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Aviation History
1940
1940 - 1146.PDF
APRIL 18, 1940 It can be no part of British naval plans to be bereft of adequate bombing support for naval purposes. One can imagine the uproar at the Admiralty if the War Office were to suggest that all bombers were of more use in France. The French corridor is the corridor for land warfare against Germany. The British corridor, on the other hand, is the corri- dor for naval warfare. And the area of action for bombers (unlike that of the French corridor) lies on both sides of the British corridor, encompassing a relatively small area of land and a big area of sea. Thus it seems probable that the bomber sections of the Royal Air Force in France and in Britain will develop into specialist sections with specific knowledge of military operations on the one hand and of naval opera- tions on the other. If this should prove to be the case, each section will be- come a fixed force, one acknowledgely attached to the army and the other secretly bequeathed to the navy. And perhaps before the Royal Air Force becomes aware of what has happened, it will be split up into the component parts from which it was created in 1918. The Air Ministry would then (as a sop) be left as an entity controlling the functions of design, inspection, testing and supply; if steps are taken in time it may still possess an operational section of the present air force as an independent unit; but that will happen only if a good enough case can be made out for the reten- tion of a mobile air section which can be despatched to any front with greater rapidity than any other branch of the armed forces of the Crown. I believe that there is a growing possibility (I would not rate it higher yet) that the Air Ministry will be faced with a crisis of disintegration as great as the crisis of integration which fell upon the Directorate of Military Aeronautics and the Naval Air Department twenty-four years ago. If this crisis comes, it will come because the Air Ministry has had to face a new war—indeed its first great war—while j'et its destinies were presided over by officers trained in their youth in the ways of Army and Navy. If the war had come, say, twenty years later the Air Service would have had air training throughout all its higher ranks and the Trenchard Cranwellian doctrine would have stood the test of inter-Depart- mental strife. But the war has come too soon for that. Some few months before the war began in Septem- ber, 1939, Lord Trenchard crossed swords in the House of Lords with Lord Chatfield over the policy then in vogue in relation to the R.A.F. Trenchard said the way to win a war was to strike at the enemy's source of supply of aircraft, and at his aerodromes. He there- fore advocated concentration upon bombers. But at that time a policy decision had been reached to double the rate of production of fighters. Chatfield, as Minister for Co-ordination of Supply, took the line that fighter defence was right because if so many aircraft were shot down on each raid the enemy's strength would be rapidly exhausted. But that was in the days of pre-war partial (political) appeasement; fighter aircraft could be said to be built without exhibiting aggressive inten- tions. MAY 9, 1940 ROYAL AIR FORCE NUMBER ON Thursday, May 9, a special number of"Flight" will be published devoted to the different branches and training of the R.A.F. of to-day on its present vast scale of wartime operation. And the Air Ministry sat back and allowed its Ser- vice to be the servant of a sycophantic political per- formance. The long range fighter was not produced soon enough. The Blenheim fighter version is only a makeshift, how- ever good it may be. Until there are real first-class long-range fighter squadrons to support the bombers, and adequate air transport for supply, staff, personnel' and all the equipment needed for a self-contained sec- tion of the Air Force to operate in any given field and to get there with the speed of flight, the Air Ministry will lack the strength of case it ought to have to hold, its own against the predacity of the older Services, who showed in the 1914-1918 war that they were willing to main- tain their battles on the home front even when engaged in war with a mighty enemy abroad. Any such attempt to disintegrate the Air Force ought to be frowned upon from the outset. For this reason: That, if the air squadrons were again to be tied to the Army and Navy, as they were from 1914 to 1918, they would be used by the two older Services for Army and Navy purposes, as the sections in France and Britain are being used to- day. The speed of transition of the fastest section of the Air Force would then come down to the speed of transition of the Navy and the Army. And as the Navy is responsible for the safe transport of the Army over- seas, the Air Force would be reduced to a speed of some- thing under thirty knots. A sudden flare up on a new front (as may well hap- pen at any time in this war) would best be countered by the Air Force in full mobile trim at the outset until other forces could get there. Such a section of the R.A.F. could have gone into action in Poland and in Finland had it existed. The tragedy was that it wasn't in existence then. If the Air Force is sold to the Arm\' and the Navy it never will exist until other nations force it upon us by taking the initiative. • - - The Coastal Command No great retentive powers of memory are needed to recall the wrave of agitation that swept under Admiralty Arch to flood the political arena with a blue sea demand for sweeping changes in air administration, and the restoration of the Fleet Air Arm and shore-based flying boats to unilateral control by the Admiralty. The Cabinet of the day decided that the Admiralty should have undivided control of the Fleet Air Arm ashore and afloat, and I believe most people will agree that it was a wise decision. But the Admiralty did not suc- ceed in their plea to obtain similar control over the shore-based flying boats. Already this wrar has lasted long enough to estimate the practical result of the collaboration between the naval-controlled surface ships and the Air Force-con- trolled flying boats. In some respects the flying boats of the Coastal Com- mand represent the most mobile section of the Royal Air Force. Apart from record breaking attempts, flying boats undertook the longest air cruises prior to the war. They are the most self-sufficient section or the R.A.F. Their aerodrome is to be found on any
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