HMA No. 1 - Fate and Legacy

Fate and Legacy

Mayfly was the subject of much negative publicity about being a waste of taxpayers’ money, and the future of Naval Airship operations was seriously questioned in the Admiralty. Winston Churchill, who was First Lord of the Admiralty at the time later made the following House of Commons statement on 26 March 1913: "Altogether, compared with other navies, the British aeroplane service has started very well... I have a less satisfactory account to give of airships. Naval airship developments were retarded by various causes. The mishap which destroyed the May-fly, or the Won't Fly, as it would be more accurate to call it, at Barrow, was a very serious set-back to the development of Admiralty policy in airships."

After being wrecked, Mayfly was abandoned and left to rot in her shed, and on 31 March 1913, Sir Bolton Eyres-Monsell (who would himself later become First Lord of the Admiralty) made the following comment during a Commons sitting regarding the fate of Mayfly and the plight of Britain's airship strength: "The 'May-fly' broke three years ago, and nothing further has been done. In non-rigid airships, Germany has seventeen, and against that we have two very inferior ones and two on order, but we are not doing anything in this respect."

Despite never having flown, the brief career of the aptly named Mayfly provided valuable training and experimental data for British airship crews and designers.