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Aviation History
1929
1929 - 0543.PDF
FLIGHT, MARCH 14, 1929 new organisation has been in existence little more than a year, suitableappointments have been found for no less than 90 out of about 120 officers who have left the Force during the past 12 months. I should add thatof the balance of 30 some have found employment of their own initiative, and others have already been placed in touch with what appear to be suitableopenings. " I believe that in both these directions, the steps that we are takingto bring good officers and non-commissioned officers to the top and the steps that we are also taking to help short service officers to find permanentemployment, we are introducing improvements into the life of the Air Force which should make for the efficiency, economy and contentment of thewhole service. Labour-saving Appliances and the Avoidance -,f Waste" Then there is the great problem of all industry—the avoidance of waste. Waste of labour, waste of material, waste that might reach huge figuresin a service like the Air Force that needs a highly-trained personnel and an expensive equipment. In these last years we have constantly beenreviewing establishments with the object of saving unnecessary labour ; we have been closing, wherever it is possible, uneconomical stations. Thatwe have not been altogether unsuccessful is shown by the fact that whilst the first line strength of the Air Force has been more than doubled sinceI first introduced Air Estimates in 1923, the number of personnnel in Vote A has not increased. " A typical illustration of our efforts to find economy in concentrationis shown in these Estimates by the removal of the Wireless School from Flowerdown in Hampshire to Cranwell. ' Year by year the wastage of aircraft and engine spares is beiug reduced,and although the number of aeroplanes and engines in service is steadily i ncreasing, it has been found possible to reduce the provision for sparesby a further £136,000 after a previous reduction of no less than £200,000 in 1928. " As for the more technical devices for avoiding waste, an instance maybe found in the provision in this year's estimates for what is known as a flowmeter, an instrument invented at Farnborough for the checking ofone of the biggest items in Air Force expenditure—the consumption of fuel in the air. " Let me give the House an illustration of the value of such an instrument.Five Horsley machines were twice flown in formation at a height of 15,000 ft. for two hours, once without flowmetcrs and again later fitted with them.With flowmeters fitted, the consumption of petrol was materially reduced and, further, there was very little variation between the individual machines.In fact, taking as a basis of comparison the lowest of the 10 consumption figures, the consumption of the other four machines with flowmeters in nocase showed an excess of more than 7 per cent., whereas when the machines were without flowmeters, the excesses were as much as 27. 29, 32, 36 andWi per cent. " There is further a most important provision for a seaplane tank and avariable density tunnel by means of which we hope to be able to do on models a great deal of the work which has hitherto had to be done on fullsized aeroplanes carrying their crews. " If I had the time I could develop at much greater length this part ofmy argument, and I could show in detail to the House how we are constantly trying to avoid unnecessary expenditure in the ue of our personnel andmaterial. I hop*', however, that I have said enough to show to the House that, although we may not always immediately succeed, we are keenly-alive to these problems of method and management, and that we realise that being a new service we must keep particularly closely in touch withthe world outside and the progress that is being made in it. How Far is Our Air Organisation Carrying Out its Main Dutiesof Defence and Air Communication '' " I asked the question just now. Is our organisation efficient '? I do notsay that I have finally answered it or that anyone can finally answer it. But let us assume that I have convinced the House that we are at leastworking on the right lines and let me pass to my second question. Is our air organisation carrying out its main duties of defence and air communi-cation ? " As to the air defence of these shores, I fear that I cannot tell the Housethat our programme is completed. There still remain to be formed 21 of the 52 squadrons that we regard as the minimum for our Home Defenceand Imperial Reserve. I can, however, claim that the standard of efficiency of the units, high as it was before, has been greatly raised in recent years,and that the Auxiliary Squadrons have shown themselves so efficient as to justify our adding three squadrons to their number in the^e Estimates." As to tne Air Force o%-crseas, I can point <o certain definite examples of its efficiency and of its usefulness as an economical instrument for ensuringpeace. The Air Force has been on active service in the Middle East, the Sudan and India during the last 12 months. Do not, however, let anyoneassume from this fact that it lightly embarks upon military operations, or is anxious to go into action. There is not a member of the Air Staff who is not fully alive to the unjustifiable danger of unnecessary operations.There is not an officer commanding any air unit in the Middle East or India whose object is not to restore order by peaceful means and to avoid militaryaction as long as possible. Where, therefore, air operations have taken place they have only taken place on the greatest provocation and in thelast resort. It was the rai ling over miles of Iraq territory and the butchery of peaceful Iraqui subjects that led to the operations on the AkhwanFrontier ; it was the encroachment of the Imam of the Yemen and the kidnapping of two friendly sheikhs that led to the operations in Aden ;it was the brutal murder of a British political officer, a peaceful trader, and their native followers which led to the operations in the Sudan ; andit was the seizure of British Indian subjects that led to the operations on' the North-West Frontier. In all these operations, success was achieved,order restored and at an almost negligible cost in lives and money. " In the course of all these operations the Royal Air Force lost only oneofficer in action. Heavy casualties and long-drawn-out sufferings have been spared to the enemy, and as an instance of the economy of cost it hasbeen calculated that whilst to secure the results achieved by the Aden operations would under old conditions have cost the Exchequer at least£6,000,000 ; they actually cost us /8,500. " I challenge any Member of this House to study the details of theseoperations and to come to any other conclusion than that the air arm was, in these cases, the most humane and economical instrument of the PaxBritannica that could have been employed, " Lastly, there have been the Kabul evacuations. Nearly 600 men.women and children of 11 different nationalities evacuated in mid-winter over snows and mountains to safety in India. The details of this splendidachievement arc so well known to the world that I need not linger upon them. I will only add one question by way of comment. Were not thesepilots and machines of the Royal Air Force the outward and visible sign of the power of the British Empire for good ? Here were machines broughtin a day or two without clamour or public comment thousands of miles from Iraq and Egypt, and safely and swiftly flown over snow-coveredmountains and a country in chaos, with the pilots and crews totally unarmed. Here were men and women, Westerns and Orientals, formerfriends and former enemies, evacuated with the ease and precision of a pre-war railway service in Great Britain. But here, most significant of all,was the staging of a great tragedy happily broken down by bravery, skill and modern science. What calamities might have been avoided had therebeen aeroplanes to rescue the beleagured women and children in Lucknow and Cawnpore, or Cavagnari in Kabul or Gordon in Khartoum ? " I have in my hand a photograph of the notice board of one of thesquadrons at Bighdad—a squadron of Victoria troop-carriers—whilst the evacuation operations were in progress. It is the practice to mark on theboard the location of every machine belonging to the squadron. Upon the day in question two machines of the squadron are recorded at Aleppo,two others on the North-West Frontier of India, and another three on their way there. The Aleppo machines were flying back Sir Henry Dobbs, whohad just relinquished his post as High Commissioner of Iraq. The machines on the N'orth-West Frontier, or on their way there, were flown 2.500 milesto take part in the evacuation, as there were no big machines of the type- in the Indian units. What better example could we have of the mobilityof air power ? A single squadron, whose total of first-line machines is 10, of which two are in Syria, two at Risalpur on the North-West Frontierof India, three on the way to reinforce the rescue work at Kabul via the Persian Gulf, and the remainder with the unit in Iraq. And these move-ments carried through with no delay and fuss, and treated as the ordinary training routine of the squadron from which the machines were sent. " These incidents are not isolated and lucky flukes in the life of the service.They are links in the chain of evidence that proves that the Air Foce, young though it be in terms of years, is fulfilling quickly, quietly andeconomically any task that is imposed upon it. Imperial Air Routes" But there is another side of the question that I have still left untouched. I said that the second objective of our air organisation should be theimprovement of air communications in the Empire. And here I am including both sides of our air organisation, military and civil—the militaryin respect of its splendid pioneer work, the work that has shown itself in the long-distance flights that units are constantly making about the Empire,in the landing grounds that it has laid out, in the knowledge of conditions that it has gained, the civil in respect of the safe and punctual operationof air services, in respect of the individual flights of enterprising men and women, and the knowledge of air travel that it is constantly extending.Let us then, for a few minutes, survey the present state of our Imperial air routes." We have been criticised for going slow. Whilst the French and the Germans have been rapidly extending their air routes, the great Imperialroutes of which we have often spoken have hitherto been undeveloped. As far as 1 niyself am concerned I have always been so anxious to see these RE-EQUIPPING THE ROYAL AIR FORCE The Westland "Wapiti" General Purpose Machine, The Armstrong- Whitworth "Atlas" Army Co-opera - Bristol "Jupiter" engine. tion Machine, Armstrong-Siddeley "Jaguar" engine. 221
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