To the Ends of the Air by Group Captain G E Livock DFC AFC. PB. HMSO. 1973.
At one of the schools attended by your reviewer the owner/headmaster was Group Captain Gerry Livock. He hardly talked of his Service history and it was only a chance check on the web many years later that found he had written a book. Although written almost forty years ago it can be found on Mr Amazon’s dealer system and other websites. It is a real historical gem.
Groupie, as the school pupils inevitably called him, had started his Service career in 1914, serving in the R.N.A.S. and then R.A.F. This book covers his career until 1931. He was awarded Flying Certificate 1004 after only a little over ten hours in the air, most of it in ten minute hops. From his early flights at Hendon in one of the original R.N.A.S aeroplanes, only fourteen years later Livock was to lead four large flying boats across the world to Australia.
In October 1914, literally direct from school, he had been appointed to R.N.A.S. Hendon being sent straight to Gieves to be kitted out before his first flight experience in a Graham-White Boxkite, 50 h.p. Gnome rotary engine, a layout not designed to make turning the aircraft any easier even apart from lack of any throttle control. His flight commander turned out to be a Russian with poor English which cannot have helped. Livock should have been one of the first thousand to receive his ticket but there was a shortage of aircraft due to someone pranging on overshoot so he dipped out whilst some from other schools dipped in and delayed his test..
The description of this early flying instruction is particularly well told and does not evade the perils and casualties. After three months he went to C.F.S. at Upavon flying the BE2a/BE8 and from there the move which gave him his specialisation in seaplanes and, later, flying boats combining airmanship with seamanship. At this stage of his career Livock’s flying concentrated on anti U-boat patrols but these proved mainly ineffective and reconnaissance became the priority although also some Zeppelin hunting and attempted bombing, operating from seaplane carriers using Short 830 and 184 seaplanes. However he notes the lack of understanding by the navy in the possibilities of flying, something heard also in later years.
This aspect of first war flying has probably not been covered better anywhere, detailed but very readable and gives a real flavour of what flying over the sea from seaplane carriers in the first war was all about. There is mention of his Gieves life jacket. Yes, really. Try Google.
A move to Great Yarmouth gave Livock more flying in seaplanes and then moving up to flying boats, initially the Curtiss H12 which was soon modified to the F boat, this really sealing his enthusiasm for the larger types. Gerry Livock’s Royal Navy service came to an end in April 1918, of course, when, to the disgust of many R.N.A.S. people he, he writes, he became R.A.F.
Even after the R.N.A.S. period of his career, his Air Force flying will be equally fascinating to naval flyers and historians as he stayed with flying boats in what can only be described as pioneering work, although prior to that 1919 was to find him in H.M.S. Argus bound for north Russia with an expeditionary force. An operation little remembered nowadays. Then back to England.
Four years of development flying were followed by posting to the Far East with Fairey IIID aircraft, later returning to England to command the Flying Boat Development Flight and leading two Supermarine Southamptons on investigative flights to Cyprus and Egypt.
1926/7 gave Livock the non-flying job of ground survey of the most difficult part of the Australia air route, tasked with locating suitable areas for land planes so that the route could be opened up properly. Dum Dum airport is still the airport for Calcutta but now has an unpronounceable name. En route through Burma towards Singapore it was Livock who also selected the area that is still Rangoon Mingaladon airport as the reviewer can vouch having been there a year or two ago.
Back in England he joined the Far East Flight and was 2 i/c to Cave-Brown-Cave on a real epic adventure, all 27,000 miles of it, using Southamptons, this at a time when hardly any of the route was really opened up and the stretch Calcutta to Singapore was unknown from an aviation standpoint; Imperial Airways had not even reached India at that time. The adventure took them to Singapore, a circumnavigation of Australia thence Hong Kong, Philippines.
Livock remained Far East, becoming boss of 205 squadron as well as OC RAF Far East. Their flying took them through extremely difficult weather conditions in covering the Far East in considerable depth including involvement in the Burma Rebellion and then detailed survey of a virtually unmapped part of the South China Sea, 250 miles North West of Borneo. Unexplored. Although operating out of Kudat,on the northern tip of Borneo, they established an advanced base on Commodore Reef in case of emergency, holding fuel there just in case, as flying from Kudat to and from the survey area meant seven or more hours in the air. The reef, then unoccupied, is still being argued about by Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Taiwan and the Philippines.
At the end of this extremely independent command he returns to R.A.F. Seletar which those of us of a certain age will remember. This was an appropriate place to end the book as he had, in 1925, flown over and photographed a patch of jungle, mangrove and rubber that was to become the airfield. In later years one could land there and see a golf ball bounce across the runway.
This is a rare book, in fact an historic document which is presumably why it was published by H.M.S.O. in 1973. It deserves reprint but meanwhile try searching the Web for a copy. Certainly makes one envious of the pioneering flying of the 1914 – 1930 years.
Groupie ran a good school as well. Your reviewer still remembers the actual point in the school drive when he was told that a friend’s son was joining one of the Services, the first time he had heard the magic words Fleet Air Arm.
Additional information.
Livock’s gongs:
DFC awarded 1918 – Capt. (T./Maj.) Gerald Edward Livock (Sea Patrol). Has rendered valuable services on numerous occasions on reconnaissance patrols in enemy waters, in attacks on hostile seaplanes, and in connection with anti-submarine patrol work.
AFC awarded 1929 for pioneer work described above.
Subsequent to the book there is mention of his diary lodged in the Imperial War Museum ‘covering his appointment as station commander Kalafrana repair and store depot, Malta, from December 1940 to October 1941 including some useful details of life in Malta during the early stages of the siege of the island.’
He appears in the wartime Ministry of Information film ‘Coastal Command’ made in 1942.
Short obituary from the Web – Gerald Edward Livock DFC AFC (11 July 1897 in Newmarket, Suffolk, England – 27 January 1989 in Blandford Forum, Dorset) was an English cricketer, aviator and archaeologist. A right-handed batsman and wicket-keeper, he played first-class cricket for various teams between 1923 and 1934.
With thanks to Mic Comber who has reviewed the book and who notes that it is strange that on various small websites there is no mention of Livock’s Service careers but more emphasis on cricket.