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Aviation History
1915
1915 - 0539.PDF
JULY 23, 1915. [JGGHT] AIRCRAFT AND PARLIAMENT. ON Tuesday night aircraft loomed large in the proceed ings of Parliament, the question of supply and equipment of our Flying Services arising out of questions by members during the Supplementary Vote of Credit for war purposes. Below we give a full report of the speeches and references to aircraft by the several members of the House who took part in the debate:— Mr. Joynson-Hicks was the first to raise the question, and said: I desire to make a few remarks on a subject in which I have been immensely interested for some years, and that is the way in which the aerial operations of the War have been conducted. I shall be careful in my remarks not to indulge in criticism of that character which was deprecated a few days ago. I do not propose to indulge in destructive criticism, and I do not propose to indulge in instructive criticism, but if I can suggest some constructive criticism to the representatives of the Navy and the Army I shall feel that I have not spoken in vain. My justification for speaking this afternoon is a speech made by the Minister of Munitions a month ago, that is on June 14th, only two days before i spoke in this House on this subject and only two days before the Under-Secretary of State for War gave us rather a glowing picture of our Air Service at_ the front. The Minister of Munitions, speaking, I think, at Bristol, said :— "We want more aeroplanes. The Germans have many more than we have." I said nothing quite as strong as that. The right hon. gentleman went on to say :— " One British aviator goes as far as two or three Germans, but we want more machines. The more you can turn out, the better it will be for our brave fellows in France." The Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief said :— "The Air Corps ihas become more and more an indispensable factor in combined operations." The object of my speech this afternoon is to plead for more aeroplanes, for more pilots, and incidentally for a larger type of aeroplane. The Air Service has, I admit, developed during the War, but the point I want to make is that it has developed along the old lines. It has developed along the lines of a year ago ; it has not struck out, because I imagine there has not been, possibly, a man of sufficient imagination to seize upon the possibilities of the occasion, to examine the best brains in the Air Service, both of the Navy and the Army, to seize upon what might be dreams, and have them translated into action on the battlefields in Flanders or in the Navy. From the reconnaissance point of view our Air Service is perfect. It is not necessary for me to say that the men are perfect; that is admitted on all hands. There are no aviators in the whole world, even those of France, who are better than our aviators. France, of course, is the leading aviation country, but to-day I think France would feel glad at being compared with us. There can be no greater honour to our own airmen than to say they are as good as those of France and far better than those of Germany. Artillery warfare is practically impossible to-day without aeroplanes. All ranging is done by means of aeroplanes. I have had an opportunity, as no doubt other hon. members have had, of speaking with officers both of the Artillery and of the Infantry and of the Air Service who have come back from the front, and it is generally admitted that in artillery warfare, good ranging is entirely the result of efficient aero plane service. It is impossible for us to locate the German trenches with sufficient accuracy without our Air Service, and it is equally impossible for the German artillery to perform the remarkable feats which we know they have performed unless they have a sufficiency of aeroplanes to identify the exact spots in our lines where our trenches are. Almost everyone who comes back from the front says that invariably the presence of German aeroplanes hovering over our trenches is followed by a burst of high explosive shells with a nicety of range which was absolutely impossible to the Artillery service three or four years ago. It is quite true, as the Field- Marshal Commanding-in-Chief said in his last report:— " During the last two months there have been sixty air battles between individuals, in which our airmen have been universally victorious." I think he said that we have not lost a single man in these sixty air battles. I am quite prepared to agree as to the superiority of our airmen. One knows that there have been individual contests, and one realises that owing to the superiority of the English flying men rather than the superiority of our aeroplanes we have come oft victorious. But we have not by any means kept the German aeroplanes off our lines. If we had done that we should have kept back the German Artillery from shelling our lines as they have done. 1 am prepared, on the authority of Artillery officers to go so far as 539 to say that to-day the German Artillery, so far as shelling new positrons is concerned—of course they have the range already on existing trenches—would be blind if we c..nld completely chase the German aeroplanes off the field. Cavalry has also been superseded from the point of view of reconnaissance by aeroplanes. One knows that the absolutely essential condition of modern warfare, indeed the essential condition of all warfare from the time of the Duke of Wellington down to the present time, is that we should know what the fellow is doing on the other side of the hill. When we realise to-day that any general, English or German, can with motor traction, say, with a couple of hundred motor omnibuses or a corresponding number of motor lorries, move in one night some thirty thousand or forty thousand troops a distance of thirty or forty miles, we see that it is absolutely essential that our Air Service should be so perfect that it could prevent the concentration of the German troops in any given area during a night like that, first, by an offensive attack while they are being concentrated in a given position, and also by giving our own generals accurate knowledge of where those troops are to be concentrated. While I am speaking of the reconnaissance side of the aeroplane work I should like to plead with the Under-Secretary of State for War that some recognition should be given to the work done by the observer. The aeroplane observer to-day is almost as important, if not quite as important, as the pilot. He must be a trained soldier, sitting side by side or in front of the pilot of the aeroplane, who can distinguish unit from unit, can discover the batteries of the enemy, carefully hidden as they always are, and can make his report in a concise and military manner to the general as soon as he gets back. There is, I know, a feeling among the observers, who are, I think, about the same number as the pilots, that they might have the badge which is given to these, or a similar badge, to show that they have been risking their lives in the same way as the pilots, and have been performing services to the Army as great as the pilots. What I want to find out is whether during this year of war there has been such an improvement in the Air Service as will show that there is a possibility, either on the spot in Flanders or in England, of taking hold of the matter and developing it not on the old lines but on new lines. When I spokt a month ago a reply was made by the Under-Secretary of State for War. All he was able to fay, and he seemed pleased to be able to say it, was this :—• " The Air Service is in very good proportion indeed to the rest of the Army. What I want the hon. member to realise is that since the outbreak of war there has been no smaller expansion ol the Air Service in proportion to the rest of the Army. On the contrary, the expansion of pilots has been in a ratio of ten to one. Where we had one before we have ten now engaged in the Air Service, while the expansion of men generally is ia the proportion of five to one." I am not a hostile critic. Everybody knows that. I want to help the Air Service, but I think that that shows that the right hon. gentleman has only got a conception of the possibilities of the Air Service such as we always had twelve months ago. He comes down to the House and says that the hon. member for Brentford ought to be satisfied because he showed an increase in the Air Service of ten to one. But during the last twelve months we have increased our forces at the front—in Flanders, and certainly if we include our forces in the Dardanelles—by ten to one, and all that the right, hon. gentleman is able to assure the House is that we have increased our Air Service in proportion, and only in proportion, to the increase of our troops at the front. Those of us who have realised two or three years ago the pos sibilities of what could be done by an air service think that instead of being pleased that we had increased our Air Service by ten to one, the right hon. gentleman should have been able to come down to the House and say that our Air Service to-day is entirely different from any conception which we had on the matter twelve months ago. But there has been no real development in the Air Service and in the possibilities of what the Air Service can do. They are going on doing what they were doing twelve months ago. They are doing it better, I admit, but it is the same kind of work—some reconnaissance work and some intermittent attacks on the enemy. But there has been no real conception of the possibilities of aerial offence out of all proportion to what were considered its possibilities twelve months ago. The right hon. gentleman went on to tell us that the question of pilots depended very largely on the question of schools, and we have, he said, eleven schools to-day instead of one at the time of mobilisation. That is quite true, but I think that I am right in saying that some of those schools which we have to-day really existed before twelve months ago. They were independent schools which were open, and they have now been converted into Government schools. The schools were there turning out pilots, and they are now turning out Government pilots. Those schools
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