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Aviation History
1930
UNTITLED0 - 0076.PDF
FLIGHT, JANUARY 3, 1930 consequence of the original idea that the prime duty of the air is reconnaissance. Observers were of necessity officers, and it happened that the early pilots were all officers: The adherence to this principle has caused certain difficulties to the regular air force. The force needs more pilots than air marshals, and the wastage of peace service does not suffi- ciently reduce the number of pilots who might aspire to air rank. It has, therefore, been necessary to engage short service officers and medium service officers. It is difficult for these men to obtain civilian employment after five or ten years in the air force, and it seems very doubtful if it will be possible to persist with this policy. The alternative is to make a greatly increased use of airmen pilots, and we scarcely hesitate to prophesy that the future of the force lies in that direction. AIR DEFENCE With the formation of the new force a new conception of strategy came into being. It is usually known as Air Defence. It contemplates an air campaign in which possibly neither the navy nor the army will be engaged. In the last few months of the war the Air Ministry despatched to France an Inde- pendent Air Force which was not under the command of Lord Haig, though it did conform to the principle by which all British forces in France were under the command of Marshal Foch. Since then, the Royal Air Force has conducted several little wars against savages on its own account. It has taken over the defence of Iraq, Aden and Transjordan. Its Air Staff (which is catered for by an Air Staff College) studies all the problems of air defence as applying to Great Britain as well as to other parts of the Empire. So important is this subject of air defence, and so specialized a study has it become, that the idea of taking it out of the hands of the Air Ministry and the Royal Air Force is wildly grotesque. Neither the Admiralty nor the War Office could possibly grapple with it. The Air Ministry has certainly come to stay. From the first, the need for an Air Ministry was greater than the need for a single air force, but since then the growth of the study of air defence has made the latter equally essential. Now it seems a matter of less import- ance whether the air squadrons which co-operate with the army and the Fleet Air Arm are provided by the Air Ministry or by the two older departments. The Admiralty has always insisted that the Fleet Air Arm ought to be an integral part of the navy, and it has succeeded in carrying the greater part of its point. The army, intent on the problems of mechanization, is unwilling to spend anything on the air, and is content to accept the number of squadrons which the Air Ministry allots for army co-operation, although in time of war that number would be ludicrously inadequate for its needs. On manoeuvres the army borrows squadrons from Air Defences of Great Britain, though it must well know that in time of war none of those squadrons would be available for army work. The navy pays for the aircraft iwhich it orders ; the army does not. This inaction on the part of the army makes air defence look more costly in the estimates than it actually is. The Air Vote, in fact, pays part of the cost of military defence, which is not as it should be. The present arrangement can only be temporary, and can only be excused by the urgent need of the Army to come to some conclusion on the problems of tanks and other mechanical vehicles. The trend of events seems to indicate that in time the navy will take over entirely its own air arm, and that the army will be obliged, willy nilly, to take over and pay for its air arm also. The Royal Air Force may face such an outcome with equanimity. No harm will be done to the force or to the Air Ministry by such a development. The essential functions of the Air Ministry are to provide for air defence, to organize the supply of aircraft to all three services, and to maintain flying training schools for all three services. Of these functions there is not the least probability that it will ever be deprived. 76
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