Major Seaton Dunham Massy, DSO

MASSY, SEATON DUNHAM [mmn] SEATON
GRO Reference: 1882 J Quarter in FULHAM Volume 01A Page 230

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Some family links here to be investigated further: http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/arthur-charles-fox-davies/arm...
and
https://www.tribalpages.com/tribe/familytree?uid=uktwin&surname=Massy and
http://www.thepeerage.com/p25324.htm

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Name Seaton Dunham Massy
Death Date 10 May 1922
Death Place Oxford, Oxfordshire, England [mistranscribed - see probate record attached. This was his last address, but he died at an address in Marylebone.]
Probate Date 18 Aug 1922
Registry London, England

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Aviators' Certificate gained in May 1911 on Salisbury Plain on a Bristol Biplane (see attachment).

Captain S.D. Massy, according to The History of The War in the Air 1914- 1918, by By Sir Walter Raleigh was an early pioneer, who had flown with the Air Battalion during 1911, and was commandant of the Indian Central Flying School at Sitapur.

Info about Indian Central Flying School here - although says est. 1913?

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Indian Army Quarterly List for 1 January 1912:
Name Seaton Dunham Massy
Birth Date 25 Apr 1882
First Commission Date 8 Jan 1901
Notes 29 Punjabis
Page number 140
Rank Captain
Company British Officers of the Indian Army

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Mentioned in

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this list of Aviators' Certificates.Haven't worked out the relationship yet, but must be related to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Massy Lieutenant-General William Godfrey Dunham Massy, CB (24 November 1838 – 20 September 1906), who was born in Ireland.

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From and article in the Royal Air Force Historical Society Journal, no. 48, 2010, pp. 63-64 (see also attached)
"...in May 1911, Sir Douglas Haig (then Chief of the General Staff in India) noted that We are considering here how best to start a school of instruction and a corps for air work. I should be greatly obliged if you could let me have any suggestions on the subject. Money at present is very tight here and so we shall find it difficult to make a beginning even in a small way. 5 In the same month, Captain Seaton Dunham Massy of the 29th Punjabis became the first Indian Army officer to qualify as a pilot with the Royal Aero Club. After serving on attachment to the Air Battalion, Royal Engineers, Massy returned to India where he spent the summer of 1912 at Army Headquarters in India working out the details of a scheme for introducing a School of Aeronautics. In 1913 Massy and three other Indian Army officers travelled back to the UK in order to attend a course at the Central Flying School, and on 1 December 1913 he was appointed formally to command the newlycreated Indian Central Flying School, then located at Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh. Captain Cuthbert Gurney Hoare of the 39th Central India Horse, Lieutenant Cyril Louis Norton Newall of the 2nd Gurkha Rifles and Lieutenant Hugh Lambert Reilly of the 82nd Punjabis were also posted to the school as instructors between November 1913 and April In answer to a question in the House of Commons on 7 April 1914, the Under Secretary of State for India stated that at that time the school comprised three aeroplanes, and five others have been ordered. The immediate object is to gain experience of aviation under Indian conditions, with a view to the eventual expansion of the school as a training establishment. 6 Plans to further develop military aviation in India were derailed by the outbreak of war in August Indian Army officers then present in the UK and possessing Royal Aero Club Certificates including Massy, Hoare, Newall, Lambert and Captain Duncan Le Geyt Pitcher of the 39th Central India Horse, all of whom were then at Farnborough were all swept up in the rapid mobilisation of the RFC. This did not mark the end of Indian military aviation per se, for in November 1914 Massy, Reilly and a party of RFC personnel embarked for Egypt, where they were joined by a detachment drawn from the Indian Central Flying School to form an aviation unit intended to support Indian Expeditionary Force E defending the Suez Canal."

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