AEROPLANE STATISTICS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21601, 23 March 1932, Page 8

AEROPLANE STATISTICS

AIR POWER AND DISARMAMENT PROBLEMS FOR GENEVA. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, February 4. Publication of the statistics of air strength returned by the countries of the world to the League of Nations, in preparation for the Disarmament Conference, ha® given rise to such comment and comparison. First among the nations in numbers of military aeroplanes—though scarcely first in quality, if statements made by French Deputies in debate last week have any shadow of justification—is France, with a declared total of 1067 “first line” machines. To this figure are added «'3O “ immediare reserves ” and 883 “ school machines,” making a grand total of 3000 aircraft. The United States figure is 1752 in the first line and a total of 2351; Italy owns to a total of 1507, but does not specify how many of these are considered in the first line; Japan returns 1385 “ first line ” machines and an aggregate of 1939, and Britain, excluding 90 aeroplanes on service in India, shows 706 “first line” machines and a grand total of 1434. The Soviet Union has made no return, but knowledgeable estimates place the Russian “first line” strength at not less than 1000 aircraft and an aggregate total of nearly 2000. The British figures are dated April 1, 1931, but the increase in numbers since then has been small, and the relative positions of the nations remain unaltered. Experts are astonished at the size of the United States and Japanese figures. Both countries, and Japan particularly, seem to have included aircraft which are ordered or projected but are not yet in service.

Thus Britain ranks sixth or fifth among the world’s air Powers in actual numbers of machines, according as the Japanese figures accurately represent the present state of the national air services or not. The comparison is startling. THE PARITY PUZZLE.

Before the experts and statesmen at Geneva is the task of reaching bases of limitation and international parity.which will be universally acceptable. Limitation may be measured in numbers and in horse-power, and by restriction of each nation’s budgetary expenditure on the air arm. The problem bristles with the thorniest technical and political difficulties. For example, how is “ parity ” to be established among the world’s leading air forces? Britain, by delaying the home defence scheme and in many other ways, has deliberately held .back from aerial expansion. But her position is still governed by the principles officially enunciated in 1923—the provision of a home defence force able to cope with the nearest striking air force and of sufficient other air equipment to meet the legitimate needs of the Empire overseas and of the army and navy. The Royal Air Force demonstrably does not fulfil those basic requirements to-day; the deficiency indicates Britain’s many solid contributions to the furthering of disarmament since 1918, when she possessed the largest and most formidable air force in the world. No degree of superiority in quality, in the skill of pilots and the performance of machines, could in sudden emergency bo expected to close too large a disparity in sheer size. Will the Disarmament Conference, in the search for air parity, scale up—or scale down to British numerical standards?