ourse. Most of these were army officers,
but there was also a fair number of naval officers, marine officers, and
naval volunteer and civilian reservists. The school was run on army
lines, so that a good deal of adjustment and tact were called for in
dealing with the navy pupils, who were accustomed to a more generous
scale of allowances and a different system of discipline. But the
resolve to make a success of the new air force prevailed over lesser
difficulties, and harmony was maintained.

The steady flow of recruits from Upavon soon enabled the Military Wing
of the Royal Flying Corps to form new squadrons. These squadrons all
started in the same fashion; they hived off, so to say, from the earlier
squadrons. As early as September 1912, a part of Major Burke's squadron,
stationed at Farnborough, was detached, and became the basis of No. 4
Squadron, commanded by Major G. H. Raleigh, of the Essex Regiment, who
had joined the Air Battalion just before the birth of the Royal Flying
Corps. In August 1913 a single flight of Major Brooke-Popham's squadron
became the basis of No. 5 Squadron, under Major J. F. A. Higgins. In
January 1914 No. 6 Squadron, under Captain J. H. W. Becke, of the Notts.
and Derby Regiment, and in May 1914 No. 7 Squadron, which was commanded
later by Major J. M. Salmond, began to be formed at Farnborough.

The history of the Military Wing of the Royal Flying Corps before the
war may be best illustrated by a more detailed account of the doings of
the two earliest squadrons, commanded by Major Brooke-Popham and Major
Burke. These showed the way to the others. There was no generally
recognized orthodox method of training flying men for the purposes of
war. Most of the work of the early squadrons was, in the strictest sense
of the word, experimental. There was at first a vague idea, expressed in
the Army Estimates of 1912, that the Royal Aircraft Factory was
responsible for experiments, and that the squadrons had only to apply
methods and use machinery already tested and approved by others. But it
was soon found that the problems of the air could not be effectively
anticipated in the laboratory. They were many of them soldiers'
problems. The man who is to meet the enemy in the air, and to be shot
at, has a quick imagination in dealing with such matters as the
protective colouring of aircraft, their defences against enemy bullets,
or the designing of them so as to give a good field of fire to any
weapon