Scampton's Early History - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

When I was an airman on my recruit training at RAF Bridgnorth in 1953 we were given several lectures on the origins of the Royal Air Force. The lectures were always delivered by Education Officers and, because we were all destined to be regular airmen not National Servicemen, most of us paid attention and found the lectures interesting. I wonder if today's recruits are given similar lectures?

To learn how Scampton started its long association with flying it's necessary to visit the early history of military aviation in the UK - and it is convoluted. It can be traced back certainly as far as the British Army's School of Ballooning which was established in 1888 at Chatham, Kent, where it was often known simply as the Balloon Factory. The school was a training and test centre for experiments with manned military balloons which quickly became known as airships. In 1890 the School moved to Aldershot and was incorporated into the Royal Engineers (to get away from Royal Navy influence perhaps?). In 1911 the school was reorganised and renamed The Air Battalion of the Royal Engineers. Initially it had an establishment of 14 officers and 150 non-commissioned personnel. The Air Battalion had two companies: Number One Company comprised airships and was collocated with the Battalion HQ at Farnborough; Number Two Company was equipped with aeroplanes and based at Larkhill on Salisbury Plain. The Battalion officers could be recruited from any regiment of the Army but they had to hold a flying certificate issued by the Royal Aero Club which indicated their proficiency at flying heavier-than-air machines. There was at that time no provision for training pilots from scratch within the Army.

In September 1911 the Italians used air power over Tripoli in their war against the Ottomans. This prompted the UK Defence Staffs to recommend the formation of a separate flying corps and with commendable speed the Royal Flying Corps came into being on 13 April 1912. The Corps soon had 12 manned airships and 36 biplane fighters and was internally organised into separate military and naval branches. That soon proved unsatisfactory because the two branches had quite different priorities (and loyalties) so in 1914 the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, withdrew the naval personnel from the Royal Flying Corps and created the Royal Naval Air Service on 1 July. At that time the new RNAS had more aircraft than the RFC and had already established shore stations around the coast of UK from Aberdeen in the far north, around the south coast of England and as far west as Anglesey. A month later the 1st World War broke out and the RNAS became fully engaged in patrolling the North Sea and English Channel seeking enemy ships and submarines and attacking the enemy coasts. In this they were quite successful.

Until the Italian raids over Tripoli, not much thought appears to have been given to the possibility of an aerial attack on the land mass of Great Britain, probably because fighter aircraft of the era had a very short operating range. Home defence of the UK was geared primarily to prevent seaborne assaults. In January 1915, however, two Zeppelin naval airships bombed Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn. The Zeppelins were slow, unwieldy and highly flammable and they could, and often did, fly over England for as long as eight or nine hours at a time dropping their bombs at random. Lincolnshire, being clearly defined by the Wash and the Humber estuary, was a favourite entry point.

The Royal Naval Air Service did not have sufficient resources to cope with this new element to the air war as well as carrying out their extensive maritime duties so Home Defence duties were handed back to the Royal Flying Corps early in 1916. By March 1916 ten new squadrons had been formed specifically for Home Defence purposes and by July of the same year a line of searchlights, anti-aircraft guns and aerodromes had been established throughout the Eastern Counties. The Home Defence squadrons were initially equipped mainly with the BE2 and Avro 504G, aircraft which were obsolescent and no longer deemed suitable for further service in France.

The Zeppelins started coming over by night which meant that the Home Defence squadrons had to be capable of operating by night. In those days the aircraft had no radio and radar had not been invented. The aeroplanes had only very primitive flying instruments and so the pilots must have been extremely courageous. There were many pure flying accidents. RFC pilots at the time reported that the best way of finding the Zeppelins in the pitch dark was to fly as high as possible, then put the aircraft into a shallow  dive, throttle the engine back to idle and listen out for the unmistakeable drone of a Zeppelin. Many places suffered from Zeppelin raids including Gravesend, Sunderland, Edinburgh, the Midlands and the Home Counties so many Home Defence squadrons were required. Normally they had their Headquarters in a conveniently located country manor which was commandeered for the purpose by the War Office. Each HQ usually had three flights at dispersed aerodromes known as Flight Stations. Because the aeroplanes  in use at that time had limited range, it was found necessary to establish a system of relief landing grounds at convenient intervals throughout a particular squadron's territory. No 33 Home Defence Squadron, for example, whose HQ was in Gainsborough, was responsible for a vast area and had aerodromes at Brattleby (the original name for the airfield that is now Scampton), Elsham and Kirton-in-Lindsey, plus some twenty other landing grounds in remoter parts of Lincolnshire, and in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire.

Incidentally the numbers allocated to the Home Defence Squadrons during World War One bear no relation to the low-numbered squadrons of the future Royal Air Force.

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