Four o’clock in the morning. Though it is summer, the weather is cold and raw, the chilly breeze bites knife-like through one’s clothes, fingers are all thumbs--rather a disillusion of the joys of flying. The engine stops, and coughs and splutters as if in protest at this extraordinary behavior. Compass, maps, instruments are missing; the petrol tanks are unfilled, or the oil has been forgotten.
At last, creaking and groaning, the crane is lowered, and fixed to the craft. A few hoarse commands, and she is swung off the deck and dropped gently on to the sea, and off she goes, bound on a reconnaissance trip or target-registering. First taxi-ing far across the open sea, clear of the Fleet. What a delightful sensation this is, skimming the water like a seagull, dipping and bowing gracefully; but it is quite another story when the sea is rough, and the swell threatens every moment to break up the floats and submerge the craft. At last up into the air, 200, 300, 500, 1000 feet, circling round the now, seemingly, stationary Fleet; how still and quiet they appear down below there!
The seaplane is usually a much slower craft to climb than the aeroplane, and some time elapses before a decent altitude is reached. The observer busies himself plotting out the course, testing the wireless gear, and preparing his report.
Scouting is the object of the flight, and scouting implies, for the most part, keeping a weather eye open for suspicious craft, enemy battleships, cruisers, destroyers and enemy submarines, the latter more easily distinguishable from a height, when the bed of the sea in the more shallow portions can be read like an open book, sandbanks standing out most prominently from the surrounding azure blue.
Target-registering, on the other hand, consists of following, or rather attempting to follow, a damnably perverse raft, on which a large target is lashed, at which the heavy guns of the Fleet are firing from a distance of from fifteen to twenty miles, and the observer wirelessing back the results of their attempts, also entering the same in his report.
To the uninitiated this report would at first sight appear slightly less understandable than a Chinese love letter or a Greek play. It is divided into columns; first there is the time of the entry, next the height at which the machine was flying, the approximate position, and, last, the nature of the observation. For example: 11.55 a.m. 6000 feet. Lat. 90, long. 70:6. Large two-funneled steamers, apparently merchantmen, observed proceeding in a south-westerly direction.