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Aviation History
1916
1916 - 0915.PDF
OCTOBER 19, 1916. AVIATION IN IN the House of Commons on October 12th, in the debate on the Vote of Credit, Mr. Lynch said : I will proceed to another aspect of the question, that is the matter of aero planes. Some of us in this House from the very beginning of the war began to agitate for' a great aeroplane fleet. Members of the Government, in their usual style of superior knowledge, pooh-poohed that idea as something impossible, and then, after a very long period, they adopted the expedient of forming a Board. We want an aeroplane fleet which will give us a mastery of the air, which will be the cavalry of the air, which will be one of the decisive factors in winning this war ; the Government has given us a Board—a Board devised after a style more or less familiar of doubtful joint stock com panies in the City which begin by giving a front-window dressing of well-known names. The representative of that Board in the Commons is, I believe, a man of good intentions. He has done that extra ordinary thing for a member of the Government, he has actively looked into the matter himself, and has endeavoured at some personal fatigue and peril to himself to be as efficient as possible. All that is to his credit; but, after all, he is not the director of the work of this Board ; and, judging entirely by results, I would say that that Board has been a lamentable failure. The Board has not given us what we have a right to demand, that aeroplane fleet which once for all will show a superiority over the Germans, so that no German aeroplane . can ever dare to show itself above the horizon. What I say is a possibility. Had the matter been accepted from the very beginning in the spirit in which some of us brought it forward, had true energy been put into the work, had we less of the Gambetta spirit and more of the spirit of Lazare Carnot, the organiser of victory, we should have had to-day, not a Board of high-sounding names and practical incom petence, but an aeroplane fleet. What was the dream of some of us could now be the reality of all. What is wanted is not merely a sufficient number of aeroplanes to tackle the Germans and gain a sort of predominance over them, or to be an aid in scouting or in directing artillery fire, or anything of that sort, but a wider conception of the functions of aeroplanes, which should be also an entirely separate arm. If I were to proceed to figures I would reach a number which would be far beyond anything that has yet been suggested. I would say, that it would have been possible, had this matter been tackled in a right spirit, with adequate intelligence and energy, to have at the present time a fleet of 30,000 aero planes. It would not have been used for these sporadic raids, which looked well in the Daily Mail and the Daily Chronicle, and so on, and which come in so very a propos when it is necessary for Ministers to come to this House to ask for £300,000,000 ; but for raids which would accomplish some thing definite and decisive towards the rapid winning of the war. With a fleet of that kind it would be possible to have not a mere raid on Combles or Strasburg or what not, but a continuous raid on points properly selected as part of a great plan which would, one by one, reduce these strong places to impotence so that the plan could be carried out methodically on to the next point. A fleet of that kind would be an aid to the Army in its attacks, and would finally attack the great German Army even in open campaign. It would be the cavalry of the air. There is a possibility that the war may still last three or four years, and even now that possibility should be faced and this fleet be made a reality. After predicting the course of the war ending with an armistice and leaving the Germans in possession of a consider able part of their conquest, and in a position to prepare for the future, Mr. Lynch said it would leave the great problem unsolved, and for other generations a still more terrible war than this one, which has been so unexampled in the history of the world. " I will not further elaborate the matter, but I will sit down after concentrating on that one point, the one great line of safety and power which can change the aspect of the war and give hope of a victory on the Western Front : that victory can only be obtained now by one means—that is, by realising the conception, bolder, as I have said, than anything yet contemplated, of a great and overwhelming aeroplane fleet, which will leave this country and the Allies undisputed masters of the air." Mr. Billing, in the course of a speech, said The Press of this country seems to devote itself every day to" new theories of [/OGHf] PARLIAMENT. why Germany must lose, because she has done •something. I very rarely read that we must win because we have done something. The Tank itself was advocated when I hap pened to be at the Admiralty. 1 think I was one at the Admiralty who was interested in the new Tank propaganda That was in December, 1914. When at the outbreak of war one of the men who to a very great extent brought the idea came over from America—an Englishman—he was turned aside, and no heed was taken of some of his best ideas. I threw out the simple suggestion in the early days that if we were going to elnploy these Tanks surely we should employ them with electric cables, so that when they broke down or got beyond the enemy's trenches they could be hauled back out of trouble, instead of being left with all their secrets in the enemy's hands. These Tanks which are so secret that we must not publish a photograph of them, or know whether they are made out of steel or of sugar candy, that we must not be told anything about them—I suggest that the Germans have already captured several of them. I ask the Secretary of State to contradict that, because I have heard it stated that we have lost some of these Tanks. If they are in the hands of the Germans, what is the use of keeping up this secrecy, this absolute official bunkum, which is exhausting the patience of the country ? This Cuffley airship business is another instance. Every body who knows anything about airships is laughing over the stupendous and crass bluff that we are trying to make over that. We all know that that was not a Zeppelin, • We all know that it was an old-fashioned army airship belonging to the Huns, and that this was the first and last time that they had the audacity to send one of that type over here. There we give the lie to the public, an official lie, and say we have brought down a Zeppelin. Even if it were true it would be fatuous enough. When we do bring down a Zeppelin there is no reason to make all this song about it. The fact that Zeppelins can get back after they have raided this country, after two and a-half years of war, the fact that one only is brought down out of ten, is a far greater disgrace to us than the fact that we have brought one down is a credit to us. I want to tell the hon. member before I sit down that he has the material—I do not say he has an army—" the cavalry of the air " to which the hon. member on my right referred. There is no excuse at all in my opinion why we should not have a fleet. There is no reason why naval aeroplanes to-day should not undertake the defence of the country without interfering with the little part they are playing in the war. There are the men and the machines, and everything else. You could then leave the Koyal Flying Squadrons to get on with the war in France. Perhaps the hon. gentleman will tell us just exactly where the influence of the Air Board starts and where it finishes : where comes in its advisory capacity, and whether it is allowed to dictate. If the Air Board is purely , in existence in an advisory capacity, you can take it from me that its advice is not worth anything. If it can dictate there is so much good work to be done. What I should like to say by way of suggestion to the Air Board is to discover to what extent they can dictate. I am afraid it is purely there as a name and not as a real thing: Under these circumstances I appeal to His Majesty's Government to put the control of -the future Air Service in the hands of young men of imagina tion, and let them not only win their spurs but let them win for the country, through the squadrons of the air, in perhaps the year or two of war which we will yet have to face, what no other weapon that has ever been put into our hands can accomplish. Major Baird (representing the Air Board) : I do not believe that the House will wish to be detained very long on the subject of the air. Deeds count more than words in matters of war, and I do not think anybody who has followed the deeds of our airmen either at home or at the Front will have cause to complain in the manner in which the hon. gentleman who has just spoken has complained. The hon. gentleman who first raised the question advocated the creation of a vast fleet of aircraft. I can assure him that I entirely agree with him in that. I do not believe we could have too many air craft. At least it is impossible to conceive conditions which would enable us to obtain more than we could use with very great success. But I must ask him to believe that both the Naval Service and the Royal Flying Corps are doing their 911
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