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Aviation History
1937
1937 - 2039.PDF
. , LM AIRCRAFT ENGINEER AND AIRSHIPS fjksT AERONAUT/CAIIVEEKLY IN mE*Wof>LD > FOUNDED 1909 Editor M. POULSEN Managing Editor G. GEOFFREY SMITH Chief Photographer JOHN YOXALL Editorial, Advertising and Publishing Offices •. DORSET HOUSE, STAMFORD STREET, LONDON, S.E.I Telegrams : Tiuditar, Sedijt. London. Telephone : Waterloo 3333 (50 linee). HERTFORD ST., COVENTRY. Telegrams : Autocar, Coventry. Telephone: Coventry 5210. GUILDHALL BUILDINGS. NAVIGATION ST., BIRMINGHAM, 2. Telegrams: Autopress, Birmingham. Telephone: Midland 2971. 260, DEANSGATE, MANCHESTER, 3. Telegrams: Hide, Manchester. Telephone: Blacklriars 4412, 2GB, RENPrELD 8T.. GLASGOW, C.2. Telegrams: Iliffe, Glasgow. Telephone: Central 4857. SUBSCRIPTION BATES-. Home and Canada: Other Countries: Year, £1 13 0. Year, f 1 16 0. 6 months, 16s. 6d. 6 months, 18s. Od. 3 months, 8s. 6d. 3 months, 9s. Od. No. 1491. Vol. XXXII JULY 22, 1937. Thursdays, Price 6d I ulling Together T HE coast defence exercises which were held last week along the South Coast from Portsmouth westward. mark a considerable advance in the country's preparations for defence. Several times in the last few years have exercises been held which involved two of the fighting Services, but this has been the first one in which all three of them were engaged on a considerable scale. Of course, in exer cises held for the Navy and Army each side has always had its own air arm over which the Air Council has no operational control, and therefore it would not be correct to say that the Royal Air Force as such took part in the exercise. No A.O.C. was in a position to issue any orders in those exercises. At Portsmouth three Com manders-in-Chief, one from each of the Services, worked together in their efforts to defeat the Blue Fleet and to save the coast ports. Of course, it does not matter in the least whether their efforts failed or not. Portsmouth was, in fact, heavily bombarded and bombed, and the other ports suffered in lesser degree. That was almost inevitable when the umpires did not order a Blue ship out of the line when it had been so attacked that it would have been sunk or incapacitated in real war. The decks of Courageous would have needed heavy armour plating to withstand all the bombing to which they were sub jected, and, moreover, one night a submarine fired six torpedoes at her and claimed that the attack was suc cessful. But if one of the carriers had actually ceased to operate the exercise would have lost much of its in terest at an early stage, and soits whole object would have been defeated. That object was not to win the war but to give practice to everyone concerned, and Particularly to the higher command in its novel experi ment in conducting war by a triumvirate. Likewise if all the aircraft which' must have been destroyed had actually been forbidden to fly any more, that also would have interfered with the main object. It was perhaps unfortunate that the Army had no mo bile troops engaged, only fixed defences in the heavy batteries, which were largely manned by the Territorial Army. The A.A. guns and the searchlights, both Regular and Territorial, naturally worked under the orders of the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief. That was why the Blue Force only made one landing and only left its party on shore for a quarter of an hour or so. Landings did not provide practice for anybody except the actual landing party. So one is rather left wonder ing whether it actually was a triumvirate which was at work in the operations room at Portsmouth, or only in effect Admiral Lord Cork and Air Marshal Joubert de la Ferte. On the Blue side there was no attempt at co operation at all. The Blue side was just part of the Home Fleet with its own air aim. Why? One point in the defence tactics was very noticeable. The Red Air Force attacked practically nothing except the Blue, carriers. The Blue cruisers were left for the Red submarines, local flotillas, and fixed batteries to deal with as best they could. It seems quite natural and reasonable that the Blue carriers should be the first targets chosen by the Red bombers and T.B. squadrons, for one thing because they offer such a tempting target, and for another that if one can even partially blind one's enemy one has gone far towards crippling him. But the idea occurs that it may not have been altogether the best tactics to continue to con centrate on the carriers all through the exercise. In sham fighting ships are unsinkable, but in real war it is reasonable to suppose that the flying decks would have been damaged, though at a cost, perhaps aconsiderable cost, in Red bombers shot down. Would it not have been reasonable tactics and also good practice for the Red bombers to have turned their attention after a while to the Blue cruisers? One wonders, did the Admiral of the Red (in the modern" sense of the term) judge that'such attacks - would have been -waste of time, or did the A.O.C.-in-C. have such a carrier-complex that he never thought of bombing anything else ? Consider ing that bombers and submarines were the only striking force at the>disposal of Redland, this concentration of
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