Mr. Neville Chamberlain has secured another important success in the House of Commons which has emphatically rejected the Opposition's resolution demanding a searching inquiry into British air defences and administration. In fact the division can bbe taken as a vote of confidence in the Government whose hands will be considerably strengthened thereby. When it was announced that it had been decided to send mission to the United States and Canada for the purpose of ascertaining aircraft construction potentialities in those two countries, and the possibility of their supplying certain of Great Britain's needs, fan outcry was raised to the effect that Britain was badly logging in he building-up of a suMciently strong alr force for the protection of the British Isles. The fact that such a commission was. being sent certainly lent colour to the complaint so far the average public was concerned, though even then it was stated in certain "London newspapers that this was not the whole case, 'The British Government had decided upon a certain programme, which at the time it was drawn up, was' considered to be the minimum needed to secure for Great Britain peace and tranquility. It later decided go beyond that programme and provide a greater margin of safety, a decision which Wwas strongly supported in all quarters, It was thought that the extra machines, witch the enlarged programme required, could be obtained from both the United States and Canada, and the most attractive side of the scheme' was the fact that by thus placing orders in peace-time the productive sources with which it was decided to deal would be brought within the British sphere of influence and provide a wartime potential of very considerable value, It was true that British resources as they then existed would be incapable of immediately providing for the acceleration which had been arranged, but that was not entirely the fault of preparation made in Britain, which appears closely to have approximated the demands of the original programme.
The position in Great Britain with regard to aircraft production was that only five or six firms produced the greater proportion of the output of aeroplanes. In the manufacture of engines the field is even more limited as four firms produce more than ninety per cent, of the aircraft engines. The whole industry had had to face the terrific task of recruiting and training enough _skilled* workers to carry out the expansion programme, and the 30,000 employed in this work in 1935 has now increased to no fewer than 90,000. The training of that additional 60,000 mechanics, elc., is in itself a large order, for the teaching has to be careful and the men have to prove themselves properly qualified for the highly technical tasks upon Which they are engaged. This information goes to corroborate the contention of the Prime Minister in the House on Wednesday that matters are not so serious as the Opposition alleged, and that the country already had an air force of which any nation might well be proud, More particularly gratifying was the manner in which Mr. Chamberlain defended the late Air Minister, Lord Swinton, who had resigned as a result of the continual criticism by the Opposition which had undoubtedly sought to make him the Cabinet's whipping boy. Lord Swinton was faced with a task of enormous magnitude, when he was asked to expand the air force at short notice, when applied science was taking a forward leap and the design of planes was changing with kaleidoscopie rapidity. Indeed it is apparent that the delays, disappointments and checks which the Prime Minister admitted have been largely due to the frequent changing of designs to bring the machines right up to date, and the increased expansion which brought the whole issue to a head. Thus three developments of recent years had necessitated substantial alterations in design and, in their cumulative effect of speed and manure, even in strategy. They were the all-metal monoplane, engines of super-efficiency, and the variable pitch air screw. It is quite clear that the Government could not have gone on building craft which did not embrace these new departures, for if it had, it would have ultimately found itself equipped with a fleet of machines imposing in numbers but completely out-moded, Mr. Chamberlain's argument against the proposed mass production appears to be an effective one. In the first case such a plan deprives the builders of a great deal of that flexibility which has been demonstrated in the continual adaptation of the programme to meet changing requirements, The comparison of the 1,700 parts of an ordinary motor-car engine' with the 11,000 of the engine of a modern bomber, and the additional 70,000 parts in the rest of the plane is suMlcient to indicate the difficulty of adapting the capital machinery used in mass production to meet the requirements of new designs. What the period of inactivity occasioned when the Ford Company changed the type of their motor-cars is remembered, {it is at once apparent that any important change in aeroplane design would seriously affect the rate 0. output, and would probably engender a reluctance to effect the alteration just for that very reason. It is; perhaps,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.