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Aviation History
1917
1917 - 1098.PDF
•-*•«» do the thing your enemy least desires you should do. We know that Germany views with dread the possi- bility of the aerial war being taken to her, as it were, in both hands, and nothing has produced so much misgiving in the minds of the enemy command as the promise that in the spring of 1918 the " air will be black with Allied aeroplanes." We have seen that this dread of the possibilities of the air has set the enemy to work at the very highest pressure on the production of means to meet the threat. We know, furthermore, that Germany is a nation of wonderful productive power, and that even yet we have not fully gauged her capacity for defensive war. Therefore, it falls to be questioned whether we on our side are doing our utmost that the threat of which we have spoken may become a decisive fact when the campiagn of 1918 opens. Much has been done, and more is being done, to accelerate the production of the best types of machines, but it is not a question of much or more, but of the maximum. Nothing but the maximum is any good to us. It is of no use to argue that in view of the eatry into the last phases of the war of thousands of American, aeroplanes we can afford to be content with some- thing less than our full output capacity. That will not do at all—it was our war before it was America's, and we have to go ahead with our, preparations for winning it just as though we had nothing to hope from the direct intervention of the United States. We agree that American help is a very good thing to have, and that, with its co-operation, the war will be the sooner over, but it would be a deadly thing if the anticipation of that co-operation were to lead to the slightest lessening of effort on our own part. Are we doing all in our power to provide the necessary machines, engines and pilots to blot the Hun out of the air next spring ? We sincerely hope we are. There are, nevertheless, still many abuses, many sources of leakage, which will have to be dealt with and removed before we are able to say that all is well, and it is during the coming winter that the last chance will be given us to set our aerial house in order. Fortunately, there are not wanting signs that at last the Government has realised what so many far- sighted people have been insisting upon for the past two years—that the war will be won in the air—and is taking its plans accordingly. We trust it may achieve its object. • • • One of Reuter's correspondents has The been int<M viewing the brothers Caproni, Romance the fan)OUS constructors of the Italian Aerial Caproui aeroplane. In the light of Travel. what we know to-day regarding the actualities of aerial travel and our home-built machines, there does not seem to be much in the way of undue optimism, or of exaggeration of hope, in the opinions expressed by the famous Italian brothers in relation to aerial development after the war. Nevertheless, to the uninitiated the interview reads like a page from one of the more imaginative works of Jules Verne or H. G. Wells. According to the prophecy of the Signori Caproni, before the sound of the guns has well died away lines of aeroplanes will connect town with town, country with country, and continent with continent. There will be aerial " trains " luxuriously fitted up, capable of transporting upwards of a hundred passengers and OCTOBER 25, 1917. ' of travelling from 120 to 190 miles an hour. Imme- diately after the war large trans-oceanic aeroplanes will be built, powerful enough to carry from 50 to 60 passengers from Europe to America and back. It is curious to reflect that not a single voice is .raised to suggest that these are the dreams of enthusiasts to whom the belief is born of the desire that these things should come to pass. On the contrary, there is no one but takes the statements seriously and believes that they are all real and practical possibilities of the very near future. And why not? So far.'no one has made the Atlantic journey, but we know nevertheless that the Atlantic is to be conquered just as soon as the end of the war sets free men's minds to the serious contemplation of the task—it has merely become a problem of oppor- tunity more than of machinery. We have already progressed in less than a decade from the frail single- seater, with uncertain and under-powered motor, in flying which the pioneers took their lives in their hands, to the powerful multi-engined machines which will take twenty people up to ten thousand feet and maintain a speed far in excess of that of the fastest express train. Moreover, all our development during the last three years has been for the purposes of the war, and there has been scant opportunity, therefore, for finding out the real possibilities of passenger flight. Even such opportunities as have occurred have been under war conditions which precluded the securing of all the data we need to enable us to base a judgment of what is actually possible to-day. Thus we are driven to the conclusion that we do not actually know how far we have in reality progressed in what we may call utilitarian flight,nor what hitherto undreamedof wonders of the. air will come to pass within a few short years. _ • • « Now that we seem to be on the " ^e ^ •?erviCe ? threshold of consummating theOne Uniform; . j i r -IT • 1 A • ideal of a single Imperial Air Service, certain critics of air ;One Badge." policy seem to have suddenly discovered that about the worst thing in the world that could happen is the constitution of an Air Board on the lines so often laid down in these pages. Among the foremost of these is the Morning Post, which since the war has manifested a distinct tendency to go off at a tangent on the smallest provocation. It seems to have become an organ which simply must have opinions counter to the majority, and which cannot exist without a grievance—as witness the virulence of its attacks on the present Minister of Munitions. In a long leading article on the subject, the Post criticises the predication of a contemporary that the requisite development " can only be brought about by an Air Service emancipated from military and naval control." In the view of the Post such a proposal seems to. be equivalent to suggesting that artillery should be " emancipated " from military control or torpedoes from naval control ! We are afraid our contemporary is suffering from the effects of too parochial an outlook, else it would have been able to appreciate the difference between the emi- nently sensible and the merely grotesque. It is probably quite well known to the Post that at one time in our history the English Fleet was controlled, commanded and fought by soldiers, while the " ship- men " were mere hewers of wood and drawers of water—people of no consideration, who simply had IO98
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