E.A. Milne and the creation of air defence: some letters from an unprincipled brigand, 1916-1919

Abstract

During the First World War my father, the astrophysicist and mathematician E.A. Milne*, curtailed his undergraduate studies at Cambridge, and became one of ‘Hill’s Brigands’. They were a research group of talented mathematicians and physicists formed by the eminent physiologist A. V. Hill and centred at the naval gunnery school, HMS Excellent , at Portsmouth. Their investigations into anti-aircraft gunnery provided accurate knowledge, for the first time, of the behaviour of shells (1), and the conclusions they drew were compiled into a War Office textbook (2) which was still of use in World War II (3). In the early stages of the 1914-18 War, raids by the slow-moving giant Zeppelins were the chief aerial threat to England, because German planes patrolled behind their own lines and rarely flew across the Channel. With the development of improved aircraft, such as the manoeuvrable Bristol Scout, a stop was eventually put to these raids (with the exception of the later high-altitude sorties), but the bombing raids by the powerful twin-engined Gotha planes posed a fresh menace. An urgent need for effective aerial defence arose, especially as the Government had until then put its main home defence resources into anti-submarine warfare. The responsibility for defence was confused and uncoordinated with no single command head: Aerial Defence was returned to the Admiralty in 1916 from the War Office, and Home Defence was shared by the Royal Naval Air Service, the Royal Flying Corps and the Home Defence Corps. The fusion of the RNAS and RFC did not take place until 1 April 1918.