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The Royal Air Force Marine Branch
It was never the best-known branch of the British military, the Royal Air Force Marine Branch, but throughout both world wars, the arm played a vital role supporting the RAF.
During the First World War, the Royal Naval Air Service had structured its force to protect Britain from both surface and aerial attack. Against surface threats, the Service built up a force of seaplanes and, in support of these, accumulated between 300 and 500 vessels. These craft were used to ferry crews, stores and supplies between the shore and early seaplanes.
The RAF Marine Branch was officially formed in 1918 when the Royal Naval Air Service merged with the Royal Flying Corps to become the Royal Air Force. As the strategic importance of seaplanes gradually declined, the role of rapid pilot rescue became one of the main duties of the Marine Branch – a shift that ultimately paved the way for the ST 200 Series.
A Lethal Inadequacy
In the early 1930s, the RAF Marine Branch was equipped with vessels wholly unsuited to the realities of aviation. For crews operating seaplanes and flying boats, the most dangerous moments of any flight were take-off and landing. When an aircraft crashed in the water, the chances of the aircrew being rescued were astonishingly slim. The RAF relied on slow, heavy tenders that simply could not reach a downed plane before it sank, leaving men to drown just offshore.
The Campaign of Aircraftman Shaw
This parlous state of affairs horrified 338171 Aircraftman 2nd Class T.E. Shaw – the man the world knew as Colonel T.E. Lawrence, or ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Having re-entered the RAF, Lawrence was posted to RAF Mount Batten and witnessed the lethal shortcomings of the existing fleet first-hand. He relentlessly campaigned the Air Ministry for the introduction of fast, purpose-built launches capable of immediate rescue. His impulse to improve the fleet was not born of abstract naval theory but of an urgent necessity to save lives.
Photo by Harry Alonzo Chase – Lowell Thomas, Public Domain, Link
Hubert Scott-Paine and the Power Boat Revolution
The solution came through a remarkable collaboration between Lawrence, the Air Ministry and the visionary master-engineer Hubert Scott-Paine of the British Power Boat Company in Hythe. Together, they jointly developed the prototype for what would become the 200 Class Seaplane Tender.
In 1931, they presented a 37-foot 6-inch vessel to the Air Ministry. Powered by twin 100hp Power Meadows petrol engines, the 4.5-ton hard-chine wooden hull was a revelation. It could reach speeds of up to 30 knots, making it the fastest craft of its size in the world at the time. The Air Ministry immediately placed orders, resulting in 104 of these engineering masterpieces being built. The ST 200 became the definitive blueprint for all subsequent high-speed vessels across all three armed services, eventually evolving into the legendary 100 Class High-Speed Launch.
By Royal Air Force official photographer – This photograph CI 46 comes from the collections of the Imperial War Museums., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19245845
The Battle of Britain
While the ST200 was conceived for peacetime seaplane tendering, its true proving ground emerged in the summer of 1940. As the war erupted over the English Channel, the Battle of Britain forced these lightweight, responsive launches into the frontline.
The most valuable assets in the skies were not the planes – they were the pilots: the training, the experience, the courage represented a finite supply of an invaluable resource. Downed fighter pilots adrift in freezing waters depended entirely on the speed and reliability of Scott-Paine’s hulls.
The ST200 class vessels were the mechanical guardians of the RAF pilots, tearing across the Channel to pull invaluable aircrew from the sea under heavy enemy fire.
Famously, as the Battle of Britain drew to a close, the RAF had more fighter planes than at the outset. Many, many more planes were lost that summer than pilots.
This interview with a retired engineer restoring a wartime rescue vessel offers excellent historical context on how the Air Sea Rescue service operated during the Battle of Britain.