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Aviation History
1919
1919 - 1510.PDF
me NOVEMBER 20, 1919 THE FLIGHT TO AUSTRALIA.—As announced in » Flight " last week, the Vickers-Vimy-Rolls left Hounslow on November 11 on its long journey. Our photograph shows the pilots, mechanics, representatives of the Royal Aero Club, and a few members of the staff of Messrs. Vickers, Ltd., standing in front of the machine. Inset: The machine starting. (2) " Ex-Chaplain " states that personnel transferred from the Navy and Army to the Air Force can never work in harmony. How untrue this is can be gauged from the fact that it was only after they began to work together that the enemy lines of communication became well-nigh untenable and England became immune from aerial attack. Before April, 1918, the R.N.A.S. had enjoyed the pick of machines and engines. With the coming of the Air Force a better and juster apportionment of the good things in aviation ensued, with strikingly successful results on the moral and efficiency of the new arm. (3) The statement that a flying officer can be made in six months, but that it takes six years to convert that same officer into an efficient military or naval officer is so mani festly absurd that it requires little refutation. Suffice it to say that the writer, who has seen service both as a military and Air Force officer, has encountered numerous instances of young men who have left the Air Force for the Army and have not only served with credit, but in many cases with the utmost distinction. , (4) To say that the Air Service could easily be controlled from the War Office shows that " Ex-Chaplain" is not writing with a full knowledge of realities. At the present moment he would indeed be a bold man who dared to affirm that the War Office is competent to handle the Army with thorough efficiency. Up to last year the War Office had control of aviation. Before the War aeronautics were regarded by the red tapeworms as an amusing and picturesque addition to manoeuvres, and in 1914 were able to put some few dozen machines in the field. In the first three years of the conflict the Clammy Hand was still laid on private enter prise ; and our airmen were still sent to meet the Hun in machines whose only recommendation lay in the fact that they were turned out from Government factories. With the establishment of the Royal Air Force and the consequent introduction of " live " and experienced men into controlling positions, came the short and welcome bound into aerial supremacy which in the last weeks of the War made the enemy position in the air practically untenable. After the results achieved, it would be nothing short of criminal folly to revert to the unsympathetic and even envious control of the War Office. A TRI-MOTORED CAPRONI HYDRO-TRIPLANE : It has a span of 31 metres, and the useful load is 2J to 3 tons. It can be fitted with three 300 h.p. Flat or Liberty engines, and the speed is 140 kiloms. per hour. 1512
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