FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1922
1922 - 0018.PDF
JANUARY 12, 1922 personnel shall remain with the units employed in co-operation with the Navy for a period of four years, and thus efficiency is secured." At whose door must the failure of the partnership be laid ? Certainly not at that of the Air Ministry. After its first violent attack on the And organisation of the R.A.F.. the Pall Thoughts Mall Gazette effects a complete, and not very graceful, volte-face. It proceeds to complain of the neglect of the flying services, refers to them as " our first line of defence," and sounds, in an article by Lieut-Col. C. R. Finch-Noyes, D.S.O., late R.A.F., a warning note on the danger of neglecting the R.A.F. While we are spending approximately £z per head per annum of the total population on the Army and £2 on the Navy, we are spending 8s. *,d. onlv on the Air Force. It is refreshing to find Col. Noyes filling the breach to enable the P.M.G. to set itself right again, but certainly nobody could adduce, from the first article, that this was what the P.M.G. was driving at. If we have misread the original article, then it is evident the methods adopted by the P.M.G. to plead for the future of the Air Force were most chaotically conceived. There was a great chance to help a great national cause which, by bad handling, ignominiously failed. The sincerity of its later-day apologies is not very satisfying. • • • Aircraft it is a matter for the greatest satisfac- Carriers j.jon ^Q ^e abie ^0 record that the Washington agreement reached at Washington in the matter of aggregate tonnage allow ances for aircraft carriers is materially different from Mr. Hughes' original proposals. These were, it may be remembered, that the United States and this country should each be allowed aircraft carriers aggregating 80,000 tons, while Japan was to be allowed 48,000 tons. The clause about replacements, however, placed this country in a very unfavourable position, as we already have approximately the prescribed tonnage, while the U.S. and Japan have nowhere near that to which the proposal would entitle them. Consequently, while the U.S. and Japan would have been free to construct up to the limit of their allowance, we should have had to stand by and watch them benefitting from our past experience, while we were unable to make progress under the hampering clause. As actually reached, the agree ment is not only much fairer to us, but the aggregate tonnage has, for all three countries, been nearly doubled. This is all to the good, since the problems relating to aircraft carriers are so novel that to limit the tonnage to 80,000 tons would mean seriously hampering development. Under the new agreement, however, Great Britain and the United States are each to be allowed an aggregate tonnage of 135,000 tons, and Japan 81,000 tons. Also, the aircraft carriers have been exempted from the restriction of the ten years' holiday and replacement conditions applying to other types of ships. It therefore seems as if each of the Powers is practically free to construct modern aircraft carriers up to the limit of their allowances. The only point on which it appears that any con troversy can arise is the interpretation of the term " obsolete experimental tonnage," which, according to the agreement, may be replaced. The development is so rapid that an aircraft carrier is really always experimental, and it is almost obsolete before it is completed. In this country all the aircraft carriers, with the exception of the " Hermes," which is still building, have been converted into aircraft carriers from cruisers, liners, and battleships. Apart from the " Hermes," which is quite a small ship (11,000 tons), and well below the maximum of 27,000 tons for individual carriers; the majority of the others are certainly to be considered as obsolete experimental, with possibly one or two exceptions. The amount of new tonnage to which this country would be entitled will therefore be considerable, while the other countries, starting practically from rock bottom, will have available for new construction almost their whole allowed tonnage. From the point of view of national policy, this is highly satisfactory, showing as it does that an increasing importance is being attached to the use of aircraft in co-operation with the Navy, while as regards the aircraft industry, with which we are directly concerned, the building of aircraft carriers necessarily means also the building of aircraft, and hence one more step towards that aerial pre paredness which will in the future be our best guarantee of peace. *• • • Apropos recent discussions relating to Mapping surveying from the air, Professor Mel- Air vill Jones has a long letter in The Times detailing certain difficulties which have been encountered in securing accurate data from aerial photographs. In particular, he draws attention to the inaccuracies consequent upon different angular positions of the camera when the photographs are taken. Experience has shown, he says, that the required order of accuracy is not generally attainable when the aeroplanes are flown by pilots who have not been specially selected or trained for the work. It is true that even when large unknown tilts occur it is possible to calculate these tilts accurately by a method known as resection—that is, to calculate the tilts from the position of the plates of known ground marks that have been accurately surveyed independently. This method is being developed, but it is thought that it will involve the fixing of too many points by independent ground surveying, and that it requires too much office work to be commer cially successful except in special cases. All of .which sounds not especially hopeful for the future of surveying from the air. Commander Boothby, however, scores a distinct point in another letter to The Times, in which he says that if Professor Jones could persuade the Air Ministry to allow him to repeat his experiments, using an airship, his difficulties would be easily overcome. An airship, he points out, can place herself vertically, over any desired position and stay there. The work of the observer with the camera is thus rendered more simple than when he is hurtled over the spot at 80 miles an hour in an aeroplane, even when in charge of a specially selected pilot. Commander Boothby concludes: " Thanks to the Air Ministry policy, all our airships are now rotting in their sheds, but I have no doubt that the Germans will be pleased to assist Professor Melvill Jones in the very near future, if no British airship can be provided." Bitter, but nevertheless too true. 18
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
