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Walter Albert Yeulett was born on 2nd June, 1899, in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. We don't know much about his parents, but his sister (May) would go on to marry Charles Casey and become my Grandparents. Walter, or "Toby" as he was known to the family, had taken an interest in aviation at a very young age - he was just 4 when the Wright Brother's flew at Kitty Hawk and at the age of 12 he was designing and building his own model aircraft , as you can see from the picture on the right, taken of Toby in 1911. There's a nice story surrounding this model which you can see by following this link to another page of this site.
He was to pursue this interest when he left school and at the age of 17 was a student engineer with Gordon Watney aero-engines in Weybridge, Surrey. Having gained workshop experience in the construction of aero-engines, he was working in the firm's drawing office when, at the age of 18 he joined up with the Royal Naval Air Service on 22nd July 1917. As a Flight Sub-Lieutenant he was soon in the air, having his initial training at RNAS Crystal Palace and also at RNAS Chingford where he was posted in August 1917 (see picture, below left, taken at Chingford in an Avro 504D).
This picture was taken in September 1917 This was shortly before his
transfer to RNAS Cranwell - which is now the home of the RAF Staff College - in
October 1917. Within five weeks he was back at Chingford learning to fly a
number of other aircraft prior to a transfer to RNAS East Fortune, Scotland, in
January 1918. Things are a little bit cloudy at this point, because there is no
doubt that at around this time he spent a period at the Isle of Grain airfield
where he was taking a considerable number of photographs. This period was not
however recorded in his Service History although it is likely that he was attached to Grain whilst "officially" at East Fortune for pay purposes. The photo, below right, shows Toby with
one of his friends, Flight Sub-Lieutenant Ashton (at least, I think it is Ashton from the
writing on some other pictures) who features in quite a few of Toby's photos.
This one was, according to the inscription on the photo, taken at the Isle of
Grain in February 1918.
This
photo features my Uncle Toby on the left and FSL Ashton on the right, in front
of a Sopwith Pup. I have about 10 different photos of FSL
Ashton, but know very little about the chap although he was obviously a
close friend of Toby and was also a continual smoker since I have very few pictures of
him without a cigarette in his hand! I have managed to trace a record of a Lt GR Ashton at around this time whose claim to fame was a forced landing of an Avro 504 on a golf course near Chingford, and then on take-off hitting a horse and destroying his aircraft. I don't know if this is the same chap, but it's a good story.
Toby's transfer to East Fortune was the last recorded in his Service History, but at some point after January 1918 things were to change considerably. Firstly, on 1st April 1918, the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps were merged to form the Royal Air Force. At this point Toby was promoted to Lieutenant, RAF. At some point after this (but certainly by June 1918) he was attached to HMS Furious as a pilot aboard the Royal Navy's first genuine aircraft carrier (pictured below, left). On 13th June 1918 we know that he made a test flight off the deck of Furious in a 1 1/2 Strutter.
'Furious' had been a cruiser but had been
converted, initially, to have a fore deck for aircraft to take-off from and
a landing deck at the rear of the superstructure. She was therefore the world's first true aircraft carrier capable of launching and recovering aircraft on board.
Click here for more pictures of HMS Furious.
(That page will take a couple of minutes to load over a 56k connection since I
haven't compressed the pictures at all).
In July 1918 she
was to be the ship which launched the first ever raid on an enemy installation
from an aircraft carrier. That raid was on the Zeppelin Sheds at Tondern in
Germany (it is now in Denmark) and would prove significant in ways other than being the birth of the
aircraft carrier as an offensive weapon. It was also to be Toby Yeulett's final
mission, and the one for which he was to receive a posthumous Distinguished
Flying Cross. The full story of the raid itself is told on the page linked below.
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