DEVELOPMENT
For the Royal Naval Air Service’s first large waterborne aircraft, Britain looked across the Atlantic


At the outbreak of the First World War, Britain’s Royal Naval Air Service had only a few waterborne aircraft, mostly floatplanes. All were small, light and unarmed. But following an intense development eff ort, early 1917 saw the introduction into RNAS service of a large maritime machine weighing more than 9,000lb, twin-engined, equipped with multiple machine guns and able to carry substantial bomb loads over long distances. Th is was the Curtiss H-12 flying boat, imported from the United States to help combat Germany’s U-boats around Britain’s coastline.