AERIAL WARFARE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18874, 29 May 1923, Page 8

AERIAL WARFARE

DEVELOPMENT AND CONTROL. WHERE AUTHORITIES DIFFER. (Feom Ode Own Coebespondent.) LONDON, April 11 In an article in the April number of'the Empire Review Major-general Sir Frederick Sykes points out that aerial warfare can be much more easily, cheaply, and secretly prepared than armies and navies, anu, in combination with chemistry, will be almost impossible to withstand. Air development entails a radical rearrangement of methods amongst the three services, for a neglectful or misguided air policy in the direct and indirect aspects of co-operation may mean defeat and eventually national disintegration. ; ' If, outwardly, goodwill has been shown in carrying on the work of the departments, inwardly each has been working for its own hand with scant consideration for what is best for the country, and this will always be so unless there is a controlling force to hold them in line and insist ll Pon a common policy. The one thing which must have struck anyone who has Men in a position in Whitehall is the absence of control. It has been so for many years, but has been accentuated since the war by the entry of the Air. Short of £omg to the Cabinet, there is no way of compelling two great departments to work together, and if the Cabinet is approached there is inevitable and detrimental delav a decision is reached. “The setting up of a Ministry of Defence would appear to bo the eventual logical necessity, but there is certainly insuiueient education in the senior staffs of the services as yet to make it practicable, ana for this and many other reasons the stages leading towards it must be taken one by one. tried, and developed.” T< es ‘i C - a , lr anc l bombardment fleet, bi r I red nek- maintains, is the greatest requirement of war-time Air Force and must be prepared on the most scientific and concentrated basis In .peace. While the Am Force must develop rather than drop n S , rolat ‘°” s with ship and battery, ”, the i<; is its independent strategic from Th» Ch far the IJl °st important from the point of view of war.”

navy must have its- OWN SERVICE t^ den ijf 111 I 1 ? 3 also contributed to the Morning' Post his views regard in tr ioa vexed question of; Air. ServiceTtoS*He maintains that the navy should have Tta own air service. .“The flying men,", he Ztll'r* ' Mo into the air without the orders of the Naval Comniander-in-Chief, Ju l t ley “ rs , not under his full control, r,3 T aU, J for “ ost ° f th eir time passhafe In 01 ] boa . rd ,. a shl P of war unable to f.,.. -l' er 4 Llt,es .' main work of aiimen witn a fleet is reconnaissance, whica If- M° St - dan S° rous if not carried out by highly trained/naval officers. In the Great wai some ridiculous'' mistakes were made ■ uon-naial airmen. Surface fleets will always be required as long as commerce ! f c l arl j? d ,? n the surface,. and while undoubtedly the Royal Navy will take more and more to the air this evolution can proceed smqo economically—only if th ® rft dmiralt y controls its own Air Force. • i e Present position of our air power is lamentable, and may in a few years become desperate, if the whole question 13 not vigorously handled by the Government, it is necessary to review all our problems of Imperial defence in terms of air force winch now dominates them. We have to evolve a policy, which, while assigning to hat force definite duties and' providing for the requirements of outlying parts of the ii.mp.ire, W ;I1 guarantee security at Home. r a !fnM CS the well-informed author or In© Riadie of the Rhine” prove that; gas may be the most potent and the least deadly weapon of the future, and in this case it Will'certainly be used from 'the air. ihe trench, in occupying the Rhine provinces, may yell have had an eye upon tho immense combine known as the Interessen bememschaft, capable of producing tons of gas at short notice and at present harmless.

Above all, it is necessary that the command and direction of the air forces should be adjusted with a single eye to the needs of war, which call only for the application of well-known principles. Lastly, no schema can be complete without the co-operation, of the dominions, which may wish to deyelqp local air forces as part of an Imperial policy. It is upon the efficiency and sufficiency of .our air power that the safety of the Empire and its influence in the affairs °f the world now depend, and the responaifaility for reducing the present confusion to order rests heavily upon the Government;” LONDON’S WIDE RADIUS OF DANGER. Lord Montague of Beaulieu also writes in tho Observer on Air Warfare of the Future. He looks, upon the present air strength of France ratliei; as an example than a threat to.be used against this country. With the present developments, he points out, tncountries from which attack by airplane would be possible now are Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Ozecho-Slovakia, Germany, Holland, Belgium, the Latvian States, Russia, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. “from a meterologieal points of view,” he continues, “attacks from the eastwards trom the direction of the .Baltic would bo the more easy during many months in the year, because the North Sea is as a rule covered by a foggy atmosphere with low visibility, as we learned to our cost in the Battle of Jutland. Moreover, the fact that such aircraft would probably not pass over any land this side .of Denmark would make the attack from the Baltic difficult to provide against, and about which to be forewarned. The 'possibility of an air attack at any point along a line drawn from Bale to Newcastle, along the land frontier or France, is much more - realised in France than here, and I fully believe that it is because the; French realise the facts that they are still increasing the number and efficiency of their air forces, rightly regarding the question of aic defence as vital to France’s existence as a nation.”

WHAT HISTORY TEACHES. Lord Montague suggests some of the ghastly possibilities of aerial warefare. “\Ve should be intensely foolish as a nation,” he says,'“if we turned aside frim a consideration of our risks with a gesture of disbelief merely because we dislike to contemplate the possibilities. Some ' people argue that the League of Nations will forbid the use ot such bombs. My reply is: Hid the Hague Convention prevent m 191418, or could the League of Nations, even if it hud existed then (admirable in theory and constitution as it is now) prevent in future the bombing of London, the use of gas on the lighting front, or an intensive submarine campaign against the mercantile marine? History teaches us that when nations are angry they have no scruples. They will tear up treaties, infringe conventions, and defy international law. No prewar agreements will restrain a nation with its back to the wall lighting for its life. What is the country to do? We must increase gradually the efficiency and power of our air forces. That is the only true insurance against the terrible risks of_the future. Peace and immunity from air attacks can lie purchased at a price. That price is the undoubted and known power of defending ourselves iii the air. Thera is no other way.” £60,000 PRIZE FOR A HELICOPTER. •J ho Air Ministry have decided to offer a prize of £50,000 f6r a helicopter machine capable of fulfilling certain requirements. The details of the oifer will be made known in a few days. Recently (says the Daily Telegraph) the Secretary for Air announced that the helicopter experiments at Farnborough would soon reach the stage of fullscale expenditure. It is believed that, first and Inst, on those experiments the Government have spent nearly. £50,000, and the machine has not yet made a flight in the open.' If the Air Ministry feel confident in the Farnborough helicopter and are willing to spend more money on it, it is difficult to see why a further £50,000 should be offered. All would welcome any invention that enables the flying machine to ascend from land in a confined space, but the prevailing opinion among aeronautical engineers is that, even if helicopters became really practicable, they would always bo more dangerous and less efficient, than aeroplanes of the same period. It is Argued that even helicopters will have to be so contrived as to land at an angle and not vertically; for vertical descent, unless at lower . descending velocity than 10 miles per hour be possible, would call for a more elaborate shock-absorber than anv yet invented. To-day the problem of control is the chief difficulty in the way of lower landing speeds and of landings in confined spaces, and the view is widely held that with the helicopter carrying a greater load fit relation to power it will be even more difficult. An- advance jn the efficiency of any part of the flying machine, the propeller, or the engine would be beneficial to the aeroplane as well as to the helicopter and more immediately adaptable, and the suggestion has been made in more than one quarter that tlie r Force would be wiser to spend any available resources, in encouraging other directions of research, such, example, as contrivances making aeroplane descents to a confined space not only possible, but safe and euaSt