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Aviation History
1920
1920 - 0386.PDF
APRIL 8. 1920 less accurate and more expensive than those now adopted. Future possibilities were, however, not being lost sight of. While we fully appreciate that aerial survey is an expensive process, we are inclined to regard it as necessary that at least the more important areas should be subjected to agrial survey. If in the near future civil aviation is to develop at all along anti- cipated lines, it will be qulie essential that there shall exist a complete and accurate scheme of charts for the aerial navigator. In the light of present knowledge, it is quite possible that the aerial survey cannot compete in accuracy with the meticulously- careful arid scientific methods of the Ordnance Survey, which have been perfected over a period measured almost in hundreds of years. It is nOf~necessary, however, that aerial maps should have the same exactitude as Admiralty charts, for example. What is required is a photographic survey which will enable the aerial navigator to fix his position within a few miles and to pick up landmarks with certainty. The maps we already have in existence are certainly good, and achieve this purpose within their limita- tions, but they do not pretend to the excellence of the photographic survey. It would be asking too much, perhaps, with the nation's finances in the state they are, to demand that a complete survey should be undertaken forthwith, but we certainly think there is a good case made out for a more limited survey on the lines suggested by Viscount Curzon. And this might be both under summer conditions and under bare boughs conditions. yet as to who is likely to succeed Mr. Churchill at the Air Ministry. . It is hardly probable that he wiH. elect to stay in Kingsway and give up the War Office. If we mistake not, although he has been a good friend to the Air, bis real interests Me more with the Army, and he would require a great deal of persuasion to lead him to sacrifice the portfolio of War. There are good men available, and it remains with the Government to make a selection such as will lead to a reversal of the present disastrous neglect, to the undoing of the whole industry in the present, and ultimately of the Empire's safety. • • • It was reported last week that Mr. Holt xx i* Tnf '„, • Thomas, whose resignation of the chair-Holt Thomas . . r , , . ° /•,••«• <• ,Position manship 01 the Aircraft Manufacturing Company we announced and com- mented upon in our Editorial columns, had been asked to resume that position, and had consented. We have enquired into the truth of the report, and are assured that the position remains exactly as it was. The only change which has been made in the arrangements since his resignation is that the Paris air mail is to be carried on in future under B.S.A. auspices. Even this latter concession is something these days to be thankful for, and it may be that out of evil good may come. Mr. Holt Thomas as a free lance may perhaps become a greater power for good in the movement at large than Mr. Holt Thomas as chairman of a company actively engaged in the industry, in which he might—quite properly—be supposed to have an axe of his own to grind when urging the Government to get a move on in the matter of encouraging civil aviation. Mr. Holt . Thomas is the best judge of bis own business, but upon consideration, we venture to think that he may easily be a greater asset outside the active.. industry than in it, for the reason that outside he can bring to bear the whole force of his personality upon the problems of propaganda. We suggest that he could do very few more apt things than to take in hand the Aerial League and make it a real factor in the world of aviation. Something of the kind is very badly needed, since only by insistent and well- directed propaganda shall we get public opinion focussed upon the vital importance of keeping the lead in air power. What the League badly wants is a dominant personality, who will supply the driving force which has been so conspicuously wanting in its affairs, and who will make it what the Navy League is in the matter of the Fleet. We mean no personal disparagement towards those who have done, and „, , ,,, , - ,, ,. . „. , . , are doing, their best to foster the League, but there We know that a "umbf 9f long-distance nights have is no good end to be gained by refusing to look facts ^en accomplished, bu these have employed a rela- Air Events 1920 We cannot but applaud the action of the Royal Aero Club in the organisation of aerial events during the ensuing summer season. At the annual meet- ing of the Club, held last week, the Duke of Atholl announced that arrangements were in hand whereby Hendon Aerodrome would probably be secured as the venue of four important races. The first, which is to be held towards the end of May, will take the form of a double circuit of London and Brighton. In June, a London-Paris race will be organised, while the 24th July has been fixed as the date of the Aerial Derby. The London-Manchester race is to be revived in August. From every point of view this revival of the sport- ing side of aviation is to be welcomed. In the first place, it will give pilots an opportunity of keeping up their practice in long-distance flying, of which there has been little enough since the end of the War. good in the face tiv£ly small number of pilots, and in the meantimethere are many hundreds of competent aviators who are rusting for want of practice. This, it may be Air Survev Viscount Curzon recently asked the agreed, is the least important aspect of the revival. * of tbe Under-Secretary for Air if any steps It must exercise an important effect on design, since Kingdom b-ave been taken, or are in contemplation, the reward of success is still sufficiently high to make to make an aerial photographic survey it worth while to exert an effort to put in the best of the whole, or, at any rate, the more important and fastest machines. Most important of all, it parts of the United Kingdom. Sir A. Griffiths- will assist very materially to maintain that very Boscawen, in reply, said the United Kingdom was necessary public interest in flying upon which FLIGHT the most completely and accurately mapped country has so continually insisted ai the principal means to in the world, on all scales ranging from 25 inches to the «iile to one mile to the inch, and smaller scales, and these were periodically revised. The Ordnance the end of creating the pressure on the Government which is an essential preliminary to getting anything „ - . done. Survey were watching the development of aerial There is nothing like long-distance sporting events photography, but at present that method was far for this. How many people will see such a race as 386
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