Two Air Services, One War
When Britain went to war in August 1914, its air power was divided between two services with very different masters. The Royal Flying Corps (RFC) had been formed on 13 May 1912 under the Army, while its naval wing separated on 1 July 1914 to become the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), answering to the Admiralty. The RNAS took with it 39 aircraft, 52 seaplanes and 7 airships. From that split flowed nearly everything that followed: two procurement chains, two design philosophies, and, eventually, the case for a single unified air force.
Charles E. MacKay's "British Aircraft of the Great War: Fighters, Bombers, Seaplanes, Trainers, Flying Boats" takes this institutional story as its spine. As the book sets out, it covers "the aircraft ordering procedures for the Royal Flying Corps, the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Air Force" and describes "how squadrons were formed from 1914 to 1918." This is a history of supply as much as of combat, and that is precisely what makes it unusual.
The aeroplane the Army began with
The RFC went to France equipped largely with slow, stable two-seaters built for reconnaissance, not fighting. That choice nearly proved fatal. From July 1915 the German air service deployed the Fokker Eindecker, the first service aircraft fitted with a machine gun synchronised to fire through the propeller arc. The result was the period the British press called the "Fokker Scourge." The Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2c, stable enough to be flown hands-off but almost defenceless, was dubbed "Fokker Fodder," and RFC losses mounted through the second half of 1915 and into early 1916.
The lesson was permanent. Air superiority would be won by purpose-built fighters, and Britain would have to design, order and deliver them in industrial quantities.
The Fighters That Answered Back
Sopwith: Pup, Camel and the naval connection
The most famous British fighter of the war was the Sopwith F.1 Camel, named for the humped fairing over its twin Vickers guns. It was credited with downing 1,294 enemy aircraft, more than any other Allied fighter of the conflict, with roughly 5,490 built. It was also a difficult and dangerous machine: the gyroscopic torque of its rotary engine killed almost as many novice pilots in accidents as died in combat.
MacKay gives particular attention to the seagoing Sopwiths, an area where the RNAS led. The book describes "the Sopwith Pup and the Sopwith 2F-1 Camel built by Beardmore plus many other types deployed to sea." The naval 2F.1 "Ship's Camel" had a fuselage that separated into two parts for shipboard stowage and a shortened wingspan. William Beardmore and Company of Glasgow received contracts for 180 of them. One Beardmore-built 2F.1, flown by Flight Sub-Lieutenant Stuart Culley, shot down the Zeppelin L 53 on 11 August 1918 after launching from a towed lighter, the last Zeppelin destroyed in the war. This is the kind of industrial and operational detail the book is built around, and it reflects the author's long-standing focus on Clydeside's place in aviation history.
The Royal Aircraft Factory and Bristol fighters
Two other types defined British fighting strength in the second half of the war. The Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5a, introduced in 1917 with around 5,205 built, was one of the fastest aircraft of the war, stable and a steady gun platform that in most respects outperformed the Camel. The Bristol F.2B Fighter, designed by Frank Barnwell, was a two-seater robust enough to hold its own against single-seat scouts; 5,329 were built and it stayed in service into the early 1930s. Between them, Sopwith, the Royal Aircraft Factory and Bristol gave the RFC and later the RAF a fighter force that had decisively turned the tables by 1918.
Bombers, Seaplanes and Flying Boats
Fighters dominate the popular memory of the air war, but the book deliberately ranges wider, covering "Flying Boats, Trainers, Seaplanes, Bombers and Fighters." The RNAS in particular pioneered British strategic and maritime aviation, from coastal flying boats hunting submarines to the first long-range bombers.
The heavy bomber squadrons
MacKay highlights "the heavy bomber squadrons equipped with the Handley Page 0/400 and the V1500." The Handley Page O/400 became the RAF's standard heavy bomber in the closing months of the war, with over 400 delivered before the November 1918 Armistice. It equipped the Independent Force, the strategic bombing force commanded by Sir Hugh Trenchard, which was tasked with striking industrial targets inside Germany. The four-engined Handley Page V/1500 was designed to bomb Berlin from East Anglian airfields and could carry 7,500 pounds of bombs over a 1,300-mile range, although only three had reached service by the Armistice.
These aircraft mark the moment British air power stopped being purely an adjunct to the Army and Navy and became a strategic weapon in its own right.
How Britain Actually Built Its Air Force
Here is where MacKay's book parts company with most popular aviation histories. Its real subject is procurement: how aircraft and engines were ordered, financed and delivered. The book states plainly that it details "the process of procurement for the Ministry of Munitions who supplied the fighting services with munitions" and that "how the air services procured aero-engines is also described."
This matters because the supply system nearly broke under the strain. Responsibility for aircraft supply was transferred to the Ministry of Munitions, a scheme accepted by Lloyd George's War Cabinet in January 1917, with Sir William Weir appointed Controller of Aeronautical Supplies to merge the separate Army and Navy supply sections. Production was concentrated into fewer types and larger factories, and the Ministry commissioned National Aircraft Factories to raise output. The engine, not the airframe, was usually the bottleneck, which is why the book's attention to how "squadrons procured engines and airframes between 1914 and 1918" is so pointed.
The book also covers "Haig's plan for the air services in 1918," tying the aircraft programme back to the strategy it was meant to serve. This is aviation history written from the inside of the supply chain rather than the cockpit alone.
The Birth of the Royal Air Force
The two-service arrangement could not survive the demands of strategic bombing and the political fallout of German raids on Britain. On 1 April 1918 the RFC and the RNAS were amalgamated into the Royal Air Force, the world's first independent air force, under a new Air Ministry. The scale of what had been built is captured in the numbers: a force that began in 1914 with around 2,073 personnel had grown by early 1919 to roughly 114,000 personnel and 4,000 combat aircraft in some 150 squadrons.
MacKay's account follows the procurement story straight through this transition, treating the RFC, the RNAS and the RAF as a continuous administrative achievement rather than three separate stories. That continuity is the book's central argument.
Why this approach matters
Most readers meet the Camel and the S.E.5a as romantic duellists. This book insists on the unglamorous truth behind them: every fighter at the front existed because a contract was placed, an engine was allocated, a factory was tooled and a squadron was stood up and supplied. As the description notes, the work "is based on official archive material and has been originally researched," drawing "from the manufacturers and the Ministry of Munitions" rather than from secondary compilations. For the enthusiast who already knows the aircraft, it is the missing half of the story.
Read the Full Story
"British Aircraft of the Great War: Fighters, Bombers, Seaplanes, Trainers, Flying Boats" (ISBN 9781838056704, published 2022) gathers the RFC, RNAS and RAF procurement story into a single illustrated volume covering fighters, bombers, seaplanes, trainers and flying boats of 1914 to 1918, with the supply of engines and airframes at its heart.
Read the full story in British Aircraft of the Great War: Fighters, Bombers, Seaplanes, Trainers, Flying Boats by Charles E. MacKay.