Royal Flying Corps arrives in France

14 August 1914

Britain’s Royal Flying Corps has commenced its deployment to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force. Yesterday morning, Numbers 2, 3, and 4 Squadrons flew their aeroplanes from Dover to Amiens. The first machine, an RAF BE.2a (serial number 327) piloted by Captain Francis Waldron took off at 6.25 AM. The first to complete the 231-km (144-mile) flight was another BE.2a (serial number 471) piloted by Lieutenant Hubert “Bay” Harvey-Kelly.

Major Charles Burke, Commanding Officer of the squadron, had intended to land first, but Harvey-Kelly, took a short-cut over some woods and beat him to the honour. Burke’s diary records:

“Just as I was gliding down I saw another machine. Landed at 8.22. It was Harvey-Kelly.”

In a photograph taken in Yorkshire last week, Harvey-Kelly is to be seen reclining between his mount and a haystack, enjoying a cigarette:

Lt “Bay” Harvey-Kelly,
2 Sqn, Royal Flying Corps

Page from Maj Burke’s diary

Aeroplanes of numbers 2 and 3 Squadrons took off at five-minute intervals and arrived in France largely without incident. Fog delayed the departure of the aeroplanes of number 4 squadron until 10.00 AM, and some of the machines of the squadron’s B Flight were damaged when they followed one of their number prematurely to the ground. Before reaching Amiens, engine trouble forced Captain Francis Cogan to make an emergency landing. He set his BE.2a (serial number 231) down on a ploughed field at Equihien, damaging its undercarriage. Three other pilots followed suit! Lieutenant Patrick Playfair recalls:

“I can remember being with the aircraft that followed Captain Cogan down to his forced landing in France, and I can still remember the roughness of the field he was unlucky enough to choose. I also remember that after refuelling and resuming the flight I was not above landing again to ask a passing pedestrian the way to Amiens.”

All together, forty-four aeroplanes have made the crossing yesterday. Number 4 Squadron has left one of its flights back in England to perform coastal patrol duties, but has instead taken with it a flight of three aeroplanes crewed by men experienced in wireless telegraphy from the air.

Number 5 Squadron is also in the process of deploying to France, but its movements have been hindered by a series of accidents with their aircraft and a shortage of shipping available to transport its vehicles and support staff across the channel. The squadron is presently at Gosport.

Numbers 2 and 4 Squadrons are furnished entirely with the BE.2a (described below). Number 3 Squadron operates a mixture of Blériot XIs (previously described in this journal) and Henry-Farman HF.20s. Number 5 Squadron also has Henry-Farman HF.20s, plus Avro 504s and RAF BE.8s.

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The Royal Aircraft Factory BE.2a

The BE.2 is the most numerous aircraft type in the Royal Flying Corps’ inventory today. First flown in February 1912 by its designer, Geoffrey de Havilland, dozens of these aircraft have now been produced by a variety of manufacturers, including Vickers, Armstrong Whitworth, Handley Page, and the British and Colonial Aircraft Company.

It is a two-seat biplane of the configuration pioneered by Louis Blériot; that is, with the engine and propeller mounted at the front of the aeroplane, and the elevators grouped with the rudder at the rear. (This configuration is the source of the “BE” designation, which stands for “Blériot Experimental”). Power is supplied by a 70-hp Renault V-8 engine that can propel the aeroplane to 74 mph.

Since last winter, RFC commanding officer Lt Col Frederick Sykes has been seeking to obtain BE.2s to replace the less capable and reliable types flown by the Corps.

Zeppelin attacks continue

12 August 1914

Following on from the recent success of German army airship Z IV in performing reconnaissance and bombardment over Poland, sister ship Z V returned from a similar mission yesterday. Flying from her base at Posen under the command of Hauptmann Grüner, Z V scouted the areas of Włocławek, Kutno, Płock, and Łódź, and dropped bombs on the latter city. 

For the appearance of Z V, refer to the article on her sister ship,  Z IV. 

Zeppelin attack on Poland

11 August 1914

Yesterday morning, German army airship Z IV returned to her base at Köningsberg from a successful overnight mission on the Eastern front. Under the command of Hauptmann von Quast, the Zeppelin undertook reconnaissance of the areas around Mława, Gumbinnen, Insterburg, Friedland, Gerdauen and Tilsit. The mission revealed little evidence of Russian forces in or moving through the region. However, while over Mława, Z IV did take the opportunity to drop bombs on the Russian troops encamped there.

Z IV is most famous for the landing that she made at Lunéville last June. Navigating in thick cloud and unable to ascertain the prevailing winds, the airship crew found themselves over French territory. Hoping to avoid a diplomatic incident, commander Oberleutnant Jacobi landed the airship and submitted to its inspection by French authorities. The French released Z IV the next day.  

Z IV is a “h” type Zeppelin, construction number LZ-16. She and her sister ship Z V are the oldest and smallest rigid airships in the German army, with Z IV making her first flight in March last year. She is 140 metres long and is powered by three 180-hp engines.

The French army airships

10 August 1914

Yesterday, the French army deployed three of its airships to reconnoitre German positions, and a fourth to perform aerial bombardment.  The results of these operations were decidedly mixed

Adjudant Vincenot departed her base at Toul late in the evening of 8 August on a successful 180-km reconnaissance flight over Dieuze, Château-Salin, and Bénestroff. She returned yesterday morning. The mission was generally successful, and the airship took only light damage from German fire: around ten hits.

Adjudant Vincenot

The fate of Éclaireur Conté could not be more different. Based at Épinal, her mission yesterday came to an abrupt halt when brought down by fire from French troops. Mistaking the airship for a German machine, they scored 1,300 hits on her within ten minutes of her appearing over French lines.  The crew returned Éclaireur Conté to base only with enormous difficulty and she is no longer airworthy.

Éclaireur Conté

The flight of Adjudant Réau was a dismal failure. The airship’s aft engine stopped after an hour and forty-five minutes and could not be repaired in flight, forcing the mission to be aborted. This is the third successive failure for Adjudant Réau: missions on 6 August and 8 August also had to be abandoned when the airship simply could not gain altitude.

Adjudant Réau

The only one of the four airships with a combat mission was Fleurus, which was dispatched from Verdun to attack the German railway station at Konz. The airship successfully reached her target last night and dropped four 155-mm (6-inch) artillery shells. However, damage to the railway was negligible, and so although Fleurus reached the target and returned safely home, the mission cannot be considered a success.

Fleurus

The French army presently possesses seven airships, of which six were judged to be operational prior to the Éclaireur Conté’s being shot down. The other two operational machines are Dupuy de Lôme and Montgolfier, both based at Maubeuge. The seventh machine, Tissandier, is currently being readied at Toul.

Dupuy de Lôme

Montgolfier

These French airships are quite dissimilar from their German counterparts; they are considerably smaller (in the 60-metre to 90-metre range, as opposed to between 140 and 160 metres for German airships) and lack the rigid, internal skeletons pioneered by Graf Zeppelin. Power is generally supplied by two engines totalling around 250 horsepower.

Adjudant Réau and Éclaireur Conté were built by the Astra company of Billancourt. Adjudant Vincenot, Dupuy de Lôme and Montgolfier were all built by Clément–Bayard of Levallois-Perret. Fleurus was built by the army itself, at its Chalais-Meudon workshop. Tissandier is under construction by Lebaudy.

French aviator wounded by anti-aircraft fire

9 August 1914

French aviator wounded in action

Yesterday, a French observer from Escadrille BL 10 was wounded during a scouting mission by small-arms fire directed at his aircraft from the ground.
He is the first French airman known to be wounded in action.

Although his name is unavailable, the pilot of the aircraft was Caporal Joseph Sadi-Lacointe. BL 10 is equipped with the Blériot XI monoplane, described below.

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The Blériot XI

The Blériot XI is the world’s most numerous aeroplane, and is the first to have been produced in series. It was in the prototype that five years ago, Louis Blériot became the first person to fly across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air craft. Since then, Blériot’s factory has manufactured hundreds of examples and exported them all over the globe. By some accounts, there are more Blériot XIs in the world today than aeroplanes of all other types put together.
 

A Blériot XI in Royal Flying Corps colours

It is impossible to overstate how influential this design has been. Owing to the success of the Type XI, its basic arrangement has become almost de rigueur in aeroplane design, slowly displacing the many other configurations that have proliferated in the last decade. That arrangement is to organise the various components around a fuselage that serves as a “backbone” for the aeroplane, with the engine and propeller at the front, and the elevators and rudder clustered together at the tail.

The Aéronautique Militaire is a major user of the type; it equips seven of the twenty-three escadrilles mobilised. However, the Imperial Russian Air Service and Britain’s Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service also operate the Blériot XI in quantity. The type has seen combat even before yesterday; last year, Bulgarian airmen used it to drop bombs on Ottoman forces during the seige of Adrianople last year.

Blériot XIs of 3 Squadron RFC at Netheravon in June

The Etrich Taube

8 August 1914

The Taube (“Dove”) is perhaps the most distinctive-looking aeroplane in the arsenals of Germany and Austria–Hungary today, and takes its shape from a surprising source: the seed of an exotic cucumber vine!

The seeds of the Javan cucumber (Zanonia macrocarpa) are unusual in that each one is surrounded by a transparent film shaped like a pair of wings. When the ripe seed pod bursts open, the seeds glide some distance away from their parent plant. A subtle twist in the structure of the wings produces exceptionally stable flight.

The seed of Zanonia macrocarpa, illustration from
Heinrich Gustav Adolf Engler’s
Das Pflanzenreich: Cucurbitaceae - Fevilleae & Melothrieae

German biologist Dr Friedrich Ahlborn studied these seeds and published an analysis of their aerodyamics in 1903. This study came to the attention of Austrian aviator Igo Etich, who used it as the inspiration to build a series of prototype aeroplanes using a similar wing design.

However, success did not come to Etrich until the design of the Taube in 1910 (with the assistance of partner Franz Wels) added a conventional fuselage and tail. The Taube also benefitted from the availability of a new, light-weight engine. Designed by Ferdinand Porsche at the Austro–Daimler company, it is intended specifically for aero use, unlike the automobile engines pressed into service previously to power Etrich’s designs.


In his native Austria, Etrich was able to patent his unique, seed-inspired wing design. He was then able to license the design to the Lohner-Werke, which produced the design in small numbers for the Austro–Hungarian army. In Germany, however, Dr Ahlborn’s prior work made it impossible to secure a patent, and, as a result, several German aeroplane manufacturers (most notably, Rumpler, Albatros, Gotha, and Jeannin) have produced unlicensed copies of the design. The German army has already purchased over 250 examples in recent years, finding them an excellent school machine. Many presently equip front-line units where they are used for scouting duties.

Zeppelin attack

7 August 1914

The German army employed a new weapon yesterday in their siege of the Belgian city of Liège: a Zeppelin.

Zeppelin Z VI

Under the command of Hauptmann Kleinschmidt, army airship Z VI  departed Cologne at 2200 on the night of 5 August, and by 0300 yesterday morning was over Liège. There, she dropped a load of 15-cm and 21-cm grenades onto the Belgian fortifications.

Illustration of the attack by Felix Schwormstädt
for Illustrierte Zeitung, Leipzig

However, the airship was struck by artillery fire, and began losing gas. Heading for home, she eventually made a forced landing in a forest at Walberburg and was damaged beyond repair.

Z VI was 140 metres (460 feet) long and first flew in July last year.