An Cosantóir

15 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE IRISH AIR CORPS 1922-2022 Comdt General W. J. McSweeney and Col Comdt Charles F. Russell – (Founders of Irish Air Service & Directors of Military and Civil Aviation) 'Whenever I made any journeys by road the corner boys lounging at the street corners in the villages almost invariably scowled at me, and a few of them even threw stones. The sight of the uniform of the British Army was becoming an increasingly unpopular one....but... when I flew anywhere and landed in a field near some village or other, I found that the young men would come running out onto the field cheering and shouting...' With the expansion of the number of training squadrons dispersed throughout the British Isles, the new forma- tions were required to produce pilots to support the war effort. This massive expansion included Ireland. A number of locations were identified with lands pur- chased by the war office. Eventually four training depot stations were established around the greater Dublin area, these were Gormanston No. 22 TDS, Baldonnell No. 23 TDS (later HQ of the RAF, and Irish Air Corps), Collinstown (Dublin Airport) No. 24 TDS and Cookstown (Tallaght) No. 25 TDS with construction commencing in 1917. There would be approximately 50 airfields/land- ing grounds of various design on the island of Ireland during the first half of the 20th Century with the United States Navy having limited facilities in the country during the war. These Training Depot Stations would have been typical of the larger aerodromes being con- structed by the British War Office and Air Council at the time and each was a major undertaking with a standard design and specifications. On the 1st April 1918 the Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Flying Corps were amalgamated to form the Roy- al Air Force and Baldonnell and became the operational headquarters element in Ireland, home of 141 Squadron and later 100 Squadron - 11th Irish Wing. January 21st 1919 saw Dail Eireann's Declaration of Irish Indepen- dence and evolution of the Irish Volunteers into the Irish Republican Army and the struggle to achieve it. This year also saw Baldonnell used in a very limited capacity as a civil airport for Ireland though this facility never expanded, while the RAF operated from there or other bases during the Irish War of Independence. It is also interesting that the Irish Air Service had planned to do the same at Baldonnell in 1922. The Irish Air Service On 21st October 1921, during the Anglo-Irish Treaty ne- gotiations, Emmet Dalton and Charlie Russel, both IRA volunteers and Great War veterans wrote to their Chief of Staff from London that a Martinsyde Type A, Mk II aeroplane had been purchased in secret to carry out military operations on the mainland or to assist the escape of Michael Collins and the plenipotentiaries should the talks collapse. The Treaty was eventual- ly signed on 6th January 1922 and the Martinsyde became the first aircraft owned by the provisional Irish Government and people, arriving at Baldonnell by sea and road on 16th June 1922. Charlie Russell and William McSweeney, also war veterans and volunteers, had been instrumental in the plan and both immedi- ately went to work in early 1922 under General Emmet Dalton's Training Branch in the Military Aviation Depart- ment at GHQ in Beggars Bush Barracks, setting up the Departments of Civil and Military Aviation. 141 Squad- ron RAF was disbanded at Baldonnell on 31st January 1922, beginning the withdrawal of aviation assets in the evacuation of Crown forces. At a meeting of mem- bers of government, the General Staff and officers from the Military Aviation Department established the Irish Air Council on March 23rd 1922. William McSweeney and Charlie Russell were appointed Directors of the Departments of Military and Civil Aviation respectively with the ranks of Commandant General and Colonel Commandant. The Irish Air Corps will mark its Cente- nary on this date in 2022. Baldonnell Aerodrome was taken over by Irish military forces on 3rd May with the Department of Civil Aviation arriving on 12th May 1922. Although limited numbers of aircraft were purchased in the initial years including the first Bristol Fighters and an Avro 504k, a decent attempt was made at forming a viable fighter squadron. The Irish Air Service managed at this time to recruit its first dozen pilots, all RAF veterans including McSweeney and Russell. The fledgling Air Service saw limited active service

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