The Spider Web: The Romance Of A Flying-Boat War Flight

The Spider Web The Romance of a Flying-Boat War Flight

BY P. I. X. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS William Blackwood and Sons Edinburgh and London 1919 [Pg v] [Pg vi] TO THE JOLLY FINE FELLOWS, OFFICERS AND MEN, OF THE WAR FLIGHT, FELIXSTOWE....

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I.

There is magic in salt water which transmogrifies all things it touches. The aeroplane with its cubist outline undergoes a sea change on reaching the coast and becomes a flying-boat, a thing of beauty, a Viking dragon ship, a shape born of the sea and air with pleasant and easy lines, and in the sun, the dull war-paint stripped from the natural mahogany, a flashing golden craft of enchantment. During the war nothing was published about the flying-boats, partly because they worked with the Silent

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II.

In the curious quirks of fortune and chance which moved people across oceans and continents to play their part in the war, and finally fetched them up, in some cases, in the jobs which they most desired to fill, there are all the elements of romance. Just before the war broke out I was occupying a room at the "Aviator's Home," a boarding-house in the small American inland town of Hammondsport, N.Y. This town was situated on a long narrow lake, with a forked end, a lake surrounded by steeply risi

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III.

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 le

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IV.

After some days at Felixstowe, feeling rather like a lost dog, as no work had been given me to do, and always expecting some demonstration to be made against the German submarines, I was much disappointed to find that nothing seemed to be done. Indeed, I got exceedingly mouldy, so mouldy that I broke out in verses for 'The Wing,' the station magazine. They were a lament for the old land hack I had left behind at Hendon—a scandalous biplane, which had been rebuilt so often that nobody could tell

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I.

The first eighteen days of the life of the War Flight was like a fairy tale, for the pilots, booming out on the Spider Web in the wet triangle formed by the Shipwash light-vessel, the Haaks light-ship, and the Schouen Bank light-buoy, sighted eight enemy submarines and bombed three, one of the patrols ran into four Hun destroyers and was heavily shelled, and one boat was lost at sea, although all members of the crew were saved. On the morning of April 13 we carried out the first patrol of the se

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II.

After the first patrol had been carried out four more pilots volunteered for the War Flight, and two patrols were carried out on April 15th. It was on the fourth patrol, on the 16th, that Billiken Hobbs, booming along in the Web at the thousand foot level in Old '61 , sighted the first enemy submarine. The commander of this U-boat was gaily navigating along on the surface, fully blown, at a position twenty miles north-east of the North Hinder. He was feeling quite at ease, for the visibility was

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III.

It was on the eleventh patrol carried out on the 23rd that I bombed my first submarine. On a pleasant morning, with a clear sky, a slight haze, and a 15-knot wind blowing from the north-east—ideal weather conditions for submarine hunting—Holmes and myself were shoved down the slipway in Old '61 and took to the air at six o'clock. Thrusting out into the North Sea on a course for the North Hinder, I steadied at the thousand foot level and throttled back until we were doing an easy sixty knots. Loo

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IV.

The quality of the dental platinum, requisitioned from the dentists to make points for the magnetos, brought the first boat down at sea on the eleventh patrol. This platinum, specially prepared for dental work, was not up to the job, and Jimmy Bath and Tiny Galpin had to come to the water forty-five miles out from land. They were found by a destroyer and towed in. John O. Galpin—known as Tiny, because of his comfortable proportions—was, as he said himself, followed by a hoodoo. He held at this t

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I.

To appreciate the work of the flying service, it must be remembered that the pilot in the machine is only the spearhead of the weapon, and behind the spearhead must be a stout and reliable haft, so that the business end can be driven home with full effect. The helve of the haft consists of the carpenters who true-up, inspect, and repair the machines; the engineers who clean, test, and keep the engines in order; the armourers who adjust the bombs and machine-guns; and the working party who push a

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II.

Down on the sea boats are not easy to handle with precision. But I once did a little bit of seamanship of which I am rather proud. It is a trick I would never try to repeat. Lofty Martin and myself were out together in two boats on the 5th, when we sighted a Fritz twenty miles south-east of the North Hinder. Lofty was nearer and went bald-headed at him. The commander of the submarine saw him coming and dived, but Lofty let go his four bombs just as Fritz went under. And then I saw that his boat

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III.

Hissed on by the ruthless wind, sea waves possess a malevolent cunning whereby they search out any weak spot in a structure made by man, and so finger, suck, hammer, and tear at the members which are flawed in design, material, or workmanship, that eventually the whole fabric is shattered. The innocent wavelets dancing in the sun, pretty and sparkling, and the huge black rollers, whose crests under the weight of a gale, before they can curl over and break, explode into spindrift, are propagated

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IV.

Felixstowe was shrouded in mist on this day until eleven o'clock, when it began to lift. It did not look very promising, but I ordered two flying-boats to be run out and the pilots were warned off to have an early luncheon. Leslie Gordon and George Hodgson, the Heavenly Twins, both from Montreal, Canada, were told off for one of the boats. They had been boys together, had come to England together, had learned to fly together, had been on the Nore Flight together, and when they came over to the W

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I.

James the One was awakened before daybreak on June 14 by the ringing of his telephone bell. The Duty Captain at the Admiralty informed him that the Little Woman at Borkum said Anna was at the Dogger Bank going south. Consider the ringing of the bell the pebble dropped in the sleeping pool, and observe how the ripples widened, and ever widened, until they broke on the coast of Germany. Number One rang up the Duty Officer, who slept, or rather did not sleep, with a telephone for bedfellow, for Jam

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II.

That night the staff-room was full to overflowing when Dixie brought in the brass tray covered with cocktails. The staff-room at this time was a small narrow place, so narrow that when anybody sat down everybody else fell over his feet. It was just big enough to hold, with a little packing, the heads of departments who were permanently attached to the station, and it had become their room by an unwritten law. But now all hands were crowded in. Everybody was standing, there was no room to do anyt

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III.

We were very proud of our new flying office in No. 2 Shed. It was just inside the big sliding doors opening out on the slipway. It had glass windows on three sides which kept out the dust and some of the noise. It contained a sound-proof cabinet complete with telephone, a desk at which writing could be done, and with drawers in which to keep papers, and a blackboard on the wall for notices. The inside was painted white to reflect all the light possible, and the outside grey to prevent it looking

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IV.

The U-C 1 pushed out from Zeebrugge harbour on July 23. She was dirty as to paint, rust streaks disfigured her sides, and she was not a pretty object to look at in the bright sunshine. But she was not really a wicked submarine, as she did not sink passenger liners or hospital ships with torpedoes or gun fire, but only laid mines, which is a legitimate act of war. She was a hundred and eleven feet long, and was the sole survivor, but one, of fifteen similar boats. She carried twelve mines in four

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I.

I was sunk a thousand fathoms deep in sleep. Came a loud rap at my cabin door, the stab of electric light in my eyes, and a voice saying, "Signal, sir." The messenger, seeing I was more or less awake, crossed the cabin and passed me a signal pad. Propping one eye open, I read— "0348 Trout, XUB top." "Thanks," I said, and the messenger vanished. The signal was a wireless fix of a Fritz. Sitting up in bed, I reached for the squared chart, and examined it. The message, interpreted, meant that at fo

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II.

U-C 6 pushed out from Zeebrugge before daybreak. It was on September 28, a thick day, a very thick day. With her were three other U-boats, three destroyers, and two float seaplanes. The Commander of U-C 6 kept station in advance of the other three submarines as they passed through the swept channels into the North Sea. He was fully blown. The whole flotilla rippled along at eight knots. The U-C 6 was an old boat, the last survivor of fifteen similar mine-layers. But it was his first command, and

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III.

October was almost the last good month of submarine hunting to be had. Four enemy submarines were sighted, but their commanders were keeping a good look-out while in the Spider Web, and only one was bombed, by Hodgson and Wilson. The 23rd of October was rather a dirty day, with a falling barometer, and that unpleasant taste to the north-west wind which usually means trouble of some sort for somebody. The Harwich Light Forces were off the Dutch coast looking for the elusive Hun, and sundry patrol

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IV.

November had sixteen flying days, and one submarine was bombed by Tiny and Moody on the 3rd. And now there comes a little yarn which might be entitled: The Pirates, the Birdman, and the Grateful Fisherman, and could be told thus:— A poor but honest Dutch fisherman had cast his nets and made a great haul of fish. His smack was filled to overflowing. He was exceedingly joyful, for he had a wife and three at home, and was expecting another. But, as he was thinking with pleasure of the pieces of sil

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I.

Down in the Straits of Dover there was now in being a barrage which put the fear into the hearts of the crews of the German submarines. All night long, across the narrow channel between the white chalk cliffs of Dover and Calais, a line of armed trawlers lit up the waves with brilliant flares, and prevented the U-boats from slipping through on the surface. Beneath the water were nasty devices which, when encountered by an Undersea-boat trying to creep through submerged, brought its crew to a sti

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II.

Fighting now commenced to be more or less common, the interference from the German fliers getting more intense as time went on. The prime mover of the Huns seemed to be Commander Christianson, a full-out merchant and apparently a sportsman, who was credited by the Felixstowe pilots with developing the fast little monoplane seaplane. He was stationed first at Zeebrugge, and when the harbour was wrecked by the Navy and mopped-up by the Army, after being thoroughly bombed by the Royal Naval Air Ser

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III.

First the skirmish and then the fight. March the 12th was a fine day, and three boats in formation were thirty miles off the Dutch coast. There was nothing in sight; the sea, the horizon, the sky, were clear. And then there were five Huns. It is as sudden as all that. The enemy pilots, owing to the greater hand-ability of their light-float seaplanes, could attack how and when they pleased. The pilots of the boats kept close formation in order to protect each other. The Huns attacked from the rea

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IV.

The telephone bell rang. Our new Intelligence Officer, a man of infinite energy, answered the call. He had arrived the previous day, and as he had never been on a flying-boat station before, he examined everything with microscopic care. He installed a new system of operation orders, put in a new method for keeping records and signals, and arranged for the building of a new and spacious intelligence hut. He had gone to bed about midnight after confiding in me that after France he was going to hav

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I.

With lustful pride the Huns called the North Sea the German Ocean, and if there was any part of this dirty sheet of water which justified the name, it was that portion known as the Bight of Heligoland. Here before the war were the growing harbours and shipyards with which she was challenging the British supremacy of the sea; and during the war her yards which turned out submarines, her seaplane and Zeppelin bases, and the refuges of her High Seas Fleet. Climbing into a flying-boat and crossing a

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II.

At noon on March 2 we were ordered to prepare to go into the Bight. I chose the three best machines out of the War Flight string of nine boats, and the men groomed them to a finish. Everything that was put on board was carefully weighed and the total weight checked to a nicety, so as to make certain that the pilots could get off in the open sea. Norman A. Magor, a Canadian from Montreal, was chosen to lead the flight. He was a fine pilot. He had taken a boat from Felixstowe to Dunkirk, when the

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III.

Illustrating the work of the lighters, although the incident did not take place until late in 1918, there is the yarn about Zeppelin L 53. Many subsequent lighter trips were attended by this Zeppelin. Its crew watched the evolution from a great height. The pilots of the flying-boats when slipped from their lighters were unable to get at the airship, as they were heavily laden with petrol. Her skipper, Com mander Proells, kept well out of range of the anti-aircraft guns of the cruisers, and he th

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IV.

Here end the yarns about the beginnings and first year of the War Flight. On the 12th of April I began to turn over the little show to my successor, and took up work under the Technical Department, a shore job. The high lights in the picture alone have been painted in, the grilling hours of monotonous and apparently unproductive patrol put in by the pilots over that grim and unfriendly graveyard of ships, the North Sea, have been left out. Results only have been more or less fully presented, the

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CHAPTER VIII. THE FUTURE: RUNNING THE U.S. MAIL.

Lotus-eating down among the South Sea Islands, knocking about in a little old topsail schooner, trading a bit for occupation and not for profit, yet getting out with a pleasant balance on the right side, I had drowsily drifted down the river of life ten years nearer to the Great Uncharted Sea. When I sloughed off my uniform at the end of the Great War, worn out in body, weary in mind, and sick with the so-called civilisation which had produced such a Frankenstein monster, I had promised myself a

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