The Henri Farman HF-27 was not built in any great numbers, but it saw service in a great many places, ranging from the Channel Coast to the Northwest Frontier, by way of the Aegean, Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Russia. Its first operational use was in German Southwest Africa, by South African airmen, and indeed, the fielding of a South African air contingent in that campaign, and the early production of the HF-27, were tightly entwined.
Henry and Maurice Farman were pioneering pilots in the heady early days of heavier than air flight in Europe. In 1912, they combined their separate aviation ventures into a single company, with their elder brother Richard handling the business end of things. Within the fraternal firm, Henry and Maurice pursued their own lines of design, Henry's being marketed under the French spelling Henri (they were all sons of an English father and French mother resident in Paris). Henry in his designs favored rotary motors and a wing structure with an upper wing of much greater span than the lower. Maurice favored stationary motors, and a wing structure with an upper wing only slightly greater in span than the lower. Both employed the early 'propulsion' (pusher) configuration in their designs.
When the Great War began, Farman aeroplanes equipped over half the front-line
escadrille of the
Aviation Militaire. The Henri Farman machines, however seemingly suitable in peacetime, did not stand up well to service in the field, proving too fragile for hurried operations off improvised fields, and delicate to fly in any sort of adverse conditions, owing to their maximum speed being only very little greater than their stalling speed. They were withdrawn as soon as doing so became practical, and when the French drew up a plan of standardization and expansion for their air service in October, 1914, Henri Farman designs had no place in it, though Maurice Farmans became a standard reconnaissance type, and were built in great quantity.
Henry Farman set out to recoup with a fresh design. It employed steel tube for all major structural components, and employed a sturdy four wheel 'perambulator' undercarriage arrangement, with oleo shock absorbers on its rear legs. It used a Canton-Unne water-cooled radial motor, providing nearly double the horse-power of the rotary Gnome employed on his earlier products, and carried motor and fuel and crew in a simple nacelle very similar in appearance to nacelles of his brother Maurice's designs. The wings were of equal span, and the struts connecting them, of steel tube with wooden fairings, were quite long: the greatly increased gap between the wings made both wings more efficient in generating lift. Only the longeron arrangement and tail surfaces retained the familiar aspects of earlier Henri Farman machines. On occassion English documents refer to the type as an 'HF Voisin', and save for the great gap between the wings, from most angles it does indeed look very much like a Voisin. There can be little doubt Henry Farman was at least 'inspired' by the very successful Voisin III/V series, constructed with steel tube and employing the powerful Canton-Unne radial, with equal span wings and a four wheel undercarriage, in drawing up the HF-27.
While Henry Farman was laying out the lines of his new aeroplane, half a world away South Africa's invasion of German Southwest Africa was collapsing in a muddle of half-measures, defeat, and rebellion.
At the beginning of the Great War, English troops had been withdrawn from South Africa, leaving military affairs there to the Union Defense Force, a numerous but poorly organized body, whose largest component was a reserve known as the Active Citizens Force. It was the Royal Navy, not the South African government, which wanted German Southwest Africa invaded. The Navy wanted to prevent German cruisers loose on the high seas receiving any aid from several long-range wireless stations in the colony.
Going to war against Germany on behalf of England was none too popular with the Boers of South Africa. Many harbored bitter memories of the recent war against England, in which Germany had lent the Boers appreciable support. Balanced against this was the desire for more land and greater influence which conquest of the neighboring German colony would bring.
Nor would invading German Southwest Africa be an easy proposition, though it could prove quite profitable. Diamonds had recently been discovered there in commercial quantities, and the northern interior of the colony was a large expanse of dry grassland well suited to cattle-ranching. But the Atlantic coast of the colony, and its southern reaches down to the Orange River, consisted of extremely inhospitable desert. The German
Schutztruppe defending the colony was far smaller than the Union Defence Force, even allowing for mobilization of men from the colony's ten thousand or so German residents, but it was highly professional, and well-adapted to desert operations. It was also almost exclusively white: German policy towards the native population had been murderous over the previous decade, and there could be no question of raising a local force of
askari. South African forces were exclusively white as well, making this one of the few instances in colonial war of the period in which both sides fielded forces even predominantly European.
(
Schutztruppe camel detachment)
General Botha, the South Arican leader, wanted to mount a three-pronged offensive.
Its major component would be a force landed at Walvis Bay. This was a modest indentation on the north coast of the German colony, where a small enclave administered (but not garrisoned) by South Africa remained from an earlier English claim on the coastline. Next door, the Germans had established the port of Swakopmund, at the mouth of the Swakop River, and here one of the wireless stations was located. Gen. Botha envisioned this force striking inland to the colony's capital, Windheok, where another of the wireless stations was located.
A second force would be landed at the port of Luderitz, not far north of the mouth of the Orange River on the southern coast. Luderitz was the site of the third wireless station. This force would advance into the interior along a railway line.
A third force would be conveyed by sea to Port Nolloh on the South African coast just south of the mouth of the Orange River. It would march inland, cross the Orange River, which was the border between South Africa and German Southwest Africa, and move north with the initial objective of seizing the wells at Sandfontien, the only reliable source of water for many miles north of the Orange River. This force was to be supported by a body of troops mustered locally.
In the event, however, the Royal Navy was unable to provide enough transport for the scheme, and it was the northern force Gen. Botha had seen as the leading element of the invasion that had to be left go, with a naval bombardment of the Swakopmund facilities substituted. The troops from Capetown, commanded by Gen Lukin, began arriving on August 31 at Port Nolloh, while local troops were gathering at Upington, headquarters of the district commander, Col. Maritz. On September 14, Swakopmund was bombarded from the sea. The wireless there was wrecked. Simultaneously, Gen. Lukin's force seized the fords of the Orange River south of Sandfontein.
(Fording the Orange River)
Next day the Commandant of the Active Citizen Force component of the Union Defense Force, Gen. Beyers, resigned his commission. That evening, driving with a famous fighter of the Boer War, Koos de la Rey, Gen. Beyers encountered a police roadblock, part of a dragnet hunting a fugitive murderer. He did not stop, police opened fire, de la Rey was shot dead. Many Boers believed it deliberate assassination of a bitter opponent of English rule.
On September 19, troops were landed without opposition at Luderitz, and Gen. Lukin advanced a small force to Sandfontein. The German
Schutztruppe concentrated against Sandfontein, and though the post received some re-inforcement, it was overwhelmed on September 26 by German forces with a decisive advantage in artillery.
(
Schutztruppe field guns)
Colonel Maritz at Upington had been surreptitiously in communication with the Germans for some time, and had given them details of the plans and forces at Sandfontien. He had refused orders to move to assist the beleagured force. He soon moved on to open rebellion, proclaiming the independence of South Africa early in October. There were soon some twelve thousand men under arms against English rule in the former Orange Free State, and in the Transvaal, where Gen. Beyers raised the standard of revolt.
(Col. Maritz at his headquarters)
Led personally by generals Botha and Smutz, loyal elements of the Union Defense Force turned to suppressing rebellion. Though after the first couple of weeks the outcome was not much in doubt, this task was not completed till early December, by which time Col Maritz and his last followers had sought refuge with the Germans, and Gen. Beyers had been shot off his horse and drowned in the Vaal River while fleeing from a loyalist column.
Even as rebellion flared that October, the South African government decided the Union Defence Force required some aeroplanes, and soon. The decision at that point to see to this quickly as possible may well have owed something to the activities of two aeroplanes operating in support of the German
Schutztruppe. These had, by mid-October, flown over South African troops encamped south of the Orange River, and assailed South African troops landed at Luderitz with field gun shells dropped as bombs, and leaflets urging them to join the rebellion against England . This sort of thing, widely reported, damaged prestige, made South Africa look second-rate, and in times of trouble, appearances can mean a great deal.
(Roland '
Pfiel' biplane, one of the two German aeroplanes)