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Aviation History
1918
1918 - 0362.PDF
/MS comes we shall be able to dimly realise what the army and the Empire owe to the self-sacrificing devotion of the R.A.F. That, however, is not precisely what we had in mind. As we get the stories of the air fighting of the past fortnight it seems to become increasingly clear that the battles of the future will be fought in the air, if only because the development of the aerial arm will make it impossible to maintain ground armies. When the summit of development has been reached it will be impossible to maintain communications ; lines of position will be untenable under the searching attack of aircraft; armies will find it impossible to manoeuvre without being decimated by fire from the air ; everything will be driven either underground or into the air. The logical sequence of this is that the ground army—as we must call it—having lost its whole raison d'etre, must disappear, and war will be transferred to the air. That seems to us to be as certain as that night follows day, and, pursuing the line of thought, it is easy to foresee the time when the armies shall have ceased to exist, except as the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Air Services, and the latter will have the whole business of fighting to itself. That is, unless—as we all most devoutly hope—Armageddon shall have taught the nations of the earth that there are more glorious and more profitable concerns than war and have decided them that there shall be no more. But we fear that so long as there are nations, and so long as human nature endures as it is, the ultima ratio regum will remain. • • • T. In an Army Order issued on Monday Royal las* *ne new relations between theAir Force Royal Air Force and the Army Council and the are laid down in extenso. The Order, Army which we reproduce in full in anothercouncil. p art Qf th.s issue of ., pLIGHT.' calls for very little in the way of comment since it merely embodies the necessary routine, so to say, which will govern liason between units of the R.A.F. operating under the orders of military commanders in the field and the latter. The main thing is that there is noth- ing at all in the Order that appears to call for criticism when regarded from the viewpoint of the Royal Air Force. This is, to our way of thinking, a most important point, and it is only its importance when viewed in the proper light that justifies the judgment we have passed upon the Order, which would other- wise be a mere piece of presumption. The point we have in mind is that, so far from the constitution of the Royal Air Force as a separate service having— as the pessimists would have had us believe—given rise to jealousy and friction between the Army Council and the Air Ministry, the Order is eloquent of a whole-hearted desire to adjust matters so that every possible point of friction shall be eliminated in advance, and of a sincere desire to bend the new order of things to the Imperial service. Which is all to the good and promises well for the future relations of the Services. There is one matter, however, which comes to mind but which really has nothing to do with the Order under discussion. Our readers will remember that, some three weeks ago, we took occasion to deplore the passing of the old Air Service ranks and the substitution of Army titles for them. Since we wrote we have had many opportunities of discussing the views enunciated with officers of both the military and naval wings of the Service, and we find that, APRIL 4, 1918. generally, they are in complete agreement with those views. Indeed, so strong does the feeling appear to be that we do not hesitate once more to appeal to the Secretary of State for Air and his advisers to reconsider the decision which has been taken to re- grade the Royal Air Force officers by military titles. To some it may appear to be a small matter whether an officer be known as " Captain " or as " Flight- Commander," but it is these " small" matters that go to make up that exceedingly valuable military asset which passes by the name of esprit de corps. We are absolutely convinced that the esprit de corps of the Royal Air Force will be most adversely affected by the new order of things—and that, if we are correct, is certainly not a small matter. It is not at all too late to retrieve what we regard as a bad start, and we sincerely trust that Lord Rothermere and his advisers will still be able to see their way clear to a revision of the re-grading system. ...... The The calling together of an Inter-Allied Conference on aircraft standardisation is certainly a move that should be Of welcomed as likely to lead to the bestAircraft, results in the way of increased output of the aircraft necessary to the pro- secution of the war. It has been called at the right time. Had any strong move towards standardisation been made at an earlier stage it is more than probable that the effect would have been an adverse one, in that too early standardisation would inevitably have led to the hampering of progress in design. Again, had it been left until later it seems certain that future output would have been prejudiced, for the reason that we have now reached a stage in the development of aircraft for warlike purposes which justifies us in thinking that no further really important dis- coveries or developments are likely to eventuate at a period in this war when they would necessarily cause us to drastically revise all our presently con- ceived ideals. Naturally, we do not for a moment desire to be taken as thinking that finality, or anything approaching finality, in the design of aircraft has been reached. On the contrary, we believe that design will progressively improve for a long time to come, but in all such matters there arrives a time when it is no longer wise to wait on the future and when we must be content to carry on with large numbers of something a little below the ideal rather than to stunt the growth of the tree by waiting for something better. We believe that stage of develop- ment in aircraft has been reached now, and that for the purposes of the war we shall do better to standard- ise with discretion the best we have now and to go all out for the maximum output than to wait on in the hope of still further improved designs. We are not quite clear, after reading the published reports of the first sitting of the Conference, to what extent it is intended to carry standardisation. As a matter of fact, it does not appear that any real decisions have been taken as yet. So far, all that appears to have been done is the appointment of permanent authoritative committees representative of the Allied nations in order to maintain continuity of action and to carry forward in the most efficient manner possible the work of co-ordination, the Engineering Standards Committee, for the time being, acting as the distributing centre of this permanent international organisation. So far as the British committee is concerned-—this being the only one of 358
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