Seaplane

The Frenchman Henri Fabre made the first successful seaplane flight in March 1910, and the American Glenn Curtiss soon built the first flying boats. Navies took to them readily, since they needed no airfields: they took off from the water in harbours or from carriers that lowered them over the side by crane. In September 1914 Japanese seaplanes from the Wakamiya bombed Tsingtao, and on Christmas Day British ones, carried by converted ferries, attacked the airship base at Cuxhaven.

On 12 August 1915 Charles Edmonds, flying a Short 184 seaplane, dropped a torpedo on a Turkish ship in the Sea of Marmara, although the target had already been crippled by a submarine. A Short 184 from Engadine was the only British aircraft at the Battle of Jutland. Until the end of the war seaplanes and flying boats, such as the British Felixstowes, patrolled the seas looking for U-boats and airships; the German, Austro-Hungarian, Italian and Russian navies had their own. Waves, however, hampered take-offs, so aircraft flying from a deck grew in importance.