Naval Air Service, amongst the 100 odd aeroplanes and seaplanes on
charge which were mainly of the Short, Sopwith, Avro, Farman and Wright
types, possessed in 1914 the more powerful engines and a number of
aeroplanes fitted with wireless and machine guns, while their
bomb-dropping arrangements were also in a more advanced stage of
development.

An Air Department was formed at the Admiralty in 1912 to deal with all
questions relating to naval aircraft. Naval officers were trained from
the beginning at Eastchurch rather than at the Central Flying School,
and in 1913 the appointment of an Inspecting Captain for Aircraft, with
a Central Air Office at Sheerness as his headquarters, accentuated a
growing tendency for the Naval Wing to work on independent lines.

The Naval Wing grew rapidly and in the middle of 1914 was reorganized as
the Royal Naval Air Service, comprising the Air Department of the
Admiralty, the Central Air Office, the Royal Naval Flying School, the
Royal Naval Air Stations, and all aircraft, seaplane ships and balloons
employed for naval purposes. This placed the naval air force on a
self-supporting basis and the entity of the Royal Flying Corps as a
whole, as originally provided for, was lost.

TACTICS AND THE MACHINE.

The value of the application of flying to war requires little
demonstration. The most important attributes of generalship are quick
appreciation of a situation and quick decision. To the ordinary
Commander the absence of information is paralysing. In the nineteenth
century the mass of cavalry was the special instrument of information
and to obtain it contact with the enemy's main forces had to be
effected. It thus acted as a shield and also tried to provide the
information necessary to enable the infantry to take the offensive.

Aviation, by the wide field of observation it commands, by the speed
with which it can collect and transmit information, to a great extent
lifts the fog of war and enables a general to act on knowledge where
before he acted largely on deduction. Information once obtained, its
mobile and far-reaching offensive power introduces the element of
surprise, and permits of lightning strokes against the enemy's vital
points.

Before the war reconnaissance was regarded as the principal duty of the
aircraft of the Military Wing. This was due to two reasons, first, the
obvious one that aircraft possessed advantages shared by no other arm
for obtaining information quic