WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 1917

CREATING THE AIR MINISTRY 105
lins were housed, on the machines of the Naval Air Service
— tasks which Mr. Churchill cheerfully undertook and vigorously
pursued. He accepted on September 3rd, 1914, at Lord
Kitchener's request, the charge of our Home Air Defence,
and on the principle that attack was the best form of defence,
he flung planes across to Dunkirk to raid enemy air
bases. Out of this grew a large independent development of
naval air activity, leading to the organisation of the Royal
Naval Air Service as a quite distinct body from the Royal
Flying Corps. To quote the first Report of the Air Board,
in October, 1916:
. . . Before the War, as is well known, there was no independent
Naval Air Service or organisation at all. There were a
military and a naval wing of a joint Service. Mr. Churchill took
the Naval Air Service into his own hands, and, though the
Fourth Sea Lord was nominally responsible, ran it himself on
vigorous but unorthodox lines. When he resigned, it became for
the first time a subordinate branch of the Admiralty, reorganised
on naval lines, under an Admiral, with naval heads of the personnel
and technical branches.
We soon found that there were several grave drawbacks
to this aerial dichotomy. The two air services, naval and
military, were competing with each other for the available
supplies of aero engines — many of which were at that stage
only procurable from France. They were competing rather
than pooling their experiments and inventions in regard to
technical improvements. The Navy, being at once the senior
Service and an essentially mechanised service, started with
a priority of claim on available resources, and a superior array
of mechanical talent. There was a good deal of bombing
by the naval aeroplanes on the Belgian coast. There was no
authenticated record of any hits which demolished German
craft or works, but Belgian towns were undoubtedly damaged,
some Belgian civilians killed, and the rest terrorised.