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Aviation History
1916
1916 - 0464.PDF
set vice than, first, to encourage ^inventions, secondly, to develop manufacture, and, thirdly, to provide far greater training facilities for our flying men. fe"2*? Viscount Galway, continuing the debate on the following day, expressed cordial agreement with the main lines of the speeches of Lord Montagu and Lord Derby. He said that so far as he could gather we had not yet got the fleet of airships which had been promised. Three and a half years ago, when he was in Germany, ne went up in a German Zeppelin, and was about five hours in the a r. He was much struck by the steadiness of the ship, the ease wilh which it seemed to be steered, and the rapidity with which it gained a greater altitude. The mails of that day were carried by the ship as an experiment. Although there was a fairly strong breeze the ship was able to remain perfectly stationary over a drill ground for about a quarter of an hour, whilst it dropped the mail bigs by means of parachutes. He urged on the new Board to consider whether more use ought not to b; made of lighter-than-air machines. He congratulated the President of the Board on not having any lawyers on that body. He had been struck by Lord Northcliffe's allusion to the great block in the inventions department and the long time required to get through. He hoped Lord Curzon would take it on himself to institute a board of his own connected with his own department to which every invention calculated to assist the aerial service could be submitted. He nlso urged that for carrying out the aerial service they must look to the young men. The more they were trusted the greater would be the benefit to this country. He hoped that Lord Montagu would press his motion to a division if it were not accepted by the Government. L«rd Grimthorpe observed that if the success of the new Board depended, as Lord Montagu had suggested, on the chairman being master in his own house, they might regard the Board's success under Lord Curzon's chairmanship as assured. It was high time the Air Service ceased to be under the tutelage of two different departments. An Air Service was of more import ance to us than to any other Power, and for us supremacy in the air was as essential for safety as supremacy at sea. Under the existing arrangements senior officers in the Service necessarily had not the same practical experience as the junior officers, and had not had proper training. Th's incapacitated them from taking intelligent command. They were transferred from duties they knew into a service of which they hid little knowledge, and were put in command over the heads of other people who had the knowledge. There resulted fiiction, misunderstanding, and inefficiency. There was a danger of the repression of the junior officers' qualities. He hoped Lord Curzon would not be daunted by difficulties, and he insisted that the country must now have a separate service for the air. Lord Beresford said the speech of the noble lord pointed to the enormous difficulties that atendtd the creation of a new arm, but these difficulties could b; surmounted and would not militate against the Air Service very long. He agreed with nearly all Lord Montagu had said, but would like to utter a note of warning on one point. The motion said " the time had arrivtd when the supply of men and materials shouUl be concentrated under single control, at the same time leaving the executive power over naval and military airciaft with the Army and Navy, as at present." He thought everything pointed to that; but it was never a good plan for one service to be dependent on another, hi this case they were going to have an Air Board that would differentiate between the services and so make the Air Service efficient. It was very easy to promote friction, but it was also easy to promote good comradeship. There was no reason why they should not take officers and men from the two services or from any other position. With regard to the shortage of air vessels, it was more dangerous to the Fleet than it was to the Army. He thought with Lo»d Nortbcliffe that the Board should have its own board of invention. Everything connected with the Air Service or with the scientific side of it ought to be under the Board, and it was clear it should be able to buy its own material, make its own designs, do all its own construction, and have the entire training of the three people—the pilot, the observer, and the artisan—who were necessary for every aircraft. He th jught the Board was very much on the lines suggested by Lord Montagu's motion ; certainly it was a distinct m >ve in the direction he indicated. The House would be pleased that Lord Curzon was the chairman, but he hoped they would be told who the other members were. One thing was imperative, that was, that no one should be on the Board who had got it into his bead that it was not going to be a success. He asked if Lord Curzon was also chairman ofthe Tonnage Committee. If so, he thought it was too much even for him to undertake. He urged the noble earl to scrap all useless machines. You nvght have a thing to-day which would be obsolete in four months' time. We began l»dly, ordering an enormous number of machines without trying them. We had ordered S50 Curtiss (American) machines at the cost of over a million and a half and no date was mentioned for delivery. He asked what had become of the Handley Page type of machine and the Sparrow. They ought to be scrapped at once. He hoped the Government would show foresight, at last, in the matter of the Air S. rvice. Let them begin by making out the respective duties which the Army and the Navy had to do ; train the Air Service as a whole and then draft the men into the Army and the Navy as required ; get the best designs possible, and prove the worth of the machines before ordering so many, as was the case in the past; and then, he though*., we would be as predominant in the air as we were on the sea. Viscoant Haldane said the moral of the whole situation with which the country was confronted was the consequence of the neglect ofthe maxim, " Think first before you act." There was a good deal of talk about the application of science, as though we could go to somebody for ready-made ideas and then use them. It w^s trained minds that were wanted, and those could only beg.t by giving up the national habit of paying no attention to ideas. He was glad the Government had taken the course not of setting up an Air Ministry, which had to do something without knowing distinctly all that it had to do, but a Board which was to surrey the ground and determine what were to be the functions of the Air Service. He entirely agreed with what had been said as to the tremendous importance which the Air Service would assume in warfare. But that would not arise in the course of the present war. It was a matter of the not far distant future. The first duty of the Board should be to<leteimine what kind of machines should be used and the quantities in which they should be ordered. Lord Northcliffs had said very truly that there wa; a great waste in one manufacturer making all the parts of a machine, and that the parts should be distributed. He thought that was very important. As regarded various parts, there was much that cou'd be standird- ised provided they knew exactly what the part was. This matt 1 had been discussed as if these things had never been thought of. They were thought of very much. Having been War Minister, he could have wished that the progress had been quicker. But the wan! of ideas and of scientific knowledge at that time was appalling. He saw some very distinguished inventors, including the Brothers Wright. Whilst he admired the skill of Messrs. Wright, he saw that their machine no more than any other was based om accurate, extens ve scientific knowledge. He read specifications by the pound, and saw the best people we had in those days. He was driven to despair. What he saw was purely emp;ricism. Lord Rayleigh was persuaded to preside over a committee of experts to work out prob lems. They gave their attention to the structure ofthe atm»spnere, the relation of speed and weight, and questions of material, particu larly the material of lighter-than-air machines. In the design of airships and aeroplanes, unless we had knowledge and training behind us, we could not cope with the new situations which were being imposed on us by an enemy as fertile in science as we were. One of the things this Commi sion might bring to ligkt might be how responsibility ought to be apportioned. As regarded aeroplanes, as far as he could gather, he could not admit that progress had not been rapid. But in airships we had been miserable. Why? The Navy was magnificent in the con struction of its ships, becaus; it had a long tradition and a great accumulation of scientific knowledge on the subject. But it knew nothing of air hips. When it was decided to hand over lighter than-air ships to the Navy, the Navy was totally unprepared to deal wi h t^e situation. As to an Air Ministry, it was not enough in dealing wi h these matters to want to do something. It was also necessary to know what to do. Unless we knew what science we had at command and how to make the best use of it, satisfactory results would not be attained. In that House they did not realise what problems were in fr.mt of them, from their habit of neglecting ideas. After the war we should have to encounter things even worse than our deficiencies in airships. For years before the war German knowledge was forging an engine against us more formidable than the shells and high explosives she had employed in the war. She had been training her artisans on a scale and in a fashion w< did not realise. The country would find itself after the war up against the results of the German educational system, but it would not be abli to say that it had received na warning. He hop^d the air service was going tj teach the country the practical value ol science. Earl Curxon, after expressing the gratitude of his colleagues and himself for the very kind and even generous reception which had been giren to the creation and composition of the Board, said he was very glad to hear Lord Derby and Lord Northclifle speak in high terms of the natural aptitude shown by British airmen fot service in the air. He thought that anyone who had studied the debates in this and the other House would have arrived at the con- 464
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