The Spider Web The Romance of a Flying-Boat War Flight by P.I.X.
London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1919. Octavo, original decorated blue cloth, x, 278 pp., frontispiece and nineteen full-page maps, photo plates and diagrams. A little foxing affects the fore-edge, yet an excellent copy overall. Scarce account of Royal Naval flying-boats used against German U-boats in the North Sea during the First World War.
The Spider Web is the autobiographical account of Theodore Hallam, a Canadian pilot who transferred to the Royal Naval Air Service station at Felixstowe in March 1917. Noffsinger provides a biographical summary of the author, who wrote his account at the close of hostilities as much of the content was both sensitive and secret. As a record of the development of flying-boat technology the book is undoubtably important, and features good images of both the Porte Baby and Porte Super Baby.
Given the extent and danger of the U-boat menace, there was keen interest in the use of aeroplanes to detect and bomb them. However, some naval men believed in flying boats, whereas others were convinced of the merits of launching conventional aircraft from vessels with rudimentary flight decks.
The state-of-play between the two camps is described in the preface to The Spider Web, and gives some sense of the urgency and importance of the work underway at Felixstowe:
From the very beginning of things there was much faith shown by the sea-going pilots of the Royal Naval Air Service in the seaplane as a weapon to do down the U-boat. But the technical people of the service neglected float seaplanes; and flying-boats, of which they did not approve, took a long time to develop. Instead of perfecting seaplanes the slide-rule merchants developed scout land machines with the idea of using them off the decks of ships, and a strong force of aeroplane pilots was collected and provided with fast and handy aeroplanes… There would probably not have been any big British flying-boats but for the vision, persistence and energy of Colonel J.C. Porte, who designed and built at Felixstowe Air Station the experimental machine of each type of British flying-boat successfully used in the service. Myron Smith 793; Noffsinger 1284. Item #201
Price (AUD): $450.00