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Aviation History
1909
1909 - 0466.PDF
IT is an unusual thing for Parliament to be sitting on an August Bank Holiday, and the matter which engaged the attention of Members at St. Stephen's last Monday was of unusual character also, for in the course of a long statement, delivered with characteristic rapidity, the Minister for War showed that at last the Government has begun to prepare the way for an adequate aero- nautical equipment for naval and military uses for this country. The points of Mr. Haldane's speech and of the debate which followed it have been analysed and classified for clearness' sake, and are presented on another page of this issue. We do not propose to recapitulate the matter here, but to dwell only on one or two reflections that arise naturally out of the proceedings. Let us begin by getting to the root of the matter, and consider what money is to be available during the current financial year for the exploitation of aerial naviga- tion for national uses. Hitherto progress has been cramped because funds were lacking. In this material world, progress in mechanics, as in most branches of activity, is dependent on money; without money all is vain. The lump sum which has gone forward in the British estimates for aeronautics is ^78,000. We who know the vast field to be covered will realise that such a sum is not enough for the work that has to be undertaken to enable Britain to make up lost ground; but we who know also how tedious has been the toil to convert the authorities, and how niggardly have been the results to date, must feel something like a thrill of joyous surprise when we learn not only that so appreciable a scale of expenditure is to be embarked on by way of a beginning, but also that the Commons passed the vote unanimously, not a voice being heard against it. Taken in conjunction, those two points certainly illustrate what was brought out by Mr. Cecil Harmsworth, namely, that whatever opinions may be expressed concerning lack of Government aeronautical enterprise in the past, at this precise moment the Government and the Commons, irrespective of party, are farther advanced in their ideas of national aeronautics than is the British public. We are glad of this, because such education as the man in the street needs can be supplied him in a matter of minutes only. That is to say, he has merely to see airships in being to be convinced of their reality and value; and as soon as he shall be afforded that opportunity he will act the only part he will ever be called on to play, he will be ready always to lift up his voice in favour of his native country being equipped with machines for aerial locomotion in such quantities and in such kinds as to be better than the best aerial fleet possessed by any other nation. But unless the funds are available for procuring examples of various kinds of airships with which to give the man in the street his needed object lesson, we should have to wait an indefinite period to see this country properly started on the quest of the mastery of the air that is so essential to our safety as an island nation. It is quite plain that whatever may be the short- comings of the grant that has been asked for and is now passed, at least the sum total is sufficient to •ensure that not one specimen of an airship alone shall be possessed by this nation within the next twelye months. The sum that is to be spent on national aeronautics is, in the present state of affairs, really something more than ^£78,000, for Mr. Haldane's statement made it quite clear that, in addition, the Government is depending on AUGUST 7, 1909. the National Airship Fund, that is being raised by the Morning Post, being carried to a successful issue. He counts on this nation being in possession of four airships early next season, but one of the quartette is to be the machine that, after test, will be bought by the National Airship Fund, so that a total of ,£100,000 is more like the sum that will be actually spent. As things go, that is certainly a fair beginning, because it were idle to lay down fleets of any particular class of airship at a period when it is eminently desirable to improve all the time on existing types. We have not gone anywhere near far enough to talk of standardising airships. According to the plan that has been unfolded this week, a very wise system has been followed in dividing the practical work in connection with national aeronautics between the Navy and the Army, leaving it to the senior service to experiment with and to develop the rigid dirigible, and putting it right away into possession of a full-size practical machine by commissioning such a world-famed engineering firm as Messrs. Vickers, Sons, and Maxim to build the first example. The semi-rigid and the non-rigid type of airship have been entrusted to the Army, for of the total of four machines mentioned by Mr. Haldane, three are left to the Army. They are somewhat nebulous, because two have to carry out certain prescribed tests before they are acquired, and it may be a question as to whether the third can be seriously regarded as a war balloon, for it will be com- posed of a gas-retaining envelope that has been secured from a French factory, and which will be used in com- bination with the nacelle possessed already by the .Balloon Department at Aldershot. The two serious and really large dirigibles for Army use that are in prospect are one that the Government will purchase, and another which will be bought by the National Airship Fund. These will probably be the frameless Clement-Bayard, which the Parliamentary Committee of Aerial Defence has arranged to have brought over to this country, and the Lebaudy. Which will be bought with which money appears a matter of indifference, the arrangement being that the first suitable airship to be available shall be the one which patriotic private subscribers to the National Air- ship Fund shall present to the Government. This making of the machines undergo reasonable tests before purchase is a commendable action on the part of the Government, because, however much we may be in need of airships, we do not want to buy them like a pig in a poke. Useless airships are worse than no machines at all, because they represent wasted money and dissipated effort. So far, regarding this as a first year's programme, it may be pronounced satisfactory—albeit, we should like to see Mr. Haldane putting a little more faith in practical active work, and not setting such a proportionately much greater store by "theoretics," if we may coin a word to describe the purely theoretical and, in many cases, the merely opinionated study of aerial locomotion. But it must be borne in mind, moreover, that very much depends upon the National Airship Fund being brought through to a successful final issue, and that there yet remains to be found ^9,000 out of the total ^20,000. Needless to say, the whole matter is of vital importance to the immediate prospects of the flying movement in this country. And hence it behoves all who deem them- selves friends of that movement to exert every ounce of the influence they possess in bringing in the shekels to the offices of the Morning Post. 468
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