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World War One At HomeThe War in the Air

WW1 saw a fledgling aviation industry take flight & audacious heroics from its pilots

  • Albert Ball was the first pilot of the Royal Flying Corps to receive the Victoria Cross. He was shot down on 7 May 1917.
  • Servicemen at Halton, Buckinghamshire, where the newly-formed Royal Flying Corps started to train its technical staff.
  • An airship at Luce Bay prepares to patrol the vulnerable Scottish coast in 1918.
  • A Wight Seaplane under construction by the Portholme Aerodrome Company. The first flight from Portholme was made in April 1910.
  • Montrose Air Station, Scotland. The first Royal Flying Corps, Number 2 Squadron, arrived there in September 1913.
  • The hangars at Old Sarum, Wiltshire. The site was requisitioned for use as a flight training establishment in 1917.
  • Rex Warneford destroyed a German Zeppelin with a ‘terrific explosion which set the Zeppelin on fire from end to end'.
  • Port Meadow's Oxfordshire Aerodrome. Grazing livestock were moved away each day before planes could take off.
  • A kite balloon hovers over a road in Donegal. These balloons were often used for intelligence gathering.
  • An airship coming in to land at Bentra Airship Mooring Station near Whitehead, Co Antrim.
  • An airship flying out of Luce Bay in Scotland
  • Duxford - one of the earliest Royal Air Force stations. Cadets began their training here, with sessions as short as 20 minutes.

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