as flying on the 5th of July
was the fast two-seater Nieuport monoplane on which Lieutenant
Barrington-Kennett had achieved some records. It seems that he attempted
too sharp a turn, lost flying speed, side-slipped, and nose-dived. He
was only a few hundred feet up, and there was no time to save the crash.
Those who knew him believe that he would have done much for the Flying
Corps. He spared no pains to understand his business, and to make theory
and practice help each other. Staff-Sergeant Wilson, who was killed with
him, was the senior technical non-commissioned officer of No. 3
Squadron, a first-class man, and a heavy loss.

Other fatalities were to follow. On the 6th of September Captain Patrick
Hamilton and Lieutenant A. Wyness-Stuart, flying a hundred horse-power
Deperdussin monoplane on reconnaissance duties connected with the
cavalry divisional training, crashed and were killed at Graveley, near
Hitchin. Four days later Lieutenant E. Hotchkiss and Lieutenant C. A.
Bettington, flying an eighty horse-power Bristol monoplane from Larkhill
to Cambridge, crashed and were killed at Wolvercote, near Oxford. A
committee was appointed to investigate these accidents, and in the
meantime an order was issued by the War Office forbidding the use of
monoplanes in the Royal Flying Corps. This order altered the scheme for
the army manoeuvres, where it had been intended to allot a squadron of
monoplanes to one force and a squadron of biplanes to the other, in
order to compare results. No. 3 Squadron, nevertheless, assembled near
Cambridge in such strength as it could muster; there were Major
Brooke-Popham, Captain Fox, and Second Lieutenant G. de Havilland of the
squadron; these were joined by Mr. Cody, who came as a civilian with his
own machine, and by officers of the Naval Air Service, who flew Short
biplanes.

The ban on monoplanes, it may be remarked in passing, was a heavy blow
to one of the earliest pioneers of aviation in this country. Mr. L.
Howard Flanders, who had worked with Mr. A. V. Roe at Lea Marshes, and
had designed the 'Pup' monoplane for Mr. J. V. Neale at Brooklands, had
subsequently formed a company for the building of aeroplanes, with works
at Richmond. He obtained a War Office contract for four monoplanes, but
when, after trial, he was engaged in reconstructing the under-carriages,
the use of the monoplane was forbidden to army pilots. This and other
disappointments put an end to Mr. Flanders's building