Ancient history records early attempts at flight, while the Chinese are credited with inventing the balloon around the third century BC. A human flying beneath a kite is recorded there around 560 AD, while in 852 Abbas Ibn Firnas jumped off the Grand Mosque in Córdoba with a set of cloth wings supported by wooden struts. His survival was as much of a surprise to him as to everyone else, his apparatus having acted as a sort of early parachute. Then, 25 years later at the age of 65, he was at it again, this time flying suspended beneath the world’s first hang glider which he just happened to have knocked up in his garden shed.

Leonardo da Vinci threw in his ideas in the 15th century, but the first recognised human flight is generally given as 1783, when the Montgolfier brothers launched their hot air balloon. After that, the ballooning craze took off, so to speak, which leads us directly to mid 19th century Britain and a dentist in the English midlands.

produced a very rapid, although safe descent, resulting, to the surprise of medical experts, in no residual symptoms. The adventurers even climbed out of the basket and strolled almost eight miles to the nearest village when they landed near Ludlow.

Meanwhile, Coxwell had been writing at length in The Times for almost ten years arguing that balloons should be a part of British military applications. After all, they had been employed in wartime during 1784 when French Revolutionary forces used them to spy on the enemy, while in 1861 the Union Army Balloon Corps had been formed during the American Civil War.

Finally, in 1863, the British Army commissioned Coxwell to carry out a series of demonstrations for the Royal Engineers at Aldershot to show how a tethered balloon could be used in reconnaissance, signalling and the dropping of bombs. But it was not until 15 years later that a Balloon Section was established at the Woolwich Arsenal to carry out more experiments.

The unit’s success over the following four years led to its move to the School of Military Engineering at Chatham where a balloon factory was later built and where the School of Ballooning was established in 1888. In the last two decades of the 19th century, the British army used balloons extensively for reconnaissance and observation in Bechuanaland and the Sudan, as well as in the Anglo-Boer War.

The alleged volunteer whose career took a sudden upward turn was Sapper Moreton of the Army Balloon Section but, sadly, any views he expressed following his 60 minutes of fame have not been recorded, perhaps wisely.

In 1906, Cody was appointed Chief Kiting Instructor at Aldershot and formed two kite sections of the Royal Engineers. Next year, he found himself designing the propulsion system for Britain’s first powered airship, the Nulli Secundus, in which he flew from Aldershot to London on October 5, 1907, in less than three and a half hours. After circling St Paul’s Cathedral, strong headwinds forced the airship to land at Crystal Palace where the wind tore it from its moorings and wrecked it.

Then, demonstrating a logic typical of the British official mind, the War Office cancelled Cody’s contract because they saw no future in air power.

Undeterred and doubtless encouraged by Blériot’s flight across the English Channel in July 1909, Cody carried on building and in 1910 was awarded the Royal Aero Club’s ninth aviator’s certificate. He became the world’s first pilot to carry passengers and in 1911, his third aircraft design was the only British entry in the “Circuit of Britain” race organised by the Daily Mail.

After Cody was killed in a flying accident in 1913, an estimated 100,000 people watched his procession make its way to Aldershot Military Cemetery where he was buried with full honours.

So, even to the least perceptive military mind, it was clear that, by early 1911 and in part thanks to Samuel F. Cody, aviation activity in Britain had grown rapidly. On February 28 that year, the British War Office issued an order for the School of Ballooning to be expanded into a new Air Battalion of the Royal Engineers, effective April 1. Fourteen officers and 150 other ranks formed the battalion’s two companies which were based at Farnborough under their first commander, Major Sir Alexander Bannerman. Number 1 Company operated airships out of the battalion’s base, while Number 2 Company was equipped with aircraft and located on Salisbury Plain.

In September of the same year, events in Europe underlined the importance of airborne forces to military leaders. Italy declared war against the Ottoman Turks who had built up a strong garrison in Tripoli, which the Italians rather wanted to annexe. In October at Prevesa in north-west Greece, a naval battle saw three Ottoman vessels destroyed, persuading the Turks that it might be better, after all, to acknowledge the Italian sovereignty of Tripoli.

It was the Italian’s use of aircraft to gain their victory which prompted the Imperial Defence Staff in Whitehall to react in the traditional British manner: they formed a committee. The group was charged with recommending policies for British military air power in the future, and the advice which came back from the deliberations was to form a new flying body, separate from the Royal Engineers. So, on April 12, 1912, the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) came into existence and by the end of the year had 12 manned balloons and 36 biplane fighters.

Unfortunately, the Royal Navy was less than impressed by the move. Captains, Commanders and Commodores accompanied by Admirals, Vice and Rear, huffed and puffed on their bridges and poop decks about how naval aviation had come under the control of an army corps. And with the knowledge that they formed the Untouchables of the British armed forces, the Senior Service took unilateral action: the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) was formed on July 1, 1914, and took control of all the RFC’s airships.

The new naval service was based at Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey, a town known as the home of British aviation. Here it was that, in 1909, pioneer aviator John Moore-Brabazon (later Lord Brabazon of Tara) had became the first Briton to fly in Britain, taking off from Shellbeach at the controls of his Voisin-Farman aircraft and cruising about 500 yards (460 metres). In the same year, the Wright brothers had contracted the Short brothers to build six of their Wright Flyer aircraft here, making Eastchurch a magnet for enthusiastic aviation engineers who developed many forms of flying machines.

Part two next month

DAVE JAMIESON