FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1919
1919 - 0377.PDF
MARCH 20, 1919 these routes, with their many ramifications, employing both airships and aeroplanes, will acquire immense importance from the standpoint of their earning capacity to the enter prising carriers, and from the standpoint of the boon they will confer on the commercial communities of Hull, and even of the West Riding and Lancashire. Schedule flying will come, and come quickly—of that I am perfectly con vinced—but before we have our air service time tables, we will have to go in for a great deal of unscheduled flying. " When our pilots have studied the peculiarities of the navigation of the North Sea, and learnt to fly over fog banks, and land in safety, notwithstanding any weather conditions, and when we have ourselves compiled more definite data than we possess to-day of cost of running, then will be the time to build up from our unscheduled services a proper time-table, and, with a proper reserve of machines, keep our faith with the public by demonstrating to them the safety and utility of our North Sea air service and its reliability as to time of departure and arrival. Reliability and con fidence are the first requisites in trade—whether it is a barrel of fresh fish you are dealing in or a scheduled air service. " How near we are to a realisation of this scheme of North Sea air service can be shown by the records that are not yet published of our pilots, who, even with the earlier flying- boats, have gone out from a certain port not far from here, and have remained in the air, taken observation of the enemy's movements in the North Sea for six to nine hours at a time. This is double to three times the time required for an ordinary straight North Sea journey. It would be a perfectly easy matter for one of our flying-boats to leave Hull, pay a visit to Bremen, and come back to Hull without any intervening landing. You will see that I am looking at the matter from a cold commercial standpoint. I believe in the service ; I want it to come ; but I don't want to disappoint the public by saying that this service can be started in three or six months' time as a scheduled service. " I would certainly like to see the foundations laid for such a service at once, because it is a service that is capable of tremendous development. It is said that the Cunard Line are deeply interested in the bigger questions of aerial transport, and with their experience of Government sub sidies they would naturally know the right way to set to work. Certain it is that both the Cunard firm and Harland and Wolff's of Belfast are intimately concerned with aircraft work. "It is a natural sequence that our Hull sea-transport concerns should protect their future by taking an early interest in the obvious supplanter of sea-transport—for mails and passenger—air transport. If Hull is first in the field, I know that the natural enterprise of Hull people will take care that Hull is made—and maintained as—not our third, but our first air port. " My belief is that the airways in the near future will be not one whit less important than our seaways and our roadways. And I prophesy that eventually air travel will be the cheapest, safest, simplest, and most convenient, and, as it has always been destined to become, one of the natural ways of transport. o <$> <•> <$> THE AIR FORCE ESTIMATES Officers. Men. Total. The Air Force estimates for 1919-20 show a maximum establishment at home and abroad, exclusive of those serving in India, of 150,000. This number is in process of reduction to 79,570. Details of the strength of the force to be retained at home and abroad, exclusive of India, when the demobilisation now in progress has been completed, are as follows :—• Armies of Occupation. Army of the Rhine, including troops in France and Belgium Armies of the Middle East- Italy Kgypt and Palestine Mesopotamia and North Persia Home and Colonial Establishments, including units in Russia and with the Grand Fleet ,620 15,800 17,420 JO l8C I60 50 1,620 I,l6d DO i,8oo T,32° 4,300 54,670 58,970 Totals 6,270 73,300 79,570 The figure of 79,570 represents the total number of officers and other ranks to be retained during the period of occupation, exclusive of formations stationed in India. The total of 150,000 is the maximum number of personnel of the R.A.F. estimated to be serving on any day during the year covered by this estimate ; but the lesser number of 79,570 should, under the present scheme of demobi lisation, be reached at an early date. Those who have passed through dispersal stations, bnt whose period of furlough will not have expired by March 31, 1919, have been included in the number of 70,430 shown as being in course of demobilisation. A vote on account of £45,000,000 is asked for, representing five "months' expenditure. As regards expenditure, the total estimate in respect of the new financial year is £66,500,000. For 1918-19 the expenditure is estimated to amount to £71,000,000, but It is explained that the estimate of £66,500,000 for 1919-20 includes approximately £31,000,000 in respect of services which, in 1918-19, were borne mainly by Ministry of Munitions funds, and to seme extent by Army funds. In the House of Commons, on March 13, the Air Estimates were con sidered in Committee, the first motion being " That a number of Air Forces, not exceeding 150,000, all ranks, be maintained for the Service of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland at Home and Abroad, exclud ing His Majesty's Indian Possessions, during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920." The Under-Secretary of State for Air (Maj.-Genl. Seely) : In asking the Committee to accept the Air Estimates which are laid belore them to-day, I cannot help recalling that it is almost five years to a day since I was privi leged to submit Estimates of £1,000,000 to this House for the War part of the Air Estimates in 1914. We now submit Estimates of £66,500,000, and, as I shall presently show, had the War gone on, it would have been £200,000,000. Before we come to the financial aspect of the matter, I think it would be right, and I am sure the Committee would think it right, that we should pay some tribute to those who have been concerned in raising our air power to such a pitch of intensity as it had reached when the armistice was signed. I do that more freely because I had no share in it myself, as I was away during the whole of this period. Of course so great an expansion of any war effort has never been seen. We started then with six squadrons. We finished with about two hundred. We were spending then £1,000,000. At the date 01 the armistice we were spending £2,000,000. At the earlier date we could build comparatively few aeroplanes and very lew engines. When the armistice was signed we were building 4,000 aeroplanes a month, or nearly 50,000 aeroplanes a year. I suppose that credit must be given to those who directed affairs and to successive Ministers of Munitions, and those who worked with them for this marvellous expansion. The greatest credit of all is due to the personnel, the pilots and observers, who raised this country's air power to a point which 1 think we can say without fear of contradiction was not attained either by our Allies or our enemies, and at which we were indeed the masters of the air. That was due, in the first degree, to the astonishing valour of our airmen. It so happened that I witnessed in France the first air combat—it is referred to in Sir John French's first dispatch—when one German aeroplane was shot down. I remember Sir David Henderson saying to me on the same day :— " This is the beginning of a fight which will ultimately end in great battles in the air in which hundreds, and possibly thousands, of men may be engaged at heights varying from 10,000 to 20,000 ft." I said to him :— " Is it possible that human endurance and human courage will be equa to that stupendous task ? " He thought so, and be was right. I hope I shall shortly publish to the House a record of the War effort of the Air Force. It will be, I am sure, a revelation even to this House—which is specially well informed on air matters, as it has so many members who have served in the Air Force—of the wonder ful things we have done in all the theatres of war. To take only one figure, from that one air combat which I remember witnessing in September, 1914, air combats grew until we have this astonishing figure : During the War just under 8,000 enemy machines were shot down by our pilots in all theatres of war; 2,800 of ours were missing and most of them similarly shot down. When we think of what that figure means—probably 40,000 or 50,000 desper ate battles in the air, sometimes far away into enemy territory, occasionally right across wide stretches of sea where an engine failure at any moment might prove fatal, we can only bow our heads in respectful admiration ol the incom parable valour of our airmen. Of course, the great reduction which we must now make in numbers will cause considerable hardship to the manufacturers of aeroplanes and to their employes and it will cause great dislocation, but I think the people to whom our sympathies must first be due are the brave young pilots to whom I have referred who will have to return to civil life. It is extraordinarily difficult to demobilise an Army, as my right hon. friend the Secretary for War and Air knows, and it is difficult to demobilise the Navy ; but it is particularly difficult to demobilise an air force, because the training given to a pilot—although he gets a certain amount of engineering knowledge, and although the other knowledge which he obtains is of supreme value to the State in time of war, requiring as it does a standard of skill and courage almost greater than that required in any other walk of life—does not particularly fit a man for civilian employment. Therefore our pilots will find particular difficulty, as compared with the corresponding officers of the Army and Navy, in fitting in the ordinary work of the world, and if I might I would respectfully appeal to all concerned to help in that matter. On that point may I say that we have come to a certain decision with regard to cadets. There were about 30,000 officers and 25,000 cadets under training when the armistice was signed. Of course these 25,000 cadets will be required in comparatively small numbers for any purpose of the air, including civilian aviation. So vast a force cannot be required for many a long dav now that peace is in sight. The hardest case is that of the Colonials from South Africa, from Australia, and from New Zealand, and some from Newfoundland, and others from other Colonies. We have decided that all Colonial cadets shall receive temporary commissions to be granted as from February 12, 1919. They will receive gratuities on the men's scale and uniform allowance on the full officer's scale of £50 will be granted. They will have first-class passages for the voyage home to the Dominions and on arrival there the temporary commission lapses and they will receive an honorary commission of the rank which they held. The cadets, other than Colonial cadets, whose training was discontinued on account of unfitness, will be demobilised and will receive honorary commissions on demobilisation unless they express a wish to the contrary. If they graduated B before December 31—and Graduation B means the completion of the first half of the course—they will receive full outfit allowance of £50. If graduated B after that date and not before demobilisation they will receive a refund of the actual expenditure, including issues in kind, up to the maximum of £35. I hope the House will forgive me for having gone into detail on this matter, because the case of the cadets is the hardest one with which we have to deal in reducing onr forces to the comparatively small limits which are now found on the Votes which I have read to the House. The total we ask tor in money as a Vote on Account is £45,000,000, and that is out of a total estimated— and I dwell on the word " estimated "—of £66,500,000. It is quite impos sible until peace is signed, for us to commit ourselves to a precise sum as a total'. We are pretty sure that this is an outside figure ; we hope it may be less, but that is our estimate of the outside figure which will be required, and I think the House will see that in the case ot the air it is peculiarly difficult to estimate in advance until peace is signed, tor the value of Air Forces, especially in outlying parts of the world, such as the Near and Middle East. 377
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
