• Royal Flying Corps •

• File format •

The files contain extracts from original documents, although not necessarily all of the information in the document has been included. For example the Aircraft Park records of receipts and deliveries often give the name of the pilot, but I have generally not transcribed this information.

Series of documents relating solely to RNAS aircraft have been excluded as this information is available elsewhere, although individual entries relating to RNAS aircraft are included where they form part of a larger collection.

All files are in comma separated value (.csv) format which can be edited with a text editor or loaded into a spreadsheet.

The majority of files are in a standard format to aid analysis. These files contain the following columns:

Field	Details
Serial	RFC Serial
SFA	French serial or non-RFC serial. In a few cases this is a German serial
Type	Aircraft type - see 'Aircraft Types' below
Engine	Engine type - see 'Engine codes' below
Engine no.	Engine no. - generally the manufacturers no. followed by the WD no.
From	Original location (if an aircraft movement)
To	Destination or current location
Date	Date in the format dd.mm.yy
Comments	Comments or narrative. My comments appear in square brackets i.e. [...]
Source	National Archive box or file reference
Class	Class of document
Image	My internal document reference
Line	Sequential line number
Notes	Other notes
Date	Date in Army format YYMMDD for text sorting purposes

'00' within a date means the day or month is uncertain i.e. 00.00.14 means some time in 1914.

All dates should be treated with caution.

If two names are given, the first is the pilot and second the observer. Otherwise the observer is identified by (Obs) after the name.

Aircraft Types

I have generally shown the type as it appears in the original document. The RFC referred to aircraft by their common names, which is often not the type designation that we recognise today. The most common names appear below.

Name in file	Actual type
AW	Armstrong Whitworth FK3 or FK8
DH Fighter	DH1
DH Scout	DH2
Sopwith 1str	Sopwith Pup
Sopwith 2str	Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter
Sopwith F1	Sopwith Camel
Sopwith Scout	Sopwith Pup
Vickers Fighter	Vickers FB

1str means single-seater. 2str means 2-seater

The BE2 series of aircraft were often recorded by a phonetic version of their designation as follows. In each case I have recorded the actual designation

Name in file	Actual type
Betuci	BE2c
Betudi	BE2d
Betue	BE2e
Betuf	BE2f
Betug	BE2g

Similarly the RE8 was sometimes recorded as 'Reait'. I have recorded this as RE8.

For a short period in 1914 the RFC introduced a code system for aircraft types. This was soon abandoned as more types were introduced. The nomenclature was:

Code	Aircraft type
RA	BE2a/BE2b
RL	BE2c
RB	BE8
RM	BE8a
RC	Avro (50 Gnome)
RD	Avro (80 Gnome)
RE	RE1
RF	RE5
RG	Sopwith 2 seater
RH	Bleriot
RI	Bleriot
RK	Maurice Farman 1913 (Longhorn)
SA	Sopwith Scout
MA	Henry Farman
MB	Maurice Farman 1914 (Shorthorn)

Engine codes

Engines are generally shown with the horse power followed by a manufacturer code.

I have used the following codes to identify the more popular engine types:

Code	Engine type
Bd	Beardmore (British built Austro-Daimler)
BR	Bentley Rotary
Cl	Clerget
Cl-LS	Clerget long stroke
Cl-SS	Clerget short stroke
CU	Canton Unne
Eag	Rolls Royce Eagle
Fal	Rolls Royce Falcon
Gn	Gnome
HS	Hispano Suiza
LR	Le Rhone
Mono	Gnome Monosoupape (single valve). E refers to English built, F is French
Raf	Royal Aircraft Factory
Ren	Renault
RR	Rolls Royce
SD	Siddeley Deasy
Viper	Wolseley Viper
Wols	Wolseley

View a list of other abbreviations