Flying over Gallipoli with the RNAS
Most New Zealanders who flew as pilots in World War I went to Britain and joined the Royal Flying Corps. However, Phillip Kenning Fowler from Feilding, took a different path. Making his own way to England in 1916, he joined the Royal Navy and trained to become a pilot in the Royal Naval Air Service. This air-borne division operated under the Admiralty from 1914 to April 1918 when it merged with the R.F.C. and formed the Royal Air Force, or R.A.F.
Fowler was based initially in the Aegean Sea and eastern Mediterranean. Later in the war, he was one of the pilots tasked with trying to bring down German Zeppelin airships over the English Channel, before they could bomb British cities.
In this radio interview recorded in the 1960s, he recalls burning crops destined for Germany and early aerial bombing techniques. which amounted to simply dropping explosives over the side of the plane.
Year:1917-1918
Location:Aegean Sea, Eastern Mediterranean
Flying over Gallipoli with the RNAS
Most New Zealanders who flew as pilots in World War I went to Britain and joined the Royal Flying Corps. However, Phillip Kenning Fowler from Feilding, took a different path. Making his own way to England in 1916, he joined the Royal Navy and trained to become a pilot in the Royal Naval Air Service. This air-borne division operated under the Admiralty from 1914 to April 1918 when it merged with the R.F.C. and formed the Royal Air Force, or R.A.F.
Fowler was based initially in the Aegean Sea and eastern Mediterranean. Later in the war, he was one of the pilots tasked with trying to bring down German Zeppelin airships over the English Channel, before they could bomb British cities.
In this radio interview recorded in the 1960s, he recalls burning crops destined for Germany and early aerial bombing techniques. which amounted to simply dropping explosives over the side of the plane.
Year: 1917-1918
Length: 4:55
Production Company: Radio New Zealand
Source: Radio New Zealand Collection, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision
Catalogue Reference: 253279 [Philip Kenning Fowler talks about serving with the Royal Naval Air Service during World War I]
People: Philip Kenning Fowler, Charles Rumney Samson
Location: Aegean Sea, Eastern Mediterranean
Image Title: Philip Kenning Fowler’s 1916 aviator’s certificate
Image Source: Courtesy Ian Matheson City Archives, Palmerston North
During his war service, Philip Fowler served twice under Commander Charles Rumney Samson, a legendary pioneer of naval aviation. In 1912 he was the first pilot to take-off from a ship, but it wasn’t until 1917 that another R.N.A.S. pilot successfully manage to land on a moving vessel. Until then, as Fowler explains, they often just ditched into the water near their ship and were then winched aboard.
Samson was also famous for his flights over the Gallipoli Peninsula during the Dardanelles campaign, but Philip Fowler did not arrive in the region until late 1916, well after the evacuation from Gallipoli. He ran bombing runs from island bases in the Aegean, targetting infrastructure such as bridges and fields of crops which were destined to be sent to Germany.
He wrote home to his parents in early 1917 to tell them he was flying Bristol Scouts and an excerpt from his letter was published in the Freelance newspaper: “Flight Lieut. Phil Fowler, of Fielding writes that he is now in charge of a new scouting-plane, and he has painted it black and yellow, the Fielding football [club] colours, and christened it “Kia Ora”.1
After the war, Fowler continued his career in aviation, entering the New Zealand history books as the first pilot to fly from Wellington to Nelson and also as the first person be charged under the Aviation Act after a spot of stunt flying over Timaru in 1921.
1. 'Palmerston Doings'. Freelance, Volume XVI, Issue 878, 4 May 1917