Britain Losing Race For World’s Sky Routes

Northern Advocate, 16 December 1942, Page 3

Britain Losing Race For World’s Sky Routes

(Rec. 3 p.m. Spec.) LONDON. Dec. 15.

Increasing Interest and attention ’s being taken in Britain in the role of transport aircraft and its future. Bigger aircraft are carrying tremendous loads ana proving invaluable for war while the commercial possibilities of these giants after the war is selfevident. Many people in Britain have suddenly become aware that compared with America and Germany, this country lacks both supply and also factories for manufacturing them. The Germans have proved time and time again during the war the value of transport aircraft, the latest instance of which being the reinforcements they are sending the troops at Stalingrad also for building up forces in Tunisia. America also is further advanced than Britain in this department of air warfare, and, in fact, the parachute units recently sent to North Africa were carried in American aircraft. One reason advanced for the British failure to have air transports is that she had to concentrae on building bombers and fighters after the fall of France —but Germany had at least 3000 transports on the outbreak, showing that they were ahead of the British before the war in this regard. I Last of the “Small” Bombers I While Britain lias now large reserves of bombers and fighters, she has not yet j turned serious attention to producing transport aircraft. That America is making further developments in bigger aircraft is indicated by comments by the Chief of the United States Army Air Force (Lieut.-General H. H. Arnold)*, who stated that the present Flying Fortress and Liberator bombers were the "last of the small bombers” and that "entirely new battle waggons” were on the way. If was recently stated that America was building 110-tonjjer aircraft and would later experiment with 220-tonners. Since the Americans arrived in Britain they have been paying attention to a planned policy of bomber development and the new bombers which will replace the Fortresses and Liberators are designed to fly faster, farther and higher, and carry more bombs and more powerful armament.

Commenting on the inadeciuac.v of transport and their future, the “Daily Mail’s” aeronautical correspondent (Colin Bednail) declared that the whole future of the British Commonwealth and the right to survive after the war depends on victory in the race for the world’s skv routes, but, he added, the British are losing this air war. “Would Have to Thumb Lift” Mr. Bednail continued that the whole Empire, sponsor of the greatest legion of fighting air forces in the world, now possesses but one international merchant airline—the semi-Govemmental British Overseas Airways Corporation. ‘‘lts tinv fleet is a motley makeshift of a score of different types, shapes and sizes of aeroplanes, mostly cast off from elsewhere. . . . i doubt if we could muster sufficient British-built air transports to carry British delegations to a Peace Conference. They would have to thumb a lift from some other nation’s slick new liners.” The fact that Britain is well alive to the possibilities of air transportation, however, is proved by the formation of air-borne divisions, which, as already reported, are designed to launch an army into battle with all equipment. It is realised that Britain naid heavily in Libya bv lacking air transports, and Major-General Sam Browning recently told war correspondents that it is likely that General Ritchie need never have retreated to El Alamein if transports had been available to rush him up reinforcements.

It is honed that definite steps will be taken to include more transport planes in Britain’s aircraft production campaign. It is certainly an aspect of air in which the Dominions are directly interested, if only from the viewpoint of post-war commercial possibilities.