The original Great War period flying log books appertaining to Lieutenant F. A. Giles, Royal Air Force, late Royal Naval Air Service (4), privately bound in one volume, covering the periods July 1917 to January 1918, January to May 1918, June 1918 to August 1919, and August 1919 to May 1920, including active service in the R.N.A.S. and R.A.F., with occasional pasted-down photograph and a mass of additional detail to the end of each book, aircraft flown, appointments, personnel rolls, etc., worn leather binding, contents good, together with several original career photographs, two old Bristol District tokens, and a small religious talisman (Lot) £400-500

Frederick Alexander Giles, who was born in November 1898, entered the Royal Naval Air Service as a Probationary Flight Officer in July 1917, direct from prior service as an N.C.O. in the Cambridgeshire Regiment.

Posted to R.N.A.S. Redcar for pilot training, he first went solo in an Maurice Farman Biplane on 18 October 1917. Transferred to R.N.A.S. Cranwell in the following month, where he graduated on Bristol Scouts and Sopwith Pups, he was himself appointed an instructor in March 1918. That August, however, he was embarked for France, where he joined No. 209 Squadron, and a few days later had his first encounter with “Archie”, his Camel being holed in two places.

Thereafter, as described in detail in his Flying Log Book, he flew regular patrols over Arras, Bapaume and Cambrai, often coming into contact with enemy aircraft while engaged on low strafing and bombing sorties - in fact no less than 50 sorties in the period leading up to the Armistice in November 1918, in the course of which he claimed a Fokker shot down over the Cambrai front on 8 October:

‘Low strafing. Led ‘B’ Flight of seven machines. When diving from about 6,000 feet to drop my four bombs in the district of Leveque, I met four Fokker Biplanes and a Two-seater. One I nearly collided with. Another I fired 50 rounds into, which then went S.E. A third one I fired at from above at a distance of about six yards. This machine then went into a steep dive from a few feet, burst into flames, and crashed. This happened at about 3,000 feet. Confirmed by Captain Foster, D.S.C., Lieutenant Gibbons and Lieutenant Mills’  [his Flying Log Book refers]

During another sortie, over Valenciennes on 9 November 1918, his engine cut out, and he was attacked by an enemy aircraft and compelled to make a forced landing - whereupon, owing to the close proximity of the German lines, he had to take cover from machine-gun fire.

Post-hostilities, he served in No. 70 Squadron as part of the Army of Occupation in Germany, prior to being posted to No. 206 Squadron out in Egypt in July 1919, with whom he flew D.H. 9s up until mid-1920.

Having then departed the Royal Air Force a year or two later, we catch a glimpse of him at work in the world of aviation some years later, namely as a potential competitor in the “Dole Air Derby” race from California to Hawaai in August 1927 - in the event a disastrous event in which three pilots were killed in accidents during pre-event trials, an another ten during the race itself. Luckily for Giles, who had entered the competition in a single-seater Hess Bluebird biplane, he decided at the last minute to attempt a flight to New Zealand.

Giles was recalled in the 1939-45 War, being appointed a Pilot Officer in the Technical Branch (Armament) in December 1941.