AIR DEFENCE OF EMPIRE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 187, 13 July 1925, Page 2

AIR DEFENCE OF EMPIRE.

BOAIBS DEADLIER THAN GUNFIRE. Aeroplanes as the future “bulwarks of Empire” was prophesied by Air Chiefniarshal Sir Hugh Trenchard in an address recently to Lie Cambridge University Aeronautical Society (reports the Daily Chronicle). “lt scents to me,” he said, “that in another 50 or 100 years the British Empire will have to be defended by air for the sake of economy and efficiency. In India tribes are coming in and making submission for wrong-doing which, in the past, would have meant punitive columns at vast expense of life and money. “The aeroplane,” continued Sir Hugh, “is the most offensive weapon that has ever been invented. It is a shockingly bad weapon of defence, but it is the only defensive weapon against the aeroplane. In one day more tons of bombs could be dropped on this country than were dropped on it in the four years that the Great War lasted. Merchant ships under convoy, from the air in the narrow waters close to the shore arc less vulnerable to submarine attack than they are further out. “Nearly all the naval battles of the past have been fought close to the shore. I do not think that any have been fought 100 miles out for the past 250 years. What will be the effect of air power with regard to this? Think of the cost of the new squadrons necessary for an air defence, as against the cost ot any other means, and remember that the pcicentage of bits by torpedo and bombing machines is far in excess of the percentage of hits by any others means. A gun fires at 40,000 yards, but an aeroplane can drop its bomb straight on to the target from perhaps 10,000 feet !”