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Aviation History
1923
1923 - 0159.PDF
MARCH 22, 1923 IN recommending the Air Vote to the House of Commons on March 14, bir S. Hoare, Secretary of State for Air (Chelsea, U.) said the past year had been, on the whole, uneventful so far as the Air Service at home was concerned, though steady progress had been made. They had been going on with the task, always a very difficult task, of building up a permanent Air Force from the very beginning. At the end of the War there was no permanent Air Force. There had been difficulties in connection with recruiting, training, and equipment, but he hoped that they would gradually surmount them. They had found during the last twelve months that they were getting an excellent type of recruit in adequate numbers. Their various training schemes had been going ahead, and perhaps the most noticeable event in that connection had been the opening of the Air Staff College at Andover. At the end of the War the Air Force was housed exclusively in war huts and in temporary buildings. The task of making these huts habitable and reconditioning them, and, where possible, replacing them by permanent buildings, had meant an ex- penditure of a good deal of money. Air Command in Iraq * There had been one or two conspicuous events abroad during the past year. First and foremost was the fact that for the first time in the history, not only of this country, but in the history of the world, they had started an independent Air Command. In Iraq today there was no longer a general officer commandiHg the troops, but there was an Air officer. They had not been able to make the reductions in the ground troops that they had hoped. That had been exclusively due to the fact that they had not yet been able to make peace with Turkey, but when that peace was made they would be able to get down to the lines suggested by the Cairo Conference, under which our garrison in Iraq would be eight squadrons and a very greatly reduced number of infantry troops. Every impartial enquirer who had been to Iraq, or who had looked into this state of affairs without prejudice, was emphatic in the view that this experiment in the Air Command was working very well. Economy of Air Operations They believed that it would save a great deal of money. Over and over again, even during the short time in which this Air Com mand had been in existence, they had been able by well-directed air operations to avoid expense both in men and money which would have been entailed by ground military expeditions. It had been possible to supply an armoured car column of 16 vehicles, with stores, spares, petrol, and rations for 17 days entirely from the air. It had been possible to evacuate 67 persons, military and civil, by air to a point 70 miles distant in the space of little more than two hours. Only the other day two companies of an Indian regiment, amounting to over 300 men, with Lewis guns and 30,000 rounds of reserve ammunition, were taken by aeroplane to a disturbed district 65 miles distant within 24 hours, at a time when the roads were impassable, and it would have been otherwise impossible to move troops at all. It had been possible to mark out by the longest furrow in the world— 470 miles in length—the desert route from Amman to Baghdad, and keep a regular service of military aeroplanes carrying mails and passengers between Cairo and Baghdad. These were very interesting experiments. If this Air Command was as successful as they thought it was going to.be, many of the most difficult problems connected with Imperial com- munications and the policing of the more distant parts of the Empire would have been solved. Control without Occupation The problem they were trying to solve was that of " control without occupation." If they could succeed, the effect it would have upon Imperial communications and upon garrison- ing of various parts of the Empire could not be exaggerated. In a lesser degree they were attempting the same problem in Palestine, Trans-Jordania, Somaliland, and at Aden. He believed that in India they would see development upon the same line. All evidence went to show that in India, the value of air operations was being better and better realised. The deficiencies in equipment which caused such grave concern last summer were being made good. The Air Officer Commanding in India had now direct access to the Viceroy. The headquarters of the Air Force had been moved into close proximity to the headquarters of the Army. There was one other field in connection with foreign operations to which he wished to draw attention, the Dardanelles. The air units there had succeeded, amongst other things, in showing that in active service soldiers, sailors, and airmen could all work THE AIR ESTIMATES harmoniously together. They had also shown how extremely adaptable to the conditions in which they found themselves were the men of this new arm. No. 4 Squadron was a squadron allotted for co-operation with the Army, yet twelve" of its machines were erected and flown off the deck of an aircraft carrier within 53 hours of its arrival in the Dardan- elles. Later, it was found desirable to detach some of the seaplanes from their carrier ships and place them in a shore aerodrome, to co-operate with the artillery. Home Defence Turning to the question of air defence at home, he said ever since he had been Secretary of State for Air he had been conscious of a growing uneasiness in the public mind as to whether our air defence was adequate or not. The Press was full of these anxieties. The House of Commons was obviously nervous, for week by week he was asked questions as to how this or that part of our Air Force compared with the air strength of other Great Powers. He proposed, therefore, to give the House the facts and the figures so far as he could, and to ask for the help of all hon. members—for this was no party question—in their attempts to arrive at a sound and wise air policy. Before he gave the figures, he wanted to make one overriding observation. If he gave a comparison of our strength with the French strength, no one here or in France must form the impression that for one moment he believed war even remotely possible between the two great Allies. No Frenchman should certainly suspect him of any such unnatural idea, for he did not suppose that any private member in the House made more constant efforts than he did in the last Parliament to bring about a guarantee treaty between ourselves and the French. He quoted France, not because it could be even remotely imagined that hostilities could break out between the two Allies, but because of all the Great Powers, France had most fully developed its air power. In November, 1918, the British Air Force consisted of 30,122 officers, 263,410 airmen, and 3,300 service aeroplanes. Today it had 3,071 officers, 27,499 airmen, and 371 first-line aeroplanes, excluding reserve and training machines. As regarded the French, it would be mis- leading to make a comparison of personnel, because so much of the French aviation personnel was taken from the Army. The only correct comparison was that of machines. In November, 1918, the French had 3,600 service machines, and today they had 1,260. While our peace air service was only one-tenth of our war air service, the French air service of today was one-third of what it was in 1918. Whilst two-thirds of the British machines were overseas, three-quarters of the French machines were in France. Of our 34 service squadrons, two of which were included in the expansion scheme, to which he was going to refer, 18 were in Egypt, the Mediterranean, and the Near East, six were in India, four were allocated to naval work at home, and one was allocated to Army work at home. That left five service squadrons in Great Britain for home defence. Of those five, only one consisted of fighters, and four were bombers. In France, there were 32 fighting squadrons and 32 bombing squadrons. ,. • :- - In 1925 In 1925, the French programme, which had already been discussed several times in the French Chamber, would pre- sumably be completed. That would mean that whilst France would have 2,180 service machines, we, even with our whole expansion scheme of this year, would have only 575. During 1922, there were 200 machines, civil and military, built in Great Britain, and 3,300 in France. He telieved the French figure was divided into 300 civil and 3,000 military. Whilst the number of men employed in the French aircraft industry was 9,250, the number employed in the British aircraft industry was only 2,500. He was fully prepared to admit the great differences between the position of France and Great Britain, but even so, the disparity was overwhelming. While it was inconceivable that these two great Allies would ever embark on hostilities with each other, the question must arise, How was it possible to justify the fact that one of them had an Air Force only a quarter of the size of the other ? Standard of Strength and Cost He would ask the attention of hon. members to that question, and he would suggest one or two considerations before they came to a definite answer as to what the standard of the British Air Force should be. They should, first of all, be clear in their minds as to what responsibilities they wished to impose on it. In the past, the Navy and Army had both had definite Imperial and national responsibilities entrusted to them. It was only in the last few months that definite 159
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