IMPERIAL AIR BASES

Southland Times, Issue 19986, 28 September 1926, Page 10

IMPERIAL AIR BASES

SIR SAMUEL HOARE’S INVITATION. The development of Empire air communications, and the part the dominions -and dependencies can play by providing air bases for mobile units and air transport, were emphasised by Sir Samuel Hoare, the Secretary of State for Air, at a luncheon given by the British Empire League at the British Empire Club. The Duke of Sutherland presided over a large company of representatives of the dominions and of men associated with aviation. The chairman said that the air, instead of separating the Empire like the sea, would untie them with their kinsfouk in all parts of the world in the future. (Cheers). Sir Samuel Hoare said that in the next generation air transport might take as prominent a place as railway and shipping development took in the second half of the nineteenth centurey. The speaker reminded his listeners that to-day they were operating at home more than 1,500 miles of regular air routes, and in Australia there were services covering distances of 3,000 miles. Upon this sound progress they could, with the backing of the Empire Governments and the Empire peoples, make greater and swifter advances in the future. The three main lines of progress before them were an airship route to India in four days—(cheers)—one to Capetown in six days, and another to Australia in ten and New Zealand in twelve days. (Cheers). Some time, also, a fourth line might be formed to cross the Atlantic to Canada in 21 days. These were the great trunk lines that, stage by stage, would be created over the territory of the Empire; and, when once they were running, smaller lines would radiate from them, linking them up with the territories of other Crown colonies and dependencies. The steps being taken to carry this great policy into effect were threefold. In the first place, on the military side they were endeavouring to organise landing grounds and air ports which would enable squadrons to be moved quickly from one part of the Empire to another. One example of this policy was in the establishment of the Cairo-Capetown route, without which the recent successful Service flights to Nigeria and Capetown could not have been made. Units flying in formation had been able to move punctually, safely, and quickly many thousands of miles over country often inaccessible to other forms of transport. As ! showing the close connection between military and civil aviation he could refer to Mr Alan Cobham (who he was pleased to see there that day) for he knew that Mr Cobham supported his view that it was essential for similar chains of landing grounds to be formed in other parts of the Empire. Might he be permitted to emphasise how valuable it would be in building up air routes to have these bases, and to ask the representatives of the dominions and colonies present that day to do what they could to make and maintain landing grounds as links in these Empire chains? I DEVELOPMENT OF AIRSHIPS. Referring to the starting of the CairoKarachi aeroplane service next January, the speaker" said that already officers on the North-west Frontier and Indian civilians were booking passages upon a service which would save them ten days or a fortnight in their leave to the Home Country. He was convinced that once this service was running regularly the demand would be irresistible for linking up Egypt with England at the one end, and Karachi with Bombay, Calcutta, Rangoon and Singapore at the other end. The third effort they were making was in the development of airships, and a protracted period of research and experiment had shoWn that there was no technical reason why airships of 5,000,000 cubic feet capacity, carrying it might be 100 pasesngers, 20 tons of freight, and a crew of 50, should not carry out the services in the times he had already referred to.

It was not for him to dictate proposals to the Governments and people of the Empire, but our airships would not be able to fly to the dominions unless masts were built to which they could be attached; and he should like to ask if it were possible for the various Governments, in their own interests, no less than that of Empire communications, each to build a mooring mast to enable the airships to fly to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The expenditure would not be great, and, if it were undertaken without delay, would enable them to make fuH use of the two airships as soon as they were built. (Cheers). In conclusion, Sir Samuel Hoare emphasised the fact that our Empire was unique in that it had no frontiers and no strip of terirtory or line of forts which, once passed, would mean its capitulation. Its backbone was its communications, which stretched from Vancouver to England, and from England to South Africa, to India, to Australia, and to New Zealand. It was that backbone he wished to strengthen by adding to the lines of the sea and of the land the line of the air; and, lastly, was there not greater military value in the building of those Empire air routes? There had been times when the arrival of a single battalion would have changed the history of events; and by a line of air ports he hoped they would be able to make their Empire defences more mobile than they had ever been before, and avoid the unsatisfactory and extravagant alternative of tying up their resources at fixed points. That was the programme for which he needed the united support of the country and the help of the dominions and the colonies. (Cheers). Mr Alan Cobham said that it was a mistake to suppose that air transport was seriously in competition with sea and rail transport. The effect of speeding up the transfer of business men and mails between the various parts of the Empire would be to increase trade, and produce must be carried in ships.