ABSTRACT
Sykes was enamored with flying even though aviation offered poor career prospects. While most pilots saw the dangerous novelty in terms of a thrill, Sykes was preoccupied with thoughts of air power. Yet so far aviators had demonstrated very little 'power' , and British aeronautics progressed slowly through 1911. When Army aircraft failed to arrive at the annual maneuvers because four of the five available aircraft crashed, they demonstrated their susceptibility to poor weather and mechanical breakdowns. Such questionable reliability had caused the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) to decide that technological development should be left to private industry. Yet the War Office recognized the potential advantages of air power and instituted military aviation. T h e Army's air service was known, however, as an unprofessional and undisciplined group of radicals.4 Sykes wanted respect for his flyers and fought this anti-aviation tide by instilling discipline and organizing the new air arm into a viable military element.
