AIR FLEETS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 10, 11 July 1936, Page 10

AIR FLEETS

MANY ESTIMATES

ALL OFFICIAL

ALL DIFFERENT

Of ths "war fsver" cables of the past week or two none are more feverish than the accounts of ths strides which Germany is making in re-arming, and particularly in building up an air force of thousands of machines, and so high is- the. weekly production of war machines now stated that from doubt will have sprung-downright disbelief. Germany, announced a cablegram received on Thursday, is now turning out aeroplanes at the rate of 300 per week. Absurd! Or not so absurd? •

The figure is far from being a production impossibility, as figures which will be given later will show, but the certainty is that outside a very close circle of German officialdom no one knows how many machines Germany has today or is producing by the week or by the month, any more than the British, French, Italian, or Russian Air Forces proclaim in a loud voice just what-they have and what they intend to have.

It is practically impossible, even by war-time censorship, to keep from the world's knowledge the building of a battleship, a cruiser, or even a minor ship of war, for the unit is too large and the construction calls for too great a concentration of work at one location for the new ship to be passed by unnumbered and unwritten, but except to the few officials the number and rate of production of aircraft, the parts of which may be manufactured, on methods closely approaching mass production, in a dozen or a score of factories, cannot be known.

The proof of that is clear from the astonishingly differing estimates of the comparative strengths of. the air fores of the greater powers. In March of this year an American statistician prepared a table of comparisons of estimates, all of them '.'official" and agreeing only in their wide variation. The figures are for first-line strength and immediate reserves combined'and British French States German Britain i"n f "A'^' e3t™'^. estimate. United ' ' " -So° 1060 States 2331 IS9O 20G0 ■ms Germany 112 103 0 MO _ France . 16G5 o fioo ~n r. , & :: SS! . ™ $» Russia . 2300 3100 3000 SUO The White Paper on Defence, published in Great Britain in the sam° month, gave still other comparisons, this time upon "first-line" aircraft only and representing definitely the British official version of comparative fsnn ng£hs: Brital n 1020' United states 1800, Germany 700,^ France 1670, Italy 850, Japan 1420, Russia 1500 Other most carefully-compiled estimates, every one from official figures have been published in English and Continental journals since the beginning of the year, but there is no agreement about any two of them, becau"> few know the facts of their own air nnr o CeS4 nd fi- ive those facts out to no one. There is no "Brassey's Naval Annual for the air, listing every machine, every gun, and every bomb f/jSht. Certainly there is a comple+e Air Annual" in all the Continental languages, most fully and expensively lUustrated, but the very facts Th^ o her countries most want to know just are not given.

WHERE THE CATCH LIES that iSth" tthatt t ; firs"me" qualification ? t a u teh lies, for first-line strength, without reference to reserves and manufacturing possibilities rt?,n? n a °L m\ an 1° much- When introducing the Air Estimates to the House of Commons this year, the Under-Sec-retary of State for Air,' Sir Philip 11l soon stepped carefully round this point explaining just what is meant by the words and leaving things as indefinite

The term, "first-line aircraft," he said, was often misunderstood. By it was _ meant the fighting strength of service squadrons. That was to say the term excluded all aircraft in training, experimental and similar establishments, as well as those in reserve whether actually held .in units or in depots. These aircraft, of course largely outnumbered the first-line figure,-and would be greatly increased with the provision of war reserves And in saying that, Sir Philip Sassoon gave the statisticians of other Powers more facts to work upon, but no more figures. So the disheartening, comparison which is at first thought drawn from the cabled news that Germany, or some other Power, is producing aeroplanes at the rate of 300 per week, and that Britain still sticks contentedly to the same old figures, static since the beginning of the year—l7so home defence 430 overseas, and 350 Fleet Air Arm —is not so one-sided. PRODUCTION RATE IN WAR TEARS. _ Because memories are short and continued reference is made to the vast air .fleets which are being built today one forgets the staggering figures which were built up in the air in 1914----18, for the total fleets, officially ad-" mitted by the seven Powers listedabove, are still below the- air strength of Britain or Germany at the close of the war, notwithstanding the appalling losses of men and machines during the four years of war. Britain and Germany each then had over 20,000 machines, but there is. of course, a vital difference in that the war aeroplanes of 1914-18 (except during the later months) were in the vast majority very light and comparatively shortrange machines designed for air duelling over the lines, whereas heavy and medium heavy long-range machines are in the majority today, for from fighting duels in the air the warplane crews will iii a future war turn to far more deadly work.

Because the machines were comparatively simple it was possible to turn them out from-war-year factories at a stupendous rate, in fact, faster than pilots could be trained to man them. The production rates have been published previously, but so remarkable are the figures that they will bear repetition. They are production figures per month:

53 from August, 1914, to May, 1915. 340 from June, 1915, to February, 1917. 1352 from March, 1917, to December,

1917. 2668 from January, 1918, to October 1918. 3500 at the Armistice.

What was aone during the war years of twenty years ago can presumably be done again, in machine production, but machines without pilots may rest in their cases indefinitely, and it is in the training of airmen to the far higher proficiency now required, in navigation, methods of communication, night and all-weather flying over great distances, and the horribly efficient tactics which have vbeen developed since 1918 and introduced to the world in Abyssinia, that the pace is set in the building of air fleets.

Signor Farinacci, former secretary of the Fascist Party, lost his right hand as the result of the premature explosion of a hand grenade during bombing practice sit Asmara recently.