'Mr, Winston Churchill, in his contribution to the debate' on the estimates on the newly-formed Ministry for Ca-ordination of Defence introduced by Sir Thomas Inskip, was looking at the experience of Soviet Russia when he envisaged the danger to England of landing troops from the air in undefended and unprepared districts. One of the principal devel-lopments of the Soviet air force thas been the concentration and land~ ing of troops by parachute and otherwise from aeroplanes, For some time, the Royal Air Force has been employing troop carriers enabling the Swift transport of large numbers of troops to danger spots, and only a few days ago this means was om-ployed to transport reinforcements from Egypt to Palestine. Provisioning of harassed forces from the alr has also been successfully carried out but it has been left to Soviet Russia to demonstrate on a large scale the possibility of dropping troops by parachute in theoretically menaced areas. A recent photograph showed 'a thousand men descending by parachute from huge troop carriers, com plete with arms and supplies," Milltury opinion on the effectiveness of this procedure is at variance because the possibility of disorganization and the lack of communications are important factors militating against the employment of isolated bodies of troops, but the surprise element erected by such tactics in areas unprepared for defence Is not to. be overlooked, Similar "do-or-die tactics have succeeded before in Ginary land operations and it can be taken as certain that future hosti-ities. will reveal as extensive transvert organization in the alr as on the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.