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Aviation History
1917
1917 - 0601.PDF
JUNE 14, 1917. It will be found that the profitable use of aircraft is based on speed, and that as speed of transit includes door-to-door movements, if there are, as we see at present, considerable terminal time losses, the longer the distance over which aerial work is conducted the less significant are the "terminal charges "upon our time of transit. This merit introduces, for a small country, the advisability of studying flight beyond its borders, and for an island the consideration that shipping is slow compared to the railway or motor car. Therefore international flying will come up early in our development of aerial transit, and may be expected to concern move- ments over the sea, not necessarily in seaplanes. But you cannot go abroad without your tickets, your circular notes and passport, so you cannot fly over another country without making arrangements. These arrangements will be easily made if there is a body of opinion abroad.which is favourable, which recognises that it will not get landing rights in British Possessions unless British aircraft have landing rights on foreign soil. One of many ways of securing "such a body of opinion favourable to aerial transportation in the prize lands themselves is to institute industrial links between our own constructors and foreign constructors, whether as " saccursales " or joint firms, or shareholders, given by the Committee certainly must be taken to include aeronautics not only as a key industry, but as an industry the growth of which is necessary to the formation of pilots and the full maintenance of their " weapons " at the abnormal rate which results from war wastage. The Committee's reply included the following phrase :—• " We consider that special steps must be taken to stimulate the production of ... manufactured articles within the Empire wherever this expansion and production is possible and economically desirable for the safety and welfare of the Empire as a whole." The necessity for special steps being taken to preserve and expand the production of aircraft is scarcely open to question. When we seek for what kind of special steps are, on the one hand, likely to win the support both of Protectionist and Free Trade voters, and on the other are sanctified by precedent and analogy, we can probably find suitable stepping stones through the marsh of the old controversies. One suggestion is the subventing of specific air-carrying trades, postal and other, on terms so that on the one hand the public get something for its money and gets a supply of pilots against a war demand, and on the other hand the aircraft producer gets orders. TABLE B.—Foreign Aeronautics. The formation of Industrial Links. Co-ordinating Technical —. Societies. Post Office Reciprocity. (a) Prices for postage. (b) Methods of collection and delivery. (c) Agreed routes. Post-War Inter- Governmental Agree- ments (Allied and enemy). (a) Flying rights. (b) Landing rights. (c) Rule of the V " road." (d) Supply of aircraft to foreign Govern- ments. (e) International law, prohibited areas, • &c. Registration of Craft. (a) Salvage by ships and by aircraft. (b) Exchange of me- teorological news. Customs and Policeing. Quarantine and Aliens Question. or agents. I te refcre put these first and tabulate five sub-heads. If we develop our aircraft making and using properly we shall be the first to wish that other countries may be equipped with "aerial ways " (lines of landing grounds), aerodromes at big centres of industry, finance, or pleasure. Moreover, we want to find elsewhere not only the maps, but also most of the safety provisions desirable at home. All these things will be fostered by the energies of societies like the Aeronau- tical Society and the Society of British Aircraft Constructors, which we should like to find abroad and enter into relations with. At present they are not nearly as active abroad as at home. They might be fostered not only officially, but rather through the intermediary of our industrially-linked prms, whether for construction or transit. One of the important matters for consideration is the avoidance of cut-throat competition at a time when it is alwaj's difficult to ensure a remunerative investment with any certainty. This involves the inter-State provision of what may be termed limited monopoly for certain services at least, until the businesses are well launched and till statistics exist in which insurance operations can be satisfactorily based. Firms can be trusted to make their own value felt by the Post Office and by passengers whom they desire to attract, but they are defenceless against one another if as soon as one energetic individual has initiated an enterprise the value of his strenuous work is to be poached upon by irresponsible persons (who may, it is true, ruin themselves undeplored), but who may drag into a like ruin those whose industry and courage founded the whole scheme. The Government should step in here in the interest of maintaining what it must maintain, a large successful and enterprising industry. It may here be worth while to say why .the country must do this. It-is a matter of economy. The Air Fleet differs materially from the Sea Fleet in being more rapidly expendible. No one would dream of rebuilding the British Fleet six or eight times per year of war. Yet the Air Fleet requires at least this. Thus the aeroplane occupies an exciting position halfway between a battleship and a cartridge. To decide on having an Air Fleet for war is synonymous with having an aircraft industry in peace competent"to produce some eight air fleets per annum when called upon. . The question " What industries are essential to the future safety of the nation, and what steps should be taken to maintain or establish them ? " was set to Lord Balfour of Burleigh's Committee. The reply, though only a general one, There is precedent for this in the mail-carrying business, and there are also valuable foreign precedents and analogies. It is obvious that the exclusion of foreign aircraft from the right to alight on these shores is not compatible with our expectation or our demand for the-fights of alighting on foreign soil—similarly heavy port dues or landing dues are objec- tionable—for if we mean to build up the biggest Air Fleet we should probably pay out to foreign Governments the biggest total of port dues even if their scale is the same as ours. It is submitted as worthy of consideration that our interest lies in the direction of the smallest possible alighting tax provided reciprocity is secured or approximated to. This therefore points to another form in which support may be given by the Government to the industry—the reliev- ing of alighting grounds of part of the burden of rent, main- tenance, night lighting, &c.—and this can, not improbably, be achieved in such a manner as to secure for the taxpa rer the direct quid pro quo dear to the finance branches, by providing that a certain amount of accommodation shall remain always available for service pilots. Subvention of aeronautics need not" by any means be limited to cash payments as subsidies to producers. It is amply clear that the formation of a chain of alighting grounds from big centre to big centre, if suitably chosen, may be made so as practically to abolish the risk of forced landings —in the current sense—that such a chain of grounds must be a high source of economy in machines and men to the State which is perennially conducting its air service training and manoeuvres, and that the greater our private aerial locomotion business becomes the greater is the money value of such insurances against accidents.* How to arrange that the owner of the alighting fields shall be able to graze them, manure them, &c, at certain times, or otherwise to derive value from them without imperilling the flyers in any way, together with the institution of suitable markings, is a matter for careful study, and such study will no doubt be conducted by using to the utmost the existing organisations such as this Society and its ally, the S.B.A.C. It is certain that an industry sufficient only to build the aircraft needed by the Services in peace time cannot possibly * I was fortunately instrumental in bringing to this country the first record of such an aerial way in practical use in Italy, and in securing from Major Perfetti the Italian maps which our recent lecturer, Mr. Holt Thomas, used as a striking illustration of his lecture. Aerial ways from Turin to Milan, to Udine, and from Milan to Rome, down both sides of the coast form part of the scheme. Recently we learn that the Central Powers are starting a £2,000,000 scheme— Berlin, Constantinople and the East. 6OI
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