFC in August, see the letters of his British pilot, Lieutenant Norman Sharples, AWM PR00611. 27 The operators had completed their training at the RFC Wireless Training School at Farnborough earlier in 1917. 28 Brigadier-General P. R. C. Groves, GSO1 RFC HQ to II Brigade RFC HQ, 31 July 1917, NAUK AIR1/1044/204/5/1506; Trenchard to Advanced HQ RFC, 4 August 1917, NAUK AIR1/1044/204/5/1506. In mid-1917 the RFC usually provided a wireless station to each field artillery brigade and headquarters and one to each heavy artillery battery. RFC HQ determined at the beginning of August that to meet the Australian government’s request that, as far as possible, Australian artillery use AFC wireless operators, it required 52 AFC wireless operators: six for each of the five Australian divisions (30), two for each of the two heavy batteries (4), two for each of the three army field artillery brigades (6), eight for 3rd Squadron and four in the reinforcements pool. 29 ‘AFC Wireless Organisation (Western Front)’, AWM44 8/1 Part 5. 2nd Class Air Mechanic Albert Earnest Hales died when a shell hit his dugout at Zonnebeke on 4 September 1917. He had been working with a battery of the 14th Australian Field Artillery Brigade. 2nd Class Air Mechanic Harold Edmund Gamble was killed when a shell hit a pillbox he was occupying at Westhoek ridge, while serving with the 105th Howitzer Battery, on 22 October 1917. [Australian Red Cross Society Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau, 1914-18 War, AWM 1DRL/0428]. 30 For an account by a wireless operator who served in 3rd Squadron in late-1918 see Verner Knuckey, diary no. 8, AWM PR03193. 217 imposed rigid, unimaginative tactics on the RFC and prevented it from responding appropriately to the circumstances it faced in 1917.31 The language of Trenchard’s September memorandum, and a briefing along similar lines that he gave his brigadiers on 6 January 1917, might lend itself to such an interpretation – though it needs to be understood that these were broad theoretical statements and not necessarily proscriptive of tactics or indeed, even a doctrine.32 Explaining this difference, James Corum notes that military theory is a ‘guide’ for organising forces, educating leaders and selecting equipment whereas doctrine is a ‘practical expression’ of theory. Theory, Corum adds, influences doctrine and tactics (how forces operate) but is often modified to suit prevailing conditions in the field.33 Trenchard’s September 1916 treatise was largely theoretical in this sense: it pointed to the need for more specialised fighting units as a proportion of the RFC’s force-structure and observed that, as aircraft had proved more effective in attack than defence, they should thus be generally employed. An examination of the RFC’s work at the brigade and wing levels during 1917 suggests that, under the influence of this theory, the RFC prosecuted a campaign that actually allowed for a degree of tactical flexibility and, while not always economical in lives, effectively supported the BEF during its offensives at Arras, Messines, Ypres and Cambrai.

The beginning of 1917 saw the RFC and Luftstreitkräfte at the opposite extremes of an organisational and technical ebb and flow. Difficulties in expanding the British training and industrial establishments left the RFC short of experienced pilots and without the new squadrons requested by Trenchard the previous year.34 What’s more, the majority of the RFC’s aircraft remained a generation behind their German counterparts. The Luftstreitkräfte had also consolidated its new

31 Trevor Wilson, in discussing Trenchard’s 22 September 1916 memorandum ‘Future Policy in the Air’, claims that ‘on the basis of these ill-supported dogmas British fighter pilots henceforth would be sent relentlessly into enemy territory and into the waiting arms of the German squadrons’ [Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War, The Polity Press, Cambridge, 1986, p. 134]. Robin Higham writes ‘British airmen took the offensive regardless of the odds; it was considered cowardly not to. This hangover from a knightly code and colonial warfare was costly’ [Robin Higham, Air Power: a Concise History, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1972, p. 43]. See also: A. D. Harvey, Collision of Empires: Britain in Three World Wars, 1793-1945, The Hambledon Press, 1992, pp. 409-414; David Jordan, ‘The Army Co-operation Missions of the Royal Flying Corps/ Royal Air Force, 1914-1918’, PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 1997, pp. 346-347. 32 Major-General Hugh Trenchard, GOC RFC in the Field, ‘Future policy in the Air’, 22 September 1916, RAF 76/1/4; Minutes of a brigade commanders conference at RFC HQ, 6 January 1917, NAUK AIR1/920/204/5/884. 33 James Corum, The : Creating the Operational Air War, 1918-1940, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 1997, pp. 2-3. 34 Trenchard to CGS, GHQ BEF, 17 February 1917, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283. 218 administration and doubled the number of Jagdstaffeln, reaching, in Hoeppner’s assessment, ‘the high point of its organization, training and equipment’.35 At no point again in the principal theatre would such a disparity in the capability of the opposing air services exist.

Employing their fighters over the line, during December and January German aviation commanders wrestled the initiative from the RFC.36 In December 17 of the 27 RFC machines lost fell within British lines and, of these, a third came from corps squadrons. The circumstances prompted brigadiers to nearly exclusively employ their fighters on line patrols and provide the two-seaters with escorts.37 Far from being a breach or aberration of RFC policy, the use of escorts had the general staff’s endorsement in Fighting in the Air, the flying corps’ first comprehensive tactical manual, published in March.38 On 23 January, seven Albatroses of Jasta 11 attacked one such mixed formation west of Lens. Manfred von Richthofen, who had taken command of the unit a week earlier, set fire to one of the escorting FE8s piloted by 2nd Lieutenant John Hay. A grazier from Warren in New South Wales, Hay had travelled to Britain to enlist in 1915. He jumped from his burning aircraft at 500 feet, becoming Richthofen’s seventeenth victim – and the first in his iconic red Albatros DIII.39 The FE8s used by Hay’s squadron encapsulate the disadvantages faced by the

35 Malcolm Cooper, ‘British air policy on the Western Front, 1914-18’, PhD thesis, Oxford University, 1982, pp. 152-53; Ernest von Hoeppner, Germany's War in the Air: the Development and Operations of German Military Aviation in the World War, The Battery Press, Nashville, 1994, p. 97. 36 Captured German documents indicate that, in the aftermath of the Somme campaign, the Luftstreitkräfte attempted to adopt a more offensive air policy to, as one document put it, ‘engage the RFC over his own lines and force him to fight’. Nonetheless, as RFC staff would observe in August 1917, ‘the measures by which he put this theory into practice were not in reality wholly offensive’. Indeed, after the war, the Reichsarchiv informed the Air Historical Branch that the Luftstreitkräfte replaced the luftsperre tactics with an interception system coordinated by the Gruppenführer der Flieger (Grufl), that is, a corps level aviation commander. In practice however, the German aviation commanders tended to adopt standing patrols throughout the day above German lines [‘A review of the principals adopted by the Royal Flying Corps since the Battle of the Somme’, 23 August 1917, LHCMA Brooke-Popham papers, Item 8/3/2; ‘German Reichsarchiv Answers to Air Ministry Questions’, 1924, NAUK AIR1/9/15/1/22]. 37 ‘The (Preparatory Period)’, manuscript notes prepared by the AHB c. 1928, NAUK AIR1/676/21/13/1777. 38 General Staff, ‘Fighting in the Air’, March 1917, LHCMA, Brooke-Popham papers, Item 8/2/1. 39 Combats in the Air Report, Manfred von Richthofen, Jasta 11, 23 January 1917, NAUK AIR1/686/21/13/2250. There has been some speculation that Richthofen’s 11th victim, Major VC of No. 24 Squadron, was also Australian. Several Australian newspapers reported the award of his Victorian Cross in August 1915 claiming him as ‘an Australian’ who had lived much of his life in Victoria and who was hence, the ‘second Victorian to secure that much-coveted honour during the present war’. [‘The ’, The Mercury (Hobart), 27 August 1915, p. 6; ‘Captain Hawker VC Another Victorian Hero’, The Brisbane Courier, 28 August 1915, p. 5] In the Official History Cutlack also quoted his brother who had told Bean in 1937 that Lanoe ‘considered himself an Australian’ [F. M. Cutlack, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VIII: The 219 RFC in early 1917. Designed over a year before and technically obsolete by the time it arrived on the Western Front in autumn 1916, the FE8 was 25 per cent slower than the Albatros and armed with a single Lewis gun against the German machine’s twin, belt-fed machine guns.40 Still flying the FE8, Hay’s squadron encountered Jasta 11 again on 9 March; four British aircraft were shot down and five others badly damaged, equating to three quarters of the squadron’s strength.41 New generation machines would gradually rejuvenate the RFC over the summer but British industry remained incapable of satisfying Trenchard’s demands throughout the year. In November 2nd Squadron would be flying DH5s – fighters he considered obsolete in April, before they had even arrived at the front.42

Despite recognising the enemy’s technical advantage, for the Arras offensive (9 April-16 May 1917) Trenchard hoped ‘to force the enemy to fight well behind, and not on the lines’ so his corps machines could co-operate with the artillery and infantry with ‘as little interference as possible’.43 Beginning five days before the infantry assault, on 4 April the RFC established an aerial zone in which the army wings would maintain a force of 50 aircraft throughout the day to attack enemy aircraft and bomb railways, camps and aerodromes while the corps squadrons worked closer to the line.44 The interception of a number of British two-seaters during the campaign’s opening days forced the British to adapt their tactics within the precepts of the air

Australian Flying Corps in the Western and Eastern Theatres of War, 1914-1918, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1939, (1923), pp. xLix; Lieutenant-Colonel A. Seymour Hawker to Bean, 15 December 1937, AWM43 A357]. Hawker’s grandfather had migrated to South Australia in 1840 and his father had been born in Australia though the family returned to Britain before Hawker’s birth. Hawker grew up in Britain and Switzerland and, by his brother’s admission to Bean, had never visited Australia. During and after the war Hawker’s mother and some of his siblings lived in South Australia. He had Australian links therefore but did not meet Bean’s critieria for inclusion on his list of Australians who served in the British flying services: ‘even if he were born abroad but spent most of his life out here before proceeding to the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, I think he could be fairly claimed as an Australian’. Nonetheless, Cutlack included him in a later edition of the Official History on the strength of his brother’s claim that he ‘always considered himself an Australian’. [Tyrrel Mann Hawker, Hawker VC, The Mitre Press, London, 1965, pp. 4-18; ‘Capt. Lanoe Hawker VC, DSO’, The Register (Adelaide), 28 August 1915, p. 10; Bean to Hawker, 7 Dec 1937 AWM43 A357]. 40 J. M. Bruce, The Aeroplanes of the Royal Flying Corps (Military Wing), Putnam, London, 1982, pp. 431-436. 41 Trevor Henshaw, The Sky Their Battlefield: Air Fighting and the Complete List of Allied Air Casualties from Enemy Action in the First War, Grub Street, London, 1995, p. 142; Richard Hallion, Rise of the Fighter Aircraft, 1914-1918, Nautical & Aviation Publishing Co. of America, Baltimore, 1984, p. 69. 42 Cooper, ‘British Air Policy on the Western Front, 1914-1918’, p. 185. 43 Trenchard to Major-General Sir David Henderson, Director General of Military Aeronautics, 14 January 1917, RAF MFC76/1/76; Trenchard to brigade commanders, 26 March 1917, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283. 44 Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, pp. 399-400. 220 offensive ethos. On 15 April, for example, Trenchard authorised his brigadiers to employ fighter patrols closer to the corps machines to intercept enemy formations operating at lower altitudes.45 From 24 April, fighter squadrons also began organising their patrols to coincide with the sorties of squadrons.46

Still, the RFC suffered unprecedented losses during the Arras offensive: 276 aircraft and 421 airmen in April alone, with the Luftstreitkräfte suffering perhaps a quarter of these totals.47 Taking these statistics alone, historians have tended to perceive the campaign as an ‘abject failure’ or ‘a catastrophe’, and British tactics as ‘folly’.48 Such assessments fail to critically re-evaluate the claims of Alan Morris’ 1967 book , which fixated on human tragedy by evoking ‘butcher’s bill[s]’ and ‘orgies of immolation’ in which ‘no British flyer on the Western Front could expect to reach May’. Adopting the populist tone of Alan Clark (whose The Donkeys preceded Bloody April by six years) Morris blamed ‘criminally inept, sometimes dishonorable politicians’ who ‘fostered and defended farcical air policy’ and alleged a government cover up.49

One major flaw in this orthodoxy is that it focuses solely on casualty numbers without considering the quantity or effectiveness of the RFC’s army co-operation. Take for example No. 16 Squadron, attached to the and in the vanguard of that formation’s capture of Vimy ridge. Its casualties (26 airmen during April) ostensibly sustain the notion of ineptitude and catastrophe, as do the experiences of one of its Australian pilots. 2nd Lieutenant John Wischer was young (21), had perhaps 12 weeks of flight training before joining the squadron and, following one familiarisation flight, joined an equally inexperienced observer and

45 H. A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force Volume III, Clarendon, Oxford, 1931, p. 335. 46 E. R. Hooton, War Over the Trenches: Air Power and the Western Front Campaigns 1916-1918, Ian Allan, Surrey, 2010, p. 139. 47 Henshaw, The Sky Their Battlefield, p. 575; Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, p. 407. 48 Thomas Bradbeer, ‘The British Air Campaign During the Battle of the Somme: A Pyrrhic Victory’, PhD thesis, University of Kansas, 2011, p. 385; Cooper, ‘British Air Policy on the Western Front, 1914-1918’, p. 174; Glenn Graham, ‘We shall deliver the goods’: the development of British airpower during the First World War’, MA thesis, Simon Fraser University, April 2003, p. 104. For similarly critical interpretations see John Morrow, The Great War in the Air, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1993, p. 234; Wise, Canadian Airmen in the First World War, p. 400-405. 49 Alan Morris, Bloody April, Jarrolds, London, 1967, pp. 15-16; Alan Clark, The Donkeys, Hutchinson, London, 1963. 221 started flying sorties. True to stereotype Wischer lasted a fortnight before being shot down and captured.50

On the other hand, a statistical analysis of No. 16 Squadron’s operations presents a strikingly different picture. During April the unit flew 459 operational sorties giving it a loss rate of 5.6 airmen per 100 flights.51 Its pilots regularly reported enemy aircraft over or immediately behind the German line (though seldom over British territory) but they attacked only occasionally. Indeed, German machines disrupted just 35 (7.6 per cent) of No. 16 Squadron’s sorties and only seven (1.5 per cent) resulted in the loss of a British aeroplane.52 If this methodology and logic is applied to No. 16 Squadron’s senior formation, 1st (Corps) Wing, the same point emerges. It flew 2,137 operational sorties between 8 April and 13 May for the loss of 65 aircraft (to all causes) and 55 airmen (to enemy action): respective loss rates of 3.04 and 2.57 per cent against operational sorties.53 Although the RFC’s army wings failed to entirely force the enemy to ‘fight well behind, and not on the lines’, they provided the British corps squadrons with enough protection to carry out a monumental amount of work relatively unimpeded. Certainly, the Luftstreitkräfte failed in its objective, as stated by OC 6 Armee Ludwig von Falkenhausen, of ‘achieving and maintaining control of the air’.54

Despite inclement weather, the corps squadrons (aided by sound ranging and flash spotting detachments) provided First and Third Armies with notably effective artillery co-operation. On 9 April, the Canadian Corps’ GOCRA considered the enemy artillery response so ‘feeble’ that during the morning he re-assigned his heavy

50 No. 16 Squadron war diary, April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1343/204/19/15. Wischer’s personal dossier [NAUK WO 339/53587] indicates that he was attached to the RFC on 9 August 1916 and appointed a flying officer on 24 March 1917. During that time he spent nine weeks in hospital recovering from injuries sustained in a training accident and most likely spent six to eight weeks under theoretical instruction at the School of Military Aeronautics before gaining any experience in flying. 51 Of No. 16 Squadron’s 459 operational (that is, not including tests, travelling or practice flights) sorties, 366 were artillery co-operation flights; 51 photographic sorties, 20 contact patrols; and 22 general reconnaissance, escort or ‘special’ missions. These figures are tabulated from the squadron’s war diary for April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1343/204/19/15. 52 No. 16 Squadron RFC war diary April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1343/204/19/15. 53 Brigade operations summaries, April 1917, NAUK AIR1/768/204/4/252; Brigade operations summaries, May 1917, NAUK AIR 1/768/204/4/253; Henshaw, The Sky Their Battlefield, pp. 148-174. ‘Operational sorties’ do not include test and practice flights. Aircraft losses (all causes) includes all machines recorded on the daily brigade operation summaries that were missing, lost or damaged too severely to be repaired at the squadron. Casualties include only those that are directly attributable to enemy action (including forced landings after being damaged in combat). 54 Nachrichtenblatt der Luftstreitkräfte, No. 7, 12 April 1917, EML, James L. Kerr III papers, Box 21 Folder 4. 222 artillery from counter-battery to other targets.55 Post-battle analysis confirmed that, in the Vimy sector, his staff had located 86 per cent of the enemy’s guns and subjected the majority to effective fire.56 Despite the superior technical capability of its fighters, the Luftstreitkräfte was impotent in comparison. According to wireless interceptions British GHQ believed that, by 25 April, German aircraft had flown 320 artillery co- operation sorties against the 842 completed by the RFC; had ranged the artillery on 160 fleeting targets versus 767 and, in a 15 day period had crossed the lines less than 500 times as opposed to over 5,000 by British aircraft.57 Post-war correspondence between the Air Historical Branch and the Reichsarchiv seems to bear this out as, to a certain extent, does Malcolm Cooper’s reading of German records.58

Trenchard had, however, spread his aviation resources too thinly for the task at hand. As Edward Hooton argues, he simply lacked the aeroplanes to maintain an effective presence across 305 square kilometres of sky.59 RFC Headquarters apparently recognised this and for the battle of Messines (7-12 June 1917) concentrated 20 squadrons into an attenuated air offensive extending only to the German balloon (10,000 yard) line.60 During May the RFC had introduced further flexibility into its fighter tactics with ‘Aeroplane Intercepting Stations’ (one per army) to assemble intelligence of enemy air activity and direct fighters (with ground signals) on interception courses.61 During the Messines operations II Brigade used intelligence

55 GOCRA Canadian Corps war diary, April 1917, LAC, R611-317-7-E, RG9-III-D-3. 56 Albert Palazzo, ‘The British Army's Counter-Battery Staff Office and Control of the Enemy in World War I’, The Journal of Military History, volume 63, number 1, 1999, 55-74, p. 68. 57 Lieutenant-General , CGS BEF GHQ to army commanders, 25 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/522/16/12/5. 58 ‘German Reichsarchiv Answers to Air Ministry Questions’, 1924, NAUK AIR1/9/15/1/22; Cooper, ‘British air policy on the Western Front, 1914-1918’, p. 174. 59 Hooton, War Above the Trenches, pp. 135-36. 60 H. A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the story of the part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force, Volume IV, Clarendon, Oxford, 1934, pp. 114-115. Some squadrons maintained long-range duties such as offensive patrols and bombing raids out to a line, Lille-Menin-Roulers. 61 Jones, The War in the Air Volume III, p. 319; Jones, The War in the Air Volume IV, pp. 115-116. Also see correspondence relating to the development of wireless interception [NAUK AIR1/526/16/12/38]. The RFC first established ‘Compass Stations’ in October 1916 to wirelessly establish bearings on German aircraft over the line and pass these onto army wing headquarters. In May 1917, the RFC expanded this system by adding an Aeroplane Intercepting Station to sythesise intelligence regarding enemy artillery co-operation, direct British corps squadrons to areas where enemy guns were particularly active and patrols on interception courses to machines observing for the enemy gunners. 223 of enemy air activity to determine patrol heights for its fighters; on the battle’s first day it provided low-altitude patrols for the ‘special protection’ of contact machines.62

Kay’s account of fighter patrols over Messines ridge provides evidence of the greater flexibility these measures afforded British fighter units. While keeping enemy balloons down and maintaining a menacing presence over German trenches, British fighters operated close enough to protect the corps machines.

We kept them right back out of reach of our artillery and other machines so that they carried on their jobs as far over as they liked, absolutely unmolested. Occasionally two or three Huns would creep up low down to try for a quick dash at an artillery machine doing a job. Three miles above, one of our patrols would see them, and immediately down we would go in a wild, rushing swoop at a colossal speed – a quick stutter of machine guns, and those Huns wouldn’t come messing about near the lines again in a hurry. By this time you are about 2000 ft away over, so rush across the lines again and climb up aloft once more.63

Indeed the air battle, as Trenchard’s aid-de-camp declared in his diary, ‘went like clockwork’.64 Between 15 May and 9 June II Brigade lost just four corps aircraft to enemy interception (the loss rate for the whole brigade being one machine per 294 flying hours) while providing Second Army with the most comprehensive counter- battery support of any British campaign to date.65 Its artillery staff located 90 per cent of enemy batteries and the preliminary bombardment accounted for around a quarter of Group Wytschaete’s field and half its heavy guns.66 The Luftstreitkräfte failed to locate any new British artillery positions in the week before zero hour, prompting one German division to describe a ‘critical’ situation: ‘Our aeroplanes could not even reach our own front line’.67 British pilots reported instances in which seven German

62 ‘Report on work of the 2nd Brigade RFC from 15th May to 8th June 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283. 63 Kay, Letters From Bob, pp. 134-36. 64 Maurice Baring, Flying Corps Headquarters, 1914-1918, Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1968, pp. 227- 228. 65 ‘Report on work of the 2nd Brigade RFC from 15th May to 8th June 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283. II Brigade’s corps squadrons engaged 463 enemy batteries for destruction and succeeded in destroying 142 gunpits and damaged 304 others. They also neutralised 301 enemy batteries. 66 Graham, ‘We shall deliver the goods’, p. 86, Peter Chasseaud, ‘Field survey in the Salient: Cartography and Artillery Survey in the Flanders operations in 1917’, in Peter H. Liddle (ed.), Passchendaele in Perspective: the Third Battle of Ypres, Leo Cooper, London, 1997, p. 123. 67 Nachrichtenblatt der Luftstreitkräfte, No. 15, 7 June 1917, EML, James L. Kerr III papers, Box 21, Folder 5; RFC intelligence summary, 27 June 1917, NAUK AIR1/2124/207/74/2. 224 fighters escorted a single artillery machine (‘an excellent example of the evils arising from local protection and dispersion of fighting forces’, noted II Brigade staff).68 As on the Somme German infantry despaired at the enemy’s apparent air superiority, attributing the accurate British artillery fire to it.69 Still, some intense air fighting occurred over Messines. A close offensive patrol by No. 1 Squadron on 8 June lost three aircraft in an engagement with a combined formation – a new German tactic – of Jagdstaffeln 27 and 8. Among those shot down, 2nd Lieutenant Frank Slee had transferred from the AIF and was on his first sortie. Surviving the crash landing to be captured, Slee afterwards learned that he had been the eighth victim of Hermann Göring.70

As with most aspects of Messines, the RFC’s success owed much to the battle’s limited nature. Being brief, restricted to a narrow front and aimed at a relatively short advance permitted the concentration of firepower and materiel, and the maintenance of high operational tempo. Acknowledging this could not be sustained (and providing further evidence of his nuanced conception of the air offensive), immediately after the battle Trenchard directed brigades to temper offensive activity. ‘It is just as impossible for the air forces to fight a continuous offensive,’ he reasoned, ‘as it is for the infantry, and as we have no reserve squadrons it is necessary to do everything to avoid losses’.71

Economy consequently dictated the types of sorties flown by fighter pilots on quiet fronts, such as Granado Foreman, an engineer from St Kilda. Joining No. 22 Squadron at Flez on 7 May, over the next two months he flew as many ‘defensive’ or ‘line’ patrols as sorties that crossed into enemy skies.72 Tempering the air offensive reduced casualties in the RFC overall between the Arras and Ypres offensives, though it could not halt the slow but sure grinding of attrition altogether. During Foreman’s nine weeks with No. 22 Squadron, the unit lost four airmen captured, two wounded and two killed. At least two other crews including Foreman and his observer were

68 ‘Report on work of the 2nd Brigade RFC from 15th May to 8th June 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283. 69 RFC intelligence summary, 2 July 1917, NAUK AIR1/2124/207/74/2. 70 Norman Franks, Frank Bailey, and Rick Duiven, The Jasta War Chronology: A Complete Listing of Claims and Losses, August 1916-November 1918, Grub Street, London, 1998. 71 Trenchard, despatch, 9 June 1917, RAF MFC76/1/27; Trenchard to RFC brigadiers, 10 June 1917, NAUK AIR1/971/204/5/1111. 72 Granado Foreman, diary, 7 May-13 July 1917, AWM 2DRL/0758. 225 shot down but uninjured and four accidents occurred, one of which resulted in Foreman’s death on 14 July.73

Nor did temporarily restraining the air offensive reduce the workload of corps squadrons. Flying RE8s with No. 5 Squadron on the quiet First Army sector at the beginning of July, Jack Allport logged over 100 hours in six weeks: ‘The weather has been good and we have been doing nothing but fly, fly fly’.74 The reason, as Albert Palazzo notes, is that the ‘British regarded counter-battery fire as a constant on-going struggle’ that continued, like trench raiding and patrolling, throughout quiet periods and on inactive fronts. Indeed in February 1918 the general staff would describe counter-battery work as a ‘continuous operation depending for success on accuracy of fire, continuity of plan, unremitting study and firm control’.75 This principle, realised by flaws in counter-battery arrangements on the Somme in 1916, resulted in the establishment in each corps of a Counter-Battery Staff Office (CBSO) to synthesise intelligence on enemy artillery and administer the daily fight to gain ascendency over the enemy’s guns.

The RFC’s corps squadrons played a major role in both aspects of the CBSO’s work, the relationship cemented by the posting of a counter-battery liaison officer to each squadron. On one hand corps squadrons fed the CBSO’s insatiable appetite for aerial photographs (the production of which increased six-fold during 1917), these supplementing and confirming the results of sound ranging and flash spotting.76 For periods of , Sanders Marble attributes corps squadrons with supplying ‘about a third of counter battery information’, and substantially more during mobile operations.77 Meanwhile, corps squadrons also co-operated with the heavy artillery to fulfil counter-battery programs issued each evening by the CBSO. In 1918 lecturers in the AFC training wing told corps squadron pilots they would spend ‘over 90%’ of their time on artillery co-operation and that an efficient unit could observe 2,000

73 Foreman, diary, 21 May 1917 and 3 July 1917, AWM 2DRL/0758. 74 Allport to family, 2 July 1917, The Society of Australian World War 1 Aero Historians newsletter, March 1971. 75 Palazzo, ‘The British Army's Counter-Battery Staff Office and Control of the Enemy in World War I’, p. 59. 76 ‘History of Air Photography’, manuscript, NAUK AIR 1/724/91/6/1. In 1916 the RFC took 552,453 photographs, in 1917, 3,925,169. 77 Sanders Marble, ‘The infantry cannot do with a gun less: the place of the artillery in the BEF 1914- 1918’, PhD Thesis, King’s College, 1998, Chapter 5, pp. 9-10. 226 rounds per day and account for 20 enemy guns.78 Anticipating this, in March 1917 the Army Council had approved Trenchard’s proposal to expand the establishment of corps squadrons from 18 to 24 aircraft.79

The beginning of the British offensive at Ypres on 31 July prompted a renewed increase in aerial activity that would develop into one of the most intense aerial struggles of the war. The RFC’s preliminary work began on 11 July, neighbouring formations supplementing British Fifth Army’s aviation formation (V Brigade) to the order of 740 aircraft, against which the Luftstreitkräfte concentrated approximately 600 machines.80 In addition to this minor numerical advantage, the RFC entered the maelstrom over the salient with certain tactical advantages. The introduction of three new fighting aircraft since April (the SE5a, Sopwith Camel and Bristol F2b) had re-established technical superiority for the British. And, although the scale of the campaign and the depth of German defences forced V Brigade to adopt a less concentrated air offensive than II Brigade had at Messines, the British maintained some depth and tactical flexibility. A week before zero the brigade established an ‘Aerial Activity Office’ to brief pilots on enemy air activity immediately before each patrol.81 Secondly, in addition to distant offensive patrolling, GHQ authorised ‘a limited number of machines to patrol daily over the enemy’s balloon line continuously… for the protection of our own artillery machines’.82

Together, these aspects of the air offensive over Ypres helped the RFC accomplish Trenchard’s order to ‘dominate the enemy in the air and stop him doing his own artillery work and interfering with ours’.83 As Hooton demonstrates, the army squadrons, fighting predominantly behind German lines, largely absorbed British losses throughout the campaign while the corps squadrons worked over the battlefront with relatively little opposition. Indeed, in only four out of eleven weeks did casualty

78 ‘Artillery Co-Operation Notes No. 5’, nd (filed with material from 1918), AWM25 943/24. 79 Minutes of brigadiers’ conference, 9 March 1917, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283. In the event a shortage of aircraft curtailed this scheme; by mid-1918 only nine corps squadrons on the Western Front had received aircraft in excess of the nominal 18 machines. 3rd Squadron finished the war with an establishment of 18 aircraft. 80 Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, p.415. 81 HQ 5th Brigade RFC to 15th and 22nd Wings and 5th Balloon Wing, and 22nd Wing Ground Signal Station, 25 July 1917, Staff College Notes, Policy No. 5, LHCMA Brooke-Popham Papers, Item 8/1. 82 Kiggell to army commanders, 5 August 1917, NAUK AIR1/522/16/12/5. 83 Trenchard to RFC brigadiers, 7 July 1917, NAUK AIR1/971/204/5/1111. 227 rates in the corps wings exceed one per 100 sorties.84 Complimenting the RFC’s offensive patrols, as one German report acknowledged, British fighters responding to intelligence ‘systematically engaged’ German two-seaters with ‘short, fast incursions’.85 Flying close escorts and interception sorties in machines Richthofen described as ‘downright inferior’, the much-romanticised Jagdgeschwaden (hunting groups) introduced in July failed to secure the Luftstreitkräfte the upper hand above the battlefield.86 Indeed, strident complaints about fighter tactics by Jagdgeschwader Nr 1’s commanding officer cast Wise’s description of them as ‘well ahead of current British tactics’ into some doubt.87

Nevertheless, artillery support proved less effective during Third Ypres than it had at Arras or Messines. Bad weather (except during September when artillery support improved) affected the CBSOs’ three principal means of detecting enemy guns, which the Gheluvelt plateau and Passchendaele ridge masked from view on the ground.88 In these conditions the RFC proved notably more reliable than the flash spotting and sound ranging detachments, being responsible, for example, for the identification of 83 per cent of enemy batteries reported to XVIII Corps’ CBSO in October.89 Flash spotters, ‘tremendously influenced by the nature of the terrain’ struggled to operate in the salient, while the prevailing westerly winds on the Western Front interfered with sound ranging. Enemy shellfire and the survey units’ lack of mobility also undermined their efforts.90

As at Arras, the Ypres offensive also produced attempts by both sides to integrate aviation into the land battle to a larger extent than previously. This was

84 Hooton, War Over the Trenches, pp. 170-175. 15th Wing flew 3,840 sorties between 2 July and 2 September and lost 34 aircraft. 85 Nachrichtenblatt der Luftstreitkräfte, No. 23, 2 August 1917, EML, James L. Kerr III papers, Box 21, Folder 6. 86 Morrow, The Great War in the Air, p. 217; Jan Hayzlett (translator), Hunting with Richthofen: the Bodenschatz Diaries- Sixteen Months of Battle with JG Freiherr von Richthofen No. 1, Grub Street, London, 1996, pp. 32 and 33. 87 Wise, Canadian Airmen in the First World War, p. 416. Bodenschatz quotes these complaints made during the Third Ypres offensive in his diaries [Hayzlett, Hunting with Richthofen, pp. 32 and 33]. For another uncritically positive evaluation of the Jagdgeschwaden organisation and tactics see Higham, Air Power: a Concise History, p. 37. 88 General Staff Second Army war diary, ‘Counter battery work’, September 1917, AWM4 1/13/16. 89 Chasseaud, ‘Field Survey in the Salient’, p. 135. 90 Sir Lawrence Bragg, A. H. Dowson, H. H. Hemming, Artillery Survey in the First World War, Field Survey Association, London, 1971, pp. 28, 30 and 39; Roy MacLeod, ‘Sight and Sound on the Western Front: Surveyors, Scientists, and the ‘Battlefield Laboratory’, 1915–1918’, War and Society, volume 18, number 1, 2000, 23-46, p. 40; General Staff, ‘Report on Survey on the Western Front 1914-1918’, HMSO, 1920, p. 120. 228 partially to improve battlefield communications and provide the infantry with greater fire support but also in anticipation of the resumption of open warfare conditions.91 For the RFC, these efforts essentially took two forms: low-altitude bombing and strafing by fighters and tactical reconnaissance in the form of ‘contact’ and ‘counter- attack’ patrols by corps squadrons.

The British employment of aircraft in low-altitude ground attack evolved from the ad-hoc efforts of individual pilots during the 1914-1916 period.92 RFC HQ acknowledged its potential in early 1917 during the German retreat to the Hindenburg line. On a few occasions during the Arras campaign brigadiers, encouraged by Trenchard, ordered their fighter units to attack enemy reinforcements and troops in the front line.93 In both campaigns the prospect of a German retreat prompted RFC commanders to perceive the aircraft as a substitute for the artillery, which would be left behind during a rapid move forward.94 These instances, along with the Luftstrteitkräfte’s effective employment of low-flying aircraft during the early stages of the Ypres campaign, prompted Trenchard to conceive the value of integrating ground attack more closely with infantry operations.95 Haig agreed, and GHQ wrote to the army commanders advocating the ‘further development of offensive tactics of the fighting Squadrons… in direct co-operation with assaulting infantry’.96 During subsequent stages of the Ypres offensive the employment of low-flying fighters in British operations became typical.97 Although there is evidence of the adverse effect this had on the morale of German troops, the impact on operations remained

91 BGGS, RFC HQ to RFC Brigades, 11 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283. 92 Richard Hallion, Strike From the Sky: the History of Battlefield Air Attack, 1911-1945, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1989, p. 19; Lee Kennett, The First Air War, 1914-1918, The Free Press, New York, 1991, p. 211. 93 Bereton Greenhous, ‘Evolution of a Close Ground Support Role for Aircraft in World War I’, Military Affairs, volume 39, number 1, February 1975, 22-28, pp. 22-23; Jones, The War in the Air Volume III, pp. 378-79. 94 BGGS, RFC HQ to RFC brigades, 18 March 1917, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283; Trenchard to OC 9th Wing, 10 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283; BGGS, RFC HQ to RFC brigades, 11 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283. 95 BGGS, RFC HQ to RFC brigadiers, 6 August 1917, NAUK AIR1/971/204/5/1111; Trenchard to Adv GHQ, 10 August 1917, NAUK AIR1/971/204/5/1111. 96 Kiggell to army commanders, 12 August 1917, NAUK AIR1/522/16/12/5. 97 For examples, see Jones, The War in the Air Volume IV, pp. 179-182 and 204-205; Trenchard, despatch, 20 September 1917, RAF MFC76/1/27. The above evidence demonstrates that A. D. Harvey is completely incorrect in claiming that Trenchard and RFC HQ obstructed the development of ‘ground attack as a form of aerial warfare’ [A. D. Harvey, Collision of Empires: Britain in Three World Wars, 1793-1945, The Hambledon Press, London, 1992, p. 407]. 229 nebulous.98 At Ypres, the RFC tended to encumber ground-attack pilots with numerous other tasks (such as reconnaissance) while, lacking training or specific targets, British pilots dispersed their limited firepower across a range of targets – both on and behind the battlefield.99 Lieutenant (ex- 3rd Field Artillery Brigade AIF) documented his sorties with No. 45 Squadron in the salient. Whereas the Sopwith Camels of this unit usually flew flight-sized offensive patrols 20- kilometres into ‘Hunland’, during attacks they remained over the front and strafed ground targets. Brownell’s work during the battles of Poelcappelle (9 October) and Passchendaele (12 October) is representative and, though illustrating the flexibility aircraft were developing, indicates the dispersion of effort and ad-hoc target selection that undermined the RFC’s effectiveness in this role.

Had one job with MacMillan my Flt Comdr. Flying at 500 feet over the Hun trenches and straffing [sic] them [and] also diving on his guns a couple of miles behind the lines. We both finished our ammunition (600 rounds) and did some great damage to 3 or 4 companys [sic] of infantry who were massed in shell holes waiting to attack…100

Had another low-flying job and went about 4 miles into Hunland, flying at between 500 and 100 feet strafing every living thing I could see. Fired all my ammunition (600 rounds) and did a lot of damage to Hun infantry. I was with Mac all the time and did whatever he did.101

German development of ground-attack paralleled the RFC’s, though, as Richard Hallion points out, the two progressed on ‘different evolutionary paths’ that reflected their respective ethos.102 Perceiving the fighter as a fundamentally defensive weapon, the Luftstreitkräfte looked to its two-seaters to provide a ground-attack capability. From April 1917 the Germans improvised by employing schutztstaffeln (‘protection flights’ of six machines, originally created to escort artillery co-operation machines) on ground attack sorties. The Germans would reorganise these as schlactstaffeln (‘battle flights’) in March 1918, equipped with purpose-designed

98 RFC intelligence summary, 23 August 1917, NAUK AIR1/2124/207/74/2. See also the intelligence summaries in this file for 1 and 16 November 1917 which also contain captured enemy letters and prisoner interrogation reports acknowledging the manner in which low-flying British aircraft undermined the morale of German infantry. 99 Greenhous, ‘Evolution of a Close Ground Support Role for aircraft in World War I’, p. 24; Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, p. 428. 100 Raymond Brownell, diary, 9 October 1917, AWM PR83/231. 101 Raymond Brownell, diary, 12 October 1917, AWM PR83/231. 102 Hallion, Strike From the Sky, pp. 16-17. 230 armoured aircraft.103 In contrast, the RFC generally eschewed the creation of specialist doctrine, units and equipment and maintained ground-attack as a task that all its fighter units (and in 1918, corps squadrons) could undertake alongside their other roles, as necessary.104

Lee Kennett suggests that ground-attack evolved organically from contact patrols – tactical reconnaissance sorties that followed infantry’s progress on the battlefield.105 Introduced at Neuve Chapelle in 1915, this mission’s initially disappointing performance presaged a difficult evolution over the following two years.106 Although it is possible to identify successful instances of contact patrols at the Somme, Arras and Messines, their effectiveness hinged on infantry training; some units did better than others.107 Nevertheless, the BEF’s persistence with it stems from the fact that during operations contact patrols provided intelligence considerably faster and more reliably than pigeon, runner or telephony.108

At Ypres British corps squadrons carried out an unprecedented amount of tactical reconnaissance: contact patrols to keep in touch with advancing forces and

103 For a more detailed examination of German close air support tactics see Chad Clark, ‘Trampled Underfoot: the Story of Attack Aviation in the German Spring Offensives of 1918’, Air Power History, volume 45, number 2, summer 1998, 16-25; Rick Duiven and Dan San-Abbott, Schlachtflieger! Germany and the Development of Air/Ground Support, 1916-1918, Schiffer Military History, Atglen, 2006. 104 In November 1917 GHQ, in its projections for aircraft requirements for 1918, requested a fighter designed for ground attack. In a minute attached to this memorandum, Trenchard envisaged an armoured, single-single seat fighter capable of carrying four 20lb bombs and three machine guns, one or two of which would be capable of firing downwards at an angle of 45° [Trenchard, minute to GHQ letter No. OB 1826/E, 20 November 1917, NAUK AIR 1/476/15/312/213]. In the April 1918 edition of ‘Fighting in the Air’, published by the General Staff there was, likewise, anticipation that a specialist, armoured fighter would replace the standard fighter for ground attack in the future [General Staff, ‘Fighting in the Air’, April 1918, p. 5, LHCMA Brooke-Popham papers, item 8/3/5]. During 1918 Sopwith produced prototypes of armoured Sopwith Camels and a new type, the Sopwith Salamander. The RFC’s leadership did not embrace either, considering the weight of armour plating and the clumsy downward firing guns impractical. Some Sopwith Salamanders were produced but the war ended before any service squadrons began using them. Until November 1918 therefore, standard fighters such as the Camel and SE5a assumed responsibility for the RFC/RAF’s ground attack sorties [Bruce, The Aeroplanes of the Royal Flying Corps (Military Wing), pp. 551-552]. 105 Kennett, The First Air War, 1914-1918, p. 211; Lee Kennett, ‘Developments to 1939’ in Cooling, Case Studies in the Development of Close Air Support, Office of Air Force History, U.S. Air Force, Washington, 1990, 13-70, pp. 16-17. 106 For a brief review of the development of tactical air reconnaissance in the BEF see Michael Meech, ‘The Development of Contact Patrols: a Short History of Appendix B of SS135’, Cross and Cockade, volume 40, Summer 2009, 116-127. 107 Jordan, ‘The Army Co-operation Missions of the Royal Flying Corps/Royal Air Force 1914-1918’, p. 99; ‘Notes on Recent Operations’, submitted by Trenchard to GHQ, 18 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283. 108 Jonathan Boff, ‘Air/Land Integration in the 100 Days: The Case of Third Army’, Air Power Review, volume 12, number 3, Autumn 2009, 77-89, p. 82. 231 ‘counter-attack’ patrols to provide early warning of enemy counter-attacks. Emerging during the later stages of the Arras offensive, counter-attack patrols initially involved corps squadrons providing one machine to watch the area behind the enemy front for troop concentrations and issue zone calls.109 By the battle of Menin Road (20 September 1917), Second Army’s corps squadrons were detailing two aircraft for the duty, supplemented by a squadron of DH4s to watch known enemy debussing and concentration points. In that battle British artillery destroyed 11 counter-attacks as they formed up.110 Six days later at Polygon Wood, Second Army’s CGS noted how ‘information as to the early movements of hostile troops’ allowed British artillery to render four enemy counter-attacks ‘either broken up or largely disorganised… before they had fully developed’.111

Against their operational value the RFC needed to weigh up the considerable losses that units committed to low-altitude sorties typically suffered. RFC HQ had recognised in April, during the Arras campaign, that low-flying resulted in ‘heavy’ casualties; ‘Most machines employed on this duty were riddled with bullets…’.112 Then there was the mental strain such work entailed that struck Bean when he interviewed an Australian fighter pilot in the RFC, apparently on the verge of nervous breakdown after flying through artillery barrages.113 Likewise, ‘strenuous’ is how Alfred Youdale, another Australian RFC pilot, described contact patrols in the salient. Explaining them to his family as ‘the “stickiest” job we have’, he noted that in addition to small arms and anti-aircraft fire, pilots had to contend with British shells; ‘I have repeatedly seen them whiz by...’.114 On 31 July 30 of the 58 British aircraft employed on contact patrolling were rendered unserviceable, one of them Youdale’s, after an artillery shell struck its cowling.115 During the campaign Youdale, who distinguished himself as low-flying specialist, was shot down eight times; two of his observers were wounded, he split his face open in one crash and bullets damaged his

109 Kiggell to army commanders, 1 May 1917, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283; Instructions for corps squadrons issued by 15th Wing, 6 May 1917, NAUK AIR1/971/204/5/1111. 110 Jones, The War in the Air Volume IV, pp. 182-85. 111 Major-General C. H. Harington, CGS Second Army, ‘Second Army Operations on 25th and 26th September, 1917’, 28 September 1917, AWM4 1/13/16. 112 ‘Notes on Recent Operations’, submitted by Trenchard to GHQ, 18 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283. 113 Charles Bean, diary, 24 August 1917, AWM 3DRL/606/87/1. 114 Youdale to family, 21 August 1917, AWM 1DRL/0611. 115 Jones, The War in the Air Volume IV, pp. 161-162. A photograph of Youdale with his damaged RE8 appeared in The Sydney Mail on 7 November 1917. 232 goggles, dress tie and flying helmet.116 On 23 December his RE8 was hit over the lines – perhaps again by an artillery shell – killing him and his observer.

In the background of the intense aerial campaign at Ypres the first two AFC units arrived at the front. 3rd Squadron, a corps unit equipped with RE8s, had been raised in Australia and consequently had few experienced personnel. It arrived at Savy on 9 September and, on Trenchard’s recommendation, commenced two months of orientation with I Brigade, sharing the workload of two experienced RFC corps squadrons.117 The first Australian fighter unit, 2nd Squadron, arrived at Baizieux on 21 September equipped with DH5s. It joined the 13th (Army) Wing of III Brigade on Third Army’s sector. 4th Squadron, flying Sopwith Camels, would arrive at Bruay aerodrome on First Army’s front on 22 December 1917 for attachment to the 10th (Army) Wing of I Brigade.

2nd and 3rd Squadrons had a relatively quiet induction to warfare on the Western Front. At the beginning of October the two German armies opposing 2nd Squadron’s sector had a single jasta to cover an area stretching from Arras almost to Péronne. In the German Sixth Army, over which 3rd Squadron operated during its first weeks at the front, three jastas – perhaps 21 fighters – had responsibility for guarding the skies north of Arras to Ploegsteert.118 Accordingly, both Australian squadrons’ had few encounters with enemy aircraft during their formative weeks at the front.119 Indeed in its first seven weeks 2nd Squadron engaged enemy fighters on just three occasions.120

With favourable reports from the COs of 1st Wing and I Brigade, 3rd Squadron moved to Bailleul on 12 November and joined the Australian Corps in Flanders. It would continue to experience relatively quiet conditions until spring

116 Youdale to family, 26 October 1917, AWM 1DRL/0611 117 Trenchard to GHQ, 16 August 1917, NAUK AIR1/1044/204/5/1506. 118 Norman Franks, Frank Bailey and Rick Duiven, The Jasta War Chronology: A Complete Listing of Claims and Losses, August 1916- November 1918, Grub Street, London, 1998, p. 104. 119 2nd Squadron war diaries, October and November 1917; AWM4 8/5/2-3; 3rd Squadron war diary, September-November 1917 Parts 1 and 2, AWM4 8/6/10. 120 Combats in the air report, Lieutenant R. W. McKenzie, 13 October 1917, AWM4 8/5/3; Combats in the air report, Captain W. A. McCloughry, 16 October 1917, AWM4 8/5/3; Combats in the air report, Lieutenant G. C. Matthews, 21 October 1917, AWM4 8/5/3. 233 1918.121 2nd Squadron, however, had a jarring introduction to battle flying in November when the army to which it was attached launched an offensive at Cambrai.

Using infantry supported by tanks and an unregistered artillery barrage, British Third Army’s staff planned an offensive, starting on 20 November, to breech the Hindenburg Line between Gonnelieu and . After punching through the German front, support and reserve lines with the initial advance, cavalry and infantry reserves would capture Cambrai and the key tactical heights of Bourlon ridge to its west before advancing north, in co-operation with the French, to roll up the German line as far as the Sensée river.122

Despite its novel aspects – the large-scale employment of tanks and absence of a preliminary barrage for example – the Cambrai plan was, as Andy Simpson argues, ‘largely based on previous experience within the BEF… the product of continuity as much as – if not more than – change’.123 The same holds true for the RFC, with III Brigade’s operation orders for 20 November closely resembling those issued by V Brigade for the Ypres offensive. Both detailed the now-typical reconnaissance, offensive patrols and bombing targets, in addition to low-altitude attacks on enemy aerodromes, and targets immediately behind the battlefront.124 III Brigade’s only departure from the norm was the assignment of a dozen fighters to attack three enemy battery groups shortly after zero deemed ‘most likely to be troublesome’ by III and IV Corps’ artillery staff.125

121 Lieutenant Colonel T. W. C. Carthew, CO 1st Wing RFC to 1st Brigade HQ, 16 October 1917, NAUK AIR1/1044/204/5/1506; Brigadier-General G. S. Shephard, GOC 1st Brigade to RFC Advanced HQ, 17 October 1917, NAUK AIR1/1044/204/5/1506. 122 Wilfrid Miles, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations: France and Belgium 1917: Volume III: The battle of Cambrai, HMSO, London, 1948, pp. 21-30.

123 Andy Simpson, Directing Operations: British Corps Command on the Western Front, Spellmount, Stroud, 2006, p. 126. 124 Brigade orders for 31 July and 20 November 1917 are reproduced as appendices in Jones, The War in the Air Volume IV, pp. 421-422 and 424-426. III Brigade’s operation orders for November 1917 are also filed in NAUK AIR1/925/204/5/910. At Ypres, V Brigade instructed pilots to engage enemy targets from below 2,000 feet ‘west of a line Staden-Dadizeele’, that is from the enemy’s front line to approximately 10.5 kilometres back. 125 GOCRA III Corps to III Brigade RFC, 15 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/1513/204/58/36; CBSO IV Corps to III Brigade, 16 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/1513/204/58/36; Captain R. H. Jerman, Brigade Major, III Brigade RFC to Lieutenant Colonel G. F. Pretyman, OC 13th (Army) Wing, 17 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/1513/204/58/36. 234

The battle of Cambrai, 20 November – 6 December 1917126

126 Probert Encyclopedia: http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com/F_BATTLE_OF_CAMBRAI.HTM, consulted 6 March 2013. 235 The battle played out in three distinct phases: the initial assault by III and IV Corps (20-21 November), IV Corps’ struggle for Bourlon ridge (22-27 November) and the German counter-offensive, which prompted a British withdrawal (30 November-6 December). Although remarkably successful by Western Front standards, the British advance on 20 November failed to create a breech sufficient for the planned exploitation to begin. By the end of the second day, it had not penetrated the third German line east of the St Quentin Canal and the high ground west of Cambrai remained in enemy hands. Operations henceforth focused on IV Corps’ capture of Bourlon ridge with British troops occupying most of the woods on 23 November, but failing to dislodge the enemy from the village or the ridge’s flanks. Despite renewed attempts the situation persisted until the 27th when, short of reserves, Third Army’s GOC, General Sir Julian Byng, stopped the offensive. The Germans counter-attacked on 30 November, advancing across the base of the salient created by the British advance, penetrating as far as Gouzeacuourt. The Germans secured only minor additional gains during subsequent days and on 4-5 December the British withdrew to the Flesquières ridge, relinquishing approximately half their gains, to establish a winter line.

Fog and low clouds severely restricted flying on 20 November. Corps squadrons provided the artillery and infantry commanders with little useful support and the planned low altitude strikes against enemy aerodromes and battery groups behind the Hindenburg support achieved little.127 From an advanced landing ground at Bapaume 2nd Squadron mounted 20 ground-attack sorties during the day in conformity with III Brigade’s operation orders.128 Between 0705 (45 minutes after zero) and 0820, six Australian pilots attacked enemy troops and artillery across a wide front, stretching from Fontaine-lés-Croisilles to , in an effort to confuse the Germans as to the main axis of the British attack. From 0820 pilots concentrated on the main battlefront, though a rigid target timetable established by III Brigade kept pilots well ahead of the infantry advance.129 By 1100, for example, when 6th Division reached its second objective just beyond the Hindenburg support line the RFC’s

127 III Brigade staff, ‘Notes on the action of the RFC’, January 1918, NAUK AIR1/912/204/5/850; J. C. Nerney, ‘The battle of Cambrai 1917’, p. 9, NAUK AIR1/678/21/13/1942. British corps squadrons engaged three enemy batteries by zone call on 20 November. In comparison, on 26 September at Polygon Wood, corps aircraft reported 193 hostile guns for spontaneous engagement [RFC HQ war diary, 26 September 1917, AWM45 29/85]. 128 2nd Squadron war diary, 20 November 1917, AWM4 8/5/4. 129 III Brigade Special Operation Order No. 370, 16 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/925/204/5/910. 236 fighters had, for an hour and a half, been attacking targets some 3.5 kilometres beyond Noyelles. A pair of 2nd Squadron pilots got in touch with cavalry at noon but, thereafter, the weather deteriorated preventing flying for the rest of the day.

Inclement weather continued the following day as III and IV Corps attempted to secure their original objectives. Although 2nd Squadron had orders to support III Corps infantry attacking around Masnières the Australians, like their counterparts throughout 13th (Army Wing), stayed on the ground.130 It is unclear who made this decision; in operation orders issued the night before 13th Wing’s CO, Lieutenant- Colonel George Pretyman, had instructed squadron commanders to check with him if weather appeared ‘doubtful’.131 On the other hand, 2nd Squadron’s recording officer later told Bean that Pretyman trusted Major Watt’s judgment (‘it was left to him to say if it were possible or not’).132 Whoever decided to keep Third Army’s fighters on the ground on 21 November, it may have been an unnecessary decision, despite the bad weather. 12th Wing’s corps squadrons flew 24 sorties, providing ‘valuable information’ and engaging enemy targets.133 German pilots were also airborne giving, in GOC IV Corps’ words, ‘considerable trouble to 62nd Division in the vicinity of Bourlon Wood’.134

The effectiveness of 2nd Squadron’s efforts during the campaign’s first stage appears ambivalent. On the one hand, the pilots reported a number of successful bombing and machine gun attacks on enemy troops, transport and artillery in the area behind the battlefront. Lieutenant Leslie Holden, for example, ‘claimed a direct hit on [a] Communication trench full of enemy troops moving West’ while his partner, Lieutenant Robert Clark strafed the survivors ‘making for shell holes’.135 On the other hand, among a large collection of German soldiers’ accounts published by Jack Sheldon, only a few mention low-flying aeroplanes.136 It appears that, as during Third Ypres, the RFC devoted too few machines to ground attack to make a discernable impression on enemy operations. A case in point is III Brigade’s effort to deceive the enemy shortly after zero hour: 2nd and No. 64 Squadrons committed 18 aircraft to

130 III Brigade operations summary, 21 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/770/204/4/259. 131 13th Wing, Special Operation Order No. 5, 20 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/1808/204/161/3. 132 Bean, diary, 8 December 1917, AWM 3DRL606/94/1. 133 OC 12th Wing to HQ III Brigade RFC, 21 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/1514/204/58/42. 134 IV Corps HQ to III Brigade HQ, 22 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/1513/204/58/36. 135 2nd Squadron war diary, 20 November 1917, AWM4 8/5/4. 136 Jack Sheldon, The German Army at Cambrai, Pen & Sword, Barnsley, pp. 47, 60, 61 and 63. 237 attack ground targets in a 160 square kilometre area.137 Altogether, 13th (Army) Wing dropped 78 25lb bombs and fired 5,500 rounds at ground targets on 20 September.138 Cutlack’s contention that ‘these attacks dismayed the German artillery’ and that after the initial tank advance Third Army ‘owed its thanks mainly to the “cavalry of the air”’, seems dubious.139

Regardless of their impact on individual enemy units, the RFC’s efforts failed to prevent the Germans effectively deploying enough reserves to contain the British advance on 20 and 21 November, after which time enemy reinforcements began arriving from other sectors. To this end the cost to III Brigade had been of unsustainable proportions: in 2nd Squadron four pilots had been shot down (two wounded, with one dying later; one captured and another returning to the aerodrome uninjured).140 In 20 sorties, the unit had lost seven aircraft (destroyed or damaged severely enough to return to the depot).141 Overall, in the squadrons employed on ground- losses amounted to 35 per cent.142 Brigadier-General John Higgins claimed that by the offensive’s second day his brigade was ‘practically a squadron and a half short’.143

On 22 November 2nd Squadron joined III Brigade’s other DH5 and Sopwith Camel units attacking enemy troops and batteries around Bourlon ridge, in preparation for IV Corps’ assault the following day. Thereafter, the Sopwith Camels and SE5as would divide their attention between ground attack and offensive patrolling to oppose German fighter reinforcements while the two DH5 squadrons remained devoted to ground attack. Their targets, however, changed in the battle’s second phase. Whereas between 20 and 22 November they had engaged targets behind the battlefront (a form of interdiction, in contemporary terms), they thereafter

137 Nerney, ‘The battle of Cambrai 1917’, pp. 13, NAUK AIR1/678/21/13/1942. 138 Résumé of operations carried out by 13th Wing, RFC, 20 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/1514/204/58/42. 139 Cutlack, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918 Volume VIII, pp. 184 and 188. 140 Leading the first sorties out just after 0700, Captain John Bell was shot in the chest and made a forced landing on the battlefield. He died on 27 December 1917. Leaving the aerodrome at 0820, Lieutenant Leslie Ward, was shot down by ground fire while attacking enemy targets in the vicinity of Marcoing. He suffered a broken leg and was taken prisoner. In the same group of sorties, Lieutenant Harry Taylor was shot down by ground fire and crashed on the battlefield; picking up a rifle he fought his way back to British positions and rejoined the squadron that evening. At noon, while attempting to make contact with the cavalry, Lieutenant F. H. S. Sheppard was wounded by ground fire and brought down on the battlefield. 141 2nd Squadron war diary, 20 November 1917, AWM4 8/5/4. 142 Jones, The War in the Air Volume IV, p. 239. 143 Greenhous, ‘Evolution of a Close Ground Support Role for Aircraft in World War I’, p. 25. 238 switched to directly supporting the infantry of IV Corps. It is difficult to determine from where this change emanated and, indeed, even the extent to which it was a calculated decision by staff. Throughout the campaign’s second phase III Brigade set only broad objectives (‘Low-flying machines will assist the IV Corps advance on Sains Lez Marquion from 7am with machine gun fire and bombs’, for example) while 13th Wing telephoned orders to squadrons for specific sorties ‘according to the situation’.144 Written records of these have not survived, nor apparently has a memorandum on ground-attack tactics produced by 13th Wing’s staff.145 The change from interdiction – which RFC pilots called ‘ground-strafing’ – to close, tactical air support (‘trench-strafing’) is nonetheless clear in the pilots’ combat reports.146

The shift to a closer support role for ground attack missions probably reflects the change from an anticipated breakthrough to operations in a finite area with limited objectives. Orders issued by RFC HQ earlier in the year in anticipation of semi-open warfare reveal the general staff’s anxiety that British pilots might accidentally attack friendly troops.147 This concern perhaps explains III Brigade’s stringent engagement timetable for 20 November, when a rapid breakthrough and long advance (co- ordinated with French forces) was planned.148 Subsequently, for the more familiar, methodical operations planned to capture Bourlon ridge, the staff may have felt more confident in allowing their pilots to work closer to the infantry. The change to trench- strafing may have also resulted to bolster the infantry’s fire support as tank support dwindled through attrition and breakdown after the battle’s first stage.

The British troops assaulting Bourlon ridge and Fontaine on 23 November 1917 enjoyed the most effective air support of the campaign and, probably, of the war so far. The weather cleared and III Brigade put some 50 low-flying aircraft over IV Corps’ front, dropping 120 bombs and firing 14,600 rounds at targets on and around

144 III Brigade Operation Order No. 373, 23 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/925/204/5/910; 13th Wing, Special Operation Order No. 7, 22 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/1808/204/161/3. 145 13th Wing’s Special Operation Order No. 9 Operations GY for 25 November 1917 [NAUK AIR1/1808/204/161/3] refers squadron commanders to 13th Wing letter S/13W/4/1b d/d 24-11-17 regarding ‘method of working’ for low-altitude ground-attack sorties it had ordered. This document is referred to in subsequent daily operation orders. 146 Summary of 13th (Army) Wing sorties on 23 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/770/204/4/259; Hallion, Rise of the Fighter Aircraft 1914-1918, pp. 125-126. 147 Trenchard to OC 9th Wing, 10 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283; Trenchard to OC 9th Wing, 5 June 1917, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283. 148 For evidence of the extent to which the general staff anticipated a British breakthrough and long advance see correspondence relating to cooperation with French forces in NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1286. 239 ridge.149 Despite being down to nine serviceable machines and a dozen pilots, 2nd Squadron contributed 14 sorties during the day. Most pilots’ flight reports indicate that they attacked enemy troops in or immediately behind the front and sometimes in direct co-operation with advancing British troops.150 During the morning Lieutenant Frederick Huxley silenced a German gun holding up three tanks on the eastern edge of the wood, and then watched the tanks advance. Afterwards he fired 500 rounds at an enemy position north-west of Fontaine holding up British troops: ‘Each time I dived, Infantry advanced, my ammunition giving out just before they reached the objective, [I] saw batches of enemy retire’.151 Captain Gordon Wilson attacked a crew manhandling a gun into position; 45 minutes later he observed it still abandoned.152 Lieutenant Albert Griggs, an American in the AFC, was shot down and killed while attacking a German machine gun position from 50 feet that had suppressed a company of the Royal Irish Rifles. Griggs’s effort moved the soldiers to mark the anniversary of his death with an In Memoriam notice to ‘an unknown airman’ who had died assisting them ‘when other help had failed’.153

This close air support seems valuable given the disappointing performance of artillery co-operation. British guns answered just nine zone calls on 23 November; in contrast, at Messines on 7 June they had responded to at least 165.154 Further, the demoralising effect low-altitude aircraft had on German infantry is evident in an account by the 3rd Lehr Battalion’s adjutant.

…they hurled aircraft at us. For about half and hour six of the beasts buzzed around our heads, dropping bombs and machine gunning us. It was a bloody unpleasant

149 Summary of 13th (Army) Wing sorties on 23 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/770/204/4/259. 150 2nd Squadron war diary, 23 November 1917, AWM4 8/5/4. 151 Huxley’s account has been cited in several other works as evidence of the effectiveness of CAS during the 23 November 1917 battle for Bourlon ridge. The accuracy of his reports, however, was called into question by some of his fellow pilots. Lieutenant A. J. Pratt and his flight commander, Captain G. C. Wilson told Cutlack that they were ‘highly exaggerated, if not totally inaccurate’. It is not possible to independently verify the accuracy of Huxley’s account, but other combat reports from 23 November (by Lieutenants L. H. Holden and R. L. Clark) likewise explicitly claim to have engaged enemy guns or positions holding up British forces [Lieutenant F. G. Huxley, ‘Report on attack on enemy infantry’, No. 6, 23 November 1917, AWM4 8/5/4; ‘Historical notes (1927)’, AWM44 24/1]. 152 Captain G. C. Wilson, ‘Report of attack on enemy infantry, No.7, 23 November 1917, AWM4 8/5/4. 153 ‘In Memoriam’, The Times, 23 November 1918, p. 1. 154 Nerney, ‘The battle of Cambrai 1917’, p. 37, NAUK AIR1/678/21/13/1942; ‘Report on work of the 2nd Brigade RFC from 15th May to 8th June 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283. 240 situation. They flew so low that we had the feeling that they could reach out of their machines, grab us by the collar and whisk us away!155

Bad weather grounded 2nd Squadron (along with the other units in 13th Wing) on all but one other day during the struggle for Bourlon ridge. On 26 November, during a lull in the fighting, Australian pilots reported a stalemate with both sides well entrenched.156 Unable to find suitable targets, some returned to Baizieux carrying bombs.157

Despite 13th Wing’s effort to support IV Corps on the Bourlon heights, it again seems that the airmen failed to affect the outcome of operations. They provided valuable assistance to individual units here and there but failed to neutralise enough enemy resistance to allow the infantry to capture all their objectives. A review of war diaries of the units principally involved in the 23 November attack on Bourlon ridge and Fontaine reveals no acknowledgement of close air support whatsoever. Significantly, all units identified unsuppressed German machine guns firing from houses and woods – positions difficult for pilots to identify – as a key reason for their failure.158 The effectiveness of close air support during the Bourlon operations varied, depending on the skill and initiative of individual pilots. Communication problems on the battlefront regularly left army and corps staff out of touch with the tactical situation, creating an ignorance of events on the battlefield that resonated down through RFC brigade and wing orders and into the squadrons.159 Indeed, during the battle No. 64 Squadron’s CO noted that he could tell his pilots nothing beyond ‘roughly where the line is and what attacks are in progress over a limited front’.160 Target selection was left to the pilots who struggled to identify friend from foe on a

155 Sheldon, The German Army at Cambrai, pp. 163- 65. The account comes from a letter written immediately after the battle. 156 Captain R. C. Phillipps and Lieutenant L. H. Holden, ‘Report on attack on enemy infantry’, No. 15, 26 November 1917, AWM4 8/5/4. 157 ‘Lieutenants C. L. Johnson, R. L. Clark, A. Robertson and F. G. Huxley, ‘Report on attack on enemy infantry’, No. 16, 26 November 1917, AWM4 8/5/4. 158 119th Infantry Brigade war diary, November 1917, NAUK WO95/2605; 152nd Infantry Brigade war diary, November 1917, NAUK WO95/2863; 1/6th Battalion Gordon Highlanders war diary, November 1917, NAUK WO95/2868; 12th Battalion South Wales Borderers war diary, November 1917, NAUK WO95/2606; 19th Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers war diary, November 1917, NAUK WO95/2607; 1/6th Battalion Seaforth Highlanders war diary, November 1917, NAUK WO95/2867. 159 On 23 November, staff at Third Army and IV Corps had little idea of progress on the battlefield. At 1900 IV Corps reported, for example, that the RFC had identified British troops in possession of both Fontaine and Bourlon village when in fact, British troops held neither [Miles, Military Operations: France and Belgium: 1917, Volume III, p. 134]. 160 Jones, The War in the Air Volume IV, p. 237. 241 battlefield obscured by smoke and many (as Arthur Lee of No. 46 Squadron admitted) endeavoured to be rid of their ordnance and out of harm’s way as quickly as possible.161 The provision of air support to infantry to the extent claimed by Huxley was clearly not the result of any kind of calculated planning at the staff level and, hence, could not be delivered either consistently or on a broad scale.

The surprise achieved by the Germans when they counter-attacked on 30 November is evident, suggests the British official historian, in the considerable time Third Army and IV Corps took to commit reserves and in the absence of co- ordination between British counter-attacks.162 The same confusion marked III Brigade’s handling of the air squadrons during the counter-offensive’s chaotic first day. 2nd Squadron’s first sorties did not begin until two and a half hours after the German infantry advanced and throughout the day it mostly flew between Bourlon and Moeuvres where German attacks were secondary (and far less effective) to those on the southern front between Vendhuille and Masnières.163

With 15 serviceable aircraft and a dozen fit pilots, 2nd Squadron flew 37 sorties on 30 November, the pilots using the advanced landing ground to refuel and rearm. British forces faced the largest concentration of schutzstaffeln yet, some 50 ground-attack aircraft supporting the German infantry assault.164 Reports from British divisions attest to their effectiveness in the initial assault; they demoralised and distracted defending troops and, in at least one case, compelled Lewis gunners to expend their ammunition on the aircraft before the German infantry came into range.165 As the day continued, however, the number of aircraft operating above the relatively narrow battlefront seems to have undermined the effectiveness of tactical air support for both sides. Wilson’s report is typical of those submitted by Australian pilots: ‘All bombs dropped at 11:40am from average height of 1,000 feet. No chance

161 2nd Lieutenant H. Cornell, diary, 30 November 1917, AWM 1DRL/0212; Lieutenant C. L. Johnson, ‘Report of attack on enemy infantry’, No. 13, 23 November 1917, AWM4 8/5/4; Lee, No Parachute, pp. 163 and 187-88. 162 Miles, Military Operations: France and Belgium: 1917, Volume III, p. 188. 163 2nd Squadron war diary, 1 December 1917, AWM4 8/5/5; Miles, Military Operations: France and Belgium: 1917, Volume III, pp. 195 and 215; Nerney, ‘The battle of Cambrai 1917’, p. 52, NAUK AIR1/678/21/13/1942. 164 Duiven and Abbott, Schlachtflieger!, p. 9 and 38. These authors claim that at least 8 Schutzstaffeln supported the German counter-offensive and that these typically comprised six aircraft each. 165 Nerney, ‘The battle of Cambrai 1917’, pp. 49-50, NAUK AIR1/678/21/13/1942. 242 of using MG owing to the presence of numerous EA’.166 Pilots typically spent their time over the battlefield charily exchanging shots with each other and, as had occurred when large formations met over the Ypres Salient, neither side sustained many losses.167 Given the circumstances, perhaps reconnaissance represented 2nd Squadron’s most valuable service. An RFC Branch Intelligence Officer at the forward landing ground passed Captain Roy Phillipps and Lieutenant Henry Forrest’s report of concentrations of German troops to III Corps HQ: ‘Our artillery was bought into action on objectives indicated’.168

The situation’s stabilisation over the following two days permitted better integration between British air and ground forces. For 1 December, 13th (Army) Wing allocated aircraft to support counter-attacks planned by Third Army and assigned the bulk of its aircraft to sectors on which British intelligence officers deemed the enemy most likely to renew the attack.169 2nd Squadron accordingly spent the day attacking German troops east of ahead of the Guards Division’s advance.170 13th Wing directed offensive patrols to ‘work close over our low bombing machines’ but, compared to the previous day, German activity in the air was light (Jagdgeschwader 1 for example, flying half the number of sorties), allowing the Australians to devote more attention to targets on the ground.171

As the German offensive ebbed over the following two days 2nd Squadron’s pilots found the battlefield a stalemate with few targets to bomb.172 On 4 December, the Australians resumed close offensive patrols to screen the withdrawal of British

166 Captain R. C. Phillipps et al, ‘Report on attack on enemy infantry’, No. 24, 30 November 1917, AWM4 8/5/4. 167 See for example, Lieutenant H. Taylor, Combats in the Air Report, 30 November 1917, AWM4 8/5/4; 2nd Lieutenant Harold Cornell, diary, 30 November 1917, AWM 1DRL/0212. 168 Captain R. C. Phillipps et al, ‘Report on attack on enemy infantry’, No. 24, 30 November 1917, AWM4 8/5/4. To improve the its intelligence gathering and dissemination capability, in January 1917 the RFC attached a Branch Intelligence Section to each corps squadron. It consisted of an officer from the Intelligence Corps, a pair of Field Survey Company draughtsman, a clerk and an orderly. The section fielded requests for intelligence from units in the corps and debriefed crews immediately after sorties; they also disseminated intelligence and sent photographs to relevant headquarters and units in the field. At Cambrai the RFC had a Branch Intelligence Section established at the advanced landing ground. 169 Miles, Military Operations: France and Belgium: 1917, Volume III, pp. 223-224. 170 Miles, Military Operations: France and Belgium: 1917, Volume III, pp. 238-242; 2nd Squadron war diary, 1 December 1917, AWM4 8/5/5. 171 13th Wing Operation order No. 195, 30 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/1808/204/161/3; Hayzlett, Hunting with Richthofen, p. 161. 172 Captain R. C. Phillips et al, ‘Report on attack on enemy infantry’, No. 29, 3 December 1917, AWM4 8/5/5. 243 troops to a winter line. Their efforts evidently worked; after withdrawing to an intermediate position before dawn on 5 December, German guns continued bombarding the abandoned British positions until mid-afternoon.173 The squadron had a final opportunity to provide close air support on 6 December when the Germans attacked British troops withdrawing to the winter positions. Wilson’s flight of three, in a notably successful example, bombed 2-300 enemy troops assembling in a sunken road between Graincourt and .174 Returning in the afternoon they strafed 100 German infantry in the open before Flesquières; these ‘broke and ran east towards Cantaing’.175

After 7 December 2nd Squadron stopped appearing on 13th Wing’s orders; it would spend the rest of the month re-equipping with SE5as, a far superior machine to the DH5.176 Meanwhile, on Trenchard’s instructions, the rest of the RFC reduced operations to the ‘absolute minimum’. Though architect of the ‘relentless and incessant air offensive’, Trenchard also recognised the need to husband resources for when they might achieve the greatest operational benefit. ‘To send them out merely for the satisfaction of saying that a squadron is pulling its weight only results in the loss of a large number of valuable young officers and machines’.177

In its post-battle analysis, III Brigade’s staff claimed to have demonstrated the ‘usefulness’ of low-altitude ground attack but provided no supporting evidence, failed to differentiate between ‘ground-strafing’ and ‘trench-strafing’, and neglected to weigh up the prohibitive casualties suffered by units devoted to this type of work against their achievements.178 Despite noting the lack of proof supporting III Brigade’s claims, RFC HQ forwarded the report to GHQ with minimal amendments. The broad range of missions flown by III Brigade and the campaign’s relatively brief duration made it an ideal case study and deserving of much closer scrutiny.

173 Miles, Military Operations: France and Belgium: 1917, Volume III, p. 265. 174 Miles, Military Operations: France and Belgium: 1917, Volume III, p. 266; Report of attack on enemy infantry, No. 31, 6 December 1917, AWM4 8/5/5. 175 Captain G. C. Wilson et al, ‘Report of attack of enemy infantry’, No. 33, 6 December 1917, AWM4 8/5/5. 176 13th Wing Operation Order No. 201, 7 December 1917, NAUK AIR1/1808/204/161/3. 177 Trenchard to Advanced GHQ, 27 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1287; Trenchard to RFC brigades, 28 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/522/16/12/5. 178 III Brigade staff, ‘Notes on the action of the RFC’, January 1918, NAUK AIR1/912/204/5/850; ‘Lessons learnt from recent operations by the Third Army, 20 November to 6 December 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1514/204/58/42; RFC HQ to III Brigade RFC, 12 January 1918, NAUK AIR1/912/204/5/850. 244 Typical for the British official history, Henry Jones also eschewed critical analysis, considering it ‘impossible’ to say how important III Brigade’s ground attack sorties were (though acknowledging ‘some evidence that it was important’).179 One of his researchers had, in fact, criticised the RFC’s ‘dispersal of tactical air effort’ but Jones rejected this as ‘being rather wise after the event’.180 Taking the pilots’ flight reports at face value in his account, Cutlack emphasised successful examples of close air support but made no overall assessment.181 A masters thesis on the topic goes a little further, suggesting that a lack of training compromised bombing accuracy.182 Other scholars reasonably question III Brigade’s focus on the tactical battle while large numbers of German reserves arrived in the sector unhindered.183

The analysis presented here can offer some additional insights. III Brigade’s pilots engaged in both interdiction and close air support during the Cambrai offensive. Though not employing these expressions, brigade and wing orders resulted in both types of operations and the pilots perceived them as distinct.184 The RFC employed interdiction during the offensive’s first phase, reflecting Trenchard’s opinion (which Haig shared) that low-flying fighters were best directed at targets behind the enemy front and perhaps an anxiety about causing casualties to friendly troops.185 Despite inflicting casualties on enemy reinforcements and neutralising some batteries, the RFC failed to disrupt German defences in anything beyond isolated instances. Bad weather affected target visibility and pilots lacked training but, most significantly, III Brigade staff allocated too few aircraft for the job.

For reasons not entirely clear in surviving documents, throughout the rest of the campaign 13th Wing devoted two (and on some days three) squadrons wholly to supporting IV Corps infantry with ground-attack sorties. It resulted in some strikingly

179 Jones, The War in the Air Volume IV, p. 252. 180 Nerney, ‘The battle of Cambrai 1917’, p. 13, NAUK AIR1/678/21/13/1942 (See handwritten annotation in the margin; it appears this is Jones’ handwriting from comparison with other documents that he wrote). 181 Cutlack, The Official History of Australia and the War of 1914-1918, Volume VIII, pp. 183-197. 182 Adam Garth Pye, ‘Evolution in Action: the Royal Flying Corps/ Royal Air Force and the Development of Ground Attack in World War I’, MA thesis, University of Calgary, 2003, pp. 29-31. 183 John Slessor, Air power and Armies, Oxford University Press, London, 1936, pp. 90-91; Wise Canadian Airmen and the First World War, p. 445. 184 Lee, No Parachute, p. 183. In a diary entry dated 29 November 1917, Lee wrote ‘… trench-strafing is all chance, no matter how skilled you are… Of course, strafing behind the Lines is different, the odds against you aren’t nearly so great, and you can observe the results, which is seldom possible in trench-strafing’. 185 Trenchard to Advanced GHQ, 10 August 1917, NAUK AIR1/971/204/5/1111; Kiggell to army commanders, 12 August 1917, NAUK AIR1/522/16/12/5. 245 successful examples of pilots co-operating with infantry and tanks and appears to have assisted them secure the crest of Bourlon ridge on 23 November. Lacking ground-air communications, however, pilots had to rely on intelligence provided before taking off and, given the limited knowledge typically possessed by staff at the corps and army level, this was always likely to be vague.186

Scholars have criticised RFC commanders for squandering their fighters on ‘trench strafing’ when they would have been better employed on interdiction. Slessor and Wise make the compelling point that while British fighters strafed Germans on Bourlon ridge between 23 – 29 November, enemy reinforcements arrived by rail behind the battlefront without disruption.187 David Jordan and Richard Hallion make a different criticism, arguing that aircraft co-operating with the infantry over the front line suffered higher losses than those shooting-up targets further back. In this they uncritically accept the view of fighter pilots such as Arthur Lee, who manifestly disliked flying low over the trenches.188 In fact, a breakdown of 2nd Squadron’s operations demonstrates the opposite: the unit’s highest aircraft loss rate occurred during the first phase (38.4 per cent) while attacking targets behind the battlefront. ‘Trench strafing’ during the Bourlon operations proved cheap by comparison (15. 3 per cent) – despite the arrival of German air reinforcements, including Richthofen’s Jagdgeschwader.189 It is doubtful therefore, given 2nd Squadron’s casualties during the first phase – not to mention the weather – that a sustained interdiction offensive was feasible, especially following 25 November when RFC Headquarters returned the additional squadrons it had seconded from I Brigade to their own sector.190

Finally, although the British inquiry into the German counter-offensive attributed much success to the schutzstaffeln, it appears their effectiveness diminished sharply once the sky over the battlefield became crowded with British and German aircraft, creating a kind of aerial stalemate.191 None of the divisional or brigade commanders who submitted reports to GHQ accounting for the enemy breakthrough

186 Hallion, Strike from the Sky, p. 21. 187 John Slessor, Air power and Armies, Oxford University Press, London, 1936, pp. 90-91; Wise Canadian Airmen and the First World War, p. 445. 188 Jordan, ‘The Army Co-operation Missions of the Royal Flying Corps/ Royal Air Force, 1914-1918’, p. 237; Hallion, Rise of the Fighter Aircraft 1914-1918, p. 130; Lee, No Parachute, p. 183. 189 Tabulated from 2nd Squadron war diaries for November and December [AWM4 8/5/4 and 8/5/5] and 2nd Squadron’s record book [AWM4 8/5/1]. 190 Trenchard to I Brigade HQ, 25 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/2182/209/15/22. 191 Greenhous, ‘Evolution of a Close Ground Support Role for Aircraft in World War I’, p. 26. 246 on the southern front emphasised the part played by low-flying enemy aircraft. Nor, it is noteworthy, did German prisoners when interrogated by GHQ intelligence staff.192 This is not unanticipated though. As Hallion has demonstrated, ground attack has historically been most effective ‘when the side employing it also has air superiority’.193

Haig’s scheme for the RFC’s further expansion, submitted on 20 November 1917, illustrates the point to which British thinking about tactical air support had evolved that year. It requested 15 ‘Single-seater fighters designed for attacking ground targets’, explaining that ‘the importance of operations against ground targets has increased to a great extent recently, and it is evident that further developments in this class of fighting may be expected in the future’.194 The BEF’s leadership had, therefore, perceived the emerging importance of ground-attack. On the other hand, its provision of just 15 aircraft for this role for the entire RFC suggests that it was yet to grasp the quantity of resources such operations required or the extent, as Chapters 9- 11 will demonstrate, to which close tactical support would consume the efforts of British airmen in 1918.

Though the Australian part in the air war on the Western Front during 1917 had remained modest, the AFC’s arrival in France began defining a distinctive Australian contribution. Airmen in both 2nd and 3rd Squadrons impressed their British colleagues and superiors with efficiency and keenness for work. 2nd Squadron’s efforts during the battle of Cambrai provided the clearest indication of the AFC’s capacity for aerial fighting. Six pilots received the Military Cross and Military Medals went to four mechanics for salvaging aircraft under fire.195 Trenchard came away from an inspection of the unit on 22 November with high expectations for the AFC. To Birdwood, he wrote, ‘…I think them really great men, and I am certain in

192 See reports from division and brigade commanders on operations, 30 November to 3 December and a report on prisoner interrogations in WO158/54. 193 Hallion, Strike from the Sky, p. 4. 194 Field Marshal Douglas Haig to GHQ, British Armies in France, 20 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/2267/209/70/34. 195 The Military Crosses went to Captains Gordon Wilson and Roy Phillipps and Lieutenants Frederick Huxley, Richard Howard, Leslie Holden and Harry Taylor. Military Medals were awarded to Sergeant R. Lonsdale, Sergeant B. F. Jones, Corporal W. B. Campbell and 1st Class Air Mechanic Hubert Raphael. 247 the summer next year they will all give a very fine account of themselves. They are splendid’.196

196 Trenchard to Lieutenant-General Sir William Birdwood, GOC AIF, 22 November 1917, AWM4 8/5/5. 248 8. THE BATTLES OF GAZA AND THE ADVANCE TO JERUSALEM, 1917 When British troops crossed the Egypt-Palestine frontier in January 1917 the war in the Middle East entered a new phase. The concentration of forces and development of fixed positions by both sides ended the war of manoeuvre and increased the importance of firepower and technology, particularly mechanised logistics, artillery and aviation. At the same time British policy makers, disappointed with progress on the Western Front and perceiving the region’s future strategic importance, bolstered the EEF’s resources. In this context, the RFC in the Middle East expanded significantly and adopted organisation, tactics and equipment from the Western Front to become capable of supporting an army in siege conditions. While their counterparts on the Western Front grappled with providing the BEF with better support in semi-open warfare during 1917, British airmen in Palestine looked to the lessons of the Somme campaign to help break the deadlock before Gaza.

Until August 1917 1st Squadron would remain the only complete service squadron on the Palestine front and, thereafter, the EEF’s specialist long-range reconnaissance and photography unit.1 Focusing on the Australian squadron, this chapter examines the RFC’s support of the three British offensives at Gaza and the subsequent advance to Jerusalem. It reveals how Britain’s aviation arm in the Middle East evolved to a considerably larger and more capable part of the EEF that year and how, through experimentation, specialisation and the appropriation of ideas from the Western Front, it assisted British forces in Palestine negotiate problems faced in the field.

Following its defeat at Rafa on 9 January 1917 the Turkish Fourth Army withdrew to an 8,000-yard long line between and El Hafir to block Desert Column’s advance to Gaza. Over the following few weeks 1st and No. 14 Squadrons, operating from an aerodrome at Kilo 143, reported the development of this defensive position into something far more substantial than anything seen in the Sinai.2 By the end of January air reconnaissance estimated that 13,000 Turkish troops occupied the

1 No. 14 Squadron’s ‘C’ Flight served in Arabia until August 1917. 2 ‘Despatch dealing with the operations of the 5th Wing… February 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/24. 249 line while the Anzac Mounted Division concentrated at Rafa and the rest of the Desert Column at El Arish.3

This unprecedented concentration of Ottoman and British forces at the Sinai- Palestine frontier changed the nature of the air war. During the first three months of 1917 5th Wing’s portfolio broadened substantially to include almost daily bombing raids and hostile aircraft patrols to counter FA 300’s ‘incessant’ attacks on British camps, the systematic photography of the enemy’s line to provide GHQ’s Topographical Section with data, and strategic reconnaissance.4 In January Australian airmen reconnoitred Jerusalem and in February successfully directed fire from a French battleship onto a Turkish mechanical depot in Jaffa.5 The co-operation with mobile columns that had characterised the squadron’s work in 1916 also continued and, indeed, would until the Armistice. In February three BE2cs from 1st Squadron supported a successful cavalry raid to eliminate remote Turkish garrisons at Nekhl and Hassana in the central Sinai.6 And in early March Australian airmen scouted ahead of light horse units pursuing the Turks as they withdrew from their positions along the frontier to the Gaza-Beersheba line. ‘It was often possible to land and discuss with the patrols the location of enemy mounted patrols’, recalled 2nd Lieutenant Frank Lukis.7

Middle East Brigade’s continuing interest in affairs on the Western Front underpinned this development of new capabilities in 5th Wing. Brigadier-General Geoffrey Salmond corresponded regularly with colleagues in France and London and his staff received and disseminated the latest tactical pamphlets.8 Part of the challenge

3 ‘History of the RFC in the Sinai and Palestine, 1917’, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28. 4 ‘History of the RFC in Sinai and Palestine during 1917’, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28; Major-General Arthur Lynden-Bell, CGS EEF GHQ to Major-General Frederick Maurice, DMO, 24 January 1917, IWM Documents 7826; Middle East Brigade HQ to 5th Wing HQ, 15 January 1917, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/23; Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Joubert de la Ferté, CO 5th Wing to 1st and No. 14 Squadrons, 28 January 1917, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/23; ‘Further instructions for defence against hostile aircraft’, 28 January 1917, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/23. 5 Ross Smith, diary, 19 and 29 January 1917, SLSA PRG 18/19; Eric Roberts, diary, 19 and 29 January 1917, AWM 3DRL/7866; Air Vice Marshal A. T. Cole, ‘Courageous Companions’, manuscript, pp. 17-18, AWM PR88/154. 6 ‘Orders for Ismailia Detachment’, 12 February 1917, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/24; Chief, Egypforce to Chief, London, 19 February 1917, AWM4 1/6/11. 7 Squadron Leader F. W. F. Lukis, ‘Service Experiences’, Staff College, Andover, 12 March 1931, NAUK AIR1/2392/228/11/177. 8 Major-General Hugh Trenchard, GOC RFC in the Field to Brigadier-General Geoffrey Salmond, GOC Middle East Brigade, 12 February 1917, RAF B3091; Salmond to Brigadier-General Sefton Brancker, Director of Air Organisation, c. late January 1917, Sir Geoffrey Salmond papers, private collection. 250 involved educating the EEF’s staff officers, many of whom had served in the Middle East for some time and were, therefore, unaware of aviation’s evolution in Europe. Salmond’s chief of staff, Lieutenant-Colonel , lectured army staff in February on developments during the Somme campaign. While acknowledging that conditions in Palestine required the Middle East squadrons to maintain some unique features, he suggested much they could emulate. ‘It is your main source of Intelligence’, he told Murray’s staff of the RFC. ‘Upon its efficiency is dependent to a large extent the striking power of your Artillery, and it can enormously assist you in the handling of your infantry during a battle’. Further, ‘in itself’ the aeroplane had the capacity to act as ‘a powerful weapon with which you can strike the enemy in both the tactical and strategtical zones’.9

Supply problems hindered the realisation of this vision for air power in the Middle East during the first half of 1917. Before First Gaza 5th Wing reported acute shortages of photographic and wireless equipment, bombs and aircraft parts.10 During February half the wing’s aircraft were unserviceable.11 In desperation Salmond employed the engineering and organisational talent of AFC officer Lieutenant Lawrence Wackett to reorganise the force’s aircraft park and oversee the reconstruction of a dozen damaged machines from salvaged parts in time for the first assault on Gaza.12 A similar spirit of improvisation prompted the use of 4.5-inch howitzer shells when aerial bombs ran out.13 Murray’s CGS noted how unsatisfactory the situation was but considered it ‘a case of faute de mieux’.14

9 Lieutenant-Colonel P. R. C. Groves, CGS Middle East Brigade RFC, ‘The Organization and Work of the Royal Flying Corps’, presented to the general staff, EEF, 3 February 1917, LHCMA Groves papers, Item 2A. 10 ‘Photographic Work of the RFC in Sinai and Southern Palestine during 1917’, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28; Salmond to ‘Dear General’ (probably Trenchard), 31 January 1917, Sir Geoffrey Salmond papers, private collection. 11 Chief Egypforce to Troopers, London, (RFC weekly returns), 17 February 1917, AWM4 1/6/11 Part 3. 12 Lawrence James Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer: An Autobiography, Angus and Robertson, 1972, pp. 58- 60. 13 ‘Delay action fuzes for aircraft bombs and method of adapting 4.5” howitzer shells for use as aircraft projectiles’, January 1917, AWM4 1/6/10 Part 3. 14 Lynden-Bell to Maurice, 24 January 1917, IWM Documents 7826 (Translation: ‘for lack of anything better’). 251

Palestine, 1917-1815

15 Michael Molkentin, Fire in the Sky: the Australian Flying Corps in the First World War, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2010, p. 118. 252 Such stopgap measures allowed 5th Wing to conduct its first concerted bombing offensive against Ottoman forces as they retired from their frontier line to positions between Gaza and Beersheba in early March. Between 5 and 20 March, the wing’s 31 serviceable aircraft dropped 11,000 lbs of bombs on Turkish rail targets, camps and aerodromes, and strafed enemy troops as they withdrew beyond the range of Desert Column, which lacked the necessary logistical support to pursue.16 A ‘reliable agent’ credited the RFC with doing ‘much to disorganise the enemy’ though the bombing failed to freeze railway transport altogether.17 FA 300 only attempted to intercept one of these raids, without success.18 Austrian anti-aircraft guns, another new feature resulting from the battlefront’s shift out of the desert, shot down one Australian machine, its pilot, Lieutenant John Tunbridge, rescued by a colleague. Engine failure – an inevitable outcome of 5th Wing’s cobbling together of aircraft – forced another AFC machine down and resulted in the capture of its pilot, Lieutenant Leonard Heathcote.

The improvisation of equipment also inadvertently led to the AFC’s most famous incident. During a raid on the Turkish railway near Tel el Hesi on 19 March, Lieutenant Frank McNamara landed under fire and rescued fellow Australian pilot, Captain Douglas Rutherford, who had landed with mechanical problems.19 On Salmond’s recommendation McNamara received the VC – the only one awarded to an Australian airman during the Great War. Despite the obvious dangers, landing in enemy territory to rescue downed comrades had official sanction so McNamara’s feat is far from unique during the campaign in Palestine – there are several other examples.20 The distinguishing feature in McNamara’s case is that before landing he

16 ‘Despatch dealing with the operations of the 5th Wing Royal Flying Corps… March 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26; ‘Appreciation of the situation on the eastern front of Egypt on 9/3/17’, AWM4 1/6/12 Part 1. 17 EEF GHQ Intelligence Branch war diary, 11 March 1917, AWM4 1/8/11. 18 ‘Combats in the air during March 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26. 19 For a more detailed account of McNamara’s action see Chris Coulthard-Clark, McNamara, VC: a Hero’s Dilemma, Air Power Studies Centre, Fairbairn, 1997, pp. 36-47. 20 For evidence that landing to rescue downed comrades had official sanction see: Lieutenant-Colonel Amyas Borton, CO 5th Wing, ‘Signals to be used in case of forced landing in the desert’, 9 March 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26; Borton, ‘Report on bomb raid carried out 26 June 1917’, 27 June 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/31. Other examples of AFC pilots landing to rescue each other in the Middle East include: Lieutenant Percy Snell rescued Lieutenant John Tunbridge on 7 March 1917 (Snell attempted to rescue Lieutenant Leonard Heathcote two days later but could not land due to the proximity of Turkish troops); Lieutenants Reginald Baillieu and Ross Smith rescued a No. 14 Squadron pilot on 19 March 1917 (both received the MC); Captain Richard Williams picked up Lieutenant Adrian Cole on 20 April 1917 (he received the DSO). Returning from a raid on Turkish 4th Army HQ on the Mount of Olives on 26 June 1917 Lieutenant Ron Austin picked up Lieutenant 253 had been ‘severely wounded’ by the premature explosion of a 4.5” howitzer shell he was using as an improvised bomb.21

Planning for the reflected Desert Column’s previous experience of assaulting Turkish outposts in the Sinai, GHQ’s anxiety that the Turkish staff might withdraw again to avoid battle and the stringent limitations on range and mobility imposed by British logistics.22 Under Lieutenant-General Philip Chetwode’s command, the Desert Column would attack Gaza on 26 March. Two mounted divisions would surround the town while 53rd Division assaulted it directly. Eastern Force HQ (the front’s senior command), under Lieutenant-General Charles Dobell, had control of two additional infantry divisions to bolster flank protection and provide reserves. Dobell intended ‘to drive the enemy out of Gaza and… destroy his advanced detachment at that place’. Chetwode had one day to achieve this objective as his force would be operating 30 kilometres beyond the railhead and supported by a hastily improvised supply column.23 GHQ intended to occupy Gaza but acknowledged the likelihood that the Desert Column might need to temporarily withdraw if counter- attacked.24

Eastern Force’s plan depended on aerial reconnaissance indicating whether enemy reserves intended counter-attacking or withdrawing.25 Believing the RFC had failed to provide the cavalry with adequate reconnaissance because it had been pre- occupied with bombing Turkish railway targets earlier in March, Dobell convinced

Clifford le Brun Brown after he suffered an engine failure. When Austin’s engine subsequently stopped Lieutenant Adrian Cole landed to attempt to rescue both pilots but crashed- the three pilots had to walk back to British lines. Meanwhile, on the same raid, Captain Allan Murray Jones and Lieutenant Roy Drummond landed and picked up Lieutenants John Butler and Leonard Potts after both had run out of fuel. Examples in 1918 include another attempt that ended badly on 1 May when Lieutenants Frederic Haig and Ronald Challinor crashed while attempting to rescue Captain Douglas Rutherford (who McNamara received his VC for rescuing in March 1917) and Lieutenant Jospeh McElligott; both crews were captured. On 19 September 1918 Lieutenants Harold Maughan and Leslie Sutherland picked up a British DH9 crew shot down during a bombing raid, close to the German aerodrome at Jenin. 21 Salmond, recommendation for the award of the Victoria Cross to Lieutenant Frank Hubert McNamara, 26 March 1917, AWM28. 22 ‘Appreciation of the situation on the eastern front of Egypt on 9/3/17’, AWM4 1/6/12 Part 1; ‘Situation on the eastern front of Egypt, on 15/3/17’, AWM4 1/6/12 Part 1; Yigal Sheffy, British Military Intelligence in the Palestine Campaign, 1914-1918, Frank Cass, London, 1998, pp. 211-212; A. P. Wavell, The Palestine Campaigns, Constable and Co. Limited, London, 1929, p. 71. 23 Eastern Force Order No. 33, 24 March 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26; Wavell, The Palestine Campaigns, p. 71; George MacMunn and Cyril Falls, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations Egypt and Palestine: Volume I: From the Outbreak of War with Germany to June 1917, HMSO, London, 1928 p. 284. 24 ‘Situation on the Eastern Front of Egypt, on 15 March 1917’, AWM4 1/6/12 Part 1; ‘Plan of Operations- Eastern Force’, 19 March 1917, AWM4 1/6/12 Part 2. 25 ‘Plan of operations- Eastern Force’, 20 March 1917, AWM4 1/6/12 Part 2; BGGS Eastern Force to GOC Desert Column, 25 March 1917, AWM45 12/7. 254 GHQ to put 5th Wing at his headquarters’ disposal for the battle.26 Of its 21 serviceable aircraft, five would do ‘general reconnaissance’, six artillery co-operation and another six, ‘patrol duties’. Desert Column’s battle headquarters would have a single aircraft to mount a ‘permanent contact patrol’.27 Opposing 5th Wing, FA 300 had approximately seven Rumpler C.Is including some new types with forward firing machine guns; the unit’s Pfalz fighters were unserviceable.28

The Desert Column advanced at dawn on 26 March. The two mounted divisions rapidly encircled the town, surprising the Turkish garrison and completing the cordon by mid-morning. A heavy fog delayed the registration of the Desert Column’s artillery and the infantry’s attack on their first objective, Ali Muntar ridge, until midday. At 1300 Chetwode ordered the Anzac Mounted Division to leave the cordon and attack Gaza from the north. British infantry had occupied Ali Muntar by sunset and were in touch with mounted troops on the north-eastern edge of Gaza. Despite this, and waning Turkish resistance in the town, Chetwode, unclear of the situation and perceiving a threat from enemy reinforcements, ordered the mounted divisions to retire and the infantry to consolidate captured ground to Gaza’s south- east. A Turkish counter-attack the following day made the Desert Column’s position untenable and forced Dobell to sanction a general withdrawal to the battle’s starting line, along the Wady Ghuzze.29

On 26 and 27 March 5th Wing mounted 70 sorties totalling over 180 hours.30 In addition to the missions ordered by Eastern Force pilots attacked ground targets opportunistically, dropping over 1,000 lbs of bombs.31 The surviving documents do not disclose the AFC’s contribution to these totals but it is likely the Australian squadron carried out the majority of the work given that No. 14 Squadron still had a

26 EEF GHQ war diary, 20 March 1917, AWM4 1/6/12; Sheffy, British Military Intelligence in the Palestine Campaign, p. 211. 27 Eastern Force Order No. 33, 24 March 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26. 28 O. Nikolajsen, ‘Ottoman aviation, 1911-1919’, manuscript, c. 1982, pp. 181-183, AWM MSS0862; Georg Paul Neumann (editor) and J. E. Gurdeon (translator), The German Air Force in the Great War, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1920, pp. 250-51. 29 Wavell, The Palestine Campaigns, pp. 67-80; MacMunn and Falls, Military Operations: Egypt and Palestine Volume I, pp. 279-320. 30 ‘Despatch dealing with the operations of the 5th Wing… March 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26. 31 ‘Despatch dealing with the operations of the 5th Wing… March 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26; Middle East Brigade, Resume of operations week ending 29 March 1917, NAUK AIR1/2119/207/72/3. 255 flight in Arabia.32 In an official report Brigadier-General Amyas Borton (CO Palestine Brigade in 1918) later credited 1st Squadron with doing ‘practically the whole of the aerial work’ during First Gaza.33 In a letter home Ross Smith told his mother likewise.34

FA 300 did not disrupt the RFC’s co-operation with the Desert Column during the battle.35 5th Wing HQ recorded four combats; in all cases RFC pilots flying Martinsydes initiated the fight. In one instance Lieutenant Adrian Cole of 1st Squadron attacked a pair of Rumplers over Gaza, forcing them both to retreat.36 With orders to avoid aerial combat the German pilots left the British two-seaters alone and focused on attacking British troops and reconnoitring for the Turkish staff, who were surprised by the British attack.37

Following its unsuccessful attempt at artillery co-operation at Rafa in January (see chapter 6), 5th Wing invested considerable effort in developing its capability in this area. Practice shoots and conferences between the airmen and gunners occurred almost daily during February and March and the RFC provided Eastern Force’s batteries with 16 wireless receiving stations (nine staffed by AFC operators).38 5th Wing hastily photographed Gaza before the battle but this only yielded a mosaic with

32 Individual flight reports for the period of the battle are missing from 5th Wing’s March 1917 war diary [NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26]. 33 Brigadier-General A. E. Borton, CO Palestine Brigade RAF to Major-General W. G. S. Salmond, GOC RAF Middle East, 16 May 1918, AWM4 8/4/7 Part 3. 34 Ross Smith to mother, 23 May 1917, SLSA PRG 18/17. 35 Dieter Gröschel and Jürgen Ladek, ‘Wings over Sinai and Palestine: the adventures of Flieger Abteilung 300 ‘Pascha’ in their fight against the Egyptian Expeditionary Corps, from April 1916 until the Third Battle of Gaza in November 1917’, Over the Front, volume 23, number 1, 1998, pp. 34 and 36. 36 ‘Combats in the air during March 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26. 37 Nikolajsen, ‘Ottoman aviation, 1911-1919’, pp. 181-183, AWM MSS0862; ‘Account of action of Anzac Mounted Division from 24 March 1917…’, Anzac Mounted Division War Diary, March 1917, Appendix 54, AWM4 1/60/13; Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, ‘The Campaign in Palestine from the Enemy’s Side’, Royal United Services Institution Journal, volume 67, number 467, August 1922, 503-513, p. 507. On 29 March 1st Squadron lost a BE2 machine in aerial combat; it was flown by Captain Douglas Rutherford (who had previously been rescued by Lieutenant McNamara) and Lieutenant William Hyam. Both airmen were wounded; Rutherford recovered and continued flying with the squadron but Hyam died on 30 March 1917. 38 ‘Review of 5th Wing, RFC, Wireless Work for 1917, Sinai and Palestine’, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28; Wireless officer’s report, 5th Wing RFC, March 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26. The latter explains that ‘A total of sixteen wireless receiving sets are attached to Artillery units; one with each heavy battery, three with each Divisional Artillery, and two with each Mounted Divisional Artillery; each station being manned by two operators. To reduce weight and increase mobility and speed in erecting these stations, no steel masts were taken; but light wooden masts made from RE signal poles were carried. The method of transport varied with the unit to which the station was attached. The operators rode horses and their wireless equipment was taken on a pack camel, or pack horse, or on a sand sleigh’. 256 an approximate scale and no grid-lines. The airmen therefore still needed to identify targets for the artillery with smoke balls while the gunners used cloth strips to communicate with the air observers.39 Artillery co-operation occupied about a third of 5th Wing’s work during the battle. On 26-27 March British airmen conducted 15 ‘shoots’, totalling 51 hours.40 Co-operation with the heavy guns yielded some success: Eastern Force’s six 60-pounders badly damaged the Turkish position known as ‘The Labyrinth’ and, according to a captured Austrian officer, accounted for three quarters of the enemy gun detachments.41 Ross Smith, who spent 8 hours on artillery co- operation on 27 March, claimed to have destroyed one enemy gun and broke up an Ottoman counter attack with well-laid fire: ‘its great to see your shells go crashing right into the very places where they are most needed’.42 In comparison, co-operation with the more numerous field artillery proved disappointing.43 Richard Williams saw shells missing Turkish positions by 500 yards or more while Henry Gullet notes how the bombardment supporting 53rd Division’s advance on Ali Muntar fell harmlessly behind the feature. Airmen reported this but a lengthy delay presaged a correction.44 As at Rafa – and indeed in France at the time – co-operation with batteries that moved and fired during battle proved problematic and usually unsuccessful.

The battle nonetheless marked the emergence in the EEF of a nascent artillery co-operation capability. How far it had to go is demonstrated by comparative results on the Western Front. At Gaza 5th Wing’s six artillery machines registered fire on 39 targets during 51 hours of sorties. At Arras, the following month, III Brigade’s observers each engaged as many as six targets every two hours.45 RFC Middle East’s obsolete procedure, based on visual signals, handicapped pilots in that theatre. Until

39 ‘Photographic Work of the RFC in Sinai and Southern Palestine during 1917’, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28; ‘Review of 5th Wing, RFC, Wireless Work for 1917, Sinai and Palestine’, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28. 40 Lieutenant J. Brown, 5th Wing wireless officer, ‘Operations against Gaza Artillery Co-operation’, 29 March 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26. 41 Lynden-Bell to Maurice, 31 March 1917, IWM Documents 7826; Brown, Wireless officer’s report, March 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26; Resume of operations, Middle East Brigade, week ending 29 March 1917, NAUK AIR1/2119/207/72/3. 42 Ross Smith, diary, 26 March 1917, SLSA PRG 18/19; Smith to mother, 29 March 1917, SLSA PRG 18/17. 43 For the battle Desert Column had the support of 16 x 4.5” howitzers, 64 x 18 pounders and 6 x 2.75” guns. MacMunn and Falls, Military Operations: Egypt and Palestine Volume I, p. 304. 44 Williams, ‘Experience in connection with the war of 1914/1918’, manuscript, RAAF Museum; H. S. Gullett, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: The Australian Imperial Force in Sinai and Palestine, 1914-1918, Angus & Robertson, 1939 (1923), p. 275. 45 Brown, ‘Operations against Gaza Artillery Co-operation’, 29 March 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26; Brigadier-General J. F. A. Higgins, CO III Brigade RFC to HQ RFC, 16 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283. 257 the EEF obtained accurately surveyed, gridded-maps to describe the location of a British gun and its target, the disparity between the two theatres would continue.46

Determining how aerial reconnaissance influenced the battle is difficult because evidence of what the observers reported, and when, is limited. The original reports dropped by airmen to units on the battlefield and delivered personally to Eastern Force HQ at In Seirat have apparently not survived, though there are references to them in signals records.47 From these, it appears that throughout the morning the RFC provided Chetwode with reassuring reports that no Turkish reserves threatened his flanks. As German sources confirm, although Ottoman Fourth Army’s staff learned of the attack from air and wireless reports early in the morning, several hours passed before Ottoman reinforcements organised themselves to move.48 Secure in this knowledge, at 1300 Chetwode diverted the Anzac Mounted Division from flank protection to join the attack on Gaza from the north.49

Signals during the afternoon give the impression that RFC reconnaissance revealed less as the day progressed, leaving Chetwode to make a decision at dusk without a clear understanding of the situation. His staff had vague reports from ground units of ‘considerable enemy reinforcements on [the] march’ and the most recent air report indicated the Turks continued to hold Gaza in strength.50 Contrary to Cutlack’s claim that aerial reconnaissance prompted Chetwode’s controversial decision to withdraw his mounted troops, Desert Column issued this order at 1810 based solely on reports from the ground – and before a reconnaissance (a three-hour contact patrol by Williams) requested by the Anzac Mounted Division at 1600 to clarify the situation had landed.51 Williams saw the main force of enemy

46 Groves, ‘The Organization and Work of the Royal Flying Corps’, presented to the general staff, EEF, 3 February 1917, LHCMA Groves papers, Item 2A. 47 Messages sent and received, Desert Column HQ, 26 March 1917, Appendix 10, AWM4 1/64/3 Part 2; ‘Copy of Telegrams reporting results of reconnaissances by 5th Wing, Royal Flying Corps on 26/3/17’, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26. 48 Liman Von Sanders, Five Years in Turkey, The United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, 1927 (1920), p. 165; Kressenstein, ‘The Campaign in Palestine from the Enemy’s Side’, p. 507 49 Desert Column HQ to Anzac Mounted Division etc., 1300, 26 March 1917, Desert Column war diary, March 1917, Appendix 10, AWM4 1/64/3 Part 2. 50 Eastforce HQ to 54th Division, 1750 26 March 1917, Desert Column war diary, March 1917, Appendix 10, AWM4 1/64/3 Part 2; Eastern Force war diary, 26 March 1917, AWM45 12/5. 51 F. M. Cutlack, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, vol. 8, ‘The Australian Flying Corps in the Western and Eastern Theatres of War, 1914-1918, Press, St. Lucia, 1984 (first edition 1923), p. 60; Macmunn and Falls, Military Operations. Egypt and Palestine, volume 1, p. 306; Desert Column HQ to Anzac Mounted Division, 1810 26 March 1917, Desert Column war diary, March 1917, Appendix 10, AWM4 1/64/3 Part 2. 258 reinforcements from the north at 1815, entrenching 12 kilometres from Gaza.52 He landed at In Seirat shortly afterwards and in his words

…informed the GSOIII of what I had seen and brightly expressed the opinion that when darkness came Gaza would be ours. He asked if I had seen a column of Turkish infantry coming down from the north-east. I said I had but that it was a very small force and too far away to affect the fate of Gaza. I was surprised that he made no note of what I was reporting and simply commented, “That’s interesting”.53

Williams’ report did not change Chetwode’s mind; had it arrived earlier it is unlikely that it would have either. It did not thoroughly clarify the tactical situation in Gaza nor change the fact that the horses needed watering. Regardless of whether enemy reinforcements attacked that night or the following morning, Eastern Force lacked the logistics to sustain its widely dispersed mounted divisions beyond dusk, something foreseen during the various stages of operational planning and impressed on battlefield commanders by Chetwode that afternoon.54

Henry Jones’ conclusion that British failure at Gaza resulted from the RFC’s inability to secure local air superiority therefore has little substance.55 The Luftstreitkräfte did not considerably hinder 5th Wing from carrying out the tasks Eastern Force allotted to it, and aside from reconnaissance, appears to have done little else to influence the battle’s outcome. With only 21 serviceable aircraft (eight of which were damaged or destroyed during the battle), a shortage of spare parts, photographic equipment and bombs, and limited capacity for co-operating with the artillery, it is difficult to see how 1st and No. 14 Squadrons could have achieved

52 Aeronautics Rafa to Advanced Perardua El Arish and Perardua Cairo, 2325 26 March 1917, 5th Wing war diary, March 1917, Appendix 221, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26. 53 Williams, These are facts: the Autobiography of Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams, KBE, CB, DSO, The Australian War Memorial and Australian Government Printing Service, Canberra, 1977, p. 63; Eastern Force war diary, 26 March 1917, AWM45 12/5. At 1835 Eastern Force HQ received a ‘summary of the situation at dusk’ from Desert Column HQ ‘compiled from cavalry and aircraft reports’ (possibly, including Williams report). It stated: ‘Enemy’s forces advancing from HAREIRA area about half a mile north west of KHUBERT HURAB DIAH point 490 aaa enemy forces advancing from AKRA area after being severely handled by cavalry and guns in [sic] digging in on line through point 405 northeast by east of Beit Durdis aaa Column moving from north has entrenched itself on very narrow front on WADY HESY south of DEIR SINEID and is bivouacing [sic] between that place to BEIT LEJUS aaa’. 54 ‘Situation on the Eastern Front of Egypt, on 15 March 1917’, AWM4 1/6/12 Part 1; ‘Plan of Operations- Eastern Force’, 19 March 1917, AWM4 1/6/12 Part 2; Desert Column HQ to Imperial Mounted Division etc, 1550 26 March 1917, Desert Column war diary, March 1917, Appendix 10, AWM4 1/64/3 Part 2. 55 H. A. Jones, The War in the Air: being the story of the part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force Volume V, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1935, p. 215. 259 anything more. Indeed, their pilots flew twice as many hours as Groves had told the EEF’s staff in February they could reasonably expect.56 Like the rest of Eastern Force, 5th Wing RFC simply lacked the capability to achieve Dobell’s objectives in the time his materiel and logistics would permit.

Although just three weeks separated the first and second battles of Gaza, circumstances on the front changed to an extent that would make the two battles very different affairs. By 5 April the British railhead had reached Deir el Belah allowing Dobell to sustain a larger force forward: for the second battle he would have an additional infantry division, eight tanks and a larger quantity of artillery and ammunition.57 At the same time 1st Squadron, carrying out tactical and strategic reconnaissance, reported the construction of ‘a continuous line of trenches’ between Gaza and Sheria and the concentration of perhaps 24,000 Turkish troops south of Junction Station.58 Given these circumstances Murray, who had the war cabinet’s sanction for an advance to Jerusalem, endeavoured to renew the offensive as soon as possible.59

The air war intensified in the brief pause between the two battles. For the first time in the campaign 5th Wing adopted a daily routine akin to a corps squadron in France, photographing the line to update maps and registering artillery.60 FA 300, reinforced with aviators from the Western Front and the improved Rumplers, also became ‘exceedingly active’, crossing the line daily and ranging west beyond

56 Groves, ‘The Organization and Work of the Royal Flying Corps’, presented to the general staff, EEF, 3 February 1917, LHCMA Groves papers, Item 2A. In this lecture Groves told the staff that from a unit of nine serviceable machines they could expect no more than 10 hours flying under normal circumstances and a maximum of 30 hours per day for no longer than two consecutive days. Between 26-28 March (three days) 5th Wing’s two squadrons, starting with 21 serviceable machines and losing eight during the battle, flew over 230 hours [‘Despatch dealing with the operations of the 5th Wing… March 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26]. 57 For the second battle Eastern Force had 170 guns (as compared with 94 at the first battle of Gaza), though the six heavy guns available in March could only be increased to 16. The French battleship Requin and two coastal monitors, M.21 and M. 22 also provided fire support during the second battle. The additional infantry division – the 74th – had just formed and had not yet received its artillery [MacMunn and Falls, Military Operations: Egypt and Palestine, Volume I, p. 304, 328 and 337; Wavell, The Palestine Campaigns, p. 84]. 58 Resume of operations, Middle East Brigade RFC for the week ending 12 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/2286/209/75/17; 1st Squadron reconnaissance and bombing reports, March-April 1917, NAUK AIR1/2288/209/75/58. 59 Major-General Sir Archibald Murray, GOC EEF to General Sir William Robertson, CIGS, 4 April 1917, NAUK WO106/716 60 See daily summaries in 5th Wing war diary, April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28. 260 Mazar.61 German aircraft bombed the aerodrome at Rafa regularly, sometimes multiple times a day. Unable to compete with the Germans in the air, 5th Wing used its numerical superiority to mount retaliation raids. In response to two raids on Rafa on 12 April, in which FA 300 dropped 28 bombs, 5th Wing launched 21 sorties (of which the AFC contributed at least 16) that dropped over 224 bombs on Ottoman camps.62

Dobell reconceived the capture of Gaza in two stages. On 17 April four infantry divisions and two cavalry divisions would occupy a jumping off line a few kilometres beyond the Wady Ghuzee. British guns would bombard Turkish strong- points around Gaza during the following 24 hours to prepare for the second advance at dawn on 19 April. While the infantry assaulted Gaza directly the cavalry would attack Turkish positions along the Gaza-Beersheba road to occupy enemy reinforcements.63 For the second battle 5th Wing had some additional aircraft: 28 serviceable.64 Eastern Force again assumed direct control of aviation and divided available aeroplanes between strategic reconnaissance, contact patrols (employing signalling methods used on the Somme), artillery co-operation and hostile aircraft patrols.65

The capture of jumping-off positions on 17 April and the preliminary bombardment the following day went to plan with few British casualties but things went awry on the 19th. Advancing dismounted and spread thinly across a wide front, the cavalry made little headway and suffered heavy casualties. Assaulting Gaza, the British infantry and tanks likewise faltered in the face of unsuppressed Turkish artillery and machine guns. From above, Williams discerned ‘an absence of “push”…a lack of cooperation between units and considerable uncertainty about the

61 Resume of operations, Middle East Brigade RFC for the week ending 12 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/2286/209/75/17. 62 Borton, ‘Bombing report’, 13 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28. 63 MacMunn and Falls, Military Operations: Egypt and Palestine, Volume I, pp. 329-331; Gullett, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VII, pp. 301-302. 64 Jones, The War in the Air: Volume V, p. 216. 65 OZ 1/27, ‘Co-operation by aircraft’, no date, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28; ‘Extract referring to Royal Flying Corps, from Eastern Force Order No. 40 of 12/4/17’, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28; Borton, Operation Order, 14 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28; Borton, Operation Order No. 2, 16 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28; ‘Extract from Eastern Force Order No. 42 of 17/4/17 referring to Royal Flying Corps’, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28; ‘Extract from Eastern Force Order No. 43 of 18/4/17 with reference to the Royal Flying Corps’, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28; ‘Extract referring to the Royal Flying Corps from Eastern Force instructions for the use of smoke’, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28. 261 whole operation...’.66 Aside from a short advance on the coast, the day ended in complete failure for Eastern Force.

The British staff recognised the critical importance of air-controlled artillery fire for the operation.67 The Turks held well-constructed positions commanding the approaches and until they reached their first objective, British gunners could not see the enemy line.68 In some respects, Eastern Force went into the second battle better equipped for artillery co-operation than previously. Using aerial photographs, GHQ’s Topographical Section (which arrived at the front on 1 April) hastily produced a 1:40,000 map of Gaza.69 Though not ‘perfectly accurate’, pre-registration of some guns indicated it would suffice, allowing 5th Wing’s observers to replace smoke balls with wirelessly transmitted grid co-ordinates. Further, the heavy batteries were brigaded into a Heavy Artillery Group as on the Western Front and allotted specific fire zones.70

As Table 8.1 demonstrates, however, 5th Wing’s co-operation with the artillery at Second Gaza proved less successful than during the first battle. FA 300 made no impression here, indecisively engaging just two of the wing’s 33 artillery sorties. As in March, the Germans focused their few – perhaps six – aircraft on reconnaissance and attacking British cavalry, against which they inflicted severe losses.71 They did no wireless artillery co-operation of their own.72 ‘Extremely unfavourable’ weather on 18 and 19 April accounted for some of 5th Wing’s disappointing performance, while the EEF’s shortage of guns and ammunition limited the assistance 5th Wing could offer. Indeed, in accordance with Eastern Force’s orders, 5th Wing’s CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Amyas Borton, provided four artillery

66 Williams, ‘Experiences in connection with the war of 1914/1918’, manuscript, RAAF. 67 Lynden-Bell to Maurice, 8 April 1917, IWM Documents 7826. 68 Borton, Operation Order No. 2, 16 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28. 69 Dov Gavish, ‘The Military Cartographic Effort in the Sinai-Palestine Campaign’, Yigal Sheffy and Shaul Shai (eds), The First World War: Middle Eastern Perspective: proceedings of the Israeli-Turkish International Colloquy, 3-6 April 2000, The Colloquy, Tel Aviv, 2000, p. 201. 70 ‘5th Wing Royal Flying Corps, Wireless Report for April, 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28; BGGS Eastern Force to GOCs Desert Column etc, ‘General Instructions-Artillery’, 9 April 1917, AWM45 12/7. 71 David Bullock, ‘Swift as Eagles: The Victory of the Royal Air Force in Palestine, 1914-1918’, PhD thesis, Kansas State Univeristy, 1995, pp. 230-31; Ion Idriess, The Desert Column: Leaves from the Diary of an Australian Trooper in Gallipoli, Sinai, and Palestine, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1951, p. 212; Private John MacNamara, diary, 18-20 April 1917, SLNSW MSMSS 2876. 72 Middle East Brigade, Resume of operations for week ending 3 May 1917, NAUK AIR1/2286/209/75/17. The RFC first detected FA 300 using wireless to direct artillery on 29 April 1917. 262 aircraft to cover the 14,000-yard battlefront despite experiments in February indicating that at least twice this number could operate in such an area without radio interference.73

Table 8.1 Artillery Co-operation, First and Second Gaza and Vimy Ridge74

First Gaza Second Gaza Vimy Ridge (26-28 March 1917) (17-19 April 1917) (9-11 April 1917)

Serviceable BE2s on the 12 17 20 battle’s first day

Artillery Sorties 20 33 54

Hours flown on artillery 62 84 127 sorties

Targets engaged 41 52 37 (+185 zone calls sent)

per aircraft 3.41 3.05 11.1 Targets per sortie 2.05 1.57 4.11 engaged per hour 0.66 0.61 1.74

Table 8.1’s comparison with the has limitations in that it does not consider substantial differences in the guns available, their organisation and the respective artillery plans. It does indicate that, allowing for the additional aircraft at its disposal, a corps squadron in France was capable of some, though not an overwhelming amount, of work in addition to what 5th Wing (effectively squadron strength in April 1917) achieved. The contrast in the number of targets engaged over a comparative period is, however, most significant. The RFC on the Western Front’s capability for alerting the gunners to spontaneous targets (using zone calls) significantly increased the artillery’s potency and, by early 1917, represented a corps

73 Brown, ‘Wireless jamming test’, 24 February 1917, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/24. This experiment demonstrated that three aircraft could work on a 5,000 yard front without interfering with each others’ transmissions. 74 ‘Despatch dealing with the operations of the 5th Wing… March 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26; ‘5th Wing Royal Flying Corps Wireless Report for March 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/26; ‘5th Wing Royal Flying Corps Wireless Report for April 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28; ‘HQ RFC Summaries of work April 1917’, NAUK AIR1/768/204/4/252; No. 16 Squadron war diary, April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1343/204/19/15. The Vimy Ridge statistics reflect the work done by No. 16 Squadron RFC attached to the Canadian Corps during the first three days of the offensive. The number of targets engaged at Vimy Ridge is the total of 1st (Corps) Wing in which No. 16 Squadron served. Nevertheless, No. 16 Squadron accounted for practically all the artillery co- operation its wing did during these three days. For example, on 9 April, No. 16 Squadron carried out 24 of 1st Wing’s 27 artillery co-operation sorties. Determining the number of zone calls answered by the artillery is difficult but the HQ RFC summary for 9 April indicates that the RFC made the majority of the 185 calls on the battle’s first day (9 April) and that artillery responded in the vast majority of cases. 263 squadron’s primary tool once a battle started. On the first day of the Arras campaign, 12th (Corps) Wing, under the command of Australian-born RFC officer Lieutenant- Colonel William Mitchell, conducted just one pre-arranged shoot – all the others were against active batteries or troops reported to the guns by air observers. ‘“Z” Day’, quipped Mitchell’s wireless equipment officer, ‘may be classified “Zone Call” Day’.75

Reports by AFC observers during Second Gaza reveal that, aside from struggling with poor visibility, they found the artillery slow, if not completely unresponsive, to their calls.76 Early on 19 April Ross Smith spotted a Turkish gun firing at a tank but, owing to ‘an absurd rule’ requiring observers to notify the Heavy Artillery Group HQ rather than the battery directly, it took 22 minutes for a British gun to respond. Five rounds silenced the enemy gun but not before it had disabled the British tank.77 Middle East Brigade was well aware of the more efficient system employed on the Western Front but could not implement it until Eastern Force had more experience with artillery maps and enough heavy artillery to permit greater decentralisation of its control.78

The RFC’s performance at Second Gaza enjoyed a strikingly successful postscript on 20 April – one that justified Middle East Brigade’s advocacy of the aeroplane’s strike potential and illustrated the potency of combining signals intelligence with aerial operations. Since early 1917 a special wireless interception station worked with 5th Wing to intercept messages from the enemy GHQ’s wireless transmitting station at – nicknamed ‘Agent X’ by Australian flyers – to FA 300. It provided the RFC with an indication of their opponent’s strength and movements and early warning of its sorties, including flight routes and times.79 On 19 April ‘Agent X’ disclosed Turkish orders for a cavalry counter-attack against the

75 Wireless Equipment Officer, 12th (Corps) Wing, ‘Report of Wireless Work from the 4th-9th April’, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1283. 76 Lieutenants Matulich and Smith, artillery co-operation report, 19 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28; Lieutenants Geere and Glen, artillery co-operation report, 19 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28; Captain Ellis and Lieutenant Smith, artillery co-operation report, 19 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28. 77 Ross Smith, diary, 19 April 1917 SLSA PRG18/19 78 Groves, ‘The Organization and Work of the Royal Flying Corps’, presented to the general staff, EEF, 3 February 1917, LHCMA Groves papers, Item 2A; ‘Artillery Co-operation Notes for Observers’, 10 December 1916, NAUK AIR1/1756/204/141/22; ‘Instructions (Provisional) – Co-operation between Aeroplanes and Artillery During an Advance’, registered by ME Brigade RFC HQ, 29 August 1916, Salmond Papers, RAF B3096; Brigadier-General A. H. Short, Royal Artillery Eastern Force Operation Order No. 3, 18 April 1917 (issued at 1845), AWM45 12/7. 79 Sheffy, British Military Intelligence in the Palestine Campaign, pp. 243-244; L. W. Sutherland, Aces and Kings, John Hamilton, London, 1935, pp. 169-177. 264 thinly held British inland flank and the following morning a No. 14 Squadron observer confirmed 2-3,000 Turkish cavalry at Hareira.80 Williams led a flight of four, dropping their bombs among the Ottoman troops as they watered.81 Although representing only about the equivalent of 75 seconds fire from an 18-pounder battery the concentrated delivery of these munitions onto such a vulnerable target gave them effectiveness far out of proportion to their weight.82 Williams recalled ‘pandemonium; men and horses ran in all directions radiating from the water-hole and bombs dropped anywhere in the vicinity could hardly miss a target’.83 Rafael de Nogales, a Venezuelan in the Ottoman 3rd Cavalry Division recalled that the raid ‘in less than thirty seconds caused us more losses perhaps than had their infantry and artillery fire the preceding day’. The corps, he claims, lost nearly 200 horses while an Australian observer afterwards reported survivors ‘galloping’ towards Sheria.84 Riderless horses arrived at the light horse lines at Shellal, eight kilometres away. ‘Agent X’ indicated that the raid compelled the Turkish cavalry commander to abandon the attack.85 In return 5th Wing lost one Australian pilot, Lieutenant Norman Steele, shot down and killed by anti-aircraft fire.

Writing home on 23 April 1917, Ross Smith explained that he had been through a period of ‘very hard fighting’ but that there was now ‘a temporary lull in the battle for Gaza’.86 This break in major operations would last six months and see British and Ottoman strategic policies vacillate, General Sir Edmund Allenby replace Murray as GOC EEF and an extensive reorganisation and expansion of British forces in the theatre, including the RFC. Although the front remained static a number of important developments occurred in the air campaign that would augment the RFC’s capabilities, present the Australian squadron with the opportunity to make a distinct

80 Middle East Brigade, Resume of operations for week ending 20 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/2286/209/75/17; Williams, These are facts, p. 65. 81 ‘Bombing report’, 20 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28. 82 Peter Mead, The Eye in the Air: History of Air Observation and Reconnaissance for the Army, 1785- 1945, HMSO, London, 1983, p. 119. 83 Williams, These are Facts, p. 65. 84 Rafael de Noagles and Muna Lee (translator), Four Years Beneath the Crescent, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1926, p. 351; Lieutenants Winter-Irving and Glen, reconnaissance report, 20 April 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/28. 85 Williams, These are Facts, p. 65; Richard Williams interviewed by Mel Pratt, 1973-74, NLA ORAL TRC 121/50. Von Sanders claims that the attack had already been cancelled by Fourth Army HQ that afternoon due to a lack of ammunition so it is unclear to what extent the raid actually affected Turkish plans [Von Sanders, Five Years in Turkey, p. 167]. 86 Ross Smith to mother, 23 April 1917, SLSA PRG 18/17. 265 contribution to operational planning and allow the British to secure air superiority before the third battle of Gaza.

Memoirs and histories of the Palestine campaign usually treat Allenby’s assumption of the EEF’s command in June as a break from the status quo and a turning point in the campaign.87 While his greater presence at the front and his rationalisation of the force’s command structure certainly made a dramatic impression – the airmen in 1st Squadron noted it – his command flourished on foundations established during the preceding 18 months.88

It is commonly assumed that the considerable expansion and reorganisation of the RFC between the second and third battles resulted from a special understanding of and enthusiasm for air power that Allenby brought from the Western Front.89 His outline for reinforcements, provided to the CIGS on 12 July, included five squadrons: ‘one for each of my 3 corps, one fighting squadron and one for GHQ’. He considered the additional aircraft ‘of vital importance as to employ my heavy artillery to the best advantage I must ensure command of the air’.90 Nevertheless, this is something that Murray and his staff had also understood: requests for more and better aircraft featured regularly in Murray’s official correspondence with London while behind the scenes Lynden-Bell petitioned the War Office’s Director of Military Operations in semi-official letters.91 Indeed, Murray had suggested a five squadron organisation to the CIGS, the same as Allenby’s, in May.92 Salmond also made the force’s deficiency in equipment clear to the Military Aeronautics Directorate, urging that ‘numbers of aircraft alone cannot compete with superior types’.93

Influential in securing additional and better aircraft for Egypt was the expansion of the pilot training system there during 1917 and the establishment of an

87 Hughes, Allenby and the British Strategy in the Middle East, pp. 14-17. Even German authors cite Allenby’s influence on the campaign [See for example Felmy’s essay in Neumann and Gurdon, The German Air Force in the Great War, Hodder & Stoughton, 1920, p. 255]. 88 Williams, These are Facts, pp. 71-72. 89 James Lawrence, Imperial Warrior: the Life and Times of Field-Marshal Viscount Allenby 1861- 1936, Weidenfield and Nicholson, London, 1993, p. 120; Williams, These are Facts, pp. 71-72. 90 General Sir Edmund Allenby, GOC EEF to Robertson, 12 July 1917, NAUK WO106/716. 91 EEF GHQ to Troopers, London, 20 March 1917, AWM4 1/6/12 Part 2; EEF GHQ to Chief, London, 31 March 1917, AWM4 1/6/12 Part 2; Sheffy, British Military Intelligence in the Palestine Campaign, p. 279; EEF GHQ to Troopers, London, 12 May 1917, AWM4 1/6/13 Part 1; Lynden-Bell to Maurice, 23 March 1917, 31 March 1917, 8 April 1917, 14 May 1917, IWM Documents 7826. 92 Murray to Robertson, 30 May 1917, Appendix 168, AWM4 1/6/13 Part 6. 93 Anne Baker, From Biplane to Spitfire: The Life of Air Chief Marshal Sir Geoffrey Salmond KCB KCMG DSO, Leo Cooper, Barnesly, 2003, pp. 105-106. 266 aircraft factory on Salmond’s initiative. Political support was necessary too, the influence of Leo Amery, the war cabinet’s well-connected assistant secretary, who ardently believed in air power’s potential in the Middle East appearing particularly significant.94 The War Office approved the establishment of a new fighter squadron (No. 111) a day before Allenby submitted his request and then another (No. 113- a corps squadron) shortly after.95

The RFC’s subsequent reorganisation occurred incidentally to any special conception of air power possessed by Allenby. Operations during 1916 and early 1917 had already indicated the inefficient and confused command arrangements between the EEF and 5th Wing.96 Allenby’s replacement of Eastern Force with a GHQ in direct command of three corps (XX, XXI and ) in August implied a clearer command of air assets – corps arranging tactical and GHQ arranging strategic work – but stopped short of distinguishing squadrons for particular types of work.97 The division of responsibilities between ‘corps’ and ‘army’ co- operation had, nonetheless, already informally emerged in 5th Wing. From May, 1st Squadron generally did strategic reconnaissance and long-distance bombing while No. 14 Squadron co-operated with the corps (though until the return of No. 14 Squadron’s flight from Arabia in July the Australians did some of 5th Wing’s 50-odd artillery shoots per month and occasional contact patrols with the cavalry).98 The delineation became formalised in October following a proposal by Middle East Brigade’s staff to reorganise the RFC in Egypt ‘on the same footing as in France’. RFC Middle East had, the proposal argued, become too large and complex to command; its organisation required GHQ’s ‘urgent attention’.99 With War Office

94 Katherine Epstein, ‘Imperial Airs: Leo Amery, Air Power and Empire, 1873-1945’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, volume 38, number 4, 2010, 571-598, pp. 578-79. 95 ‘The formation of service squadrons and flights in Egypt and Palestine 1917-18’, NAUK, AIR1/678/21/13/2090. 96 See, for example: Sheffy, British Military Intelligence in the Palestine Campaign, p. 211; EEF GHQ war diary, 20 March 1917, AWM4 1/6/12; EEF GHQ to GOC Eastern Force and Palestine L. of C. Defences, 29 May 1917, AWM4 1/6/13 Part 2. 97 GHQ memorandum, 13 August 1917, NAUK AIR1/1758/204/141/35. 98 Lists of observers engaged in artillery reconnaissance, April-August 1917, NAUK AIR1/1758/204/141/35; ‘Review of 5th Wing RFC Wireless Work for 1917- Sinai and Palestine’, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28; Lieutenants McNaughton and Lukins, reconnaissance report, 4 July 1917, NAUK AIR1/1758/204/141/33; Lieutenants Spragg and Headlam, reconnaissance report, 4 July 1917, NAUK AIR1/1758/204/141/33; ‘Report on operations, 4/7/17, 3rd Light Horse Brigade, AWM4 10/3/30. 99 Middle East Brigade HQ to CGS, GHQ EEF, no date (c. September 1917), Sir Geoffrey Salmond papers, private collection. This proposal does not refer to any previous discussion between GHQ and 267 approval 5th Wing became a ‘corps’ formation and a new ‘army’ wing (the 40th) was established. Two new brigade-level formations replaced Middle East Brigade: Palestine Brigade at the front to assume operational command of units east of the canal (and ‘X’ Aircraft Park at Abbassia) and HQ RFC Middle East in Cairo to administer the training units in Egypt and squadrons elsewhere in the Middle East.100 Aside from passing Middle East Brigade’s proposal onto the War Office, Allenby’s HQ only made one contribution to the scheme, actually narrowing its scope. Whereas Salmond had proposed making RFC HQ Middle East a division-level formation (like its counterpart in France) with its own GOC, Allenby determined that it should remain classified as a brigade command and that Salmond would command both it and Palestine Brigade.101 This, and Allenby’s delay in re-organising the RFC on Western Front lines until mid-September – when he had originally planned launching his offensive – indicates that his conception of air power may have been less innovative than is usually assumed.

Aside from some retaliatory bombing and artillery co-operation, reconnaissance and photography consumed the majority of 1st Squadron’s flying hours between the second and third battles. With human sources providing minimal intelligence during the period, GHQ relied heavily on aerial reconnaissance to monitor Turkish dispositions and traffic.102 Traditional observation reports (counting enemy tents or checking an agent’s report of an enemy concentration, for example) retained their place, though the EEF also developed an insatiable appetite for aerial photographs.103 After Second Gaza an intelligence officer joined 5th Wing’s photographic section and replaced the previously ad-hoc handling of photographs with the systematic interpretation, organisation and dissemination of intelligence data.104 Between the first and third battles the RFC’s monthly exposures increased

the RFC on the topic of reorganisation, suggesting that it is the first time this subject was broached officially. The proposal describes 5th Wing as containing four squadrons, dating it to September 1917. 100 GOC-in-C Egypt to CIGS, 13 September 1917, NAUK AIR1/129/15/40/197; ‘A’ Branch, Headquarters, Royal Flying Corps, Middle East, preface to war diary, October 1917, NAUK AIR1/2263/226/7/2J. 101 GOC-in-C Egypt to CIGS, 13 September 1917, NAUK AIR1/129/15/40/197. 102 Sheffy, British Military Intelligence in the Palestine Campaign, pp. 273-74. 103 See, for example Captain MacNaughton and Lieutenant Lukis, reconnaissance report, 18 August 1917, NAUK AIR1/1758/204/141/35. 104 ‘Photographic work of the RFC in Sinai and Southern Palestine during 1917’, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28; Lieutenant H. Hamshaw Thomas, officer in charge of photography, 5th Wing, ‘Technical photographic report for August 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1758/204/141/35. 268 from 411 to 1,342 (227 per cent) and from 2,557 to 24,113 prints (843 per cent).105 Although both squadrons in 5th Wing took photographs, 1st Squadron emerged as the EEF’s principal source, accounting for at least 81 per cent of the wing’s exposures between June and August.106

Organisation of the RFC in the Middle East, 27 October 1917

In contrast to the cartographic process on the Western Front, in which military maps emerged from a synthesis of traditional ground survey and aerial photography – ‘each lent authority to the other’ explains Finnegan – Allenby’s map makers (7th Field Survey Company) had to co-operate with 5th Wing’s photographic section to pioneer a technique for mapping terrain that had previously not been accurately surveyed.107 Using an ‘Aerocam’ continuous film camera (British service cameras

105 ‘Photographic work of the RFC in Sinai and Palestine during 1917’, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28. 106 See lists of photographs taken 5th Wing War diaries for June [AIR1/1757/204/141/31], July [AIR1/1758/204/141/33] and August [AIR1/1758/204/141/35]. It is appears that 5th Wing’s single Aerocam film camera was used exclusively by the AFC squadron for terrain mapping. The Aerocam was not suitable for the tactical reconnaissance (such as locating enemy battery positions) that No. 14 Squadron primarily carried out [Hamshaw Thomas, ‘May Technical Photographic Report’, 3 June 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/30]. 107 Peter Collier, ‘Innovative Military Mapping Using Aerial Photography in the First World War: Sinai, Palestine and Mesopotamia 1914–1919’, The Cartographic Journal, volume 31, number 2, 1994, 100-104; Gavish, ‘The Military Cartographic Effort in the Sinai-Palestine Campaign’, pp. 201-202; Terrence Finnegan, Shooting the Front: Allied Aerial Reconnaissance in the First World War, Spellmount, Stroud, 2011, p. 132. 269 typically used glass plates) 1st Squadron’s airmen systematically photographed 1,300 square kilometres of Ottoman territory in intersecting series of up to 120 exposures.108 The cartographers checked for distortion and uniformity of scale by overlapping these ‘strips’ and connecting them back to ‘fixed’ points in the British line. By October the EEF had 20 new 1:20,000 charts of southern Palestine, including 17 based almost entirely on the AFC’s aerial photography and without reference to inaccurate pre-war charts.109 In the days preceding and during the British offensive a staff working at 1st Squadron’s aerodrome at Weli Sheikh Nuran updated the sheets each day to reflect changes in enemy positions.110 Within about five hours of a photograph’s exposure they could develop it, transpose relevant details on a 1:20,000 sheet and distribute 50 copies by air.111 Palestine Brigade’s photographers reasonably considered the results ‘probably unique in the ’.112

Even so, the intelligence gathering and mapping endeavours the AFC participated in during 1917 neither provided the EEF with a flawless product nor did the British staff always use it to its full potential. Mapping covered terrain containing enemy positions comprehensively but neglected other areas, a consequence, suggests Yigal Sheffy of the British advance occurring faster than the Intelligence Department anticipated.113 British troops advancing north of Beersheba in early November were ‘much handicapped’ by a lack of maps, as initially were infantry arriving in the Judean Hills a fortnight later. Topographical errors in the new charts also led

108 Unique among RFC service cameras, the Aero Camera ‘F’ type used 5-inch film spooled on 25-50 feet rolls that provided up to 120 exposures in a continuous series. The camera was completely automatic, being driven by a small propeller that could be set to release the shutter at different intervals. 5th Wing’s photographers modified their camera using gramophone springs to achieve the right interval between exposures for their mapping series [Hamshaw Thomas, ‘Technical photographic report for July’, 4 August 1917, NAUK AIR1/1758/204/141/33]. On the Western Front the RFC briefly experimented with the ‘Aerocam’ of ‘F’ Type camera following its introduction in 1915 but never employed it as extensively as the RFC in Palestine [Finnegan, Shooting the front, p. 258-59; ‘Review of 5th Wing RFC wireless work for 1917- Sinai and Palestine’, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28]. 109 ‘Review of 5th Wing RFC wireless work for 1917- Sinai and Palestine’, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28; H. Hamshaw Thomas, ‘Geographical Reconnaissance by Aeroplane Photography, with Special Reference to the Work Done on the Palestine Front’, The Geographical Journal, volume 55, number 5, 1 May 1920, 349-370, pp. 351-352. 110 40th Wing RFC, weekly resume of operations, 26/10-1/11/17, NAUK AIR1/2118/207/72. 111 Salmond to CGS, EEF GHQ, 9 November 1917, AIR1/2286/209/75/20; Brigadier-General G. P. Dawnay, BGGS, GHQ EEF to Salmond, 26 October 1917, AWM4 1/6/18 Part 4; Ross Smith, diary, 2 November 1917, SLSA PRG 18/19. 112 ‘Photographic work of the RFC in Sinai and Southern Palestine during 1917’, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28. 113 Sheffy, British Military Intelligence in the Palestine Campaign, p. 282. 270 commanders to make tactical errors.114 On the other hand, human bias could misconstrue the raw data of aerial reconnaissance. 1st Squadron’s comprehensive tally of Turkish tents in September, for example, failed to modify the prevailing view of British authorities, based primarily on diplomatic sources, that Turkish forces had some 52,000 troops at the battlefront – some two and a half times the actual number.115

The aerial survey undertaken by 1st Squadron during mid-1917 nonetheless represents the single most significant contribution that Australian airmen made to a campaign during the Great War. At no other point would an AFC squadron independently undertake a distinct task of such operational significance – a point obscured at the time in RFC communiqués, which did not distinguish the AFC’s part within 5th Wing’s general effort.116 1st Squadron would continue aerial survey in 1918 but with significantly better aircraft, more consistent reinforcements and the support of several other RFC units. In 1917 it struggled with inadequate numbers of technically-obsolete aircraft, relying on the BE2e until their replacement with RE8s in October. Given the BE2e’s vulnerability the squadron had to employ its Martinsydes and BE12as as close escorts – an ‘extraordinarily bad arrangement’ as 1st Squadron’s CO recognised – but one for which there existed no alternative while the RFC in Palestine lacked fighters to effectively intercept hostile aircraft.117

Despite the escorts AFC losses spiked during mid-1917: 14 of the squadron’s 17 deaths in action that year (82 per cent) occurred in sixteen weeks between March and July.118 Exacerbating the effect of these casualties, in April Australian authorities ordered the replacement of British airmen in the squadron (including Australians with RFC commissions) with AIF officers.119 As senior flight commander Williams

114 ‘History of the RFC in Sinai and Palestine, 1917’, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28; 40th Wing RFC resume of operations, 2/11-8/11/17, NAUK AIR1/2118/207/72; Sheffy, British Military Intelligence in the Palestine Campaign, p. 282. 115 ‘Despatch dealing with the operations of the 5th Wing Royal Flying Corps… September 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1758/204/141/37; Hughes, Allenby and British Strategy in the Middle East, pp. 51-54. 116 Lieutenant-Colonel Edgar Reynolds, AIF Staff Officer for Aviation, report on inspection tour to Palestine in October-November 1917, AWM10 4343/3/2. 117 Williams, These are Facts, p. 75; Experiences of Flight Lieutenant C. R. Davidson, RAF Staff College 8th Course, 12 May 1930, NAUK AIR1/2391/228/11/151; Squadron Leader A. T. Cole, ‘War Experiences’, Air Publication 1097, ‘A selection of lectures and essays from the work of officers attending the second course at the Royal Air Force Staff College’, 1923-1924, Air Ministry, 1924, p. 24. 118 1st Squadron manuscript history, AWM224 MSS514. 119 Major Foster Rutledge, CO 1st Squadron to Lieutenant Colonel David Fulton, Commandant, AIF HQ Egypt, 14 April 1917, AWM22 31/4/2000. 271 replaced Rutledge as CO on 22 May and in the following month 14 AIF pilots joined the squadron from training units, swamping it with inexperience.120 Five of them lasted barely a month.121 Lieutenant-Colonel Borton attributed 1st Squadron’s disastrous raid on Ottoman Fourth Army HQ on the Mount of Olives on 28 June to inexperience; few bombs landed within 100 yards of the large and conspicuous target and five of the eight aircraft involved were lost in forced landings, some because pilots mismanaged their fuel.122 Meanwhile the squadron’s cadre of veterans had to work beyond the point of exhaustion because AIF Administrative Headquarters neglected to provide adequate reinforcements for the AFC (see chapter 3). For much of 1917, 1st Squadron functioned several pilots and observers under establishment strength.123

German capability in the air meanwhile increased in mid-1917 when FA 300 received a pair of Albatros D.IIIs. An Australian reconnaissance flight (a BE2e escorted by a Martinsyde and a BE12a) encountered them for the first time on 8 July and lost both escorts.124 As Cole, who regularly escorted the reconnaissance machines in a Martinsyde related, the performance gap between the aircraft put the initiative entirely in the hands of the German pilots.

As our performance was so much inferior… we just had to wait until they came and dived on us and our only tactic was to turn up at them with our one shaky Lewis gun, mounted on the top wing to miss the propeller, getting in a short burst until we stalled

120 1st Squadron nominal roll, AWM224 MSS515. The officers were 2nd Lieutenants L. W. Rogers (joined No. 1 Squadron 16 June 1917); J. H. Butler (8 June 1917); A. H. Searle (21 June 1917); E. L. Spragg (18 June 1917); H. L. Fraser (15 June 1917); J. D. S. Potts (15 June 1917); P. G. Hartley (16 June 1917); J. S. Brassell (21 May 1917); G. C. Peters (30 May 1917); R. A. Austin (11 June 1917); C le B. Broun (15 June 1917); L. M. Potts (15 June 1917); C. H. Vautin (7 June 1917); G. C. Stones (23 May 1917). 121 Vautin was shot down by enemy aircraft and captured, 8 July 1917; Stones was shot down and killed by anti-aircraft fire, 30 May 1917; Brassell was shot down and killed by enemy aircraft, 25 June 1917; Searle was shot down and killed by enemy aircraft on 13 July 1917; Hartley was struck off the squadron’s strength on 10 July 1917 on account of a medical condition [1st Squadron nominal roll, AWM224 MSS515]. 122 Borton, ‘Report on bomb raid carried out 26 June 1917, 27 June 1917, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/31; ‘Report on bombs dropped 26.6.17, NAUK AIR1/1757/204/141/31; ‘Aviation report’, 31 July 1917, NAUK AIR1/2287/209/75/31; R. Meinertzhagen, Army Diary 1899-1926, Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, 1960, p. 215. 123 Salmond to AIF Headquarters, Egypt, 14 October 1917, AWM22 31/9/2000. 124 Lieutenant Claude Vautin flying a BE12a was shot down and captured and Captain Charles Brooks (an RFC officer attached to 1st Squadron) shot down and killed. 272 and fell away in a spin. After seven abortive dives they gave up (we couldn’t) and went away.125

Despite this the EEF continued to benefit from aerial support vastly superior to what FA 300 provided its Ottoman counterpart. Artillery co-operation on the other side of the line peaked at 13 sorties in October (the RFC did 130) while systematic aerial survey of the type carried out by Middle East Brigade only commenced in mid- October.126 The Turks would fight the autumn campaign using inferior ‘pilgerkarten’ (pilgrimage maps).127 Small but frequent bombing raids, which 5th Wing found impossible to intercept until the arrival of some Bristol Fighters in October, represented FA 300’s most significant threat to the EEF. When Allenby’s headquarters moved to the front in August his CGS, Major-General Arthur Lynden- Bell, noted that they would probably be bombed every day: ‘that can’t be helped and they are sure to bomb us if they wish to wherever we go’.128

Although the situation improved slightly when No. 14 Squadron received some DH2 fighters in June, it was the ‘critical position’ (as one Turkish report described it) of the front’s logistics that undermined German air power.129 By the end of July FA 300 had six serviceable aircraft and nearly half its strength suffering syphilis; by late September, because of a lack of reinforcements and ‘working material’, the German unit had a pair of airworthy two-seaters and two fighters to face over 40 British aircraft.130 ‘Mastery of the air has unfortunately for some weeks completely passed over to the English,’ admitted the German commander of the Turkish Eighth Army, Kress von Kressenstein, on 29 September.131 Indeed, 5th Wing flew 721 hours that month and fought just five aerial combats – German pilots initiating only one.132 Notably, Kressenstein’s admission preceded the deployment of

125 Air Vice Marshal A. T. Cole, ‘Courageous Companions’, manuscript memoir, p. 18, AWM PR88/154. 126 ‘Review of 5th Wing RFC Wireless Work for 1917- Sinai and Palestine’, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28. 127 Gavish, ‘The Military Cartographic Effort in the Sinai-Palestine Campaign’ pp. 206-08; Anon., ‘Die deutschen Fliegerstreitkräfte an der Sinai- und Palästina-Front. 1916-1918’ Luftwelt, volume 2, number 10, 1935, 404-407, p. 406. 128 Lynden-Bell to Maurice, 23 August 1917, IWM Documents 7826. 129 Hussein Husni Amir Bey, ‘Yilderim’, manuscript history, AWM255 7. This officer on Falkenhayn’s Yilderim Army Group HQ staff cited the ‘incapacity of the railways’, a lack of finances and the inefficiency of Turkish administration for the serious problems of supplying the Palestine front. 130 ‘Aviation report’, 31 July 1917, NAUK AIR1/2287/209/75/31. 131 Kress von Kressenstein to Yilderim HQ, 29 September 1917, EEF GHQ Intelligence Summary, 30 October 1918, AWM4 8/4/10 Part 2 132 Borton, ‘Combats in the Air, September 1917’, 2 October 1917, NAUK AIR1/1758/204/141/37. 273 the RFC’s much-vaunted Bristol Fighters and their destruction of the first enemy Albatros on 8 October. It came down in British lines and was, noted Australian air mechanic Joseph Bull, ‘a fine machine in the first place but the repairs made to it show they have no proper material at hand in the field’.133

The German position in the air was to be revived by the arrival of four squadrons (FAs 301, 302, 303 and 304), an aircraft depot (with 40 two-seaters and 16 fighters) and an aviation headquarters staff as part of General Erich von Falkenhayn’s Yilderim Army Group, which began reinforcing the Palestine front in October.134 These squadrons, however, lost a considerable quantity of equipment through accidents and theft en-route and arrived in Palestine only a fortnight before the British offensive began – too late to reverse the air superiority Allenby’s airmen held by zero hour.135

Ostensibly the RFC’s reinforcement and re-organisation, effective 5 October 1917, put it on a sound footing to support the EEF, which by that time had expanded to comprise seven infantry divisions, three cavalry divisions and 88 heavy guns.136 For the third battle of Gaza Palestine Brigade possessed three times the number of serviceable aircraft it had in April, organised and trained to provide the EEF with several distinct forms of air support concurrently.137 Allenby’s operation orders gave 5th (Corps) Wing responsibility for artillery co-operation, contact patrols and tactical reconnaissance. No. 14 Squadron, organised with dedicated contact patrol and artillery flights as in France, would support XXI Corps (to which three quarters of the force’s heavy artillery was attached) in its assault on Gaza while No. co-operated with XX Corps and Desert Mounted Corps for the attack on Beersheba

133 Mark Lax, One Airman’s War: Aircraft Mechanic Joe Bull’s Personal Diaries 1916-1919, Banner Books, Maryborough, 1997, p. 73. 134 For the formation and composition of the Yilderim Army Group (also known as Army Group F or Heeresgruppe F) see Edward Erickson, Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War, Greenwood Press, Westport, 2001, pp. 166-172; Hussein Husni Amir Bey, ‘Yilderim’, AWM255 7. 135 Anon.,‘Die deutschen Fliegerstreitkräfte an der Sinai- und Palästina-Front. 1916-1918’, pp. 404- 405. At the beginning of the British offensive FA 300 and FA 301 were at an aerodrome at Ramleh, FA 302 at El Sawafir, FA 303 at El Tine and FA 304 (sometimes referred to as FA 304b for ‘Bavarian’) at Arak el Menshiye. 136 Wavell, The Palestine Campaigns, pp. 138-140. 137 Salmond to CGS, EEF GHQ, 9 November 1917, AIR1/2286/209/75/20. Seventy of the RFC’s 83 machines were serviceable. 274 and subsequent exploitation.138 The squadrons of 40th (Army) Wing likewise had distinct tasks: No. 111 Squadron would fly air superiority missions while 1st Squadron reconnoitred ‘areas beyond the tactical zone and in which the enemy’s main reserves are located’.139 Salmond – ever eager to demonstrate the strike potential of aircraft – planned for the exploitation by ordering all machines to have ‘trench machine gun mountings’ and bomb racks fitted. On his suggestion GHQ also authorised the raising of a temporary bombing unit, ‘B Flight’, from the training group.140

Despite these considerable improvements to Palestine Brigade’s strength and capability, its on-paper strength masked some deficiencies in the field. Though available for the battle, the two new squadrons lacked experienced airmen and aircraft and established themselves at the front only shortly before zero hour.141 At the RFC’s command and administration level the sudden expansion in early October created a shortage of staff officers that Salmond could not remedy before the offensive. With London unable to provide staff, RFC authorities in Egypt had to make do with personnel in local units.142 5th (Corps) Wing HQ lost its CO, three staff officers and 30 ranks to the new 40th (Army) Wing HQ three weeks before zero. For the offensive’s first ten days Salmond would have two wing commanders for a force structure that required six.143 Meanwhile, the additional service squadrons strained the RFC’s logistics, creating ‘serious congestion’ in the supply of aircraft during the midst of operations and a shortage of motor transport for the squadrons – particularly problematic given Allenby’s intention to advance the British line beyond Jerusalem. Even clerical supplies ran short, Salmond urgently appealing to the War Office for

138 Salmond to CGS, EEF GHQ, 9 November 1917, AIR1/2286/209/75/20; Squadron Leader H. I. Hanmer, Staff College essay, 6th Course, NAUK AIR1/2389/228/11/118; Minutes of Commander-in- Chief’s Conference, 1 October 1917, AWM4 1/6/18 Part 2. 139 ‘Force Order No. 54 by General Sir Edmund Allenby’, 22 October 1917, AWM4 1/6/18 Part 3; Dawnay to GOC Palestine Brigade RFC, 26 October 1917, AWM4 1/6/18 Part 4. A map illustrating the tactical and strategic reconnaissance zones is in AWM4 1/6/18 Part 5. 140 Salmond to CGS, EEF GHQ, 9 November 1917, AIR1/2286/209/75/20; Minutes of Commander-in- Chief’s Conference, 15 October 1917, AWM4 1/6/18 Part 3. It is unclear exactly what Salmond meant by ‘trench machine gun mountings’. It is possible he was referring to mountings on which Lewis guns could be fixed to fire downwards for strafing targets on the ground. 141 Minutes of Commander-in-Chief’s Conference, 15 October 1917, AWM4 1/6/18 Part 3; ‘The formation of service squadrons and flights in Egypt and Palestine 1917-18, NAUK, AIR1/678/21/13/2090. 142 Cable, Adastral Three to GHQ Egypt, 1 October 1917, NAUK AIR1/129/15/40/197. 143 Routine Orders, 40th Wing RFC, 5 October 1917, NAUK AIR1/2213/209/28/8; Salmond to CGS, EEF GHQ, 9 November 1917, AIR1/2286/209/75/20. 275 more typewriters and explaining how their paucity had ‘seriously handicapped the RFC’s expansion.144

Also disruptive to the RFC’s efficient running during the battle, a fortnight before zero Salmond received notice of his imminent relief as GOC RFC HQ Middle East and Palestine Brigade. Major-General Sefton Brancker arrived in Egypt on 1 November and relieved Salmond four days later.145 This bizarrely-timed change of command had nothing to do with Salmond’s performance – indeed, Allenby praised his work and regretted losing him.146 Rather, it resulted from political machinations in London where Brancker, as Deputy Director-General of Military Aeronautics, fell out with the Army Council over his perceived support for the establishment of a separate air ministry.147 That Brancker, whose field experience amounted to four months in command of a wing in 1915, should supplant Salmond, who had managed the RFC’s development in Egypt from inception and who had the complicated task of holding two brigade-level commands concurrently (HQ RFC Middle East and Palestine Brigade) during major operations is an indictment of the Army Council and particularly the judgment of the CIGS, Sir William Robertson.

Allenby surprised his adversaries on 31 October 1917 by launching his main offensive against their inland flank. There, at Beersheba, he intended using the majority of his force (the Desert Mounted Corps and XX Corps) to roll up the Ottoman line to the north-west while XXI Corps, stripped of most of its transport but well-supported by heavy artillery, besieged Gaza. In the event a lack of water held up the mobile columns advancing from Beersheba; they did not reach Huj until 8 November giving Turkish Eighth Army in the Gaza line time to escape the British pincer and withdraw north.

During this initial phase of the offensive 1st Squadron reconnoitred the country 10,000 yards beyond the British front between two and four times daily for GHQ. Reports from Australian observers indicated that Allenby’s diversionary assault

144 ‘A’ Branch, Headquarters, Royal Flying Corps, Middle East, 3 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/2363/226/7/2K. 145 ‘A’ Branch, Headquarters, Royal Flying Corps, Middle East, preface to war diary, November 1917, NAUK AIR1/2363/226/7/2K. 146 Allenby to Salmond 10 November 1917 [quoted in Baker, From Biplane to Spitfire, p. 115]. 147 Malcolm Cooper, The Birth of Independent Air Power: British Air Policy in the First World War, Allen & Unwin, London, 1986, pp. 111-114; Norman MacMillan (editor), Sir Sefton Brancker, William Heinemann Ltd, London, 1935, pp. 154-170. 276 on Gaza initially worked. On 31 October enemy reserves moved towards Gaza – and not against the main British effort at Beersheba – and during the first few days of the offensive Turkish troops built trenches facing the sea at Askalon where British intelligence had deceived Falkenhayn into expecting an amphibious landing.148 From 1 November, however, observers tracked the movement of ‘considerable reinforcements’ to the Sheria area where the Desert Mounted and XX Corps were advancing following the capture of Beersheba.149 Air reconnaissance detected the Turkish withdrawal from the back area early on 6 November that preceded the general retirement from Gaza that night.150 Visual reconnaissance in the ‘strategical’ area nonetheless failed to change GHQ’s vastly exaggerated estimate of enemy strength (45,000 Turkish troops including 25,000 east of Atawine), perhaps because Australian observers found estimating troop numbers in the rough terrain north-east of Beersheba ‘extremely difficult’.151 Owing to the EEF’s shortage of one corps squadron the Australians also photographed the enemy front line to provide units in the field with revised maps each evening.152 Although 1st Squadron had ceased artillery co- operation in August, AFC operators still manned artillery wireless stations (and would do so until the Armistice). Private John MacNamara’s station accompanied one of the few heavy batteries attached to XX Corps for the assault on Beersheba: ‘We bombarded all day long’, he noted on 31 October. ‘We did excellent work at Beersheba and put a couple of batteries out of action’.153

Between 7-15 November, Palestine Brigade pressed all available aircraft into attacking enemy troops and transport as they retired to the Jaffa-Jerusalem line.

148 Hussein Husni Amir Bey, ‘Yilderim’, AWM255 7. 149 For RFC ‘strategical’ reconnaissance reports from 1-6 November 1917 see EEF GHQ war diary, November 1917, AWM4 1/6/19 Parts 3 and 4; ‘Resume of operations of the 40th Wing, Royal Flying Corps, 26.10.17-1.11.17’, NAUK AIR1/2118/207/72; ‘Resume of operations of the 40th Wing, Royal Flying Corps, 2.11.17-8.11.17’, NAUK AIR1/2118/207/72. 150 ‘Summary of aerial reconnaissance, 6 November 1917’, AWM4 1/6/19 Part 4; Edward Erickson, Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War 1: A Comparative Study, Routledge, Oxon, 2007, pp. 123- 24. 151 Major-General L. J. Bols, CGS, EEF GHQ to GOCs XX Corps and Desert Mounted Corps, 4 November 1917, AWM4 1/6/19 Part 3; ‘Resume of operations of the 40th Wing, Royal Flying Corps, 2.11.17-8.11.17’, NAUK AIR1/2118/207/72; Brancker to GS, GHQ EEF, 22 December 1917, NAUK AIR1/2286/209/75/19. 152 Ross Smith, diary, 2 November 1917, SLSA PRG 18/19; ‘Resume of operations of the 40th Wing, Royal Flying Corps, 2.11.17-8.11.17’, NAUK AIR1/2118/207/72. 153 John MacNamara, diary, 31 October 1917, SLNSW MSMSS 2876. For another account of the campaign by a 1st Squadron wireless operator see George Shaw, ‘Wireless Operator on Active Service: Extracts From the Diary of Private George W. Shaw, Wireless Operator Attached to the Australian Flying Corps’, Air, Land and Sea, volume 1, number 9, December 1918, 528-537. 277 During ten raids 40th (Army) Wing dropped nearly 10 tons of bombs and fired an unrecorded quantity of ammunition at ground targets – a three and a half fold increase in ordnance dropped per day since the Ottoman retirement from the frontier in March. RFC staff used strategic reconnaissance (of which 1st Squadron maintained three each day in addition to the bombing) to identify choke points along the Turkish Eighth Army’s line of retreat; the air offensive followed the columns north, harassing them from Mejdel to Jaffa.154 An examination of RFC bombing reports and Ottoman sources indicates that Palestine Brigade’s raids had three adverse effects on the enemy’s effort to withdraw to a new defensive line in good order.155 First, the airmen inflicted considerable casualties among enemy troops and transport over 15 kilometres beyond the leading British cavalry patrols and well beyond the range of the EEF’s heavy artillery.156 ‘They… wrecked our columns of artillery,’ recalled de Nogales, ‘disembowelled the horses of the squadrons that protected our flanks and caused serious losses to our infantry… [who] could find no means of defense against those pertinacious aviators…’.157 Bombing also damaged Turkish telephonic communications inhibiting the efforts of enemy commanders to co-ordinate rearguard actions and forcing Yilderim GHQ to use wireless, which the British could intercept.158 Finally, the air attacks demoralised Ottoman forces, turning their retreat, which began in good order on 5-6 November, into a rout. By 9 November Kressenstein had a ‘disastrous panic’ on his hands and Falkenhayn’s HQ, aware ‘that all cohesion and organization in the Eighth Army had broken down’ had to cancel a

154 40th Wing directed their attacks at the following targets: 7 November: Mejdel railway station and troops retreating as far north as Arak el Menshiye; 8 November: Arak el Menshiye railway station; 9 November: Et Tine railway station and aerodrome and troops retreating north-east of Julis; 10 November: Junction station and the bridge over Wady Surar; 11 November: no bombing due to dust storm; 12 November: Junction station; 13 November: Junction station; 14 November: railway between Junction station and Ramleh; 15 November: troops and rolling stock north of Ludd and a camp east of Jaffa. 155 GHQ situation reports, November 1917, AWM4 1/6/19 Parts 4 and 5; 1st Squadron manuscript unit history, p. 16, AWM224 MSS515; Hussein Husni Amir Bey, ‘Yilderim’, AWM255 7; 40th Wing RFC resume of operations, 2/11-8/11/17, NAUK AIR1/2118/207/72; Report of the evacuation of the airfield Arak el Manchije 1917, BHStA IV, Flug und Luftschiffe, file 54; Ross Smith, diary, 7-15 November 1917, SLSA PRG18/19; Kressenstein, ‘The Campaign in Palestine from the Enemy’s Side’, p. 511; Lax, One Airman’s War, pp. 80-83. 156 Ross Smith, diary, 7 November 1917, SLSA PRG18/19; ‘Situation report 7th November 1917’, AWM4 1/6/19 Part 4; Report of the evacuation of the airfield Arak el Manchije 1917, Flug und Luftschiffe, BHStA IV, file 54. 157 de Nogales, Four Years Beneath the Crescent, p. 396. 158 Major-General Sefton Brancker, GOC RFC HQ Middle East and Palestine Brigade RFC to General Staff, GHQ EEF, 22 December 1917, NAUK AIR1/2286/209/75/19; Hussein Husni Amir Bey, ‘Yilderim’, AWM255 7. 278 planned counter-offensive.159 That afternoon, AFC observers reported the Turkish main force as a ‘disorganised rabble’ strung out between Et Tine and Ramleh.160 When Turkish troops occupied their new line north of Jaffa on 15 November a German officer warned that ‘dug-outs must certainly be provided, otherwise everybody will disappear in event of an air raid’.161

The rapid and disorganised Ottoman retreat hamstrung the Luftstreitkräfte. The new abteilungen had a strong presence over the battlefield during the offensive’s first week but almost none for the following fortnight after the British breakthrough at Gaza.162 A shortage of motorised and rail transport relegated the German aviation units to a slow retreat and forced them to abandon large quantities of stores and at least 15 aeroplanes.163 By 14 November the five abteilungen had also lost nine pilots and two observers in action and several others to illness. Re-establishing themselves on aerodromes in northern Palestine at the month’s end, the entire Luftstreitkräfte in Palestine could muster 17 pilots and 6 observers – less than the strength of a British corps squadron.164

Limiting the results of the air offensive, Palestine Brigade had to curtail its efforts after 9 November due to a shortage of serviceable aircraft engines.165 40th Wing’s rate of sorties dropped sharply during the week-long offensive and only covered the coastal flank of the Turkish retirement: further inland, the Ottoman Seventh Army withdrew towards Jerusalem relatively unmolested from the air.166

159 Kressenstein, ‘The Campaign in Palestine from the Enemy’s Side’, p. 511; Report by Kress written 17 December 1917 at Tul Keram, quoted in Hussein Husni Amir Bey, ‘Yilderim’, AWM255 7; Report by Falkenhayn, 9 November 1917, Hussein Husni Amir Bey, ‘Yilderim’, AWM255 7. 160 ‘Situation report 9th November 1917’, AWM4 1/6/19 Part 5. 161 Volte to Major von Papen, 14 November 1917, EEF GHQ Intelligence Summary, 26 October 1918, AWM4 8/4/10 Part 2. 162 ‘History of the RFC in Sinai and Palestine, 1917’, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28; Bullock, ‘Swift as Eagles’, pp. 289-90. 163 ‘Situation report, 16th November 1917’, AWM4 1/6/19 Part 6; Anon., ‘Die deutschen Fliegerstreitkräfte an der Sinai- und Palästina-Front. 1916-1918’, p. 405; Report of the evacuation of the airfield Arak el Manchije 1917, Flug und Luftschiffe, BHStA IV, file 54. 164 Anon., ‘Die deutschen Fliegerstreitkräfte an der Sinai- und Palästina-Front. 1916-1918’, p. 406. 165 HQ Palestine Brigade RFC, ‘Summary of Events for 9.11.1917’, AWM4 1/6/19 Part 5. 166 Erickson, Ordered to Die, p. 173. According to 40th Wing’s resume of operations [NAUK AIR1/2118/207/72] and situation reports submitted by the RFC to GHQ [AWM4 1/6/19 Parts 4 and 5] Palestine Brigade conducted the following number of sorties during the Turkish retreat: 7 November 1917 (approximately 30 against Mejdel railway station and columns retreating as far north as Arak el Menshiye); 8 November (two raids of approximately 30 sorties each against Arak el Menshiye railway yard, camps and FA 304’s aerodrome); 9 November (42 sorties in three raids against enemy troops retiring north of Julis, Et Tine railway station and aerodrome); 10 November (13 sorties against Junction Station); 11 November (no bombing due to dust storms); 12 November (raid on RFC stations- 279 Further, as one pilot in No. 111 Squadron noted, ‘these raids were carried out in a very haphazard manner. There was no recognised formation for approaching the objective and on arrival each pilot went for the target that appealed to him’. He also pointed to ‘inefficient staff work’; orders for targets arrived late and personnel lacked training in using some of the bombing equipment.167 Despite the casualties, confusion and damage to morale the British air offensive inflicted on them, Ottoman forces saved over 80 per cent of their transport and perhaps an even greater proportion of their artillery.168

Between 18-24 November the Desert Mounted and XXI Corps advanced into the Judean Hills from the west in an attempt to capture Bireh and make the Turkish position in Jerusalem untenable. The endeavour failed owing to ‘the difficulty of the country and the strength of the Turkish positions’; the offensive stalled for the following fortnight while Allenby re-organised his forces, deploying XX Corps for a direct assault on the Holy City.169 Commencing on 8 December, Allenby entered Jerusalem three days later. By the year’s end British troops had pushed the Ottoman line beyond artillery range of the city and established a line north of the Auja river.

While 5th (Corps) Wing supported British troops in the Judean hills directly, 1st Squadron bombed targets behind Turkish lines including aerodromes, shipping on the Dead Sea, bridges over the Jordan and rail yards congested with rolling stock.170 Following the capitulation of Jerusalem, Palestine Brigade also ordered strikes against retreating columns; ‘we are bombing and machine gunning their line of retreat for all we are worth’, reported Brancker on 9 December.171 The Australians most pressing concern, however, remained photography as Allenby’s forces now occupied largely uncharted territory. Despite bad weather 1st Squadron photographed 600 square kilometres during December, producing 10,000 prints and eight new 1:20,000 maps number of sorties unrecorded); 13 November (raid on Junction station- number of sorties unrecorded); 14 November (9 sorties raid rail traffic between Junction Station and Ramleh); 15 November (17 sorties attack rolling stock north of Ludd and a camp east of Jaffa). 167 Squadron Leader H. I. Hamner, essay on war service experiences completed at the RAF Staff College’s sixth course, NAUK AIR1/2389/228/11/118. 168 Erickson notes that Ottoman sources suggest that they lost between 11 and 19 per cent of transport and 11 per cent of artillery. British sources claim that the Turks lost as much as 37 per cent of their artillery [Erickson, Ottoman Army Effectiveness, pp. 128-29]. 169 Chief Egypforce to Chief London, 28 November 1917, AWM4 1/6/19 Part 8. 170 ‘Despatch dealing with the operations of the 40th Wing, Royal Flying Corps, in Palestine during the month of December 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1672/204/112/1. 171 Brancker to an unnamed cabinet member, 9 December 1917 [quoted in MacMillan, Sefton Brancker, p. 174]. 280 (four of which appeared in second edition before the year’s end).172 Relative to the RFC’s modest accomplishments at Second Gaza it is a striking achievement and illustrative of the RFC’s considerable evolution in the Middle East during 1917.

Even so, limitations in RFC Middle East’s logistics and deficient staff work continued to encumber the squadrons during the offensive’s final phase. British troops occupied Jaffa on 16 November but owing to a shortage of transport 1st Squadron remained at Weli Sheikh Nuran – over 100 kilometres behind the battlefront – for the following three weeks.173 The Australians moved to Julis on 5 December only to discover that headquarters staff had allocated 40th Wing a ploughed field that became inundated with water within 72 hours. Few machines could get off the boggy aerodrome on 9 December to support operations at Jerusalem.174 Major Williams convinced Borton (now 40th Wing’s CO) to allow 1st Squadron to move to a better site at Mejdel.175 Although the squadron could resume regular operations from there the aircraft remained without shelter, causing them to deteriorate.176 A storm on Christmas eve destroyed several of 1st Squadron’s machines. Fortunately the unit began receiving Bristol Fighters to replace its older types in the subsequent days, the result of representations to Brancker by Lieutenant-Colonel Edgar Reynolds, who as the AIF’s staff officer for aviation inspected the Palestine front in November.177

Despite these problems, in November and December 40th Wing dropped 14 tons of bombs, registered 1,332 negatives and produced nearly 17,000 prints. Of the wing’s 2,200 flying hours, 1st Squadron had been responsible for just over 60 per cent, No. 111 Squadron and ‘B’ Flight sharing the remainder. Illustrating the incapacity of Ottoman forces to counter British air operations, the wing’s casualties for the period comprised four wounded and two killed.178 The latter belonged to 1st

172 ‘Despatch dealing with the operations of the 40th Wing, Royal Flying Corps, in Palestine during the month of December 1917’, NAUK AIR1/1672/204/112/1. 173 Brancker to General Staff, GHQ EEF, 22 December 1917, NAUK AIR1/2286/209/75/19; MacMillan, Sir Sefton Brancker, p. 174. 174 Lax, One Airman’s War, p. 87. 175 Williams, These are Facts, p. 78. 176 Brancker to General Staff, GHQ EEF, 22 December 1917, NAUK AIR1/2286/209/75/19. 177 Reynolds, report on inspection tour to Palestine in October-November 1917, AWM10 4343/3/2. 178 ‘Despatch dealing with the operations of the 40th Wing, Royal Flying Corps, in Palestine during the month of November 1917’, AWM45 44/4; ‘Despatch dealing with the operations of the 40th Wing, Royal Flying Corps, in Palestine during the month of December 1917’, AWM45 44/4. 281 Squadron, both of them accidental.179 Though the RFC’s work was not as extensive as it might have been given better logistical and administrative support, the operational records nonetheless sustain Allenby’s acknowledgement of the RFC’s ‘valuable assistance to all arms’, its ‘complete mastery of the air’ and the contribution its pilots made through accurate reconnaissance, effective artillery support and the infliction of ‘severe loss’ on retreating enemy units.180

1st Squadron had thoroughly distinguished itself during some 6,100 hours of flying in 1917. Brancker described it to Reynolds as ‘in every way… the best squadron he has ever seen’ – quite an accolade given that he had overseen the raising of most RFC squadrons in Britain since August 1914.181 Aside from its consistent efficiency in the face of administrative and logistical impediments, and technically superior German aircraft, 1st Squadron played a central role in pioneering aerial survey methods to provide the EEF with maps on which to plan operations and direct artillery fire. From a general duties unit employing improvised army co-operation tactics in January, the Australian unit became the EEF’s specialist strategic reconnaissance squadron: GHQ’s eyes on, and ability to strike against, targets on the distant battlefield. Yet 1st Squadron is not unique: it represents a microcosm of the evolution that British aviation underwent that year in all theatres, but especially in the Middle East where air power gave the EEF the capability to more effectively plan operations, control artillery fire and strike targets far behind the battlefront. Further, 1st Squadron’s success in the face of such difficult circumstances was far from a wholly Australian feat. It co-operated with and was comprehensively supported by the RFC’s training and operational arms in the Middle East and, for most of 1917, had a strong British component owing to a shortage of AFC reinforcements; at least two- dozen officers from British regiments passed through 1st Squadron’s flying roster that year.182 The war’s final year would see 1st Squadron assume a more homogenous, national character though it would remain an appendage of the British air service in

179 Lieutenant F. Harvey, an observer, died following a flying accident on 12 November 1917. Lieutenant H. M. Matheson, an attached RFC officer, died on 25 December from exposure after becoming lost between Mejdel and a neighbouring aerodrome. 180 GHQ EEF, ‘Special Order of the Day’, 15 December 1917, AWM4 1/6/20 Part 3. 181 Reynolds, report on inspection tour to Palestine in October-November 1917, AWM10 4343/3/2; MacMillan, Sir Sefton Brancker, p. 119. 182 1st Squadron manuscript unit history, pp. 19-20, AWM224 MSS515; Williams, These are Facts, p. 69. 282 Palestine and, more broadly, part of the unequivocally imperial force operating there under Allenby’s command.

283 9. AUSTRALIANS AND THE BATTLE FOR AIR SUPERIORITY IN 1918: THE WESTERN FRONT The archetype of the fighter pilot has always dominated the literature on the first air war.1 Yet there remains ambivalence about his actual contribution to the conflict’s outcome. Historians have variously described fighter pilots as playing a central role in the war and as being most useful as propaganda symbols; their efforts as having ‘little direct impact’ and, alternatively, playing a ‘major role’ in supporting ground forces; and aerial combat, overall, as being decisive or marginal to the result of campaigns.2

This chapter uses an analysis of the two Australian squadrons flying air superiority missions on the Western Front in 1918 to examine how the British achieved and used air superiority during the war’s climactic campaigns. Building on the argument developed in Chapter 7 it demonstrates that the RAF applied the theory of offensive air power with a surprising degree of tactical flexibility and variation. Further, this chapter continues to develop a fundamental argument of this thesis: that despite having nationally distinct fighter squadrons in 1918, the AFC did not function discretely from the RFC/RAF. The AFC’s reliance on British equipment, its comprehensive adoption of RAF tactics, and its employment under British operational command wholly defined its contribution. Prime Minister Hughes could proudly point to Australia’s achievements in the air in 1918 – something his Canadian counterparts struggled to do (despite considerably larger numbers of Canadian airmen at the front) – but he could not, had he tried, have found much distinctive about the manner in which the Australian fighter squadrons operated.3 The chapter begins by positioning

1 During and immediately after the war memoirs came almost exclusively from those who had flown scouts. As early as 1935 John Slessor noted the ‘rather disproportionate amount of attention given to the operations of fighter aircraft in the last war’ [John Slessor, Air Power and Armies, Oxford University Press, London, 1936, p. 7]. 2 Richard Hallion, Rise of the Fighter Aircraft, 1914-1918, Nautical & Aviation Pub. Co. of America, Annapolis, 1984, p. 137; A. D. Harvey, Collision of Empires: Britain in Three World Wars 1793-1945, The Hambledon Press, London, 1992, pp. 409-413; Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War: Britain and the Great War, 1914-1918, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1986, p. 371; Linda Robertson, The Dream of Civilized Warfare: World War I Flying Aces and the American Imagination, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2003, p. 87; Robin Higham, Air Power: A Concise History, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1972, p. 27; David Bullock, ‘Swift as Eagles: The Victory of the Royal Air Force in Palestine, 1914-1918’, PhD thesis, Kansas State University, 1995, p. 500; Malcolm Cooper, The Birth of Independent Airpower: British Air Policy in the First World War, Allen & Unwin, London, 1986. 3 ‘Australians in the Battle’, The Times, 19 August 1918, p. 4; S. F. Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1980, pp. 592-93. 284 Australian airmen within the broader organisation of the British flying services in 1918.

The proportion of colonial personnel in the British flying services increased as the war progressed, peaking in 1918 when at least 20 per cent of the RAF hailed from the dominions.4 Although Australia’s contribution to the air war grew in terms of total numbers in 1918 it did not keep abreast with the expansion of the British flying services, which, considering service squadrons alone, more than doubled during the war’s final year. Even with the deployment the 2nd, 3rd and 4th squadrons on the Western Front, the proportion of Australians to the rest of the RAF shrank between 1917 and 1918.5 Australian airmen remained scattered among British squadrons during the war’s final year, but they were proportionally fewer in number. X Brigade may have been representative: in August 1918, in addition to 2nd and 4th Squadrons it had four RAF squadrons, two of which (Nos 46 and 92) had Australian-born COs and one (No. 88) with two Australian flight commanders.6 A roughly similar representation is evident in 22nd (Army) Wing (V Brigade) in the same period, Australians commanding at least four of its 11 squadrons.7 In 1918 Australian airmen would make their numerically largest and most visible contribution to the war’s final campaigns with the AFC.

4 Only an estimate is possible given the available records. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) lists 536 RAF/RFC/RNAS and AFC personnel who died between 1 January and 31 December 1918 with a next of kin in the dominions: Canada: 265, Australia (AFC and British air services): 148; South Africa: 107 and New Zealand: 16. These come from a total of 5,904 personnel who died in the British and Australian flying services during the entire year of 1918. [http://www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead.aspx, consulted 24 October 2012]. The CWGC’s records for next-of-kin are not complete. Its figures for Canadians, for example, is probably too low given that Wise identified nearly three times as many (659) as being killed or missing between January and October 1918 (though he noted that this figure probably included many who subsequently turned up as POWs). Nonetheless, the casualties he identified as Canadian comprised 16.8 per cent of the RFC/RAF in 1918. If the CWGC figures for Australians, New Zealanders and South African’s are added to this (4.6 per cent of all burials) it seems reasonable that at least 20 per cent of personnel in the British flying services that year came from the dominions. 5 For this data see Table 7.1 in Chapter 7. 6 Major Arthur O’Hara Wood, a surgeon from Melbourne, commanded No. 46 Squadron (he had succeeded another Australian, Rupert Henry Mealing at the end of July); Major Arthur Coningham, born in Brisbane but educated in New Zealand commanded No. 92 Squadron. The two Australian flight commanders in No. 88 Squadron were Captain Allan Hepburn, a Melbournian, and Captain Edgar Charles Johnston from Perth. Johnston wrote, but did not publish, an account of his experiences [AWM PR01977]. 7 On 8 August 1918 Major Victor Bell, from Boonah, Queensland commanded No. 80 Squadron (Sopwith Camels); Major Hugh Champion de Crespigny from Melbourne, No. 65 Squadron (Sopwith Camels); Major Charles Booker, born in England but educated at Melbourne Grammar commanded No. 201 Squadron (Sopwith Camels) and Major Stanley Goble of Melbourne commanded No. 205 Squadron (DH4s). 285 The number of Australians in command positions increased considerably in the war’s final 12 months. This resulted from both the expansion of the AFC in Britain, which doubled the number of unit command positions, and the culmination of the wartime careers of several officers who had joined the RFC and RNAS earlier in the war. In addition to the six AFC officers who commanded the three Australian squadrons on the Western Front in 1918, it is possible to identify at least 16 Australians who led British squadrons in that theatre.8 Even so, the doubling of the number of British service squadrons during the war’s last twelve months meant that the proportion of Western Front squadrons that had an Australian CO at some point in 1918 decreased from the year before; whereas nearly a quarter of units (including AFC squadrons) had an Australian CO in 1917, the share dropped to just over 18 per cent (18 of 98 squadrons) in 1918. The number of Australians graded as wing commanders in 1918 meanwhile increased. Along with Lieutenant-Colonel William Mitchell, who continued as 12th (Corps) Wing’s CO until July, Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Blomfield who had commanded No. 56 Squadron in 1917 was appointed CO

8 COs of AFC squadrons on the Western Front in 1918 were: Major David Valentine Jardine Blake (commanded 3rd Squadron from 10 September 1917 until 28 October 1918); Major William Hopton Anderson (commanded 3rd Squadron 28 October 1918 until 7 January 1919); Major Wilfred Ashton McCloughry (commanded 4th Squadron from 17 December 1917 until 30 November 1918); Major Walter Oswald Watt (commanded 2nd Squadron 21 September 1917 until 16 February 1918); Major William Sheldon (commanded 2nd Squadron from 16 February 1918 until 22 May 1918); Major Allan Murray Jones (commanded 2nd Squadron 5 May 1918 until after Armistice). Australian officers in the British flying services included Major Alfred Barton Adams (born in London but attended Sydney Church of England Grammar School and worked in Sydney before the war; he commanded No. 1 Squadron RFC from 20 June 1917 until 3 August 1918); Squadron Commander Bertram Charles Bell (born in Boonah, Queensland; commanded No. 10 Naval Squadron/ No. 210 Squadron RAF from April 1917 until the end of the war); Major Victor Douglas Bell (born in Boonah, Queensland, brother to Bertram Bell; Bell commanded No. 80 Squadron from January 1918 until the Armistice); Squadron Commander Charles Dawson Booker (born in England but educated at Melbourne Grammar; commanded No. 1 Naval Squadron/ No. 201 Squadron RAF from 18 March until his death from wounds on 13 August 1918); Major Arthur Coningham (born in Brisbane; commanded 92 Squadron from March 1918 until the Armistice); Major Hugh Champion de Crespigny (born in Melbourne, after commanding No. 29 Squadron in France during 1917 he led No. 65 Squadron from June 1918 until the Armistice); Major Roderic Dallas (born in Esk, Queensland; commanded No. 1 Naval Squadron during until March 1918; commanded No. 40 Squadron from April 1918 until killed in action, 1 June 1918); Squadron Commander Stanley Goble (born in Melbourne, commanded No. 5 Naval Squadron/ No. 205 Squadron RAF from 18 July 1917 until mid-1918); Major Rodney Wilfrid Heath (born in Malvern, Victoria; commanded No. 11 Squadron in mid 1918); Major Edric Percival Henty (born in Toorak, Victoria; took command of No. 152 Squadron in October 1918); Major Rupert Henry Mealing (born in Hobart, commanded No. 46 Squadron between December 1917 and July 1918); Major Barry Fitzgerald Moore (born in Monegeetta, Victoria, commanded No. 60 Squadron between December 1917 and July 1918 before being graded a wing commander and given command of No. 1 Aeroplane Supply Depot at Marquis). Major Arthur O’Hara Wood (born in Melbourne; commanded No. 46 Squadron from July 1918 until killed in a mid-air collision, 4 October 1918); Major Frederick Esk Sandford (born in Redfern, Sydney, commanded No. 2 Naval Squadron from December 1917 to February 1918); Major Wilfred Rippon Snow (born in Adelaide; commanded No. 2 Squadron RFC/RAF between August 1917 and August 1918); Major Benjamin James Silly (born in Burwood, commanded No. 55 Squadron from September 1918 until the Armistice). 286 51st Wing (part of IX Brigade: GHQ’s strategic reserve) in August.9 Another Australian-born officer of the RFC, Barry Fitzgerald Moore, who led No. 60 Squadron during the first half of 1918 was graded wing commander in July to command No. 1 Aeroplane Supply Depot at Marquis.10 Taking other theatres into account, Majors Oswald Watt and Richard Williams were also graded wing commanders in 1918 and respectively appointed CO, AFC training wing in Britain and 40th (Army) Wing in Palestine. Uniquely among AFC officers, Williams received a supplementary RAF commission so he could exercise authority over the imperial units under his command. As he observed, the promotion put him in charge of ‘a formation larger than my own corps [ie the AFC] could produce’.11 Larger still was Palestine Brigade, which he commanded temporarily following the Armistice. Aside from 1st Squadron AFC, which Tasmanian journalist Major Sydney Addison commanded following Williams’ promotion, a representative number of British squadrons in the other theatres also had Australian COs.12

The major expansion of British training and home defence organisations during 1917 saw a number of Australian officers in the British flying services who had served in the field move back to Britain in 1918 to impart their experience. Service tours for pilots in 1917-18 typically lasted 8 or 9 months followed by a ‘home establishment’ posting which could include instructing, home or coastal defence, experimental or administrative work.13 Thus, after commanding No. 46 Squadron in France for eight months, in July 1918 Major Rupert Mealing returned to Britain to command the night-flying school at Tern Hill.14 After commanding 2nd Wing for 17 months Mitchell finished the war in charge of South Western Training Area.15 For others, a posting back to Britain represented not just respite but an opportunity for

9 Biographical notes on Lieutenant-Colonel W. G. S. Mitchell, AWM43 A600; Biographical notes on Lieutenant-Colonel R. G. Blomfield, AWM43 A82. 10 Chas Schaedel to Michael Molkentin, 21 February 2012. 11 Williams, These are Facts: the Autobiography of Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams KBE, CB, DSO, Australian War Memorial and Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977, p. 85. 12 Examples include: Major Roy Maxwell ‘Peter’ Drummond (born in Perth, Western Australia, commanded No. 145 Squadron in Palestine from July 1918 until the Armistice); Major David Edmund Stodart (born in Gobur, Victoria, commanded No. 114 RFC in India from July 1918); Major Thomas Maxwell Scott (born in Sydney; commanded No. 28 Squadron in Italy from July 1918 until the Armistice); William James Yule Guilfoyle (born in Edinburgh to Australian parents and educated at Church of England Grammar in Melbourne, commanded No. 28 Squadron in Italy from 1 November 1918). 13 ‘Average lifetime of pilots in France’, nd, AIR 9/3 Folio 5. 14 Biographical notes on Major R. H. S. Mealing, AWM43 A582. 15 Biographical notes on Lieutenant-Colonel W. G. S. Mitchell, AWM43 A600. 287 promotion. The Australian training squadrons provided several AFC flight commanders an opportunity they would not have otherwise had to command at the unit level. Clifford Ross, a businessman from Sydney, represents a similar example from the RFC: he spent two years flying in service squadrons before his appointment in October 1917 as CO, No. 75 (Home Defence) Squadron, a position he held until late 1918.16 Other Australians advanced through the home establishment by virtue of their technical skills or aptitude for teaching. With less than four months active service experience Norman Brearley rose through the ranks of training units to become commandant of the Midland Area Flying Instructors’ School at Lilbourne.17 Joining the RFC’s naval wing in 1913, Henry Busteed finished the war in command of the navy’s Experimental Construction Depot and graded a wing commander in the RAF.18 The route to unit and formation command could therefore diverge considerably from that of flight, squadron, wing and brigade command at the front. As a result, though it remained small, the cohort of Australian commanders ended the war with a broader pool of expertise than the frontline activities of the AFC might suggest.

Of the 18 Western Front squadrons that had at least one Australian CO during 1918, 12 (67 per cent) were single-seat fighter units. This is unrepresentative of the RAF in that theatre, which finished the war with 38 per cent of its units flying fighters (compared with 34 per cent in the Luftstreitkräfte).19 The dozen scout squadrons commanded by Australians on the Western Front during 1918 used fighter types roughly in proportion to the wider RAF at the Armistice. Both introduced in 1917, the SE5a and Sopwith Camel remained the mainstay of the RAF until the end of the war, equipping 39 and 45 per cent of British single-seat fighter units on the Western Front at the time of the Armistice.20 They capably switched between air superiority and ground attack in the absence of a specialised British ground attack aircraft. The Dolphin, a superb fighter introduced at the beginning of 1918, had potential to supersede the Camel and SE5a but teething difficulties and RFC authorities’

16 Biographical notes on Major C. M. Ross, AWM43 A749. 17 Biographical notes on Major N. Brearley, AWM43 A97. 18 Biographical notes on Lieutenant-Colonel H. R. Busteed, AWM43 A122. 19 H. A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force, Appendices, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1937, pp. 125-29; David Zabecki, The German 1918 Offensives: A Case Study in the Operational Level of War, Routledge, London, 2006, p. 58. 20 Jones, The War in the Air: Appendices, pp. 145-150. 288 predilection for the Dolphin’s conventionally designed predecessors saw it equip few squadrons, and none commanded by Australians.21 A less capable fighter and only a slight improvement over the Camel (which it was intended to replace), the appeared at the end of the war and had only re-equipped two squadrons before the Armistice. Major-General (GOC RFC in 1918) allocated the second batch to 4th Squadron at the beginning of October, believing it to be one of his best fighter units and, being deployed on Fifth Army’s front (where no major offensives were in progress), able to refit without disrupting operations.22 Of the units commanded by Australians, 1st Squadron in Palestine and No. 11 Squadron on the Western Front flew the Bristol F2b. Although officially classified a ‘fighter reconnaissance’ machine, by summer 1918 RAF leaders in both Europe and Palestine were increasingly employing the Bristol Fighter on air superiority missions.23 In this role it proved superlative as 1st Squadron’s airmen demonstrated alongside their Australian colleagues flying with the RAF in France such as Captains Charles Johnston (who claimed 19 enemy aircraft flying Bristol Fighters), Allan Hepburn (16) and Geoffrey Hughes (11).24

Strictly speaking it is anachronistic to describe such pilots as ‘aces’ as the term was applied neither officially nor colloquially in the British flying services. ‘The term… was unknown to us then’, recalled Eric Dibbs, an Australian in the RFC, ‘and indeed would have seemed at the time vulgar’.25 Nevertheless, both airmen and the public perceived victory tallies as a measure of success in the air war. Individuals counted and reported their personal and unit scores to family; units such as 2nd and 4th Squadrons ‘competed for the number of Germans they can put down’; and the

21 J. M. Bruce, The Aeroplanes of the Royal Flying Corps (Military Wing), Putnam, London, 1982, pp. 535-43. 22 Major-General John Salmond, GOC RAF in the Field to X Brigade, 3 October 1918, NAUK AIR1/1044/204/5/1506. 23 Minutes of brigadiers’ conference held at HQ RFC, 30 July 1918, NAUK AIR1/920/204/5/884; See also Chapter 10 regarding the employment of the Bristol Fighter in an air superiority role in Palestine. 24 Victory tallies taken from Christopher Shores, Norman Franks and Russell Guest, Above the Trenches: A Complete Record of the Fighter Aces and Units of the British Empire Air Forces, 1915- 1920, Grub Street, London, 1990. Hughes recorded his experiences in an extensive collection of correspondence and personal diaries [SLNSW MLMSS 1222]. 25 Anonymous, ‘Interview with Captain Eric Rupert Dibbs formerly of the AFC’, The 14-18 Journal, 1967, 86-101, p. 91. For the RFC’s official position on publicising the exploits of individual pilots see Field-Marshal Douglas Haig, GOC British Armies in France to General Sir William Robertson, CIGS, 5 October 1917, NAUK AIR1/522/16/12/5. 289 press in Britain and Australia reported the scores of notable fighter pilots.26 The popularisation of the term ‘ace’ in the late 1920s through cinema established its retrospective association with Great War aviators and a focus on dogfighting that obscured, in the popular imagination, air power’s other roles.27 As John Morrow explains, unlike those who flew reconnaissance or artillery co-operation sorties, the fighter pilot’s success and valour is easily quantified.28 Keith Isaacs is far from alone in citing the number of Australian aces during the Great War against the country’s population as indicative of ‘the manner in which Australians took to, and conquered, the air’.29

This focus on the ‘aces’ is flawed for a number of reasons. The victory tallies of individuals found in the literature are based on subjective criteria, often a retrospective compilation of claims made by the pilot (usually filed in squadron war diaries), those listed in wing and brigade summaries and victories noted on RFC HQ communiqués.30 Citing the combat reports in the squadron war diary, Cutlack reports a 4th Squadron patrol on 20 May 1918 shooting down ‘between them six machines’ when, in fact, the unit’s CO submitted only three of these claims to 11th Wing, which confirmed one.31 One of those disallowed belonged to Arthur Cobby, though authors

26 to family, 11 August 1918, 15 September 1918 and 1 October 1918, AWM 1DRL/84; Dallas Roderic to father, 14 October 1916, 29 August 1916, 15 May 1917 [Rick McQualter ed. ‘Letters of Major Roderic Stanley Dallas’, The 14-18 Journal, 1996, 64-71, pp. 66-67]; Charles Bean, diary, 15 August 1918 and 18 August 1918, AWM38 3DRL/606/116/1; Major Richard Blomfield to No. 56 Squadron flight commanders and senior NCOs, 11 September 1917, RAF AC1997/93/333; Brigadier- General Ludlow-Hewitt to HQ 80th Wing RAF, 8 September 1918, NAUK AIR1/1938/204/245/9; ‘Lieutenant DSO’, Barrier Miner (Broken Hill), 13 May 1917, p. 3; ‘British Air “Stars”’, Cairns Post, 29 April 1918, p. 7; ‘British Airman’s Exploits’, The Times, 23 September 1918, p. 8. 27 In Australia the term ‘ace’ seldom appears in the press before 1925 (exceptions usually being in connection with a curiously named race horse, ‘’). Australian newspapers began using the term ‘ace’ regularly when reviewing films such as The Sky Raider [‘Amusements’, The Register (Adelaide), 4 August 1926, p. 12], Three Miles Up [‘Dynamite and Aeroplanes’, The Advertiser (Adelaide), 1 November 1927, p. 18], Hard Boiled Haggerty [‘Shots from Screenland’, The Daily News, 2 December 1927, p. 10], Wings [‘Wings’, The Advertiser (Adelaide), 22 August 1928, p. 9], Love Never Dies [‘Valley Theatre’, The Brisbane Courier, 16 September 1929, p. 10] and Young Eagles [‘Young Eagles’, Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton), 17 September 1930, p. 5]. By the beginning of the Second World War the press used the term ‘ace’ commonly. 28 John Morrow, The Great War in the Air: Military Aviation From 1909 to 1921, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1993, p. 365. 29 Keith Isaacs, Military Aircraft of Australia, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1971, p. 84. 30 For example, see Shores, Franks and Guest, Above the Trenches, passim. 31 F. M. Cutlack, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VIII: The Australian Flying Corps in the Western and Eastern Theatres of War, 1914-1918, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1939, (1923), p. 284; 11th Wing RAF Combats in the Air reports, 19 May 1918- 17 June 1918, NAUK AIR1/1829/204/202/20; Royal Air Force Communiqué No. 8, 28 May 1918, AWM4 8/14/2. 290 always count it and two other unconfirmed claims in his ‘score’ of 29.32 For this reason the number of victories attributed to individuals sometimes vary, as do the number of ‘Australian aces’ with various publications listing between 57 and 65 names.33 At all levels, the evidence used to compile such lists is tenuous because both sides over-claimed to a large degree.34 Such discrepancies resulted from the zeal of pilots to claim and the confusion of aerial combat but also ambivalence in the definition of a ‘victory’. British pilots routinely claimed ‘out of control’ aircraft while the Luftstreitkräfte only counted aircraft destroyed as losses; those damaged but repaired do not appear in German records.35

Problems with the methodology and evidence aside, a preoccupation with victory tallies puts the focus on an unrepresentative cohort. In 2nd Squadron 39 of the 79 pilots (49.35 per cent) who crossed the lines are credited with an aerial victory in the squadron’s records. The proportion is less in 4th Squadron (40.45 per cent).36 Indeed, those responsible for their unit’s score constituted a minority. In 4th Squadron less than five per cent of the pilots who served with the unit claimed 46 per cent of the victories.37 Similarly, in 2nd Squadron seven per cent of pilots accounted for 42 per cent of claims.38 More broadly, the fixation on ‘kills’ and ‘aces’ encourages a parochial understanding of the role air power played in the war. As earlier chapters have demonstrated, shooting down large numbers of enemy aircraft (as the Germans did in April 1917) did not guarantee effective army co-operation. Furthermore, as the RAF’s operations in 1918 indicate, by the final stages of the war dogfighting represented only one aspect of the fighter’s role.

32 A. D. Garrison, Australian Fighter Aces 1914-1953, Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 1999, p. 31; Shores, Franks and Guest, Above the Trenches, p. 110. 33 Shores, Franks and Guest, Above the Trenches (58 Australian aces); Isaacs, Military Aircraft of Australia 1909-1918 (65 Australian aces); Denis Newton, Australian Air Aces, Aerospace Publications, Fyshwick, 1996 (61 Australian aces); Garrison, Australian Fighter Aces 1914-1953 (57 Australian aces). This also highlights the subjective criteria used by various historians to identify an individual as ‘Australian’. 34 Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, pp. 572-74. 35 Note from the Reichswehrministerium regarding the German method of counting machines lost by hostile action, 1924, NAUK AIR1/9/15/1/24. 36 Tabulated from data in the histories squadrons prepared for the Australian War Records Section [2nd Squadron AWM224, MSS517 PART 3; 4th Squadron, AWM224 MSS520]. 37 Tabulated from data in 4th Squadron records and statistics, AWM224 MSS520. Six of the 132 pilots claimed 112 of the 242 victories recorded by the unit. 38 Tabulated from data in 2nd Squadron, manuscript history, AWM224, MSS517 PART 3. Six pilots accounted for 77 of the 184 victories. 291 The two Australian scout units, 2nd Squadron flying SE5as and 4th Squadron using Sopwith Camels, spent the period before the German spring offensives attached to 10th Wing, (I Brigade) on First Army’s sector between the Scarpe and rivers. Until March the front remained quiet, typically hosting between six and eight Jagdstaffeln, which the Australians found reluctant to fight. Along with the rest of I Brigade’s fighter units, the AFC supported III and V Brigades during , the first of five offensives launched by the Germans between March and July 1918. At the beginning of April 2nd Squadron joined 51st Wing, part of IX Brigade, attached to GHQ as a theatre reserve. When the second German offensive (Georgette) commenced in Flanders on 9 April both AFC squadrons operated over the main battlefront, with 4th Squadron’s aerodrome at Bruay so close to the fighting that it was evacuated at the end of April. 2nd Squadron spent May and June with 51st Wing patrolling the length of the British sector and co-operating with French forces around Noyon to repel Gneisenau, the fourth German offensive. 4th Squadron meanwhile worked with Second Army in Flanders, a respite following two months of intense low-altitude work during Michael and Georgette. From the beginning of July until the end of the war, 2nd and 4th Squadrons came together again in the 80th Wing of the X Brigade, new formations raised to join Fifth Army, reactivated and deployed astride the Lys. Comprising divisions that had suffered heavy losses in March and April, Fifth Army spearheaded no major offensives during the ‘Hundred Days’ campaign but, rather, advanced to support operations launched by the armies to its immediate north and south.39

Even so, the two Australian fighter squadrons maintained a high tempo of operations throughout the war’s final four months, the result of the RAF’s endeavour to suppress enemy air activity over all sectors and the concentration of German fighters in northern France during September and October to cover their army’s line

39 James Edmonds, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations: France and Belgium 1918: Volume IV: 8th August-26th September: The Franco-British Offensive, Macmillan, London, 1947, p. 428. During the battle of the two AFC scout squadrons provided two flights each to reinforce V Brigade. The pilots flew to an improvised aerodrome at Horseshoe Wood, just outside of Amiens, each morning and operated throughout the day before returning the Reclinghem at night. 292 British and German dispositions on the Western Front, September 191840

40 A. J. L. Scott, The History of 60 Squadron RAF, William Heinemann, London, 1920. 293 of retreat. Indeed, despite no battle flying, between July and October the two AFC squadrons flew 4,275 operational sorties, fired 130,000 rounds at ground targets (and half that again in air combat), dropped 2,500 bombs and claimed 113 enemy aircraft and 25 balloons destroyed. Yet these combined totals disguise significant differences in the work the two squadrons performed: 4th Squadron flew more sorties, encountered and destroyed enemy aircraft more frequently, expended considerably more ordnance on ground targets, and suffered nearly twice as many casualties (see Appendix 2). This is because it typically worked below 10,000 feet where its Sopwith Camels performed best, giving its pilots greater scope for attacking ground targets, exposing them to small-arms fire, and presenting fewer opportunities to disengage from dogfights: encountering German machines usually meant fighting them. Working at higher altitudes, 2nd Squadron saw fewer enemy aircraft and had the initiative to dive away from engagements in which it found itself at a disadvantage. The two squadrons switched roles in October 1918 when 4th Squadron replaced its Camels with Snipes, somewhat reversing the statistical picture.

To put the AFC’s work into context it is necessary to consider how the Luftstreitkräfte operated during 1918. Although the German general staff had, by late 1917, come to perceive the value of a more offensive aviation policy, they continued employing the Jagdstaffeln on inherently defensive sorties such as interceptions, line patrols and escorts.41 One German airman described it to his captors as an aktive verteidigung (active defence) policy, an apparent compromise between the general staff’s aspirations for an air offensive and what was feasible given the Luftstreitkräfte’s dwindling human and material resources.42 To mitigate their considerable numerical disadvantage and support the widely dispersed offensives during 1918, the Germans concentrated their Jagdstaffeln for brief periods at decisive points.43 Accordingly, opposition over British sectors fluctuated considerably; it peaked in April and May when just over half the available Jastas (41) were deployed

41 Chief of General Staff of the Field Army, ‘Directions for the engagement of pursuit flights’, 25 October 1917, translated by British General Staff (Intelligence), 27 September 1918, AWM F940.44941 W253l; Summary of air intelligence, 4 August 1918, NAUK AIR1/2124/207/74/3. 42 Summary of air intelligence, 22 February 1918, NAUK AIR1/6B/4/56/2A. The Luftstreitkräfte’s logistical, supply and manpower problems in 1918 are well documented. See for example: Ernest von Hoeppner, Germany's War in the Air: the Development and Operations of German Military Aviation in the World War, The Battery Press, Nashville, 1994 (1921), pp. 137-38 and 167; Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, p. 517; Morrow, The Great War in the Air, p. 301; Summary of air intelligence, 29 July 1918, NAUK AIR1/2124/207/74/3. 43 Hoeppner, Germany's War in the Air, p. 166. 294 on fronts held by British troops but dropped as low as 26 per cent (21) of the total in August. This allowed the Germans to challenge Allied air superiority over specific sectors until the closing weeks of the war. Some cite this as evidence that the Luftstreitkräfte ‘remained a potent fighting force until the end of the war’.44 These instances, however, proved to be a microcosm of the German army’s broader achievements in 1918: impressive though ephemeral tactical level victories that had no bearing on the outcome of campaigns or the war.45 By contrast, implicit to RAF policy was the understanding that it was not enough to hold air superiority briefly, over certain sectors, when the artillery and intelligence-gathering battles went on perpetually along the entire line.

German policy nonetheless presented the RAF with significant challenges in 1918. It forced British squadrons to remain dynamic and prevented the emergence of any uniform doctrine in the RAF. At all levels of the RAF British airmen had to continually re-evaluate how they employed fighter aircraft in response to the fluctuating German presence over their sector. Taking command of the RFC on the Western Front in January 1918, Major-General John Salmond maintained Trenchard’s delegation of tactical matters to his brigadiers who, in turn, allowed wing and squadron commanders considerable latitude as well. As a result the war diaries of 2nd and 4th Squadrons contain little discernable pattern; the type, frequency and size of missions continually change and there is little similarity between what wings and brigades are doing at various points along the front. Still, it is possible to broadly identify four types of missions conducted by the Australian fighter squadrons: offensive patrols, interceptions, ‘special missions’, and ground attack.

Underpinning these missions are ideas articulated in Fighting in the Air, the RAF’s tactical manual published in March 1917 and revised in April 1918.46 Although the later edition contains more detail, reflecting the evolving sophistication and diversity of air power, it retains the original’s rationale for aerial fighting (to ‘gain and maintain a position from which they can see the enemy’s movements’); its

44 James Corum, The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918-1940, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 1997, p. 39; Norman Franks, Dog-Fight: Aerial Tactics of the Aces of World War I, Greenhill, London, 2003, p. 244. 45 Zabecki, The German 1918 Offensives, p. 12. 46 General Staff, Fighting in the Air, March 1917, LHCMA Brooke-Popham papers, item 8/2/1; General Staff, Fighting in the Air, April 1918, LHCMA Brooke-Popham papers, item 8/3/5. 295 unequivocal belief that the fighter was ‘essentially a weapon of attack and not of defence’; and its clear exposition of the aerial offensive’s objectives: to destroy enemy aircraft, to compel German commanders to employ their machines defensively, and to support ground operations.47

In British scout squadrons, offensive patrols with ‘the sole mission’ of ‘find[ing] and defeat[ing] the enemy’s aeroplanes’ had been the most common type of sortie since early 1915.48 Since then the chief development had been an increase in their size: from single machines initially to flight-sized formations (four to six aircraft) by early 1917.49 Late that year Trenchard foresaw flights and even squadrons co-operating at different altitudes to protect each other (though he also predicted the continued usefulness of single flights working close to the lines ‘to destroy isolated enemy machines’).50 RFC HQ circulated Trenchard’s paper throughout the corps for discussion and prepared the way by increasing the establishment of aircraft in fighter squadrons (including one for the CO, previously prohibited from flying sorties) and instructing the Training Division to prepare pilots for work in multi-unit formations.51 Still, Salmond left his brigadiers ‘at liberty to organise their patrols as they think best’ and they, to varying degrees, left patrol sizes and tactics to wing and squadron COs.52 The approach allowed individual units to respond to the level of enemy activity on their sector. Finding German patrols timid in mid-February for example, 2nd Squadron’s CO reduced patrols to pairs and devised a scheme to surprise German

47 General Staff, Fighting in the Air, March 1917 p. 3, LHCMA Brooke-Popham papers, item 8/2/1; General Staff, Fighting in the Air, April 1918, p. 2, LHCMA Brooke-Popham papers, item 8/3/5. The 1918 edition also included the destruction of enemy industry as one of the air offensive’s objectives. 48 General Staff, Fighting in the Air, April 1918, p. 3, LHCMA Brooke-Popham papers, item 8/3/5. 49 George Kay to father, 18 April 1917 [George Pollard Kay, Letters from Bob, Melville & Muller, Melbourne, 1917, pp. 120- 124]. 50 Major-General Hugh Trenchard, GOC RFC in the Field, ‘Development of Aerial Fighting’, 18 December 1917, RAF MFC 76/1/4. 51 Captain Barton, HQ RFC to RFC Brigade HQs, 19 December 1917, NAUK AIR1/1581/204/81/56; Director of Air Organisation to OC Training Division RFC, 19 January 1918, AWM25 943/26 PART 1; H. A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force: Volume IV, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1934, pp. 286-87. By the end of May 1918 10 of the 14 Camel Squadrons on the Western Front (including 4th Squadron AFC) had their aircraft establishment increased from 18 to 24. The other Camel squadrons, along with all the SE5a units, finished the war with the lower establishment, though usually with an additional machine for the CO and sometimes one for the wing commander too. 52 Minutes of brigadiers’ conference held at HQ RFC, 24 February 1918, NAUK AIR1/920/204/5/884. 296 aircraft over their own aerodromes. The squadron claimed 17 aircraft over the following three weeks, its first victories for the year.53

The RFC began experimenting with multi-squadron ‘circus’ patrols in March to counter the Luftstreitkräfte’s practice ‘of sending up all available fighters at certain times during the day in very large formations of 30-50 aeroplanes and putting practically nothing in the air at other times’.54 GHQ used the fighters of 51st Wing in its strategic air reserve (IX Brigade) to move about the front in response to concentrations of enemy activity. 2nd Squadron typically provided the top layer of a dozen SE5as at 16,000 feet to cover two squadrons of Camels staggered below at 14 and 12,000 feet, with the lowest formation’s leader commanding the entire patrol.55 IX Brigade also regularly timed 51st Wing’s offensive patrols to cover long-range reconnaissance and bombing sorties conducted by the other squadrons under GHQ’s command.56 The number of units involved required detailed organisation; brigade staff directed aspects of patrols that had previously been the preserve of flight commanders.57 During May 51st Wing’s ‘circuses’ engaged few German aircraft, the Luftstreitkräfte concentrating on the Aisne to support the next offensive. Just seven of 2nd Squadron’s 37 offensive patrols encountered enemy aircraft while in 11th Wing, where squadrons continued working more independently, 4th Squadron had frequent engagements, claiming 21 German machines.58 The circus patrols suddenly proved more effective in June during the Gneisenau offensive when 2nd Squadron claimed 23 enemy aircraft in just four days.59 Clearly, the RAF’s army wings needed to retain a capability for both meeting German fighter concentrations during battle and for more efficiently maintaining control of the skies over quieter sectors.

53 Richard Howard to father, 11 March 1918 [Eric Watson and Alan Fraser (editors), ‘The Personal Letters of Captain R. W. Howard, MC, Australian Flying Corps’, Part 3, The 14-18 Journal, 1999, 52- 68, pp. 60-61]; 2nd Squadron AFC war diary, February 1918, AWM4 8/5/7. 54 Précis of report by Major-General Salmond, 5 August 1918, Air Historical Branch manuscript, p. 66- 67, NAUK AIR1/677/21/13/1887. 55 CO IX Brigade to CO 51st Wing etc., 4 April 1918, NAUK AIR1/1838/204/208/17. 56 CO IX Brigade RAF to 9th Wing, 51st Wing, etc., 12 April 1918, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1285. 57 Operations orders in NAUK AIR1/1838/204/208/17 and NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1285; Brigadier General commanding IX Brigade RAF to 9th Wing, 51st Wing, etc., 12 April 1918, NAUK AIR1/1008/204/5/1285. 58 2nd Squadron war diary, May 1918, AWM4 8/5/10 Part 1; 4th Squadron war diary, May 1918, AWM4 8/7/15. 59 Major Allan Murray Jones, CO 2nd Squadron, ‘Record of service, No. 2 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps June 1918’, 24 July 1918, AWM4 8/5/11. 297 Multi-unit patrols featured to varying degrees in RAF army wings until the end of the war.60 80th Wing, in which 2nd and 4th Squadrons served from July until the Armistice, regularly timed the patrols of its SE5a and Camel squadrons to coincide, ‘in order that Camels may pick up E[nemy] A[ircraft] driven down by SEs and at the same time feel secure in carrying out their natural role of picking anything seen at lower heights, two-seaters, balloons, ground targets etc.’. The wing commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Louis Strange, left detailed planning to the squadrons and encouraged COs to let pilots ‘work out their own schemes’.61 Smaller patrols and ‘special missions’, planned by the pilots themselves and carried out alone or in pairs were also permitted, achieving overall more flexibility than 51st Wing had during the spring offensives. Consequently, when additional Jagdstaffeln deployed in the sector in late August to meet the British offensive on the Scarpe, 80th Wing had the capacity to resume larger patrols. During a quieter period in the first fortnight of October the wing reverted to single flight patrols before resuming multi-squadron affairs to counter the Luftstreitkräfte’s final efforts to cover its retreating armies.62 As a result the war’s final month produced dogfights involving dozens of aircraft spread across thousands of feet. Pilots agreed that, ironically, these tended to be indecisive affairs in which flight commanders, relying only on visual signals, had no tactical control. Until the end of the war, decision in air combat continued to result from surprise.63

The high degree of air superiority that the RAF enjoyed throughout most of 1918 encouraged the further development of the fighter in a ground attack role.64 By the beginning of 1918 British pilots flying all types of sorties routinely descended

60 Brigadier-General , CGS, RAF HQ in the Field to the Director of Air Organisation, 24 May 1918, NAUK AIR1/1581/204/81/56. At this time Game reported that patrol sizes varied between sectors, from ‘large formations of two or more flights’ to single flights depending on the number of German aircraft, their tactics and level of aggression. A review of wing and brigade records for later months indicates this continued. 61 Lieutenant-Colonel Louis Strange, CO 80th Wing, ‘Offensive Patrols’, 2 August 1918, NAUK AIR1/1938/204/245/2. 62 See 80th Wing operation orders for October 1918 in NAUK AIR1/1938/204/245/2. 63 A. H. Cobby, High Adventure, Robertson & Mullens, Melbourne, 1942, p. 171; Squadron Leader George Jones, ‘War experiences’, staff college essay, NAUK AIR1/2390/228/11/131; J. C. F. Wilkinson, manuscript memoir, October 1937, RAF Museum X001-2325. 64 At the beginning of June the Luftstreitkräfte had a quarter of its Jagdstaffeln (23 units, a nominal strength of 320 aircraft, but much lower in practice) deployed on the Western Front between Arras and the Channel coast; during July and August just 14 Jagdstaffeln opposed the fighters of three RAF army wings in the same area giving the RAF at least, and perhaps considerably more than, a 2:1 advantage in fighter numbers. Throughout the summer the Germans kept the majority of their Jagdstaffeln on the French front. 298 below 1,000 feet to attack targets of opportunity: Cobby recalled that, while with 10th Wing early in the year, 4th Squadron had standing orders to carry bombs on all patrols.65 Anticipating the German offensive, the RFC’s leaders planned to fight a conventional battle, emphasising the air offensive to maintain British air superiority and, above all, protect the artillery co-operation machines. Ground attack remained subsidiary to this, RFC HQ departing from its earlier ambivalence about the best targets and settling on enemy reinforcements ‘a mile or two behind the assaulting line’. The debussing points of German reinforcements, transport and artillery followed in order of importance. Only a few aircraft would attack the enemy spearhead for ‘moral effect’.66

In the event, bad weather and the unexpected speed of the German advance hamstrung British artillery, forcing the RFC to abandon its scheme and press all squadrons into attacking ground targets.67 During both Michael and Georgette the Luftstreitkräfte had a marked presence over the battlefield for the first 72 hours but thereafter succumbed to logistical problems and a well-prepared, rapid concentration of RFC reinforcements.68 In particular, the much-vaunted schlactstaffeln (see Chapter 7) failed to meet expectations; when communication with the infantry broke down so did their rigidly co-ordinated ground-attack plans.69 British scout squadrons proved much more capable of responding to the rapidly changing tactical situation; all (including the AFC) had trained in ground-strafing during the winter and RFC HQ

65 Adam Pye, ‘Evolution in Action: the Royal Flying Corps/ Royal Air Force and the Development of Ground Attack in World War I’, MA thesis, University of Calgary, 2003, p. 62; Cobby, High Adventure, p. 59. In January 1918, perhaps the worst month of flying in the year, the RFC fired nearly 204,000 rounds at ground targets in the course of regular patrols and reconnaissance sorties [Extracts from the RFC HQ War Diary, January 1918, AWM45 29/86]. 66 ‘The Employment of the Royal Flying Corps in Defence’, 16 January 1918, NAUK AIR1/526/16/12/36. This file also contains the various drafts of this document, reflecting the evolution of the ideas it contains. 67 By 25 March artillery co-operation had completely collapsed on the battlefront. In Third Army the RFC reported 35 hostile batteries, to which the artillery responded to five. Fifth Army’s corps wing (15th) recorded no successful artillery co-operation at all despite the RFC having recovered air superiority over the battlefront according to German sources. Neither army’s balloon sections did any work [Brigade work summaries, 24-25 March 1918, NAUK AIR1/838/204/5/285]. 68 Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, pp. 501-03; Hoeppner, Germany’s War in the Air, p. 149; E. R. Hooton, War Over the Trenches: Air Power and the Western Front Campaigns 1916- 1918, Ian Allan Publishing, Surrey, 2010, pp. 209-215. 69 Bereton Greenhous, ‘Evolution of a Close Ground Support Role for Aircraft in World War I’, Military Affairs, volume 39, number 1, February 1975, 22-28, p. 27; John Cuneo, ‘Preparation of German Attack Aviation for the Offensive of March 1918’, Military Affairs, volume 7, number 2, Summer 1943, 69-78, p. 78; David Ian Hall, Strategy for Victory the Development of British Tactical Air Power, 1919-1943, Praeger Publishers, 2008, Praeger Security International Online, http://psi.praeger.com.ezproxy.libadfa.adfa.edu.au:2048/doc.aspx?d=/books/gpg/Hall-C7767/Hall- C7767-317.xml: consulted 19 August 2012. 299 had planned ahead to concentrate squadrons at the critical point.70 Along with the rest of I Brigade’s fighter squadrons, the AFC attacked German reinforcements crowding the roads leading to Third Army’s front between 23 and 26 March, switched to south of Albert on 27th where German forces exploited a gap between the British Third and Fifth Armies and then attacked German troops on the Arras-Cambrai road involved in the Mars phase of operations on 28 March.71 Some scholars have suggested that the RFC’s leadership did not comprehend the principle of concentration as effectively as their German counterparts; on the contrary, unlike the Luftstreitkräfte, which covered the entire Western Front with interceptors capable of only short endurance, RFC fighters had the range to cover much of the British front without needing to relocate.72 From their aerodromes on First Army’s sector the Australian pilots could be over the Michael battlefront within 20 minutes flight time and thus complete multiple sorties each day. Lieutenant Jack Wright’s three sorties to Bapaume on 25 March are typical: ‘I fired at least 1,500 rounds into the masses of Germans on the roads, and on each mission I dropped four 25-pound Cooper Bombs (high explosive) into the German columns’.73 By directing their fighters to attack targets a few miles behind the battlefront RFC HQ ensured that they struck German units at their most vulnerable, before dispersing on the battlefield. Cobby reckoned it ‘almost impossible’ to miss columns of German troops and transport moving on narrow roads. ‘One only had to fly straight over a road for a few seconds, and let the bombs go one after another as quickly as possible, and they fell amongst masses of marching troops’.74

During Michael 4th Squadron expended over 67,500 rounds and three tons of bombs while 2nd Squadron, freed from high altitude patrols when Jagdstaffeln interference decreased after 25 March, fired 14,000 rounds at ground targets.75 During the first week the RAF dropped over 250 tons of bombs and fired over a million

70 Minutes of brigadiers’ conference held at RFC HQ, 24 February 1918, NAUK AIR1/920/204/5/884; Howard to ‘granny’, 12 February 1918 [Watson and Fraser (eds.) ‘The Personal Letters of Captain R. W. Howard, MC, Australian Flying Corps’, p. 56]. 71 I Brigade operational summaries, March 1918, NAUK AIR1/838/204/5/285. 72 Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, p. 575; John Slessor, Air Power and Armies, pp. 184-85; Malcolm Cooper, ‘British Air Policy on the Western Front, 1914-1918’, PhD thesis, Oxford University, 1982, p. 189. 73 John Wright, ‘From Horses to Horsepower’, manuscript memoir, private collection. 74 Cobby, High Adventure, p. 86. 75 ‘No. 4 Squadron Australian Flying Corps records and statistics’, AWM224 MSS520; John Bennett, Highest Traditions: the History of No. 2 Squadron RAAF, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1995, p. 55. 300 rounds at enemy troops, becoming Third and Fifth Armies’ surrogate artillery.76 Numerous sources attest to the significance of these attacks in halting the German advance before Amiens. While not decisive they alleviated the gap in British fire support created by the temporary ineffectiveness of British artillery; they demoralised and caused German units considerable casualties and added to logistical difficulties behind the battlefront.77 As Cambrai had presaged however, low-flying proved expensive. Between 21 March and the end of April both AFC scout squadrons wrote off or returned for major repairs over 100 per cent of their establishment strengths in aircraft.78 The Australian experience reflected the RAF as a whole, which during the same period struck off 1,302 aeroplanes, 70 more than it had on strength to begin with, and over half of which were attributable to ground fire.79

Despite the cost, the RAF’s improvised focus on ground attack for fighter squadrons continued to a comparable extent during Georgette and Gneisenau, though more effective handling of the artillery may have made the airmen’s efforts less important overall.80 Georgette saw the further integration of fighters into the land battle when 1st Tank Brigade arranged for 4th Squadron’s wing to provide ‘an aeroplane to cover each tank…to deal with Anti-Tank Guns etc’.81 This concerted shift from air superiority to ground support for fighters had the highest sanction; Generalissimo of the Allied Armies, , declared ‘the first duty’ of fighter aircraft to be ‘incessant attacks’ on enemy troops and bivouacs, with air

76 RFC HQ war diary, March 1918, AWM45 29/86 and 29/87. 77 Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Case Studies in the Development of Close Air Support, Officer of Air Force History, Washington DC, 1990, p. 25; David Jordan, ‘The Royal Air Force and Air/Land Integration in the 100 days, August-November 1918’, Air Power Review, volume 11, number 2, 12-29, p. 18; David Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918, Allen Lane, London, 2011, p. 195; Hallion, Rise of the Fighter Aircraft, p. 134; Cooper, The Birth of Independent Air Power, p. 146; Pye, ‘Evolution in Action’, pp. 57-59; Jones, The War in the Air, Volume IV, p. 321; ‘Summary of air intelligence’, No. 79, 8 May 1918, NAUK AIR1/2124/207/74/3; Summary of Air Intelligence, 11 April 1918, NAUK AIR1/6B/4/56/2A; III Corps Headquarters, ‘Protection against enemy aeroplanes, 19 July 1918 in ‘Annexe to summary of air intelligence’, No. 193, 1 September 1918 NAUK AIR1/2124/207/74/3. 78 List of machines drawn and returned to the aeroplane depot, 2nd and 4th Squadrons, March and April 1918, AWM25 81/5. 79 Cooper, The Birth of Independent Air Power, p. 142. 80 Peter Mead, The Eye in the Air: History of Air Observation and Reconnaissance for the Army, 1785- 1945, HMSO, London, 1983, p. 132. 81 1st Tank Brigade Order No. 22, 16 April 1918, NAUK AIR1/1542/204/77/21. It appears that the operation was not carried out. In any case, fighter-tank co-operation developed in other parts of the RAF during the summer. No. 80 Squadron commanded by Major Victor Bell, an Australian, provided the Tank Corps with specialist close support [Bereton Greenhous, ‘Close support aircraft in World War One: the Counter Anti-Tank Role’, Aerosapce Historian, volume 21, June 1974, 87-93]. 301 fighting ‘not to be sought except so far as necessary for the fulfilment of this duty’.82 A similar emphasis on ground attack appeared in RAF orders issued to fighter squadrons during the summer in anticipation of another German offensive in Flanders and during the Hundred Days RAF brigadiers would, to differing degrees, usually allocate a portion of their fighters to ground attack.83 In July the Army Council pressed the Air Ministry to allocate 15 squadrons for close air support on its 1919 expansion program, warning that ‘any policy tending to weaken the forces available for this class of offensive action will militate against the offensive power of the Army as a whole’.84 Six months earlier GHQ had requested 15 aircraft for low work, indicating the emphasis the German offensives put on the aeroplane as a battlefield attack weapon.85

Between major operations RAF brigadiers also used their fighter squadrons in an ‘energetic harassing policy by means of bombs and machine gun fire’ to disrupt preparations and force the Luftstreitkräfte to commit itself before the main battle.86 ‘Bombing and offensive patrols’ thus replaced the standard offensive patrol in Camel units such as 4th Squadron. Similar to the ‘armed recce’ of the Second World War, these sorties combined the RAF’s two means of gaining air superiority as articulated in Fighting in the Air (aerial combat and attacks on ground targets behind German lines) and exploited the fighter’s inherent flexibility and versatility. They also took advantage of the Luftstreitkräfte’s absence over quiet sectors, through which both sides rotated battle-fatigued infantry units. Whereas British troops enjoyed a respite over the summer, German soldiers suffered under daily air attacks which, as well as inflicting casualties, contributed to the deterioration of morale.87 Prisoner interrogations suggest that attacks on billets by British fighters made German troops

82 Jones, The War in the Air, Volume IV, p. 348. 83 11th Wing RAF, ‘Battle Operation Order No. 1’, 30 May 1918, NAUK AIR1/1826/204/202/9; J. P. Harris and Niall Barr, Amiens to Armistice: the BEF in the Hundred Days campaign, 8 August- 11 November 1918, Brassey’s, London, 1998, p. 82; Jonathan Boff, ‘Air/Land Integration in the 100 Days: the Case of Third Army’, Air Power Review, volume 12, number 3, Autumn 2009, 77-89, p. 83. 84 G. V. Flemming for the Secretary, the Army Council to the Secretary, Air Ministry, 27 July 1918, NAUK AIR1/2267/209/70/34. 85 Field Marshal Douglas Haig to GHQ, British Armies in France, 20 November 1917, NAUK AIR1/2267/209/70/34. 86 Brigadier General Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, CO X Brigade RAF, ‘Operation Orders No. 36’, 18 July 1918, NAUK AIR1/1938/204/245/3. 87 Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall, p. 289; Fourth Army Intelligence summary, 13 May 1918, NAUK AIR1/1591/204/83/9. 302 feel perpetually unsafe.88 A typical attack on Lestrem by 4th Squadron with eight bombs on 29 July, for example, killed 15 and wounded 31 soldiers of the 23rd Reserve Division, with a dozen casualties following in a similar raid the next day.89 Jonathan Boff attributes significance to the RAF’s constant, menacing presence over German rear areas, arguing that it ‘played an important role in continually reinforcing the German sense of material inferiority’, which figured in the German army’s eventual collapse.90 Captain Alfred Carne of the 6th Battalion AIF, which did four tours in front of Strazeele, meanwhile noted that aside from an ‘occasional Hun plane [that] sneaked a little way across the line at twilight’ the RAF ‘had complete mastery of the air’.91

Alongside its ‘energetic harassing policy’ the RAF also targeted German aerodromes in carefully planned strikes by entire wings. Like most such missions planned at formation level in 1918, low-altitude attacks on enemy aerodromes had ad- hoc origins, originally conceived and carried out by resourceful individuals in mid- 1917. Aerodrome strikes subsequently featured in RFC operation orders during the Ypres and Cambrai campaigns. Previously flight-sized affairs, on 9 March 1918 V Brigade employed five squadrons in co-ordinated raids against three German aerodromes, the intention being to coax the reticent Jagdstaffeln on the Somme front to fight.92 V Brigade resurrected wing-sized raids in mid-July when its scout pilots again faced few German fighters.93 Over the summer other brigades mounted similar raids all along the British front. In mid-August the AFC scout squadrons contributed the lead elements of 80th Wing’s attacks on and Lomme aerodromes, near Lille. German sources confirm that 80th Wing caused considerable damage and disrupted Jagdstaffeln operations. At Haubourdin 65 RAF aircraft dropped 140 bombs and fired 12,000 rounds from heights between 50 and 400 feet.94 At least one hangar and four aircraft burned and numerous others were damaged; Jasta 43 waited three

88 Summaries of air intelligence, NAUK AIR1/2124/207/74/3 (see especially 7 July 1918, 23 July 1918 and 29 August 1918). 89 4th Squadron war diary, 29 July 1918, AWM4 8/7/17 Part 1; ‘Summary of air intelligence’, 19 September 1918, NAUK AIR1/2124/207/74/3. 90 Boff, ‘Air/Land Integration in the 100 Days: the Case of Third Army’, p. 86. 91 Alfred Carne, essay on wartime experiences, AWM 2DRL/0013. 92 Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, p. 485. 93 RAF Communiqué No. 16, 24 July 1918, AWM4 8/14/2. 94 Ludlow-Hewitt, ‘Report on a low flying operations against Haubourdin aerodrome’, 17 August 1918, NAUK AIR1/1056/204/5/1550. 303 weeks for replacements.95 Sixty machines from 80th Wing attacked Lomme aerodrome the following day, dropping 106 bombs and firing another 12,000 rounds – again from tree-top heights.96 In the words of one Staffelführer, the raid ‘caused all sorts of damage to us and the other Staffeln… Mechanics were wounded and killed by concussion bombs and machine gun fire, and four of Jasta 40’s best Fokkers were burned up in the sheds’.97 Shortly afterwards, a captured German aviator told his interrogators the two raids had wrecked 17 Fokkers while a post-war German history credited the RAF with ‘completely destroying three formations of fighting machines’.98 80th Wing lost two British airmen wounded and an AFC pilot killed: ‘The ease and simplicity of the attack was astonishing…’.99

Raids by other RAF wings during the summer achieved similarly impressive results with notably few British casualties.100 Their effectiveness came from the degree to which the RAF controlled the air, German staff acknowledging that, as they had no fighter reinforcements to counter these ‘extraordinarily strong formations’,

95 Josef Raesch, ‘Raesch of Jasta 43 (Diary of a Fighter Pilot)’, Cross and Cockade (US), volume 8, number 4, 1967, 307-334; Nachrichtenblatt der Luftstreitkräfte No. 26, 13-20 August 1918, EML, Kerr collection, Box 22, Folder 5. 96 X Brigade to HQ RAF, telegram, 16 August 1918, NAUK AIR1/1056/204/5/1550. 97 Peter Kilduff (editor), Germany's Last Knight of the Air: the Memoirs of Major Carl Degelow, W. Kimber, London, 1979, pp. 144-48. 98 ‘Summary of air intelligence’, August 1918, NAUK AIR1/2124/207/74/3; Georg Paul Neumann (editor) and J. E. Gurdeon (translator), The German Air Force in the Great War, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1920, p. 208. 99 Strange to HQ X Brigade RAF, 16 August 1918, NAUK AIR1/1938/204/245/9; Ludlow-Hewitt, ‘Report on Low Bombing Operation against Lomme Aerodrome carried out on 17th August 1918’, NAUK AIR1/1056/204/5/1550. 100 Examples of other wing raids on German aerodromes during August and September include: 13th Army wing’s raid on Epinoy aerodrome on 1 August [A. J. L. Scott, The History of 60 Squadron RAF, p. 114; RAF Communiqué No. 18, 7 August 1918, AWM4 8/14/2; Rudolf Stark, Wings of War: an Airman's Diary of the Last Year of World War One, Arms and Armour Press, London 1973 (1933), pp. 96-98]; 65th Wing and 5th Operations Group’s raid on the German Gotha base at Varsenare on 13 August [RAF Communiqué No. 20, 21 August 1918, AWM4 8/14/2; Frederick Mortimer Clapp, A History of the 17th Aero Squadron, Country Life Press, New York, 1918, pp. 30-32]; 10th Wing’s raid on Phalempin aerodrome, 19 August [RAF communiqué No. 21, 28 August 1918, AWM4 8/14/2]; 10th Wing’s raid on Gondecourt aeordrome on 22 August [RAF communiqué No. 21, 28 August 1918, AWM4 8/14/2]; 10th Wing’s raid on Courtin aerodrome on 23 August [RAF communiqué No. 21, 28 August 1918, AWM4 8/14/2]; 1st Wing’s raid on Cantin aerodrome on 23 August [Captain Bunt for OC 10th Wing RAF to HQ 1st Brigade RAF, 23 August 1918, NAUK AIR1/1056/204/5/1550]; 11th Wing raided Linselles aerodrome on 2 September [RAF communiqué No. 23, 11 September 1918, AWM4 8/14/2]; 10th Wing attacked Emerchicourt aerodrome on 17 September [Lieutenant-Colonel A.S. to GOC AS(I), 17 September 1918, NAUK AIR1/1056/204/5/1550]. Strange planned a raid by 80th Wing, including the Australian fighter squadrons, against Gondecourt aerodrome for 2 September but it apparently did not eventuate, probably due to poor weather [Strange to COs 80th Wing squadrons, 1 September 1918, AWM26 470/3]. 304 they could only concentrate ground defences and establish dummy aerodromes.101 Yet surprisingly, after what appears to have been developing into a concerted campaign to destroy the Luftstreitkräfte on the ground in August, activity slackened during September and October, becoming intermittent and un-coordinated. Salmond recognised in October that low-altitude strikes against aerodromes by fighters could effectively counter the Luftstreitkräfte’s concentration of large formations to gain local air superiority but only asked his brigadiers to ‘bear this point in mind and put it in effect whenever possible’.102 Some did so while others considered attacks on aerodromes as subsidiary to engaging and destroying the enemy in the sky.103 Strange appears to have perceived the value of striking aerodromes with the full strength of his formation and 80th Wing raided several German aerodromes during October and early November, effectively clearing the skies ahead of Fifth Army by the Armistice.104 Malcolm Cooper observes that these attacks exploited the Luftstreitkräfte’s vulnerability on the ground and might have annihilated German air power in the autumn had RAF HQ prosecuted a more deliberate campaign against enemy aerodromes.105

Rather, the RAF’s employment of fighters remained provincial with brigades, wings and squadrons autonomously prosecuting the air war over their respective sectors. Strange issued orders to the AFC COs in July to encourage pilots in planning their own ‘special missions’ such as attacking balloons or high-altitude two-seaters. commanders should, he suggested, ‘do their utmost to encourage pilots to think out good plans and carry them into effect on their own initiative’.107 Strange could fit such sorties into the daily schedule because his brigadier, Edgar Ludlow- Hewitt, recognised that as the sector was ‘very quiet’, the fighter units only needed to

101 Translation of instructions issued by 4. and 17.Armees in ‘Summary of air intelligence’, 8 and 9 October 1918, NAUK AIR1/2124/207/74/3. 102 Salmond to RAF brigadiers, 9 October 1918, NAUK AIR1/725/97/8. 103 Slessor, Air Power and Armies, pp. 55-57; Brigadier-General Charles Longcroft, CO III Brigade RAF, memorandum, 22 September 1918, pp. 239-240, NAUK AIR1/677/21/13/1887. 104 80th Wing attacked Froyennes and Pont-a-Chin aerodromes on 18 October [RAF Communiqué No. 29, 23 October 1918, AWM 8/14/2]; Rebaix aerodrome on 30 October [Strange to HQ X Brigade RAF, 31 October 1918, NAUK AIR1/1938/204/245/8]; and Chapelle-a-Wattines and Grandmetz aerodromes on 4 November 1918 [Strange, ‘Low bombing attack on Chapelle-a-Wattines aerodrome, NAUK AIR1/1938/204/245/8]. 105 Cooper, The Birth of Independent Air Power, p. 150. 106 Strange to Nos 46, 2nd and 4th Squadrons, 14 July 1918, NAUK AIR1/1938/204/245/9. 107 Strange to 80th Wing squadrons, ? July 1918, NAUK AIR1/1938/204/245/9. 305 do a single patrol each day.108 For his part, Ludlow-Hewitt had the sanction of Fighting in the Air and RAF HQ’s instructions to brigadiers to encourage ‘special missions’ to keep the scout squadrons from becoming ‘stale’ in the face of German inactivity.109 Strange’s suggestion in his memoir that these sorties evolved among the Australian pilots from a special initiative instilled by their colonial upbringing, and that he needed to adapt the wing’s daily orders to ‘suit their methods and at the same time satisfy the demands made from higher up’ therefore gives entirely the wrong impression.110

McCloughry explained how the pilots of 4th Squadron used the greater freedom permitted by this policy to tailor their sorties to the specific circumstances of their sector.

Once a pilot had proven his ability he was permitted to carry out special offensive patrols, either alone or with another aeroplane. In this manner my squadron gradually was relieved of the bulk of daily routine flights and carried out patrols at the COs discretion. It was found that the best results were achieved by working in pairs, the individuals being allowed to choose their partners… My partner and I made frequent visits to the infantry and forward troops, particularly to A/A units and there we obtained most valuable information as to the enemy aircraft movements… In consequence, we arranged our patrols for these periods.111

‘Special missions’ achieved outstanding results, accounting for the vast majority of enemy aircraft 4th Squadron claimed in July and August (see Table 9.1). Regular offensive patrols proved less effective but re-emerged as useful during September and October when Jagdstaffeln bolstered the northern part of the line to cover the German withdrawal through Belgium. Particularly successful were attacks on observation balloons, on which the Germans relied heavily in the absence of air superiority and which they struggled to replace.112 The RAF never established official tactics for attacking these notoriously difficult targets but, as the private records of 4th

108 Ludlow-Hewitt to Strange, 30 June 1918, AWM26 359/1. 109 General Staff, Fighting in the Air, March 1917, p. 13, LHCMA Brooke-Popham papers, item 8/2/1; General Staff, Fighting in the Air, April 1918, p. 19, LHCMA, Brooke-Popham papers, item 8/3/5; Minutes of brigade commanders conference held at RAF HQ, 30 July 1918, NAUK AIR1/920/204/5/884. 110 L. A. Strange, Recollections of an Airman, The Aviation Book Club, London, 1940, pp. 175-181. 111 Edgar McCloughry, ‘Some war experiences’, staff college essay, 23 January 1928, NAUK AIR1/2389/228/11/121. See also: Edgar McCloughry to the officer in charge of Australian War Records, 21 February 1919, AWM 1DRL/0426. 112 Hoeppner, Germany’s War in the Air, p. 158. 306 Squadron’s pilots indicate, freedom from standard offensive patrolling allowed them to devise their own schemes and then adjust them as balloon units in their sector introduced new defensive measures.113

Table 9.1 4th Squadron enemy aircraft claims and mission type, June-October 1918114

June July August September October

Offensive Patrol 21 5 6 15 21 Special Mission 5 31 16 19 14 Escort 0 2 1 0 5 TOTAL 26 37 23 34 40

Striking a balance between individual initiative and the larger squadron and wing-strength schemes proved challenging. In September, following the destruction of a 4th Squadron flight that continued on a deep offensive patrol after failing to rendezvous with co-operating formations, Brigadier-General Ludlow-Hewitt castigated the pilots of X Brigade for what he perceived as their alarming individualism. He criticised the ‘entirely selfish enterprise’ of airmen who ‘exaggerate the importance of their individual prowess as “Hun-getters”’ to the detriment of the ‘principle of co-operation’. While recognising the ‘inestimable value’ during quiet periods of ‘special missions composed of small patrols of determined men acting on their own initiative’, pilots had to be prepared to submit ‘to steady leadership in large and carefully organised formations’ when Luftstreitkräfte activity increased.115 One 2nd Squadron pilot noted this tendency too, attributing ‘a great deal of our losses’ to overconfidence ‘owing to the previous inactivity of the Bosche’; another insinuated that the loss of two pilots to a large formation of Fokkers north-east of in

113 Brigadier-General Robert Brooke-Popham, Deputy Quartermaster-General, RAF HQ to RAF Brigadiers, 12(?) July 1918, NAUK AIR1/1938/204/245/9; 11th Army Wing notes on balloon strafing, February 1919, NAUK AIR1/1580/204/81/50; Wright, ‘From Horses to Horsepower’, private collection; Wilkinson, manuscript memoir, pp. 263-266, RAF Museum X001-2325; Eric Watson (ed.), ‘Letter from a flying officer’, The 14-18 Journal, 1996, 16-19, p. 17; McCloughry to the officer in charge of Australian War Records, 21 February 1919, AWM 1DRL/0426. 114 Tabulated from claims filed on Combats in the Air Reports in 4th Squadron’s war diaries, AWM4 8/7/16- 8/7/20 Part 3. 115 Ludlow-Hewitt to HQ 80th Wing RAF, NAUK AIR1/1938/204/245/9. 307 mid-October resulted from the patrol leader’s impetuosity.116 The reappearance of strong German fighter formations in September and October saw the emphasis in 80th Wing shift from ‘special missions’ back to multi-unit offensive patrols with ‘each Flight conforming to the leadership of the leading flight’. Still, as further memoranda on the issue reveals, brigade and wing commanders continued struggling to bend the initiative of their pilots to the objectives of air power on a grand tactical scale.117 British air leaders finished the war having not satisfactorily reconciled this tension between flexibility and strength.

Another issue not completely reconciled by British air leaders in 1918 involved the use of fighters on defensive sorties such as escorts, line patrols and interceptions. Despite acknowledgement in the 1918 edition of Fighting in the Air that, as ‘aerial supremacy will usually be relative and seldom absolute’, patrols needed to work both over and beyond the line, the RAF stuck rigidly to the principle that the fighter was an inherently offensive weapon.118 This created an ambivalence and inconsistency throughout the air force regarding the use of fighters to directly protect other aircraft.

The RAF, for example, officially considered escorts ‘seldom desirable’, arguing that offensive patrols timed to coincide with bombing raids were more effective.119 Even so, throughout 1918 various brigades in which the Australian scout squadrons operated provided both army (bombing and long range reconnaissance) and corps squadrons with close escorts; the frequency of these varied considerably from none to several per week depending on enemy activity and, it seems, the attitude of brigade and wing staff regarding escorts. That they had potential to mitigate losses among the two-seaters is clear from AFC records. In one instance, six 4th Squadron Camels protected a flight of DH9s from 19 enemy scouts, seeing all the bombers safely to their target and back.120

116 James Ross to mother, 9 September 1918, AWM 3DRL/1298; Frank Roberts interviewed by Fred Morton, 1977, NLA ORAL TRC 536. 117 Strange to COs of squadrons in 80th Wing, ‘Offensive Patrols’, 30 September 1918, NAUK AIR1/1938/204/245/9. 118 General Staff, Fighting in the Air, April 1918, p. 3, LHCMA Brooke-Popham papers, item 8/3/5. 119 General Staff, Fighting in the Air, April 1918, p. 16, LHCMA Brooke-Popham papers, item 8/3/5; General Staff, SS 205 Notes on Observation from Aeroplanes, Army Printing and Stationary Services, France, February 1918, pp. 5-6. 120 CO 4th Squadron to the Officer in Charge of War Records, AIF HQ, 4 August 1918, AWM4 8/7/17 Part 1. 308 More routinely RAF wing and brigade commanders co-ordinated offensive patrols with two-seater sorties, as suggested in Fighting in the Air. Thus in May, for example, IX Brigade detailed 2nd Squadron ‘to work in conjunction’ with bombers attacking Bray, that is, to time their patrol to be near the target as they made their bombing run.121 Strange did likewise in September, directing the Australian squadrons to patrol at lower altitudes following a spike in losses to aircraft co- operating with the artillery over Fifth Army’s sector.122 III Brigade’s commander, Brigadier-General Charles Longcroft, did similarly the following month, detailing an ‘inner offensive patrol’ 6,000 feet above the German balloon line.123 He emphatically reminded his fighter pilots however that their role was ‘solely offensive’; when employed in ‘the vicinity’ of two-seaters their purpose remained destroying enemy machines they attracted.124

Some army wings also conducted a limited number of line patrols. 4th Squadron carried them out intermittently, flight commanders using them to orientate new pilots to the front. ‘Their job was to fly in formation at about 4,000 feet on our side of the line and protect our observation balloons from attack’, explained Lieutenant Jack Wilkinson. ‘This patrol went out in the late evening – a favourite time for the Hun to come over and try his luck with one of our balloons’.125 The ‘high- altitude patrol’ represented a variation that both AFC scout squadrons attempted, single pilots patrolling 20,000 feet over the line to intercept Rumpler C VII photo- reconnaissance machines. Neither Australian unit had much success; the tactic remained the preserve of specialists flying modified aircraft such as British Captain James McCudden and Captain Alexander Pentland, an Australian in the RAF. Although flying with No. 87 Squadron, Pentland had attachments to units all along the front during the summer to deal with persistent intruders; flying a Sopwith

121 Brigadier General commanding IX Brigade to OC 9th Wing RAF etc., 16 May 1918, NAUK AIR1/1838/204/208/17. 122 Strange to COs of squadrons in 80th Wing, ‘Offensive Patrols’, 23 September 1918, NAUK AIR1/1938/204/245/9; Strange, Recollections of an Airman, pp. 171-173. 123 Brigadier-General Charles Longcroft, CO III Brigade to HQ 13th Wing RAF, 30 October 1918, NAUK AIR1/1513/204/58/34. 124 Longcroft to OC 13th Wing, RAF, 29 October 1918, NAUK AIR1/1513/204/58/34. 125 Wilkinson, manuscript memoir, p. 241, RAF Museum X001-2325. 309 Dolphin carrying additional guns, electrical heating and compressed oxygen he shot down nine German reconnaissance machines.126

Technological constraints hindered other interception sorties conceived in the RAF and attempted by AFC pilots in 1918. Since late-1916 ‘compass stations’, capable of determining the direction of German wireless signals, and ground observers had alerted British pilots to German aircraft over the line using visual signals.127 In 1918 brigades made various arrangements to respond to this intelligence more deliberately.128 Although specific schemes differed, in July 80th Wing began detailing a squadron to provide aircraft to wait on stand-by and scramble in response to reported enemy aircraft.129 These rarely succeeded in shooting down intruders; as 4th Squadron pilots noted, the time taken to climb to the German aircraft’s height gave them plenty of opportunity to escape back across the line. Nonetheless, the pilots believed that as ‘they usually cleared off… the effort was worthwhile’.130 4th Squadron’s CO, Major Wilfred McCloughry, also attempted to intercept German bombers during the Luftstreitkräfte’s night offensive during May 1918.131 He engaged Gothas on several occasions but could never press his attack due to interference from British searchlight and anti-aircraft units mistaking him for a German.132 The most successful Australian fighter pilot of the war, Captain Robert Little, died intercepting night bombers during the same period, possibly hit by British machine-gunners making the same error. Even a specialist British night interceptor squadron had limited success. Until the war’s end anti-aircraft fire proved more effective against German night raiders.133

126 Charles Schaedel, Australian Air Ace: the Exploits of ‘Jerry’ Pentland, MC, DFC, AFC, Rigby, Adelaide, 1979, pp. 52-56. For other accounts of Australian pilots attempting high altitude interceptions see Eric Watson (editor), ‘Letter from a flying officer’, The 14-18 Journal, 1996, 16-19, p. 17; Wilkinson, manuscript memoir, pp. 255-256, RAF Museum, X001-2325. 127 Jones, The War in the Air Volume IV, pp. 115-116. 128 Although specifics differed between brigades and changed over time the basic system is outlined in General Staff, Reports of Movement of Enemy Aircraft, Army Printing and Stationary Services, France, March 1918. 129 Strange, Operation Orders No. 30, 30 July 1918, NAUK AIR1/1938/204/245/2. 130 Cobby, High Adventure, p. 104; Garnet Malley, ‘Stand-by patrol’ (notes written for the official historian c. 1922), AWM 44 8/2; McCloughry to the officer in charge of Australian War Records, 21 February 1919, AWM 1DRL/0426. 131 Following the failure of Michael and Georgette the Luftstreitkräfte diverted bombers from targets in Britain to bomb the area behind the British front. Between May and September German bombers dropped some 15,000 bombs, causing 4,000 casualties. 132 McCloughry’s combat reports are in 4th Squadron’s war diary, May 1918, AWM4 8/7/15. 133 General Staff, War Office, ‘Summary of Hostile Aircraft Bombing Activity on British Front in France during September 1918’, 11 October 1918, NAUK AIR1/2267/209/70/38. 310 As the RAF’s training manual would note in 1933, defensive and interception sorties required careful organisation and co-operation between ground and air units supported by ground-air and air-air communications, which, despite experiments with wireless telephony, the RAF lacked in 1918.134 Although later generations of aircraft would provide capable defensive weapons, Trenchard, Salmond and their colleagues were right to perceive the fighter aircraft of their day as offensive weapons and largely employ them as such.

Evaluating the effectiveness and success of the AFC fighter squadrons against each other or their British counterparts is difficult because of considerable contrasts in the intensity of aerial activity over different parts of the front and corresponding variations in the manner that RAF squadrons operated. Further, the unit records contain little easily comparable data while that which is available, such as flying hours, ordnance expended, victories and casualties was subject to the amount of battle flying and type of operations a squadron conducted – not to mention length of service on the Western Front. Even comparing the Australian squadrons with the few British units that shared a similar service history reveals little of substance. 2nd Squadron’s statistics for claims, casualties and hours flown resemble those of No. 64 Squadron, a unit that formed and deployed at roughly the same time, starting on DH5s before switching to SE5as.135 Both squadrons suffered less than half the casualties and made far fewer claims than another SE5a unit, No. 84 Squadron, which deployed to France in the same period but did considerably more battle flying during the Hundred Days.136 4th Squadron’s statistics resemble those of the only British Camel squadron that arrived in theatre at a similar time (No. 65 Squadron), though the latter did considerably more battle flying than the Australians during the final campaigns.137 Perhaps for this reason Ludlow-Hewitt regarded 4th Squadron as ‘one of the finest’

134 John Tanner, Fighting in the Air: the Official Combat Technique Instructions for British Fighter Pilots, 1916-1945, Arms and Armour Press, London, 1978, p. 141. This is a reproduction of the Air Publication 928, ‘Air Fighting’ published in February 1933. 135 Manuscript history of 64 Squadron RAF NAUK AIR 1/173/15/182/1. 136 ‘Statistical data 1914-1918’, NAUK AIR1/686/21/13/2248; History of No. 64 Squadron RAF, AIR1/173/15/182/1; Trevor Henshaw, The Sky Their Battlefield: Air Fighting and the Complete List of Allied Air Casualties from Enemy Action in the First War, Grub Street, London, 1995. 137 ‘Statistical data 1914-1918’, NAUK AIR1/686/21/13/2248; Shores, Franks and Guest, Above the Trenches, p. 37. 311 Camel squadrons in France, something with which Strange and Salmond agreed but which, ultimately, is impossible to quantify.138

When considered from the operational level, at its climactic stages in 1918 the British air offensive over France and Belgium had a depth and complexity considerably greater than is apparent in the records of units and individual pilots, on which the literature has traditionally focused. Previously considered rigid and inefficient, the British air offensive’s success actually owed much to its flexibility. As the AFC squadrons demonstrate, British fighter wings developed the capability to mount sorties on the grand tactical level while also taking advantage of initiative at the squadron level. Although units tended to operate at heights prescribed by the performance of their machines, British fighter squadrons could switch between roles as the situation on the ground demanded. Another charge made against the RAF is that it became embroiled in a fight for air superiority for its own sake. As this chapter demonstrates however, in both policy and practice aerial fighting was a means to an end; as 4th Squadron indicates in particular, British fighters not only fought for air superiority but they used it too, most notably in aggressively attacking German troops on the ground both during and between major operations. Ironically, the main flaw in British air policy resulted not from dogmatism or parochialism but rather RFC/RAF HQ’s failure, in some instances, to impose a grander vision for the air war’s prosecution on a on a theatre-wide scale.

138 Ludlow-Hewitt to HQ RAF, 2 October 1918, NAUK AIR1/1044/204/5/1506; Salmond to X Brigade, 3 October 1918, NAUK AIR1/1044/204/5/1506; Strange to X Brigade, 25 September 1918, AWM26 470/3. 312 10. AUSTRALIANS AND THE BATTLE FOR AIR SUPERIORITY IN 1918: PALESTINE In his memoir, published in 1935, Les Sutherland provided a grim portent of ‘what the air part of the next war is going to be like’. Drawing on his experiences as an observer with 1st Squadron in Palestine during 1918, he claimed that he had seen aircraft ‘win’ the final campaign and that indeed, he and his comrades had taken part in ‘what was probably the most decisive air action of the whole war’. He goes on to present a compelling account of 1st Squadron’s part in the – Allenby’s final campaign in the theatre – which succeeded in largely destroying the three Ottoman armies in northern Palestine and the trans-Jordan and ending the war in that theatre. Titled ‘The Nine Miles of Dead’, Sutherland’s account focuses on his unit’s bombing and strafing of unprotected Turkish columns as they retreated through narrow defiles and along roads flanked by rough terrain. He emphasises the unprecedented carnage they caused and frankly acknowledges how it affected him and his fellow aviators: ‘I feel sick even now when I think of it’.1

The RAF’s part in the final campaigns in Palestine has been thoroughly covered in the literature. Most accounts, like Sutherland’s, focus on its ground-attack role and emphasise the decisiveness of air power in that campaign. Focusing on 1st Squadron, this chapter re-evaluates the RAF’s role at Megiddo in the broader context of British operations in Palestine throughout that year. Using German records it challenges some well-established assumptions about the campaign and the part that the flying arm played in securing Allenby’s victory. Like the previous chapter the principal theme here is air superiority: how the Australians helped achieve it, and how they used it to support operations on the ground.

Following their retreat from Gaza in November 1917 the Ottoman Seventh and Eighth Armies established a line across central Palestine while, east of the Jordan, Fourth Army garrisoned the Hejaz railway. The three armies formed Heeresgruppe Yilderim (Lighting Army Group) with Liman von Sanders replacing Falkenhayn as Commander-in-Chief in March 1918. With the War Cabinet’s approval for an advance beyond Jerusalem, the EEF spent the early part of 1918 securing better tactical positions in the Judean Hills and extending their right flank into the Jordan

1 L. W. Sutherland, Aces and Kings, John Hamilton, London, pp. 235-36. 313 Valley. Allenby tried twice during the spring to cut the Hejaz railway and link up with Emir Faisal’s Arab insurgents, but both trans-Jordan operations failed. The EEF paused between mid-May and mid-September while Allenby reorganised and retrained his force, flush with inexperienced Indian units to replace British troops lost to reinforce the Western Front. The major British offensive (the battle of Megiddo) started on 19 September and within 36 hours the EEF’s cavalry had completely enveloped the two Ottoman armies (7th and 8th) west of the Jordan. Co-operating with Faisal’s Arabs, the EEF captured Damascus on 1 October and then, pursuing the remnants of the Ottoman armies through Syria, had reached by the 30th, at which point Ottoman authorities agreed to Armistice terms.

The RAF’s role in the Megiddo campaign, and in particular its attacks on retreating Turkish columns, remains the classic example of air power’s potential to influence surface operations. Salmond proclaimed aviation ‘the main feature’ in securing British victory, something his pilots echoed in their letters home.2 Little has changed in modern studies of the campaign, one dissertation describing it as ‘a classic example of what may [be] obtained through theatre-wide air superiority’ and attributing the decisiveness of Allenby’s victory to the RAF’s ground attack missions.3 Specifically, historians have credited the RAF with contributing to the campaign’s outcome by providing pre-battle intelligence, achieving before zero hour, concealing Allenby’s pre-battle deployment, disrupting Ottoman communications during the battle, and destroying retreating Turkish columns.

Although Allenby had fewer troops for the Megiddo campaign than he had a year earlier at Gaza, his air force had nearly doubled in size.4 RFC HQ Middle East in Cairo remained in overall command of air units in the theatre, though the War

2 Major-General Geoffrey Salmond, GOC RAF Middle East to Major-General Frederick Sykes, Chief of Air Staff, nd (c. October 1918), NAUK AIR1/725/115/1; Ross Smith to mother, 24 September 1918, SLSA PRG 18/17; Stanislaus Nunan to family, 24 September 1918, AWM 3DRL/6511. 3 David Bullock, ‘Swift as Eagles: The Victory of the Royal Air Force in Palestine, 1914-1918’, PhD thesis, Kansas State University, 1995, p. 500. For a similar interpretation see: R. D. Layman, Naval Aviation in the First World War: Its Impact and Influence, Chatham Publishing London, 1996, p. 14. 4 Cyril Falls, Military Operations Egypt and Palestine: From June 1917 to the End of the War, Part II, HMSO, London, 1930, p. 452; A. P. Wavell, The Palestine Campaigns, Constable and Co., London, 1929, pp. 112-113. In October 1917 the EEF had approximately 17,000 sabres, 75,000 rifles and 475 guns. In September 1918 it had 12,000 sabres. 57,000 rifles and 540 guns. 314

Palestine, Syria and Trans-Jordan, 19185

5 Jean Bou, Australia’s Palestine Campaign, Army History Unit, Canberra, 2010. 315 Office granted it a divisional status on par with RFC HQ in France.6 Palestine Brigade, which came under Brigadier-General Amyas Borton’s command in December 1917, remained organised into two wings but each received additional squadrons. A third squadron joined 5th (Corps) Wing, providing each of the EEF’s three corps with its own unit for tactical co-operation, while 40th (Army) Wing absorbed a new bombing squadron (No. 144 Squadron flying DH9s) and a partially formed fighter unit (No. 145, commanded by an Australian, Peter Drummond) before the battle. The original units in 40th Wing, 1st and No. 111 Squadrons upgraded their machines in early 1918, the British unit receiving SE5as while the Australians finished replacing their older types with Bristol Fighters by the end of April.

As in 1917 strategic reconnaissance and topographical photography remained 1st Squadron’s main task during the first half of 1918 – though both occurred on a considerably grander scale. Whereas up to Third Gaza the RFC had photographed 1,000 square kilometres, in 1918 Palestine Brigade covered 5,200 square kilometres, 1st Squadron’s C Flight responsible for some three quarters of this work alone.7 GHQ’s surveyors used the pictures to produce new 1:40,000 sheets covering 4,500 square kilometres of enemy country. The Australians also photographed roads and railways extending 240 kilometres behind the Turkish front line, thus elucidating the routes by which Allenby’s cavalry could rapidly encircle the enemy.8 The Australian airmen also conducted daily strategic reconnaissance over the enemy’s vast back areas; flights routinely ranged as far east as Amman and north to Nablus and Tul Keram. Special sorties ordered by GHQ went further, communicating with Arab forces along the Hejaz and reporting enemy dispositions as far north as Haifa.9

6 Also, whereas in late 1917 RFC HQ and Palestine Brigade had shared a commanding officer (though separate staffs), under the new scheme they each had their own GOC. Sir Geoffrey Salmond returnted to Egypt early in 1918 to assume command of RFC HQ in the Middle East. 7 H. Hamshaw Thomas, ‘Geographical Reconnaissance by Aeroplane Photography, with Special Reference to the Work done on the Palestine front’, The Geographical Journal, volume 55, number 5, May 1920, 349-370, p. 352. 8 Captain H. Hamshaw Thomas, ‘Photography during September 1918’, 1 October 1918, NAUK AIR1/1726/204/126/20; Lieutenant W. E. Gower, Officer in charge of photography, 40th Wing, ‘Photographic report for the month of September 1918’, 4 October 1918, AWM4 8/4/9 Part 4. 9 The results of 1st Squadron’s reconnaissance flights are thoroughly documented in the unit’s 1918 war diaries [AWM4 8/4/1 to 8/4/14]. 316 Palestine Brigade order of battle, 30 September 1918

Despite its immense scope and obvious value to British operations, aerial reconnaissance remained fallible. Of the rough terrain astride the Jordan river, maps surveyed exclusively by aerial photography contained errors in scale of up to 400 metres.10 Though certainly better than nothing, the EEF replaced these maps with traditionally surveyed charts whenever it occupied new ground.11 And despite the development of more systematic methods during 1918, broken ground and camouflage continued to hinder accurate interpretation of aerial photographs.12 Sound-ranging and flash-spotting proved more effective than photography in locating Ottoman batteries in the Judean Hills while the misinterpretation of aerial photographs contributed to the failure of both trans-Jordan operations.13 By the start of the Megiddo campaign, Palestine Brigade’s production of oblique and stereoscopic prints had mitigated these problems – though it never entirely overcame them.14 Overall, Palestine Brigade’s photography provided the EEF with an important, but imperfect, intelligence source in the absence of alternatives.

10 Hamshaw Thomas, ‘Geographical Reconnaissance by Aeroplane Photography’, p. 358. 11 Peter Collier, ‘The Impact on Topographic Mapping of Developments in Land and Air Survey: 1900-1939’, Cartography and Geographic Information Science, volume 29, number 3, 2002, 155-174, p. 162. 12 General Staff, Intelligence, EEF GHQ, ‘Notes on the interpretation of aerial photographs taken on the Palestine Front’, 2nd edition, June 1918, AWM 778.35 G253. 13 Yigal Sheffy, British Military Intelligence in the Palestine Campaign, 1914-1918, Cass, London, 1998, pp. 306-07; Matthew Hughes, Allenby and British Strategy in the Middle East, Frank Cass Publishers, London, 1999, pp. 86-87. 14 Captain H. Hamshaw Thomas, ‘Photography during September 1918’, 1 October 1918, NAUK AIR1/1726/204/126/20. 317 The extent and success of 1st Squadron’s reconnaissance work, and the subsequent effectiveness of RAF support during the Megiddo campaign, owes much to the air superiority British airmen achieved before zero hour. Although the Luftstreitkräfte expanded to eight Abteilungen and achieved peak capability in early 1918 the Germans rarely disrupted Palestine Brigade’s sorties.15 1st Squadron suffered a conspicuously low casualty rate during 1918: 285 flying hours per airman killed or captured from all causes and 1,311 flying hours per casualty if only losses to enemy aircraft are considered.16

By necessity, Palestine Brigade waged a very different kind of air superiority campaign to that employed by its counterpart on the Western Front. With only one single-seat fighter squadron (No. 111) to cover a line two thirds as long as the British sector in France and Belgium, 40th Wing’s staff tended towards a defensive strategy that allowed them to concentrate strength wherever necessary. Thus sorties crossing the line typically had a close escort and, from February, No. 111 Squadron held fighters in readiness to respond to ‘H[ostile] A[ircraft] alarms’ issued by a chain of observation posts along the front. 40th Wing’s resumes also record a considerable number of ‘offensive patrols’, but in contrast to those carried out over the Western Front they appear to have been barrage-type patrols either over or just beyond the front line. Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Williams (CO of 40th Wing from late June) believed that standing patrols throughout daylight hours, co-ordinated by a rigid

15 In the spring of 1918 three additional flying units reinforced Heeresgruppe Yilderim: FA 305 and 1F from Germany and FA 14, a joint Ottoman-German flying unit. Jasta 1F, equipped with 20 Albatros DVs merged with Jagdstaffel Yilderim, which had been established in January by combining the few fighters brought to Palestine the previous autumn by FAs 301-304. German fighter operations were severely curtailed when these machines proved structurally defective; Yilderim withdrew them from service in about April following two fatal accidents. During 1918 FA 300 (at Semakh) and FA 302 (at El Afule and later, Waldheim) provided tactical cooperation for Eighth Army on the coast. FAs 301 and 303 (at Jenin) fulfilled the same role for Seventh Army while FA 305 and FA 14 supported Fourth Army from Deraa. The Jagdstaffel, also based at Jenin, ranged across the entire front, as did FA 304 (at El Afule) which provided Heeresgruppe Yilderim with strategic reconnaissance and bombing (and was hence effectively 1st Squadron AFC’s opposite on the Ottoman side). [Brian Flanagan (trans.), ‘The Reports of Major Serno Part 4: Last Days of the Ottoman Air Force’, Cross and Cockade (US), volume 11, number 4, winter 1970, 346-369, pp. 347-349; Brian Flanagan, ‘Palastine Jagdstaffel (Jasta 55)’, Cross and Cockade (US), volume 13, number 1, 1972, 46-59]. Drafts of Dr Flanagan’s translations of the Serno reports are in the McDermott Library History of Aviation Collection (University of Texas), Ferko papers, box 37, folder 4. 16 This statistic is derived from the 6,559 flying hours reported in 1st Squadron’s manuscript history for the Australian War Records Section [AWM MSS515 Part 2] and the nine airmen killed (including in accidents) and 14 captured during 1918 recorded in Mark Lax (editor), One Airman's War: Aircraft Mechanic Joe Bull's Personal Diaries 1916-1919, Banner Books, Maryborough, 1997, pp. 185-88. 318 timetable, could completely block enemy incursions into British skies.17 As at Verdun in 1916, however, the air barrage failed to live up to expectations. Palestine Brigade intercepted only 13 per cent of FA 304b’s sorties between February and September 1918.18 The British official historian’s claim that ‘German pilots could seldom take to the air without being fiercely attacked’ is evidently a gross exaggeration.19

Indeed, German aerial activity during the spring and summer overwhelmed No. 111 Squadron, the number of hostile aircraft alarms increasing from 71 to 147 per month between March and July.20 This compelled 40th Wing’s staff to assign patrol and interception sorties to 1st Squadron.21 By June the Australians were conducting a third of the wing’s air superiority sorties alongside their strategic reconnaissance and photography missions.22 The Bristol Fighter’s outstanding capability is evident in the fact that, from this point, the AFC accounted for the majority of German aircraft engaged and by numerous references to the Bristol Fighter’s ‘extremely palpable’ superiority in German aviation reports.23 Still, it would be inaccurate to suggest – as do both the British and Australian official historians – that 1st Squadron alone defeated the Luftstreitkräfte.24 The wing’s operational records indicate how its squadrons co-operated, over six months, to wear down their opponents: between March and August 1918 1st Squadron accounted for 46 engagements while No. 111 fought around 60.25 It is also apparent that the Australians’ regular long range sorties (reconnaissance and escorts) afforded them opportunities to engage enemy aircraft that No 111 Squadron, tied to patrols close to the line, lacked. Further, and not reflected in the raw combat data, is the effect of No. 111 Squadron’s menacing

17 Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Williams, OC 40th Wing to OCs Nos 1 and 111 Squadrons, 29 July 1918, AWM25 81/22. 18 FA 304b weekly operation reports, 1918, BHStA IV, F&L, folder 50. 19 H. A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force, Volume VI, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1937, p. 207. 20 Hostile Aircraft alarms are recorded in 1st Squadron’s wireless reports, filed in the squadron’s war diaries. 21 1st Squadron war diary, May 1918, AWM4 8/4/5 Part 1. 22 40th Wing weekly resumes, 1st Squadron AFC war diary, June 1918, AWM4 8/4/6 Part 1. 23 ‘Extracts from translation of weekly reports issued by headquarters of the German Flying Corps’, 16- 22 June 1918, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28. See also other reports in this file, especially those dated 14- 19 July; 20-27 July; and 25-31 August 1918. 24 F. M. Cutlack, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VIII: The Australian Flying Corps in the Western and Eastern Theatres of War, 1914-1918, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1939, (1923); Jones, The War in the Air, Volume VI, p. 206. 25 Resume of operations of 40th Wing, Royal Flying Corps, March-August, NAUK AIR1/2118/207/72. Copies of these weekly resumes are also filed in 1st Squadron’s war diary. No. 111’s engagements include a few by scouts attached to the corps squadrons in March. 319 presence over the line in dissuading German pilots from their tasks, as noted by Yilderim aviation staff, or the ‘enormous influence on the course of operations’ the SE5as had patrolling over German airfields to keep their flyers grounded during the early stages of Allenby’s offensive.26

Ottoman logistical problems and shortages of personnel and materiel also considerably assisted British efforts to achieve air superiority. Replacement aircraft from Germany arrived sporadically throughout the year and were, for the most part, older types lacking modifications necessary for reliable running in the Middle Eastern climate.27 In June, the ‘exceptional shortage of flying personnel’ permitted reconnaissance only when absolutely necessary while, a month later, a shortage of aircraft forced the withdrawal of FAs 300 and 302 from operations altogether.28 In the last week of August Australian airmen destroyed seven German aircraft, forcing Eighth Army to abandon all tactical reconnaissance while flights along the rest of the front would to be attempted ‘occasionally’.29 Von Sanders believed he had just five airworthy machines when the British attacked on 19 September and these he concentrated at Deraa to cover the railway to Damascus.30 Within a few days of the British offensive beginning these had all been shot down or bombed by an AFC detachment supporting Thomas (T. E.) Lawrence’s Arabs advancing on Allenby’s right flank.

This secured considerable advantages for the EEF in the forthcoming operations. In mid-March Ross Smith recorded that, as he had not ‘scrapped a Hun’ in two months of sorties deep into enemy skies, he and his observer had started ‘unofficially’ carrying a bomb in the cockpit to drop by hand on any ‘decent target’

26 ‘Extracts from translation of weekly reports issued by headquarters of the German Flying Corps’, 13- 19 April 1918, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28; Brigadier-General Amyas Borton, OC Palestine Brigade to Salmond, 20 November 1918, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28. 27 The Luftstreitkräfte’s serious supply problems, which were affecting operations by April 1918, are documented in German aviation documents captured by the RAF [NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28] and in the reports of Major Erich Serno, the German Inspector General of Ottoman aviation. Brian Flanagan translated these for Cross and Cockade (US), which published them in four parts in 1970 (volume 11, numbers 2, 3 and 4). 28 ‘GHQ intelligence summary for 24 hours ending 2200 19th October 1918’, AWM4 8/4/10 Part 2; ‘Extracts from translation of weekly reports issued by headquarters of the German Flying Corps’, 20- 27 July 1918, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28. 29 Quoted from captured German documents in Borton to Salmond, 20 November 1918, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28; ‘GHQ intelligence summary for 24 hours ending 2200- 8th October 1918’, AWM4 8/4/10 Part 2. 30 Liman Von Sanders, Five Years in Turkey, The United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, 1927, p. 273. 320 seen.31 The practice became official from mid June; Palestine Brigade’s airmen crossing the line carried bombs to attack ‘any favourable target’ they found, a substitute, explained Borton, for an organised, preliminary bombing campaign for which he lacked the resources.32 The persistent attacks on camps, working parties and transport (the Australians alone dropped over 100 bombs and fired 30,000 rounds at ground targets between June and August) contributed to the deterioration of Ottoman morale over the summer that British intelligence staff documented.33 Secondly, British control of the skies protected the deployment of Allenby’s cavalry on the coast before zero hour. Experience in the Sinai in 1916 had demonstrated the considerable damage that even light aerial bombing could cause mounted units while, more recently, British Fourth Army’s gunners had lost 1,030 horses during the five-day Amiens campaign – 720 to aerial bombing, a third of these to ‘two small bombs’.34 During Allenby’s offensive itself, the RAF faced practically no opposition in the air, allowing 5th Wing to provide units in the field with comprehensive tactical co- operation and GHQ with the vast majority of intelligence it received during the campaign’s early stages.35 The speed and length of the British advance into Syria during October outstripped the RAF’s logistics and mobility but 1st Squadron’s A Flight did accompany advanced units. It flew some of the longest strategic reconnaissance sorties of the war (nearly 1,000 kilometres) but also reprised its 1916- 17 role of co-operating with units on the battlefield. Thus, on 30 September at Damascus, Lieutenant Stanislaus Nunan and his observer Francis Conrick strafed machine gun posts holding up the light horse and dropped notes to them indicating enemy rearguard positions.36 During October, in which the AFC flew 700 hours – as

31 Ross Smith to mother, 12 March 1918, SLSA PRG 18/17. 32 Borton to Salmond, 20 November 1918, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28. 33 Evidence of the absolute impunity with which Australian airmen attacked Turkish ground targets is found in private records such as: Ross Smith to mother, 20 July 1918 (incorrectly dated 20 July 1917), SLSA PRG 18/17; Pat Conrick (editor) The Flying Carpet Men, self published, Lucindale, 1993, pp. 104-05. For the decline in Ottoman morale see GHQ’s daily intelligence summaries in 1st Squadron’s war diaries and Edward Erickson, Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War I: a Comparative Study, Routledge, Oxon, 2007, pp. 143-44. 34 Borton to Salmond, 20 November 1918, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28; ‘Fourth Army Artillery in the ’, 26 August 1918: reproduced in Sanders Marble, ‘The Infantry Cannot do with a Gun Less: the Place of the Artillery in the BEF 1914-1918’, PhD thesis, King’s College, 1998, Appendix 34. 35 For the reconnaissance reports provided to GHQ by the airmen see: General staff, EEF GHQ war diary, September 1918, AWM4 1/6/29 Part 2. 36 Conrick, The Flying Carpet Men, p. 152. For other examples of tactical co-operation conducted by 1st Squadron during October see Lieutenant W. E. Gower, Officer in charge of photography, 40th Wing, ‘Photographic report for the month of September 1918’, 4 October 1918, AWM4 8/4/9 Part 4; 321 much as the six other RAF squadrons combined – Australian airmen engaged only three enemy aircraft.37

Even so, British control of the air was not as comprehensive as previously thought. German operational records indicate that, though considerably reduced, the Luftstreitkräfte maintained strategic reconnaissance until shortly before the commencement of the British offensive. Whereas Borton believed that his ‘permanent defensive patrol’ had prevented all but one German aircraft penetrating over ‘a small and, at the time, unimportant area’ of the British deployment zone after 13 September, during the previous month the Abteilungen had, in fact, conducted numerous reconnaissance sorties. Between 11 August and 12 September, FA 304 took 329 photographs during 14 kriegsflüge (war flights), only one of which the RAF engaged.38 Contrary to intelligence provided by prisoners and agents, these increasingly suggested an imminent British offensive on the coast while providing no definite evidence of one in the Jordan Valley.39 Von Sanders and his staff thus developed a reasonably accurate understanding of Allenby’s dispositions, allowing them to concentrate their heavy artillery and few reserves to meet the threat.40 This disputes two thoroughly established ideas about the campaign: that surprise played a crucial part in British victory and that the RAF’s ‘mastery’ of the skies had underwritten this.41

The RAF’s ground attack missions, in which all squadrons participated, emerged as its most striking and renowned achievement during Allenby’s offensive. Raids on Ottoman army and army group communications close to zero hour by a bomber assigned to 1st Squadron and No. 144 Squadron’s DH9s probably made the most quantifiable contribution to British success. Post-battle analysis indicated that raids on Deraa on 16 and 17 September had destroyed

Gower, ‘Photographic summary for the month of October 1918’, 31 October 1918, AWM4 8/4/10 Part 1. 37 Palestine Brigade, desptach, October 1918, NAUK AIR1/1726/204/126/22. 38 Borton to Salmond, 20 November 1918, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28; FA 304b Wochenberichte [weekly reports], 17, 24, 31 August and 7 and 14 September 1918, BHStA IV, F&L, folder 50. Records for the following weeks do not appear to have survived. 39 FA 304b Wochenberichte, 17 and 31 August 1918, BHStA IV, F&L, Folder 50. 40 Erickson, Ottoman Army Effectiveness, pp. 144-146. 41 H. S. Gullett, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918:Volume VII: The Australian Imperial Force in Sinai and Palestine, 1914-1918, Angus & Robertson, 1939 (1923), p. 687; Wavell, The Palestine Campaigns, p. 201; John Slessor, Air Power and Armies, Oxford University Press, London, 1936, p. 12; Bullock, ‘Swift as Eagles’, pp. 497-98 and 500. 322 telephone and telegraph communications while an attack on El Afule early on the 19th cut lines between GHQ at Nazareth and Seventh and Eighth Army HQs at Nablus and Tul Keram. Buildings at both Ottoman armies’ telephone exchanges also received direct hits, though RAF staff considered it impossible to frankly determine if the retreating enemy had augmented the damage.42 Von Sanders noted that by 0700 (zero plus an hour and a half) his headquarters at Nazareth had lost telephonic communication with Eighth Army and had only intermittent wireless contact with Seventh Army throughout the day. Unreliable communications with the three army headquarters hindered his attempts over the following 48 hours to co-ordinate a retirement to a new defensive line between Semakh and Deraa.43 In Edward Erickson’s assessment, the interdiction of communications by air raids (and Arab saboteurs) caused a ‘loss of situational awareness’, which represented ‘the most glaring deficiency’ in Ottoman control of the defensive battle.44

By mid-morning on 19 September the RAF switched to attacking retreating Turkish columns. Using aerial photographs, Salmond’s staff had correctly identified the routes along which Ottoman forces would need to retreat from the battlefront.45 1st Squadron reconnoitred these and, using wireless, reported targets to Palestine Brigade. In order to concentrate their limited firepower, the army wing squadrons had arranged to dispatch pairs of aircraft every three minutes, with an additional flight of six machines on the half hour.46 These methodical attacks began against Eighth Army troops retiring from the main battlefront at Et Tine and followed them over the next 24 hours north along the Dothan Pass towards Jenin and El Afule. On 21-22 September the RAF switched to Seventh Army units making for the Jordan river crossings; it initially targeted Ottoman troops and transport heading to Jisr ed Damieh through the Wady Fara and shifted north the following day against columns retiring towards Beisan. From 23 September Palestine Brigade, working more sporadically, attacked Fourth Army columns retreating towards Damascus. By that town’s capture,

42 Borton to Salmond, 20 November 1918, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28; ‘Diary of work of RAF during operations from 17/9/18 to 24/9/18’, NAUK AIR1/2393/244/2. 43 Von Sanders, Five Years in Turkey, pp. 285-95. 44 Erickson, Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War I, p. 153. 45 Jones, The War in the Air: Volume VI, p. 210; Salmond, ‘Work of the RAF in the final offensive in Palestine’, lecture, nd, AIR1/498/15/321/1. The five lines of retreat identified by RAF staff were Tul Keram to Samaria; Samaria to Jenin; Ambla on the Tul Keram road to Jenin; Nablus-Wady Fara-Jisr ed Damieh; Balata-Khurbet Ferweh-Wady Fara-Beisan. 46 Salmond, ‘Work of the RAF in the final offensive in Palestine’, undated lecture, NAUK AIR1/498/15/321/1; Borton to Salmond, 20 November 1918, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28. 323 on 1 October, Palestine Brigade had dropped 57 tons of bombs and fired over 300,000 rounds at ground targets, the Australian squadron being responsible for about a third of each.47 Aside from small arms fire, Ottoman troops were effectively defenceless. In 820 flying hours during September 1st Squadron suffered two officers wounded.48

There is no question that in return the RAF inflicted considerable – even unprecedented – damage, disorganisation and demoralisation on Ottoman forces. Several airmen left revealing accounts of the carnage while post-battle inspection tours shocked Salmond and Allenby.49 The RAF’s chief thought the results ‘impossible to describe’, guns and transport piled up, abandoned and overturned lorries and tangled heaps of dead oxen, horses and Turkish soldiers: ‘I have never seen anything so appalling and sickening’.50 Yet these descriptions alone – striking as they are – do not adequately explain how the RAF’s raids on retreating Turkish columns affected the campaign’s outcome. Rather, it is necessary to consider how they helped the EEF achieve the objectives Allenby had set and how they hindered Ottoman forces repeating their successful fighting withdrawal from Gaza.

Integral to Allenby’s plans to inflict a ‘decisive defeat’ on Heeresgruppe Yilderim were the objectives he set for his mounted troops. He correctly identified El Afule and Beisan as the critical points at which the EEF could envelope the two Turkish armies (Seventh and Eighth) west of the Jordan, and cut them off from retiring north by rail.51 The scheme did not depend in any explicit way on the RAF. Allenby asked Salmond for ‘general assistance’ and GHQ defined Palestine Brigade’s involvement in the broadest terms (it allocated 1st Squadron ‘strategical reconnaissance outside the Corps tactical zones’ and ‘photography’) and significantly,

47 ‘Despatch dealing with the operations of the Palestine Brigade, Royal Air Force, during September 1918’, NAUK AIR1/1726/204/126/20; ‘Report on 1st Squadron, Australian Flying Corps for month of September 1918’, AWM4 8/4/9 Part 1. According to the latter 1st Squadron dropped 41,618 lbs of bombs during September (1,311 x 25lb bombs, 64 x 112 lb bombs and 45 x 15lb indendiaries) and fired 116,684 rounds, the vast majority of which must have been against ground targets given the paucity of enemy aircraft. 48 Lieutenants D. R. Dowling and E. A. Mulford of 1st Squadron were shot down by ground fire and wounded on 19 September. 49 Sutherland, Aces and Kings, pp. 235-261; Conrick, The Flying Carpet Men, pp. 135-141; General Sir Edmund Allenby, GOC EEF to wife, 20 September 1918, LHCMA, Allenby papers, item 1/9. 50 Salmond, undated semi-official letter to Major-Generals John Salmond, Frederick Sykes and Sefton Brancker, LHCMA, Groves papers, item 2A. 51 Force Order No. 68 by General Sir Edmund Allenby, 9 September 1918, AWM4 1/6/29 Part 3; Major-General L. J. Bols, CGS EEF GHQ, ‘Instructions to General Officer Commanding Desert Mtd. Corps’, 9 September 1918, AWM4 1/6/29 Part 3. 324 ordered no special bombing operations.52 The staff at RAF HQ and Palestine Brigade devised a detailed air plan to support GHQ’s overall scheme and conceived the idea of making concentrated attacks along the Turkish lines of retreat to help exploit the success of Allenby’s infantry and cavalry.53

As Allenby planned, mounted troops played the key role in the battle with aircraft playing a support role. On the first day light horse commanders assaulting Tul Keram believed air attacks contributed to the capitulation of the town’s garrison.54 Thereafter, in the majority of instances, the RAF attacked Turkish troops who had already been comprehensively outflanked along their only lines of retreat. The ostensible exception to this are the vaunted 21 September raids against relatively intact Ottoman Seventh Army units retiring along the Wady Fara towards the Jisr ed Damieh crossing, which the Turks held until 22 September.55 The RAF inflicted considerable casualties on this force and compelled it to abandon much of its transport but came nowhere near single-handedly annihilating it as Cutlack claims.56 Pushing north along the Jordan on 22 September, the New Zealand Mounted Rifle Brigade only partially prevented, after fighting, ‘a large portion’ of the Turkish 53rd Division from fording the Jordan.57 Over the following two days several thousand of their comrades who had also avoided or escaped the aerial attacks on 21 and 22 September attempted to cross the river in the 40 kilometre gap between British cavalry at Jisr ed Damieh and Beisan. Only a rapid advance south along the river by the British 4th Cavalry Division on 23-24 September, by which time 40th Wing’s attention had shifted east of the Jordan, prevented these troops escaping. Lieutenant-General Henry

52 Anne Baker, From Biplane to Spitfire: the Life of Air Chief Marshal Sir Geoffrey Salmond KCB KCMG DSO, Leo Cooper, 2003, p. 133; Brigadier-General W. H. Bartholomew, BGGS EEF GHQ to the EEF’s corps commanders and GOC Palestine Brigade RAF, 7 September 1918, AWM4 1/6/29 Part 3. 53 Jones, The War in the Air: Volume VI, p. 210; Salmond, ‘Work of the RAF in the final offensive in Palestine’, lecture, nd, AIR1/498/15/321/1. 54 5th Light Horse Brigade war diary, 19 September 1918, AWM4 10/5/2. 55 Jones described 21 September 1918 as ‘the outstanding day in the history of the Palestine Brigade’ [Jones, The war in the air: Volume VI, pp. 223-224]. 56 Cutlack, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18: Volume VIII, p. 161. 57 Auckland Mounted Rifles war diary, 22 September 1918, AWM4 35/2/40; New Zealand Mounted Rifle Brigade war diary, 21-22 September 1918, AWM4 35/1/41; Falls, Military Operations Egypt and Palestine: From June 1917 to the End of the War, Part II, pp. 550-552. 325 Chauvel’s horsemen captured over 10,000 prisoners, in some instances after sharp fighting.58

The RAF’s efforts east of the Jordan between 23 and 30 September had an arguably more significant bearing on the campaign, though again, they did not prove decisive. Unlike the other two Ottoman armies, when Fourth Army started its retreat from Amman on 23 September it had neither been heavily engaged nor outflanked; it also had a three-day head-start before Allenby could redeploy his forces for a pursuit into Syria.59 Even so, Fourth Army (along with remnants of Seventh and Eighth Armies) reached Damascus a depleted and disorganised force, incapable of defending the city against the Desert Mounted Corps, which captured it and some 11,000 prisoners, with little difficulty, on 1 October. Alongside Faisal’s Arabs, who cut the railway between Amman and Deraa, the RAF harried the Turkish troops retiring on foot over the immense stretch of waterless terrain separating Amman and Damascus. On 25 and 26 September Palestine Brigade (including 29 sorties by 1st Squadron) dropped 4 tons of bombs and fired 21,500 rounds into columns passing through the railway station at Mafraq towards Deraa, ‘inflicting enormous casualties and causing much material damage’.60 The Turkish columns dispersed over the following few days, reducing their vulnerability to aerial attack, but on 29 September an Australian reconnaissance sortie identified over 5,000 Turks sheltering in the Wady Zabirani, just south of Damascus. A flight of Bristols attacked them shortly afterwards and when another returned to bomb them again the following morning, the survivors ‘just sat quite still with their heads bowed, resigned to die, too exhausted to move’.61 Shortly afterwards the British 4th Cavalry Division, advancing along the pilgrim’s road, overtook and captured two Turkish divisions north of Kiswe and in the evening Australian Mounted Division troops blocked the route north of Damascus to .62

40th Wing undoubtedly played a role, alongside Faisal’s Arabs and the British cavalry, in destroying the cohesion and morale of this, the last formation Sanders had

58 Falls, Military Operation:s Egypt and Palestine: From June 1917 to the End of the War, Part II, pp. 538-542. 59 Allenby issued orders for the advance on Damascus on 26 September [Falls, Military Operations Egypt and Palestine: From June 1917 to the End of the War, Part II, p. 561]. 60 ‘Despatch dealing with the operations of the Palestine Brigade, Royal Air Force, during September 1918’, NAUK AIR1/1726/204/126/20. 61 Conrick, The Flying Carpet Men, p. 152. 62 Von Sanders, Five Years in Turkey, pp. 303-04. 326 to defend Syria. Still, it is possible the fighter pilots’ efforts might have been more constructive had their sorties been better integrated with the cavalry’s tactical objectives. Rather than strafing retreating Turkish columns south of Damascus, who lacked water and transport and who the Arabs harassed, 40th Wing might have attacked the company-sized rearguard that tenaciously delayed the Desert Mounted Corps’ main thrust along the road from Tiberius. Had the Australian Mounted and 5th Cavalry Divisions secured Damascus 48 hours earlier, as planned, they would have succeeded in cutting off still-larger numbers of enemy troops retreating towards Homs and Beirut.63 Despite 40th Wing being ‘under direct orders of General Headquarters’, Allenby’s staff attempted to co-ordinate air raids with ground forces in very few instances.64 No. 142 Squadron (of 5th Wing) had responsibility for tactical co- operation with the cavalry, but had its attention divided between ‘Chaytor’s Force’, a cavalry flank guard on the Jordan, and the other mounted divisions on the coast. The corps squadron co-operating with the cavalry also experienced mechanical problems with its Armstrong Whitworth aircraft, rendering it ‘practically ineffective’.65 Unlike in 1916, when they had enjoyed close and relatively consistent air support, for much of the Megiddo campaign Allenby’s horsemen had little direct assistance from the RAF. Only after the did 1st Squadron begin co-operating closely, and quite effectively, with Allenby’s cavalry, and only then because Palestine Brigade’s logistics could not sustain additional squadrons forward.66 A reassessment of John Mordike’s interpretation of Meggido as a model of combined operations (‘the dynamic synergism achieved by aircraft and cavalry’) is therefore warranted.67

63 Adv. Descorps to GHQ, 1900hrs 26 September 1918, AWM4 1/6/29 Part 3; Bols, ‘Instructions to General Officers Commanding Desert Mounted Corps and XXIst Corps’, 26 September 1918, AWM4 1/6/29 Part 3. 64 Bartholomew to the EEF’s corps commanders and GOC Palestine Brigade RAF, 7 September 1918, AWM4 1/6/29 Part 3. In the war diary of the general staff, GHQ EEF there are only a couple of examples of GHQ staff attempting to allocate 40th Wing bombing objectives tied directly to operations. In one instance, on 25 September at 0400 hours Chaytor’s force cabled GHQ requesting the RAF attack Amman ahead of its assault on the town at 0700. GHQ received the cable too late to accede to this request but offered to organise strikes for later in the day if necessary. Chaytor’s HQ again requested bombing attacks at 0815 on 28 September against Kastala, 14 miles south of Amman. GHQ passed the request onto the flight of No. 142 Squadron allocated to Chaytor’s Force for corps co- operation claiming that its (GHQ) machines were ‘otherwise engaged’ [General Staff EEF war diary, 25 and 28 September, AWM4 1/6/29 Part 2]. 65 Borton to Salmond, 20 November 1918, NAUK AIR1/2415/303/28. 66 Borton to Lieutenant-Colonel P. R. C. Groves, Director of Flying Operations, 25 October 1918, LHCMA, Groves papers, Item 2A. 67 John Mordike, ‘General Sir Edmund Allenby's Joint Operations in Palestine, 1917-1918’, Working Paper No. 06, Air Power Development Centre, Canberra, August 2002. 327 Further, if the surviving records allow it, an examination of air power’s handling at the GHQ and army levels during the Great War could prove illuminating. David Jordan has noted a similar instance in France, during the Amiens offensive. Without clear objectives for aviation from British Fourth Army’s planners, RAF commanders committed ‘army’ squadrons (fighters and bombers) to an expensive and fruitless campaign to bomb the Somme bridges and cut the German line of retreat. As with 40th Wing in Palestine, they might have been better used to assist the infantry who, after 8 August, advanced without adequate tank or artillery support.68 Although a de-centralisation of aviation resources had worked effectively during trench warfare when aircraft had a limited strike role and troops had guaranteed artillery support, it may have required revision for the more mobile, higher tempo campaigns of 1918.

Critical to an overall assessment of the RAF’s attacks on Turkish columns is the question of whether they hindered Heeresgruppe Yilderim’s withdrawal and re- establishment on a new line. Salmond claimed it did, as does Bullock who argues the RAF’s ‘intensive aerial bombing, prevented von Sanders from forming any recognizable defensive line’, and repeating the results of Third Gaza.69 This, however, overestimates Ottoman capability in Palestine by September 1918. In addition to crippling morale and supply problems, and a disruptive enmity between German and Turkish troops, the Yilderim armies lacked the transport, and hence mobility, required to outmanoeuvre Allenby’s forces. Also significantly, Sanders had neither the reserves nor prepared positions on which to fall back, the former beyond his control but the latter resulting from his rigid insistence on holding ground. Under his command a withdrawal such as that carried out in November 1917 under the more dynamic Falkenhayn seems unlikely.70 It would be fallacious therefore to argue that the RAF denied the Turks the opportunity to fall back and re-establish their defensive line when they never had the capability to do so in the first place.

Megiddo, in any case, was a combined operation: its success resulted from the bold and generally well co-ordinated employment of air and ground forces to the battle. If any individual arm played an outstanding role in ensuring the annihilation of

68 David Jordan, ‘The Royal Air Force and Air/Land Integration in the 100 Days, August-November 1918’, Air Power Review, volume 11, number 2, Summer 2008, 12–29, pp. 22-23. 69 Salmond, ‘Work of the RAF in the final offensive’, undated lecture (post-1920), NAUK AIR1/498/15/321/1; Bullock, ‘Swift as Eagles’, p. 500. 70 Erickson, Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War I, pp. 142-143. 328 Ottoman forces it was the cavalry, as Allenby had planned. Although by late 1918 the RAF was participating in the tactical battle to an unprecedented extent, it still made its most considerable, consistent and, arguably, operationally valuable contribution before the British offensive commenced. The RAF played an important and, indeed, necessary part in the British success in Palestine in 1918 but it was not decisive. Contrary to what Salmond told staff college students in the 1920s, the RAF had not guaranteed British surprise at Megiddo, nor had it prevented the Turks from withdrawing and establishing a new line further back.71 Given Allenby’s stated objective of waging an annihilation campaign, the RAF’s arrangements to systematically bomb retreating Turkish forces were entirely appropriate. In the event their efforts inflicted heavy casualties on an enemy who had already been outflanked and lacked the mobility and reserves to survive envelopment by the British cavalry.

Within Palestine Brigade the Australian squadron made a major contribution to the campaign both in the quantity and quality of its reconnaissance and the aggressive manner in which it engaged and destroyed enemy aircraft and targets on the ground. Despite flying only marginally more hours in 1918 than the year before (6,400 against 6,100) 1st Squadron carried out a considerably larger volume of work, reflecting the increased efficiency that better technology and experience at all levels of the RAF in the Middle East provided. In 1918 1st Squadron’s airmen photographed 5,400 square kilometres of terrain, dropped 70,000 lbs of bombs and fired over a quarter of a million rounds; its crews claimed 43 enemy aircraft destroyed and as many again driven down or out of control.72 In a personal letter to Percy Groves, Director of Flying Operations at the Air Ministry, Borton considered it ‘invidious’ to compare the squadrons when ‘all were excellent’ but nonetheless singled out 1st Squadron for praise.

…it is I think universally admitted that the Australians eclipsed themselves – quite undefeated they were prepared to tackle any situation in the air or on the ground and have never failed on anything they have been asked to do but rather have done it better than could possibly have been expected – they are now surmounting all kinds of difficulties of transport and communications and have established an advanced

71 Salmond, ‘Work of the RAF in the final offensive’, undated lecture (post 1920), NAUK AIR1/498/15/321/1. 72 Tabulated from data in the squadron war diaries and Lax, One Airman’s War, pp. 181-84. 329 landing ground with the armoured cars 70 miles from Aleppo and in advance of our cavalry!73

But 1st Squadron did not do it alone. Success in the air in September and October 1918 resulted from the concerted efforts of all Palestine Brigade’s squadrons over several months and would not have been possible to the extent that it was without the failure of the Luftstreitkräfte’s logistics or, indeed, manifest weaknesses in the materiel and morale of Heeresgruppe Yilderim.

73 Borton to Groves, 25 October 1918, LHCMA Groves papers, Item 2A. 330 11. ARMY CO-OPERATION ON THE WESTERN FRONT IN 1918 In September 1917 Trenchard wrote to Major-General John Salmond, the recently appointed Director-General of Military Aeronautics. Salmond had replaced Sir David Henderson as part of a major reorganisation of British aviation administration that would culminate in the establishment of the RAF as a separate service on 1 April 1918. Anticipating the wrangling that would characterise the transfer of authority for aviation from the War Office to the new Air Ministry, Trenchard reminded Salmond that the British air arm’s principal task remained co- operation with the army: ‘Remember in your dealings with the War Office that we are part of the army and that we are not trying to run a separate show at the expense of the army’.1 This notion had comprehensively guided the development of British air power between 1914 and 1917: it shaped the RFC’s organisation, directed research and development of equipment and influenced policy and tactics. As Trenchard’s successor in command of the RFC on the Western Front from 18 January 1918 until the Armistice, Salmond would hold resolutely to the idea that supporting surface operations remained the RFC/RAF’s raison d’être. The corps squadrons, one attached to each army corps on the Western Front represented his foremost means of doing so.

3rd Squadron’s co-operation with the Australian and II American Corps during 1918 is the focus of this chapter. It outlines how the squadron supported the ground forces with which it worked and evaluates the success of air-ground integration in the war’s final campaigns. A major theme of this chapter is the manner in which the move from static to more mobile warfare presented both possibilities and challenges for air power. On the one hand it saw aircraft integrated into army operations to a greater extent than previously, especially in direct support of troops, and suggested the potential of air power’s inherent responsiveness, versatility and flexibility.2 On the other, open warfare undermined many of the elaborate structures

1 Major-General Hugh Trenchard, GOC RFC in the Field to Major-General J. M. Salmond, Director- General of Military Aeronautics, 12 October 1917, RAF MFC 76/1/90. 2 This chapter elaborates on John Bennett’s argument that 3rd Squadron provides an early demonstration of air power’s flexibility and versatility. Like Bennett, I adopt the RAAF’s current definitions of these terms, ‘flexibility’ being ‘the capacity to adapt plans to counter unforeseen circumstances or setbacks, and to capitalise on unexpected opportunities. ‘Versatility’ is the ‘Air Force’s ability to adapt its organisation and forces for a wide range of operations’. ‘Responsiveness’ is ‘the ability to adapt and apply the force in a time frame matched to the situation’ [John Bennett, ‘Flexibility in Air Power: No. 3 Squadron AFC/RAAF: The Direct and Effective Operational Application of Air Power’, MA thesis, University of New South Wales, 2001; Australian Air 331 established during trench warfare to enable reliable co-operation; in this respect 1918 forced British airmen to improvise to an extent they had not done since 1914-15.

After completing its orientation on the Vimy sector, in November 1917 3rd Squadron joined the Australian Corps in Flanders. A focus on improving defences to meet the major German offensive expected in the spring, and the presence of few enemy aircraft, allowed the squadron a relatively quiet winter; though the routine of trench warfare – with its perpetual demand for intelligence and counter-battery fire – demanded flying as frequently as the weather would allow. Although 3rd Squadron’s airmen initially struggled to meet the rather modest demands of even winter trench work, by the beginning of March they had achieved the best operational record of 2nd (Corps) Wing’s six squadrons.3

That co-operation with the heavy artillery formed the bulk of a corps squadron’s work during trench warfare is evident in the usual assignment of two of the unit’s three flights to this duty.4 Efforts to suppress enemy artillery continued unabated with the squadron flying 477 artillery co-operation sorties between 1 January and 31 March 1918: nearly three-quarters of the unit’s operational sorties for the period (see Appendix 3).5 The Australian Corps’ Counter-Battery Staff Office (CBSO) pre-arranged approximately half these as ‘destructive shoots’ issued in a program to the squadron and corps heavy artillery each evening. During a day of fine weather an efficient corps squadron could complete a dozen pre-arranged ‘shoots’, each observing and correcting approximately 300 rounds.6 The system reached peak efficiency in early 1918 following the RFC’s somewhat tardy implementation of standardised procedures throughout the theatre.7 Pre-arranged shoots represented the most comprehensive support the RFC could provide the Royal Artillery; aviators knew the location of the battery with which they co-operated allowing two-way

Publication AAP 1000-D, The Air Power Manual, 5th Edition, Air Power Development Centre, Tuggeranong, 2008 (2007), pp. 44 and 77]. 3 2nd Wing, ‘Monthly summary of squadron artillery reports’, 1-28 February 1918, AWM4 8/6/14 Part 2. 4 Brigadier-General C. Longcroft, GOC III Brigade RAF to RAF HQ in the Field, 16 July 1918, NAUK AIR1/920/204/5/884. 5 3rd Squadron war diaries, January-March 1918, AWM4 8/6/13 Part 1 to 8/6/15 Part 2. In January, February and March, 3rd Squadron flew 656 operational (ie not tests, practices etc) sorties. Of these 477 were artillery co-operation flights, either destructive shoots (219) or artillery patrols (258). 6 ‘Aerial Tactics’, notes prepared by No. 1 School of Aeronautics, Redding, November 1918, NAUK AIR1/161/15/123/4. 7 General Staff, SS131 Co-operation of Aircraft with Artillery, Printing and Stationary Services, France, December 1917. 332 communication (wireless Morse code from the aircraft and cloth strips on the ground) and they carried photographs of their targets superimposed with a ‘clock code’ to determine aim corrections for the gunners.8 Despite frequent bouts of poor air-ground visibility, during the first three months of 1918 3rd Squadron assisted the Australian Corps’ gunners in successfully engaging 179 enemy batteries for destruction.9

Less thorough, but with greater flexibility, artillery patrols formed the other half of 3rd Squadron’s artillery work in Flanders. RFC policy determined that corps squadrons should keep at least one machine in the air throughout daylight hours to spot active enemy batteries along with other targets and report them to their corps’ artillery using the zone call system.10 Though conceived in 1916 for mobile operations (when programmed shoots would be difficult to arrange) the system proved highly effective during static warfare. Familiar with the location of their guns, corps squadron pilots could offer to range a particular battery onto a fleeting target, thus combining the thoroughness of a pre-arranged shoot with the responsiveness of a spontaneous one. When, during an artillery patrol on 18 June for example, Lieutenants Nigel Love and Max Shelley spotted ‘a good many shells’ falling near the 93rd Siege Battery, they had a means of responding: ‘Nigel picked up the Hun Battery firing these’, recorded Shelley. ‘We straightaway got in touch with the 93rd SB and carried out a destructive shoot on the offenders getting through 100 rounds. The E[nemy] B[attery] was pretty well stonkered for its cheek’.11

Photography comprised the other major task of a corps squadron during position warfare. According to the CO of 4th Field Survey Company, one of the

8 R. S. Brown, ‘War Experiences’, RAF Staff College essay, 3rd course, NAUK AIR1/2387/228/11/54. The clock-code, introduced into the RFC in early 1915, allowed pilots to transmit aim corrections in Morse code to the artillery. It consisted of a series of concentric circles, the centre placed on the target with 12 o’clock pointing north. The circles (lettered Y, Z, A-E moving outwards) measured distance from the target (10, 25, 50, 100, 200 yards etc.) while the clock’s 12 digits indicated direction. The signal ‘C2’, for example, would indicate that the shell had fallen inside the ‘C’, (100 yard) circle, in the 2 o’clock direction (north-east) from the target. The frequent movement of artillery and flying squadrons between armies during Third Ypres highlighted the need for the British armies in France to have uniform artillery co-operation procedures. 9 3rd Squadron war diaries, January-March 1918, AWM4 8/6/13 Part 1 to 8/6/15 Part 2. By 1918 British artillery delineated between fire for destruction and fire for neutralisation. The former, usually conducted during trench warfare, aimed to destroy German guns, ammunition and battery positions. British gunners used neutralising fire, typically involving a large proportion of chemical shell, during offensive operations. Rather than methodically destroying enemy artillery and ammunition it had the more limited objective of incapacitating the gunners while the British infantry captured and consolidated their objectives. 10 General Staff, SS131 Co-operation of Aircraft with Artillery, pp. 10-11. 11 Lieutenant Max Shelley, diary, 18 June 1918, AWM 2DRL/0290. 333 principal beneficiaries of the 1,300 photographs 3rd Squadron exposed between January and March 1918, aerial photographs had two applications: cartography and intelligence.12 In contrast with Mesopotamia and Palestine, where cartographers relied almost entirely on aerial photographs in the absence of accurate pre-war charts and trigonometrical points, mapping in France and Belgium primarily involved revision.13 Aerial photographs provided detail necessary for the production of the large-scale (1:10,000) maps the army required for plotting artillery targets and tactical-level planning.14 In trench warfare field works changed gradually enough to permit corps to photograph their line intermittently – perhaps once a fortnight.15 More regularly – indeed, perpetually – the staff needed photographs of the area behind the German line for intelligence. Acting as a conduit between the squadron and the rest of the corps, a Branch Intelligence Section attached to each corps squadron administered requests for photographs requested by headquarters from battalion up. A corps squadron’s photographs, therefore, had wide dissemination and could, indeed, influence the war’s prosecution at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. In February and March for example, 3rd Squadron augmented its reconnaissance and photography efforts in response to a theatre-wide directive from RFC HQ to reveal the location of enemy offensive preparations; by mid-March GHQ had identified it, with reasonable accuracy, between Arras and St Quentin.16 Meanwhile, at the level of operations and tactics, ’s staff found aerial photographs of ‘great value’ in planning a raid in March, while a few months later Captain Alfred Carne noted the ‘valuable aid’

12 3rd Squadron war diaries, January-March 1918, AWM4 8/6/13 Part 1 to 8/6/15 Part 2; M. N. MacLeod, ‘Mapping from Air Photographs’, The Geographical Journal, volume 53, number 6, June 1919, 382-396, p. 382. In early 1916 the BEF had established four field survey companies, one for each army on the Western Front. They each comprised a headquarters and topographical, map, observation and sound ranging sections. They later absorbed the army’s printing sections and became responsible for producing maps. In May 1918 the companies were expanded to battalions and re-organised to comprise a headquarters (responsible for survey and printing), two artillery sections (responsible for sound ranging and observation) and a corps topographical section (for mapping work with corps staff and). Personnel of the latter worked closely with the RFC squadron attached to its respective corps. 13 Peter Collier, ‘The Impact on Topographic Mapping of Developments in Land and Air Survey: 1900-1939’, Cartography and Geographic Information Science, volume 29, number 3, 2002, 155-174, p. 161. 14 MacLeod, ‘Mapping from Air Photographs’, pp. 386-87. 15 Terrence Finnegan, Shooting the Front: Allied Aerial Reconnaissance in the First World War, Spellmount, Stroud, 2011, p. 136. 16 Minutes, Brigade Commanders conference held at RAF HQ, 24 February 1918, NAUK AIR1/920/204/5/884; 3rd Squadron war diary, February 1918, AWM4 8/6/14 Part 1; Tim Travers, How the War was Won: Factors That Led to Victory in World War One Pen & Sword, Barnsley, 2005, pp. 51-53. 334 provided to his company during a minor operation by ‘splendid aeroplane photographs we received’.

We had a variety of photos of the area on which we were operating, including one taken at 11 o’clock in the morning of the stunt which we received at tea time that afternoon. Next evening we saw a photo taken that morning of our new position which we had dug over night!17

Despite the wide dissemination of aerial photographs, by 1918 their main recipients remained the artillery – specifically the Counter-Battery Staff Office (CBSO) and corps heavy artillery. In Flanders 3rd Squadron photographed the counter-battery area two to three times a week to discover the location of camouflaged positions. Although the importance of photographs in locating enemy guns had diminished during 1917 with the introduction of sound-ranging and flash- spotting techniques, they continued to make a substantial contribution to the analysis of counter-battery intelligence. ‘All these sources of information,’ explained GHQ’s flash spotting advisor, ‘dovetailed into each other and one submitted all of them to the test of the air photograph’ – a point corroborated in the general staff report on survey at the end of the war.18

3rd Squadron’s move to the Somme with the Australian Corps and attachment to 15th (Corps) Wing on 8 April upset this routine considerably. Fifth Army’s 50- kilometre retreat in March disrupted the well-established rhythm of trench warfare, putting pressure on the squadrons of 15th Wing to re-establish their corps on unfamiliar fronts and provide warning of further German attacks. In 3rd Squadron ‘A’ and ‘B’ Flights found themselves working on open warfare lines, relying exclusively on zone calls while the CBSO surveyed the enemy’s new counter-battery area to re- establish a program of destructive shoots. With little demand for photographs, ‘C’ Flight became the unit’s dedicated counter-attack flight, flying two or three sorties each day to watch for the concentration of German forces. Reflecting the emphasis the spring offensive placed on the RAF’s ground attack role (see Chapter 9) all 3rd Squadron sorties carried bombs to drop on suitable targets, preference being enemy

17 Captain Alfred Carne, manuscript account, AWM 2DRL/0013. 18 Lawrence Bragg et al, Artillery Survey in the First World War, Field Survey Association, London, 1971, pp. 17-18; General Staff, ‘Report on Survey on the Western Front 1914-1918’, HMSO, 1920 pp. 38-39. 335 batteries, which counter-attack patrols also reported by zone call.19 The artillery and counter-attack patrol thus began to merge, presaging the greater flexibility and versatility that open warfare during the Hundred Days would require of corps squadrons.

Moving to the Somme also confronted the Australian airmen with the largest- ever concentration of German fighters on a British sector. The rate of 3rd Squadron combats per flying hour doubled in April-May from what it had been previously with a proportional increase in losses.20 Still, the squadron’s output did not suffer (it actually established records in most mission-types in May) and engagements with enemy aircraft remained at between 0.01 and 0.02 per flying hour, indicating that 22nd (Army) Wing’s fighters maintained effective air superiority in the area in which 15th (Corps) Wing’s machines operated. When German interceptors did manage to engage 3rd Squadron over the lines, the RE8s, despite usually working alone and being designed to provide a stable platform for photography, proved surprisingly resilient. There are numerous examples of Australian crews successfully resisting attacks by enemy formations and, indeed, attacking German aircraft themselves.21 During fifteen months on the Western Front, the unit would claim 51 victories for the loss of six of their own machines to enemy action.22 The Australians were not unique in this regard; during 1918 corps squadrons throughout the RAF increasingly shouldered fighting duties, some wings using them on balloon protection patrols and all employing them in close air support (ground-attack).23 This foreshadowed a merging of the air superiority and army co-operation roles; in future conflicts aircraft capable of assuming multiple roles would largely replace the dedicated reconnaissance machine of 1914-15.

19 Operation orders No. 11, 15th Wing RAF, 9 April 1918, AWM26 358/19. 20 3rd Squadron war diaries, March-May 1918, AWM4 8/6/15 Part 1 to 8/6/17 Part 4. In March the squadron had fought one aerial combat per 108 flying hours. This dropped to one every 53 hours in April and 48.5 in May. 21 See, for example, 3rd Squadron war diary, 13 July 1918, AWM4 8/6/19 Part 1; 3rd Squadron war diary, 15 July 1918, AWM4 8/6/19 Part 1; Lieutenant J. Gould-Taylor and Lieutenant B. G. Thomson, Combats in the Air Report, 1 August 1918, AWM4 8/6/20 Part 3. 22 3rd Squadron manuscript history, AWM224 MSS518. 23 J. C. Nerney, ‘The Western Front Air Operations May-November 1918’, c. 1930, p. 260A, NAUK AIR1/677/21/13/1887; 15th Wing Battle Instructions Series C No. 1, 7 October 1918, NAUK AIR1/1591/204/83/8; 15th Wing Battle Instructions Series D No. 1, 1 November 1918, NAUK AIR1/1591/204/83/8. 336 V Brigade RAF, 8 August 1918

Re-emerging trench warfare conditions during the summer prompted a return to standard corps squadron work. The artillery flights gradually resumed destructive shoots administered by the CBSO in May but for some time a reliance on artillery patrols and zone calls continued; by the end of the month Fourth Army’s counter- battery staffs had still only located a ‘limited number’ of German artillery positions.24 Similarly, following the capture of Hamel on 4 July, the Australian counter-battery staff could ‘only gradually’ determine where the Germans had withdrawn their guns.25 Developing the kind of intelligence picture necessary for comprehensive artillery co-operation took several weeks after an advance, a constraint that would prove deleterious to artillery co-operation during the Hundred Days. Photography for map revision and counter-battery intelligence also resumed in May, the former important as the Australian Corps’ line advanced frequently with ‘peaceful penetration’ raids. In May alone, with orders from 15th Wing to photograph ‘the area from the front line to 4,000 yards East… as frequently as weather conditions will

24 Notes on discussion at No. 1 Counter-battery Conference, 29 May 1918, NAUK AIR1/1592/204/83/17. 25 ‘Counter-battery Australian Corps HA weekly intelligence summary’, 17 July-24 July 1918, AWM4 13/7/28 Part 2. 337 admit’, 3rd Squadron photographed the Australian Corps’ 20 kilometre front five times.26

Implicit in 15th Wing’s orders, the effectiveness of a corps squadron’s work depended on atmospheric conditions. All 3rd Squadron’s mission-types required clear visibility, thus usually precluding it from supporting Australian troops at night (the recapture of Villers-Bretonneux, 24-25 April 1918, for example) and in bad weather. Summer heat produced haze in the Somme valley that obscured the ground for varying periods on most days; at its worst – such as following 5th Division’s operation at Morlancourt on 29 July 1918 – ‘practically no useful work could be done’ despite 3rd Squadron airmen flying all day.27 During the Hundred Days, autumn rain and mist would provide an even more severe impediment. With the exception of Second Cambrai (8 October 1918) bad weather disrupted 3rd Squadron’s work on the first day of all other major offensives: Amiens (8 August), Mont St Quentin-Péronne (31 August), the Hindenburg outpost line (18 September), the Hindenburg Line (29 September), the Selle river (17 October) and the Sambre-Oise canal (4 November).28 Conditions deteriorated throughout the campaign, V Brigade’s neighbouring formation reporting flying altogether impossible on two days in September, 10 in October and every day in November except two.29

26 Operation Orders No. 11, 15th Wing RAF, 9 April 1918, AWM26 358/19; H. N. Wrigley, The Battle Below: Being the History of No. 3 Squadron Australian Flying Corps, Errol G. Knox, Sydney, 1935, p. 69. 27 3rd Squadron war diary, 29 July 1918, AWM4 8/6/19 Part 1. 28 Weather conditions and their impact on flying operations are recorded in the squadron’s war diary. 29 Jonathan Boff, ‘Air/Land Integration during the 100 days: The Case of Third Army’, Air Power Review, volume 12, number 3, Autumn 2009, 77-89, p. 79. 338

The Australian Corps’ Advance, 8 August-5 October 191830

Although 3rd Squadron had supported numerous raids by the Australian Corps, 4th Australian Division’s offensive at Hamel represents the unit’s first major operation. Often cited as a ‘model’ for future British offensives – something of an exaggeration – its comprehensive arrangements for air co-operation did herald a new extent to which aviation supported ground forces.31 3rd Squadron conducted the ‘majority of the tactical work’, flying 80 hours to provide continuous artillery and counter-attack patrols, following the advance with contact patrols and photographing the new line before dusk.32 Assisting it, No. 8 Squadron co-operated with the tanks while No. 9 Squadron parachuted ammunition to troops at their objectives. The squadrons of 22nd (Army) Wing also directly supported the land battle: three of its

30 Peter Pedersen, The Anzacs: Gallipoli to the Western Front, Viking, Camberwell, 2007. 31 J. P. Harris, Amiens to the Armistice: The BEF in the Hundred Days Campaign, 8 August-11 November 1918, Brassey’s, London, 1998, p. 57. 32 3rd Squadron war diary, 4 July 1918, AWM4 8/6/19 Part 1. 339 four fighter squadrons flew ground-attack sorties while its Bristol Fighter unit watched roads, railways and debussing points as far back as Proyart (10 kilometres east of Hamel). The army wing’s two bomber squadrons raided German bivouacs. GHQ lent three additional fighter squadrons from IX Brigade to provide top-cover and Third Army’s fighters extended their offensive patrols south to cover the rest of Fourth Army’s front.33 Probably no other division-sized operation of the war enjoyed the combined support of aircraft from three wings, that is, 13 squadrons, or 230-odd aircraft. As well as the multi-faceted and highly integrated function air power had assumed by this stage, the air plan, devised by the Australian Corps’ BGGS in collaboration with V Brigade illustrates the British Army’s growing reliance on machinery and firepower to reduce casualties and compensate for dwindling manpower.34

As the plan dispensed with a preliminary bombardment, 3rd Squadron’s artillery spotting began at zero hour. For the first few hours airmen reported batteries neutralised by the barrage so that artillery commanders could switch their guns onto active targets. The plan also allocated five heavy batteries to answer zone calls, airmen being briefed on where the Germans might move batteries once the battle started.35 3rd Squadron issued 80 zone calls and co-operated in the neutralisation of at least 17 batteries (‘in many cases’ airmen did not see the artillery’s response to zone calls).36 Although not entirely preventing it, the Australian Corps counter-battery arrangements adequately suppressed the German artillery’s response during the advance and consolidation.37

Counter-attack patrols flew beyond the German lines to ‘an unheard of distance’ with instructions to transmit zone calls on concentrations of German troops

33 Nerney, ‘The Western Front Air Operations, May-November 1918’, pp. 54-55, NAUK AIR1/677/21/13/1887. 34 Brigadier-General , BGGS Australian Corps to GOC 4th Australian Division and GOC V Brigade RAF, 29 June 1918, NAUK AIR1/1592/204/83/17; Gary Sheffield, Forgotten Victory: The First World War: Myths and Realities, Review, London, 2002, p. 236. 35 ‘Counter-battery Australian Corps HA Operation Order No. 7’, 1 July 1918, AWM26 364/12. 36 3rd Squadron war diary, 4 July 1918, AWM4 8/6/19 Part 1; RAF Headquarters, ‘Notes on corps squadrons work on the First and Third Army fronts during recent operations’, 14 September 1918, NAUK AIR1/1009/204/5/1289. 37 general staff war diary, 4 July 1918, AWM4 1/48/28 Part 1. The divisional staff noted that enemy artillery was ‘not very active’ and that retaliation against the Australian barrage was ‘weak’. 340 and engage them with bombs and machine guns.38 One crew reported a concentration of enemy infantry just before 0700 but otherwise, seeing no enemy counter-attacks the airmen, as Lieutenant Arthur Barrett put it, ‘…bombed and machine gunned everything we saw’. Crossing the line just after zero hour he and his pilot halted a train, silenced several machine gun positions and strafed a pair of limbered guns, overturning one. Descending below 300 feet, Barrett’s eyes ran from gas in the barrage.39 3rd Squadron’s airmen dropped 138 bombs and fired 9,500 rounds on 4 July 1918.40 Combined with the record 54,000 rounds and 850 bombs expended by 22nd Wing’s fighter pilots, this had a considerable impact on such a narrow battlefront.41 ‘Several’ prisoners attested to the ‘moral effect’ of air attacks and noted how ‘they prevent men getting machine guns into action almost as effectively as a barrage… it was almost impossible to look over the top without getting machine gunned from the air’.42 Corroborating this are German Second Army orders that noted ‘heavy casualties caused by machine gun fire from low-flying enemy machines’ at Hamel and issued instructions for dealing with British aircraft.43

Although Australian infantry had been signalling to aircraft since operations at Poziéres in 1916, contact patrols represented a new role for 3rd Squadron at Hamel. Despite difficulties experienced during the 1916-17 campaigns, the general staff recognised that aircraft provided the shortest possible passage of information from the battlefield to corps (and, atypically at Hamel, divisional) headquarters.44 Dropped by airmen returning from the line, contact patrol reports reached headquarters staff in 24 minutes on average – up to half the time taken by a wireless message and a third of that usually taken by carrier pigeon.45 Experience indicated that staff needed to carefully synchronise contact patrols with the infantry’s timetable. At Hamel, 3rd Squadron had instructions to call for flares on the objective at 90 minutes after zero.46 The infantry’s clockwork progress and minimal resistance at the objective allowed

38 Lieutenant Arthur Barrett to mother, 30 August 1918, AWM 2DRL/0053. 39 Barrett to mother, 30 August 1918, AWM 2DRL/0053. 40 3rd Squadron war diary, 4 July 1918, AWM4 8/6/19 Part 1. 41 CO 22nd Wing RAF, ‘Summary of Operations’, 11 July 1918, NAUK AIR1/1592/204/83/17. 42 Summary of air intelligence, 18 July 1918, NAUK AIR1/2124/207/74/3; RAF Communiqué No. 15, 17 July 1918, AWM4 8/14/2. 43 Summary of air intelligence, 18 August 1918, NAUK AIR1/2124/207/74/3. 44 General Staff, SS 205 Notes on observation from aeroplanes, Army Printing and Stationary Services, France, February 1918, p. 10; Captain Errol Knox, recording officer, 3rd Squadron to 3rd Squadron flight commanders, 3 July 1918, AWM4 8/6/18. 45 Boff, ‘Air/Land Integration in the 100 days’, p. 82. 46 Knox to 3rd Squadron flight commanders, 3 July 1918, AWM4 8/6/18. 341 them to respond ‘well’ when 3rd Squadron’s pilots sounded their klaxon horns; the airmen delivered ‘exceedingly accurate’ reports.47 It remained to be seen how the system would cope during running battles and exploitation operations when it would be arguably more crucial for staff to keep track of their troops.

For the first time, at Hamel, the RAF organised battlefield resupply using equipment designed and built at 3rd Squadron under the direction of ‘B’ Flight’s commander, Captain Lawrence Wackett. The idea apparently came from the Luftstreitkräfte’s attempts at dropping ammunition to troops on the battlefield during the spring offensives.48 At Hamel a detachment from No. 9 Squadron carried out the work, dropping 111,600 rounds to Australian troops at their objectives and at dropping stations close behind the line.49 Endorsing Wackett’s claim for a £1,000 inventor’s fee from the British government (he received £350), Lieutenant-General declared the scheme ‘an unqualified success’, noting how it permitted the rapid resupply of troops in ‘isolated and exposed positions’ and saved casualties among carrying parties.50 His subordinates, though more prosaic, also indicated the trial’s success. 4th Australian Infantry Brigade’s CO described it as working ‘satisfactorily’ while 6th Brigade’s commander noted how the scheme ‘worked very well’, delivering ammunition within 10 yards of one machine gun position.51 Though faster, aircraft lacked the carrying capacity of other transportation available to the Australian Corps: a single tank could deliver four times as much ammunition as each of No. 9 Squadron’s aircraft, plus 300 grenades, 450 litres of water and a vast quantity of food and other trench stores.52 Employed in all subsequent British offensives (the RAF delivered 30-60,000 rounds each day during the Amiens offensive), ammunition

47 3rd Squadron war diary, 4 July 1918, AWM4 8/6/19 Part 1. 48 F. M. Cutlack, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VIII: The Australian Flying Corps in the Western and Eastern Theatres of War, 1914-1918, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1939, (1923), p. 272; GHQ AEF, Summary of Air Information, No. 29, 19.6.18, EML Gorrell papers, Series M, Item 14. 49 3rd Squadron war diary, 4 July 1918, AWM4 8/6/19 Part 1. 50 Lieutenant-General John Monash, GOC Australian Corps to The Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors, 13 , AWM10 43/13. 51 ‘Fourth Australian Infantry Brigade Intelligence Summary, 6am 3.7.1918 to 6am 4.7.1918’, AWM4 23/4/34 Part 1; Brigadier-General J. Paton, CO 6th Australian Infantry Brigade, ‘Preliminary Report on Operations of 6th AI Brigade on 4-7-1918’, AWM4 23/6/35 Part 1. 52 ‘Fourth Australian Division Report on Operations- August 7th to August 10th 1918’, AWM4 1/48/29 Part 3. 342 drops by corps squadrons thus remained an ‘emergency’ adjunct to other forms of battlefield logistics.53

Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson point to the employment of similarly elaborate air support at Amiens in August as indicative of the importance air power occupied in the ‘true weapons system’ that the British Army had established. They note specifically that for the first time Salmond submitted a ‘separate air plan’ to Haig.54 This was appropriate given the scope of RAF operations, which by mid-1918 explicitly supported most other arms on the battlefield and had clear applications at the strategic (GHQ), operational (army and corps) and tactical (division and below) levels. Emphasising this point, V Brigade’s GOC, Brigadier-General , addressed his airmen the day before the battle of Amiens.

The task of the other arms…is to assist the infantry to the blue line. The task of the RAF however has a wider scope. It is in fact not only to help the infantry directly to their blue line objective, but to help every other arm as well, Cavalry, Artillery and Tanks, to help the infantry.55

For this reason, and because of problems associated with the planning and command and control of such a large air force (800 aircraft on Fourth Army’s sector), scholars have given the RAF’s role at Amiens a relatively thorough treatment.56 Salmond’s costly but unsuccessful attempt to cut the German army’s retreat across the Somme by bombing bridges and, more generally, the ambiguity of air power’s role in planning at the army level undoubtedly deserves scrutiny; but so does tactical co- operation, for which the Amiens battlefield represented a testing ground for the open warfare conditions anticipated by the general staff.

53 H. A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force: Volume VI, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1937, p. 484; RAF Headquarters, ‘Notes on corps squadrons work on the First and Third Army fronts during recent operations’, 14 September 1918, NAUK AIR1/1009/204/5/1289; 15th Wing Operation Order No. 112, 17 September 1918, NAUK AIR1/1591/204/83/8. 54 Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Command on the Western Front: The Military Career of Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1914-18, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1992, p. 310. 55 Brigadier-General L. E. O. Charlton, CO V Brigade RAF to 22nd Wing, 15th Wing and 5th Balloon Wing, 5 August 1918, NAUK AIR1/1592/204/83/17. 56 See, for example: John Slessor, Air Power and Armies, Oxford University Press, London, 1936, passim, S. F. Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1980, pp. 518-541; David Jordan, ‘The Royal Air Force and Air/Land Integration in the 100 Days, August-November 1918’, Air Power Review, volume 11, number 2, Summer 2008, 12-29. 343 Until August 1918 aviation principally contributed to the war’s prosecution at the operational and strategic levels, namely the planning of campaigns and battles and co-operation in counter-battery programs planned and executed at the corps level. Indeed, as this thesis has demonstrated, between 1914 and 1917 air power made its most discernable contribution before zero hour. The battles of 1918 however – with their high tempo, long advances and necessary de-centralisation of command – would provide greater scope for the RAF to co-operate with soldiers on the battlefield.

This is demonstrated in the corps squadrons’ production of photographs for Amiens and subsequent battles. Whereas during trench warfare the vast majority of a corps squadron’s photographs went to survey and intelligence staff at army and corps headquarters, during the Hundred Days they assumed a greater influence in the field. In the week before 8 August 3rd Squadron produced some 90,000 prints to include in folders for distribution down to platoon sergeants.57 Monash believed these, which also included ‘sectional maps’ of a unit’s objectives, ‘contributed powerfully to the success and precision with which all battle orders were carried out’.58 During open warfare oblique photographs, which ‘convey more information to the unskilled student of air photographs than do vertical photographs… and indicate the contours of the country’ became popular in infantry units; indeed, they are ubiquitous in AIF battalion war diaries for 1918.59 They also provided staff with a rough substitute while the surveyors prepared new maps: at the conclusion of the Amiens advance on 12 August, for example, 3rd Squadron photographed the new Australian line and dropped prints at divisional headquarters a few hours later.60 As well as encouraging closer co-operation with the troops on the battlefield, the Hundred Days thus prompted a renaissance in corps squadron photography following its decline during 1917 when trench warfare required infrequent revision of maps and increasingly effective artillery survey diminished the importance of photography in locating German guns.

Indeed, preparations for Amiens illustrate the point to which the RAF’s contribution to the location of enemy batteries had declined during trench warfare.

57 Wrigley, The Battle Below, p. 87. 58 John Monash, The Australian Victories in France, 1918, Hutchinson & Co., London, 1920, p. 113. 59 General Staff, SS 550 Notes on the Interpretation of Aeroplane Photographs, Army Printing and Stationary Service, France, March 1917, p. 10; see, for example: 24th Battalion AIF war diary, July 1918, AWM4 23/41/34. 60 3rd Squadron war diary, 12 August 1918, AWM4 8/6/20 Part 1. 344 Relying on sound ranging and flash spotting because bad weather restricted flying in the week before the offensive, Fourth Army nevertheless located 95 per cent of enemy batteries – and this despite a late withdrawal and re-deployment of German guns after 1 August.61 Unfavourable flying weather also prevented 15th Wing’s corps squadrons from working during the first six hours of the advance on 8 August. Still, the calibration of each gun at a range behind the front permitted extraordinarily accurate counter-battery fire without any preliminary registration or aerial observation.62 On subsequent days, however, as the carefully timed set-piece advance gave way to exploitation, the situation reversed: the advance left the sound ranging sections behind and put responsibility for locating the new German artillery positions ‘almost entirely upon aeroplanes and balloons’.63 On 9 August, for example, while the Australian Corps’ sound rangers moved forward, 3rd Squadron located hostile guns harassing the Australian left and directed fire onto them, silencing nine German batteries.64 Anticipating the challenges of mobile warfare for the artillery, the Australian Corps had de-centralised control of its guns, assigning mobile detachments to advance with brigades and providing individual field batteries with wireless stations for direct communication with 3rd Squadron’s artillery patrols. In the event, this novel scheme provided less effective artillery co-operation at Amiens than in previous limited-objective offensives. Post-battle analysis citied the inexperience of the field artillery in using wireless and the airmen in observing the small burst of 18 and 60 pounder ammunition.65 3rd Squadron’s CO nonetheless considered co- operation with the smaller calibre guns worth practising as during the second and third stages of the advance the corps had ‘depended almost entirely on field artillery support’.66

61 Jordan, ‘The Royal Air Force and Air/Land Integration During the Hundred Days’, p. 19; General Staff, ‘Report on Survey on the Western Front 1914-1918’, p. 122; ‘Notes on Counter-battery Work in Battle of 8/8/18 and the advance from Villers Bretonneux to the Hindenburg Line’, AWM26 494/8. 62 Monash, The Australian Victories in France, p. 102. 63 General Staff, ‘Report on Survey on the Western Front 1914-1918’, p. 122; ‘Notes on Counter- battery Work in Battle of 8/8/18 and the advance from Villers Bretoneux to the Hindenburg Line’, 1 October 1918, AWM26 494/8. 64 3rd Squadron war diary, 9 August 1918, AWM4 8/6/20 Part 1. 65 15th Wing RAF, ‘Impressions of the Battle [of Amiens]’, nd, NAUK AIR1/1592/204/83/17; Major D. V. J. Blake, CO 3rd Squadron to OC 15th Wing, 19 August 1918, AWM4 8/6/20 Part 1; Lieutenant- Colonel E. J. Cummins, CBSO Australian Corps, ‘Counter-battery Methods during the Advance’, October 1918, AWM26 494/8. 66 Blake to OC 15th Wing, 19 August 1918, AWM4 8/6/20 Part 1. 345 The ambitious objectives of the Amiens offensive exacerbated problems with battlefield communications and increased the staff’s reliance on contact patrols. Pre- empting this a week before the battle, Salmond issued instructions that all flights should practise contact patrolling and ‘as far as possible’ be ‘affiliated to a Division for this work and for the work with the Divisional Artillery’.67 To further support the de-centralisation of command that staff anticipated, 3rd Squadron had instructions to drop contact reports at brigade headquarters whereas previously they had only dropped them at division and corps headquarters.68 As at Hamel, 3rd Squadron’s contact patrols followed the infantry advance relatively easily on 8 August, when it largely proceeded to plan. One brigadier described the reports dropped at his headquarters as ‘very good’ and noted an instance in which a 3rd Squadron crew landed in front of the final objective and briefed a company commander on German dispositions ahead.69 The system broke down on subsequent days as the infantry ran out of flares (of which the British Army suffered a shortage) and advanced without set objectives or rigid timetables.70 For much of 9 August the position of the line remained ‘rather obscure’ and the following day, as Barrett wrote, ‘no one knew where it was within five miles’.71 Indeed, 3rd Squadron’s airmen had instructions not to drop bombs for fear of hitting Australian troops.72

Smoke bombing represented another means by which the general staff looked to corps squadrons to overcome challenges raised by the transition to mobility. The infantry objectives lay beyond field artillery range and there was a shortage of 60- pounder smoke shell.73 3rd Squadron’s airmen had occasionally dropped phosphorous bombs to screen raids but, from 8 August, this became an increasingly frequent task. On the first day at Amiens 3rd Squadron’s airmen had orders to drop 24 phosphorous bombs on high terrain overlooking the first objective. At the Sambre-Oise canal on 4 November, it would drop 74 phosphorous against 66 conventional bombs.74 Infantry

67 Minutes, Brigadiers conference held at RAF HQ, 30 July 1918, NAUK AIR1/920/204/5/884. 68 3rd Squadron Australian Flying Corps Operation Order No. 3, 7 August 1918, AWM26 470/2. 69 Brigadier General Commanding 8th Australian Infantry Brigade to GOC 5th Australian Division, 11 August 1918, AWM4 1/50/30 Part 9. 70 15th Wing RAF, ‘Impressions of the Battle [of Amiens], nd. NAUK AIR1/1592/204/83/17. 71 3rd Squadron war diary, 9 August 1918, AWM4 8/6/20 Part 1; Barrett to mother, 30 August 1918, AWM 2DRL/0053. 72 3rd Squadron war diary, 10 August 1918, AWM4 8/6/20 Part 1. 73 Jones, The War in the Air, Volume VI, p. 440; Nerney, ‘The Western Front Air Operations, May- November 1918’, pp. 118-119, NAUK AIR1/677/21/13/1887. 74 3rd Squadron war diary, 4 November 1918, AWM4 8/6/23. 346 commanders reported the usefulness of air-delivered smoke, 4th Division’s GOC considering them ‘essential’, especially for the tanks, which proved helpless’ against concealed German field guns.75 Like ammunition dropping, though, technological limitations meant that delivering smoke screens by air could not replace more conventional methods (in this case, artillery smoke shell). Recognising that smoke screens dropped by his squadrons had assisted the army during the Hundred Days, 15th (Corps) Wing’s CO noted that it was labour intensive (a bomb needed dropping every 15-20 minutes to maintain a 220-yard screen) and distracted corps squadrons from other tasks. He recommended them only for ‘special occasions…to mask commanding ground’ beyond artillery range.76

Following its 15 kilometre advance between 8 and 11 August, the Australian Corps paused until the 22nd, permitting eight days of conventional artillery preparation ahead of further operations (the battle of Chuignes, 23 August 1918). This pattern – open warfare advances punctuated by brief pauses in front of organised defences – would continue until the Armistice. To maintain operational tempo the halts never allowed enough time for the type of elaborate preparation the stalemate had permitted – that is, time to deploy and survey the heavy artillery, photograph the enemy counter-battery area and establish a program of destructive shoots. Between 25 August, when the German retirement across the Somme commenced in earnest, and 15 September, when preparation for the assault on the Hindenburg outpost line commenced, 3rd Squadron co-operated in no artillery shoots arranged by the CBSO. It would conduct 19 ‘successfully observed destructive shoots’ in September (against 119 in June, a month of routine trench warfare) and just a single pre-arranged shoot in October, despite the extremely heavy and methodical six-day bombardment that preceded the battle of the Selle.77 With the Australian Corps’ sound rangers employed sparingly (‘when the enemy appeared likely to make a stand for some days’), responsibility for locating German guns and registering the Australian Corps’ artillery remained primarily with 3rd Squadron.78 It employed a scheme improvised by 15th Wing dubbed ‘Donnybrook Fair’ whereby a pilot could conduct ‘8 to 10 rough

75 ‘Fourth Australian Division Report on Operations- August 7th to August 10th 1918’, AWM4 1/48/29 Part 3; Dale Blair, The Battle of Bellicourt Tunnel: Tommies, Diggers and Doughboys on the Hindeburg Line, 1918, Frontline, London, 2011, p. 109. 76 Lieutenant Colonel J. A. Chamier, CO 15th Wing RAF, 25 November 1918, NAUK AIR1/1592/204/83/17. 77 3rd Squadron war diaries, June-October, AWM4 8/6/18 to 8/6/22 Part 2. 78 Cummins, ‘Counter-battery methods during the advance’, October 1918, AWM26 494/8. 347 registrations’ without knowing the location of the batteries with which he co- operated.79 The standardised artillery co-operation that had achieved such effective results in trench warfare thus reverted to ad hoc methods to cope with the grand strategic timetable that Fourth Army became locked into.

The advance that carried the Australian Corps across the Somme at the end of August illustrates the limitations that open warfare imposed on artillery co-operation. Despite another stretch of bad weather and a strong German fighter presence, 3rd Squadron provided the artillery supporting the assault on the Bouchavesnes-Mont St Quentin-Péronne line with a considerable amount of target intelligence. Between 30 August and 2 September the airmen located around 150 targets (predominantly active enemy guns), reporting them via wireless and offering to range available guns.80 There were some notable successes. The response to one zone call silenced three enemy batteries firing from west of Bouvincourt (over 6,000 yards south-east of Péronne) as 6th Brigade assaulted the Mont early on 1 September; spotting an active battery in the same area that afternoon, another crew ranged 30 rounds, causing an explosion. Nonetheless, the majority of 3rd Squadron’s zone calls apparently went un- answered.81 The speed of the Australian advance left insufficient time to deploy the heavy guns and work out a counter-battery program; consequently the Australian infantry captured these formidable positions with far less effective fire support than previously.82 Further, it allowed the Germans to withdraw to the Hindenburg Line with little interference from British artillery. ‘Plenty of Hun transport are close to their line’, noted Lieutenant Max Shelley following a counter-attack patrol on 29 August, ‘but our guns are not yet in a position to answer our calls’.83

The high tempo and fluidity of the Australian Corps’ advance to the Hindenburg Line likewise placed an ever-heavier premium on the importance of tactical reconnaissance while, at the same time, underlining limitations in what the airmen could provide. During the pursuit to the Somme in the last week of August

79 Chamier, ‘Donnybrook Fair’, 20 September 1918, NAUK AIR1/1592/204/83/17. 80 3rd Squadron war diaries August and September 1918, AWM4 8/6/20 Part 1 to 8/6/21 Part 2. 81 3rd Squadron war diary, 1 September 1918, AWM4 8/6/21 Part 1. It was normal that airmen would not always see the guns respond to the zone call but in this case the proportion of answers observed (around a quarter of the total) seems particularly low. 82 Michele Bomford, Beaten Down by Blood: the Battle of Mont St Quentin-Péronne 1918, Big Sky Publishing, Newport, 2012, p. 180. 83 Shelley, diary, 29 August 1918, AWM 2DRL/0290. 348 and the advance to the Hindenburg Line in the following fortnight, contact patrols provided accurate, timely reports on the location of forward Australian troops.84 Monash considered ‘the Contact Aeroplane’ unsurpassed in supplying division and brigade commanders with ‘rapid and reliable information as to the progress of the various elements of our front line troops’.85 During set-piece intervals, however, when accurate, timely information was perhaps even more crucial, contact patrols proved less reliable. At Mont St Quentin-Péronne 3rd Squadron’s reports failed to clarify the situation sufficiently to allow close artillery support.86 Michele Bomford cites this as one reason why the 6th and 14th Australian Infantry Brigades advanced on 1 September with such inadequate artillery support.87 Contact patrols proved similarly ineffective during the battle for the Drocourt-Quéant Line occurring concurrently on First and Third Armies’ fronts. The RAF noted the reluctance of troops to light flares while closely engaged with the enemy and admitted that pilots showed ‘a tendency’ to ‘show on the map more than had actually been seen’. Particularly problematic, airmen who saw isolated outposts joined up ‘the various pinpoints’ giving staff the impression of a consolidated line where one did not exist.88

Despite clear indications of these problems in early September, the Australian Corps continued to rely on tactical air reconnaissance during the Hindenburg and Beaurevoir Line operations (29 September-5 October). Perhaps a successful trial on 24 September using white-painted respirator bags to signal aircraft (instead of flares) renewed the Australian staff’s confidence in the system.89 So too may have the introduction of a procedure allowing contact patrols to wirelessly transmit their reports in addition to dropping paper copies at brigade and divisional report centres.90 Nevertheless, 3rd Squadron’s contact patrols failed the Australian Corps and the attached 27th and 30th American Divisions (of the II American Corps) during operations on the Hindenburg Line at the end of September.

Despite appalling weather and the failure of American troops to light flares, during the preliminary operations to secure a jumping-off line on 27-28 September

84 3rd Squadron war diary, 25-31 August 1918, AWM4 8/6/20 Part 1. 85 Monash, The Australian Victories in France, p. 171. 86 3rd Squadron war diaries August and September 1918, AWM4 8/6/20 Part 1 to 8/6/21 Part 2. 87 Bomford, Beaten Down by Blood, pp. 172-74. 88 Brigadier General, I Brigade to HQ RAF, 12 September 1918, NAUK AIR1/1009/204/5/1289. 89 Blake to 2nd Division general staff, 4 October 1918, AWM26 470/4. 90 Wrigley, The Battle Below, p. 133. 349 3rd Squadron managed to roughly identify a line.91 In most places it appeared short of the objective, though some reports indicated isolated American parties further forward. The ambiguity proved adequate to convince GOC II American Corps to object to any shortening of the barrage for the main attack, which might fall on Americans in these advanced positions. As a result, 27th American Division had a thousand yards to advance before catching up to the supporting barrage on 29 September – a key factor in its failure that day and difficulties experienced by the 3rd Australian Division following in the second wave.92 Air reports again led Monash, his staff and their American colleagues to misunderstand the situation on the battlefield on 29 September. Again struggling with poor visibility, by mid-morning contact patrols indicated that the Americans of the first wave had captured their objective.93 Corroborating this, between 1500 and 1600 the leader of an SE5a squadron sent to strafe German troops reported friendly infantry east of the Gouy- Estrees road, that is, beyond the Americans’ objective.94 When the Australian units following in the second wave encountered determined German resistance between their start line and the supposedly secure first objective, corps staff interpreted this as isolated pockets that the inexperienced Americans had missed. Despite contrary reports from his subordinates, Monash maintained this belief throughout the day, pressing his divisional commanders to attack in the afternoon without artillery support, again for fear of hitting Americans further forward.95 Operations also continued the following day with stripped-back artillery support, GOC II American Corps prohibiting fire on areas that air patrols suggested his troops occupied.96 Fourth Army captured the Hindenburg Line, largely due to IX Corps’ successful crossing of the St Quentin canal on the morning of 29 September and with more infantry casualties and in a longer time frame than perhaps necessary.

The abysmal weather certainly reduced the reliability of contact patrols: reports from the airmen were sporadic and usually inconclusive. Yet it is important to

91 3rd Squadron war diary, September 1918, AWM4 8/6/12 Parts 1-2. 92 Blair, The Battle of Bellicourt Tunnel, pp. 32-35; Mitchell Yockelson, Borrowed Soldiers: Americans Under British Command, 1918, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2008, pp. 166-67. 93 Australian Corps to Fourth Army, outward wires, 1100, 29 September 1918, AWM4 1/35/9 Part 8. 94 Nerney, ‘The Western Front Air Operations May-November 1918’, p. 290, NAUK AIR1/677/21/13/1887. 95 Prior and Wilson, Command on the Western Front, p. 371; ‘Action near Bony’, 3rd Division report, AWM4 1/46/23 Part 3 96 Blair, The Battle of Bellicourt Tunnel, p. 116. 350 note that their reports (of which only précis survive in the war diary) appear prosaic, reflecting the conclusion of a recent study of the battle that only a few small parties of Americans reached their objective on 29 September.97 It appears Monash and his staff read too much into the snippets provided by the RAF while rejecting contrary intelligence from infantry commanders on the spot. The inexperience of American troops might also be blamed, yet mixed success by contact patrols with seasoned Australian troops during the previous month and subsequently ‘poor’ results with 2nd Australian Division on the Beaurevoir Line (3-5 October) suggest otherwise.98

Indeed, tactical air reconnaissance had inherent problems which the general staff had acknowledged back in February. Contact patrols ‘rarely’ proved successful when the enemy held onto a portion of the objective, forcing British troops to launch a ‘small local attack’ to secure it.99 This, and the performance of contact reconnaissance during the Hindenburg and Beaurevoir Line operations, raise doubts about the reliability of contact patrols in mobile warfare. If only liable to success when the infantry advance succeeded then they were not likely to be helpful when most needed, that is, when plans failed and intervention from higher headquarters became most urgent. The contact aeroplane therefore represented a stop-gap measure with mixed results in the effort to maintain battlefield communications. It did not solve the perennial problem of commanders maintaining contact with their troops during the Great War, though it reduced it in some instances. The point is underlined in Lieutenant-Colonel John Chamier’s (CO 15th Wing) evaluation of his corps squadrons written shortly after the Armistice. Up to the war’s end, contact patrols remained unreliable and frequently ineffective but, in the absence of an alternative, important in all forms of fighting (static, semi-open and open) and worth improving.100

Following the capture of Montbrehain on 5 October, 3rd Squadron joined II American Corps, which replaced the Australian Corps in the line. It served as the Americans’ corps squadron during the Second Battle of Cambrai (8 October) and the initial stages of the Selle river campaign that commenced on 17 October. When II

97 Blair, The Battle of Bellicourt Tunnel, pp. 51-54. 98 Blake to 2nd Division general staff, 4 October 1918, AWM26 470/4. 99 General Staff, SS205 Notes on Observation from Aeroplanes, Army Printing and Stationary Services, France, February 1918, p. 10. 100 Chamier, ‘15th Wing Experiences’, 25 November 1918, NAUK AIR1/1592/204/83/17. 351 American Corps left the line on 19 October, 3rd Squadron, ‘without a Corps to work with’, became 15th Wing’s reserve with instructions to assist the other corps squadrons in Fourth Army with artillery patrols, reconnaissance and special tasks (predominantly smoke dropping and ground attack) during operations.101

Fourth Army’s offensives at Cambrai (8-10 October) and the Selle (17-26 October) illustrate the extent to which the work of corps squadrons had become integrated into the tactical battle while at the same time exemplifying how high tempo, mobile operations forced the RAF to abandon previous procedures and improvise, sometimes to the detriment of effectiveness. As Salmond had predicted before Amiens, the flexibility and responsiveness that open warfare required eroded specialisation among flights in the corps squadrons.102 During October 3rd Squadron’s sorties acquired a general nature encompassing any number of the squadron’s previously discrete mission types – a general trend among RAF corps squadrons in order to achieve ‘economy of force’ and ‘ensure continuous observation throughout the day’.103 Though described in the war diary as a ‘counter attack patrol’, a typical 3rd Squadron sortie on 11 October identified the position of the line, issued five zone calls on active German batteries (and bombed one) and engaged a German two-seater.104 In another example that underlines this flexibility and versatility, as well as demonstrating the responsiveness that 3rd Squadron’s sorties achieved during the war’s final weeks, Lieutenant William Palstra, while flying a contact patrol, noticed a mile-long column of German infantry deploy in extended order and advance.

Dropped parachute flare to warn the diggers and bring down artillery barrage, also sent wireless SOS. In response to red Very light call two Camels, one Bristol and another RE8 came along to attack this favourable target. Swooped down on flank of advancing line with engine full out. Ham[ilton: his observer] fired 400 rounds one burst catching a party of six and killing 5. Counter attack stopped on the outskirts of Sequehart…

101 3rd Squadron war diary, 22 October 1918, AWM4 8/6/22 Part 1. 102 Minutes, Brigade Commanders conference held at RAF HQ, 30 July 1918, NAUK AIR1/920/204/5/884. 103 ‘Notes on recent operations’, c. October 1918, NAUK AIR1/725/97/8. 104 3rd Squadron war diary, 11 October 1918, AWM4 8/6/22 Part 1. 352 Despite having his Klaxon horn shot away by ground fire, Palstra and Hamilton then completed their contact patrol, identifying friendly troops in the Beaurevoir line east of Joncourt.105 Air power’s capacity for such responsiveness owed much to the Central Information Bureau – a centralised wireless receiving station that collected RAF air reports and rapidly disseminated them to aviation and other units in the field. Established in mid-August, in recognition that the RAF needed to better-co-ordinate its ground attack sorties against the most favourable targets, the system really came into own during October, allowing the humble RE8s to effectively become target-markers for the rest of the RAF.106 By the battle of the Selle the employment of Fourth Army’s fighters had become ‘largely dependent’ on reports transmitted to the Bureau by the corps squadrons.107

Despite pausing for methodical artillery preparation, the RAF shouldered the burden of artillery survey preceding operations on the Selle. Between 10 and 15 October II American Corps located 72 German battery positions; half of them by 3rd Squadron and the remainder by direct ground observation. Sound-rangers accounted for one.108 A thorough knowledge of German battery positions was particularly important since, if bad weather prevailed on Z-day (as it did), the artillery had instructions to engage these locations by firing at map co-ordinates.109 Even had visibility been good, Fourth Army’s artillery shortage, especially in heavy guns, limited the scope of air co-operation.110 II American Corps could not spare any for dedicated co-operation in ranged shoots with 3rd Squadron after zero hour: the airmen would only identify targets and transmit rough corrections based on the mean point of impact.111 (At Hamel, by comparison, 3rd Squadron had five siege batteries standing by to engage targets reported by the pilots).112 As John Paul Harris notes, British artillery support proved ‘not as effective as usual’ on the Selle, though his explanation

105 Lieutenant William Palstra, manuscript notes/ diary, AWM 1DRL/0538. 106 Nerney, ‘The Western Front Air Operations May-November 1918’, p. 161, NAUK AIR1/677/21/13/1887 107 ‘3rd Squadron Australian Flying Corps Battle Instructions’, 22 October 1918, AWM4 8/6/22 Part 1. 108 II American Corps RA summary of hostile battery locations 10 to 15 October 1918, 16 October 1918, AWM26 482/5 109 ‘Artillery co-operation instructions for 17 October 1918 operation by Lieutenant Colonel RGA II American Corps’, 16 October 1918, AWM26 482/5. 110 Monash, Australian Victories in France, p. 173; David Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918, Allen Lane, London, 2011, pp. 239-240. 111 SO for counter-battery, II American Corps to 5th Australian Division Artillery, 16 October 1918, AWM26 482/5. 112 ‘Counter-battery Australian Corps HA Operation Order No. 7’, 1 July 1918, AWM26 364/12. 353 (‘low cloud and poor visibility’) does not account for deficiencies in artillery co- operation imposed by battlefield conditions.113 Indeed, Fourth Army’s gunners had fired a devastatingly successful artillery barrage at Amiens on 8 August despite a preceding week of conditions just as bad for aerial observation.

In late October 3rd Squadron provided personnel for ‘O’ Flight, a Bristol F2b unit established in 15th Wing for long-range reconnaissance and artillery co- operation. Each corps wing on the Western Front received one, illustrating the RAF’s de-centralisation of ‘strategical’ work from GHQ and army to corps control, a necessity given the huge demand put on the RAF by the concurrent Allied offensives and the manner in which the rapid German retreat stretched the traditional boundaries of the corps squadron’s work. On 10 November ‘O’ Flight, staffed by AFC officers and RAF ground crew moved to Avesnes as part of a ‘strategical air force’ (also comprising a corps squadron and a fighter unit) to support ‘Bethell’s Force’, a division-sized mobile formation thrown forward by Fourth Army to maintain contact with the retreating Germans.114 The Armistice occurred before ‘O’ Flight conducted more than a few operational sorties, but had the war continued RAF HQ planned to expand the Bristol Fighter flights into squadrons.115 This, and amendments to the British Army’s artillery co-operation manual suggested by Brigadier-General Charlton (GOC V Brigade) in November, indicate that the ad hoc solutions of the Hundred Days would have been codified in the structure and policies of the RAF for campaigning in 1919.116

Charlton’s amendments to artillery co-operation tactics essentially sought to streamline the highly organised and centralised system that had worked so effectively during trench warfare but broke down after 8 August. They represent a microcosm of how operations during the Hundred Days broadened the scope but also limited the capability of air power on the battlefield. On the one hand, the high-tempo, fluid battles of autumn 1918 created opportunities for aviation’s integration at lower-levels of the land battle and demonstrated a versatility and flexibility in air power that had

113 Harris, Amiens to the Armistice, p. 250. 114 Charlton to Fourth Army general staff, Bethell Force general staff etc., 9 November 1918, NAUK AIR1/1009/204/5/1289. 115 Nerney, ‘The Western Front Air Operations May-November 1918’, pp. 75-76, NAUK AIR1/677/21/13/1887. 116 ‘Proposed amendments in the new issue of SS131- Remarks by GOC 5th Brigade RAF’, 2 November 1918, NAUK AIR1/1592/204/83/17. 354 been largely obscured by the structured routine of trench warfare. On the other, they reduced the effectiveness of air power missions that had been thoroughly worked out in the 1915-17 period. The RAF’s challenge involved achieving flexibility to meet the rapidly changing tactical situation while retaining simplicity and uniformity of procedure – all within the boundaries of available technology. 3rd Squadron’s airmen essentially used the same equipment as their predecessors had in mid-1916; Charlton and his staff could only do so much with one-way Morse code radios, cloth strips on the ground and the RE8’s small carrying capacity. Wireless telephony may have rectified many problems of air-land integration in mobile campaigning had the war continued into 1919.117 Changes to 3rd Squadron’s work over the course of 1918 indicate that its personnel, along with their superiors at wing and brigade headquarters and counterparts in the Royal Artillery and Engineers, exploited the available technology to its full potential but failed to devise methods of co-operation as reliable or effective as they had during the stalemate.

In this respect the RAF’s experiences during the Hundred Days reflect the broader experience of the armies that it served so unequivocally, even after the RAF’s establishment as a separate service. The de-centralisation of command – specifically the devolution of planning, command and control to lower levels in the army – is well recognised in the literature as a trend common among the British Armies in France. Likewise, scholars acknowledge the shift towards mechanisation, with machinery replacing soldiers on the battlefield to increase mobility and firepower while preserving dwindling manpower. Less well-established in previous studies of the Hundred Days is the way in which the pressures of mobility and concurrent operations undermined ingrained practices and deteriorated the capability of certain arms – perhaps indeed, the entire expeditionary force. For the RAF at least, the battles of Hamel and Amiens marked a high point in the efficacy of army co-operation; thereafter, in many respects, it declined. That it nonetheless remained relevant and heavily relied upon during mobile operations was assisted by the lack of a viable alternative but ensured by the RAF’s willingness to depart from previously established policy and the inherent flexibility and versatility of its organisational structure and indeed, the aeroplane itself.

117 Nerney, ‘The Western Front Air Operations May-November 1918’, pp. 81-82, NAUK AIR1/677/21/13/1887. 355 CONCLUSION This thesis had three objectives. Primarily it set out to revise the history of the AFC, Australia’s first military air arm, as presented in Frederic Cutlack’s volume of the Official History. To achieve this, research focused on archival records that Cutlack did not use and new questions about administration, organisation, training, recruitment and the higher-level (political, strategic and operational) dimensions of Australia’s endeavour to field its ‘own’ flying corps. Secondly, this thesis sought to examine Australian involvement in the RAF and its antecedents. This involved determining the extent and nature of the service of Australians in the British flying services and evaluating their contribution against the AFC and that of the British Isles and other dominions. Finally, this thesis has attempted to contribute to the broader historiography of air power during the Great War. It examined the role aviation played in campaigns across three theatres: Mesopotamia, Sinai-Palestine and the Western Front.

Australian political and military authorities conceived the AFC in the period 1909-11 as part of a vast defence scheme. Although plans existed to support the empire in a European war, the main concern of Australian leaders remained local and regional security as Britain reduced its presence in the Pacific. The AFC and CFS, staffed largely by militia, would help defend Australia’s shores. Press reports and demonstrations by visiting aviators revealed the military potential of aeronautics while predictive literature and the air lobby promoted what would turn out to be unrealistic expectations of the new technology. Despite the early support for a military air arm in both political and military quarters, Australian authorities proceeded gradually, their aspirations curbed by a lack of locally-available technology and expertise and, above all, finances – much of which the redevelopment of the Australian army and navy consumed. Australia was not unique in showing an early interest in military aeronautics: leaders in all the other self-governing dominions explored the issue and, to varying extents, made preparations to train aviators. Like the Commonwealth, India’s government established its own school and corps while private enterprises started in South Africa and New Zealand. Although further research is needed on the other dominions (especially New Zealand and South Africa), it seems that the strategic outlook of each dominion shaped its response to

356 developing military aviation locally; the trend was to start by relying on British infrastructure and leave developing a local capability until later.

Had the war not started it is possible that the AFC would have developed gradually as planned, by 1917 comprising a two-flight squadron staffed largely by part-time soldiers. Three factors compelled Australian authorities to depart from these original plans and embark on a considerably more ambitious scheme. Firstly, aviation rapidly established its usefulness on the battlefields of Europe, demonstrating to observers in Australia that future wars would require large and well-equipped air forces. Australia’s military authorities in turn perceived the war as an opportunity to cultivate experience in this new medium of warfare and to secure levels of funding bound to disappear once peace returned. Though committed to supporting the empire in its immediate crisis, the Australian general staff remained mindful of the future: aware of Australia and London’s divergent strategic interests and expectant that responsibility for Australian security would increasingly rest with locally raised and maintained forces. Thirdly, political considerations determined that Australia field nationally distinct flying units. During 1915 and early 1916 Australian authorities followed the other dominions in supplying the British flying services with manpower for the general, imperial cause. In 1916, however, a growing sense that Australia needed to distinguish its contribution to the war effort prompted the Commonwealth to raise complete squadrons of the AFC for expeditionary service. Henceforth, the Australian government endeavoured to shape its contribution to the air war as distinct, unique and emblematic of an autonomous Australian military capability.

In this, the Commonwealth proved successful. By March 1918 the British press routinely acknowledged the AFC beside the RFC and RNAS, creating the impression that Australia had established its own air service.1 Prime Minister William Hughes exploited this while in Britain during 1918 to promote Australia’s post-war interests, citing the AFC (‘our own air force’) when underlining the ‘magnificent contributions Australia had… made to the cause of the Allies’. The Australian Corps, he claimed, had fought at the battle of Amiens as a self-sufficient military force of all arms (excepting tanks). Hughes also pointed out that the AFC had preceded the

1 See, for example: Their Tails Well Up’, The Times, 27 March 1918, p. 7; ‘Seaplane attack in the bight’, The Times, 22 March 1918, p. 6; ‘Enemy Retreat Cut’, The Times, 23 September 1918, p. 9. 357 recently announced Canadian air service by three years.2 Indeed, although Canadian officers comprised perhaps 40 per cent of RAF aviators on the Western Front in mid- 1918 (Australians probably constituted less than 5 per cent) their vast contribution had been obscured in the general imperial effort. Realisation of this had, indeed, provided impetus to reverse Canadian authorities’ long-standing opposition to a national flying service.3 A September 1918 article in The Times, reporting ‘British Airman’s Exploits’, illustrates the contrast in results that the Australian and Canadian policies respectively had, rather neatly. The dominion backgrounds of Major (a Canadian) and Major David Stodart (an Australian who had joined the RFC in 1913) went unacknowledged while Captains Arthur Cobby and Edgar McCloughry were identified as ‘Australian officer[s]’ of the AFC.4

From a military perspective, Australia’s creation of a flying service had more mixed results. On one hand, the Australian Military Forces finished the war with a potential recruitment pool of a thousand-odd trained pilots, many with extensive combat experience, and a few thousand skilled aviation tradesmen. It paid for practically none of the equipment used by its airmen and, indeed, in 1919 received an ‘’ of 100 war surplus aircraft.5 At the same time the efforts of Australian authorities to preserve the AFC’s distinctiveness limited the extent of Australia’s contribution to the air war and the amount of experience AFC officers, as a cohort, gained. Relative to population considerably fewer Australians fought in the air than their South African and Canadian counterparts. Further, prevented from serving in British units by Australian policy, AFC officers had a strictly limited field for promotion within their own tiny corps. As a result, when it came to establishing a permanent air force after the war, Australia’s military authorities had neither the quantity nor quality of candidates they might have had, had they sacrificed political expediency and nationalistic agendas and adopted a more pragmatic policy, similar to the other dominions. Those planning Australia’s air force at the end of the Great War predicted difficulties owing to the inexperience of AFC officers in command and

2 ‘Australians in the Battle’, The Times, 19 August 1918, p. 4. 3 S. F. Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force Volume I, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1980, pp. 591-598. 4 ‘British Airman’s Exploits’, The Times, 23 September 1918, p. 8. 5 John Bennett, The Imperial Gift: British Aeroplanes which Formed the RAAF in 1921, Banner Books, Maryborough, 1996. 358 administration.6 Chris Clark notes some effects this shortage of leadership experience had on the nascent RAAF and also highlights problems caused by rivalry between Air Force personnel who had served in the AFC and those who had flown with the British flying services. It was a harmful disunity that extended from the new service’s two senior officers (ex-AFC officer Richard Williams and Stanley Goble, an Australian who served in the RNAS and RAF), through the officers mess at Point Cook and into the popular press.7

In any case, the notion of an independent Australian contribution to the war in the air (‘our own air force’, as Hughes put it) is illusory. Distance and a lack of aviation infrastructure in Australia made the CFS’ efforts largely redundant by the time 1st Squadron was raised at the beginning of 1916. AIF and War Office authorities thereafter – quite rightly – pressed the Defence Department to send recruits to Britain for training in the interests of efficiency. Though existing on paper from mid-1917, the AFC training wing did not become fully operational until the summer of 1918 – and even then it could only provide pilots with a portion of their training. For the rest of their course, along with observers and mechanics, AFC pilots needed to attend British schools. Ultimately, the Australian aspiration of raising its own flying units in the field had a detrimental effect on operations – most notably in 1st Squadron during mid-1917 and 4th Squadron the following summer. Shortages of trained airmen forced the Australian squadrons to rely on officers loaned by the RAF. Meanwhile, in mid-1918 3rd Squadron had an overabundance of observers and the AFC, with too many mechanics, began sending them back to the trenches – at the very time that British authorities struggled to find suitably qualified candidates to serve as mechanics in the still-expanding RAF. The AFC’s case suggests that, in protecting its own national interest, Australian policy did not always best serve the general imperial goal of defeating Germany – an ironic reversal of the popular belief that a distinct ‘national’ identity allowed dominion forces to make a disproportionately large contribution to the war effort. Certainly, there is little evidence to support the claim that the AFC squadrons performed better than their counterparts in the RFC/RNAS/RAF. When Australian squadrons did clearly distinguish themselves – such as 1st Squadron during 1917-18 and 4th Squadron

6 Richard Williams, manuscript history of the AFC, c. 1919, AWM224 MSS510 Part 2. 7 C. D. Clark, The Third Brother: The Royal Australian Air Force 1921-39, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1991, pp. 36-37 and 361-363. 359 during the summer of 1918 – it is clear that they did so with a mixture of British and Australian personnel, using British equipment supplied through the RAF’s supply chain and employing tactics and flying operations planned by British wing and brigade staff. Indeed, the Australian ‘air force’ at Amiens that Hughes spoke to journalists about was in fact just 3rd Squadron – carrying out orders of the 15th (Corps) Wing and V Brigade RAF and using aircraft and consumables produced in British, French and American factories and distributed by the 4th Aircraft Park at St Riquier. 3rd Squadron’s aviators communicated, using skills learned at the RAF’s wireless school, with the Australian Corps’ artillery batteries (some of them Australian but many from British brigades) while protected by the RAF fighter squadrons of 22nd (Army) Wing, employed according to RAF HQ’s theories of offensive air power. Australia’s modest contribution to the air war was only possible through its reliance on the broader efforts of the empire. In future, scholars might explore the implications of the imperial relationship further by evaluating how access to the empire’s resources enhanced the military capacity of the dominions and, indeed, how differing strategic priorities created tensions and affected their contribution to the empire’s war effort.

British air policy, command and logistics not only enabled, but also comprehensively defined, the involvement of Australian airmen in combat. Decisions made at the War Office’s Military Aeronautics Directorate (and later, Air Ministry) and in conferences between theatre air commanders and their wing and brigade staffs fundamentally affected the fate of Australian personnel in the AFC and British flying services in equal measure. The War Office’s chronic aircraft manufacturing problems, for example, relegated 1st Squadron’s airmen to flying an assortment of outdated machines in 1917, manifestly unsuited to the long-range reconnaissance that RFC HQ Middle East instructed them to do. The same issue saw 2nd Squadron take the DH5 to war in September 1917 – a machine RFC HQ had considered obsolete some six months earlier. By the same token, in 1918 improvements to the British aviation industry (and the support of its American and French allies) supplied 1st Squadron with the outstanding Bristol Fighter and kept 2nd and 4th Squadrons fully equipped in spite of their enormous wastage rates. Britain’s industrial and training capacity also underwrote the success of its offensive air policy, which, above all delineated the Australian airman’s work. Poorly understood in the literature, this thesis has

360 demonstrated that air commanders interpreted the theory of offensive air power with flexibility at the tactical level and, moreover, that in the context of 1914-18 this was the correct approach. Though costly, the aggressive employment of air assets all along the line allowed the RFC/RAF to consistently provide the British army with better support than the Luftstreitkräfte could provide German and Ottoman troops. The documents make it clear that, had they possessed the resources to prosecute a broad- scale aerial offensive, German aviation commanders would have done likewise. Indeed, post-war German doctrine rejected the Luftstreitkräfte’s predominantly defensive posture and proposed a relentless aerial offensive that could be mistaken as Trenchardian.8

Although several Australians who served in the British air services published memoirs, this thesis has attempted to both quantify and qualify their part in the air war. Around 600 individuals (born, educated and/or with next of kin in Australia) joined the British flying services, mostly before the AFC’s expansion in early 1917. These Australians joined the RFC or RNAS for a variety of reasons that spanned the ideological to the pragmatic – though most did so independently, as civilians. A similar-sized cohort to the AFC’s flying officers who saw active service, Australians in the British flying arms had an experience of aerial warfare both broader and deeper than their AFC counterparts. It is possible to identify Australians who served with British units between August 1914 and the Armistice, in all theatres and on the home front; the majority flew with service and/or training squadrons but others worked in research and development, manufacturing, administration and logistics. As well as serving in a broader range of places and roles, Australians in the British flying services also had more leadership experience than their AFC counterparts. Ironically, an Australian had better prospects for commanding at the unit and formation levels in the British service than his own, native air arm – a direct result of the parochial Australian policy that prevented the employment of AFC officers in the wider RFC/RAF.

Given these conclusions, more work needs to be done on this cohort. While this thesis has examined Australians in the British flying services broadly, as a group,

8 James Corum, The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918-1940, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 1997, p. 64.

361 it has only singled out a handful of individuals to provide illustration and example. Research for this project identified several collections of private papers that would allow a closer examination of the work of individuals or smaller groups (Australians in the RNAS or Australians engaged in experimental aviation work, for example), and the air war in other theatres. Rupert Hoddinott’s manuscript, for example, describes his experiences with the RFC in Salonika and Macedonia; Raymond Brownell’s diaries document the under-researched air campaign in Italy in 1918 and Ewart Garland describes, in a lengthy diary, his work with the Independent (strategic bombing) Air Force in 1918.9

In 1936 John Slessor concluded that the aeroplane was not a ‘battlefield weapon’ and that it had made its most valuable contribution to armies at the level of operations; that is, planning and co-ordinating the efforts of various arms or striking targets beyond the range of other arms.10 Whereas much of the subsequent literature dismisses the value of air power during the Great War out of hand, this thesis thoroughly supports Slessor’s conclusion. Although aviation became increasingly involved in the tactical battle between 1914 and 1918, and was regularly employed in direct support of troops during the war’s final campaigns, it remained most consistently successful and discernibly useful before battles commenced. From Es-Sin in 1915 to the Hindenburg Line three years later, the evidence consistently supports this contention through the manner in which reconnaissance, artillery co-operation and air superiority (which underwrote the success of air-ground co-operation) assisted staff in preparing for battle. The documents present examples of successful tactical reconnaissance – though these exist alongside numerous instances of failure, some of which had detrimental effects on command decisions. Ground-attack undoubtedly emerged as one of air power’s key roles in 1917-18, a corollary of British air superiority over both Palestine and the Western Front. Evaluating its effectiveness is difficult: on the one hand it clearly caused casualties to and sapped the morale of enemy troops. On the other it proved expensive, costing the British squadrons that engaged in it unusually heavy casualties. In none of the campaigns examined closely in this thesis, in which Australians conducted systematic ground attack sorties (Third

9 Rupert Uriah Hoddinott, manuscript autobiography, AWM 3DRL/6367; Raymond Brownell, diaries and other papers, AWM PR83/231; Ewart Garland, typescript diary, IWM 12198. 10 John Slessor, Air Power and Armies, Oxford University Press, London, 1936, p. 90. 362 Gaza, Cambrai, Michael and Megiddo), does it seem to have materially affected the battle’s outcome.

Then again, this might be a flawed approach for evaluating air power’s contribution to British arms during the Great War. Most of the literature dismisses its relevance on the grounds that it did not ever prove decisive (that is, the key factor in an operation’s success or failure) or even, as Malcolm Cooper puts it, ‘dramatically affect[ed] the course of a battle or campaign’. This is an unrealistic criterion by which to measure the impact of British aviation for two reasons. Firstly, no weapon or arm in the British Army of 1914-18 could be considered ‘decisive’. It is now established as an orthodoxy that the Allies proved victorious due to (among other things) the application of a highly effective ‘weapons system’, that is the various arms in support of one another. Artillery proved necessary for winning battles, for example, but to work effectively it needed the support of the logistical and transport arms, intelligence, survey and of course, air power. Further, it is anachronistic to judge the efficacy of air power by its level of decisiveness on the battlefield or its ability to influence the war’s outcome. This is a post-1918 idea, developed in connection with theories of strategic air power. The British Army’s leadership never intended the aeroplane to assume a decisive role in the strategic, operational or tactical spheres. From the earliest official expositions on the role of aviation through to staff-level discussions in late 1918 in anticipation of campaigns the following year, the aeroplane remained a tool for supporting the army’s principal fighting arms – the cavalry, infantry and artillery (and increasingly, the tanks). From first to last British airmen worked to increase the effectiveness of these arms through the provision of intelligence, the correction of their indirect fire (and its supplementation through bombing and strafing), the maintenance of communication between them and with their headquarters, and their protection from attack by enemy aircraft. As intended, air power helped the British army win battles – it neither won them alone, nor attempted to do so.

363 1 APPENDIX 1: AFC SQUADRON DISPOSITIONS

1 Squadron manuscript histories: 1st Squadron, AWM 224 MSS515 Part 2; 2nd Squadron AWM224 MSS517; 3rd Squadron AWM224 MSS518; 4th Squadron AWM224 MSS520.

364

365 1 APPENDIX 2: AFC SCOUT SQUADRONS: OPERATIONAL STATISTICS, JULY-OCTOBER 1918

EA/ balloons destroyed in Ammunition Bombs Machines War Flying Daily average Sorties across Ammunition Battle EA seen air combat (ground dropped serviceable (nearest hour) (nearest hour) the line (air combat) casualties (crashed or in targets) (25lbs) (daily av.) flames) 2AFC 4AFC 2AFC 4AFC 2AFC 4AFC 2AFC 4AFC 2AFC 4AFC 2AFC 4AFC 2AFC 4AFC 2AFC 4AFC 2AFC 4AFC 2AFC 4AFC

July 801 1083 27 35 526 610 296 318 5 23/8 4165 7480 330 39980 84 661 16 24 0 2 August 1115 1151 36 37 546 684 287 249 11 14/32 10715 6970 4900 42000 122 644 18 24 0 1 September 932 1090 31 36 461 607 152 392 9 14/9 8335 8915 0 17530 0 565 18 26 2 4 October 798 778 26 25 447 384 179 285 13 23/5 8919 7040 7985 17670 341 291 18 24 3 2 TOTAL 3646 4102 - - 1980 2285 914 1244 38 74/25 32134 30405 13215 117180 547 2161 - - 5 9

1 Tabulated from the data in the squadron war diaries: 2nd Squadron war diary July to October 1918, AWM4 8/5/12 Part 1; 4th Squadron war diary July to October 1918, AWM4 8/7/17 Part 1 to 8/7/20 Part 3. 2 The monthly report by 4th Squadron’s CO for August claims twice that the unit destroyed 24 enemy aircraft/ balloons. An examination of the Combats in the Air Reports, however, indicates that pilots observed 14 aircraft and 3 balloons to have been destroyed; the others were only observed ‘out of control’. For subsequent months the CiTARs have been examined to tally up victories that Australian pilots claimed crashed or burned in the air.

366 3 APPENDIX 3: 3RD SQUADRON: OPERATIONAL STATISTICS, 1918 Pre-arranged Counter- Rounds fired Artillery Contact Photographs Aerial Bombs Flying hours artillery attack at ground patrols patrols exposed combats dropped shoots patrols targets

January 435 79 72 0 0 494 1 210 15,542

February 355 62 58 0 0 401 8 113 12,755

March 649 117 89 0 21 426 6 154 28,085

April 530 109 6 1 59 212 10 110 10,100

May 1,164 199 79 0 105 1,187 24 240 33,620

June 1,047 210 119 22 46 613 14 1,421 57,260

July 900 255 66 10 38 668 14 1,399 57,175

August 937 208 14 45 121 659 35 1,419 62,590

September 871 162 19 41 75 686 47 510 45,330

October 626 130 1 45 61 426 31 244 13,690

3 Tabulated from data in 3rd Squadron’s war diaries, AWM4 8/6/13 Part 1 to 8/6/22 Part 2. As noted in chapter 11, mission types tended to merge together during the final few months of the war.

367 BIBLIOGRAPHY

ARCHIVAL SOURCES

Australian War Memorial, Canberra (AWM)

Official records

AWM4 Australian Imperial Force unit war diaries, 1914-18 War

AWM8 Unit embarkation nominal rolls, 1914-18 War

AWM10 Australian Imperial Force Administrative Headquarters registry, “A” (Adjutant-General's Branch) files

AWM15 Australian Imperial Force Depots in the United Kingdom Headquarters (Salisbury Plain), Central registry files

AWM16 Australian War Records Section files and register of file titles

AWM22 Australian Imperial Force Headquarters (Egypt), Central registry files

AWM25 Written records, 1914-18 War

AWM26 Operations files, 1914-18 War

AWM27 Records arranged according to AWM Library subject classification

AWM28 Recommendation files for honours and awards, AIF, 1914-18 War

AWM30 statements, 1914-18 War

AWM38 Official History, 1914-18 War: Records of C E W Bean, Official Historian

AWM43 Official History, 1914-18 War, biographical and other research files

AWM44 Official History, 1914-18 War, manuscripts

AWM45 Copies of British war diaries and other records, 1914-18 War (“Heyes papers”)

AWM47 German records collected by Captain J. J. W. Herbertson

368 AWM48 High Commissioner's Office, London, registry files, 1914-18 War

AWM133 Nominal roll of Australian Imperial Force who left Australia for service abroad

AWM224 Unit manuscript histories

AWM255 Written records, 1914-18 War, Second series

AWM315 Australian War Memorial correspondence files, second series (1940 - )

The Australian War Memorial also holds copies of War Office and Army Printing and Stationary Service pamphlets cited in this thesis such as Field Service Regulations, Fighting in the Air and Co-operation of aircraft with artillery. The Memorial also holds copies of the Military Orders issued by the Australian Military Forces during the period covered in this thesis.

Private records

1DRL/0084 Captain Thomas Baker

2DRL/0053 Lieutenant Arthur Barrett

3DRL/3376 Field Marshal Lord William Birdwood

3DRL/6060 Corporal Hubert Billings

PR83/231 Air Commodore Raymond Brownell

2DRL/0013 Captain Alfred Carne

PR88/154 Air Vice Marshal Adrian Cole

1DRL/0212 Lieutenant Harold Cornell

1DRL/0214 Captain Edmund Cornish

PR83/186 Lieutenant Mervyn Cummings

PR85/344 Lieutenant Donald Day

PR86/385 2nd Lieutenant Thomas Edols

369 2DRL/0758 Lieutenant Granado Foreman

MSS1276 Trooper Reginald Forsyth

PR84/003 Captain John Harris

PR00740 Trooper Jeffrey Holmes

PR01977 Captain Edgar Charles Johnston

2DRL/0411 Lieutenant Stewart Keith-Jopp

PR03193 Private Verner Knuckey

PR86/203 Air Mechanic 2nd Class Harry Leckie

PR00709 Lieutenant Owen Lewis

3DRL/6858 Captain Robert Little

PR86/090 Captain Robert Little

1DRL/0426 Captain Edgar McCloughry

PR01381 Lieutenant Wallace McDougall

3DRL/2316 General Sir John Monash

2DRL/0011 Lieutenant Arthur Mott

MSS0862 Ole Nikolajsen

3DRL/6511 Lieutenant Stanislaus A. Nunan

MSS1037 Lieutenant Colonel Roland Oakes

1DRL/0538 Lieutenant William Palstra

3DRL/2222 Senator George Pearce

3DRL/7866 Wing Commander Eric Roberts

3DRL/1298 Lieutenant James Ross

2DRL/0290 Lieutenant Max Shelley

370 PR83/100 Lieutenant Laurence Smith

PR84/380 Lieutenant John Treloar

PR84/244 Lieutenant William Treloar

1DRL/0589 Major Lawrence James Wackett

3DRL/5018 Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Oswald Watt

3DRL/1400 Major-General C. B. B. White

2DRL/0766 Captain Thomas White

PR83/230 Lieutenant Leslie Ward

1DRL/0611 Captain Alfred Youdale

Oral history

S04307 Lieutenant Laurence Smith

Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Abteilung IV: Kriegsarchiv, Munich (BHStA IV) Flieger und Luftschiffe

File 46 Field Flying Unit 300 (Pascha), maps and operations papers, 1916

File 47 Field Flying Unit 300 (Pascha) flight reports, 1916

File 48 Bavarian Flying Unit FA304b war diary 24 July 1917 - 3 April 1919

File 50 Bavarian Flying Unit FA304b supplements to war diary

File 51 Heeresgruppe Yilderim enemy situation reports

File 54 Report of the evacuation of the airfield Arak el Manchije, 1917

File 55 Bavarian Flying Unit FA304b operation orders

Directorate of History and Heritage, Ottawa (DHH) 75/514 F. H. Hitchins Papers

371 Eugene McDermott Library, University of Texas, Dallas (EML)

The History of Aviation Collection

James L. Kerr III Papers

Ed Ferko World War I Collection

Gorrell History of the American Expeditionary Forces 1917 - 1918 Air Service

Imperial War Museum, London (IWM)

Documents

4886 Sir Gerard Clauson

10403 G. P. Dawnay

12198 Captain Ewart Garland

7826 Major General Sir Arthur Lynden-Bell

Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa (LAC)

R611-317-7-E Canadian War Records Office

RG9-III-D-3 Canadian Corps war diaries, 1915-1918

Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College, London (LHCMA) Papers of Field Marshal Edmund Allenby

Papers of Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham

Papers of Brigadier-General P. R. C. Groves

National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew (NAUK)

Air Ministry

AIR 1 Air Ministry: Air Historical Branch: Papers (Series I), 1794-1974

AIR 2 Air Ministry and Ministry of Defence: Registered Files, 1887-1985

AIR 5 Air Ministry: Air Historical Branch: Papers (Series II), 1914-1959

372 AIR 10 Ministry of Defence and predecessors: Air Publications and Reports, 1913-1978

AIR 20 Air Ministry, and Ministry of Defence: Papers accumulated by the Air Historical Branch, 1874-1983

AIR 75 Marshal Sir John Slessor: Papers, 1914-1980

AIR 76 Air Ministry: Department of the Master-General of Personnel: Officers’ Service Records, 1918-1919

Cabinet Office

CAB 2 Committee of Imperial Defence and Standing Defence Sub-committee: Minutes, 1902-1939

CAB 4 Committee of Imperial Defence: Miscellaneous Memoranda (B Series), 1903-1939

CAB 19 Special Commissions to Enquire into the Operations of War in Mesopotamia (Hamilton Commission) and in the Dardanelles (Cromer and Pickford Commission): Records, 1916-1919

CAB 23 War Cabinet and Cabinet: Minutes, 1916-1939

CAB 24 War Cabinet and Cabinet: Memoranda (GT, CP and G War Series), 1915-1939

CAB 37 Cabinet Office: Photographic Copies of Cabinet Papers, 1880-1916

CAB 44 Committee of Imperial Defence, Historical Branch and Cabinet Office, Historical Section: War Histories: Draft Chapters and Narratives, Military, 1914-1965

CAB 45 Committee of Imperial Defence, Historical Branch and Cabinet Office, Historical Section: Official War Histories Correspondence and Papers, 1904-1957

Domestic Records of the Public Record Office

373 PRO 56 Public Record Office: Registered Files: Miscellaneous Case Files, 1941-1975

PRO 57 Public Record Office: Accessions of Records, Registered Files (Case Files), 1956-1991

PRO 58 Public Record Office: Registered Files: Records Administration (CD Series), 1945-1977

War Office

WO 32 War Office and successors: Registered Files (General Series), 1845- 1985

WO33 War Office: Reports, Memoranda and Papers (O and A Series), 1853- 1969

WO 95 War Office: First World War and Army of Occupation War Diaries, 1914-1923

WO 106 War Office: Directorate of Military Operations and Military Intelligence, and predecessors: Correspondence and Papers, 1837-1962

WO 158 War Office: Military Headquarters: Correspondence and Papers, First World War, 1909-1929

WO 163 War Office and Ministry of Defence and predecessors: War Office Council, later War Office Consultative Council, Army Council, Army Board and their various committees: Minutes and Papers, 1806-1973

WO 339 War Office: Officers’ Services, First World War, Long Number Papers (numerical), 1914-1939

National Archives of Australia, Canberra (NAA)

A737 Lands and Survey Branch

A192 Correspondence files, annual single number series with 'FCL' [Federal Capital Lands] prefix

A741 Federal Capital Administrative Offices, Canberra

374 A202 Correspondence files, administrative series

CA 1 Governor General

A11803 Governor-General’s correspondence relating to the war of 1914-1918

A11804 General Correspondence of Governor-General

CA 6 Department of Defence

A289 Correspondence files, multiple number series

A1952 Correspondence files, multiple number series

A2023 Correspondence files, multiple number series with 'A', 'B', 'D' or 'E' prefix

A2180 Correspondence Files, Multiple Number (Secret) System

A5954 ‘The Shedden Collection’

B197 Secret and confidential correspondence files, multiple number series

MP367/1 General correspondence files

MP472/1 Correspondence files, annual single number series

CA 12 Prime Minister’s Department

CP103/2 Minutes of Proceedings and Papers laid before the Imperial Conference

CA 89 Military Board

A2653 Volumes of Military Board Proceedings

MP84/1 Correspondence files, multiple number series

MP153/9 Decisions of the Military Board

CA 89 Military Board

A2653 Volumes of Military Board Proceedings

MP84/1 Correspondence files, multiple number series 375 MP153/9 Decisions of the Military Board

CA 241 Australian High Commission, United Kingdom

A2911 General correspondence files, two and three number system with year suffix

CA 778 Air Services Branch

A705 Correspondence files, multiple number (Melbourne) series

A1195 Correspondence files, multiple number series

CA 2001 Australian Imperial Force, Base Records Office

B2455 First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920

National Library of Australia, Canberra (NLA)

Oral history

ORAL TRC 425/5 Eric Dibbs interviewed by Fred Morton, 1976

ORAL TRC 712 George Jones interviewed by Fred Morton, 1976

ORAL TRC 425/6 Jerry Pentland interviewed by Fred Morton, 1976

ORAL TRC 391/36-38 interviewed by Neil Bennetts, 1980

ORAL TRC 536 Eric Roberts interviewed by Fred Morton, 1977

ORAL TRC 536 Frank Roberts interviewed by Fred Morton, 1977

ORAL TRC 121/50 Richard Williams interviewed by Mel Pratt, 1973-74

ORAL TRC 425/1 Richard Williams interviewed by Fred Morton, 1976

Privately Held Papers

Air Mechanic 1st Class William Henry Lord (Andrew Smith: St Clair, New South Wales)

Nigel Love (John Love: Pymble, New South Wales)

Lieutenant Archie Rackett (Phil and Allison Rackett, Howrah, Tasmania) 376 Air Chief Marshal Sir Geoffrey Salmond (Anne Baker: Salisbury, Wiltshire)

Stanley Winter-Irving (Andrew Winter-Irving: Nagambe, Victoria)

Captain John Wright (Brian Wright: Wahroonga, New South Wales)

Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon (RAF)

173620 Captain Ian Henry David Henderson correspondence

AC97/93/333 Major R. G. Blomfield correspondence

AC72/5/25 Major R. G. Blomfield correspondence

AC73/23/53 RFC in Mesopotamia, diary of operations

AC78/6 Wing Commander Louis Arbon Strange papers

B3090-99 Sir Geoffrey Salmond papers

DC 73/48 Corporal W. H. (Minter) Candy papers

MFC76/1 Sir Hugh Trenchard papers

X003-8803 Correspondence relating to the writing of the official history, The War in the Air

X001-2325 J. C. F. Wilkinson manuscript memoir

Royal Australian Air Force Museum, Point Cook (RAAF)

CFS DOCS Central Flying School records

HALF FLIGHT Mesopotamia Half Flight/ No. 30 Squadron records

Richard Williams papers

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney (SLNSW)

B 687 Aerial League of Australia minute book

MLMSS 1003 Papers of John Herbert Butler

Aa 98 Papers of John Duigan

377 MLMSS 1222 Papers of the Hughes family (Geoffrey Forrest Hughes)

MLMSS 2876 Papers of John Patrick MacNamara

A 1378 Papers of Florence and Geoffrey Sulman

MLMSS 2539 Papers of George Augustus Taylor

State Library of South Australia, Adelaide (SLSA)

PRG 18 Papers of Sir

State Library of Victoria, Melbourne (SLV)

MS 10762 Papers of Stanley George Garrett

State Library of Queensland, Brisbane (SLQ)

M 780 Papers of Bertram Charles Bell and family

M 836 Papers of William Fraser

State Records New South Wales, Sydney (SRNSW)

Department of Education subject files, 1875-1948

20/12530.1 Aviation School (1916-1917)

20/12876 State Aviation School (1918-1919)

NRS 12061 Premier's Department Special Bundles, 1895-1976

4/6254.2 Aviation School at Richmond (1917-1920)

PUBLISHED SOURCES Books

Air Ministry Publication 1097, ‘A Selection of Lectures and Essays from the Work of Officers Attending the Second Course at the Royal Air Force Staff College’, 1923-1924, Air Ministry, London, 1924.

John Alger, Definitions and Doctrine of the Military Art, Avery Publishing Group, New Jersey, 1985

378 James Ambrose Brown, A Gathering of Eagles: The Campaigns of the South African Air Force in Italian East Africa June 1940-November 1941 with an Introduction 1912-1939, Purnell, Cape Town, 1970.

Eric Andrews, The Anzac Illusion: Anglo-Australian Relations During World War I, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993.

Anonymous, Air Publication 1097, A Selection of Lectures and Essays From the Work of Officers Attending the Second Course at the Royal Air Force Staff College, 1923-1924, Air Ministry, London, August 1924.

Australian Air Publication AAP 1000-D, The Air Power Manual, 5th Edition, Air Power Development Centre, Tuggeranong, 2008 (2007).

C. Alma Baker (ed.), Souvenir of Ninety-Four Gift Battleplanes which Helped us to Victory, August 4th, 1914 to November 11th, 1918, Field Press, London, c. 1920.

Glen St. J. Barclay, The Empire is Marching: a Study of the Military Effort of the British Empire 1800-1945, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1976.

Maurice Baring, Flying Corps Headquarters, 1914-1918, Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1968.

A. J. Barker, The First Iraq War 1914-1918: Britain’s Mesopotamian Campaign, Enigma, New York, 2009 (1967).

Ralph Barker, A Brief History of the Royal Flying Corps in World War One, Robinson Publishing, London, 2002.

C. E. W. Bean, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume V: The Australian Imperial Force in France During the Main German Offensive, 1918, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1939 (1937).

______Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VI: The Australian Imperial Force in France: during the Allied Offensive, 1918, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1942.

379 ______Anzac to Amiens: A Shorter History of the Australian Fighting Services in the First World War, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1946.

Joan Beaumont (editor), Australia’s War, 1914-18, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, 1995.

John Bennett, Highest Traditions: the History of No. 2 Squadron, RAAF, Australian Government Printing Service Press, Canberra, 1995.

______The Imperial Gift: British Aeroplanes which Formed the RAAF in 1921, Banner Books, Maryborough, 1996.

Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham, Firepower: The British Army Weapons and Theories of War 1904-1945, Pen & Sword, Barnsley, 2004.

Dale Blair, The Battle of Bellicourt Tunnel: Tommies, Diggers and Doughboys on the Hindenburg Line, 1918, Frontline, London, 2011.

Michele Bomford, Beaten Down by Blood: the Battle of Mont St Quentin-Péronne 1918, Big Sky Publishing, Newport, 2012.

Jean Bou, Australia’s Palestine Campaign, Army History Unit, Canberra, 2010.

Andrew Boyle, Trenchard, Collins, London, 1962.

Walter Boyne, The Influence of Air Power Upon History, Pelican, Gretna, 2003.

Lawrence Bragg, A. H. Dowson and H. H. Hemming, Artillery Survey in the First World War, Field Survey Association, London, 1971.

Norman Brearley and Ted Mayman, Australian Aviator, Rigby, Adelaide, 1971.

F. S. Briggs and S. H. Harris, Joysticks and Fiddlesticks: the Unofficial History of a Flying Kangaroo, Hutchinson, London, 1938.

Raymond James Brownell, From Khaki to Blue: the Autobiography of Air Commodore R. J. Brownell, Military Historical Society of Australia, Canberra, 1978.

J. M. Bruce, The Aeroplanes of the Royal Flying Corps (Military Wing), Putnam, London, 1982.

380 John Buckley, Air Power in the Age of Total War, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1999.

Stephen Bull (editor), An Officer’s Manual of the Western Front, 1914-1918, Conway, London, 2008.

Kathleen Burk (editor), War and the State: the Transformation of the British Government, 1914-1919, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1982.

Peter Burke (editor), New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991.

J. B. Bury, An Inaugural Lecture Delivered at the Divinity School Cambridge on January 26 1903, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1903.

A. G. Butler, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914-1918, Volume III, Problems and Services, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1943.

Edmund Candler, The Long Road to Baghdad, volumes 1 and 2, Cassell & Co., London, 1919.

L. E. O. Charlton, Charlton, Faber, London, 1931.

Frederick Mortimer Clapp, A History of the 17th Aero Squadron, Country Life Press, New York, 1918.

Alan Clark, The Donkeys, Hutchinson, London, 1963.

Frank Clune, D’air Devil: the Story of “Pard” Mustar, Australian Air Ace, Allied Authors and Artists, Sydney, 1941.

A. H. Cobby, High Adventure, Robertson & Mullens, Melbourne, 1942.

Paolo Enrico Coletta, Admiral Bradley A. Fiske and the American Navy, Regents Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 1979

Basil Collier, History of Air Power, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1974.

John Connor, Anzac and Empire: George Foster Pearce and the Foundations of Australian Defence, Cambridge, Port Melbourne, 2011.

381 Pat Conrick (editor), The Flying Carpet Men, Lucindale, self-published, 1993.

Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Case Studies in the Development of Close Air Support, Office of Air Force History, U.S. Air Force, Washington DC, 1990.

Malcolm Cooper, The Birth of Independent Air Power: British Air Policy in the First World War, Allen & Unwin, London, 1986.

James Corum, The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918-1940, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 1997.

C. D. Coulthard-Clark, No Australian Need Apply: the Troubled Career of Lieutenant-General Gordon Legge, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1988.

______The Third Brother: The Royal Australian Air Force 1921-39, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1991.

______McNamara VC: A Hero’s Dilemma, Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 1997.

Sebastian Cox and Peter Gray (eds.), Air Power History: Turning Points from Kitty Hawk to Kosovo, Frank Cass, London, 2002.

David Crotty, A Flying Life: John Duigan and the First Australian Aeroplane, Museum of Victoria, Melbourne, 2010.

F. M. Cutlack, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VIII: The Australian Flying Corps in the Western and Eastern Theatres of War, 1914-1918, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1939, (1923).

Paul Davis, Ends and Means: The British Mesopotamian Campaign and Royal Commission, Associated University Press, Cranbury, 1994.

Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey (editors), 1918 Defining Victory: Proceedings of the Chief of Army History Conference 1998, Army History Unit, Canberra, 1999, pp. 173-174.

______Proceedings of the 2001 Chief of Army's Military History Conference, Army History Unit, Canberra, 2001.

382 Peter Dennis, Jeffrey Grey, Ewan Morris, Robin Prior and Jean Bou (editors), The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2008.

David Divine, The Broken Wing: A Study in the British Exercise of Air Power, Hutchinson, London, 1966

Hugh Driver, The Birth of Military Aviation: Britain, 1903-1914, Boydell Press, Suffolk, 1997.

Christopher Duffy, The Somme Through German Eyes, Phoenix, London, 2007.

Rick Duiven and Dan-San Abott, Schlachtflieger! Germany and the Origins of Air/Ground Support, 1916-1918, Schiffer Military History, Atglen, 2006.

James Edmonds and G. C. Wynne, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations: France and Belgium 1915: Volume I: ‘Winter 1914-15, Battle of Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres’, Macmillan, London, 1927.

James Edmonds, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations France and Belgium, 1915: Volume II: Battle of Aubers Ridge, Festubert and Loos, Macmillan, London, 1928.

______History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations: France and Belgium 1918: Volume I: The German March Offensive and its Preliminaries, Macmillan, London, 1935.

______History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations: France and Belgium 1918: Volume II: March-April: Continuation of the German Offensives, Macmillan, London, 1937.

______History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations: France and Belgium 1918: Volume III: May-July: The German Diversion Offensives and the First Allied Counter-Offensive, Macmillan, London, 1939.

383 ______History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations: France and Belgium 1918: Volume IV: 8th August-26th September: The Franco-British Offensive, Macmillan, London, 1947.

______History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations: France and Belgium 1918: Volume V: 26th September-11 November: The Advance to Victory, Macmillan, London, 1947.

Edward Erickson, Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War, Greenwood Press, Westport, 2001.

______Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War I, Routledge, Abingdon, 2007.

Cyril Falls and A. F. Becke, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations: Egypt and Palestine: Volume II: From June 1917 Until the End of the War Parts I and II, HMSO, London, 1930.

Terrence Finnegan, Shooting the Front: Allied Aerial Reconnaissance in the First World War, Spellmount, Stroud, 2011.

Martin Francis, The Flyer: British Culture and the Royal Air Force, 1939-1945, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008.

Norman Franks, Dog-Fight: Aerial Tactics of the Aces of World War I, Greenhill, London, 2003.

Norman Franks, Frank Bailey, and Rick Duiven, The Jasta War Chronology: A Complete Listing of Claims and Losses, August 1916-November 1918, Grub Street, London, 1998.

______Casualties of the German Air Service, 1914-1920: As Complete a List Possible Arranged Alphabetically and Chronologically, Grub Street, London, 1999.

Hudson Fysh, Qantas Rising, Qantas Founders Outback Museum, Longreach, 1996.

Bill Gammage, The Broken Years: Australian soldiers in the Great War, Penguin, Ringwood, 1980

384 General Staff, War Office, The Russo-Japanese War: Reports from Officers Attached to the Japanese Forces in the Field, Volume 2, HMSO, London, 1905.

______Field Service Regulations Part I Operations, 1909, HMSO, London, 1909.

______Field Service Regulations Part I Operations, 1909, HMSO, London, 1914.

______Training Manual, Royal Flying Corps Part II (Military Wing), HMSO, London, 1914.

______Training Manual, Royal Flying Corps Part II (Military Wing), HMSO, London, 1916.

______SS 550 Notes on the Interpretation of Aeroplane Photographs, Army Printing and Stationary Service, France, March 1917.

______Co-operation of Aircraft with Artillery, Army Printing and Stationary Services, France, December 1917.

______SS 205 Notes on Observation from Aeroplanes, Army Printing and Stationary Services, France, February 1918.

______Reports of Movement of Enemy Aircraft, Army Printing and Stationary Services, France, March 1918.

______Report on Survey on the Western Front 1914-1918, HMSO, London, 1920.

General Staff, Indian Army, Critical Study of the Campaign in Mesopotamia up to April 1917, Government of India Press, Calcutta, 1925.

G. M. Giles, Some Chapters in the Life of George Augustine Taylor: a Biography, Building Pub. Co. Pty. Ltd., Sydney, 1957.

Douglas Gillison, Royal Australian Air Force 1939-1942, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1962.

385 Mark Girouard, The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1981.

Alfred Gollin, The Impact of Air Power on the British People and Their Government, 1909-14, Macmillan in association with King’s College, London, 1989.

David Goodland and Alan Vaughan, Anzacs over England: the Australian Flying Corps in Gloucestershire, 1918-1919, Sutton Publishing Limited, United Kingdom, 1992.

Anna Green & Kathleen Troup, Houses of history: a Critical Reader in Twentieth- Century History and Theory, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1999.

Jeffrey Grey, A Military History of Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000 (1990).

______(editor), The Last Word?: Essays on Official History in the United States and British Commonwealth, Praeger, Westport, 2003.

H. S. Gullett, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: Volume VII: The Australian Imperial Force in Sinai and Palestine, 1914-1918, Angus & Robertson, 1939 (1923).

Terry Gwynn-Jones, Heroic Australian Air Stories, Rigby Publishers Limited, Adelaide, 1981.

David Ian Hall, Strategy for Victory the Development of British Tactical Air Power, 1919-1943, Praeger Security International, Westport, 2008.

Richard Hallion, Rise of the Fighter Aircraft, 1914-1918, Nautical & Aviation Pub. Co. of America, Annapolis, 1984.

______, Strike from the Sky: The History of Battlefield Air Attack, 1911-1945, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1989.

______, Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age from Antiquity Through the First World War, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003.

J. P. Harris, Amiens to the Armistice: The BEF in the Hundred Days Campaign, 8 August-11 November 1918, Brassey’s, London, 1998.

386 A. D. Harvey, Collision of Empires: Britain in Three World Wars, 1793-1945, The Hambledon Press, London, 1992.

Tyrrel Mann Hawker, Hawker VC, The Mitre Press, London, 1965.

Frederick Stansbury Haydon, Aeronautics in the Union and Confederate Armies, Arno Press, New York, 1980.

Neville Hayes, Billy Stutt and the Richmond Flyboys, Pacific Downunder, Cowes, 2008.

Jan Hayzlett (translator), Hunting with Richthofen: the Bodenschatz Diaries- Sixteen Months of Battle with JG Freiherr von Richthofen No. 1, Grub Street, London, 1996

R. P. Hearne, Aerial Warfare, John Lane, The Bodley Head, London, 1909.

Adrian Hellwig, Australian Hawk Over the Western Front: a Biography of Major R. S. Dallas DSO, DSC, C de G avec Palme, Grub Street, London, 2006

Peter Helson, The Private Air Marshal: A Biography of Air Marshal Sir George Jones, KBE, CB, DFC, Air Power Development Centre, Canberra, 2010.

Trevor Henshaw, The Sky Their Battlefield: Air Fighting and the Complete List of Allied Air Casualties from Enemy Action in the First War, Grub Street, London, 1995.

Robin Higham, Air Power: A Concise History, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1972.

C. W. Hill, The Spook and the Commandant, William Kimber & Co. Ltd, London, 1975.

Chris Hobson, Airmen Died in the Great War, 1914-1918: the Roll of Honour of the British and Commonwealth Air Services of the First World War, J. B. Hayward, Suffolk, 1995.

Ernest von Hoeppner, Germany’s War in the Air: The Development and Operations of German Military Aviation in the World War, The Battery Press, Nashville, 1994.

387 E. R. Hooton, War over the Trenches: Air Power and the Western Front Campaigns 1916-1918, Ian Allan Publishing, Surrey, 2010.

David Horner, The Gunners: A History of Australian Artillery, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, 1995.

Mark Osborne Humphries and John Maker, Germany’s Western Front: Translations from the German Official History of the Great War, 1915, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Ontario, 2010.

H. Montgomery Hyde, British Air Policy Between the Wars 1918-1939, Heinemann, London, 1976.

Ion Idriess, The Desert Column: Leaves from the Diary of an Australian Trooper in Gallipoli, Sinai and Palestine, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1951.

Keith Isaacs, Military Aircraft of Australia, 1909-1918, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1971.

C. G. Jefford, Observers and Navigators and Other Non-Pilot Aircrew in the RFC, RNAS and RAF, Airlife, Shrewsbury, 2001.

George Jones, From Private to Air Marshal: the Autobiography of Air Marshal Sir George Jones KB CB DFC, Greenhouse, Richmond, 1988.

H. A. Jones, Sir Walter Raleigh and the Air History: a Personal Recollection, Edward Arnold & Co., London, 1922.

______The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force: Volume II, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1928.

______The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force: Volume III, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1931.

______The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force: Volume IV, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1934.

______The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force: Volume V, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1935.

388 ______The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force: Volume VI, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1937.

______The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force, Appendices, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1937.

Ira Jones, King of Air Fighters: Biography of Major "Mick" Mannock, Ivor Nicholson & Watson, London, 1934.

Philip Joubert de la Ferte, The Fated Sky, Hutchinson, London, 1952.

William Joy, The Aviators, Shakespeare Head Press, Sydney, 1965.

George Pollard Kay, Letters from Bob: Flight Commander, 46th Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, Melville & Mullens, Melbourne, 1917.

A. Kearsey, A Summary of the Strategy and Tactics of the Egypt and Palestine Campaign with Details of the 1917-18 Operations Illustrating the Principles of War, 2nd Edition, Gale & Polden Limited, Aldershot, 1931.

John Keegan, The Face of Battle, Jonathon Cape, London, 1976.

Lee Kennett, The First Air War, 1914-1918, Free Press, New York, 1991.

Peter Kilduff (editor), Germany's Last Knight of the Air: the Memoirs of Major Carl Degelow, W. Kimber, London, 1979.

Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, Mit den Türken zum Suezkanal, Otto Schlegel, Berlin, c. 1938.

James Lawrence, Imperial Warrior: the Life and Times of Field-Marshal Viscount Allenby 1861-1936, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1993.

Mark Lax (editor), One Airman's War: Aircraft Mechanic Joe Bull's Personal Diaries 1916-1919, Banner Books, Maryborough, 1997.

R. D. Layman, Naval Aviation in the First World War: Its Impact and Influence, Chatham Publishing London, 1996.

A. S. G. Lee, No Parachute: A Fighter Pilot in World War I, Time Life Books, New York, 1991.

389 Cecil Lewis, Sagittarius Rising, Peter Davies, London, 1936.

Peter Liddle, Passchendaele in Perspective: The Third Battle of Ypres, Leo Cooper, London, 1997.

Arthur Longmore, From Sea to Sky, 1910-1945, Geoffrey Bles, London, 1946.

Erich Ludendorff, Ludendorff's Own Story, August 1914-November 1918; the Great War from the Siege of Liège to the Signing of the Armistice as Viewed from the Grand Headquarters of the German Army, Volume I, Harper, New York, 1919.

John Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture, Westview Press, Colorado, 2003.

S. S. Mackenzie, The Official History of Australia in the War, 1914-1918: Volume X: The Australians at Rabaul, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1938 (1927).

Ian Mackersey, No Empty Chairs: the Short and Heroic Lives of the Young Aviators who Fought and Died in the First World War, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2012

Norman MacMillan, Into the Blue, Duckworth, London, 1929.

______(editor), Sir Sefton Brancker, William Heinemann Ltd, London, 1935.

George MacMunn and Cyril Falls, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations Egypt and Palestine: Volume I: From the Outbreak of War with Germany to June 1917, HMSO, London, 1928.

Errol Martyn, For Your Tomorrow: A Record of New Zealanders who Have Died While Serving with the RNZAF and Allied Air Forces Since 1915: Volume One: Fates 1915-1942, Volplane Press, 1998.

______Swift to the Sky: New Zealand’s Military Aviation History, Penguin Group, 2010.

James McCudden, Flying Fury: Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps, Bailey and Swinfen, Folkestone, 1973.

390 Michael McKernan and Margaret Browne (editors), Australia: Two Centuries of War and Peace, Australian War Memorial Press, Canberra, 1988.

‘McScotch’, Fighter pilot, George Routledge, London, 1936.

Peter Mead, The Eye in the Air: History of Air Observation and Reconnaissance for the Army, 1785-1945, HMSO, London, 1983.

Neville Meaney, A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy, 1901-1923: Volume I: The Search for Security in the Pacific, 1901-1914, University of Sydney Press, Sydney, 1971.

Piet Hein Meijering, Signed with Their Honor: Air Chivalry During the Two World Wars, Paragon House, New York, 1988.

Phillip Meilinger (ed.), The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Air Power Theory, Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force Base Alabama, 1997.

Richard Meinertzhagen, Army Diary 1899-1926, Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, 1960.

Charles Messenger, Call to Arms: the British Army, 1914-1918, Cassell, London, 2005.

______The Day We Won the War: Turning Point at Amiens 8 August 1918, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2008.

Wilfrid Miles, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations: France and Belgium 1917: Volume III: The Battle of Cambrai, HMSO, London, 1948.

F. J. Moberly, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations: The Campaign in Mesopotamia 1914-1918: Volume I, London, HMSO, 1923.

______History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Military Operations: The Campaign in Mesopotamia 1914-1918: Volume II, London, HMSO, 1924.

Michael Molkentin, Fire in the Sky: the Australian Flying Corps in the First World War, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2010.

391 John Monash, The Australian Victories in France, 1918, Hutchinson & Co., London, 1920.

John Mordike, An Army for a Nation, a History of Australian Military Developments, 1880-1914, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992.

______, General Sir Edmund Allenby’s Joint Operations in Palestine, 1917- 1918, Working Paper No. 6, Aerospace Centre Papers. The Aerospace Centre, Fairbairn, 2002.

Alan Morris, Bloody April, Jarrolds, London, 1967.

John Morrow, The Great War in the Air: Military Aviation from 1909 to 1921, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1993.

Robin Neillands, The Death of Glory: The Western Front in 1915, John Murray, London, 2007.

Georg Paul Neumann (editor) and J. E. Gurdeon (translator), The German Air Force in the Great War, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1920.

Dennis Newton, Australian Air Aces, Aerospace Publications, Fyshwick, 1996.

Rafael de Noagles and Muna Lee (translator), Four Years Beneath the Crescent, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1926.

Aaron Norman, The Great War in the Air: the Men, the Planes, the Saga of Military Aviation 1914-1918, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1968.

Albert Palazzo, Seeking Victory on the Western Front: The British Army and Chemical Warfare in World War I, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2000.

Michael Paris, Winged Warfare: The Literature and Theory of Aerial Warfare in Britain, 1859-1917, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1992.

George Foster Pearce, Carpenter to Cabinet: Thirty-Seven Years of Parliament, Hutchinson, London, 1951.

392 Peter Pedersen, The Anzacs: Gallipoli to the Western Front, Viking, Camberwell, 2007.

Donimick Pisano, Legend, Memory and the Great War in the Air, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1992.

Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Command on the Western Front: The Military Career of Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1914-18, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1992.

Christopher Pugsley and John A. Moses, The German Empire and Britain’s Pacific Dominions: Essays on the Role of Australia and New Zealand in World Politics in the Age of Imperialism, Regina Books, Claremont, 2000

Christopher Pugsley, The Anzac Experience: New Zealand, Australia and Empire in the First World War; Reed, Auckland, 2004

RAAF Historical Section, Units of the Royal Australian Air Force: A Concise History, AGPS Press, Canberra, 1995.

Walter Raleigh, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force: Volume I, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1922.

Andrew Rawson, British Army Handbook 1914-1918, Sutton Publishing, Phoenix Mill, 2006.

Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkreig 1914 bis 1918, Volume X, Die Operationen des Jahres 1916 bis zum Wechsel in der obersten Heeresleitung, E. Mittler & Sohn, Frankfurt am Main, 1936.

E. J. Richards, Australian Airmen: History of the 4th Squadron, Australian Flying Corps, Bruce & Co., Melbourne, c. 1919.

George Robb, British Culture and the First World War, Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2002.

Eric Roberts, Box Kites and Beyond, Hawthorn Press, Melbourne, 1976.

Linda Robertson, The Dream of Civilized Warfare: World War I Flying Aces and the American Imagination, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2003.

393 J. M. S. Ross, Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939-45, Royal New Zealand Air Force, War History Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1955.

Liman Von Sanders, Five Years in Turkey, The United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, 1927 (1920).

Charles Schaedel, Men and Machines of the Australian Flying Corps, 1914-1919, Kookaburra, Dandenong, 1972

______Australian Air Ace: the Exploits of ‘Jerry’ Pentland MC, DFC, AFC, Rigby, Adelaide, 1979

A. J. L. Scott, The History of 60 Squadron RAF, William Heinemann, London, 1920.

Ernest Scott, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18: Volume XI: Australia During the War, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1938 (1936).

Gary Sheffield, Forgotten Victory: The First World War: Myths and Realities, Review, London, 2002.

______The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army, Aurum Press, London, 2012 (2011).

Gary Sheffield and John Bourne (editors), Douglas Haig War Diaries and Letters, 1914-1918, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2005.

Yigal Sheffy, British Military Intelligence in the Palestine Campaign, Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., London, 1998.

Yigal Sheffy and Shaul Shai, The First World War: Middle Eastern perspective: proceedings of the Israeli-Turkish International Colloquy, 3-6 April 2000, Tel-Aviv, , Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 2000.

Jack Sheldon, The German Army on the Somme, 1914-1916, Pen & Sword Military, Barnsley, 2005.

Christopher Shores, Norman Franks and Russell Guest, Above the Trenches: A Complete Record of the Fighter Aces and Units of the British Empire Air Forces, 1915-1920, Grub Street, London, 1990.

394 ______The German Army at Cambrai, Pen & Sword Military, Barnsley, 2009.

Andy Simpson, Directing Operations: British Corps Command on the Western Front, Spellmount, Stroud, 2006.

John Slessor, Air Power and Armies Oxford University Press, London, 1936.

Alan Smith, Do Unto Others: Counter Bombardment in Australia's Military Campaigns, Big Sky Publishing, Newport, 2011.

Charles Kingsford Smith, My Flying Life, Andrew Melrose, London, 1937.

Sydney Ure Smith (ed.), Oswald Watt: A Tribute to his Memory by a Few of His Friends, Art in Australia Ltd, Sydney, 1921.

Peter Stanley, Invading Australia: Japan and the Battle for Australia, 1942, Viking, Camberwell, 2008.

Rudolf Stark, Wings of War: An Airman’s Diary of the Last Year of World War One Arms and Armour Press, London, 1973.

Nigel Steel and Peter Hart, Tumult in the Clouds: the British Experience of the War in the Air, 1914-1918, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1997

Alan Stephens, The Royal Australian Air Force, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2001.

David Stevens, In Search of a Maritime Strategy: the Maritime Element in Australian Defence Planning Since 1901, Strategic Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, 1997.

David Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918, Allen Lane, London, 2011.

L. A. Strange, Recollections of an Airman, The Aviation Book Club, London, 1940.

Ray Sturtivant and John Hamlin, Royal Air Force Flying Training and Support Units Since 1912, Air Britain (Historians) Ltd., Staplefield, 2007.

395 Barry Sutherland (editor), Command and Leadership in War and Peace: The Proceedings of the 1999 RAAF History Conference, Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 1999.

L. W. Sutherland, Aces and Kings, John Hamilton, London, 1935.

John Sweetman, Cavalry of the Clouds: Air War Over Europe 1914-1918, Spellmount, Stroud, 2010.

Frederick Sykes, From Many Angles, George G Harrap & Co., London, 1943.

John Tanner, Fighting in the Air: The Official Combat Technique Instructions for British Fighter Pilots, 1916-1945, Arms and Armour Press, London, 1978.

George Taylor, The Air Age: Being Lectures Given Before the United Service Institutes of Australia, July 1910, July 1918, Building Limited, Sydney, 1918.

______Wanted at Once, an Aerial Defence Fleet for Australia: a National Call to Australians, Sydney and Melbourne Publishing, Sydney, 1911.

Patrick Gordon Taylor, The Sky Beyond, Cassell Australia, Melbourne, 1963.

Harold Temperley (ed.), Selected essays of J. B. Bury, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1930.

Dan Todman and Gary Sheffield, Command and Control on the Western Front: the British Experience, 1914-18, Spellmount, Staplehurst, 2004.

Charles Townshend, My Campaign in Mesopotamia, T. Butterworth, London, 1920.

Tim Travers, The Killing Ground: the British Army, the Western Front and the Emergence of Modern War, 1900-1918, Pen & Sword, Barnsley, 2003 (1987).

______How the War was Won: Factors That Led to Victory in World War One, Pen & Sword, Barnsley, 2005 (1992).

Alan Treloar (editor), An Anzac Diary, Cambridge Press, Newcastle, 1993.

Lawrence Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer: an Autobiography, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1972.

396 War Office, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire During the Great War, The London Stamp Exchange, London, 1922.

A. P. Wavell, The Palestine Campaigns, Constable and Co. Limited, London, 1929.

T. W. White, Guests of the Unspeakable, Angus & Robertson, Sydney 1932.

Craig Wilcox, For Hearths and Homes: Citizen Soldiering in Australia, 1854-1945, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1998.

______Red Coat Dreaming: How Colonial Australia Embraced the British Army, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2009.

Richard Williams, These Are Facts: The Autobiography of Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams KBE, CB, DSO, Australian War Memorial and AGPS, Canberra, 1997.

Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War, The Polity Press, Cambridge, 1986.

Denis Winter, The First of the Few: Fighter Pilots of the First World War, Allen Lane, London, 1922.

S. F. Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force Volume I, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1980.

James Woods, Militia Myths: Ideas of the Canadian Citizen Soldier, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 2010.

H. N. Wrigley, The Battle Below: Being the History of No. 3 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps, Errol G. Knox, Sydney, 1935.

Mitchell Yockelson, Borrowed Soldiers: Americans Under British Command, 1918, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2008.

David Zabecki, The German 1918 Offensives: A Case Study in the Operational Level of War, Routledge, London, 2006.

Articles and Papers Anonymous, ‘Die deutschen Fliegerstreitkräfte an der Sinai- und Palästina-Front 1916-1918’ Luftwelt, volume 2, number 10, 1935, 404-407.

397 Anonymous, ‘Die andere Seite: Der kampf um den Suezkanal’, Luftwelt, volume 4, number 3, 1937, 99-102.

Anonymous, ‘Interview with Captain Eric Rupert Dibbs Formerly of the AFC’, The 14-18 Journal, 1967, 86-101.

Anonymous, ‘Report on the Defence of Gommecourt on July the 1st, 1916’, Royal United Services Institution Journal, volume 62, number 447, 1917, 535-556.

C. E. W. Bean, ‘The Technique of a Contemporary War Historian’, Historical Studies Australia and New Zealand, volume 2, issue 6, November 1942, 65-79.

______‘The Writing of the Australian Official History of the Great War- Sources, Methods and Some Conclusions’, Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Australian Historical Society, volume 24, issue 2, 1938, 85-112.

Jonathan Boff, ‘Air/land Integration in the 100 Days: The Case of Third Army’, Air Power Review, volume 12, number 3, Autumn 2009, 77–89.

Jean Bou, ‘An Aspirational Army: Australian Planning for Citizen Forces Divisional Structure Before 1920’, Sabretache, the Journal of the Military Historical Society of Australia, number 49, 2008, 25-30.

Robert Brooke-Popham, ‘Military Aviation’, The Army Review, January 1912, 87- 102.

Ian Burns, ‘Woman of my Heart': The Story of HMS Ben-my-Chree Part 2’, Cross and Cockade (UK), volume 7, number 1, 1976, 1-12.

Peter Chapman, ‘The New Zealand Flying School 1915 to 1918’, The 14-18 Journal, 1997, 6-14.

Chad Clark, ‘Trampled Underfoot: The story of Attack Aviation in the German Spring Offensives of 1918’, Air Power History, volume 45, number 2, summer 1998, 16-25.

Chris Clark, RAAF Support for an Australian Maritime Strategy Before World War II, seminar paper, Air Power Development Centre, Canberra, April 2012.

398 Douglas Cole, ‘The crimson thread of kinship’: Ethnic Ideas in Australia, 1870– 1914’, Historical Studies, volume 14, number 56, 1971, 511-525.

______‘The Problem of “Nationalism” and “Imperialism” in British Settlement Colonies’, The Journal of British Studies, volume 10, number 2, May 1972, 160-182.

Peter Collier, ‘Innovative Military Mapping Using Aerial Photography in the First World War: Sinai, Palestine and Mesopotamia 1914–1919’, The Cartographic Journal, volume 31, number 2, 1994, 100-104.

______‘The Impact on Topographic Mapping of Developments in Land and Air Survey: 1900-1939’, Cartography and Geographic Information Science, volume 29, number 3, 2002, 155-174.

Peter Collier and Rob Inkpen, ‘Mapping Palestine and Mesopotamia in the First World War’, The Cartographic Journal, volume 38, number 2, 2001, 143-154.

John Cuneo, ‘Preparation of German Attack Aviation for the Offensive of March 1918’, Military Affairs, volume 7, number 2, Summer 1943, 69-78.

E. M. Dowson, ‘Further Notes on Aeroplane Photography in the near East’, The Geographical Journal, volume 58, issue 5, November 1921, 359-370.

Katherine Epstein, ‘Imperial Airs: Leo Amery, Air Power and Empire, 1873-1945’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, volume 38, number 4, 2010, 571-598.

Edward Erickson, ‘The Turkish Official Military Histories of the First World War: A Bibliographic Essay’, Middle Eastern Studies, volume 39, number 3, 183-191.

Peter Fearon, ‘The Formative Years of the British Aircraft Industry, 1913-1924’, Business History Review, volume 43, number 4, 1969, 476-95.

John Ferris, ‘Review: The Air Force Brats’ View of History: Recent Writing and the Royal Air Force, 1918-1960’, The International History Review, volume 20, number 1, March 1998, 118-143.

399 Brian Flanagan (translator), ‘Erich Serno reports on Turkish/ German Aviation in the Middle East: Parts 1 and 2’, Cross and Cockade (US), volume 11, number 2, 1970, 97-144.

______‘Erich Serno reports on Turkish/ German Aviation in the Middle East: Part 3’, Cross and Cockade (US), volume 11, number 3, 1970, 224-243.

______‘Erich Serno reports on Turkish/ German Aviation in the Middle East: Part 4’, Cross and Cockade (US), volume 11, number 4, 1970, 346-369.

______‘Palestine Jagdstaffel (Jasta 55)’, Cross and Cockade (US), volume 13, number 1, 1972, 46-59

Dov Gavish, ‘The Schmetterling Farm: Flieger-Abteilung 300 at Samakh Airfield, Palestine 1918’, Over the Front, volume 17, number 3, 2002.

Ron Gibson, ‘Australian Aviation: the First Hundred Years’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, volume 58, number 3, September 1972, 162- 177.

Alfred Gollin, ‘The Mystery of Lord Haldane and Early British Military Aviation’, Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, volume 11, number 1, Spring 1979, 46-65.

______‘The Wright Brothers and the British Authorities, 1902-1909’, The English Historical Review, volume 95, number 375, April 1980, 293-320.

Bereton Greenhous, ‘Close support aircraft in World War One: the Counter Anti- Tank Role’, Aerospace Historian, volume 21, June 1974, 87-93

______, ‘Evolution of a Close Ground Support Role for Aircraft in World War I’, Military Affairs, volume 39, number 1, February 1975, 22-28.

Jeffrey Grey, ‘Cuckoo in the Nest? Australian Military Historiography: the State of the Field’, History Compass, volume 6, number 2, 2008, 455-468.

Dieter Gröschel and Jürgen Ladek, ‘Wings Over Sinai and Palestine’, Over the Front, volume 13, issue 1, 1998, 3-62.

400 Brian Hall, ‘The ‘Life Blood’ of Command? The British Army, Communications and the Telephone, 1877-1914’, War & Society, volume 27, issue 2, October 2008, 43-65.

Eric Harrison, ‘Military Tuition in Aviation’, Commonwealth Military Journal, April 1914, 292-294.

Brett Holman, ‘Seeing Things’, Wartime, number 61, summer 2013, 48-53.

Michael Howard, ‘The Concept of Air Power an Historical Appraisal’, Air Power History, Winter 1995, 5-11.

James Hudson, ‘Military history and the First Great Air War’, Air University Review, Jan-Feb 1970.

Alexander Johnson, ‘Review: Military Histories of the Great War’, The Journal of Modern History, volume 3, number 2, June 1931, 266-286.

David Jordan, ‘The Royal Air Force and Air/Land Integration in the 100 Days, August-November 1918’, Air Power Review, volume 11, number 2, Summer 2008, 12–29.

Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, ‘The Campaign in Palestine from the Enemy’s Side’, Royal United Services Institution Journal, volume 67, number 467, August 1922, 503-513.

Mark Lax, ‘The Skies Over Mesopotamia, Part 1: To Kut’, The 14-18 Journal, 2005, 26-50.

M. N. MacLeod, ‘Mapping From Air Photographs’, The Geographical Journal, volume 53, number 6, June 1919, 382-396.

Roy MacLeod, ‘Sight and Sound on the Western Front: Surveyors, Scientists, and the ‘Battlefield Laboratory, 1915-1918’, War & Society, volume 18, number 1, 2000, 23-46.

J. P. McCoy and K. Keohane, ‘Interview with G. N. Mills, Former Observer with the Australian Flying Corps’, The 14-18 Journal, 1968, 76-80.

401 Rick McQualter (editor), ‘Letters of Major Roderic Stanley Dallas’, The 14-18 Journal, 1996, 64-71.

Michael Meech, ‘The Development of Contact Patrols: a Short History of Appendix B of SS135’, Cross and Cockade (UK), volume 40, Summer, 2009, 116-127.

Phillip Meilinger, ‘The Historiography of Airpower: Theory and Doctrine’, The Journal of Military History, volume 64, issue 2, April 2000, 467-501.

Michael Molkentin, ‘That Dreadful Flying Corps: Responses to Life and Death in the Australian Flying Corps, 1914-1918’, Cross and Cockade International, volume 35, number 4, 2005.

______‘Unconscious of any distinction’? Social and Vocational Quality in the Australian Flying Corps, 1914-1918’, The Journal of the Australian War Memorial, number 30, February 2007.

______‘To catch old Jerry eating his sauerkraut’, Wartime, number 51, July 2010.

Gareth Morgan, ‘Australian Flying Corps Roll of Honour 1915-1921: Part Three’, The 14-18 Journal, 2010, 43-61.

Desmond Morton, ‘‘Junior but Sovereign Allies’: the Transformation of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1918’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, volume 8, number 1, October 1979, 55-67.

Captain J. W. Niesigh, ‘Aviation in Relation to Australian defence’, Commonwealth Military Journal, August 1911, 403-410.

Albert Palazzo, ‘The British Army's Counter-Battery Staff Office and Control of the Enemy in World War I’, The Journal of Military History, volume 63, number 1, 1999, 55-74.

Michael Paris, ‘Air Power and Imperial Defence 1880-1919’, Journal of Contemporary History, volume 24, number 2, April 1989, 209-225.

402 ______‘The First Air Wars- North Africa and the Balkans, 1911-13’, The Rise of the Airmen: The Origins of Air Force Elitism, c.1890-1918, volume 26, number 1, January 1991, 97-109.

______‘The Rise of the Airmen: The Origins of Air Force Elitism, c.1890-1918’, Journal of Contemporary History, volume 28, number 1, January 1993, 123- 141.

Henry Petre, ‘Safety in Aviation’, Commonwealth Military Journal, July 1913, 389- 392

H. Bannerman Phillips, ‘Progress in Aeronautics’, Commonwealth Military Journal, November 1911, 717-724.

Richard Preston and Ian Wards, ‘Military and Defence Development in Canada, Australia and News Zealand: a Three Way Comparison’, War & Society, volume 5, number 1, 1987, 1-21.

Josef Raesch, ‘Raesch of Jasta 43 (Diary of a Fighter Pilot)’, Cross and Cockade (US), volume 8, number 4, 1967, 307-334.

George Shaw, ‘Wireless Operator on Active Service: Extracts From the Diary of Private George W. Shaw, Wireless Operator Attached to the Australian Flying Corps’, Air, Land and Sea, volume 1, number 9, December 1918, 528-537.

Dick Silberbauer, ‘The Origins of South African Military Aviation: 1907-1919 from South African Archives’, Cross and Cockade (UK), volume 7, number 4, 1976.

Sydney Smith, ‘Aviation in Relation to Australian Defence- a Reply’, Commonwealth Military Journal, October 1911, 604-607.

John Sweetman, ‘Crucial Months for Survival: The Royal Air Force, 1918-19’, Journal of Contemporary History, volume 19, number 3, July 1984, 529-547.

George Taylor, ‘Australian Defence and Aviation’, Commonwealth Military Journal, February 1912, 71-76.

403 H. Hamshaw Thomas, ‘Geographical Reconnaissance by Aeroplane Photography, with Special Reference to the Work Done on the Palestine Front’, The Geographical Journal, volume 55, number 5, May 1920, 349-376.

Robert Thornton, ‘Invaluable Ally or Imminent Aggressor? Australia and Japanese Naval Assistance, 1914–18’, Journal of Australian Studies, volume 7, number 12, 1983, 5-20.

Eric Watson (editor), ‘Letter from a flying officer’, The 14-18 Journal, 1996, 16-19.

Eric Watson and Alan Fraser (editors), ‘The Personal Letters of Captain R. W. Howard, MC, Australian Flying Corps’, Part 3, The 14-18 Journal, 1999, 52- 68.

Oswald Watt, ‘Australia and the Fourth Arm’, Commonwealth Military Journal, May 1912, 413-419.

______‘Recent Aviation Developments and Australian Aerial Organisation’, Commonwealth Military Journal, January 1913, 62-65.

Andrew Whitmarsh, ‘British Army Manoeuvres and the Development of Military Aviation, 1910-1913’, War in History, volume 14, number 3, July 2007, 325- 346.

Craig Wilcox, ‘Relinquishing the past: John Mordike's An Army for a Nation’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, volume 40, 1994, 52-65.

H. S. L. Winterbotham, ‘British Survey on the Western Front’, The Geographical Journal, volume 53, number 4, April 1919, 253-271.

______‘Geographical Work with the Army in France’, The Geographical Journal, volume 54, number 1, July 1919, 12-23.

Garry Woodard, ‘Ministers and Mandarins: The Relationships Between Ministers and Secretaries of External Affairs, 1935-1970’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, volume 54, number 1, April 2000, p. 80.

404 Theses John Bennett, ‘Flexibility in Air Power: No. 3 Squadron AFC/RAAF: The Direct and Effective Operational Application of Air Power’, MA thesis, University of New South Wales, 2001.

Thomas Bradbeer, ‘The British Air Campaign During the Battle of the Somme: A Pyrrhic Victory’, PhD thesis, University of Kansas, 2011.

David Bullock, ‘Swift as Eagles: The Victory of the Royal Air Force in Palestine, 1914-1918’, PhD thesis, Kansas State University, 1995.

John Connor, ‘Senator George Pearce as Defence Minister’, PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, 2004.

Malcolm Cooper, ‘British air policy on the Western Front, 1914-1918’, PhD thesis, Oxford University, 1982.

Glenn William Graham, ‘We shall deliver the goods': the Development of British Airpower during the First World War’, MA thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2003.

David Jordan, ‘The Army Co-operation missions of the Royal Flying Corps/ Royal Air Force, 1914-1918’, PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 1997.

Mark Lax, ‘The Impact of Technology and Command on No. 1 Squadron Operations, 1916-1958’, MA thesis, Australian Defence Force Academy, 1995.

Sanders Marble, ‘The Infantry Cannot do with a Gun Less: the Place of the Artillery in the BEF 1914-1918’, PhD thesis, King’s College, 1998.

Michael Molkentin, ‘Culture, Class and Experience in the Australian Flying Corps’, Honours thesis, University of Wollongong, 2004.

Robert Morley, ‘Earning their wings: British Pilot Training, 1912-1918’, MA thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 2006.

Adam Garth Pye, ‘Evolution in Action: the Royal Flying Corps/ Royal Air Force and the Development of Ground Attack in World War I’, MA thesis, University of Calgary, 2003.

405 James Streckfuss, ‘Eyes all Over the Sky: the Significance of Aerial Reconnaissance in the First World War’, PhD thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2011.

Newspapers and Periodicals The Advertiser (Adelaide)

The Aeroplane

The Age (Melbourne)

The Argus (Melbourne)

Barrier Miner (Broken Hill)

Brisbane Courier

The Cairns Post

Commonwealth Gazette

Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates (Hansard)

The Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate

The Examiner (Launceston)

Flight

Kalgoorlie Western Argus

The Mail (Adelaide)

The Mercury (Hobart)

The Queenslander

The Register (Adelaide)

The Society of Australian World War 1 Aero Historians Newsletter

The Sun (Sydney)

The Sunday Times (Perth)

Sydney Morning Herald

The Times (London)

West Gippsland Gazette (Warragul) 406 Websites

Brett Holman, ‘Airminded: Airpower and British Society’, last consulted 2 August 2012, <‘http://airminded.org>.

National Library of Australia, ‘Australian Newspapers Online – ’, last consulted 10 April 2013, .

407