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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 1851.PDF
SEPTEMBER 3RD, 1942 FLIGHT 257 WE MUST SHIP BY AIR American Views on Advantages of Air Transport : Speed, Safer Routes, and Huge Savings in Materials IF I were asked which I preferred, 1,000 bombers or 1,000 transporters, I should find it difficult to decide ; I should take advice." In these, or at any rate very similar words, Mr. Churchill, in the House of Commons, answered Members of Parliament who were pressing for transport aircraft. The realisation is spreading that the air will play an ever-increasing part in the conduct of the war, not military aviation alone, but air transport generally. The August issue of Fortune contains a sane and closely reasoned article on the subject, from which the following extracts are quoted. Although the article approaches the problems largely from the American point of view, it is not difficult to think of applications to British conditions. —ED. This vicious problem of pushing munitions out to the fighting fronts and bringing strategic materials in, resolves itself into a question of how to manufacture the most ton- miles in the shortest time from relative investments in man power, fuel, steel, and other raw materials. Our first attempted solution was instinctive and traditional; ships and still moie ships. But obviously ships by themselves are not enough for this war. Fast as we are building, they The C-47 is the familiar, seven-year-old DC-3 airliner, with alljja.s'iangar ,^. comforts removed and a big cargo door, heavy floor bejaKTand folding seats substituted. Glenn Martin project for 125-ton " flying ship " designed to carry 100 passengers and 25,000 lb. of mails from New York to London in 13 hours. P are being sunk even faster, and as each one goes down there is subtracted from the total American power to wage war a vital fraction of its communications and, in too many instances, an irreplaceable fiaction of weapons and supplies required to maintain armed force somewhere in the world. On the sea we have therefore arrived at the margin of frustration. Tanks, guns and ammunition, however miracu lously produced, win no battles on the bottom of the ocean. From this predicament the airmen, supported by influential laity, are proposing a bold escape ; that we turn to the air at once and develop « fleet of cargo aircraft, even at the cost of cutting into the shipbuilding and combat-aircraft programmes. Until a few months ago the conception of moving large bodies of men and heavy cargoes by air had little standing in American strategy. In the President's original 50,000 aircraft programme of May, 1940, the proportion of cargo carriers was less than two to every hundred combat air craft. Moreover, these were mostly intended for limited, short-range tactical use, and they carried the catchall A-10 priority, the same as that enjoyed by aluminium scrap and most maintenance and repair parts, as for trucks. Too Many Sponsors To-day many of the air cargo carriers, espe cially those intended for long-range ocean hauls, have moved up to the top of the priority list alongside the four-engined bomber. And from having no sponsors at all, except for a handful of supposed crackpots and airline operators tainted by the suspicion of self- interest, the cargo carrier as a war instrument is jeopardised by having too many. The struggle over who shall control this new logistical weapon threatens to develop into a fierce bureaucratic war. The case for the cargo aircraft versus* the ship has gone beyond technical bookkeeping costs. It is beside the point that on a per-ton- mile basis the aircraft is not in the same league with the surface ship—with 10 to 15 cents per ton-mile for the former compared to as little as one-tenth of a cent for the latter. This dif ferential derives primarily from the higher technical skills required to build and operate an aircraft^ifc'ifa dollar cost that ceases to be in war. Therefore, the only realistic a"sissfor comparison is the extent to which the
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