had happened was clear to the man who planned the raid, Squadron Commander Cecil L’Estrange Malone. ‘I look upon the events which took place on 25 December
as a visible proof of the probable line of developments of the principles of naval strategy,’ he wrote in his official report. ‘One can imagine what might have been done had our
seaplanes, or those sent to attack us, carried torpedoes instead of light bombs. Several of the ships in Schillig Roads would have been torpedoed and some of our force might have been sunk as
well.’ L’Estrange-Malone, aremarkable figure who would go on to become Britain’s first Communist MP, had grasped that at some point, the success or failure,
in fact the very survival of a naval force, would depend on the strength and efficiency of its air forces and air defences.
That time was still some way off. The Cuxhaven raid was not repeated. Instead the RNAS would soon be preoccupied with one of its consequences. The fright that the Germans had received produced a
strengthening of the anti-aircraft batteries around ports and bases, but also persuaded them to press ahead with air attacks on England. Rather than wait for long-range aeroplanes capable of doing
the job, it was decided to use Zeppelins, and when the raids began early in the New Year it was naval pilots who had the task of hunting them down.
The results of the attacks on the Zeppelin sheds did not justify the effort and expenditure of manpower and resources that went into them. It was accepted that there might be future benefits in
developing what was essentially a doctrine of strategic air warfare, but for the time being they were theoretical. The army’s needs were obvious and pressing. It was inevitable that in the
battle for resources the RNAS would lose out.
With the Western Front frozen it was clear that the war would not be over by Christmas. Many more soldiers would be needed. The British Expeditionary Force began to swell, and at the end of
December divided into First Army, under Haig, and Second Army, under Sir Horace Lockwood Dorrien-Smith, while in Britain the War Minister, Lord Kitchener, issued acall for
volunteers that brought tens of thousands flooding in. If the RFC was to do its job it would have to match the expansion. Plans were made for fifty new squadrons – more than ten times the
number that had gone to France in August. Its structure was reorganized to harmonize with the new army arrangements. The squadrons were now divided into wings, which were teamed with the First and
Second armies, with the expectation that there would be many more to follow.
Chapter 3
Archie
By the spring of 1915 the life of a British aviator on the Western Front had settled into a steady, if hazardous, routine. The first squadrons operated mainly from the
aerodrome at St Omer, just inland from Calais, where the RFC set up its headquarters and which would remain its home in France until the end of the war. The fliers lived surrounded by a much larger
force of ground staff and administrators. Maurice Baring, in peacetime an urbane man of letters who served as Henderson’s aide-de-camp, remembered ‘a stuffy office, full of clerks and
candles and a deafening noise of typewriters’, with a ‘constant stream of pilots arriving in the evening in Burberries with maps, talking over reconnaissances’. 1 The two-man teams of pilot and observer could expect to make two trips a day over enemy lines, usually to carry out the photographic reconnaissances which were
becoming the norm, or spotting for the artillery batteries whose bombardments made up the main business of war in between ‘pushes’.
The day began with the crew, insulated against the extreme cold of high flying in an open cockpit by layers of leather, fur and wool, climbing into their aeroplane. A
mechanic swung the big, double-bladed wooden propeller, the engine coughed, spurted a plume of dirty exhaust smoke and the machine trundled out onto the
as a visible proof of the probable line of developments of the principles of naval strategy,’ he wrote in his official report. ‘One can imagine what might have been done had our
seaplanes, or those sent to attack us, carried torpedoes instead of light bombs. Several of the ships in Schillig Roads would have been torpedoed and some of our force might have been sunk as
well.’ L’Estrange-Malone, aremarkable figure who would go on to become Britain’s first Communist MP, had grasped that at some point, the success or failure,
in fact the very survival of a naval force, would depend on the strength and efficiency of its air forces and air defences.
That time was still some way off. The Cuxhaven raid was not repeated. Instead the RNAS would soon be preoccupied with one of its consequences. The fright that the Germans had received produced a
strengthening of the anti-aircraft batteries around ports and bases, but also persuaded them to press ahead with air attacks on England. Rather than wait for long-range aeroplanes capable of doing
the job, it was decided to use Zeppelins, and when the raids began early in the New Year it was naval pilots who had the task of hunting them down.
The results of the attacks on the Zeppelin sheds did not justify the effort and expenditure of manpower and resources that went into them. It was accepted that there might be future benefits in
developing what was essentially a doctrine of strategic air warfare, but for the time being they were theoretical. The army’s needs were obvious and pressing. It was inevitable that in the
battle for resources the RNAS would lose out.
With the Western Front frozen it was clear that the war would not be over by Christmas. Many more soldiers would be needed. The British Expeditionary Force began to swell, and at the end of
December divided into First Army, under Haig, and Second Army, under Sir Horace Lockwood Dorrien-Smith, while in Britain the War Minister, Lord Kitchener, issued acall for
volunteers that brought tens of thousands flooding in. If the RFC was to do its job it would have to match the expansion. Plans were made for fifty new squadrons – more than ten times the
number that had gone to France in August. Its structure was reorganized to harmonize with the new army arrangements. The squadrons were now divided into wings, which were teamed with the First and
Second armies, with the expectation that there would be many more to follow.
Chapter 3
Archie
By the spring of 1915 the life of a British aviator on the Western Front had settled into a steady, if hazardous, routine. The first squadrons operated mainly from the
aerodrome at St Omer, just inland from Calais, where the RFC set up its headquarters and which would remain its home in France until the end of the war. The fliers lived surrounded by a much larger
force of ground staff and administrators. Maurice Baring, in peacetime an urbane man of letters who served as Henderson’s aide-de-camp, remembered ‘a stuffy office, full of clerks and
candles and a deafening noise of typewriters’, with a ‘constant stream of pilots arriving in the evening in Burberries with maps, talking over reconnaissances’. 1 The two-man teams of pilot and observer could expect to make two trips a day over enemy lines, usually to carry out the photographic reconnaissances which were
becoming the norm, or spotting for the artillery batteries whose bombardments made up the main business of war in between ‘pushes’.
The day began with the crew, insulated against the extreme cold of high flying in an open cockpit by layers of leather, fur and wool, climbing into their aeroplane. A
mechanic swung the big, double-bladed wooden propeller, the engine coughed, spurted a plume of dirty exhaust smoke and the machine trundled out onto the
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