FLEET AIR ARM

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17871, 30 August 1932, Page 5

FLEET AIR ARM

PARADE BEFORE KING SUCCESS OF ATTACKS LONDON, July 19. Forty aeroplanes of the Fleet Air Arm —torpedo bombers, fighters and reconnaissance craft—demonstrated before the King last week the devastating might ot this new weapon of naval warfare. Later, in a day packed with thrills, the Prince of Wales ascended from the deck of the aircraft carrier “Courageous” and broadcast from mid-air to the entire Fleet a message from his father m which the King declared that he was enjoying watching the operations of the aircraft carriers—a side of the work of a modern Navy that the King had not previously studied. Noon after the King had gone on board the Courageous, where he sat beliind a glass windscreen to watch the flying, the first of the ship’s complement of aeroplanes was brought on to the smooth flight deck in the special lift which raises aircraft from the hangars below in less than two minutes. Soon the decks of Courageous and of the sister carrier Furious were thronged with aircraft. Swiftly engines were started, the roar of exhausts rising in a crescendo as the throttles were pushed' open, and one after the other the aeroplanes ascended from the carriers, each climbing in a beautiful spiral and taking up its appointed position for the remarkable display that was to follow. Twelve lighting planes made swift bombing attacks on the carrier, using boxes of flour to bombard the flying deck. Nearly 100 per cent, of hits were secured inside a 30ft. circle-—astonishing precision. Then fighter units from the Courageous attempted to repel an attack launched by three torpedo bombers, joining in dizzy aerial combat above tlie threatened warship. This encounter was repeated at the special request' of His Majesty, who followed every movement of the battling aircraft with the keenest interest.. Six torpeao nombevs, each with its deadly load slung in launching gear beneath the fuselage, attacked the carrier together. Though they dived towards the target at a speed approaching 200 miles an hour, the aim was magnificently accurate; one direct hit shook the great vessel from stem to stern, and naval experts on board were not slow to estimate the damage that the projectile would have done had the torpedo carried its warhead instead of a dummy. Precision of aiming was again demonstrated to notable effect when lighters bombed a splash target drawn at high speed behind a destroyer; with only a plume of spray at which to direct the bombs the lighter pilots raised time and again a high column of smoke from the exact spots where the targets had been. Finally a flight of reconnaissance twoseater biplanes went for the targets with machine-gun fire, and the observers on the carrier again remarked admiringly that the bullets splashed invariably all round the tarset. A ROYAL SALUTE Before landing all of the aircraft flew past the Courageous and dived in salute before the King. The landing operations provided yet another example of the high efficiency achieved by the British Air Arm. Though each craft had to be stowed away in the hangar before the next could follow the entire complement was landed and below decks at the rate of six every five minutes. The day’s events undoubtedly provided the finest demonstration yet staged of the power and efficiency of the Fleet Air Arm machines and of the remarkable skill of its pilots. Recently certain naval flying units have received new equipment in the shape of single-seater and two-seater lighters capable of speeds ranging up to 200 miles an hour, which will widen still further the margin of superiority possessed by the British Fleet Air Arm over that of any other nation. And the day’s events shook the convictions of even the diehard members of the “blue water” school of naval thought, men who have time and again declared that aircraft are comparatively useless adjuncts to a sea fleet. They know better now.