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Aviation History
1925
1925 - 0273.PDF
MAY 7, 1925 THE AIR DEFENCES OF GREAT BRITAIN Sir Hugh Trenchard's Address at Cambridge University THE address delivered by the Chief of the Air Staff, Air ChiefMarshal Sir Hugh Trenchard, G.C.B., D.S.O., A.D.C., before the Cambridge University, on April 29, was an extremelyimportant one, and had space permitted, we should verv much have liked to publish the address in full. This has not,however, been possible, but it is hoped that the extracts given in the following do not omit any vital point made bythe distinguished lecturer. The President of the Union (Mr. G. Sparrow) occuped the chair, and the audience included Sir Geoffrey Butler, M.P., Parliamentary Secretary to the Secretary of State for Airi General Costello, President of the Board of Military Studies' Professor C. E. Inglis, and Professor B. Melvill Jones'. Following are extracts of Sir Hugh's address :— " I do not want you to think that I look upon the air as a blessing altogether. It may be more of a blessing for this Empire than for any other country in the world, but I feel that all the good it will do in civil life cannot balance the harm that may be done in war by it and, if I had the casting vote, I would say ' abolish the air.' I feel it is an infinitely more harmful weapon of war than any other and it is a terri- fically powerful weapon, and therefore though my remarks to-night will touch on technical and civil aspects, they will necessarily deal with the service aspect of this great question." Division of the Royal Air Force Sir Hugh Trenchard then briefly outlined the divisions of the R.A.F., pointing out the three main parts : The section responsible for defence against aerial invasion, and which is, in turn, divided into two sub-divisions—Home Defence and Defence of the Empire as a whole, the Fleet Air Arm, working with the Navy, and the Army-Co-operation Squadrons, working with the Army. Dealing first with Home Defence, Sir Hugh continued : Home Defence of the Empire " The Air Force for the defence of these islands is divided into righting squadrons, which are at present single-seaters and will probably remain so. These are used for protective purposes and attack any enemy which attempts an aerial invasion of this country. Then there are the day bombers and night bombers, these are the offensive aeroplanes. I would now like to say that I have sometimes been asked why we don't use only defensive aeroplanes. My answer is that if you play a game of football against an opposing team, I take it your objective is to win. If the opposing team commence to attack and the members of your team are told only to defend their own goal, they could not possibly win the match, and it is quite conceivable they would lose it. Equally, if all your team were told to attack and not to defend, one of the opposition might get a run through and, if he did, he would find an open goal. A certain number of defensive squadrons are necessary for the morale of our own people. Nothing is more annoying than to be attacked by a weapon which you have no means of hitting back at, but, although it is necessary to have some defence in order to keep up the morale of your own people, it is infinitely more necessary to lower the morale of the people against you, as nothing else can finish the war, and that can only be done by attacking them wherever they may be. ' " The Aeroplane as a weapon of "defence.—There is one point that I would like to emphasise "here, though this may not be the right place for it. I would like to say that the aeroplane casualties to be replaced ? For the first month you will haveyour reserves, both pilots and machines, but beyond that there will be no reserve that I can see—at any rate, that arefit to take the field at once—and the two opposing armies will go on fighting each other on the basis of 20 machinesa side instead of 100. From this you will see that whichever side can re-equip first both in pilots and machines and getback to the original number of 100 machines will probably win the war. That is where you come in. The brains heremust so conceive and develop machines that the output after the war has begun can be rapidly increased from whatit is at present, and if this is going to be done on an economical basis, then the construction of the machines and enginesmust be made more simple and easy to carry out. Some of your minds in the future must be applied to that. It maybe that you will ask, ' Why should we not keep sufficient reserve to carry us on until the normal trade could put forthsufficient machines to make up for our losses ? ' The answer to this is that in peace the wastage is 30 per cent,per annum, while in war it is in the neighbourhood of 80 per cent, per month. You can, therefore, see that if you keptsix months' wastage at war rate most of the machines would die of old age without ever having flown, and the waste ofmoney would be gigantic and, in my opinion, crippling. Pilots are not quite so difficult, but there is difficulty in thatdirection too. Another place where you come in, which I will refer to at the end, is in the Air Force squadron which Ihope will be formed at Cambridge, so that some of your successors at this great university will be ready and ableto take their place if this country is ever called upon to face an attack from the air. The Auxiliary Air Force" Now there is one interesting innovation we have made in the Air Service with regard to Home defence. We feel verymuch indeed the importance of trying to get the nation intimately connected with the air service for Home defence,and we feel that all good men of the different types—the pilot, the engineer, the dashing motor driver, the literaryman and the scientific man—which so largely predominate in the English public, all could be of use in the defence of thiscountry. We therefore decided to start in the Home Defence squadrons six Auxiliary Air Force squadrons and sevenSpecial Reserve squadrons. " What we call the Auxiliary Air Force squadron is on thelines of what is familiar to you as the Territorials : that is, a whole unit is raised by an area or a county with a smallnucleus of regular Air Force personnel, consisting of an adjutant and a number of good tradesmen. These squadronswill be run by the county associations just outside some great industrial centre or large town, and thus would bringflying close to that town and enable the inhabitants to come and see it. I also hope that a good man who is working ona bench in a factory will be able to walk across to another bench in the Air Force unit, and, if we get a really good man,within a few hours he should learn the work he has to do in the Royal Air Force. My experience in the last warproved that this was possible and, indeed, quite practicable. Let me tell you of one amongst many mistakes I made—onethat happened to turn out to be a great success. A very skilful fitter came to join up in 1914 when I was at Farn-borough, and so I agreed to take him on. The next morning I saw a man who I took to be a rigger. I told him to rig a is the most offensive weapon that has ever been invented. Henry Farman which was lying in parts on the ground. IIt is a shockingly bad weapon of defence, but it is the only defensive weapon against the aeroplane that has yet been discovered, and even in these days of great scientific improve- ments and inventions, I have grave doubts that any other weapon will take its place for another hundred years, if then, though the possibility of this must be looked into continually. " Replacements.—Before I leave the subject of Home Defence I will touch on another aspect of it which affects you more closely. In the event of war, which I hope will not take place "again in our time, and a war in which this country- is seriously attacked by an air power, the great problem to be faced is that in the' first clash of the opposing forces the casualties will be very, very high, and the question of replacing the reserves will be very difficult. In fact, they will be almost insuperable, not only for this nation, but for any other nation. Let me explain. Supposing the two forces con- sisted of—let us take the figure of something like 100 aero- planes on each side. Within a month this figure would drop to something like 20, or even 10 aeroplanes. How are the gave him a ' Blue print' which showed the aeroplane rigged to scale. The man got to work and rigged the machine, and in a few days it flew fairly successfully several times. " Later I found out that the man who I had thought to be the rigger was my newly joined fitter, who knew nothing about rigging but was able to read a ' Blue print,' and so managed to do the work which I had set him. " Of course, he was an exceptional case. I will tell you of another case. I had two new types of engines sent me, and I also had two men fresh from civil life. I told them that the engines would not work and that I wanted them to make them run. Within a few hours both engines were running. Both these cases show that men from civil life can come straight into the Air Force and take their place. The Special Reserve "The special reserve squadrons are to be much the same as the auxiliary air force squadrons—that is to say, they will be located near an industrial centre, but they will be a little more 273
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