Looking through a WW1 pilot's logbook and it contains a number of references to flying contact patrols. Just exactly what were they?

Brian

Maintaining contact with troops in advanced positions (especially during a major attack). Relaying their position back to commanders in the rear. Delivering and receiving messages to and from said troops (sometimes via panels laid out on the ground), delivering vital supplies (eg ammo) and sometimes carrying out local ground attack in their support. Required much low flying under fire from enemy ground troops (and given the standards of air craft recognition) sometimes one's own side). Both sides flew contact patrols from about 1915. In WW2 the same function was sometimes carried out for the British Army by Curtiss P 40A Tomahawks. By then it was called army cooperation.

My thanks - I originally read 'contact' as 'combat' but soon realised that given the normal squadron task, artillery spotting, that the two weren't the same.

Brian

also by the dropping of message bags and telegraphing messages using airborne wireless mounted in the aircraft

As an example of the operation of "contact" aeroplanes, this is part of the operation order of the 6th Canadian Infantry Brigade for the 6th November 1917 Passchendaele assault. This was typical of the technique in use at that time. The contact aeroplane would signal with its KLAXON when it wished the infantry to discloss its position. The most forward infantry would signal its position, usually by lighting flares, but sometimes by signal panels laid on the ground. In earlier battles, battle flags seem to have been used, but they did not work so well. The airmen would write the information down and drop it back near a report centre.

I'm not sure that wireless was used for contact patrol as the long aerial that had to be trailed under and behind the aircraft was unsuited to low altitude work

Mike Meech gave a brilliant talk on Contact Patrols at April's CCI AGM and provided a great overview in the latest issue of the CCI journal. He's gone on to give another article on Cavalry Contact Patrols and will, I hope, follow that with one on Tank Contact Patrols. The depth of detail in his talk was so great that it was impossible to absorb every detail, so itr was great to have it in a text + diagram format that I could study properly.