Digitised by Google Books from the collection at the University of Michigan https://books.google.com/books?id=7lBLAAAAMAAJ      Published by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office 1973. From the PrefaceGroup Captain Livock's entertaining account of his experiences in the Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force covers the period from 1914 to 1931. When he joined the RNAS as a young sub-lieutenant shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, naval aviation was in its infancy. Barely two years had passed since Commander Oliver Schwann had coaxed his Avro D machine off the water to make the first successful ascent by a British float seaplane. Although the war saw important advances in many branches of naval aviation, notably the evolution of the aircraft carrier, technical difficulties prevented the new weapon of air power from having more than a marginal influence on naval strategy. It was not, for example, until 2 August 1917 that an aircraft, flown by Squadron Commander E. H. Dunning, succeeded in landing on the deck of a moving ship, and Dunning was drowned a few days later attempting to repeat his exploit. Another factor which hampered the development of naval aviation was, as Group Captain Livock points out, the lack of interest shown by many senior naval officers.After qualifying as a pilot, Group Captain Livock took part in some of the early carrier operations, flying the sluggish and unreliable Short and Sopwith seaplanes, which, until their replacement by landplanes, were the mainstay of the RNAS. At the end of 1916 he was posted to Yarmouth. Here he flew the big Curtiss H12 Large America and Felixstowe F2a flying boats, which were only entrusted to the most experienced airmen. The F2a, the product of the energy and vision of Commander John Porte, was a landmark in British flying boat design. The strength and endurance of this remarkable aircraft made it especially suitable for the long-range reconnaissance and anti-submarine patrols which were carried out over the North Sea in 1918. It is not difficult to imagine the physical and nervous strain which these patrols imposed on the pilots of the flying boats, who were often in the air for more than six hours. German seaplanes from the naval air stations at Norderney, Borkum and Zeebrugge patrolled the eastern waters of the North Sea, and there were many encounters between them and the flying boats. Although the seaplanes were faster and more manoeuvrable, especially the formidable Hansa-Brandenburg w29 fighter, the flying boats with their powerful armament more than held their own.Group Captain Livock continued to work with flying boats after the war and in 1925 was appointed to command the Flying Boat Development Flight at Felixstowe. Partly as a result of the tests carried out by the Flight, great improvements were made in the design and construction of flying boats. In 1926 Group Captain Livock led two Supermarine Southampton flying boats on the first long-distance flying boat cruise to Egypt and Cyprus. The following year, as second-in-command to Group Captain H. M. Cave-Brown-Cave, he flew one of the four metal-hulled Southamptons of the Far East Flight which, on 11 December 1928, completed a historic 27,000-mile cruise to Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong. The Far East Flight proved that flying boats were capable of operating for long periods from improvised bases, and the Air Ministry and the civil airlines began to take a new interest in their military and commercial possibilities. Group Captain Livock concludes his account by describing some of the more unusual activities of 205 Squadron (the first RAF squadron to be stationed in the Far East) in the years 1929 to 1931.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Livock  Gerald Livock Wikipedia