Operating seaplanes required the carrier to stop to hoist the aircraft out- and in-board by crane, leaving the ship exceedingly vulnerable to U-boat attacks and the Admiralty began to seek alternatives.

[2] By the middle of 1916, Campania had been fitted with a 200 ft (61 m) flight deck forward on which, experiments were being carried out in launching aircraft.

The two-bay wings folded rearwards for storage, the crew of two sat in separate cockpits, the observer being provided with a Lewis gun on a Scarff ring.

[1][4] On 1 August 1918, during the North Russia Campaign in support of the British intervention in the Russian Civil War, Campanias from Nairana participated in what was probably the first fully combined air, sea, and land military operation in history, joining Allied ground forces and ships in driving Bolsheviks out of their fortifications on Modyugski Island at the mouth of the Northern Dvina River in Russia, then scouting ahead of the Allied force as it proceeded up the channel to Arkhangelsk.

[5] Campanias from Nairana then operated against the Bolsheviks from Arkhangelsk,[1] as well as against the White Finnish defensive positions in Uhtua in the autumn of 1918 from Kem.