St Mildreds Bay
Note: This map only gives a general location within the UK. If anybody can kindly provide a more exact location for this Seaplane Station, this advice will be most welcome.
St MILDRED’S BAY: Military Seaplane Station (also known as WESTGATE or WESTGATE-on-SEA)
Military users: RNAS [Royal Naval Air Service] Temporary Seaplane Station 1914
Later to become RAF [Royal Air Force] from April 1918)
Seaplane Station for Marine Operations 1914 to 1920 (Mainly flying Short’s seaplanes?)
Location: On the coast, about 1.5nm W of Margate town centre
Period of operation: 1914 to 1920
Site area: In 1914: 11 acres Later expanded to 23 acres
NOTES: Although not really pertinent to this ‘Guide’, I was fascinated by the account by G E Livstock in his autobiography From the Ends of the Air of his volunteering for service in north Russia.
From July 1918 to July 1919 he was the Station Commander at “Westgate-on-Sea” as he refers to it, a job he found intensely boring with very little worthwhile to do when hostilities ceased. I suspect the story of the RAF, (and the British Army), sending an expeditionary force to north western Russia, (Murmansk and Archangel), to support the ‘White’ armies and anti-Bolshevik forces is little known about today?
He sailed from the Humber in HMS Argus in late July 1919, this ship being the first aircraft carrier with a full length flight deck. This gives me an excuse to mention I have made an appendix, (far from complete), of some Royal Navy aircraft carriers and other ships equipped with aircraft discovered along the way for the simple reason that when they were/are undertaking any flying duties in British coastal waters, let alone harbours, lochs and estuaries etc, it seems to me perfectly reasonable to regard them as legitimate flying sites within Great Britain.
WELL WORTH A READ
His autobiography, written in a rather understated fashion, (and all the better for it), has more hilarity than a Buster Keaton movie - often describing incidents of a comparable nature. For example; After arriving at the seaplane base Medvegigora, “During the first day or two I lived in a railway compartment, but soon managed to scrounge a, (Sopwith – my inclusion), Camel packing case, which I turned into a two-room bungalow.” (This being possibly the least funny of his accounts)
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