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Aviation History
1921
1921 - 0070.PDF
under the orders of the commander-in-chief for operations, even though administratively they may belong to a separate and independent Service. The same must obtain when detached naval units are operating with the army, or when detachments of troops are embarked to assist in naval operations. Let us put a case to our contemporary. In 1896, the present editor of the Morning Post accompanied the force which, under Lord Kitchener, was operating up the Nile against the Khalifa. Working with that force were certain gunboats, which did excellent work against the enemy. These gunboats were officered and manned by the Royal Navy, but they were under the operation orders of the military commander-in- chief. Like air squadrons working with an army, they carried out the task assigned to them in their own way, but the fact remains that they were, with their entire personnel, a part of the army, except administratively. It did not appear to occur to anybody at the time—even to Mr. Gwynne—that it was anomalous that the Navy should be a separate Service, nor was it the opinion of naval and military authorities that the Navy-should be incorporated into the Army. The argument equally applies to the Air Service. The Air Service is not an auxiliary arm. It is as separate and distinct in its principal functions as are the Navy and the Army. Units of the- air service can he auxiliary to fleets and armies, in the same way that the Nile gunboats, carrying out warlike operations against an enemy ashore, were auxiliary to the Army. But the fact does not make the whole Service an auxiliary arm in either case. In a very able letter to TheA . . Mr. Holt Thomas puts his finger on a visYon weak sPot when he complains that it is loose thinking and a failure to envisage the problems of the future clearly to talk about aircraft, or air service?, as being " auxiliary" to land or sea forces, or to picture an Air Ministry simpiv in the position of providing these other Services with the machines they require. We know, but always fail to realise, that an Army or a Navy without the Air would be hopelessly outmatched. " This seems to me," he says, one of the perils of the present position. There has been no clear visualisation of the respective roles in the future of sea, land and air forces ; or, more particularly, of how they will interact one with the other, and how they can be welded into one great striking machine rather than blunder along separately, each in its own compart- ment. There is sometimes an almost total lack of any real grasp of what the great air strategy of the future may imply." v That is the whole trouble. The reactionaries are utterly incapable of realising that what the conquest of the air has brought about is not the addition of another arm—a long range gun, as it were—for the use of the existing Services, but a completely new faci^r in the greater problems of offence and defence -—a factor which has an even more important bearing upon those problems than the discovery of steam navigation with its widening effect on sea and land strategy. We shall get nowhere until the full realisation of what the air and air power mean has been grasped by those who direct the policy of the Government or who have their share in the moulding of that public opinion without which even Govern- ments cannot act. As we have said, - the chief FEBRUARY 3, complaint is that of restricted vision, which prevents people from seeing any farther ahead than to- morrow—of the probable events of a month hence they have no sense of vision. It is this which is at the back of all the reactionary talk—this and the quite understandable desire of a few senior officers of the older Services to squash the aspirations of one that is new. .. . • •» •» One good thing all the argument and Se arat counter-argument is doing, and that is Air Minister to f°cus attention upon 'the question of the future control of the Air Ministry. The Times, we are glad to see, is throwing the whole weight of its powerful influence on the side of separat- ing the offices of Secretary for War and for Air. It points out with considerable force that the duality of office necessarily leads to a brake being applied to the future of civil aviation. While The Times gives every credit to Mr. Churchill for having tried to overcome this fatal tendency of his dual authority, it argues that no one man at the head of two great Departments of State can control the tendencies which their association sets in motion, and the result of the combination under one Minister of the War Office and the Air Ministry has been inexorable. The military side of aviation has throughout been regarded as of paramount importance. That is perfectly true. If we look at the current air estimates we see that nearly a million and a quarter is to be spent on the establishment of a training school at Halton. The same estimates show a vote for civil aviation of £900,000, of which a third has been saved ! However, there is really no need to pursue the argument farther. We have discussed the question from every angle of view on many occasions since the announcement was first made that the two offices were to be combined, and have nothing to add to what we have already said—save and except this, that, able as Mr. Churchill has shown himself to be and well as he has succeeded in carrying on his two offices—we are speaking comparatively—there can be no question but that the experiment has been a failure. What would have happened had a less brilliant man than the present Secretary of State been at the head of the two Ministries we do not care to think. Civil aviation is in bad enough case as it is. What it would have been under other circum- stances does not bear contemplation. The time is ripe and the opportunity present to make the essential change which will give us a separate Air Minister, in accordance with what were stated to be the views of the Government themselves when the Air Force Act was passed by Parliament. // must be done. 4- «*• • In another part of this issue of FLIGHTAn t we describe and illustrate a new auto- Invention matic stabilising device for aeroplanes, the invention of M. Aveline, which has been extensively tested by Messrs. Handley Page, and which, so far, has given all the results anticipated. A machine fitted with the Aveline invention will literally fly itself for hours—the pilot has practically little to do but to take it off the ground, steer it, and land it at the end of his flight. Everything else is done for him. It is quite clear that, unless there is some inherent disability yet to be discovered after further tests, this is only to be described as an epoch-making invention. Indeed, as the perfecting of the internal-
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