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ISLANDERS IN THE ROYAL FLYING CORPS AND THE ROYAL AIR FORCE DURING THE GREAT WAR, and CANADIAN EQUIVALENTS.
In light of the absence of any aviation activity on the island at the time, together with the ban on motor vehicles then in effect on the island's roads, it may seem incongruous that the colony should have produced any aviators at all during the Great War. The islanders had not travelled far yet from their maritime heritage,however, and many were handling boats from early childhood. The similarity of the experience to flying may be difficult to grasp for someone who hasn't tried either, but both involve a fluid medium and mariners more easilygrasp the subtelties of flight than those whose reactions have been trained by a more firm and immediate form of transport, such as motor-cycling.

  In any account, a rather large number of islanders found their way into the army's Royal Flying Corp (RFC), its Canadian equivalent, and its successor, the Royal Air Force (which was created in 1918 by merging the RFC with the Royal Naval Air Service [RNAS]), considering the small population and the inability to enter the aviation arms or service directly from the colony (although, in the Second World War the Bermuda Flying School would supply the RAF with trained Bermudian, and other, pilots.)
  A list of the colony's Great War aviators appears below. Further information on each, where available, can be gained by clicking on the name.

Lieutenant Bernard V.S. Smith
Lieutenant Willard M.B. Skinner
2 Lieutenant Cyril Nelmes
2 Lieutenant Stanley Stone
2 Lieutenant Harry C. Curtis (RNAS/RAF)
Squadron Leader A. Rowe Spurling, DFC
H. Martin Godet
Major Cecil Montgomery-Moore, DFC*
2 Lieutenant Bernard Logier Wilkinson**
Flt. Cadet Reuben M. Dickinson ( 2/LT, 15/2/19)
Sgt. C.H. Young (Transf. RFC, 2 Aug., 1916)
Reginald Darrell (RFC Canada)
Robert V. Darrell (RFC Canada)
Herman Leseur (RFC Canada)
A.E. Roberts (RFC Canada)

KILLED IN ACTION
2 Lieutenant Joseph Watlington
2 Lieutenant Ewart C. Brown
2 Lieutenant Lennock de Graaf Godet

NOTED JOINING CANADIAN AIR SERVICE IN 1918
Harold Hutchings
Norman Frith

*Served after Great War and through WW2 as OC Bermuda Volunteer Engineers, and CO of Bermuda Flying School during WW2.
**Served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War.
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