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Aviation History
1923
1923 - 0251.PDF
MAY 10, 1923 AIR FORCE EXPANSION Sir Samuel Hoare's Speech at the Royal Academy Banquet THE PRINCE OF WALES was the principal guest at the annual banquet at Burlington House of the Royal Academy of Arts on May 5. Sir Aston Webb, President of the Royal Academy, presided over a very distinguished company, and after proposing the loyal toasts, to which His Royal Highness replied, the president proposed " The Imperial Forces of the Crown." Mr. Amery, responding on behalf of the Navy, referred to the great curtailment that had recently taken place. He called attention to the change which had come about with the surrender of the German fleet, resulting in the necessity for considering concentration at a new centre on the middle seas. He also pointed out that the Navy of the Empire must depend upon support from all partners of the Empire, and not upon the Mother-country only. Field-Marshal Sir William Robertson, who replied on behalf of the Army, pleaded for " a little more interest in Army matters in time of peace. Your ships may prevent you losing a war, but they will never win it for you." Sir Samuel Hoare, Secretary of State for Air, in responding to the toast on behalf of the Royal Air Force, said :— " I am grateful to the President and the members of the Royal Academy for including the Royal Air Force, the youngest and smallest of the three fighting Services, in this distinguished toast. Gentlemen, we are a very young Service. Flying has only been a serious enterprise for twenty years, military flying for ten, and the Royal Air Force itself has only existed for five years, but I think that we may safely affirm that if during so short a period there has been so conspicuous a development in aviation, the next twenty years will see progress that at present we can scarcely imagine. Is it not significant of the development of the air that one of the most beautiful and arresting pictures in this year's Academy should be a view of the Port of London painted from the air ? " Gentlemen, being a young Service, encompassed with many difficulties, we have our full share of problems to solve in the immediate future. Wrhat, for instance, should be the standard for our air defence ? How is the Force itself best to be organised ? " These, observe, are new questions to which politicians and the public have hitherto given scant attention. The Air Force was improvised for the War, and splendidly it acquitted itself. Its place in home defence and its peace- time organisation are questions which have never been settled—indeed until the last few weeks they have scarcely ever been discussed. It is to these two questions that I am constantly addressing myself, and it is to these two questions that I would ask the attention of the representative assembly that is gathered here tonight. I should trespass upon your patience if I attempted to elaborate answers to them, and if I do not trespass upon your attention it would be unprofit- able for me to give a useful reply until the • Committee of Imperial Defence has finished its enquiry into them. " Permit me, however, to make one single observation, and I believe that it is an observation of the first importance. " If an expansion of the Air Force is to take place—and I believe that when the facts are fully weighed an expansion of the Royal Air Force is bound to take place—there is one condition that must be fulfilled. The expansion must be so organised as to make aviation and air defence an integraL part of the life of the nation. Home defence on land ceased to be the exclusive province of a profession when, first by the volunteers and secondly by the Territorials, mainly due to the efforts of Lord Haldane, it entered into the life of the civilian population. Whilst there are obvious difficulties in the way of a similar development of the air defence, I none the less say, and I say quite definitely, that though the brunt of home defence will always fall upon the highly- trained regular squadrons, a definite .place should be found for the growing number of men of every class, sportsmen and scientists, engineers and artisans, who year by year are taking a keener interest in aviation. Only in this way will the air sense of the nation, supported as I hope by the expansion of civil aviation, become as deep and general as the sea sense of the nation. Only in this way can we develop to the full our home defence against air attack, on the one sound principle upon which we have not only organised our home defence in the past, but upon which we made it possible for the nation to win the War—namely, that civilian and territorial have their definite place to play in it. In this way there will come about a real National Air Force, deeply embedded in the national life, fully capable of undertaking the Imperial duties to be placed upon it, and no less capable of carrying out the even more important duty of the defence of these shores against air attack." Royal Tournament THE Royal Tournament, which opens on Empire Day, will mark the 45th year since it was first held. It was in 1878 that the germ of the idea formed, when a tourney was arranged to entertain the Volunteers engaged in shooting at the Wimbledon Meeting. Two years later it became a separate institution, housed at the Royal Agricultural Hall. The first profit made for the charities was one of ^500, and in the course of years this grew into thousands. The most prosperous years have been from 1914 onward, when all records were broken. Six million people have attended and paid over a million sterling for admission, out of which one quarter has been profit, and the charities have benefited accordingly. This year considerable variety will be introduced into the programme, including an airship fight, in the guise of a night aerial demonstration by Air Defence Brigades, this forming a sensational finale to each performance. The box offices are now open at 66, Victoria Street, and at Olympia. Parcels by Air to Paris and Holland THE Postmaster-General announces that parcels for conveyance by aeroplane to Paris and Holland, which could hitherto be posted only at a few Post Offices in London and in the larger provincial towns, will in future be accepted at every Branch Post Office in London and at every Head Post Office in the provinces. A new and cheaper parcel service to Paris, for parcels of a less urgent kind, has also been instituted, and will be known as the "Non-Express " Air Parcel Post—the present service being known as the " Express." The fees will be as follows :— Up to 2 lbs. 2-5 lbs. 5-8 lbs. 8-11 lbs. 5. d. s. d. s. d. s. d. Express Service ..19 30 46 60 Non-express Service ..16 23 33 43 The air parcel post to Holland similarly offers a substantial saving in time of transmission of urgent parcels to that country. The fees payable are as follows: On parcels weighing up to 3 lbs., 3s. Gd. ; 3-7 lbs., 6s. 6d. ; 7-11 lbs., 9s. These fees include express delivery at the place of destination. On a parcel addressed " Poste Restante " the charge is 6d. less. _ . . Cobham's Great Hustle THAT amazing pilot, Alan Cobham, has just added another exploit to his long list of successes. A few days ago he returned from a 12,000 miles' air tour over three con- tinents, and on Monday and Tuesday of this week he flew from Rome to London with photographs for the Daily Mail of the visit of the King and Queen to Rome. Leaving Rome at 6 p.m. on Monday, Cobham reached Pisa at 8 p.m., having 'taken two hours to do the 175 miles against a strong head- wind. After a few hours' sleep in a hangar Cobham started out from Pisa at 4 a.m. on Tuesday morning and reached Lyons at 8.30 a.m., where he replenished. After an hour's stay at Lyons he headed towards le Bourget, where, without alighting he dropped photographs for the Continental Daily Mail, and then made for Croydon, which was reached at 2.30 p.m. The machine used was one of the famous D.H.9's of the de Havilland Hire Service, and is equipped with a Siddeley "Puma" engine of 240 h.p., made by Armstrong-Siddeley Motors, Ltd., of Coventry, in 1918, and which has been in continuous use ever since. Cobham's 12,000 miles' tour was covered in 130 hours' flying time, during which no overhauls were found necessary. ,. y . , ... Helicopteritis DURING the last few days there has been a perfect epidemic of flights with helicopters. M. Etienne Oemichen has established a " duration record " by remaining clear of the ground for five minutes, and later another "record " by flying in a closed circuit of small diameter. M. Pescara also made a short circular flight, getting out of a circular space about 30 ft. in diameter. In America the de Bothezat helicopter is stated to have left the ground with four persons on board, which is probably a record for weight lifting. 251
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