fine Avro biplane, whose splendid performances stamped
it as one of the finest aeroplanes ever designed, if not indeed the
finest of all".

This craft is fitted with an 80-horse-power Gnome engine, and is
probably the fastest passenger-carrying biplane of its type in the
world. Its total weight, with engine, fuel for three hours, and a
passenger, is 1550 pounds, and it has a main-plane surface of 342 square
feet.

Not only can the biplane maintain such great speed, but, what is of
great importance for observation purposes, it can fly at the slow rate
of 30 miles per hour. We have previously remarked that a machine is kept
up in the air by the speed it attains; if its normal flying speed be
much reduced the machine drops to earth unless the rate of flying is
accelerated by diving, or other means.

What Harry Hawker is to Mr. Sopwith so is F. P. Raynham to Mr. Roe. This
skilful pilot learned to fly at Brooklands, and during the last year
or two he has been continuously engaged in testing Avro machines, and
passing them through the Army reception trials. In the "Aerial Derby"
of 1913 Mr. Raynham piloted an 80-horse-power Avro biplane, and came in
fourth.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. The Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service

The year 1912 was marked by the institution of the Royal Flying Corps.
The new corps, which was so soon to make its mark in the greatest of all
wars, consisted of naval and military "wings". In those early days the
head-quarters of the corps were at Eastchurch, and there both naval
and military officers were trained in aviation. In an arm of such
rapid--almost miraculous--development as Service flying to go back a
period of six years is almost to take a plunge into ancient history.
Designs, engines, guns, fittings, signals of those days are now almost
archaic. The British engine of reliable make had not yet been evolved,
and the aeroplane generally was a conglomerate affair made up of parts
assembled from various parts of the Continent. The present-day sea-plane
was yet to come, and naval pilots shared the land-going aeroplanes
of their military brethren. In the days when Bleriot provided a world
sensation by flying across the Channel the new science was kept
alive mainly by the private enterprise of newspapers and aeroplane
manufacturers. The official attitude, as is so often the case in the
history of inventions, was as frigid as could be. The Government looked
on with a cold and critical eye