I just recently finished “I Chose the Sky” by Leonard “Tich” Rochford, an account of his time in the Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force during The Great War. I was very much looking forward to this piece as there aren’t many RNAS pilot memoirs in existence, at least compared to Royal Flying Corps pieces, and it didn’t disappoint. At 224 pages, this book serves as a very good resource for gaining insight into the Royal Naval Air Service’s contribution to The Great War and gives the reader an understanding of the life in a fighter squadron at the front lines. From the beginning of the book to the end, Tich writes each page as if he was talking to a friend which made the book even more enjoyable to read. He begins the book with his early childhood and how his interest in aviation developed, so when the war began he “chose the sky” instead of the infamously unglamorous war on the surface. His tales of flight school in 1916 followed with detail on how the entire course for pupils was organized and stories of his flying adventures while not at a fighter squadron. Soon that dream came true, and he was posted to 3 Naval Squadron in 1917 which was then attached to the Army for fighting duties alongside the Royal Flying Corps.
Here begins his life as a combat pilot in the First World War. As briefly mentioned earlier, Rochford’s writing style is that of a friendly correspondence and I would further describe the rest of the chapters as a sort of ‘tour of the logbook’. He writes of his fights but in a way that is not as creatively descriptive one might find in other memoirs. His scraps and stories are written in a very matter-of-fact way, without the imaginative detail that one might find in other memoirs written of the air war. An example of this being “In the afternoon of 1st October Hayne and myself accompanied Beamish on the Fleet Protective Patrol. Beamish developed engine trouble and returned to Bray Dunes but Hayne and myself carried on the patrol. When over the sea off Nieuport we saw a two-seater DFW flying at 7,000 feet about three miles off the coast. We attacked and drove him down to 1,500 feet over Westende but unfortunately we both had gun jams and he was able to continue diving away from us inland. The observer was probably killed or wounded as he had suddenly ceased firing at us during the chase. For the next ten days we had very bad weather and flying was impossible, but during the morning of the 11th we escorted DH4’s to bomb Bruges Docks. We flew at 17,000 feet and the cold was intense.” (Leonard “Tich” Rochford. I Chose the Sky. William Kimber & Co., 1977. p.114) Almost the entire book is written in this manner, but I found it quite enjoyable because I felt like I was reading his own logbook as I toured through the pages; one can tell he had his logbook in front of him during the writing process. Besides the wonderful flying stories and tour of his logbook, Rochford includes the reader in each move of the squadron to different aerodromes and tells fun stories of the officer’s time in the mess with his fellow pilots. As the war became mobile and the Army required squadrons to constantly move aerodromes, the RFC and RNAS amalgamated to become the Royal Air Force, which Rochford briefly covers in this book. Continuing a theme I’ve seen in multiple books written by First World War aviators, this combining of forces is only hardly mentioned because war flying was war flying to them; in the morning they still had to fly combat missions! Rochford’s book is no different, and not much is discussed regarding the formation of the RAF on April 1st 1918.
There is no doubt that this book would make a wonderful addition to the First World War or aviation enthusiast’s library as it contains lots of wonderful material for each reader. With an overwhelming majority of the WWI aviation memoirs being from pilots of the Royal Flying Corps, it is a neat touch to read about the Royal Naval Air Service’s war from 1917 to 1918. I believe and hope that you will hold the same opinion if you decide to read this fantastic piece of Great War literature.
