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Aviation History
1917
1917 - 0537.PDF
31, 191/. up the world as no other means of transport has yet done, and I look to Lord Northclifie, whose enterprise and energy we know, to so guide his Committee that a start at any rate will be made quickly and on the right lines. Only a few days •ago General Smuts said in a speech :— " Our Empire, peculiarly situated, scattered over the whole world, was dependent for its very existence on world- wide communications which must be maintained, or that Empire would go to pieces." In reading a paper on " The Commercial Use of Aircraft in the. Future," I am placed in a somewhat awkward position, as I have spent a good many hours explaining to the gentleman •at the Ministry of Munitions who is responsible for the taxa- tion of aircraft accounts that there is no future whatever for •aircraft after the war; and this evening I am here to prove •exactly the opposite. The position, however, is not so awkward as it might appear, as this paper is largely an effort of imagination, and the ideas which I have to put before you would be quite impossible to carry out unless the accounts of the aircraft companies are very liberally treated as regards their so-called profits during the war and subsidies for aerial services after the war. I say " so-called profits " as the •capital expenditure since the war in the case of aircraft •companies has been so huge, and of such an extraordinary mature ; their pre-war standard is so absurd compared with other industries that taxation can with the greatest ease erttirel y prevent any schemes for the use of aircraft after the be done, I think I may safely say that all that is asked for is encouragement on business lines in the form of money paid for services rendered. But there are many doubters even in the aircraft world. Fog is mentioned, weather is referred to, and many objections raised. Several friends have said we cannot compete with trains and lorries and other forms of transport, and that we cannot carry heavy weights. One man said we could not transport a motor car, for instance, and so on. Now all these doubters, even if they were right, in my opinion have not altered the case one jot. They have simply done what the Army Council did when, years ago, I used to attack them daily—they have simply advanced arguments as to what aircraft will not do, ignoring •\frhat it will do. One might as well say nowadays a motor car is no use for commercial purposes because it cannot fly. At the same time I may say that if anyone wants it it is per- fectly easy to produce an aeroplane which will transport a motor car with ease, and several machines are in existence to-day which will do it, so far as weight is concerned. Fog, for instance, is a drawback, but it holds up trains, motor cars, and ships. If bad enough, it stops the whole of the street traffic of this Metropolis, and personally in this new science of flying and new method of transport I would far rather accept the argument that we shall have, sooner or later, fog- penetrating searchlights on our machines, or other devices, than that fog will prevent the use of commercial aircraft. Because we can't do what a^train or motor car can is no argu- ment whatever in my opinion. The whole and only point in my case for commercial air- craft is that we can go faster and within certain limits carry a given weight faster than any other form of transport. , 3. »OO, OOP CAPITAL. EXPCNDITURC. 100 MILES ,„>-/' SERV 'S.6a.aaa. •v '^:?~t:y Fig. 1. war by leaving no funds for development. To carry out commercial schemes very large expenditure will be required, and this is naturally impossible unless there are funds to draw on. For commercial aircraft new types of machines will have to be devised and new problems will have to be faced. But there is another problem for the Government in addi- tion, viz., the question of Government subsidies for mail and passenger services. The British Mercantile Marine has been assisted in the past by subsidy, and I fail to see why the British Commercial Air Services should not come under the same category. We know during the war how important the Mercantile Marine has been, and the Commercial Air Services, if they-had been in existence and properly developed, would have been equally important, and certainly will be in the future. You can decide what we could do to-day if we had a real surplus of aircraft and pilots as well as I can. You can decide what effect on the war at the beginning we could have had with a large aerial fleet. Aviation has suffered in the past from mere discouragement, and the people in this country must see that in the future not only is it not discouraged, but on the contrary that it is very fully encouraged. One way of encouragement is a subsidy for passenger and mail services, and although I cannot say exactly how this could :;-v..-.\ £"'-':. :.•. ' - : : ^" •• .•*:/:.:: : :•' Fig. 2. . The question naturally arises as to in what way will air- craft be used commercially after the war. As I have said for nearly ten years, to prophesy for such a new science as flying is almost impossible, but many instances will crop up for the use of commercial aeroplanes, of which I may give yon a few. , Surveying, for instance. I am told by my friends amongst the large contractors that it would be worth an enormous sum to be in a position not to know where to go, but to know where not to go ; and the production of some sort of cine- matograph machine for the purpose has already been tried and certainly will be produced. For those in a hurry. Nothing can compete with the aero- plane for those on special services in need of the greatest speed possible. This alone opens a very wide field indeed. From a business point of view it must be remembered that speed is everything. One saw this in pre-war <lays in the competition between the steamship companies in the race across the Atlantic. A special aeroplane, i.e., special used in the sense of special train, which is perfectly feasible to-day, will enable the business man to leave London in the morning, do his business in Paris and be home again to dinner. It will take him to Baghdad in a day and a half, or New York 537
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