NOTES ON THE WAR

Waihi Daily Telegraph, Volume XXXI, Issue 8839, 2 November 1942, Page 2

NOTES ON THE WAR

VALUE OF AIR POWER THEORY AND PRACTICE CASE HAS NOT YET PROVED The enthusiasts, who, before the war, expected .on hoped that air power would supplant the other arms in securing victory in short time, have still to see their case proved or disproved. .So far, in three years of war, the air arm has in, practice had to ac-

cept the same status as the army and the navy. But they can still argue, if they wish, that it is a matter of quantity: if there were enough aircraft they would be right. The trouble is that there are not enough aircraft; perhaps there never can be. It is, however, obvious that the air arm has altered the character of the war, as radically as the long-bow did; Almost as radically as the use o‘f firearms. It has been a slow process, not only because aircraft have had to be evolved in the light of actual combat experience—civil aviation was a quite inadequate laboratory—and because large-scale production takes a long time to work up, but also because methods of using aircraft to the best effect cannot be worked out on paper until until they have been tested.

It required the Battle of Britain, with its terrific slaughter of German aviation, to show the enemy that mere superiority in weight of air power was not sufficient; conversely, it has been proved again and again that inferiority in numbers is fraught with peril. Then, from an entirely different angle, aviation theory remains in doubt. Those who contended that warships were inevitably vulnerable to air attack can point to many examples that support the contention, but must accept the fact that innum- J erable attacks have completely failed.

Aircraft Efficiency It is, however, clear that experience has resulted in a rapid and impressive increase in the fighting power of aircraft and also that the United Nations have, at this stage, acquired real superiority- in the efficiency of machines and in quantity of output both of aircraft and of men to use them.

They have been driven harder and faster in this direction by the disadvantages of their position as against Germany. Britain’s geographical position, requiring far longer flights to strike the enemy than German machines had to make to strike at Britain, was and is an enormous handicap.

That it is being overcome by the skill of aircraft designers and builders is especially vyell shown by the ' recent bombing of industrial centres in North Italy. According to London 'Daily Telegraph these raids involved a total of a million flying miles and with the loss of eleven aircraft. These numbers mean that about 650 machine-flights were made, so that the loss was about 1.7 per cent. This is an astonishingly low rate of loss: compare it with the recently announced 2 per cent, loss of aircraft on the “ferry” service from the African West Coast to Egypt. In the first raid, no aircraft were lost.

Beating Geography In a recent broadcast, Oliver Stewart made optimistic deductions from these raids on Italy. With the adoption of such long-range machines as were used, ho said, the advantage which the enemy gained from his interior position was being overcome. It was, he suggested, becoming possible for aircraft based on positions thousands of miles apart to cooperate against an enemy between them, and so to answer radiating attacks by attacks directed from the circumference to the centre: thus Italy, for example; might be sandwiched between air attacks from England and Africa.