A Century of Naval Aviation, 1909–2009: The Evolution of Ships and Shipborne Aircraft

First published in Great Britain in 2009 by

PEN & SWORD MARITIME

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Copyright © David Wragg, 2009

9781844681747

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgements

Glossary

Introduction

Chapter 1 - In the Beginning

Chapter 2 - Defending the United Kingdom

Chapter 3 - The Search for Air Power at Sea

Chapter 4 - On the Western Front

Chapter 5 - Gallipoli

Chapter 6 - A Lighter Shade of Blue

Chapter 7 - A Bad Start to the War

Chapter 8 - The USN Comes to the Aid of the FAA

Chapter 9 - The Forgotten Victory

Chapter 10 - Bringing the Enemy to Battle

Chapter 11 - The Urgent Need for More Flight Decks

Chapter 12 - Over Desert and Sea

Chapter 13 - Protecting the Convoys

Chapter 14 - Back to the East

Chapter 15 - An Uneasy Peace

Chapter 16 - Into the Jet and Helicopter Age

Chapter 17 - The Falklands Saves the Carriers

Chapter 18 - A Changing Role

Chapter 19 - The Future

Appendix I - Naval Air Stations 1914 – 18

Appendix II - Naval Air Stations 1939 – 45

Appendix III - Seaplane Tenders and Aircraft Carriers 1914 – 18

Appendix IV - Aircraft Carriers 1939 – 45

Appendix V - Post-war Aircraft Carriers

Appendix VI - Standard Convoy Air Patrol Code Names

Chronology

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements

In researching and compiling a book such as this, an author is heavily dependent on the help and assistance of many others. In particular, I am indebted for the provision of photographs and other material to the late Lord Kilbracken, who, as John Godley, flew as an RNVR pilot, eventually reaching the rank of lieutenant commander, during the war; to the late Mrs Marjorie Schupke; to my father, the late Lieutenant S.H. ‘Harry’ Wragg, RN, for his collection of wartime photographs and other material.

Inevitably, official and semi-official sources have also been invaluable. Like many other researchers, I am grateful to both the Fleet Air Arm Museum and the Imperial War Museum.

No work on something as vast as our long history of naval aviation can cover every inch of ground, and for those whose appetite is whetted by this book, I would draw their attention to the bibliography at the back. There are accounts of the air war at sea from every perspective, including the all-important personal accounts, as well as volumes of sheer factual matter, essential for the serious student and the modeller alike.

Glossary

(A) – Air Branch of the RN or RNVR.

AA – Anti-aircraft.

AB – Able seaman.

ADDL – Aerodrome dummy deck landing.

Aeronautics – Embraces both lighter-than-air flight, or aerostation, and heavier-than-air flight, or aviation.

Aerostation – Lighter-than-air flight or ballooning.

AFC – Air Force Cross.

Airship – A balloon that is streamlined and with a torpedo-like shape which can be powered and steered.

AM – Albert Medal, predecessor of the George Cross (GC).

ASH – Air-to-surface vessel radar (US-built).

ASV – Air-to-surface vessel radar (British-built).

Aviation – Heavier-than-air flight, including gliding as well as powered aircraft.

Balloon – A lighter-than-air vehicle with an envelope that can be inflated either by hot air or by gas, originally usually hydrogen. It has no means of control other than ascent and descent, and is at the mercy of the prevailing wind.

BPF – British Pacific Fleet.

CAG – Carrier Air Group.

CAM-ship – Catapult-armed merchant vessel.

CAP – Combat Air Patrol.

Capt – Captain.

CB – Commander of the Order of the Bath.

CBE – Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

CCA – Carrier controlled approach.

Cdr – Commander.

Charliere – A hydrogen balloon, named after the inventor in 1783, Professor Jacques Charles. During the nineteenth century, the high cost of producing hydrogen sometimes meant that coal gas was used instead. C-in-C – Commander-in-Chief.

CMG – Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George.

CO – Commanding Officer.

CPO – Chief Petty Officer.

CVE – Escort carrier, more usually known in the RN as auxiliary carriers.

CVO – Commander of the Royal Victorian Order.

DFC – Distinguished Flying Cross.

DLCO – Deck Landing Control Officer, more usually known as the ‘batsman’.

DLP – Deck landing practice.

DLT – Deck landing training.

DSC – Distinguished Service Cross.

DSO – Distinguished Service Order.

Dt – Detachment.

E-boat – German MTBs or MGBs.

Empire – Prefix for name of merchantmen owned by the British government but managed by shipping lines.

FAA – Fleet Air Arm.

Fixed-wing – Aircraft other than a helicopter, and including naval aircraft with folding wings as well as variable-geometry aircraft.

Floatplane – The correct term for a seaplane, a name supposedly invented by Winston Churchill when First Lord of the Admiralty.

Flt – Flight.

Flying boat – A hydroaeroplane that has its hull sitting in the water.

FRU – Fleet Requirements Unit. A squadron based ashore that provided anti-aircraft training for ships of the fleet and also, on occasion, other miscellaneous duties.

GC – George Cross.

HMS – His/Her Majesty’s Ship.

HMAS – His/Her Majesty’s Australian Ship.

HMCS – His/Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship.

Hydroaeroplane – Any aircraft that can land on water, whether it is a seaplane, floatplane or flying boat.

KCB – Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.

Lt – Lieutenant.

Lt Cdr – Lieutenant Commander.

MAC-ship – Merchant aircraft carrier (a merchant vessel with a flight deck).

MBE – Member of the Order of the British Empire.

MGB – Motor Gunboat.

MONAB – Mobile Naval Air Base.

Montgolfiere – A hot-air balloon, named after the inventors, the Mongolfier brothers, who discovered this means of making a balloon rise in 1783.

Monitor – A warship designed specifically for coastal bombardment, usually with a single turret with two heavy calibre guns, which can be 11-in or more.

MTB – Motor Torpedo Boat.

MV – Motor Vessel.

NAS – Naval Air Squadron.

OBE – Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

OS – Ordinary Seaman.

PO – Petty Officer.

PR – Photo Reconnaissance.

RAAF – Royal Australian Air Force.

RAF – Royal Air Force.

RAN – Royal Australian Navy.

RCAF – Royal Canadian Air Force.

RCAN – Royal Canadian Navy.

RFC – Royal Flying Corps.

RM – Royal Marines.

RMLI – Royal Marine Light Infantry.

RN – Royal Navy.

RNethN – Royal Netherlands Navy.

RANVR – Royal Australian Naval Volunteer Reserve.

RCNVR – Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve.

RNR – Royal Naval Reserve.

RNVR – Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.

RNZNVR – Royal New Zealand Naval Volunteer Reserve.

RP – Rocket projectile.

SAAF – South African Air Force.

SANF(V) – South African Naval Force (Volunteer), equivalent of RNVR.

Seaplane – A hydroaeroplane that has floats and the fuselage clear of the water.

TAG – Telegraphist Air Gunner.

TBR – Torpedo Bomber Reconnaissance.

TF – Task Force.

TSR – Torpedo Spotter Reconnaissance.

U-boat – German submarine.

USN – United States Navy.

USS – United States Ship.

VC – Victoria Cross.

Introduction

No one could have realized the impact of air power on warfare at sea when they signed the tender documents for the Royal Navy’s first airship on 7 May 1909. That the Royal Navy’s first airship was a complete failure would only have made practical air power seem even less likely, but the aeroplane had already arrived, and the achievements of the Wright brothers had been recognized on both sides of the Atlantic, and beyond. In the years that remained before the outbreak of the First World War, the early naval flyers divided their time between showmanship and experiment. The former was undoubtedly necessary to raise the profile of naval aviation, and the latter, which included the first dropping of a torpedo from an aircraft, was equally necessary to prove that the new arrival was a practical addition to the Royal Navy’s capabilities.

The years before the start of the First World War have often been presented as an age of innocence for the aeroplane, but it was also an age of experiment, and during the war years, rapid strides were made in aviation in particular. Desperate measures were sometimes resorted to: the need to get landplanes to sea led to experiments in flying aircraft off lighters towed behind destroyers steaming at high speed. The aircraft carrier steadily evolved as the embarrassing ‘light battlecruiser’ HMS Furious was converted in stages to become the world’s first aircraft carrier, and in due course between the wars her two sisters, Courageous and Glorious, followed her. By this time, the first carrier-borne strike had been flown off Furious in August 1918, and the design of the aircraft carrier had finally been settled, with the first ship designed as such, the small HMS Hermes.

Yet this progress was not without its problems. The Royal Navy had lost control of its own aviation with the creation of the Royal Air Force on 1 April 1918, so the inter-war years were also ones of inter-service rivalry as the Admiralty fought the political battle to regain control of its own air element. A small number of naval airmen were allowed in the RAF squadrons that comprised the inter-war Fleet Air Arm, itself an RAF creation within Coastal Area, but for most of them, naval aviation meant flying the seaplanes and amphibians that were operated from battleships and cruisers for reconnaissance and spotting the fall of shot. Two problems resulted from the loss of naval aviation to the RAF. The first was that a generation of senior naval officers was produced that was largely ignorant of the potential and the threat of air power at sea. The second was that, starved of funds between the wars, the RAF neglected the provision of modern aircraft for the fleet.

Both services suffered from conservatism. The RAF selected the Fairey Swordfish and, in particular, Gloster Sea Gladiator biplanes because they resisted the appeal of monoplanes, but the Royal Navy thought that high-performance aircraft could not be flown off ships!

Nevertheless, elsewhere the aircraft carrier was showing what it could do, as the Imperial Japanese Navy provided support for the advance by Japanese forces into China. Substantial carrier fleets were already part of not just the Royal Navy, but also the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. The French had just one obsolete aircraft carrier, but as war loomed, both Germany and Italy started work on carriers of their own.

Even before war broke out, the Admiralty realized that they did not have enough aircraft carriers, and at one stage conversion of even the two largest ships in the world, the Cunard transatlantic liners RMS Queen Mary and RMS Queen Elizabeth, the pride of the British Merchant Navy, was considered and wisely rejected as these two ships would be needed as troopships in wartime. The problem was that the British carrier fleet by this time was aging, with only three ships, the new HMS Ark Royal, only the second purpose-built British carrier, and Courageous and Glorious, both of a reasonable age, being conversions with flight decks that were less than their full length. The four older carriers were due to be replaced by four new, fast, armoured ships, and fortunately, an additional two ships were then ordered, as well as a maintenance carrier, Unicorn, which also saw action. Yet, in a time of need, even the four elderly ships were to find themselves in the front line at sea.

Meanwhile, the Admiralty had finally regained control of the Fleet Air Arm. The transfer was not complete, as the Fleet Air Arm still depended on the RAF for training aircrew and ground crew. It was fortunate indeed that some 1,500 RAF personnel elected to transfer to the RN, and after the outbreak of war, even before the United States entered the conflict, the USN started to provide aircrew training in the United States under the ‘Towers Scheme’.

The first year of war saw the loss of two British aircraft carriers, the sisters Courageous and Glorious, but not before the Fleet Air Arm had managed to sink the first major operational warship to be lost to air attack, the German light cruiser Konigsberg. Aerial reconnaissance had also contributed to the loss of the German Panzerschiff, or ‘pocket battleship’, Graf Spee. Before 1940 was over, the Fleet Air Arm scored a remarkable victory over the Italian Navy at Taranto, where three of Italy’s six battleships were put out of action, although this achievement was never accorded the recognition it deserved. Most of the major naval battles of the Second World War, and all but one of the Allied assaults on enemy territory, that at Anzio, relied heavily on naval aviation. The Fleet Air Arm contributed to the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck, and to the victory at Matapan.

One of the major contributions to the war at sea, and to the survival of the United Kingdom and eventual victory, was the success in the convoy war against German U-boats. This was aided by the advent of the auxiliary aircraft carrier, converted merchantmen, known more generally as escort carriers, the numbers of which were steadily growing, and by the stop-gap measure of putting wooden flight decks on grain carriers and tankers to create merchant aircraft carriers or MAC-ships. The latter also introduced the Dutch to naval aviation with one naval air squadron manned by Royal Netherlands Navy personnel.

If the Battle of the Atlantic was essential to the survival of the United Kingdom and for the building up of forces for the invasion of first North Africa and then Europe, the Arctic convoys were essential for the supply of war materiel to the Soviet Union. These were amongst the hardest-fought convoy battles of the war, with the weather being as great an enemy as the Germans, who were able to use U-boats, surface raiders and shore-based aircraft to mount attacks that, in the long Arctic summer days, could be continuous. The Fleet Air Arm was there as soon as escort carriers became available, starting with convoy PQ17. Yet, escort carriers were never enough for a Malta convoy, as the beleaguered islands needed fleet carriers to ferry aircraft for the defences and for the great convoy, Operation Pedestal, of August 1942 that lifted the siege of the islands, and on which one of the four fleet carriers was sunk.

With war drawing to a close in Europe and the Battle of the Atlantic won, the Royal Navy returned to the East, with the creation of the British Pacific Fleet, the largest and most balanced fleet the United Kingdom has ever deployed. The Fleet Air Arm learnt about massed air attack from the United States Navy, and encountered fierce Japanese opposition as it attacked the oilfields and refineries in Sumatra, so much so that some naval aviators of the period believe that the achievement on these raids was even greater than that at Taranto. These operations saw widespread fighter cover. The USN didn’t want the Fleet Air Arm in the way, but no doubt appreciated its actions off the Sakishima Gunto, where it stopped the Japanese flying in reinforcement aircraft to replace their losses. At the bitter end, the Fleet Air Arm was flying strikes against Japanese shipping in the Home Islands.

The return of peace saw the Fleet Air Arm foster naval aviation in Australia, Canada and the Netherlands, and, much later, India, as well as helping the French Navy, the Marine Nationale, re-establish its air arm, L’Aeronavale. Peace was all too short, however, as the Fleet Air Arm provided the British air contribution to the Korean War, something brought about not just by the RAF’s other post-war commitments, but also by the shortage of good bases ashore as North Korea nearly overran the South. The Korean War was the last conflict dependent upon piston-engined aircraft, but even so the Fleet Air Arm managed to use a Hawker Sea Fury to shoot down a North Korean Mig-15, while others were damaged.

The Suez Campaign of 1956 has become one of those conflicts that politicians like to forget, but not only did the Royal Navy, operating alongside the French Navy, do all that was asked of it, striking at Egyptian airfields and military installations, it also marked the first airborne assault from the sea using helicopters from two aircraft carriers. In this way, the concept of the commando carrier was born, proving a useful addition to Britain’s defence capabilities during the brush fire wars of the Cold War era. The Royal Navy played a vital role in the Indonesian confrontation with Malaysia in the 1960s, helped quell a mutiny in East Africa and also prevented a threatened Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, all in the same decade! Naval aviation was vital to all of these and in Kuwait, HMS Victorious, the much modernized Second World War veteran, provided fighter control for the RAF fighter squadrons when they eventually arrived. Less appealing roles for the Fleet Air Arm included using the Royal Navy’s carriers to enforce sanctions against Rhodesia after that country declared its unilateral declaration of independence, with ships mounting a blockade off Mozambique, the so-called ‘Beira patrol’.

Yet controversy and a settled existence, still less an assured future, still seemed to evade the Fleet Air Arm even when at the peak of its powers, at last flying carrier-borne aircraft that were a match for those based ashore in the form of the Buccaneer bomber and the Phantom jet fighter. With the two largest aircraft carriers ever operated by the Royal Navy, HMS Ark Royal and Eagle, worthy successors to the wartime Illustrious and her sisters, two even larger ships were promised – CVA.01 and CVA.02 – and although they would have been commissioned no doubt with inspiring names, they were cancelled. The whole future of fixed-wing aviation in the Royal Navy was once again doomed. Fortunately, this coincided with the appearance of the vertical take-off Harrier, and someone thought of the idea of building a new generation of light fleet carriers, although this time they were known as ‘through-deck cruisers’, which some cynics have suggested was an idea to fool the RAF into not objecting!

A cynical ploy or not, the first of these ships, HMS Invincible, played an important role in the liberation of the Falklands after the Argentine invasion in 1982. Yet the limitations of the ship were clear alongside the last of the old carriers, HMS Hermes, which had been converted from an aircraft carrier into a commando carrier, and then converted again to carry the BAe Sea Harrier, and which had a far larger aircraft capacity. While no one can lament the Invincible-class ships, they were badly designed with lifts that obstructed the flight-deck runway, and an overlarge superstructure.

Today, the Fleet Air Arm has lost its air-defence capability with the retirement of the Sea Harrier and the substitution of the Harrier GR9, an effective aircraft but basically a bomb truck designed to support ground forces rather than defend the fleet or attack enemy warships. This will change once the Lockheed Martin F-35 V/STOL fighter enters service after 2014, by which time the Royal Navy should have two large new aircraft carriers from which to operate these aircraft – but haven’t we been here before?

Chapter 1

In the Beginning

The British Army was the first of the British armed services to take to the air with the Royal Engineers forming a balloon section at Woolwich as early as 1878. The advantage of being able to rise above the surface had been appreciated almost from the earliest days of the balloon age, which began in 1783 with the invention of both the hot-air balloon, or Mongolfiere, and the hydrogen balloon, or Charliere. By 1794, the French Army was using a balloon at the Battle of Maubeuge, with the balloons, or aerostat, giving the user the advantage previously only conferred by holding the high ground. It took some time for the true value of the balloon, or aerostat, to be fully appreciated, and the early commanders had to drop notes to the ground so that their forces could make use of this intelligence.

One can discount the use of a coal barge, the G.W. Parke-Curtiss, as a transport to carry and tow observation balloons for the Unionist Army during the American Civil War, as an early maritime use of the balloon. In the same way, the use of small balloons, unmanned, to carry messages from HMS Assistance in 1856, while searching in the Canadian Arctic for the ill-fated expedition led by Sir John Franklin, was imaginative, but not a true naval use of the technology, such as it was.

The fact was that navies were far slower to make use of the balloon. The reasons for this were practical rather than any lack of imagination or an excess of conservatism. Not only was there less need for a balloon on a warship at sea, with lookouts posted in its masts and later gunnery direction platforms high above the rest of the superstructure, there were problems with the balloon itself. The simple balloon, regardless of whether it was hot air or hydrogen, could only be used at sea, even when tethered, in flat calm conditions with the ship not under way, and therefore a sitting duck. It was not until the arrival of the airship, or dirigible, pioneered in Germany by Zeppelin and in France by the Lebaudy brothers, that a practical means of using aeronautics at sea could be realized with aerostats that could be powered and steered.

The first senior officer to appreciate the opportunities and threats that the air posed was Admiral of the Fleet Sir John ‘Jacky’ Fisher, who was First Sea Lord from 1904 to 1910. It was Fisher who famously predicted that the future of naval warfare lay under the waves and above them. By this, Fisher meant the airship. While the Wright brothers had made their first flights in December 1903, it was not until 1908, when they demonstrated their invention first to the United States Army and Navy at Fort Myers, Virginia, and then brought it to Europe, that their achievement was widely recognized, even though a United States Coast Guard sufman had been present at their first flight, and had even taken a photograph of it for the brothers. The airship was showing its potential during the first decade of the twentieth century, while the aeroplane was frail and at first more of a novelty or plaything.

The USN was slow off the mark. Meanwhile the estimates for the Royal Navy in 1909 included £35,000 for the purchase of an airship, and the Admiralty tender for HMA.1 (His Majesty’s Airship No. 1) was signed on 7 May. This marked the start of the race amongst navies to get into the air, with France, the United States, Imperial Russia, Sweden, Japan, Germany, Norway and then Denmark, all buying or, in the case of Sweden and Norway, being presented with, aircraft during the next few years. By 1913, even Brazil had aircraft for naval use and, the following year, Greece was doing the same, with British assistance.

It shouldn’t be thought that the British were content with an airship. During the early days of aviation, it was the Royal Aero Club that issued pilots’ licences, not the government, and in 1910, the Royal Aero Club put two Short biplanes, based at Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey, at the disposal of the Royal Navy for any naval officers who wished to learn to fly. When young officers seemed backward in taking advantage of this opportunity, that December the Commander-in-Chief at the Nore, Admiral Sir C.C. Drury, drew the attention of his officers to the availability of the aircraft, describing them as ‘biplanes of the most modern type, fitted with Gnome motors’, adding that they were available ‘at all times and without charge’. The only conditions were that any damage be repaired at the cost of the pilot concerned, and that those using them become members of the Royal Aero Club.

It is easy to overlook Drury’s intervention. Naval aviation histories so often point out the way in which senior officers, even as late as the 1930s, thought it a kindness to discourage bright young officers from becoming involved in aviation, and not just in the Royal Navy but in others as well, including the Imperial Japanese Navy. Drury was the exception.

As a further incentive, before the year was out, King George V approved an Order in Council giving a daily allowance to naval airmen of six shillings for officers and half-a-crown for chief petty officers, petty officers and leading seamen, while able seamen received two shillings. It is perhaps reassuring that flying pay was available from the beginning!

Nevertheless, aviation medicine was clearly in its infancy, as The Lancet, then as now a leading British medical journal, ran an article on the blood pressure of airmen, suggesting that they keep to a low and steady altitude. Others also had concerns, with a correspondent for the new magazine, Flight, warning against shooting at aeroplanes as they flew over in case the crew decided to drop a bomb – clearly someone who had got cause and effect badly muddled.

Nevertheless, amidst this interest in aeronautics, there was a big disappointment for the Royal Navy. Its first airship, HMA.01 was finally completed at Barrow-in-Furness, but appeared to be too heavy to be successful. Workers quickly set about lightening the structure of the craft, which had been named Mayfly, but the lightened structure collapsed, breaking almost in two halfway along the airship, as she was moved outside her shed on 24 September 1911. It was not until 27 November 1916 that the RNAS had its first successful rigid airship, R9.

Some Royal Navy officers must have been attracted to flying, or at least tempted by the King’s six shillings, for on 25 April 1911, the service received the first four pilots from Eastchurch. These were Lieutenants Arthur Longmore, R. Gregory and Charles Rumney Samson, all RN, and Lieutenant E.L. Gerrard of the Royal Marine Light Infantry.¹ Some idea of the spirit which these young men possessed was that at the time the Royal Aero Club had issued just fifty-five pilots’ certificates, suggesting that almost 8 per cent of British aviators were members of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines! These were the first, but others soon followed. One of these was Sub Lieutenant F.E.T. Hewlett, who had been taught to fly by his mother, who seems to have been a woman of considerable character since she flew in bad weather wearing sabots, a type of wooden clog.

Naturally, the Royal Navy was not the only service interested in aviation, as we have already seen. In mid-November 1910, Lieutenant Eugene Ely of the United States Navy had taken off from a wooden platform built over the forecastle of the light cruiser USS Birmingham as she lay at anchor, while in January 1911, he landed on the cruiser USS Pennsylvania as she too lay at anchor, and took off later to fly back to his base at Selfridge Field. His landing had been helped by a primitive arrester wire system, with wires strung across the landing platform and kept in place by 100-lb sandbags at each end. Meanwhile in Italy, before the end of 1911, Captain Claudio Piomatti produced a paper on the role of the aeroplane in naval warfare.