But these monsters of the air were
something more than ordinary seaplanes. For out of the seaplane there
gradually grew a regular flying boat which began to make it hot for
German submarines in 1917. Commander Porte, of the Royal Navy, went on
inventing and trying new kinds of flying boats for nearly three years
before he made one good enough for its very hard and dangerous work.
He had to overcome all the troubles of aircraft and seacraft, put
together, before he succeeded in doing what no one had ever done
before--making a completely new kind of craft that would be not only
seaworthy but airworthy too. Porte's base was at Felixstowe, near the
great destroyer and submarine base at Harwich on the east coast of
England. Strangely enough, Felixstowe was a favourite summer resort of
the Kaiser whenever he came to the British Isles. Felixstowe is within
a hundred miles of the Belgian coast, where the Germans had submarines
at Ostend and Zeebrugge. It is only fifty from the Dutch lightship on
the North Hinder Bank, where German submarines used to come up so as to
make sure of their course on their way between the English Channel and
their own ports.
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