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Aviation History
1912
1912 - 0186.PDF
EDITORIAL COMMENT. At last Great Britain is to commence ^et<j?r Late coming into line with the Great Powers of Never *ne Continent by the establishment of a military air corps worthy of her rank among the nations. It has taken a great deal of time and more agitation to bring home to the authorities the realisation that in the aeroplane we have an engine of war which may well decide the fate of battles and, collaterally, that of nations, but this we have to be thankful for, that now the start has been made it is with no ungenerous hand that the Government is approaching the problems of the air. The vote for which Lord Haldane is asking may not be as large as that placed on the French estimates for the current year, but there is at least some reason to think that the ,£308,000 which is being allotted now is only an earnest of more to come. Even taken by itself it is, as we say, not an ungenerous amount, and we welcome it the more as evidence that the Government no longer intends this country to lag behind its rivals in the lament able fashion which has given us so much concern in the past. Moreover, the fact must not be lost to sight, the sum quoted is for the Army alone—it takes no account of any sums that may be asked for in the forthcoming Naval Estimates and, if we are not very much mistaken, the appropriation that will figure in those estimates for the creation of an efficient aerial service for the Navy will be a fairly substantial one. For this relief, much thanks. Naturally, the first feeling induced by the awakening of the Government to the enormous potentialities of air craft is one of intense satisfaction. Criticism is well-nigh disarmed by the figures as they stand, especially when we keep it in mind that there must necessarily be a Naval vote in addition. Therefore, any comment that is to be made on the Estimate must be in the nature of discussion and suggestion, which shall be constructive rather than critical. There are several points, too, which may be usefully discussed ahead of the announcement of pre cisely how the vote is to be spent—for we take it for granted that Parliament will not revise the suggested expenditure in the direction of a cutting down, which would be the falsest of false economy. To begin with, it is to be sincerely hoped that the British industry, upon which the country must ultimately depend for the supply of materiel, will be systematically fostered, not only to the end we have indicated, but in order that it may be enabled to secure its legitimate share of the world's trade in air-craft. Let us not be taken to mean that the figuratively blind and halt should be nursed into' a fictitious semblance of health, for that way lies the inefficiency which we cannot afford at any price. We have a parallel in the shipbuilding industry. Great Britain practically builds the warships of the world, but she would never have attained to the proud position she holds had it not been for the judicious policy of the Government towards the industry. During the Napoleonic wars, and for years after, the French naval architects were far ahead of our own in design, and, logically, it would seem that if we had desired the best that could be obtained for our own Navy, we should, after the wars, have gone.to France for our ships. But nothing of the sort happened. Our own people were sympathetically encouraged until, as is our wont, we before long took the lead and now the art of warship building is understood nowhere so well as it is in our own yards. To-day we are in the same position sa far as regards the aeroplanes as we were during the first three decades of last century in relation to warship con struction. It would be idle to deny that France leads us in the aeroplane industry, though we have come along very rapidly of late and possess more than one factory which is capable of turning out air-craft quite fit to lie in the line with the best produced across the Channel. But one swallow does not make a summer, and neither does a single firm, or even half a dozen, make an industry. The salient fact is, however, that we can and do build aeroplanes in this country which are as good as any, sa that all that is required is reasonably sympathetic fostering to create from the existing nucleus an industry worthy of the country and efficient against the time of stress. We have emphasised this need for building up the industry as rapidly as possible because we have some thing of a lurking fear—it has been made the subject of categorical statement in some quarters—that when we set to work on the building of aeroplanes for the Army it will be found that arrangements have quietly been made to manufacture on a large scale at the Army Aircraft Factory. It is not that we, on behalf of private industry, are afraid that money will go in a direction we had rather not see it take, but we are most absolutely convinced that the road to safety lies through a strong industry in private hands rather than through practical concentration in a Government factory. Indeed, this is so obvious as to need no explanation. We have got to dig much deeper than merely experimental work in an official laboratory will take us. We have not got the perfect aeroplane motor yet—which means that it must be made worth while for the best engineering brains at our disposal to> investigate the problems connected with flight engines. There are many other directions in which judicious encouragement will be necessary to create and preserve the organisation that will be required to place us on an equality with the Continental Powers, but there is no necessity at the moment to go farther on this point than we have already done. There are two points in the Estimate upon which we trust some discussion will centre when the Estimates come to be debated in the House. First of all, there is to be built and equipped a school of flying, but there is nothing said about any provision for taking advantage of the organisation and experience of existing privately- owned schools. This seems to us to be a mistake, for if we are going to build two hundred or so aeroplanes we shall necessarily require the men to fly them, plus a proportion to fill the gaps caused by casualties. It is- manifestly impossible that this number can be trained in a school which, at the moment, exists only on paper, and the efficient military aviator is not made in a day either. Surely it is possible for some arrangement to be made whereby the services of the schools can be secured if and when they may be necessary, as necessary they un doubtedly will be. Finally, we would express the pious hope that the appropriation of £161,000 which figures under the head of "Aeroplanes, Materials, &c.," will not be subjected to depredations on behalf of futile experiments with dirigibles, large or small. Let these have their own grant—and justify it. 186
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