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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 1942.PDF
and AIRCRAFT ENGINEER FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY W THE WORLD .• FOUNDED 1909 Editor C. M. POULSEN Managing Editor G. GEOFFREY SMITH, M.B.E. War Correspondent JOHN YOXALL Editorial, Advertising and Publishing Offices: DORSET HOUSE, STAMFORD STREET, LONDON, S.E.I Telegrams : Truditur, Sedist, London. Telephone : Waterloo 3333 (35 lines). COVENTRY: 8-10, CORPORATION ST. Telegrams : Autocar, Coventry. Telephone: Coventry 5210. BIRMINGHAM, 2: GUILDHALL BUILDINGS, NAVIGATION ST. Telegrams : Autopress, Birmingham. Telephone: Midland 2971 (5 lines). MANCHESTER, 3 : 260, DEANSGATE. Telegrams : Iliffe, Manchester. Telephone : Blackfriars 4412. GLASGOW, C.2 : 26B, RENFIELD ST. Telegrams : IIiffe, Glasgow, Telephone: Central 48 5 7. No. 1919. Vol. XLVIII. SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Home and Abroad : Year, £3 10. Registered at the G.P.O. us a Newspaper. October 4th, 1945 6 months, £1 10 6. Thursdays, One Shilling IFe Outlook What the Army ThinksF UTURE historians will certainly choose 1939 as the year in which the novelty of air power began to exert a serious influence in war, for in 1918 that power had not really got into its stride. The fair- minded historian (admittedly a rara avis) will not accept as authoritative the enthusiasm which declares that the air is the dominant arm, any more than he will be pffected by the grief of old cavalry soldiers that the horse no longer rules the battlefield. Probably the best estimate of the effect produced by air power in the defeat of Germany could be given by a highly placed and candid German authority. Next to that, it is most useful to hear the opinion of an authoritative Allied officer who is not a member of the flying Services. Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander has given his opinions in a very frank interview to The Times, which did not deal exclusively with the air, but gave some most im- portant reflections on its part in the Italian campaign from the Army's point of view. Perhaps the remark of Sir Harold's which will attract most attention is the one in which he said that the atomic bomb is unlikely to be a sufficient deterrent to the natural bellicosity of man, but he added that what we want is a small staff of experts to watch ihe latest developments of science, and he ended by.saying that if our Navy and our air pilots kept abreast of the latest developments of science we should be able to stand up to anything. ,We take it that he did not mean to ex- clude the Army from the need to benefit from science. The importance of airfields in modern war is shown by the discovery of a German document which explained that one reason why the enemy did not shorten his lines in the Apennines was that it was advantageous to fight as far away from the homeland as possible, so that iighter-bombers could not bomb the Reich. That fear of bombing should force an enemy to fight in a disad- vantageous position is most significant. But the Field Marshal did not consider that our '' overwhelming superiority in the air," our greater strength in guns, or our far greater mobility was the decisive factor in the German defeat in Italy; but the fact that the Germans had their backs to the Po, and when defeated could not withdraw. There are, in fact, times when air supremacy is not decisive. On airborne troops Sir Harold was most interesting. The use of them, he said, could obviously be carried much further. Once a commander had to search for his enemy's exposed flank; now he could go over the top and plant a force in the enemy's rear. Previously this could only be done by sea, and then command of the sea was all-important. Now command of the air had become even more important (of course, from the Army General's point of view). The ordinary student can see for himself that command of the sea remains of the utmost importance in a world war, but Sir Harold was evidently thinking of the effect of air and sea on a specific land campaign. We have all heard already of what marvels Admiral Mountbatten was abte to perform in Burma once he had gained command of the air. The importance of that is now obviously well recognised by the leading personalities in both Navy and Army. Luxury and EconomyW E have always rather regretted the tendency towards reviving names of aircraft types. The practice makes for a certain amount of confu- sion, and more often than not there is no similarity between the original bearer of a name and its modern namesake. A case in point is the Vickers Viking, an article ©n which appears in this issue. The original machine was an amphibian flying boat of all-wood con-
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