A plea for a Naval Air Service, 1919.

This article, anonymous as far as authorship is concerned, is adapted from The Naval Review Vol. VII, No. 4, November 1919; very minor changes have been made, e.g "double single quotes" have become "double quotes". The background to this article is that shortly before the end of the First World War (April 1918) the Royal Naval Air Service was composed of 67,000 officers and men, 2,949 aircraft, 103 airships and 126 coastal stations, but was merged with the Royal Flying Corps form the Royal Air Force. Just weeks after launching HMS HERMES, the world's first dedicated aircraft carrier, a Fleet Air Arm was constituted within the Royal Air Force (1 April 1924); it was returned to Admiralty control on 24 May 1939. – Ed.

The part which aircraft play in naval warfare is becoming greater and greater, and they are now being used to co-operate in all forms of naval operations from fleet actions to mine-sweeping. An exactly similar state of affairs exists in military warfare; aircraft co-operate in all forms of military operations from scouting to bringing up ammunition.

In this article an endeavour will be made to show that co-operation with the Army and Navy is the main function of aircraft, and that this is best accomplished by a reversion to the old régime of a Naval Air Service and Royal Flying Corps.

No attempt will be made to consider the administrative work required to deal with design, supply, and matériel. The object in view is to deduce conclusions from the employment of aircraft, and to show that the principles underlying the use of aircraft in war require a Naval Air Service and Royal Flying Corps. If the principle is sound from the point of view of employment and handling of aircraft in war, any difficulties in the way of design, supply, and matériel should be made light of, and should not be allowed to stand in the way.

Aircraft are a most necessary adjunct to the Navy, because they enhance the work which ships can do, but they do not carry out separate strategical operations of their own in the air. Aerial operations, such as bombing Zeebrugge and Bruges, may be done frequently without co-operation with ships, but the object of the enterprise is purely naval, and dictated by naval requirements.

Few aerial combats out at sea have taken place during the recent war, but more may be expected in future wars. Such fighting, however, would only be a phase of the general naval operations, and can be compared to a destroyer engagement.

In the Army artillery, engineers, tanks; machine guns, mines, cavalry, and aircraft find their true rôle as adjuncts to the infantry. Their business is to make things as easy as possible for the infantry, on whom success ultimately depends. Aircraft are quite as much a special branch of the Army as are cavalry or artillery. None of these find employment in war on a campaign of their own.

A separate air force, charged with the supreme duty of obtaining and maintaining command of the air, sounds at first attractive, but aerial supremacy is obtained by successfully carrying out work which the Army and Navy require, not by a separate operation or aerial campaign. To establish this supremacy may entail large covering forces and heavy aerial fighting, in order to bomb some gun positions, drop ammunition to infantry, or collect intelligence behind the enemy’s lines; or, again, it may entail continual raiding of enemy aerodromes to protect our coast patrols from annoyance or the necessity of having plenty of fighting machines with the fleet to drive off any enemy who threatens our spotting planes. It will not entail, as a large operation, the employment of special squadrons, whose sole function is to obtain and maintain command of the air. This question in its larger sense must not be confused with the employment of flights, such as that led by Richthofen, to try and temporarily dominate one locality and then flit away to attempt the same object elsewhere. Neither must it be confused with the defensive employment of a few planes, whose function is to attack and destroy any enemy aircraft flying over land or sea behind our lines.

With the possible exception of long-distance bombing raids and defensive aerial actions behind our lines, aircraft work is always an accessory to land or sea operations; it is not an end in itself.

The higher command and employment of aircraft will always be a function of the senior naval or military officer in charge of the campaign. Hence the air service should be absolutely under his orders for discipline and administration as well as for operations, in which case they should form a naval or military flying corps, not a separate service.

Much special work, other than flying, is common to both the Army and Navy, and each service provides its own personnel and matériel for such work, Take, for instance, gunnery, wireless telegraphy, visual signalling, and intelligence services. When a new arm is introduced which is required by both the Army and Navy, let each start a new branch to meet its own requirements. These requirements may quite possibly be divergent, as has happened in the case of gunnery.

Piloting an aeroplane is likely to become quite as common an accomplishment as riding a horse or driving a motor car, and not a highly special attainment, necessitating a separate service of its own.

Let us now examine a few of the duties performed by aircraft at sea, with a view to showing that a naval personnel is more suitable than a separate air personnel.

Use of aircraft for spotting. To obtain the best results, something more than mere signalling of the fall of shot is required, and this something is sympathy between the planes and the ships. The flying officers should be conversant with a ship’s fire-control system, its possibilities and limitations, and should have had practical experience of it. The control officers should also have some experience of spotting from planes, so as to appreciate the flying officers’ difficulties. In short, both the ships and the planes should have naval officers brought up together and thoroughly in touch with one another’s work, just as the G and T officers are.

Use of aircraft for scouting and reconnaissance work. In this case the work to be performed and the intelligence to be transmitted to the Admiral coincide with a cruiser’s duties, when employed for scouting, though the means of attack and defence during this work are of a special kind and purely aeronautical. It must be borne in mind, however, that the primary object of these planes is scouting and get reports through, not fighting. Whatever the means employed, fleet reconnaissance work is essentially a naval officer’s job.

Use of aircraft for anti-submarine work. Were the motto "set a thief to catch a thief" is quite applicable, and the flying officers on this work, or a proportion of them, should have practical experience of submarine work. The best results may be expected by employing naval officers on both submarine and anti-submarine work, even if some of the latter is done from the air.

In the olden days men-of-war were worked by seamen, but fought by soldiers embarked for the purpose. Now we have the fleet manned by sailors, while its subsidiary services in the air are performed by a separate force. The work of aircraft over the sea is naval, just as much as the work of submarines under the sea is naval. Unity of personnel, command, and administration on the sea, under the sea, and over the sea is the ideal.

With a separate air service the Air Ministry must be ultimately responsible for all work carried out in the air for the Navy, both as regards the personnel and matériel. Divided responsibility does not make for the highest efficiency; the whole responsibility for the fighting efficiency of the Navy should be borne by the Admiralty. However harmoniously the Admiralty and Air Ministry may work together in war, when Parliamentary control of expenditure is in abeyance, in peace, the time is sure to come when the two departments do not see some new departure with a single eye. It is safer to entrust the Navy’s requirements to the Admiralty alone.