Francis Stewart Briggs

Francis Stewart Briggs (18 September 1897 – 21 July 1966) was a pioneering Australian aviator. Frank Briggs learnt to fly with the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War. During the Peace Conference in 1919 he flew delegates between London and Paris and was the personal pilot of Australia’s Prime Minister, Billy Hughes. On return to Australia, Briggs flew with Jack De Garis and in 1922 joined Herbert Joseph Larkin's “Australian Aerial Services” (AAS) company, headquartered at Hay, New South Wales. Frank Briggs married Miriam Carter in Hay on 3 August 1926. Later he joined the Shell Oil Company, taking charge of a new aviation department in Perth.

Early years
Francis Stewart Briggs was born in Fort William, India on 18 September 1897. His parents (both widowed) had married in Calcutta on 30 April 1895. His father, George Howard Briggs, who worked as a (non-musical) Conductor with the British Indian Army in the Bengal Ordnance Department, died in Allahabad of fever on 5 June 1897, three months before Francis was born. Some years later, his mother, Eliza Briggs (nee Eldridge), and her son moved first to Jersey in the Channel Islands then in 1912 to Adelaide. Before the war, Briggs was a telegraph operator at the Adelaide GPO.

(George Howard Briggs' first wife was Elizabeth Eleanor Sophia Ross, born 5 February 1857 in Umballa, India. They married on 13 September 1883 in Ferozepore, India. She died in Rawalpindi on 26 December 1888. Eliza Eldridge's first husband was Francis O'Hare, an army tailor. They married on 13 May 1883 in Battersea. Francis O'Hare died on 21 March 1892 at Fort William, India.)

World War I
Briggs enlisted as a signaller with the Australian 3rd Light Horse Regiment of the 1st Light Horse Brigade, embarking from Adelaide on 11 January 1916. By May 1916, he was in France (at Croix du Bac near Steenwerck) with the AIF as a Wireless Operator and Signalman. In November 1916, he was selected by the Royal Flying Corps. Two other men were selected from Briggs' division (4th Division (Australia)) at this time - Charles Kingsford Smith and Edgar Johnston, all three survived the war.

Training
Initial training, starting November 1916, was at Denham, Buckinghamshire. This training continued at Oxford from January to March 1917. The cadets were quartered at various colleges. Briggs was at Exeter College, where his room-mate was Edgar Johnston. On March 10 all the cadets succeeded in their examinations and passed out from Oxford. On March 17 Briggs was simultaneously honourably discharged from the AIF and admitted to the RFC as a second lieutenant.

On March 24 Briggs was in Thetford to start training on an aircraft, the Maurice Farman Shorthorn, known as a "Rumpty". His instructor was Captain Foggin. On June 15, after twenty hours of flying solo, Briggs was amazed to receive orders to report to a training squadron in Stirling as an instructor.

Scotland
On July 30 Briggs was introduced to his first six pupils. First in the air was a gentleman named Pitt-Pitts, believed by Briggs to be great grandson of the famous British statesman Pitt. On August 19 Briggs crashed his Martinsyde Elephant aircraft. He and other members of the squadron had been in the habit of flying very low over the local golf course on their return, a practice the CO had banned. The procedure involved hopping across traffic on a road bordering the aerodrome, plus a wall separating the road and the aerodrome. On this occasion Briggs hurdled a car on the road, but then noticed that the car was the CO's and saw his enraged face staring out. Distracted for a split second he forgot about the wall, had to climb almost vertically, stalled and crashed on the aerodrome side of the wall. Briggs walked away without a scratch but with badly bruised feet. The CO was so relieved Briggs was OK that all he did was shake his head at him and he walked away speechless.

The squadron relocated from Stirling to Montrose, where a fighter squadron  No. 80 Squadron of Sopwith Camels was being formed. On October 2 Briggs was flying a De Havilland IV bomber when he noticed a Sopwith Camel using him as a practice target. He responded in kind, engaging the Camel, flying the De H. IV as if it were a fighter. When he landed the CO of No. 80 Squadron (Major Graham, an Australian) offered Briggs a place in his squadron, an offer which delighted Briggs (who was keen to see active service).

Suffolk
Briggs' hopes were soon dashed. Major Graham had started the transfer process, but Briggs learnt on October 10 that higher authority had decided he be transferred instead to the RFC Test and Experimental Station at Orfordness. Briggs recorded that Orfordness was regarded by pilots as "a very hush-hush show where high priests perform aerial magic". Briggs was at Orfordness on October 14. The CO, Major Norman, had invented a machine-gun sight that made firing reasonably accurate for the average pilot. In the mess Briggs was introduced to two Oxford dons and a Cambridge don (one of whom, Captain Fairbairn, he later taught to fly). On the base he was delighted to discover another Australian, Lieutenant Wackett (the very resourceful Lawrence Wackett, who later invented a very efficient anti-aircraft gun sight).

The reason he was posted to Orfordness was to conduct experiments in cloud flying (later known as blind flying) and aerial navigation. He was told that bad weather in France was restricting flying operations, if more pilots could get above the cloud on dirty weather days then more bombing could be carried out inside German territory. At this stage cloud flying was an unknown art, nobody could tell Briggs much about it. He depended on the standard rev. counter, airspeed indicator, inclinometer and compass. After two days at the station Briggs was joined by four more pilots who had been assigned to research cloud flying. These were Bell and Montmorency (Canadians) and Powell and Weller (Englishmen). They were soon able to fly through ten or twelve thousand feet of cloud in reasonable formation (Briggs recorded in his diary).



The squadron also acted as an unofficial Home Defence squadron. German raids on London passed over Orfordness on their way out and on their way back. Four months earlier a Zeppelin had been shot down by a station pilot. On the night of October 19 Briggs was part of a "reception committee" sent out to "welcome" some German visitors. Word was received that some Gotha bombers would soon pass overhead. Briggs took off in a B.E.12a and climbed to 15,000 feet, the height at which he thought the bombers would cross the North Sea. It was pitch black, and cold and miserable after cruising around for an hour or so, Briggs was starting to believe that the Gotha report was a "furphy". Then, for a fleeting second, he saw a flicker of flame, like a "will o' the wisp", then all was black again. After what seemed like an eternity he saw it again "obviously a tiny flame from an exhaust pipe .. about half a mile in front of me and slightly below". When he got closer he saw its (the flame's) twin and knew for certain he was behind a Gotha. Now, however, the tiny exhaust flames were becoming fainter. The Gotha was faster than Briggs' plane, he had only gained on it while diving from a higher altitude. Briggs fired a long burst, hoping the range was not as great as it looked, but the Gotha proceeded out of sight. The next morning the flight sergeant said "It certainly wasn't your fault that Hun got away!" and showed Briggs the throttle lever that he had bent trying to get more revs out of the engine.

Another function of the Orfordness station was "proofing" every batch of bombs for delivery overseas. From every batch of 250 bombs, four were tested on a concrete target on the beach. If one failed to explode the whole batch was scrapped. On November 5 Briggs recorded an event involving Lawrence Wackett. Wackett had been up proofing some 112-pounders. He heard three detonations, but not the fourth, and assumed this was a dud. The fourth bomb was still partially attached to the bomb-carrying rack. It detached when the aircraft received a bump as Wackett was about to land. The machine went up on its nose, then over on its back. A startled Wackett climbed out of the wreckage. Two weeks later (on November 18) Briggs had his own scare while proofing. He dropped a 360 pound bomb on the target from about 60 feet height. Two things then happened. The blast under the tail put the plane into an almost vertical dive position, and there was a loud "wham" from the aircraft. A piece of bomb casing had torn a fist-sized hole through the aircraft. As Briggs put it "six inches in the wrong direction and I would have had difficulty in sitting down for some long time". He resolved to drop bombs from a minimum height of 2,000 feet.

Wiltshire
The Air Ministry came up with a scheme to pass on the knowledge gained at Orfordness to other pilots. A squadron titled "No. 1 School of Aerial Navigation and Bomb Dropping" was to be set up at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. On December 5 Briggs, a corporal and six men were the first to arrive to set up the school. They were quartered for the time being at an infantry camp nearby. At this stage it was an aerodrome in name only, there were "no hangars, no nothing. At some time or other somebody has set up a bloody big heap of massive stones likely to prove obstructions on the edge of the drome". Four days later some Bessonneau hangars arrived for Briggs' team to erect. Another four days later (December 13) not one hangar was erected. Each morning they found the fierce winds of the plain had scattered the hangar they had erected the previous day across the aerodrome. On December 17 the remaining personnel for the school arrived and hangars started going up "like the price of wine". Briggs was delighted that George Powell, Sammy Weller and Dit Montmorency turned up to be fellow instructors.

Close to the aerodrome at Stonehenge there was an Observation Balloon School. On 23 January 1918 Briggs sent out a student pilot, Turner, to fly a triangular compass course at a height of 4,000 feet. The Observation Balloon School had a balloon up at 7,000 feet. Turner was so intent on his compass that he did not notice the cable tethering the balloon. The cable cut deeply into his right hand wing. The impact was such that the aircraft turned "on to its back" and started to slide down the cable, spinning rapidly around the cable. This continued till the machine was only five or six hundred feet off the ground. At this point the spinning motion flung the machine off the cable, and the machine was at the same time thrown right side up. It went into a glide and landed with no further damage on a piece of cleared ground. When some nearby artillery men ran over they found Turner still in his seat, but unconscious. When he recovered he stated that he had blacked out after the first three spins.

The men from the balloon school spent much of their spare time at the aerodrome, scrounging joy rides. Briggs and company tried to "cure them by doing everything we knew in the air". This just increased the "balloonatics" appreciation, leading to invitations to visit their mess and to ascend in a balloon. One day (March 29), after repeated invitations, some forenoon drinking and a good lunch, George Powell and Briggs were persuaded to step into the basket of a balloon to get a "still air" view of the country. The balloon ascended to about 4,000 feet and Briggs found it novel to be at that height and not be deafened by the roar of an engine. Their enjoyment ended abruptly when their host said "What about a jump?". Before they could demur they each had a parachute harness buckled on and were receiving unheeded advice. On asking what would happen if something went wrong, Briggs was told he told he could take the parachute back to the Equipment Officer and get another one. To prevent the grin of his host from getting any wider Briggs closed his eyes and flopped off the basket. A sharp jerk caused him to open his eyes, and he was astonished to see the basket just 150 feet above him. After letting rip at his tormentor with some "pure bullocky Australian" language, Briggs found he was enjoying the most wonderful sensation he had ever known. He was so intrigued at the stillness that he held his watch to his ear, and heard it ticking away merrily. After a rather heavy landing Briggs vowed, with George Powell, not to go within miles of a kite balloon outfit for a very long time.

Briggs was flying with his observer, Lieut. Peterkin, a Canadian, on May 2 when there was a bang. The rear cylinder head separated from the engine and the part with the spark plug went straight through the side of the petrol tank, igniting it. Fortunately Briggs, who was looking over the side of the "bus" at the time, saw the explosion out of the corner of his eye. He automatically switched off and put the aircraft into a vertical sideslip. The sideslip fanned the flames away from the fuselage and in less than a minute the flames were extinguished. After one more minute they landed safe, but badly scared, on an artillery parade ground.

Briggs made repeated attempts to get posted to a service squadron, but the result was always negative. On July 18 he planned to go before a medical board to complain that Britain's cold and wet weather was aggravating his malaria, and suggest that he be posted to a warm climate such as Palestine. On August 3 he went before a medical board, with which he was honest about his application. On August 19 he received orders to report to Cairo, Egypt, where he would receive instructions regarding which squadron on the Palestine front he was being posted to.

Egypt
Briggs spent his 21st birthday (on September 18) at Helouan in Egypt. His instructions had been to report to General Borton commanding the R.A.F. in the Middle East. In this interview Briggs received a rude shock. The Air Ministry had advised the general to utilise Briggs' talents in a new school, similar to the one at Stonehenge, that had been set up just before Briggs' arrival in Egypt. All protests were cut short, but the general conceded that he would only keep Briggs at the school for six months. After that he would be posted to whatever service squadron he elected.

Helouan was a pleasant spot. Before the war it was a popular tourist resort, its main attraction being the sulphur baths. There was also a former hotel in which enemy aliens were interned. Briggs visited the building several times, playing games of bridge with cultured and charming Germans and Austrians. He pitied the way the internees of both sides were incarcerated, ruined and humiliated.

General Borton must have remembered Briggs because in November, immediately after the Armistice, Briggs was ordered to return to England, to the great envy of those left behind. He lost no time in obeying this order, but between Cairo and Alexandria he developed Spanish flu. In six hours he became delirious and unconscious, and was taken off the train and into hospital by stretcher. For four days he remained in that state. When he came to he had one thought, to join the ship he was due to sail in, which was to leave in two days' time. He was due to stay in hospital for another two weeks, followed by a week in a convalescent camp. On the day he managed to evade the hospital authorities and get aboard without interference. Back in England at the end of January 1919 Briggs conceded he had been foolish not to accept the medical advice, he was still unwell at that time, many weeks after leaving Egypt.

Hampshire
On arrival in London Briggs reported to the Air Ministry who posted him to "No. 2 School of Navigation and Bomb Dropping", which was formed at Andover, Hampshire just before Briggs left for Egypt. At Andover, regarding this posting, Briggs wrote on January 30th 1919 "I feel too ill and weak even to laugh". Because of the Armistice, Andover was effectively a school in name only, a place where people marked time and waited to see what would happen next. It was a perfect place for Briggs to continue his recuperation.

Middlesex
On March 14 Briggs wrote that he received instructions to report to the Demonstration Squadron at Hounslow. The squadron had just been formed "for what precise reason I don't think anybody quite knows". It was equiped with all sorts of machines imaginable. There was little organised flying. "If a couple of us feel like going up, say one in a Sopwith Snipe and the other in a Fokker D7, we just order the machines out and after taking to the air, scrap around the sky until fed up. We then land and adjourn for another gin and two."

On April 3 Briggs wrote "I was instructed to proceed to Hendon last Thursday afternoon in an Avro to give Mr. Winston Churchill a flying lesson. I duly arrived on time at that point and so did Winston Churchill. He took two looks at me, and one at a cloud overhead that started to sprinkle gentle spots of rain, then turned on his heel, re-entered his car, and drove off. I gather that he considered the weather unsuitable or that he didn't like my face."

Three weeks later, on April 18, Briggs had one of the greatest thrills he had ever had. Major Barker V.C., who visited the squadron a couple of times, took Briggs on in mock combat. Though suffering the disability of a wound in one arm, he won Briggs' respect as a great pilot. Briggs got in a position to put in a very short burst, but believed this was because Barker let him.

Published works

 * Joysticks and Fiddlesticks: (the Unofficial History of a Flying Kangaroo) Or, The Flying Kangaroo; Foreword by Edgar Johnston (1938)

Unpublished works

 * Albums of press clippings, letters and memorabilia; photocopies held by National Library of Australia

Images

 * Briggs in front of his DH4 (1921)
 * First aircraft to land at Alice Springs (1921)

Memorials

 * Alice Springs Airport's "Briggs Street"


 * Melbourne Airport's "Francis Briggs Road"