Alternative British Military Aviation 1900 to 1918

We regularly have better RAF and FAA in World War II threads, but we don't have many better RFC and RNAS threads.

This thread is specifically about British Army aviation. I'm going to start a second thread about British Naval Aviation to 1918.

I was going to allow the POD to be any time from 1909, which is when the CID decided to discontinue work on aeroplanes and concentrate on airships. However, I changed my mind and the pod can be any time from 1st January 1900.

You are allowed to spend more money.

This thread is about the British Army's kites, balloons and airships as well as its aeroplanes.

The thread was inspired by me watching Wings (for the first time since 1978) which was a BBC series about RFC pilots in France in 1915. It consisted of 26 episodes spit into two series that were broadcast in 1977 and 1978 respectively.
 
Well, I am sorry I missed this one when it was first posted. I was wondering if such a thread existed.

Its not my area of expertise but here is a couple of ideas to maybe get the ball rolling again:

-If the Vickers E.F.B.1did not crash maybe the Vickers Gunbus is developed faster?

-Earlier development of the pull down Lewis mounting to avoid using the Vickers gun in unsuitable mounts early on?

If the Saulnier patent for a synchronizer gear was picked up on by the British, or if the tests had used a more suitable gun than the Hotchkiss 8mm then forward firing guns and front mounted propellers might have allowed the Allies to contest air superiority before 1916. In fact, if forward firing guns were accepted to be a superior gun platform in general that would have been helpful.
 
1900 The British Army as well as experimenting with Balloons in South Africa experiments with a small Blimp roughly equivalent to the OTL Sea Scout blimp of 1915.

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