FUTURE OF R.A.F.

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 150, 22 December 1945, Page 8

FUTURE OF R.A.F.

UNCERTAIN PROSPECTS

The hint given recently by Viscount •Stansgate, Secretary for Air, that the future policy for the R.A.F. had not been decided, was a sign of the dilemma in which the naval and military authorities were placed by the emergence of the atomic bomb, writes E Colston Shepherd, air correspondent of the "Sunday Times." Plans for the use of air power as a police force could proceed along normal lines, but plans for air defence in the event of major war would have had to concern themselves largely with rockets and atomic bombs. Armed forces and particularly air power will be freed of a mass of uncertainties if the attempt to put the atomic bomb into international chancery should succeed. An immediate effect will be to give the military plane a new lease of life just when it appeared to have a formidable rival in the rocket. To forswear the atomic bomb will be to demand a degree of accuracy which cannot yet be obtained with the rocket and which can be attained by the bomber. . . ■

Ultimately, any plan for restricting atomic energy to industrial uses would have to take into account its possible application as a means of propulsion for bombers and rockets. There will probably be little danger of that complication for at least a decade. The more urgent control of the atomic bomb by itself would change entirely the direction of air force development 2000-MILE ROCKETS. Because of the relatively wide area over which the present type of atomic bomb can cause destruction, the rocket would give sufficient accuracy. The radius of the two devastated areas in Japan was about two miles. That has led to the assumption that rockets. with atomic warheads, might be used up to a range of about 2000 miles and still be near enough to their targets to cause immense damage. From investigations already made, modified rockets capable of travelling a distance of 2000 miles can be foreseen. But the present belief is that at distances beyond 2000 miles bomber planes would still have to -be used for attacks on specific targets. Given the atomic bomb of intense destructive power at a small weight, bombers would have no difficulty in undertaking attacks at extremely long range. Without the atomic bomb, the longrange rocket loses much of its value and attractiveness through lack of accuracy. Still bigger bombers seem indicated for long-range work because they will need to carry big loads of bombs as well as large quantities of fuel. The relegation of the atomic bomb to the list of forbidden weapons would therefore set the air forces working along those lines of development which had begun when the fighting ended in Europe.