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Aviation History
1916
1916 - 0271.PDF
MARCH 30, i9»6- l/yeiHT] THE AIR SERVICES IN PARLIAMENT. IN the House of Commons on March 22nd, Mr. Joynson-Hicks, at the request ot the civic authorities of south-eastern coast towns, raised several points in connection with recent air raids. The civic authorities who saw Viscount French on February 28th proposed that when a report of the approach of enemy aircraft was received by the naval or military authorities, they should at once transmit the information to chief constables of districts likely to be affected, who should use their discretion whether warning should be given. In a recent raid Ramsgate station sighted enemy airships, but had to communicate with the Admiralty before notice was given to the Westgate craft to go up. Last Sunday firing was heard in the direction of Dover, but no warning was given at Ramsgate till after the raiders had dropped bombs and disappeared. The opinion of the mayor was that if the siren had been blown earlier the children who were killed would not have been allowed to leave home to go to Sunday school. In the raid of February 14th the naval authorities had notice of it over an hour before the civic authorities received the information. He urged that the civic and police authorities should have warning the moment there was any idea of hostile aircraft coming over our coast. He understood that on the occasion of the last raid, as well as on a previous occasion, the officers in charge of the anti-aircraft arrangements were not at their posts when the raiders appeared. Apparently also the naval and military authorities did not under stand that soldiers and sailors under arms were entitled to tire their rifles at hostile aircraft without waiting for specific orders from an officer. Mr. Pemberton-Billing said the Government had been warned of the air menace for eight years, but our present position in the air wa-. one which reflected credit neither on the Government nor on the officers whose duty it had been to prepare to gain the supremacy of the air for us. In consequence of the agitation which arose eight years ago, the Government appointed a committee, which he for one had not taken very seriously, pointing out in the journal devoted to flight which he edited that it was evidently their desire to shift the responsibility for muddling along on to other shoulders. Now, after 18 months of war, after another agitation, the Government had adopted the same course and appointed another committee, the Derby Committee, to deal with the construction of aeroplanes for the Naval and Military Services. It seemed to him that while the Army aud Navy were quarrelling as to who should possess the poor little air child, there was a danger that the child would fail to develop as it should. Adopting the Chinese principle, the Army had bound one foot and the Navy the other, so it would never be able to walk by itself unless there was some definite change of policy. Lord Derby was a man with a great public reputation, and the Govern ment, finding themselves confronted by an outraged public, had thrown him to the people like a bone to a dog and then said that everything would be well. What qualifications had Lord Derby to decide the destinies of our Air Service ? What could he do when sitting at the head of a table with a multitude of counsellors, some counselling him to build, and Others—the little aerites—telling him we had so many machines here and there which were doing nothing. Lord Derby had for his assistants some hon. and gallant gentle men. He had also Lord Montagu, who quite recently in the House of Lords stood up for the Air Service and criticised the Govern ment, pointing out the error of their ways in no measured terms. But what was the result ? Within 24 hours he was roped in and was told to sit on the Committee. Then he had to confess, in another 24 hours, that he would like to say a number of things in the interests of his country, but, unfortunately, his lips were sealed. Then there was a gallant officer of the General Staff on the Com mittee. His peculiar knowledge of aeronautics was quite unknown to him, although he had been associated with aviation since 1904. Then there was Admiral Vaughan Lee, who had devoted the whole of his life to the noble profession of the sea, but as surely as he was capable as a naval officer, so surely was he ignorant as a babe in matters of aeronautics. He was the naval officer to whom this country was looking to solve the problem of how we should beat our enemies in the air. He feared that his name would be coupled with the names of other officers who had been sacrificed on the altar of the Government's ineptitude. General Henderson was a very able officer, but so far as the Air Services are concerned he had heard him referred to as the De Rougemont of the Air Service. Then uiere was Commodore Sueter, who is the father of the Naval Air Service, and he, together with Squadron-Commander Briggs, he said with a full sense of responsibility, represent the expert opinion on that committee. Under these circumstances it might be well for the "-•pverument to give serious consideration to the advisability of aoopting the minority report of that committee. whatever efforts this committee made, it was likely to be reactionary. In view of the fact that both himself and several other men were most anxious and perturbed over the present policy of masterly inactivity in the air and our present hopeless muddle, it might be well also for the Government to state exactly what were the powers and duties of the committee. He understood that in the last six weeks it had met on six occasions. That meant out of six weeks for over five weeks a policy either of pondering or of waiting to see had been adopted. Any board that was appointed for dealing with this very pressing question of the air should sit not once in six days but every day, and if necessary all day, until some solution was found for our third-class ixisition as an air power. He considered our national pride had suffered a blow which it would take us many years and much labour to recover from. This great nation had to seek protection from our enemies in the air in darkness and impotence, and had to walk about the streets like a lot of huddled fools when all that was necessary was for the Government to grasp the nettle and not to funk and' twist and turn in every direction to avoid a task which either they must accomplish or must make way for some other body of men to accomplish. Our very national existence in the next 20 years would lie in the ocean of the air. Within the next five or ten years we might live to see the sky darkened by aeroplanes. The idea of a country owning 500 aeroplanes would be looked upon as a humorous event of the past. Within the next ten years some country would own 100,000 or 200,000 aeroplanes. In the course of the next few yeais small scouting aeroplanes, the cost of which was now about £600 or .£700, would be reduced to about £100 or £200. That meant that even a little insignificant nation that could not afford to buy a battle ship would be able to terrify the world with machines carrying 500 lbs. of explosives and which would be able to get from one place to another, say about 100 miles, in 50 or 60 minutes. What would be the striking power of any nation which possessed such a terrifying arm ? It meant that if at some future date our relations with some other country, perhaps 100 miles or 200 miles away, became strained at 6 o'clock in the evening, it was quite feasible that if those relations were not attended to very rapidly, before six o'clock in the morning half our cities would lie laid waste. He never walked alnrat the streets in darkness at night without a certain feeling that our country was suffering at the hands of the Germans an insult which would take a lot of wiping out. He did not want to wash the dirty linen of the Air Service on the lloor of the House, but if there was no other way, if the Government is going to promise reforms when only alterations were taking place, if the only way to impress upon the Government the great import ance of the question was to shame and shock the House, he should not hesitate to give facts and figures which would do much to shock them and would do a great deal, he hoped, to shame the House. He was told we had no pilots. Yet we had about 130 officers, holding His Majesty's commission in the Royal Navy and the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, trained at great public expense, who were doing second-class clerical work in the Air Department. We had 3c first-class pilots quill-driving instead of machine driving. There was something very rotten in a service which allowed that sort ot abuse. The air pilot was an expensive man to train, but once he was trained he should be used as an air pilot and not as a civil clerk. OUT Air Services were in a condition of suspended animation pending a decision which it seemed very difficult for the Govern ment to arrive at. He would suggest that while this condition of suspended animation continued, the only thing the Germans were waiting for was, not decisions, but atmospheric conditions, to strike yet another, possibly appalling, blow at us. He had been asked to suggest a possible solution for tbe present condition. He had in his hand a very brief synopsis of a solution of the existing chaos, muddle, and inefficiency which reigned in our Air Service. He would briefly refer to one method which at least could be adopted to harness the material we had to let the work which was now in progress be carried on, and yet to prepare for the production of such an air fleet as would, within the next six or twelve months, gain for us an ascendency which, once we succeeded in winning it, no Government would permit us to lose. There were four ways out of our present muddle. The first was the amalgamation of the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps under the control of a board selected from the heads of those services. The second was the development of those two services on independent lines under one political chief. The third was a conjunction of the productive and financial department of these services, which would leave the operative side independent. The fourth was the creation of a new force responsible for the production of all air material and for all services which did not form an integral part of naval and military operations. Dealing first with the amalgamation of the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps, he said that this at first sight 271
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