NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 37, 12 August 1942, Page 5

NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS

AIR TRANSPORT

SOME LIMITATIONS

Today's news so far reports no major developments in any theatre j of the war. In Russia the progress of the Germans towards the foothills of the Caucasus continues, but the Russians are standing firm I at the two points where the enemy ! threatens Stalingrad and the Volga, and are offering stubborn resistance in the western region of the Caucasus round Novorossisk. More news is coming through about the American attack with all arms on the southern Solomon Islands. The fighting is apparently tough. There are signs of a greater liveliness on the Egyptian front. India seems to he somewhat calmer. The R.A.F. continues its air offensive over Western Europe. Meanwhile the basic problem of the Allies is transport, with more and more attention being given to the possibilities of the air. On this point a careful student of aviation contributes the following observations on the limitations of air transport, which he regards as a useful supplement to, but not a substitute for, sea transport: Hidden for some months behind a veil of strategical silence, the Battle of the Atlantic has lately been allowed to show itself in glimpses, in the extraordinary phase of trying to get out of the sea into the air. In other words, we have been told that the shipping resources of the United Nations have been so strained that serious thought is being given to the carriage of war supplies by air. Indeed, it seems to have gone beyond mere tninking. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that, to bring this about, the shipping problem has become even more acute than the bluntest public statements have admitted. The strain upon shipping comes from several directions: the losses directlyinflicted by enemy action; tne great demands upon tonnage for the carriage of war materials and troops; the inability of shipyards to produce ships fast enough to meet the demand; and, contributing to this, the inability of the steel industry to provide metal fast enough: these- arc among the causes. A Desperate Remedy. It is a desperate situation, such as proverbially demands a desperate remedy. 'Could any more desperate th^n. air transport be suggested? For air transport, not only as it exists now, but even as it can be forecast by enthusiasts who at least keep one foot on the ground, is a gravely limited facility, and nobody has yet been able to show, or even imagine, any way of overcoming its limitations. A ship can carry" about three times its own weight of cargo, of which only a small fraction is its own fuel. An aeroplane can lift only a fraction of its. weightas load; and for a long journey, fuel forms a very large proportion of this load. The natural tendency is to assume that the solution is to build bigger and still bigger aircraft. But this, unfortunately, is not the solution. It is an inescapable fact that, retaining the same type of aircraft, the bigger it is made the less efficient it becomes as a carrier. The load increases less rapidly than the size of the machine; reaches a point after which it decreases, and finally we have an aeroplane so big that it can just get ori the ground with no load and empty tanks. . Enlarge it a little more, and it cannot fly at all.. Limitation of Load. Marvels have been worked in building even bigger and bigger aircraft, overcoming one handicap after another by the use of new materials, new designs that give enormous strength with minimum structural weight, and engines of great power; but these all have their limits. When Major Seversky spoke the other day of 150-ton aircraft he, as a highly authoritative practical designer, was probably pushing the figure as high as he knew how. It is more than twice the weight of any machine in use, but it is still very small viewed from the transport angle. Britain's biggest bombers can carry eight tons. Would Seversky's transporter carry fifty? It is most improbable. If it could, it would take 200 of them to shift the load of one fair-sized steamship. The cost of these machines would be of the order of £ 10,000,000-—as much as a fleet ot steamships. In time of war money, as such, loses its value, and a nation will spend ten millions on anything it wants almost without blinking; but no less than in times of peace, money is only a symbol for man-hours; and the figures mean that to build aircraft to replace one ship requires as much human effort as would build a fleet. ; Costly Servicing. It is true that aircraft travel much faster than ships, so that they can shift cargoes more frequently; but not as much more frequently as their speed suggests. A ship can go on for years with no more attention than her staff can give her. An aircraft has to be given the closest attention and frequent overhauls if disaster is to be avoided, and must have a great and costly stock of spare parts behind it, and a retinue of earth-bound servitors —as every airman knows. Aircraft have pushed their way into ! commercial transport, subject to the j | restrictions inherent in them; they can only compete with ships in carrying "luxury" freight—passengers and mails and very urgently needed goods, the quantity of which is limited in the long run not by the availability. of aircraft but by the ability of the freight to bear the costs of the service. For war purposes, the. quantity of freight able to pay is practically unlimited; it is enormously greater than the service can meet. For an opposite cause, therefore, military air transport as a substitute for ships, like commercial, have to be restricted to special classes of personnel *and supplies. Dependence on Sea and Land. The point has been repeatedly made by Oliver Stewart, who is a foremost authority on aviation, that one of the weaknesses of the air arm is its inability to move rapidly over great distances; in other words, its complete dependence upon land or sea transport for its supplies and ground equipment. But where else than in the air arm, for its own purposes, would one expect to see air transport first developed? It has nowhere, been done, or even seriously attempted. Yet for aviation to service the air arm is only a fraction of wh<:t is now suggested as a new j [ ;iir transport policy. i