Barlow pre WW1
BARLOW: Temporary Landing Ground
Operated by: Royal Flying Corps
Location: Just N of Barlow village, about 2nm SE of Selby town centre
Period of operation: Early to mid May 1914
A MICHAEL T HOLDER GALLERY
We have Mike Holder, a great friend of this 'Guide' to thank for discovering this little known location.
The article was published in the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer on the 8th May 1914.
The area view is from my Google Earth © derived database.
NOTES: It appears that an exercise in logistics had been arranged which included twelve biplanes from No.2 Squadron based at MONTROSE, to be flying down, via multiple stops, to Salisbury Plain. Previously, in this area, the racecourse at Knavesmire had been used, but that was not available do to horse racing taking place.
It seems entirely reasonable to suppose that one of the main reasons for ordering this exercise was simply because the situation in central Europe was exceedingly volatile, and that another large scale war in Europe was pretty much inevitable. Turned out the predictions were entirely correct, Austria-Hungary declaring war on the 28th July 1914, immediately following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Serbia.
Germany immediately sided with Austria-Hungary and launched an invasion westwards into Luxembourg, Belgium and France. It would appear that in Britain this had also been expected - hence the need to see how well a reasonably sized deployment over a long distance could be conducted. The military establishment however had not at that time foreseen any great need for the use of aeroplanes. conceding at best that they might be useful, alongside tethered balloons, for mostly artillery ranging spotting duties.
Once the two opposing forces had dug in, quite literally in trenches, which eventually extended from the Belgian coast almost to Switzerland, the use of the aeroplane for extended reconnaissance, including aerial photography, soon proved their worth. It took a while though before the concept of arming aeroplanes, mainly to combat each other, began to be developed.
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