I am presently reading E.P.F.Lynch’s “Somme Mud”.
Towards the end he relates the attack on German-held Hamel (near Amiens) on, I think, 4th July, 1918. After a sucessful advance he saw his first instance of RAF aeroplanes dropping boxes of ammunition, pickets and barbed wire by parachute.
Anybody know when was the first recorded instance of supplying troops by air?
Roger Smith.
By: Rlangham - 29th March 2009 at 13:40
Yeah… back to where it started!
By: Creaking Door - 29th March 2009 at 00:32
In November 1917 the Germans managed to transport over 30,000lb of supplies by air, over a distance of 4200 miles…..non-stop! 😉
By: JDK - 29th March 2009 at 00:01
Lawrence Wackett Australian Flying Corps came up with a dropping device in the Mid East and it was used there and later on the Western Front.
Wackett later transferred to No. 3 Squadron AFC in France and played a significant role in the Battle of Hamel fought on July 4, 1918. Captured German documents revealed that they had been experimenting with dropping ammunition from aircraft and 3 Sqn. was asked to investigate doing the same. Wackett was asked to do the work as his reputation had spread; ‘he had a gift for mechanical inventions’ according to his superiors[5]. Now a Captain, he devised a small parachute that could be used to drop supplies to troops, designed a modified bomb rack to hold the supplies and then trained 3 Sqn. personnel in the required technique. General Monash’s battle plan for Hamel involved resupplying the engaged machine-gunners with ammunition dropped by aircraft. In the event 3 Sqn was assigned other tasks during the battle and the ammunition dropping was performed by No. 9 Squadron RAF. Monash later wrote, ‘at least 100,000 rounds of ammunition were [dropped] during the battle with obvious economy in lives and wounds. The method thus initiated became general in later months'[3][7]. Later that year, on September 25, Wackett undertook a daring reconnaissance mission in 3 Squadron’s first Bristol F.2 Fighter, when he penetrated six miles (10 km) behind enemy lines to take aerial photographs of the German Joncourt-Villers Outreaux line, that were needed for a forthcoming attack[5]. Two days later he carried out an ammunition resupply flight to some isolated troops using the equipment he had designed. As a result of these two actions he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross[8].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Wackett
Also touched on here (note PDF):
http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2007/oct07/story-2.pdf
There’s a photo of the device and more detail in the Crowood book on the Royal Aircraft Factory.
While certainly not the first, Wackett’s was among the first effective, planned, given appropriate equipment and successful efforts.
HTH!
By: John Aeroclub - 28th March 2009 at 19:42
Not entirely sure but I think the beseiged garrison at Kut (Iraq) (1916?) were dropped some supplies by air.
John
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March 28, 2009 at 6:07 pm