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Aviation History
1932
1932 - 0202.PDF
FLIGHT, MARCH 4, 1932 separate from the Army, under the Air Force. Sir Philip Sassoon gently quelled Mr. Attlee, but who knows how far the tram of thought thus aroused will travel ? On March 1 Gen. Spears came into the open and called the R.A.F. cars " a fundamental departure from previous policy." Again Sir Philip was equal to the occasion, pointing out that the system had worked successfully for 10 years. The meaning of it all seems to be that one school of Army thought holds that every fighting man or vehicle which moves upon the ground ought to be provided by the War Office. With that school of thought we most emphatically disagree. Responsi bility should be divided among the three Ministries which manage the fighting services according to the limits of naval defence, military defence, and air defence. The element on which or through which a certain vehicle moves is of less importance. As the Air Ministry has been placed in charge of the defence of Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan, it is far the best arrangement that it should provide its own armoured car units, which have to work in close co operation with the aircraft. Of course, if this argu ment were pushed to its logical conclusion, the R.A.F. ought also to provide the two infantry bat talions for Palestine and Transjordan. That might not be a convenient arrangement at the moment, though plenty of precedent could be found for it in the history of the Royal Marines, a force of artillery and infantry which was raised by the Admiralty for its own purposes, and was not provided by the War Office. To suggest, as Gen. Spears and Mr. Attlee seemed to do, that the armoured cars should be taken from the Air Force and placed under the Army, is evidence of a foolishly reactionary mind. Turning from the Middle East to the Air Defence of Great Britain, we find a glaring case where reac tion still prevails and where progress should be sub stituted. The elements of the air defence of London consist briefly of aircraft, an Observer Corps, search lights, and anti-aircraft guns. The aircraft and the Observers Corps are raised and maintained by the Air Ministry, but the searchlights and guns are pro vided by the War Office. The ? are under the Air Ministry for training and operations, but they are paid for by the War Office. This divided control has had harmful results, as divided control almost always has, and a much-needed reform in our defence system is to put these ground units com pletely in the hands of the Royal Air Force. To take this step would be in accordance with the prin ciple mentioned above, that the Air Ministry should be responsible for all which concerns air defence. These guns and these lights serve no Army purpose. They are elements of air defence solely, and there fore they should be paid for out of the Air Estimates and should be manned by officers and men in the blue uniforms of the Royal Air Force. Whether these men should be regulars or should belong to the Auxiliary Air Force is a matter of secondary import ance. At present they are manned by personnel of the Territorial Army, and so the easiest change to make would be to hand them over to the Auxiliary Air Force. Both these forces are raised by the Territorial Associations, and so the change could be effected with the minimum of trouble. The impor tant practical point is that the Air Ministry should control the amount of money expended on making these ground units as efficient as possible in working in the closest co-operation with the aircraft of the command A.D.G.B. We find strong support tor our views in " Air Defence," written by Maj. Gen. E. B. Ashmore in 1929. The author was in charge of the whole air defence of London in the last months of the war, and he is able to recount the defeat of the Gothas by his defence organisation. He himself remained in the Army, but none the less he holds that the anti aircraft guns and the searchlights should belong to the Royal Air Force. We cannot do better than quote some passages from Chapter IX of his book. On page 133 he writes: " The organisation of the defences has, in fact, shown a fundamental weak ness, due to divided responsibility between the War Office and the Air Ministry." He goes on to tell how in the early days of the scheme the then Air Minister, Sir Samuel Hoare, said that the Air Ministry should not be burdened with the administra tion of the ground troops. Gen. Ashmore comments: " This reluctance to accept the whole responsibility for the air defence, in all its implications, may, per haps, be traced to a desire to avoid criticism. There are critics, not too well informed, who appear to think that the whole personnel for the Air Force should be permanently employed in the air, which is as if we asked that the whole of our railway staffs, including the porters and the board of directors, should spend their whole time on the footplate." He goes on to consider the influence of finance. In time of war finance has little control over training and efficiency. In peace it is different. In these hard times the Army Council is naturally reluctant to find money for a defence that has been removed from its control. " The ground troops have two masters pulling them in opposite directions; the R.A.F. only want them to be efficient, the War Office only want them cheap." Would Gen. Spears, we wonder, wish to see the armoured cars in Palestine and Iraq placed on the horns of a similar dilemma? Gen. Ashmore tells how the Observers Corps was handed over by the War Office to the Air Ministry. He adds: " The sooner the rest of the ground organisation, the anti aircraft guns and searchlights follow the Observer Corps and come under the Air Ministry for admini stration and finance, as well as for operations, the better." He elaborates the necessity of the closest co-operation between the searchlights and the fighter aircraft. The latter are regulars, and the fighter squadrons cost a good deal of money, to keep them in the highest state of efficiency. Much of this expenditure must be wasted if the co-operating search lights are not up to the mark. Their efficiency, whether they are to be regulars or Auxiliaries, must also depend largely on the amount of money which the responsible Ministry is willing to spend on them. The War Office, obviously, has no incentive to spend much, while the Air Ministry has every reason to strain after their efficiency. We do not, of course, mean to imply that at the moment these units are inefficient. They have aroused our admiration dur ing past Air Exercises, and they are doubtless better now than they were in 1929 when Gen. Ashmore wrote his book. But so long as dual control remains, these ground units must be hampered by that un sound system. We shall never be on safe ground unless we make a sharp division between naval defence, military defence, and air defence, and organise our operational units on that basis. 136
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