FUTURE AIR WARS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18768, 23 January 1923, Page 5

FUTURE AIR WARS

VITAL NEED OF SUI’KKJIACY. Avialion in industry and war was the subject discussed at the dinner of the Imperial Industries Club in London on November 28, Sir Alan Burgoyne, opening the discussion, referred to the tremendous strides made in aviation during the war. AYe started the war, he said, with, roughly, 80 aeroplanes. 167 officers and 1600 non-commissioned officers and men; we ended the war with 22,000 planes in existence. Between January and October, 1918, we built 26,000 aeroplanes and 29,000 engines. The French had 20,000 planes and the Germans nearly as many. AVe destroyed just on 8000 aeroplanes < between July, 1910, and the Armistice 1 .— (Cheers.) There were two ways only in which the British fleet could be beaten; one was by a superior fleet, and the other by an atm that could ignore the existence of the fleet. The development of aviation was continuing. During the late war the biggest bomb dropped in this country weighed 600 lb, but in two countries to-day experiments were being carried out with bombs of 20001 b weight. The air fleet in existence in France to-day could very easily, on the first day of the outbreak of war, drop 200 tons of explosives on London, and afterwards continue with 70 tons a day without adding a single aeroplane. One could conceive that the navy of the future would consist of fast aeroplane carriers, still faster light cruisers, and infinitely faster destroyers, and a battle would begin by an attempt on both sides to smash one another's plane-carriers. Speaking of civilisation. Sir Alan Bnrgoyne eferred to the sad spectacle of a science brought to such a development during the war being allowed to sink almost into desuetude. — ("Hear, hoar.”) If only our Government had taken that keen initiative that poor, povertystricken France had taken, we should be in n fur better position than we were at the present time. Lientenant-colonel J. T. C. Moore-Braba-zon, M.P., expressed the hope that the ebb tide in civil aA'iation was now over, and that we were started on the flood. In visualising the next war, he would say that the country which got the supremacy of the air could not lose the war. He granted thai they wanted other forces to compel a. successful victory. The first thing necessary would be to attempt to destroy the enemy’s aeroplane works, because by doing that one would stop the enemy’s power to reply, and one’s own supremacy became greater and greater. Consequently, it was necessary for aeroplane manufacturers to get all the protection they could, and, if possible, get underground. He had just gone through an election, and while he had been bombarded witli ques*

lions on drink, education, divorce, etc., ho had to withstand no preaure on the question of air power. Major-General Sir Sefton Brancker, Direc-tor-General of Civil Aviation, said the vital matter in connection with aviation was tho development of public opinion. The press had been wonderful, but the public were still lagging behind. Air transport was now in a precarious condition, because it was, as yet, a proposition that did not pay. It could not be expected that a new industry would pay at once, and it was necessary that air transport should be assisted in some way. The public had not yet been educated up to the knowledge that air transport was tho way to travel, and until that was'done it was up to tho Government to see that the industry got through. Turning to tho future, General Brancker expressed the opinion that in five years’ time we should have a good many air transport lines paying their way. Big items of expenditure of to-day were going to vanish. We were undoubtedly going to be the leading nation in the air, just as w© had been the leading nation on the sea.. We could not get away from it. It was the Spirit of tho nation. He hoped to live long enough to see flights to New York accomplished in eight hours.—(“Hear,, hear.”) Mr Handley Page compared the Government assistance being given to air transport in Franco with that of Britain—£ls,ooo against £150,000 —and pointed out that despite this disparity our machines on the London-Paris route carried 75 per cent, of the passengers who travelled by air. Ho thought we ought continually to extend the service until it linked up this country with India-, and said he believed that was certain to come in lime. In his opinion the results achieved by British machines were well •worthy of further support for linking up the different parts of the Empire, which was something even more important than aviation. —(“Hear, hear.”)