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Aviation History
1940
1940 - 1670.PDF
JUNE 6, 1940 through which we shall have to pass before victory is achieved. But it can no more be done now by utilising the orthodox methods of the past than could it be done by accepting the theories of Sea Power (without corre- lating them properly to Air Power) and giving them priority five years ago. The British Empire possesses untapped sources of strength. They ought to have been tapped long ago, but they were not. A tardy start was made with the training of pilots and other members of aeroplane crews in the Empire countries. It ought to have been begun years before, when it was first suggested. So with the building of aircraft. They ought to be under con- struction in bigger quantities outside Great Britain than within our seagirt snores, which lie too near the shores of Continental Europe; but it is the other way about. Everything we have done in the last five years has been the other way about. To-day we are not only making the United Kingdom the principal arsenal for the de- fence of the whole Empire, but we are perpetuating that mistake in spite of the fact that the Prime Minister has warned the British people that the forces which have been turned against Norway and Holland and Belgium are likely to be turned against us here in these islands. Why, oh why do we remain so blind? . . ,- .- .... ~ Decentralise to Dominions Years ago I pleaded that Great Britain should not be made the arsenal of Empire. I visualised Great Britain as the advanced zone wherein actions would be fought and in which our advanced bases would be situated. But to place one's factories and stores in the same area as one's advanced bases is madness. I believe it is not too late to do much, even now. Why not despatch com- plete aeroplane design staffs to Canada? Why not send trained men out there, too; workmen, ship equipment, tools, jigs ; all the paraphernalia of the aircraft industry? Ship the industries that feed it. Make Canada our war base. Make Australia a second base. New Zealand a third. If we are getting their men as fighters, soldiers, as we are, we can replace them by British workers. After all, we are a moated castle here in the United Kingdom. Vulnerable to air attack we are and must be. But we are not accessible to tanks moving under their own power. Great Britain should become a forward •battle zone. All redundant males, females and children ought to be cleared out and not left to become pitiable refugees. We know well enough that the German pilot will shoot at refugees, will bomb them. To clear them out to the western counties is not enough. Our strength lies in the fact that we can evacuate the United Kingdom. Germany cannot evacuate the heart of Europe—not yet. She may have, indeed she has, numerous factories sited far apart within the Greater Reich. But she cannot put them into places of safety as can the British Empire. Invincibility If Britain acts now, even as the clock approaches the twelfth hour we may yet have time to recover from the shortsightedness of our leaders in the past, who have left undone the things that ought to have been done. If we can keep our aircraft industry intact within the Empire, if we can keep our design staffs and our work- men for that industry in places of complete safety, if we can shift our machine tools and factories and re-erect them where they can carry on inviolate despite the ravages of war, the Navy will have done a job that will make the British Empire and the English and French speaking peoples invincible. Then, at one stroke, we shall have accomplished a number of things. We shall have a huge and growing aircraft industry established in parts of the Empire that are inviolate in the present stage of the struggle, and which we shall thus make strong enough to withstand assault at any later stage. We shall render it impossible for Germany and any ally she might possess to defeat the British people by a European struggle. We shall have forced the industry to produce and the Royal Air Force to employ the types of aircraft most necessary for the kind of campaign in which we are engaged. We shall have a truly mobile air force. The British Commonwealth Our air force should then be renamed. It ought even now to be called the Royal Empire Air Force. Its train- ing grounds, and the industry that makes its aeroplanes and equipment ought to be situated throughout the Empire. In the United Kingdom should be the advanced base repair shops and a number of constructing factories working under wrar conditions, making only certain things. There would be reception aerodromes sited as far west as possible in the country. To them would come a steady stream of new aircraft, and new crews trained in the tonic atmosphere of the Dominions. In the United Kingdom we should have plenty to do. There would be factories to make munitions, for one would not want to carry bombs, for example, farther than was necessary. There would be reserve bomb factories over- seas as well. Germany might overrun all Europe. We might hold her east and southward drive somewhere in that vague region called the Middle East. If we can hold these islands, too, Germany cannot prevail. To win we need far better organisation than we yet have had. We need an outlook that embraces our Imperial domains, which are in the main far removed from Imperialism, and which will sweep them into a real Commonwealth wherein our money is their money and wherein we shall not hesitate to spend upon the erection of factories as freely as we would spend if we were building these same factories in the United Kingdom. Standardise We should also have to concentrate upon the utmost speed of output of the most suitable aeroplanes. They would have to be long-range aircraft able to fly the Atlantic non-stop with ease. They would have to be fast, faster than anything yet flying, in their class. We should want just one type at a time. One bomber—the best. We should have to scrap, for the time being, all the industrial pride of names. The prefixes of Hawker, Fairey, Handley Page, Vickers would have to go, as well as all the others. We need just one bomber. We do not need a mixed bag of Wellingtons, Hampdens and Whitleys. We want just one, with the best qualities of all. And there is no reason why we should not get it, and have it produced in greater numbers than we have so far achieved with our mixed grills of bombers. By comparison with Germany it almost seems as though Great Britain has been suffering from a conspiracy of slowness. Now, the aircraft industry had better face the fact that it has a choice of alternatives^-production or extinction. Some of the leaders of the industry have had too soft a time for too long a time. Now they could profitably spend twenty hours a day planning the trans- formation of their plants from United Kingdom to Empire soil. Let them get on with that job before it is too late, without waiting to discuss the question of profit or loss. If they dally too long it may be all loss. Fighters and the shorter range dive-bombers we can continue to make in the factories that are left here. With them (and a proportion of heavy bombers) we should be able to carry on, for the interim period, the war at the closer ranges of to-day.
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