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Aviation History
1920
1920 - 0562.PDF
MAY 27, 1920 . work with such a service while the Post Office is .making up its mind. ip Incidentally, and while we are on the subject of these mail services, we have not heard yet What was the result of the request for tenders for the Dutch service, or whether the strained conditions insisted upon by the Post Office were modified at the eleventh hour. . than-air types. When the War broke out our airship "fleet " consisted of two or three effective vessels of tiny capacity and low speed, which were hopelessly out-classed by the airships of every one of the bel- ligerent Powers. In comparison with the progress which had been made in airship construction in Ger- many, our own efforts were puny to the point of being .. ^ . ludicrous. Yet in the five years of war we not only "•-••'•• * • . • • improved our airships all along the line, but even in From every point of view the Show the construction of giant rigid ships of the super- Forthcoming w^ch wi*1 °Pen at Olyrnpia on JulY 9 Zeppelin type we had not only overtaken the enemy Aero Show Wl^ be by far the most interesting and but in several essential particulars had actually passed informative that has ever been held in him. There is little doubt that the latest British this country, and probably in the world. The interval rigids were superior in speed and airworthiness to the of six years which has elapsed since the last Show of best that Germany had produced. How much of the kind to be held in the Olympian building has been this was due to the shortage of material in the latter one of marvellous achievement, and even more won- country, caused by the Allied blo.ckade, and how much derful progress in all that makes towards speed,progres l t reliability and safety of operation in aircraft. That progress can in no wise be measured merely by the period of time elapsed, because the latter has been extraordinarily prolific of invention and applied research under the intensive influence of a great and bitter war, in which each side struggled for aerial supremacy as it possibly did not exert itself in any other direction. We say this with full appreciation of the fact that the War caused intensive effort in many directions. For example, it brought a terrific struggle to attain an overwhelming superiority in gun power, which again resulted in a concentration of effort to provide more and yet more munitions to feed the guns. Again, the enemy's submarine campaign brought with it a corresponding activity on our own side and that of some of our Allies in shipbuilding to replace the losses caused by that immoral attack on civilisation, while the enemy himself was building hard to make good his losses in under-water craft. But, after all is said and done, the fight to attain aerial supremacy was probably the most strenuous and bitter of all, and almost certainly resulted in more progress being made towards a stage of relative perfection than was the case in any other direction. It must be borne in mind that when the War began the aerial arm was a veritable infant in swaddling- clothes. No*t one of the belligerents had more than a mere nucleus of an air service as we now understand it. Our own case was worse than that of the rest, owing to the policy of wait and see which had been so characteristic of this country's defence preparations. We had few firms beyond the pioneers who could build aircraft at all. Practically none could, or at any rate did, build engines which were comparable to those of France and Germany, and in consequence we were compelled in the first instance to draw our main supplies of aero-motors from our Allies. Nor were the best of these, at all comparable to the magnifi- cent engineering productions which were the engines of the late War period. The advances made in engine construction, especially by British constructors, were such that they simply cannot be described in plain words, while the corresponding advance in the material, design and construction of aircraft was just as great. Neither were these advances peculiar to the aero- plane. As a matter of fact, it is highly probable that when we sit down to review the whole of the aerial history of the War, we shall come to the conclusion •that the British constructor progressed to an even greater length in the design and building of the lighter- to superior inventiveness and applied genius on the part of our own constructors, we cannot say, but the facts are indisputable. The Lessons Embodied in the Show Harking back for a moment to the las* Olympia Aero Show, that was prac" tically an exhibition of the experimental, where we could see the striving of in- ventors to overcome the manifold problems which had to be solved in order that flight might be made practical. It is true that the major problem had been solved. It was solved from the moment the first free flight under power was made. But there still remained an enormous amount of research and its application to be done, before we could say that aerial navigation in its broadest sense was actually with us, and he would have been a bold man who would have dared to prophesy that we should stand where we do today within any shorter space of time than a quarter of a century. What has really happened is that we have made the progress of at least twenty years in five under the driving impetus of war for our very existence. All the lessons learned during that bitter period and all the application of those lessons to the navigation of the upper air will be gathered together under the giant roof of Olympia, and to say that the resultant will be one of extra- ordinary interest is to hopelessly understate the case. By far and away the best, most comprehensive, and superlatively interesting Aero Show in history it will be, and we shall be surprised if the public fail to realise it and to flock taOlympia in its thousands. .,.--. • • • - • . . - ; We do not like the repeated suggestions that Germany has been able to keep from the eyes of the Allied Aeronautical Commission a large number of aeroplanes and aeronautical supplies in defiance of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, reference to which has been so often made in FLIGHT. There may be much or little in the axiom that where there is smoke there is fire, as applied to the present question under dis- cussion, but constant reiteration of the statement cannot but give rise to a feeling of uneasiness. Just before the House rose for the Whitsuntide Recess, Col. Sir Frederick Hall asked the Secretary for Air if, as a result of the long period which elapsed between the armistice and the visits paid by the Commission to the aeroplane and motor works and aerodromes in Germany, the Germans were enabled to secrete a large quantity of important aircraft and machinery. He Aircraft 562
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