SPECIAL AIR UNIT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 224, 21 September 1934, Page 9

SPECIAL AIR UNIT.

STUDY OF NEW PROBLEMS. LONDON, August 10., The Royal Air Force will shortly form a special unit for the study of air lighting. This unit will consist of a staff of experts assisted by the finest pilots, working with the latest typos and equipment. It will avail itself of the experience of some of the pilots who specialised in air fighting during the war. Progress and diversity in airplane design have created new problems ill every branch of aerial operation, and ncrne are more complicated than those connected with air fighting. Many of the new squadrons to be formed under the R.A.F. expansion scheme will be lighter squadrons. The new unit will be comparable to the air armament, electrical and wireless, photography, naval co-operation, and army co-operation schools, and other special branches. One of the most important issues to be tested will be that of the single seater as compared with the two-seater fighter, an issue which has not yet been settled in spite of the recent adoption of two-seater fighters for one squadron and the intention to equip several of the auxiliary air force squadrons with two-seater fighters. It is claimed by some that the circumstances of the world war and the prowess of the "ace" gave a false value to the single seater, and that a different story may be told in any future war, although, doubtless, single seaters will still be needed. Fighting formations of single or two-seaters and the tactics to be employed; the tactics to be used for intercepting and giving battle to formations of armed bombers, speeds of climb, altitude capacity; performance adjusted to certain levels: consideration of the probabilities and the policy to be determined accordingly will enlarge the field of inquiry and experiment with which the new unit will he concerned.