Personnel of
No 1 Squadron RNAS in late 1914
The Royal Naval Air Service or RNAS was the air arm of the Royal Navy until
near the end of the First World War, when it merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps to form a new service (the
first of its kind in the world), the Royal Air Force.
History
When the RFC was founded on April 13, 1912, it was intended to
encompass all military flying. The Navy, however, was not pleased at all forms of naval
aviation being moved to an Army corps, and soon formed its own, unauthorised, flying
branch with a training centre at Eastchurch. Command of this group was given over to
Murray Sueter, who had been working on airship
development for the navy.[1] At the time, the
Admiralty, known as the "Senior Service", had enough political clout to ensure that this
act went completely unchallenged. The Royal Naval Air Service was officially recognised on July
1, 1914 by First Lord of the
Admiralty Winston Churchill. The new service was completely separate from the
RFC except for the Central Flying School, which was still used, and became in
effect a rival air force.
By the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the RNAS had more aircraft under its control than the RFC. The Navy
maintained twelve airship stations around the coast of Britain from Longside, Aberdeenshire in the northeast to Anglesey in the west. In addition to seaplanes, carrier borne aircraft, and other aircraft with a legitimate
"naval" application the RNAS also maintained several crack fighter squadrons on the Western Front, as well as allocating scarce
resources to an independent strategic bombing force at a time when such operations were highly speculative. Inter-service rivalry
even affected aircraft procurement. Urgently required Sopwith 1½ Strutter
two-seaters had to be transferred from the planned RNAS strategic bombing force (for which the type was in any case quite
unsuitable) to RFC squadrons on the Western Front because the Navy had "cornered" Sopwith production. In fact this situation
continued - although most of Sopwith's products were not specifically naval aircraft. Thus RNAS fighter squadrons obtained
Sopwith Pup fighters months before the RFC - and then replaced these first with
Sopwith Triplanes and then Camels while the
hardpressed RFC squadrons soldiered on with their obsolescent Pups. An account of this scandalous situation may be found in the
book No Parachute by Arthur Gould Lee.
On April 1, 1918 the RNAS was merged with the RFC to form the
RAF. At the time of the merger, the Navy's air service had 67,000 officers and men, 2,949 aircraft, 103 airships and 126 coastal stations.
The RNAS squadrons were absorbed into the new structure, individual squadrons receiving new squadron numbers by effectively
adding 200 to the number so No. 1 Squadron RNAS (a famous fighter squadron) became No. 201
Squadron RAF
The Royal Navy regained its own air service in 1937, when the Naval Air Branch (covering carrier borne aircraft, but not the
seaplanes and maritime reconnaissance aircraft of Coastal Command) was returned to
Admiralty control and renamed the Fleet Air Arm.
Bases
Aircraft
Roles and missions
The main "naval" roles of the RNAS (ignoring for the minute the service's direct "competition" with the RFC) were fleet
reconnaissance, patrolling coasts for enemy ships and submarines, and attacking enemy coastal territory. The RNAS systematically searched 4000 square miles of the
Channel and the North Sea for U-boats. In 1917 alone, they sighted 175 U-boats and attacked 107. Because of the technology of the
time the attacks were not very successful in terms of submarines sunk, but the sightings greatly assisted the Navy's surface
fleets in combatting the enemy submarines.
It was the RNAS which provided much of the mobile cover using armoured cars, during the
withdrawal from Antwerp to the Yser, in 1914. Later in the war,
squadrons of the RNAS were sent to France to directly support the RFC. The RNAS was also at one
stage entrusted with the air defence of London. This led to its raids on airship stations in Germany, in places as far from the
sea as Friedrichshafen.
Before techniques were developed for taking off and landing on ships, the RNAS had
to use seaplanes in order to operate at sea. Beginning with experiments on the old cruiser
HMS Hermes, special seaplane tenders
were developed to support these aircraft. It was from these ships that a raid on
Zeppelin bases at Cuxhaven and Wilhelmshaven was launched on Christmas Day of 1914. This was the first attack by ship-borne aircraft. A
chain of coastal air stations was also constructed.
Notable personnel
See also
References
- ^ Murray Sueter Oxford Dictionary of National Biogrpahy entry
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