Auction Catalogue

23 September 2005

Starting at 11:00 AM

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Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, to include the Brian Ritchie Collection (Part III)

Grand Connaught Rooms  61 - 65 Great Queen St  London  WC2B 5DA

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Lot

№ 1248

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23 September 2005

Hammer Price:
£6,200

An important Great War O.B.E. group of eleven awarded to Group Captain A. J. Miley, Royal Air Force, late Royal Naval Air Service, one of a handful of pilots chosen for the famous Cuxhaven Raid on Christmas Day 1914, ‘the world’s first carrier air strike’: compelled to “ditch” in hazardous conditions, he was picked up by the submarine E11, in which craft he experienced good old naval hospitality in the form of Christmas turkey and plum pudding at 20 fathoms - the whole after a Zeppelin’s bombs had badly shaken - but clearly not stirred - the submarine’s crew

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
, O.B.E. (Military) Officer’s 1st type breast badge, silver-gilt, hallmarks for London 1919; 1914-15 Star (Flt. Cr., R.N.A.S.); British War and Victory Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf (Sq. Cr., R.N.A.S.); War Medal 1939-45; Jubilee 1935; Coronation 1937; Republic of Argentina Ministry of Marine Gold Medal, the reverse centre with embossed inscription, ‘Agregado Aeronautico Britanico Capitan de Navio Arnold John Miley, 1936-1942’, in its Jose F. Piana, Buenos Airies case of issue; Brazilian Republic Anniversary Medal 1939; Chilean Order of Merit, Commander’s neck badge, silver, gilt and enamel, in Bertrand, Paris case of issue, together with another Argentinian presentation award, possibly to mark the Buenos Airies Conference of December 1936, gold and enamel, the reverse named in relief on a blue enamel ground, ‘Coronel Arnold J. Miley’, in its Rossi, Buenos Airies leather case of issue, the Chilean piece with one or two chipped arm points, contact marks, otherwise generally very fine and better (11) £3000-3500

O.B.E. London Gazette 1 January 1919.

Arnold John Miley was born in 1890, the son of a doctor from St. Mary Bourne, Andover. Educated at the Royal Naval College Dartmouth, he was appointed a Lieutenant in March 1911 and commenced a pilot’s course in the fledgling Royal Naval Air Service at Eastchurch in June 1913.

The outbreak of hostilities found him employed as a Flight Lieutenant at the Naval Air Station, Calshot, an appointment that led to his selection for the famous Cuxhaven Raid of Christmas Day 1914, the world’s first carrier air strike. The operation, in essence an air reconnaissance of the Heligoland Bight, including Cuxhaven, was made by nine seaplanes, Miley piloting an Admiralty Type 74 “Folder” aircraft (No. 120) - the naval pilots and aircraft were conveyed to a point about 12 miles to the north of Heligoland before being lowered onto the water from the seaplane carriers
Empress, Engadine and Riviera. Miley’s subsequent experiences in that memorable operation are described in R. D. Layman’s definitive account, The Cuxhaven Raid:

‘Flight Lieutenant Arnold J. Miley, in
Engadine’s Folder No. 120, reached the coastline at 8.10 a.m. and found the fog, although thick, did not totally restrict his view. He crossed and recrossed a railway line, observing nothing more than two villages, many ploughed fields and a number of farms. ‘In spite of covering a good deal of ground I found no [airship] sheds and no fortified places worth attacking.’ At 8.30 he turned north and recrossed the coastline, coming under fire from a shore battery he could not see.

Miley apparently tried to carry out the requested reconnaissance of Wilhelmshaven but missed it in the fog, emerging in the vicinity of the Jade entrance. For the next 20 minutes or so, until he reached Wangeroog, he was fired at by a variety of ships in the Jade and the Weser and Schillig Roads. He identified them as three light cruisers at the Weser’s mouth, two more steaming up the river, and another two entering the Jade; a battle cruiser at Schillig Roads, and a destroyer flotilla entering the Jade. ‘All ships challenged me with a searchlight,’ he reported, ‘and all fired with anti-aircraft guns, apparently, as I was too high for the elevation of any ordinary naval guns and all shells ... were time-fused.’

At 9.05 a.m. Miley was five miles north of Wangeroog, where he turned west and passed over two trawlers. Ten minutes later he sighted an airship, probably
L5, which he misidentified as a Schutte-Lanz, heading west at 4000 feet. At 9.30 he was six miles east of Norderney.’

Layman next describes Miley’s ditching and rescue by the submarine
E11:

‘At 9.30 a.m. submarine
E11 was submerged in her assigned position six miles north-east of Nordeney Gat when her skipper, Lieutenant-Commander Martin E. Nasmith [later of V.C. fame], spotted a seaplane through the periscope. Although the plane was at 1200 feet, Nasmith could identify it as British, and he ordered E11 to surface.

The plane was Miley’s No. 120. Its fuel was nearly exhausted and Miley could see no sign of the carriers ahead although the visibility was excellent. He sighted
E11’s periscope about the same time Nasmith saw the plane, and, as the submarine broke water, identified it as friendly by the red and white conning tower band. He landed alongside and asked the direction and distance of the carriers. Told they were 25 miles away, Miley decided, since he had fuel for no more than five to ten minutes, to ask for a tow north. Nasmith agreed. Miley went aboard E11, taking his bombsight with him, and the Short was placed under tow at 9.50 a.m.’

About ten minutes later
E11’s lookouts spotted an airship to starboard - infact the zeppelin L5 commanded by Kapitanleutnant Klaus Hirsch - a complication compounded by the additional arrival of two more R.N.A.S. seaplanes, both dangerously short of fuel (No. 814 crewed by Gaskell Blackburn and Bell, and No. 815 by Oliver and Bell). Both swept down and landed alongside the submarine, just as Nasmith spotted another looming danger in the form of a periscope (it was, in fact, the British submarine D6, hastening to the scene to offer assistance). Layman’s account continues:

‘Nasmith, tackling the problem of rescuing four airmen in the face of what appeared to be imminent underwater and aerial attack, acted with the cool-headed precision that would win him fame later in the war. Casting off the tow-line to [Miley’s] No. 120, he manoeuvred
E11 so close to No. 815 that Oliver and Bell were able to step aboard her, then hailed Gaskell Blackburn and Bell to swim to the submarine. Doffing their flying clothes and the impedimenta that Malone had insisted upon, they dived from their tilting plane and were hauled, dripping, aboard E11.

Although the airship was now closing fast, Nasmith was obedient to the orders to destroy abandoned aircraft if possible. Since
E11, like most British submarines in 1914, as yet lacked a deck gun, he ordered a machine-gun up from below and began to pepper the seaplanes’ floats with it. Oliver joined in with his pistol.

Before this fire could have any effect, the aerial menace got too close for comfort, and Nasmith ordered a crash dive. With
L5 nearly overhead, he waved his cap defiantly as he made for the conning tower hatch. It has often been claimed that the gesture confused the airshipmen into thinking E11 was a U-boat capturing enemy planes and caused them to delay dropping bombs. Gaskell Blackburn thought so at the time. But there is nothing in German accounts to suggest the gesture was even seen, and Hirsch’s report makes it clear he was quite aware that the submarine was an enemy craft. He saw the rescue of the airmen clearly just before he sent two bombs crashing down. Their explosions shook both E11 and D6, although the former had time to dive to 40 feet before they went off and the latter was 60 feet down. The men on each submarine thought their boat was the target, but Hirsch’s account indicates he was aiming simply in the general vicinity of the seaplanes and the submerged E11, hoping any or all might be damaged. Observing no effect from the bombs, he headed seaward toward the Harwich Force.


Nasmith meanwhile took
E11 down to rest on the seabed, where at 20 fathoms the submariners shared their Christmas turkey and plum pudding with their five unusual guests.’

For his part in this trail-blazing episode of naval aviation, Miley was mentioned in despatches (
London Gazette 19 February 1915), and in June 1916, while serving at H.Q. (R.N.A.S.) Dover, he was advanced to Squadron Commander. His subsequent wartime appointments included service at R.N.A.S. Felixstowe from August 1916 until June 1917 and, finally, having transferred to the Royal Air Force, employment at the Air Department’s N. 17 Section, work that included him visiting the west and south coasts of France to deliver a report ‘in connection with the delivery of large flying boats to the Mediterranean’. He was awarded the O.B.E.

Between the Wars Miley served as a member of the Naval Mission to Chile 1926-28, for which latter services he was appointed a Commander of the Chilean Order of Merit and, on being advanced to Group Captain in January 1931, as C.O. of the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment at Felixstowe. As it transpired, this latter appointment witnessed the arrival of Lawrence of Arabia at the same establishment in April 1933, a short-lived but nonetheless sensitive posting that required the latter to report for duty in civilian attire, in order to avoid publicity.

Appropriately enough, after such a diplomatic tenure of office, Miley was next appointed, with effect from November 1936, Air Attache at Buenos Airies, in which capacity he served for much of the 1939-45 War, so it is likely he was involved in one form or another in the famous River Plate battle in 1939, if only because one of the
Graf Spee’s potential escape routes was a dredged channel leading to Buenos Airies.

The Group Captain, who after his retirement from the Royal Air Force ‘continued to take an active interest in seaplanes as a member of the Seaplane Committee of the Aeronautical Research Council’, died in November 1956.