FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1916
1916 - 0228.PDF
JOSE] Navy. It was merely a departmental committee, and though other powers might be thrust upon it, it had been appointed merely for the purpo e he had stated. That would not take us very far. He had seen no fresh arguments against the appointment of a Minister of Aviation. They were precisely the same arguments as those which had been urged against the appointment of a Minister of Munitions, and every one knew what the effect of that appointment had been. It was said you should not swap horses while crossing a stream, but if one horse was drowning, it would really be wise to take the other. The whole question was whether the difficulties of machinery were to be made into a stronger argument than the efficiency of the service. The proper motto was " One Element one Service." The real difficulty at the moment was said to be that his proposal, if carried into effect in a time of war, might produce confusion. He was one of thote who believed, however, that possibly that conclusion was exaggerated. He thought that they would eventually, and very soon, get the men to work together. The first function of such a Board would lie the function of supply and construction. The Derby Committee to-day, he believed, had to do with supply, not with construction. He would also like to see the Board of Aviation deal with the question of future policy ; it should be able to inform the future staff what was the best kind of machines to construct for certain purposes. It should include a representative certainly of the Admiralty and of the War Office; men of commercial manufacturing experience, and also a member of the General Staff or a delegate from that staff. At the present moment there was a Parliamentary responsibili y. If anything went wrong with the Air Service or Zeppt-lms came over and did harm to this country, who was the Minuter responsible ? He had never discovered any Minister who was particularly responsible. If questions were now asked about the air defence of London, it turned out that there had been four different stages in regard to its organisation. The very fact that they had such vacillation proved to his mind that it was almost impossible for the Army and Navy to carry out the proper organisa tion and control of the air service of this country. He did not propose at this stage to ask the Government right away for a Ministry of Aviation. A great deal had to be thought out before that organisation could be established. But he thought they ought to take the Derby Committee, give it more power, and make it the germ of what might come later. The Chairman of that Committee should certainly be a member of the Cabinet or of the War Council. But to leave the Committee as it was, merely an interdepartmental Committee, was only touching the fringe of the question, and was not goi- g to do any real good at all. At the present time the Air Service was merely auxiliary to the fightirg forces of the Navy and Army. He could see a time coming wnen the Air Service would be more important than either the Army or Navy. We were so close to the Continent as to be vulnerable to attack by a nation which had organised its air service, and the danger would increase in years to come. We must get into the habit of looking at the Air Service not as an auxiliary to the Army and Navy, but as a great service which was an establishment of itself and to which we should have to look in future years largely for the defence of this country. It would take many years before the full value of air power was realised. He believed it was the logical outcome of the present system of war fare that the greater part of our future warfare would be in the air. The soldier to-day had become a cave-dweller; he had to dig him self in the ground ai.d stop there the greater part of the time. At sea many of our sailors had become diving men. The power of the great gun and the pswer of explosives would tend more and more to drive the issue of battle into the element of the air. Therefore we mu-t learn a lesson from the present system of fighting. We were led irresistibly to the conclusion that the supremacy of the air was the goal to which this country should strive. Then there was another aspect All war would become more and more scientific, but warfare in the air would become more scientific than anything which had preceded it. And as it became more scientific our foes would become more dangerous. That being so, it would become more important that the foresight which had to be exercised and the organisation of this great service should not be left to a divided responsibility. There should be one responsibility, and one only. The three problems to be dealt with were simple enough, but they required all the brains at the disposal of the country to solve. They were, first, the provision of powerful enough aeroplanes ; secondly, the provision of powerful enough anti-aircraft guns ; and thirdly, the construction and building at once of airships ot the Zeppelin type for this country. As regards the first point, he thought it would be admitted as mcessary. As regards the second, our anti-aircraft guns with few exceptions were of far too small a calibre and nothing like powerful enough to do serious damage to a Zeppelin. Anyone who saw the raid of last September must have MARCH 16, IQJ.6. thought it tragic and pitiable that the shells fired at a Zeppelin flying 7,000 ft. high burat at the extreme range of about 5,000 ft. To do any real damage quite a big gun was needed. The modern Zeppelin consisted ot about 20 balloonettes, and unless you could set it on fire or tear the envelope the airship, if struck, would probably get home and become a formidable adversary on a future occasion. There was at one time a great contempt in this country for Zeppelins, and a conviction that they could always be overcome by aeroplanes. He had never subscribed to that view. For proper defence against aircraft you must have both kinds of aircraft, and to depend on aeroplanes to destroy Zeppelins was a great mistake. Then we should do to our enemies what they have done to us. They attacked, and were going to attack still more, our manu facturing districts, while we had never attacked theirs to the same extent. Yet there were points on our frontier in Flanders which were far closer to Essen and the great indu-trial districs of Westphalia than our industrial districts were to the nearest for the German airships. Wc were absolutely unable to give a proper reply, which was the bombing and destruction of the hangars of the enemy beyond the horizon of his manufacturing districts. In order to convince their lordships of the seriousness of the modern Zeppelin, he would q iote a few particulars. Every one, he supposed, would grant that the number of Zeppelins possessed by Germany was still considerable. Within the last few days he had talked with a neutral who had come from Berlin and who was in a position to know what he was talking about, and he had put the number as high as 50. He himself (Lord Montagu) thought it was between 30 and 40. There were a certain number on the Russian frontier, but there was a pos sibility of their putting a fleet of not less than 20 in the air at this moment. That was a formidable fleet when it was remembered that each Zeppelin could carry ij to 2 tons of explosives and thermite and oxide of aluminium for fire-raising purposes, materials under which steel melted like thin woe and which nothing could resist. The great danger in this country was not from explosives but from fire, and he would like the Government to consult fire experts, such as the London Fire Brigade and the fire brigades of our grrat cities, on that subject. If a thermite bomb were dropped on any of our big cities, one would no like to contemplate the loss of life that would ensue and the shock to our national nerves. The length of the mo t recent form of Zeppelin was over 560ft. and would shortly be ov> r 600ft.—or getting on towards three times the leng h of Westminster Hall. They were 65ft. in diameter, and fur nished with four engines and propellers. They had a radius, or would shortly have a radius, of 2,000 miles. The distance from Ghent to London was only 160 miles, to Sheerness only 120 miles, to Dover HO, and to Portsmouth 212, while our manufacturing districts as far west as the west of Stafford-hire were not more than 250 miles. From Emden to Hull it was only 300 miles, to Newcastle 320,and to Manchester 350. To the Firth of Forth it was only 450 miles, to Cromarty Firth 530, and to Scapa Flow 550 ; so that if they con sidered the range of these airships they would have to extend their ideas con-iderably of the danger that might exist. He believed it was more serious than the aspect on land. If the German Fleet came out, and came out at a time that suited the Zeppelins, although their aid might not redress the balance against the superioiity of our Fleet it would cause extra losses, it would make the tactics of our Fleet more difficult, and might even have a serious influence on the battle itself. Some people said we ought to try to defend this country to a large extent by artillery, and he was sorry to hear the Secretary for War say the other day that the building of certain antiaircraft guns had been accelerated to the disadvantage of other guns in order to cope with this danger. They might just as well try to retain the supremacy of the sea by means of a few forts along the coast as to cope with Zeppelins by setting up artillery all over the country, unless—as was unthinkable—they were going on the idea of having these guns round all the great centres. The extreme range with the cuns we had—he would not give the figure—but he would say that Zeppelins could rise higher. Th-y could fly to a height, he believed, of 15,000 ft., and any gunnery expert would tell them that accurate shooing at an object travelling at that height was a very difficult thing. The airships that attacked us did not come over at their top speed, but at an economic speed—about 35 miles an hour—but when they were here, if they were fired at, they could go up to well over 70 miles an hour. To hit an object flying at 70 miles an hour when you did not know the wind at that height was beyond the science of gunnery. The only way to overcome Zeppelins was to carry the war into the enemy's camp, and lor that they required powerful aero planes to bomb the enemy's territory and hangars. He wasawa>e that th- re was a new air engine coming out in Germany of 225 horse power, and an extraordinarily light plane which was likely to give extraordinary results. In this connection it would be worth white to take note of the fact that in France and Germany all the finest guns 228
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
