CHAPTER XII

The Naval Flying Corps--What The Navy Department Has Accomplished And Is Accomplishing in the Way of Air-Fighting--Experience of a Naval Ensign Adrift in the English Channel--Seaplanes and Flying Boats--Schools of Instruction--Instances of Heroism

In writing of aviation in the navy an incident which befell one of our naval airmen in the English Channel seems to demand primary consideration, not alone because of the dramatic nature of the event, but because it sets forth clearly the nature of the work upon which our flying men of the navy entered as soon as the United States took hostile action against Germany. Our navy aviators, in fact, were the first force of American fighters to land upon European soil after war was declared. Here is the story as told by Ensign E. A. Stone, United States Naval Reserve, after he was rescued from the Channel, where with a companion he had clung for eighty hours without food and drink to the under-side of a capsized seaplane pontoon. "I left our station in a British seaplane as pilot, with Sublieutenant Moore of the Royal Naval Air Service as observer, at 9 o'clock in the morning. Our duty was to convoy patrols. When two hours out, having met our ships coming from the westward, we thought we sighted a periscope ahead, and turned off in pursuit. We lost our course. Our engine dropped dead, and at 11.30 o'clock forced us to land on the surface of a rough sea. We had no kite nor radio to call for assistance, so we released our two carrier-pigeons. We tied a message with our position and the word 'Sinking' on each. The first, the blue-barred one, flew straight off and reached home. But the other, which was white-checked, lit on our machine and would not budge until Moore threw our navigation clock at him, which probably upset him so that he failed us.

"Heavy seas smashed our tail-planes, which kept settling. I saw that they were pulling the machine down by the rear, turning her over. We tore the tail-fabric to lessen the impact of the waves. It wasn't any use. The tail-flat was smashed and its box filled with water.

"This increased the downward leverage and raised her perpendicularly in the air. At 2.30 P.M. we capsized. We climbed up the nose and 'over the top' to the under-side of the pontoons. Our emergency ration had been in the observer's seat at the back, but we had been so busy trying to repair the motor and save ourselves from turning over that we didn't remember this until too late. When I crawled aft for food Moore saw that I was only helping the machine to capsize. He yelled to me to come back and I did, just in time to save myself from being carried down with the tail and drowned.

"From then on for nearly four days, until picked up by a trawler, we were continually soaked and lashed by seas, and with nothing to eat or drink. We had nothing to cling to, and so to keep from being washed overboard we got upon the same pontoon and hugged our arms about each other's bodies for the whole time. We suffered from thirst. I had a craving for canned peaches. Twice a drizzle came on, wetting the pontoon. We turned on our stomachs and lapped up the moisture, but the paint came off, with salt, and nauseated us. Our limbs grew numb. From time to time the wreckage from torpedoed ships would pass. Two full biscuit-tins came close enough to swim for, but by then in our weakened state we knew that we would drown if we tried to get them. We did haul in a third tin and broke it open; it was filled with tobacco.

"Every day we saw convoys in the distance and vainly waved our handkerchiefs. We had no signal-lights to use at night. Our watches stopped, and we lost all track of time. We realized how easy it was for a submarine out there to escape being spotted. On Sunday night we spied a masthead light and shouted. The ship heard and began to circle us. We saw her port light. Then when the crew were visible on the deck of the vessel, she suddenly put out her lights and turned away.

"'She thinks we are Huns,' said Moore.

"'I hope she does,' said I. 'Then they'll send patrol-boats out to get us. 'We couldn't be worse off if we were Germans.'

"But no rescue came. The next afternoon a seaplane came from the east. It was flying only 800 feet overhead, aiming down the Channel. It seemed impossible that she could not sight us for the air was perfectly clear. She passed straight above without making any signal, flew two miles beyond, and then came back on her course.

"'Her observer must be sending wireless about us,' I said.

"'Yes, that is why we get no recognition,' said Moore, 'and now she's decided to go back and report.'

"But that plane hadn't even seen us. Our spirits fell. We had been afraid of two things, being picked up by a neutral and interned, or captured by an enemy submarine. Now we even hoped that the enemy--that anything---would get us, to end it all.

"We sighted a trawler about 6 P.M. on Tuesday. She had been chasing a submarine, and so did not seem to take us very seriously at first. We waved at her half an hour before she changed her course. We were both too weak to stand up and signal. We could only rise on our knees. Moore's hands were too swollen to hold a handkerchief, but I had kept my gloves on and was able to do so. The trawler moved warily around us, but finally threw a life-preserver at the end of a line, I yelled that we were too weak to grasp it. She finally hove to, lowered a boat, and lifted us aboard. Then we collapsed.

"I remember asking for a drink and getting water. The skipper would let us take only sips, but he left a bottle alongside me and I drained it. He gave us biscuits, but we couldn't chew or swallow them. We felt no pain until our clothing was ripped off and blood rushed into our swollen legs and arms. Moore lost six toes from gangrene in the hospital. My feet turned black, but decay did not set in."

When the pigeon released by Stone and Moore returned to the base every machine from that seaplane-station, as well as from a station on the French coast, was sent out to search for the missing seaplane, while destroyers and patrol-vessels were notified to be on the lookout. Which shows, after all, how difficult the job of detecting such small objects as submarines is. Stone had enlisted as a seaman, and was trained in aviation. On December 11, 1917, he was detached from the air-station at Hampton Roads and ordered to France for duty, arriving there January 21, 1918. In February he was ordered to report to the commander of the United States naval forces at London for patrol duty in England.

Which shows the way the Navy Department worked in with the French and British Admiralties, using either our own planes or those of our allies.

When the navy's plans concerning the American Naval Flying Corps are completed, it will have an air service of fully 125,000 men, of which 10,000 will be aviators. There will be 10 ground men for every aviator. Observers, inspectors and specialists of various sorts will fill out the total. These seaplanes are of immense value in the war zones. They leave bases for regular patrol duty, watching the ocean carefully, and locating submersibles at a great height. Once a submarine is thus located the seaplane descends to the surface and notifies vessels of the patrol-fleet of the location of the craft, or in cases when the undersea craft is on or near the surface, the aviator will drop bombs upon the vessel. Seaplanes are also sent from the decks of naval vessels to scout the waters through which a fleet may be travelling, while large vessels serving as parent-ships for the smaller seaplanes--from which they fly and to which they return--ply the infested waters. The service is a valuable one, and a thrilling one, and only the best types of men were selected by the Navy Department to engage in it.

In 1917 Congress appropriated $67,733,000 for aviation for the navy, a sum which permitted the department to proceed on an extensive scale. And right here it may be said that the navy has fared much better than the army in the progressive development of air service. Within a year the flying personnel of the navy had grown to be twenty times greater than it was when we went to war, and where a year ago we had one training-school, we now have forty naval aviation-schools.

The navy has not only strained every nerve to turn out aviators and to produce airplanes, but the development of improved types of planes has not been overlooked, and we now have abroad several fine types of seaplane as well as airplane. The seaplane is merely an airplane with pontoons, It starts from the ground or from the deck of a vessel.

Then there is the flying-boat, developed under naval auspices. This boat takes wing from the water, and is regarded as the most desirable form of aircraft for sea purposes. It is a triumphant instance of our ingenuity, and is built in two sizes, both effective under the peculiar conditions which may dictate the use either of one or the other. The navy has also developed a catapult arrangement for launching seaplanes from the decks of war-ships. This is a moving wooden platform, carrying the seaplane, which runs along a track over the ship's deck. The platform drops into the sea, and the seaplane proceeds on its course through the air.

The progress of the navy was so great in arranging for the home coast-defense aerial service that Secretary Daniels agreed to establish air coast-patrol stations in Europe, and it was not long before our naval aviators were rendering signal service both along the French and the British coasts. There is the understanding that the United States has already taken the lead in naval aviation, not in quantity, to be sure, but in quality and efficiency, as to which the presence of foreign experts studying our new improvements may be regarded as confirmatory evidence.

The Navy Department now has an aircraft factory of its own at Philadelphia, and there flying-boats are now being turned out. Also, five private plants throughout the country are working on navy aircraft exclusively.

The Aircraft Board, which succeeded the Aircraft Production Board, is made up in three parts: a third from the navy, a third from the army, and a third civilian. This board is under the joint direction of the Secretaries of War and the Navy.

The naval flying-schools are located at Pensacola, Fla., Miami, Fla., Hampton Roads, Va., Bay Shore, L.I., and San Diego, Cal. Some of the aviators are drawn from the regular naval forces, but the great majority are of the reserves, young men from civil life, college men and the like, who have the physical qualifications and the nerve to fly and fight above tumultuous waters.

The men training in the naval aviation-schools are enrolled as Second Class Seamen in the Coast Defense Reserve. Their status is similar to that of the midshipmen at Annapolis. Surviving the arduous course of training, they receive commissions as ensigns; if they do not survive they are honorably discharged, being free, of course, to enlist in other branches of service. The courses last about six months, the first period of study being in a ground school, where the cadets study navigation, rigging, gunnery, and other technical naval subjects. Thence the pupil goes to a flight-school, where he learns to pilot a machine. Here, if he comes through, the young cadet is commissioned as an ensign. All pilots in the Naval Reserve Flying Corps hold commissions, but not all of the pilots in the regular navy are commissioned officers, a few rating as chief petty officers.

The men who act as observers--who accompany the pilots on their trips, taking photographs, dropping bombs and the like--are not commissioned. They are selected from men already in the service, regular seamen, marines, reserves, or volunteers. Of course, these men have their opportunities of becoming pilots. The United States seaplanes carry extremely destructive weapons, which will not be described until after the war. The Germans, it may be assumed, know something about them.

The spirit of our naval pilots, both students and qualified graduates, is of the highest, and foreign naval officers have been quick to express their appreciation of their services. When Ensign Curtis Read was shot down in February, 1918, while flying over the French coast, his funeral was attended by many British army and navy officers, and by representatives of both branches of the French service. Besides the company of American sailors there were squads of French and British seamen, who marched in honor of the young officer. The city of Dunkirk presented a beautiful wreath of flowers.

"Nothing," wrote Ensign Artemus Gates, captain-elect of Yale's 1917 football eleven, and a comrade of Read's in France, to the young officer's mother, "could be more impressive than to see a French general, an admiral, British staff-officers, and many other officers of the two nations paying homage."

The death of Ensign Stephen Potter, who was killed in a battle with seven German airplanes in the North Sea on April 25, 1918, followed a glorious fight which will live in our naval annals. Potter was the first of our naval pilots to bring down a German airplane, and indeed may have been the first American, fighting under the United States flag, to do this. His triumph was attained on March 19, 1918. Between that time and his death he had engaged in several fights against German airmen, causing them to flee.

And in this country our course of training has been marked by many notable examples of heroism and devotion, none more so than the act of Ensign Walker Weed, who, after his plane had fallen in flames at Cape May, N.J., and he had got loose from his seat and was safe, returned to the burning machine and worked amid the flames until he had rescued a cadet who was pinned in the wreckage. It cost Weed his life, and the man he rescued died after lingering some days; but the act is none the less glorious because the gallant young officer gave his life in vain.

Related to the aviation service, to the extent at least that they observe from an aerial post, are the balloon men of the navy, officers who go aloft with great gas-bags, which, when not in use, are carried on the decks of the larger war-ships engaged in work. From the baskets of these sausage-shaped balloons the observers, armed with telescopes and binoculars, the ocean and the ships of the convoy lying like a map below, sweep the surface of the water for lurking submarines and enemy raiders. The balloons are attached to the war-ships, and are towed along through the air. Just how effective this expedient is, is known only to the Navy Department, but the fact that it is retained argues for its usefulness.

Convoyed merchant vessels steam in a wedge or V-shaped formation. At the apex is a destroyer, following which is an armored cruiser of the Colorado or Tennessee type. Astern of the cruiser is another destroyer, which tows the captive balloon at the end of a very light but strong steel wire. This balloon-towing destroyer really forms the point of the wedge formation. Behind it are placed the two diverging lines of merchant ships, which follow one another, not bow to stern, but in a sort of echelon position. Down through the centre of the wedge is a line of armed trawlers, while armed vessels steam outside the V. Somewhat astern of the convoy is another destroyer, which tows another captive balloon. As a final means of protection, destroyers fly about on each wing of The convoy.