An important Great War airship pioneer’s A.F.C. group of three awarded to Flight Lieutenant I. C. Little, Royal Air Force, late Royal Naval Air Service, whose ‘Little-Crook anchoring gear’ design enabled the first use of defensive aircraft being attached to airships: having then carried out a parachute descent from the R. 34 during her trail-blazing visit to the U.S.A. in July 1919, he was among those drowned in the R. 38 airship disaster over the Humber in August 1921

Air Force Cross, G.V.R., unnamed as issued; British War and Victory Medals (Major I. C. Little, R.A.F.), good very fine and better (3) £4000-5000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Awards to the Royal Flying Corps, Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force.

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A.F.C. London Gazette 1 January 1919.

Ivor Cecil Little was born in October 1895 and was appointed a Midshipman in the Royal Navy in May 1915. Transferring to the Royal Naval Air Service, he was appointed a Flight Sub. Lieutenant, and gained favourable reports for his work in airships at Kingsworth and Longside, Aberdeen, over the course of 1916. And by the time he was awarded his certificate as an Airship Pilot in early October of that year, he had amassed 360 hours flying time.

Recommended for being ‘a very good Rigid Airship Officer’ at Howden in June of the following year, he was advanced to Flight Lieutenant and moved to the airship station at Barrow in Furness, where he commenced work on a pioneering programme to attach Sopwith Camels as defensive aircraft to airships. And it was no doubt as a result of his resultant design, the ‘Little-Crook anchoring gear’, conceived with a fellow officer, that he was invited to join the staff at the Airship Experimental Station at Pulham, Norfolk, in October 1917. Here, as C.O. of the R. 23, he carried out many trials, latterly as a Temporary Major in the newly established Royal Air Force, and, by late 1918, Camel aircraft were indeed being ‘slipped’ from the R. 23 - such was the success of the experiments that Little applied to patent his design in July 1919, a patent which was duly approved and also covered the use of aircraft as auxiliary power plants for airships. He was awarded the A.F.C.; for further information, see Philip Jarrett’s article in The Cross & Cockade, ‘At the Drop of a Camel’ (Vol. VIII, No. 3, 1977, G.B. edition), a definitive account of these early trials.

Post-war, Little remained employed on airship duties, carrying out numerous test flights in the R. 32 and the R. 80, Barnes Wallis being a passenger of his on at least one occasion. Then in July 1919, in the R. 34, he was among those to complete the first ever airship trans-Atlantic crossing - as no-one in the States had much experience of handling big airships, Little carried out a parachute descent on the R. 34’s arrival at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in order to give instructions to the U.S.N. handling party. Accordingly, he was an ideal candidate for the next big cross-Atlantic project - the R. 38. Constructed at the Royal Airship Works at Cardington, the R. 38 made her maiden flight in June 1921, when defects were found in her framework. As a result further test flights were undertaken in the lead-up to her proposed journey to New Jersey, where she was to be handed over to the Americans and renamed ZR. 2. And it was in the course of one of these tests that she blew up over the River Humber at 5.40 p.m. on 21 August 1921 - a trawler 16 miles away staggered under the concussion of the explosion and trains on railway lines in Lincolnshire shook on their tracks, while ceilings in houses in Hull and Grimsby collapsed. Only four of her 48 passengers survived, the roll of honour including 16 members of the U.S.N’s Rigid Airship Detachment and many highly experienced British airship personnel, not least Air Commodore E. M. Maitland, C.M.G., D.S.O., A.F.C., and Flight Lieutenants Little, Montagu, Pritchard and Thomas, in addition to Constructor Commander Campbell of Royal Airship Works.

Little’s body was recovered on 29 August and interred in a common grave with Maitland, Campbell and a Leading Aircraftman, in Hull Western Cemetery, on 3 September; sold with extensive research and copied photographs, in addition to two or three original postcards of airships.