A pro-German government brought Turkey into the First World War in late October 1914, an action that posed a threat to British and French lines of communication and supply in the Middle East. Defence of the Suez Canal was of immediate importance, but as preparations to launch an attack against the waterway were being made by Djemal Pasha the British regular garrison was withdrawn from Egypt and sent to France.  The force that would eventually defend the canal was composed of substantial army elements from India, Britain, New Zealand and Australia supported by Egyptian artillery and French and British naval and air units.   

On November 4th, as the first Battle of Ypres raged, the S.S. Beethoven set sail for Egypt from Avonmouth. On board was an RFC detachment equipped with three Maurice Farman aircraft (two 1913 type Longhorns and one 1914 type Shorthorn), 2 Crossley light tenders, one Leyland repair lorry, two spare 70 H.P. Renault engines, 2 tent hangars and six months supply of petrol and oil. Amongst the RFC personnel was Bill Edgington a young aircraft mechanic from Reading, Berkshire.

The ship arrived at Alexandria on November 17th and the detachment disembarked and entrained the following day, not an easy task as there were fifty yards between the dockside and the train, across which all equipment had to be manhandled.

When the transhipment was completed the detachment set off for Camp Moascar, Ismailia, a town approximately half way between Port Said and Suez where the Headquarters of the Canal Defence Force had been established. The detachment arrived on November 20th. The next few days were spent in setting up an air base, the equipment the RFC had brought from England being supplemented by three sheds and two Henri Farman aircraft transported from a base at Heliopolis, near Cairo. An Italian aviator, Peppino Leonardi, was assigned to the detachment as an extra pilot on November 26th. Leonardi seems to have been something of a celebrity and had appeared on one of a series of French themed postcards, one of which, shown below, was kept by Bill Edgington.
 

By the end November the Shorthorn (No. 369), was operational and was immediately flown out on reconnaissance. In order to facilitate flights over as wide an area as practicable, landing grounds with fuel and lubrication depots were established at Qantara, (midway between Ismailia and Port Said) and at Suez. Each was to be kept in order and protected by army units, but the landing strip at Suez was difficult to land on due to bad ground and when the Shorthorn came to grief there on December 9th the pilot suffered a broken arm. Fortunately two other aircraft were operational on the same day and so the work of the detachment could continue

The RFC detachment was not the only unit giving air support to the Canal Defence Force for a captured cargo steamer, the Aenne Rickmers had been converted by the French into a seaplane carrier, moored at Port Said and put at the disposal of the British commander. As the RFC strength grew pilots were sometimes transferred to the seaplane flight. 

Throughout December further reinforcements and material reached the Canal Defence Force and by the end of January 1915 there were 70,000 allied troops in Egypt.

The size of the RFC detachment increased when pilots arrived from England and India and British officers from the Egyptian Army, Coast Guards and Irrigation Department joined as observers. Three aircraft (two 1913 pattern Maurice Farmans and an engine-less  B.E.2a) were also shipped over from the Indian Central Flying School.

As preparation for the defence of the canal continued, units of the Djemal Pasha's Suez Expeditionary Force concentrated at Bersheeba in readiness for a 300 kilometer march across the difficult terrain of the Sinai Desert. The main body moved off on January 15th and it was not long before advanced units were observed by RFC reconnaissance patrols. As there were reports that the Turkish Army had its own aircraft, rudimentary anti-aircraft measures were put in place at Ismailia and an aircraft, pilot and observer kept on standby.

On January 17th cavalry and infantry units were seen advancing towards Qantara and the observing aircraft was fired on and hit. For most of the next three weeks the RFC were involved in locating advancing Turkish units and, where possible, bombing them. The pilots and observers were constantly under shrapnel and rifle fire. One aircraft had to make a forced landing on the coast with engine problems and the mechanical trouble was fixed only just in time to save it from being captured by a Turkish cavalry patrol. A couple of days later the BE2a was wrecked in a forced landing, a loss the detachment could ill afford.

It was the intention of Demjal Pasha to take the allies by surprise and attack across the canal a little north of Ismailia after making a feint against Qantara. Action began at Qantara on January 26th but, vitally, air patrols kept the Canal Defence Force informed of the general area in which the main attack was most likely to take place. Consequently, when the assault began on February 3rd, only 600 expeditionary troops out of the 12,000 massed on the the east bank were able to cross. Indian infantry supported by Egyptian Army artillery and the guns of allied ships stopped the establishment of a bridgehead and within a couple of days the Turks began to retreat towards Bersheeba. Approximately 700 Turkish soldiers were captured in this period.

On February 7th a telegram from General Sir J. Maxwell was received by the G.O.C of the Canal Defence Force. It read;

Will you please convey to Captain Massey and the officers of the Royal Flying Corps, also the observers, my appreciation of the hard and good work they have done with inferior machines. I do not know what we would have done without them.

No doubt the ground crew took some satisfaction in this commendation too but, even though the Turkish Army was in retreat and despite bad weather, reconnaissance and bombing operations continued.

Had the Dardanelles operation been a success it is possible that Turkey could have been knocked out of the war within a couple of months but as things turned out the focus of action in the Middle East moved to Mesopotamia. The RFC detachment in Egypt began to transfer there in March 1915, although Bill Edgington was not to go himself until much later in the year.