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Aviation History
1919
1919 - 1662.PDF
purposes, and unless you have a Minister who will assist civil aviation we shall be hard put to it in time of stress to find the requisite number of machines. Just as declarations of war are becoming less and less formal in spite of the League of Nations, we must not overlook the possible use of the most modern means of any nation to gain its ends. What is to prevent a nation with plenty of aeroplanes making a sudden raid on a country not prepared for defence. The poshing of the civil side of this problem necessitates the maintenance at least of an Under-Secretary, if not of a Minister, and when the time comes for the formation of a joint Imperial Staff the constitution of each of the Services should be considered equal. Chemical science has developed very quickly, and just before the Armistice gas-bombs were improved and we had produced a gas so effective that if 3 per cent, of it was mixed with 100 per cent, of the atmosphere it proved fatal. We have to realise that you can now go to Cologne in an aeroplane in 3i hours, and it would take that time to walk to Woolwich. What would be the feeling of our people if an enemy bombed Woolwich ? There would be a tremendous outcry, and a demand that our defences should be made adequate. I think we should treat this subject of dealing with air warfare as a separate force. I think the greatest point of all is that in maintaining the Air Force you are maintaining a great prestige. I think it is equally important to realise the state of affairs with regard to aeroplanes at the time of the Armistice. Germany on November n had 4,000 machines on the Western Front, and in reserve and in depots and at schools she had 14,000 machines, and the output in Germany was estimated at 1,000 machines per month. Marshal Foch's terms were that Germany should surrender 2,000 machines. Of course, the French took their quota, but that leaves 8,000 machines unaccounted for. I think we should have demanded more aeroplanes and prevented the Germans from doing what the latest evidence shows they are doing. They have now 7,000 miles of aerial routes with alighting arrangements and definite transport services. This has been done to foster the power of striking in the air, and they are at the same time assisting their commercial industries. What are the definite arrangements that have been made to encourage those who serve in the Air Force to be ready to man these machines which we hope the Government will keep in being, either by a direct subsidy or otherwise ? Rear-Admiral Adair : The Naval Air Force, I claim, is distinct and should be part and parcel of the Navy itself, and should never be dissociated from it as it was even in the R.N.A.S. We want it manned primarily by naval officers and seamen. % There must be an absolutely independent force. The whole atmosphere of the air is open to it, but it has nothing to do with the Navy. It seems to me that the Chief of the Staff thoroughly understands the situation. He advocates, just as I do myself, three forces, and I cannot help thinking that he is absolutely right. An Air Force today is an absolutely essential constituent part of the Navy. We cannot do without it at the present time. We have heard a great deal about the Navy of the future. Some people want to destroy it offhand, and others are a little more modest. There are those who say that it can no longer exist on the surface or as surface-borne ships. There is that very well-known officer who has been quoted several times who states that presently we shall have aerial armed battleships. It is quite possible that we may have all sorts of aircraft, but there is this about every type of aircraft, that nine-tenths of its time is spent either on the land or on the sea. There fore, any Naval aircraft, whether it be a battleship or something else, should be manned by seamen, manned by men who are seamen first and aviators secondly. I am not recommending the building of battleships at the present time. We must wait and see what are the possibilities of the future. I believe that in a very short time there will be craft, perhaps as big as a destroyer, normally floating on the sea, and steaming at a high speed, perhaps getting up to 70 miles per hour, as I mentioned just now, but when the occasion arises spreading her wings and travelling 150 miles per hour through the air. I foresee that, though I admit it may not be in my lifetime, but I do not foresee a battleship aircraft. Who could possibly evolve such craft other than naval constructors, and, seeing that nine-tenths of their time they must be on the sea, who is going to man them except seamen, and, if they are to be evolved by naval constructors and manned by seamen, who can administer them other than the Admiralty ? It would be really ridiculous to leave it to the Air Ministry, constituted as it is at present, to evolve such craft or to administer the personnel of them. My object has been to bring home to the Committee the fact that the Air Ministry are not competent to deal with the naval side of the question. The Chief of the Staff foresees that it will be a separate arm. It is a separate arm already, and its development as such must start at once under the auspices and direc tion of the Admiralty alone. Capt. Wedgwood Benn : If such a misfortune were to happen as that we were to hand over to the Admiralty a part of the Flying Corps, that force would be amputated in a way which would produce atrophy and even death. Were the hon. and gallant Admiral's suggestions to be accepted it would mean this, that you would get a type of pilot acquainted with a certain kind of machine only. At one air station they are all in favour of the F.3A. boat, while at another they say you cannot beat the Sopwith seaplane. It is one of the dangers in designing types of aeroplanes to give way to pilots' prejudices, for the pilot is not always a very safe guide as to the best type of machine to take the air. I understand the plan of the Air Ministry to be to select boys who have passed through public schools. I believe they have rejected the plan of taking boys at 13—the Osborne or Selborne scheme—and have put that aside in favour of taking boys from public schools, because they say that public school education gives a boy a certain amount of " savvy," or self-confidence, which i s so requisite for the handling of machines in the air. That may be true. I do not know whether it is so or not. But the difficulty is this : If you restrict your boys to boys who come from public schools you limit the choice to boys of a certain social class. Mr. Churchill: There will be promotion from the ranks—from the me chanics, and so on. Capt. Benn : Personally, I do not think promotion from the ranks meets the case. My experience is that people promoted from the ranks never have the status of the officers who have entered direct. There is one other point that I want to emphasise. I think there is too much tendency in the Air Force to exalt the pilot at the expense of the science —I am using the words in the broadest sense. The man who is a stunt flyer and can perform in the air is apt, especially among the community, to get a predominance which is not altogether good for the Service. What is required is more the man who corresponds to the engineer in the Navy, the man who takes an interest in the scientific side of his work. I suggest to the right hon. gentleman that the real course to pursue is not to standardise. It is quite obvious that, with the money at his disposal, he cannot possibly carry out the whole of the work of defence and the design of machines. I suggest, therefore, that his real course would be not to standardise a type which is already obsolescent—every type is obsolescent the moment it gets into the air—but rather to devote less money to that, and more to the encouragement of the civilian inventor Mr. Churchill: First of all, I would like to refer to the financial aspect. In March, Air Estimates were presented of approximately £66,500,000, and the present Estimate is for £54,000,000, so that there is an apparent reduction of £12,500,000. I say " apparent" advisedly, because DECEMBER 25, 1919 £11,250,000 out of those £12,500,000 are transferred bodily from the charges of the Air Ministry to those of the Ministry of Munitions, and the actual net saving to the public on the new Estimates over the old is only £1,250,000. I am very anxious that the House should clearly understand exactly what the position is, and should not think that we are in any way trying to mislead them as to the actual financial position. This £150,000,000 would have been greater by £2,000,000 if the airships had remained on the Admiralty Vote We have had put on our charge £2,000,000 for airships which otherwise would have figured on the Admiralty Vote. Therefore the total net actual saving on the Air Estimates as now presented is £3.250,000. To this may be added a further almost certain saving on the Ministry of Munitions Vote through not going on with contracts instead of taking delivery of machines. That is to say that owing to the reduction in the demand we are wiping out con tracts by compensation instead of by taking delivery, as was done the first few months after the Armistice. It is probable that the reduction will at least amount to £3,000,000, and it may be more ; so that the total benefit to the Exchequer is in the neighbourhood of £6,250,000, to which may be added the £400,000 which my right hon. Friend was able to secure by his judicious sale of one of our airships to the United States, and possibly by other sales which are in contemplation and which were not foreseen when the Estimates were originally introduced. Therefore the saving is not £12,500,000, but the ublic may consider it is better off by the changes which have taken place y something between £6,000,000 and £7,000,000. . These Estimates which are now laid for the Army and for the Air Force are not the Estimates for next year. They are the Estimates for last year, which ought to have been presented in March. It was not possible to prepare them, and I promised that both Estimates should be laid before the end ot the year. I am doing this in fulfilment of my pledge. But, of course, we are only separated by a few months from the time when the new Ustimates will be introduced. By the end of February or the beginning of March whoever represents these Departments will lay the new Estimates before the House, and there will be a long series of opportunities of debate and discussion on all matters connected with Air and Army policy. I shall reserve till then the task of making a full statement on the Army. I think it desirable to have published a full outline of the new scheme for the permanent post-War Air Force which has already been laid before the House. The post-War Air Force is much further advanced in shape than either the Army or the post-War Navy. This scheme has been worked during the year iu considerable elaboration. The Estimates of 1918-19 tor the Air aggregated £370,000,000, including the Vote for the Ministry of Munitions for aircraft. In 1919-20 they have fallen to £54,000,000, and the limit which the Cabinet has approved for the framing of the Air Force Estimate next year is approximately £15,000,000, so that whatever else may be said, a very great reduction is being effected in the scale of our expenditure Discount it as you will, criticise it as you may, the fact remains that the whole standing of the Air Force has been in the currency of the present year reduced from its great War level of expenditure at more than £i,ooo,oooa day to an expenditure which will not exceed, in 1920-2T, £15,000,000. ITiese financial considerations are very necessarv to bear in mind. . _* «. I hope the Committee will not'underrate the very considerable merit ot the achievement accomplished in elaborating this scheme. During the present year the Air Force has had to be reduced from an enormous war organisation, rapidly expanded in every direction, down to almost nothing, and a modest, compact, permanent peace-time Air Force is being erected out of and upon its ruins. Whereas the Army and the Navy both had permanent pre-War structures to fall back upon and reduce down to, and were strongly organised and established on that basis, the Air Force had nothing at all except its emergency War organisation. At the same time a double element of un-certainty was playing over the whole field, namely, uncertainty as to the rate at which the German and Turkish situations would allow demobilisation to be carried out, and, secondly, uncertainty as to how much money would be allocated for the permanent post-War Air Force. It was inevitable during this period of arrest, of dissolution, af uncertainty, and of reconstruction, that everyone should feel disquieted and uncomfortable. The Air Ministry had not only to work out plans for the future in all their detailed complexity but they had to have two or three sets of alternative plans carried forward simultaneously through all their variations and complications, so as to ne ready to come forward with a complete scheme at an early date, m accordance with whatever scale of Air Force was ultimately sanctioned ,Dy,*B Cabinet I confided this task to Air-Marshal Trenchard, and with his staff he has been engaged during the last three or four months on its execution, iiarly ui October the Cabinet definitely approved a permanent organisation for the Royal Air Force on a scale of approximately £15,000,000 a year, of which the India charges will be borne by India. This organisation has now been elabor ated in full detail, and every move in demobilisation, the transfer of stores surrender of aerodromes, etc., has for some time past been made m direct relation thereto. The full organisation will, of course, be laid before the House when the Air Estimates for next year are produced. Meanwhile we claim the fullest liberty within the ambit of the scheme now presented to make such variations, refinements and improvements as further experience and study may suggest. But the central principle which has always been followed throughout this year has been the maintenance of the ^dependent status and identity of the Royal Air Force, and, secondly, the gathering to the Royal Air Force of an those elements necessary for its permanent integral existence. Every step, in fact, has been taken on the basis of there being three separate independent Services for sea,.land and air respectively, capable of forming part of a higher organisation of Imperial de*en~ »• * whole, and no step inconsistent with this ideal has been allowed ^erences of uniform, decorations, etc., have been preserved by the> RoyalI Air Force A new set of ranks and titles, specially devised Jf"****^*?***^ as far as ingenuity could make them, from those in current use in the Army and Navy, have been brought into force. , . Everything possible has been done to strengthen the Air Mmist^ and lend bodv -to the Air Force. The Technical Department of the Ministry of Munitions has been"^transferred from the Ministry of Munitions to^the Royal Air Force. Anyone who knows what is involved in that will realise how vitally important it was for the future independent ^f^0" °f *%^ Service that this Technical Department should so be transferredThe- meteorological research has been assigned definitely^ to the Air Mimstn Civil aviation has been rescued from the ambitions °.f.th\MmB*ry ^Transport or the Board of Trade and definitely assigned to the Air Ministry. All the course of the Resent year has, in fact, been occupied in building up by every means a separ^nde^endentRoyal Air Force and in ma^g an organ^ation which will effectively prevent any future combining up of the Air bervice betweenlhe Ar^7»dPthe Navy? My hon and gallant, nend asked for a special assurance on that point, and I am glad to give it him so far as I and the Government are concerned, who are now responsible for the ,^section of affairs We are moving forward with the scheme outlined by Sir Hugh TreSLrd m h?s Memorandum in such a way as to make ,t^extraordmarriy affficult at a later stage to make any of *°**^™2££* tt21ta*72i brinK the Air Force into two separate, subsidiary branches of the Army ana thTNavv which would be fatal to the development of the air spirit and of the Air Foveas"•^reat new army. We are rapidly reaching a position which ^imakeft almott^m^ssiWetoyarrive at such a change without the^greatest amount of waste and «pense should it be de"^d/^\ JVo^ce into approximately, five years to bring the permanent post-War Air Force into. 1664
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