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Aviation History
1917
1917 - 0028.PDF
JANUARY II 1917. To go back a little, it will be remembered that the recent controversy over the old Air Board had its genesis in the competition between the two fighting Services. Each of them was concerned primarily in the equipment of its own Air Service, with very little regard to the needs of the other, and, consequently, production was retarded and prices often inflated by the unhealthy competition. The way out was thought to be through the constitution of an Air Board which should take over control of all matters affecting the supply of machines and equipment for both Services, and, collaterally, to deal with such questions of design as experience might suggest would be best considered by an independent body which in- cluded representatives of both the Services concerned. That is what we thought we were going to get when the new Government took in hand the reorganisation of the Air Board. As a matter of fact we were justified in assuming that that was so, in the light of the speech of the Home Secretary when announcing the intention-to put in hand the reorganisation. What we are to get, apparently, is what we have advisedly described as a glorified committee of the Ministry of Munitions. It certainly does not make for confidence in the future of the Air Services. ^ ** were no* *or *kc disquieting factsNew w^ wmcn we nave already dealt, we Air Lord, could view with approval the general scheme of the reorganisation. TheNavy is to be put on an equality with the Army at last, in that it is to have a responsible officer to sitin the inner councils of the Admiralty. It has always been a disability of the R.N.A.S. that it was repre- sented only at second hand on the Board of Ad-miralty, and to that we believe was due in no small measure the attitude taken up by the Admiraltytowards the old Air Board. Not only are we un- feignedly pleased that aerial interests are now to bedirectly represented on the Board, but we feel that every interest concerned will be served by the ap-pointment of so experienced an officer as Commodore Godfrey Paine, C.B., to represent them. He not onlybrings to bear all the knowledge gained during a long sea service but a unique experience of the Air Service as well. To have appointed an officer with seaservice only would have been, we feel, a mistake under all the circumstances. Although it is a part ofthe Royal Navy and its reorganisation for war, the R.N.A.S. is really a service by itself, and one that requires special understanding and special treatmentat the hand* of those at its head. The experiment of handing it over to officers who know nothing about it,and who have been bred to the sea and the sea service only, has not been such a conspicuous success that it need be repeated in times like these. As Fifth Sea Lord—though we do not see whytradition should not be ignored and the new Lord be given the title of his duties—Commodore Paine will be complementary to the Director-General of MilitaryAeronautics at the War Office. J When we read the things that have Thinking been wn*tfin around the reconstructionAlike! °f *ne Air Board and cognate matters, it is difficult to repress a smile when wefind served up as new discoveries and new ideas the doctrines that we ourselves have been enunciating for two years and more. To quote one example out of many, the naval correspondent of the Telegraph, in the course of a very sound article on " The Air Problem," makes the discovery that : " Whatever %-: may be the future development of aircraft, the Fleet ; will require aeroplanes, if not airships also, as auxili- aries if it is not to fight at a disadvantage. . . . The Fleet needs craft specially designed to meet its . needs, and pilots specially trained. That is the Ad- • miralty's business." Exactly. We said so, when discussing the Naval Estimates of 1914 ! Then, Mr. Joynson-Hicks, in an interview with the -• Observer, tells his interlocutor :— " But the most important question for the Air Minister is to decide the question of the use of the machines. On this point I am in advance of many f- of those who support the creation of an Air Ministry. , This is a new force in war. The old naval and . military chiefs have not that belief in its independent possibilities that our flying men have. " I would allow to Sir Douglas Haig and Sir John Jellicoe all the machines they want for their own tactical purposes. But I would give the new Air _ Minister the power of establishing an independent service for independent strategical operations. Of course, he would have his military staff to advise him. But, to give an illustration, whilst the Army is engaged in a great battle in France or the Fleet in its duties in the North Sea, have either of their • leaders time to work out and develop the possibilities of bringing the war to a successful issue by a great strategical air offensive ? " We are, indeed, pleased that so eminent an authority as Mr. Joynson-Hicks is so thoroughly in accord with the opinions we have expressed in the columns of " FLIGHT " ! When we say that we are glad, we mean it, for this is an aspect of development in the Air Service in which we have the profoundest belief. From the very earliest developments of air- craft for warlike purposes we have held fast to the idea that it is impossible to altogether divorce the Air Service from the Army and Navy. We have seen in this war how vitally necessary it is that both Services should be supplied with a sufficiency of all types of aircraft for the special purposes required. That must always be a first charge on our resources, but under a Government that is determined to main- tain aerial supremacy, and with a real Air Ministry ' charged with the maintenance of that supremacy, there would be a surplus of production which should be applied to the constitution of yet another service to undertake the work that Mr. Joynson-Hicks speaks of. If our statesmen had been prescient, we should have created such a service in nucleus form at least before the war. How necessary it is that there should 'be such a separate service we can see day by day when we read of the work of the R.N.A.S. on the distant fronts. The bombarding of bridges far in the interior of Bulgaria and the bombing of blast furnaces in Lorraine is not work within the legitimate sphere of a Naval air service. Nor does it fall properly within the scope of a military air service which is attached to an army in the field for purely tactical purposes. It is the affair of a separate service formed and held in readiness for exactly that kind of work, although at all times in close working touch with the other Services. In a word, the func- tions of the Naval and Military Flying Services are purely tactical, while those of the Air Service proper are just as purely strategical. There is nothing in the idea of the separate service as we visualise it to 28
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