Cyril Wellesley Carleton and Lympne AAP

[Airshipped]

Hi,

I'm sure that someone has already dug up the 8 AAP files somewhere in Kew. I just didn't manage to come across it on my last visit.

My interest lies in a Cyril Wellesley Carleton. He was Irish-born, as was his father Lt-Col Arthur Wellesley Carleton who died when Cyril was young. His mother was a Halpin from Wicklow, Cyril's uncle being the chap who laid the first trans-Atlantic cable between Newfoundland and Co Kerry. Carleton's mother remarried to a Walker. He emigrated to South Africa at one stage.

Carleton appears in a few memoirs of pilots and observers who flew with No. 45 Squadron. They didn't have the usual mess arrangement of a piano and inventive bawdy lyrics. Carleton appears to have inflicted classical music gramophone sessions upon his squadron colleagues. Macmillan charitably opines 'everything I learnt about the love of classical music came from Carleton' or some platitude to that effect. Others appear less well disposed to the gramophone sessions.

Anyway, I digress. By September 1917 Carleton was with AAP Lympne as OC, Despatch. I gather that he may or may not have had an ADGB role there too but primarily it'd appear to have been with the AAP, rising to a senior role there. From the material I've seen at Kew thus far it'd appear that for a one-section Park the revised War Establishment was for 237 officers and other ranks, which was comprised of 194 men and 43 women. The number of acetylene welders (1), carpenters (3), coppersmiths (1), fitters (29), painters (1), riggers (51), sailmakers (1), tinsmiths (1), and vulcanisers (1) were all laid down in the establishment specifications. For a four-section Park the staffing complement rose to 844, including 142 women.

The image below (from TNA AIR 1/679/21/13/2203) shows the approximate numbers on the strength of the AAPs at the time Carleton was in command of its despatch function.

These were substantial operations, with endless numbers of forms, e.g. daily returns to show every machine on charge, 'Job Cards' issued to the contractors as machines were received, with a 'Form 10' which the pilot needed to co-sign to identify all instruments, armament and accessories in each machine. There were monthly returns to show the number of man-hours occupied on each machine in each process, with other forms to list the pilots available for the delivery of machines etc.

In all there's plenty of surviving information on the procedures and processes at the AAPs but there'd appear to be very few surviving records - or none I could find - of returns in respect of the personnel serving there. 

Carleton is name-checked in some memoirs by pilots departing to France, e.g. Macmillan mentions Carleton in the context of an expedited departure being facilitated, and the journalist Charles Cyril Turner mentions Carleton taking him for a few flights in D.H.4s or D.H.9s. I'm taking it that Carleton's Air force Cross arose from the efficient running of the despatch section of the AAP. However, if anyone has a concrete reference to the operations of 8 AAP I'd be grateful.

Carleton became a reasonably good squash and tennis player in the interwar years. He served in WWII. His son Geoffrey rose to the rank of AVM in the legal services division of the MOD in the 1980s or 1990s. Alas no published articles on Carleton, let alone his time at Lympne. Any information on 8 AAP would be welcome.