ain F. H. Sykes was given the command of the Military Wing on its
formation. His adjutant was Lieutenant B. H. Barrington-Kennett. Captain
H. R. M. Brooke-Popham in March of that year joined the Air Battalion,
and was serving at Farnborough when the Royal Flying Corps came into
being. Most of the aeroplane company were then at Larkhill, but Captain
C. J. Burke, with his B.E. machine, and Captain A. G. Fox, of the Royal
Engineers, with a Bristol box-kite, were at Farnborough. Some of the
officers of the airship company were making strenuous and successful
efforts to get the aviation certificates which were demanded from
officers of the new formation. In April and May about a dozen officers
from various units joined at Farnborough. One of the first of these was
Captain Patrick Hamilton, of the Worcestershire Regiment, who had done
much flying in the Argentine (and, incidentally, had been stoned by the
human herd for refusing to give an exhibition flight in impossible
weather). He was a keen and skilled aviator; he had made more than two
hundred flights, and had had some narrow escapes--one particularly, when
his machine capsized and glided a hundred feet upside-down, at a sharp
angle to the ground. By the two strong masts of the monoplane and by the
breaking of the machine he was preserved unhurt. He remarked that it was
a good lesson, for 'to an aviator experience is everything'. He brought
with him to Farnborough his two-seater Deperdussin monoplane with a
sixty horse-power Anzani engine. Others who joined about the same time
were Major H. R. Cook of the Royal Artillery, who became instructor in
theory at the Central Flying School, Captain E. B. Loraine of the
Grenadier Guards, Captain C. R. W. Allen of the Welch Regiment, Captain
G. H. Raleigh of the Essex Regiment, Lieutenant C. A. H. Longcroft of
the Welch Regiment, and Lieutenant G. T. Porter of the Royal Artillery.
A sort of class was held at Farnborough for these early recruits; they
heard lectures, and did practical work in the overhaul of engines.

There were only four serviceable machines available at that time, one
B.E., one Breguet, and two Bristol box-kites, so the recruits, who
wanted above all things to fly, were disappointed. They were taken up in
the baskets of captive spherical balloons, where they spent hour after
hour sketching the various parts of Farnborough, counting the cows on
the common, and writing descriptions of what they could see from the
ba