Читать книгу The Spider Web - T. D. Hallam - Страница 7

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When I first rolled up to Felixstowe Air Station I was tremendously impressed by its size. It was enclosed on the three land sides by a high iron fence. As I passed the sentry-box and entered by the main gate, the guardhouse occupied by the ancient marines was on my right, flanked by the kennel of Joe, a ferocious watch-dog who had a strong antipathy to anybody in civilian attire. Beside guarding the gate, Joe provided a steady income to the marines, for his puppies fetched good prices. On my left were the ship's office and garage. I entered the former and reported my arrival to the First Lieutenant.

The First Lieutenant of the station was Lieut.-Commander O. H. K. Macguire, R.N., known as James the One or Number One, who understood discipline, and reigned over an exceedingly fine mess. He ran the station under naval routine, the time being tapped off on a bell, the ship's company being divided into watches, anybody leaving the station "going ashore," and the men for leave, when marching out of the gate, were the "liberty boat." The Navy people, of course, said that the R.N.A.S. was not run on Navy lines, but it was run as close to them as everybody knew how, and as the exigencies of the new weapon permitted. The naval routine and discipline fitted the work of a seaplane station admirably, for the work approximated to that of a ship, where drill is of secondary importance, and speed, skill, and accuracy in carrying out a job of work is of the first importance.

As James the One had a shrewd tongue he was rather feared by the junior officers, especially the Canadians, who hated with a profound hatred the ever-recurring twenty-four-hour job of Duty Officer, during which they could get no sleep in the long watches of the night owing to the continuous ringing of the telephone bell. But he instilled discipline into their unruly hearts, which assisted them to carry out their work when subsequently elevated in rank.

Sheds and Slipways at Felixstowe.

He had taken over the station at a time when, owing to rapid growth, the new men were not being digested, and discipline was rather ragged at the edges; but by this time he had the men well in hand. And woe betide the defaulter, standing to attention outside the ship's office in full view of Number One as he sat in an easy-chair on the verandah of the mess, if the unfortunate so much as moved a little finger. The tiger roar which greeted such a disobedience to the order not to move, made every man with a guilty conscience on the station tremble.

On the other hand, he would brook no interference with the rights and privileges of the men, and looked after their interests as regards pay and promotion. Divisions, when the whole ship's company were mustered on the quarter-deck in the morning and at noon, was a marvel of smartness, especially when it is remembered that the men were "tradesmen." The effect was heightened by the attendance of the pipe band, of which Number One was rightly proud.

Leaving the office of the First Lieutenant I stepped out on the quarter-deck. On the mast, on the far side of this gravelled expanse, rippling and snapping in the breeze, flew the white ensign.

Crossing the quarter-deck and steering close to the bright and shining ship's bell, which I passed on my left, I found a path leading to the harbour. The left side of the path was the starting-point of an interminable row of huts for the men. Carrying on, after stumbling over a railway siding, and passing between two of the huge seaplane sheds, of which there were three—sheds 300 feet long by 200 feet wide—I eventually arrived at the concrete area on the water front.

Before each of the big sheds was a slipway. These were wide wooden gangways running out from the concrete into the harbour and sloping down into the water, and were used for launching the flying-boats.

Here I could look across the harbour and see Harwich and Shotley, the tangle of light cruisers and destroyers lying at anchor in the river, and the outlines of the floating dock in which destroyers, battered by the seas or damaged in contact with the enemy, were lifted out of the water and their hurts attended to. As I stood sniffing in the harbour smells, one of our E-class submarines came slinking in between the guardships at the boom, fresh from patrol in the Bight, and wearing that sinister air of stealth and secrecy which marks even the friendliest of submarines.

Walking down the concrete to my left I finally came to the pre-war buildings of the Old Station. These buildings were used by Commander Porte for his experimental work. In the early part of 1914 Commander Porte was in America, at the Curtiss Company works at Hammondsport, where he supervised the designing and testing of the first American type of flying-boat. This boat was constructed with the intention, if it was satisfactory, of attempting to fly the Atlantic. It was a very big machine for that time, although to a modern pilot, familiar with the luxuriously fitted up six-ton boats with two Rolls-Royce engines giving a total of 720 horse-power, she would seem a funny old, cranky, under-engined tub.

On the afternoon of the day war was declared Commander Porte sailed for England, and a little later took over Felixstowe. Sundry copies of the original boat arrived from the United States in 1915. These were comic machines, weighing well under two tons; with two comic engines giving, when they functioned, 180 horse-power; and comic control, being nose heavy with engines on and tail heavy in a glide. And the stout lads who tried impossible feats in them had usually to be towed back by annoyed destroyers.

As the Navy people could not understand anything being made which could not be dropped with safety from a hundred feet, or seaworthy enough to ride out a gale, or as reliable as the coming of the Day of Judgment for the Hun, much criticism and chaff, some good-natured but some not, were worked off by the sailors during this period on both boats and pilots. But improvements went steadily on.

In the fall of 1916 improved and very much bigger flying-boats, built in the United States to specifications supplied by Commander Porte, began to arrive.

By this time Commander Porte had got out several experimental flying-boats. He carried out his plans with a scratch collection of draughtsmen, few with any real knowledge of engineering; with boat-builders and carpenters he had trained himself; and he only obtained the necessary materials by masterly wangling. He frequently started a new boat and then asked the authorities for the grudged permission. But in all things connected with the building of flying-boats his insight amounted to genius, and the different types of boats kept getting themselves born. His latest boat, known unofficially as the Porte Super Baby, or officially as the Felixstowe Fury, a huge triplane with a wing span of 127 feet, a total lifting surface of 3100 square feet, a bottom of three layers of cedar and mahogany half an inch thick, and five engines giving 1800 horse-power, I flew successfully—it weighed a total of fifteen tons. On this test I carried twenty-four passengers, seven hours' fuel, and five thousand pounds of sand as a make-weight. Some idea of its huge size can be had when it is realised that its tail unit alone is as large as a modern single-seater scout.

At Hendon I had assisted in dragging the first twin-engined Handley-Page, at midnight and with the greatest secrecy, through the streets leading from the works at Cricklewood to the aerodrome. The procession was headed by an army of men removing obstructing lamp-posts and cutting off overhanging branches, followed by a motor-lorry with two acetylene flares, and then sixty men hauling the machine along by ropes. At the time I thought she was a very big machine. But in the sheds at Felixstowe I found boats of equal size and horse-power and greater speed, and boats that were even larger.

There was the boat called the Porte Baby, a bigger machine than any built and flown in this country until 1918, and this boat was produced in 1915 and flown in 1916. Although it did little useful active service work, it set other designers to thinking, and was the father and mother of all big British aeroplanes and seaplanes. When fully loaded it weighed about eight and a half tons, but no scales big enough to weigh it were obtainable in the service.

It was so large that a Bristol Bullet land scout was fitted on the top plane, which, while the boat was in the air, was successfully launched and flown back to an aerodrome by Flight Lieutenant Day, of the seaplane carrier Vindex. This gallant officer unfortunately was killed later in France.

Well on in 1917 sundry young pilots took the Porte Baby out for a joy-ride, and presently found themselves off the Belgian coast being attacked by a Hun land-machine and two fighter seaplanes. Two out of the three engines were shot about and the big boat had to come down on the water. The Huns circled around firing at it until their ammunition was exhausted, and then returned joyously to Zeebrugge to report the total destruction of a giant flying-boat.

But while the tracer bullets were playing about, the crew were lying down in the bottom of the boat watching the splinters fly. When the Huns departed the crew repaired the engines, started them up, and all night long taxied on the water across the North Sea. The much-chastened pilots beached the boat, in the small hours of the morning, on the coast of England, near Orfordness. A sentry, believing, as he explained later, that at last an invasion of England by Zeppelin was being attempted, fired on them, but was eventually pacified. The crew arrived at the station very tired, very black, one of their number with a bullet hole in him, but cheerful.

When the Porte Baby was finally dismantled, her hull was placed in the grounds of a woman's hostel, a door was cut in the side, electric light laid on, and four Wren motor-drivers found sufficient room inside to sling their hammocks, stow clothing, and room even for mirrors and powder puffs.

After sculling about in the sheds for some time, I finally climbed to the look-out on top of Number One Shed.

Here I surveyed for the first time the mottled, misty, treacherous North Sea. In a southeasterly direction and some ninety miles away was the Belgian coast, with the German submarine and seaplane bases at Zeebrugge and Ostend. Some hundred and eighty miles away, in a north-easterly direction, was Terschelling Island, and just around the corner of this island was the Bight of Heligoland. On a shoal, half-way on a line between Felixstowe and the Hook of Holland, fifty-two sea miles from either place and the same distance from Zeebrugge, was the red rusty North Hinder light-vessel belonging to the Dutch, with a large lantern on its one stout steel mast, and its name painted in huge white letters along its sides. This light-vessel was to play a large part in the bombing of submarines.