Increased R.A.F. Strength Justified: Mr. Stanley Statement Frame un Own Consestoxoexe London, July 17 It is learnt that the report of the, Cabinet sub-committee which, for several weeks, has been studying the additional needs of Great Britain's air defence, will be submitted to the Cabinet to-morrow.
Approval of the report is _a for. gore conclusion and Mr. Stanley Baldwin, Lord President of the Council, is expected to announce details on Thursday.
Excluding India, which maintains: her own force of approximately one hundred machines, the British air force at home and abroad, consists! of 01 squadrons, equivalent to. 899 aeroplanes, of which 760 ave frst-Me machines.
France at the present time boasts 1650 first-line fighting planes; while Soviet Russia has 1,800; Italy and the United States, 1,100 each; ant Japan, 700.
Officially, Germany has no fighting aeroplanes but the country is covered with a network of commercial ai ways unequalled anywhere and large number of her commercial machines could easily be converted into first-line fighters within a short period of time.
Although it is not possible to give the definite nature of the contem-fed expansion of the United Kingdom's air force, it is understood that the Government plans to augment the air force with an addi-anal §0 squadrons spread over a period of five years, with additional expenditure for research work for air defence in industrial areas and training the public against air tacks This plan, however, is being denounced as being too slow and weak by one of the factions which will urge that the Government summon an Imperial Conference to co-ordinate all of the Empire's air dtfence.
The Liberals and the Labourites fare bitterly opposed to any increase in the air force while the Disarmament Conference is still officially alive,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.