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Aviation History
1921
1921 - 0822.PDF
"!..."•'••-• U!1 intelligent thought, save and except those unfortu- nately in authority who desire to spend every penny of the Air Estimates on increasing the military wing of the Air Service. We shall have to institute Airship services between the Mother Country and the Domi- nions before we are much older, and as a result of the present short-sighted policy of the Government, we shall have to commence at the beginning again, and it will cost the country far more than is being saved by misguided " economy " now. ,;•-- •••••• • + ^ ^ .-••... f - - In the text of the agreement arrived at The Air between the Cabinet and the Irish repre- '"" a?rishC sentatives, the future of aerial relations ~ Settlement between the British Government and the new Irish Free State is, as we. briefly mentioned last week, provided for. In the matter of Imperial defence, it is stipulated that facilities shall be provided at the four naval stations of Berehaven, Queenstown, Belfast Lough, and Lough Swilly. In the matter of civil air communications by air, it is agreed that a convention shall be made between the two Governments for its regulation. We take it this latter means that the new Govern- ment of the Irish Free State will become a signatory to the International Air Convention, possibly with the addition of such provisions for internal control as may be agreed between the two Governments. Apart from any question of satisfaction that a political problem of the first magnitude has been settled by the Agreement, we are very pleased to know that air matters have come within the purview of the settlement. We have long been of the opinion that one of the routes on which an air service would justify its existence is between England and Ireland. We believe such a service would rapidly become popular, and might easily before long even rival the London-Paris service in numbers of passengers and bulk of goods carried. ^To be able to avoid the comparatively lengthy sea passage between the two countries would certainly be an attraction to the traveller, while the time saved en route would obviously be greater than is saved by the London-Paris air service. As soon, therefore, as the necessary con- vention has been signed, we shairiook forward to seeing the almost immediate institution of a service across the St. George's Channel . Mr. H. G. Wells, in one of his recent ^ndWaf cables to the Daily Express, makes our in the Air flesh creep by his prophecies of what will happen in the next great war. War as we saw it in the period between 1914-18 is already old-fashioned, he tells us. The old idea of an army marching on an enemy's capital has given place to a new conception of an attack through propaganda, through operations designed to produce acute economic distress, and through the air on enemy populations. The closing years of the War, he says truly, gave the world only a slight experience of what aerial offensives can be. Always the air operations were subsidiary to the surface engagements DECEMBER 15, 1921 •'••_' • \^ of the belligerents. He then draws a picture of Japanese aircraft devastating San Francisco, while American aeroplanes are bombing Tokyo with the very latest thing in poison gas and high-explosive bombs. We need not follow Mr. Wells through the whole of his speculations on what will happen when in the future two great powers become involved in war. When in 1908 he wrote his " War in the Air " the aeroplane had not really arrived, and it was per- missible for the man in the street to regard it as a phantasy of the novelist's imagination. Today everybody knows it is absolutely as certain as that night follows day that within a very few hours of a declaration of war between this country and any first- class European power the enemy's aircraft would be dropping bombs on London. We should be subjected to a mass air attack beside which the worst experi- ence of the late War would fall into nothingness. The German attacks on London were very properly described as " raids." They were nothing else, They were annoying, and they certainly caused some amount of material damage, but the latter was quite insignificant in comparison with what would happen in the event of another war with a power prepared for aerial action on a great scale. Now, although the Washington Conference is doing its best to ensure that there shall be no more war, we have no assurance in the world that its efforts will be permanently successful. By permanently we do not mean success for all time, but over a reason- able period of years. We do not know that they will succeed in keeping the peace for, let us say, the next twenty years. It is utterly impossible for the most far-seeing of statesmen to say what may happen even in the next five years, or certainly in ten. The resultant situation is a somewhat peculiar one. Sea ' and land armaments are to be limited—or at least it is hoped and believed they will be. There are not wanting many of sound judgment who think that this is a matter of very little consequence except in so far as the saving of the money at present spent on navies and armies is concerned. They say, and with considerable show of reason, that these forces are already out of date, since the issues of war will in future lie in the air, and ships and armies are there- fore a superfluity. Aircraft, for good and obvious reasons, are not, by the terms arrived at by the Conference, to be limited, and any power can therefore amass enormous power in the air by the simple pro- cess of spending its money, aforetime devoted to old-fashioned armaments, in the direct encouragement of civil air communications. By so doing it will build up a great reserve of trained air pilots, with staff and organisation, and will become possessed of great numbers of machines almost instantly available for conversion to warlike use. France is doing this. Germany is laying plans to the same end as soon as the fetters of the Peace Treaty are removed. What are we doing ? Unfortunately, the answer is all too obvious. Next to nothing at all. It is time the nation was awakened to the full consequences of our want of an aerial policy.. 500,000 lire and a balloon contest with prizes of 30,000 lire. All the above events are international. In order to encourage those aircraft constructors whose machines do well in the contests, the Ministry of War has set aside 400,0(50 lire for the acquisition of these machines, which will then be handed to the civil aviation companies There will also be a parachute competition'with prizes of by way of subsidy, for the operation of civil air services, 822 Flying Contests in 1922 THE Minister of War has approved the proposal of theHigh Command for Aeronautics to hold two flying contests during "September, 1922, the Tyrrhenian Cup and the ItalianGrand Prix. ^
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